Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

  24 Lysias, In Defence of Mantitheus, 16.17.

  25 Thucydides, 1.10.

  26 The Iliad, 21.470. Her shrine by the Eurotas was originally dedicated to an obscure goddess named Ortheia. The Spartans worshipped Artemis there as Artemis Ortheia, probably from the sixth century bc, although the name is not attested before the Roman period.

  27 The masks date from the seventh and particularly the sixth centuries bc.

  28 Pindar, quoted by Plutarch, lycurgus, 21.

  29 According to Plato, only the elderly were permitted to criticise aspects of the state. See Laws, 634d—e.

  30 Pindar, quoted by Plutarch, Lycurgus, 21.

  31 Xenophon, The Constitution of the Spartans, 10.3.

  32 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16.

  33 Ibykos, Fragment 58.

  34 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 14.

  35 Herodotus, 6.61.

  36 The king was Charilaus, but since he was supposed to have lived in the eighth century, before the Lycurgan revolution, the saying is surely apocryphal. It was recorded by Plutarch, and is grouped in his Sayings of the Spartans.

  37 Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16.

  38 It is only fair to point out that both these details derive from late sources, Aelian and Athenaeus (both c. second century ad), respectively.

  39 The precise origins of this practice are obscure — some scholars date it to as late as the fifth century bc.

  40 Xenophon, The Constitution of the Spartans, 2.9.

  41 There is an ambiguity here in the sources. It is claimed that Spartans married in secret, but how a bride could keep her new status a secret when she had just been cropped is unclear. In Sparta, it was only married women who were veiled in public.

  42 Critias, 88B37 D-K.

  43 Herodotus, 7.104.

  44 Tyrtaeus, Fragment 2.

  45 Homeric Hymns, 3.214—15.

  46 When precisely this occurred is unclear. The story that the Pythia had originally been a young girl was much repeated, but all the writers of the classical period took it for granted that she was old. The state of our knowledge of the history of archaic Greece being so patchy, it is perfectly possible that she always had been.

  47 Homeric Hymns, 3.538.

  48 The so-called Sacred War is traditionally dated 595-591 bc. There is an eeriness about the details as they are found in the sources that has suggested to some historians that the entire episode may be legendary.

  49 Pausanias, 10.5.

  50 Ibid., 10.4.

  51 Heraclitus, quoted by Plutarch, Why the Pythia No Longer Prophesies in Verse, 404E.

  52 The Odyssey, 17.323-4.

  53 Plutarch, Agis, 11.

  54 Thucydides, 1.70.

  55 The date is approximate. Cleomenes was certainly king by 519 bc, at the latest.

  56 Herodotus, 5.42.

  IV Athens

  1 From Pericles' famous funeral speech (Thucydides, 2.36). The sentiments here derive from the golden age of Athenian self-confidence, in the mid-fifth century bc, but the Athenians' belief that they were earth-born seems to be genuinely ancient, and can be traced, albeit vaguely, at least as far back as Homer.

  2 From the Acharnes Stele, a copy of the oath sworn by the ephebes, young Athenians who were obliged by the city to undergo two years' military training. The formal nature of such a programme was a fourth-century bc innovation, but the words of the oath are traditional, and date back at least to the time of the Persian Wars.

  3 The precise name of the Athenians' earliest hero is beset by one of those confusions so typical of archaic Greek history. The Athenians of the late fifth

  century called him Erichthonius, and identified Erechtheus with his grandson. The close similarity of the two names and the fact that 'Erechtheus' is much the older one, however, strongly suggest that grandfather and grandson were originally one and the same. A further layer of confusion comes from the fact that Cecrops, another Athenian king, and sometimes held to be Erechtheus' son, was also earth-born and snake-tailed. Erechtheus himself long continued to be worshipped as a god on the Acropolis. His legend is a further fragment of evidence that the Athenian belief in their own earth-born status was ancient. As Shapiro (p. 102) has pointed out, 'Generally, myths involving the legendary Kings of Attika are genuinely old.'

  4 The Iliad, 2.549-51.

  5 Herodotus, 7.161.

  6 The question of when Attica was formally unified, so that the citizens of communities beyond Athens came to be identified as 'Athenian', has never been answered definitively. Orthodox opinion would accept that the process was completed, at the latest, by the end of the seventh century Be, although Greg Anderson, in a brilliant if controversial book, has argued that it was completed only by 500 BC, as part of the reforms that also helped establish the democracy.

  7 The evidence for the backward-looking nature of Athenian exceptionalism during the seventh century bc derives principally from archaeology. See Morris (19S7), in particular.

  8 Sappho, 58.25.

  9 Ibid., 1-13.

  10 Alcaeus, 360. A poet from Lesbos, in the Aegean, he is quoting Aristodemus of Sparta.

  11 The most commonly accepted date. See R. Wallace. Some historians have speculated that Solon's reforms post-dated his archonship.

  12 Solon, 3.

  13 Ibid., 36. It is likely that the lifting of the boundary-stones signalled less a straight cancellation of debt than a reform of the system of share-cropping, whereby tenants paid a sixth of their produce to their landlords.

  14 Ibid., 5.

  15 Ibid., 4.

  16 Aristotle, Politics, 1274al6—17.

  17 The Iliad, 6.208.

  18 Pindar, Fifth Isthmian Ode, 12—13. The poem was written in 478 BC, when noblemen could still be described in terms that evoked the gods on Olympus, but only with stern caveats. Pindar's poem, having described the glory won by a victor in the games at Corinth, next gives him a stark warning: 'Do not try to become Zeus.'

  19 Plutarch, Table Talk, 2.5.2.

  20 Although, according to the uncorroborated evidence ofThucydides (1.126), Cylon and his brother managed to escape.

  21 For the dating, see Rhodes (1981), p. 84.

  22 Such, at any rate, is the traditional story. The chronology is a trifle awkward.

  23 Herodotus, 6.125.

  24 Whoever inaugurated the Great Panathenaea, with its grand procession to the summit of the Acropolis, must surely also have been responsible for the construction of the ramp. Other names have been proposed (see Shapiro, pp. 20—1), but Lycurgus, with his responsibilities towards the cult statue of Athena, to say nothing of his clearly attested political dominance in the 560s bc, appears overwhelmingly the likeliest candidate.

  25 This description of Athena's statue derives from Pausanias (1.26.7), who appears to be implying that the holy image was a meteorite. Confusingly, however, it is also described in a speech by Demosthenes (Against Androtion, 13) as being fashioned out of olive wood. The truth has been lost.

  26 At issue is the question of whether the so-called 'Bluebeard Temple' -named after a figure found among the rubble of its pediments — was built as a replacement for the seventh-century temple of Athena Polias or in competition with it. If the former, then the Boutads were probably responsible for its construction; if the latter, the Alcmaeonids. The scholarly consensus, having originally favoured the first hypothesis, has now swung in favour of the second. See Dinsmoor, for the archaeological evidence, and Greg Anderson (pp. 70—1), for the part played by the Alcmaeonids.

  27 Such, at any rate, on the principle of cui bono, appears the likeliest explanation of the muddled descriptions of the episode that have survived.

  28 Almost certainly. The epitaph comes from the 'Anavyssos Kouros', a memorial statue raised to a young man named Croisos, who is conventionally assumed to have been an Alcmaeonid killed at Pallene.

  29 Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, 15.5.

  30 Solon, 36.

  31 Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenian
s, 16.2.

  32 Ibid., 16.5.

  33 Ibid., 16.7.

  34 The exact date is unknown. It would later please the Alcmaeonids to pretend that they had never reached an accommodation with the tyrants, but had always remained in obdurate and principled exile. Only the discovery in 1938 of an archon list from the late fifth century bc gave the game away.

  35 Plutarch, Solon, 29. He is said to have made the comment to Thespis, who was held by the ancients to have been the inventor of tragedy. Since Solon died around 560 bc, and Thespis was said to have produced the first tragedy in 535, the tradition is clearly unreliable in the extreme.

  36 Herodotus, 5.93.

  37 Thucydides, 6.54.

  38 [bid., 6.57.

  39 Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, 19.3.

  40 Herodotus, 5.63.

  41 Ibid.

  42 Aristotle, The Constitution of the Athenians, 20.1.

  43 We are nowhere told explicitly that Cleisthenes made his proposals to the Assembly, but such is the almost universal presumption.

  44 Whether Cleisthenes ever used the word 'demokratia' is much debated. The consensus is that he didn't, and that it was not coined until the 470s nc, more than thirty years later. In a sense, however, the argument is sterile: later generations of Athenians certainly recognised the form of government established by Cleisthenes as a democracy, and so too has almost every modern historian. In this book, I will refer to it, and post-Cleisthenic Athens generally, as a democracy. For the reasoning of a classicist who would argue that this is no anachronism, see Hansen (1986).

  45 Herodotus, 5.66.

  46 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 279.

  47 Such, at any rate, is the implication of a phrase in Herodotus (5.78), where he associates the sudden rise to greatness of democratic Athens with the benefits that derive from 'isegoria' — literally, equality in the agora, the place of assembly in a Greek city, but with a specific subsidiary meaning: that of the right of every citizen to address the people. Some scholars argue that isegoria was introduced to Athens by later reformers.

  48 Plato, Protagoras, 9.82.

  49 Herodotus, 5.74.

  50 In Greek, the Eteoboutadai.

  51 Herodotus, 5.78.

  52 Ibid., 5.77.

  53 For the best account of the earlier agora, see Robertson.

  54 Herodotus, 5.73.

  V Singeing the King of Persia's Beard

  1 Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.2.11—12.

  2 Darius, inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam (DNb 8a).

  3 Such, at any rate, is what the archaeology suggests. See Dusinberre, p. 142.

  4 Isaiah, 45.1. 'Christ' — 'chnstos' — is the Greek translation.

  5 Ibid., 45.2-3.

  6 Xenophanes, 3d.

  7 Heraclitus. From Diogenes Laertius, 9.6.

  8 Diogenes Laertius, 1.21. The saying was also attributed to Socrates.

  9 Hipponax, 92.

  10The dating is not absolutely certain.

  11Herodotus, 4.137.

  12Ibid., 5.28.

  13For this interpretation of Herodotus, 5.36, see Wallinga (1984).

  14Herodotus, 5.49.

  15Ibid., 5.51.

  16Ibid., 5.97.

  17Ibid.

  18Aelian, 2.12.

  19Plutarch, Themistodes, 22. Plutarch does not otherwise describe Themistocles, but his assertion that life-like portrait busts of the great man could still be seen under the Roman Empire makes the survival of exactly such a portrait bust at the Roman port of Ostia all the more intriguing. Conventionally dated to the second century ad, the bust is judged by most - though by no means all - scholars to derive from an original sculpted between 480 and 450 bc, and therefore almost certainly drawn from life.

  20Thucydides, 1.138.

  21Herodotus, 6.11.

  22Precisely when is unclear.

  23Herodotus, 6.76.

  24Ibid., 6.21.

  25Ibid., 6.104.

  26Ibid., 5.105.

  27Strabo, 15.3.18.

  28Herodotus, 5.35.

  29Ibid., 6.1.

  30 Ibid., 6.42.

  31 Yam, 30.6.

  32 Ibid., 32.3.

  33 Herodotus, 7.133.

  34 Ibid., 6.61.

  35 Ibid., 6.95. Six hundred triremes were marshalled for the expedition, but Herodotus does not tell us how many troops were sent. .Six thousand four hundred Persians were killed at Marathon, mostly from the centre. Since the centre of an army was conventionally a third of its total, and since not all of the troops sent on the expedition were present for the battle, a total of 25,000 seems a reasonable estimate.

  36 Ibid., 6.94.

  37 Ibid., 6.97.

  38 The chronology has to be worked out from assorted scattered clues. The key question is whether the Battle of Marathon was fought in August or September — nowhere are we specifically told. The balance of probability is overwhelmingly in favour of August: if the battle was fought in September,

  as some scholars argue, then Datis must have spent an unfeasibly long time in crossing the Aegean.

  39 Pausanias, 7.10.1.

  40 Plutarch, Spartan Sayings. The aphorism is attributed to Demaratus.

  41 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 3.10.

  42 Herodotus, 6. 106.

  43 The tradition that Philippides hurried back to Athens from Sparta was recorded by the second-century ad essayist Lucian in his article 'On Mistakes in Greeting' (3). Rationalist that he generally was, Lucian showed himself merciless towards the more far-fetched claims made about Marathon, scoffing, for instance, in another essay, at the very notion that Pan might have taken part in the battle. This surely suggests that Philippides' return to Athens was taken for granted by the ancients, and although it has been doubted by Lazenby (1993, p. 52) it is hard to see why. The news of Spartan plans was of pressing importance to the Athenians (as it was to the Persians too, of course), and Philippides would hardly have been in any mood to hang around in Sparta and enjoy the fun of the Carneia. Of course, that the run back to Athens would have been gruelling for the already exhausted runner is not doubted — that he may have pushed himself to the point of hallucinating wildly surely implies that he had his vision of Pan on the return, rather than the outward, leg of his journey.

  44 A phrase so celebrated that it ultimately came to serve the Greeks as a proverb. It was quoted as such in a Byzantine encyclopedia, the so-called Suda, together with an explanation of its origin in the Marathon campaign. Although the Suda was compiled in the tenth century ad, almost 1500 years after Marathon, the fact that it transcribes a saying so obviously traditional and widely known has led most historians to accept its accuracy (although by no means all: see, for instance, Shrimpton). A further clincher - albeit an argument from omission — is the failure of Herodotus to make any mention of cavalry in his account of the famous battle. Clearly, although some horsemen must have been left behind by Datis, there were not enough to influence the result.

  45 An alternative theory, that the cavalry were away on a foraging expedition or being watered, makes little sense. Why would all the cavalry have been sent away on such a mission in the middle of the night?

  46 Herodotus, 6.112.

  47 That Themistocles was one of the ten generals is nowhere directly stated, but it is strongly implied by a passage in Plutarch's life of Aristeides (5), in which the two men are described as fighting as equals at Marathon - and Aristeides, we know for certain, was the general of his tribe. Since Themistocles was a recent archon, and a man strongly associated with an anti-Persian policy, it is hard to know whom his tribe might have voted for in preference to him.

  48 Aristides, 3.566.

  49 Plutarch, Aristeides, 18. The phrase quoted is a description of the Spartan phalanx at the later Battle of Plataea.

  50 Pausanias, 1.32.6.

  51 Herodotus claims that a shield was used, but since the shields used by the Greeks were convex, and a flat surface is needed to catch the sun, this seems improbable. That the signal was s
ent from Mount Pentelikon is an assumption based on the local topography.

  52 Herodotus, 6.116.

  53 Ibid., 6.109.

  54 Ibid., 8.105.

  55 Pausanias, 1.29.4.

  VI The Gathering Storm

  1 From Plato's epigram 'On the Eretrian Exiles in Persia'.

  2 The exact date of Demaratus' flight from Sparta is uncertain. It was most likely some time between September 490 BC and the following September, although it could have been later.

  3 Herodotus, 1.136.

  4 Plato, Alcibiades, 121d. Herodotus (1.136) and Strabo (15.3.18) claim that Persian boys began their full-time education at the age of five; Plato, immediately after the passage quoted, says seven.

  5 Ctesias, 54.

  6 Although Herodotus (7.2-5) claims that Xerxes was not proclaimed heir until Darius was preparing to depart for Egypt, a frieze dating from much earlier in his reign (at least before 490 bc), shows Darius with Xerxes as crown prince standing behind him.

  7 Cicero, 1.41.90.

  8 Strabo, 15.3.21.

  9 Herodotus, 7.187.

  10Xerxes, inscription at Persepolis (XPf).