by Bill Fawcett
The Persian emperor and his family never forgot what the Athenians did. Up until then, the Greek cities had been considered too poor and too remote to be worth conquering. The burning of Sardis had dramatically demonstrated that the Greeks should be considered a threat to the Persian empire, and the Persian empire could not and did not tolerate threats.
If Aristagoras had not overreached himself, insulted his admiral, and then led a revolt to save his own hide, it is quite possible that Persia would not have paid much attention to the relatively poor and small Greek cities beyond that empire’s border. If Athens had not meddled in another country’s revolt, then the world would be most different. The mistakes Aristagoras made, from insulting his admiral to starting a self-serving and hopeless revolt, began the Greco-Persian wars that included the Battle of Marathon, the famous stand of the 300 Spartans, and eventually Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia. Without the impetus of the Persian threat, Philip of Macedon might never have been able to unite Greece. Western culture might never have been forced to grow to greatness. The much greater Persian empire could have continued to dominate the Western world for centuries longer than it did, and the world today would look very different. It would have been a world in which the Persian values of subservience to the state and a strong central ruler were more important than the Greek values involving personal rights and pride in individual accomplishments. The world is as it is today all because a local Persian politician, ruling a city at the far edge of the empire, got too ambitious.
2
AHEAD OF HIS TIME
A Pharaoh Goes Too Far
1390 BCE
Some great thinkers are years ahead of their time, whereas others are millennia ahead of theirs. Pharaoh Akhenaten proved to be the latter when he took on Egypt’s most powerful icons, the gods. Had he succeeded, the world might have experienced a large-scale movement of monotheism a thousand years before the Hebrew Bible was written. Instead, his overzealous tendencies virtually buried his newfound faith. This was a time when the pharaoh was considered a god, so it took a lot of effort for the Egyptian’s living god and messenger to the other gods to alienate almost his entire population, but somehow Akhenaten managed to do just that.
Akhenaten inherited a vast empire when he came to power in 1390 BCE. His father, Amunhotep III, set up diplomatic relations with the surrounding kingdoms and created an era of peace and tranquility. This golden age in Egyptian history gave rise to the cult of Amun-Ra, who was praised above all other gods because he brought great abundance to the Fertile Crescent. As Amun-Ra’s status increased, so did that of his priests. They controlled one-third of the country’s wealth and soon became as powerful as the pharaoh himself. Amunhotep must have recognized the threat because he started showing interest in the god Aten, and when the pharaoh favors a god, the people generally follow suit. This is probably just what Amunhotep hoped for. Whatever his plan, he would not see it come to light. When he died in 1352 BCE, Akhenaten took up the reins under the name Amunhotep IV; however, in just a few short years, he turned the Egyptian world on its ear.
The first noticeable change that occurred after the succession came in the form of art. Depictions of the royal family at this time have a surprisingly realistic look. The pharaoh and his wife, Nefertiti, were shown with full, shapely bellies and thin torsos. They were also seen playing with the royal children and kissing them. In every way, she was shown to be his equal. Compared to modern times when members of royal households have their own talk shows and presidents spend nights on late-night talk-show circuits, this seems rather minuscule. But in ancient Egypt, this was sheer vulgarity.
This was only the beginning. Next, the pharaoh changed his name from Amunhotep, meaning “Amun is satisfied,” to Akhenaten, meaning “one who is beneficial to Aten.” This slap in the face to the priests of Amun-Ra was a direct challenge. Akhenaten began closing the temples to Amun and redistributing funds given to them by the government. Like the priests who said only they could communicate to Amun-Ra, the pharaoh said he was the son of Aten and had a direct line of communication with him. He went one step further by abandoning the old gods and declaring that Aten was the only god. The plural form of the word “god” was no longer used. Put in perspective, this would be like today’s Congress passing a law forbidding people to watch television.
These drastic changes were still not enough for the new pharaoh to ensure power over the people. The priests of Amun retained significant influence in the capital city of Thebes, so Akhenaten undermined them even more by moving the capital to a more remote location in the desert. He called his new capital Akhetaten, meaning “the horizon of the sun.” Tens of thousands of people were expected to make the move to what must have seemed like a wasteland. Mass building projects began almost immediately. The new city would have all the amenities: palaces, lakes, and, most important, the temple to Aten. Much of the country’s resources were tied up in new building projects. In fact, so much of Akhenaten’s efforts went into building his new city that he forgot the importance of maintaining the good relations that his father established with the neighboring countries. Lines of communications and diplomacy were all but broken.
In the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, tragedy struck. His beloved Nefertiti suddenly disappeared from all records. The reason for this is a bit of a mystery, but what is known is that Akhenaten launched a full-scale war against Amun-Ra and his priests. He tried to eradicate all traces of the name Amun. He even went so far as to defile his father’s name by scratching out the “Amun” from Amunhotep. All his energies turned toward the destruction of Amun. Akhenaten began to neglect the needs and will of his own people. The country slowly began to spiral downward. Blame for this was laid on Akhenaten for angering Amun-Ra, but the jilted god soon had his revenge. In 1336 BCE, Akhenaten died, leaving his nine-year-old son, Tutenaten, as his successor. People began to flee back to Thebes in droves, and all construction at the new capital city stopped.
Immediately after Akhenaten’s death, the priests of Amun-Ra reestablished their dominance in the community. Then they went to work on the young pharaoh. Gaining control over the naive leader proved to be an easy task. They pressed him into changing his name to Tutankamun, meaning “the image of Amun.” Tutankamun then issued a statement, under the “guidance” of the priests, faulting his father for Egypt’s decline. Akhenaten was declared a heretic. All images of him and his queen were defaced or destroyed, and the capital city was knocked down stone by stone. The name of Akhenaten was erased from Egyptian history and his father’s god, Aten, was reduced to a minor status.
Akhenaten’s dream of monotheism through the god Aten never came to fruition. By pushing his new religion too strongly, Akhenaten guaranteed its failure. Had he been a better and wiser pharaoh, this might not have been the case. Certainly a thousand years later another monotheistic religion that was introduced from the bottom up and against great resistance, Christianity, joined Judaism as a monotheistic faith.
Of course, this is not the end of the story. How, you ask, do we know anything about Akhenaten? The answer lies in the very stones used to build the city of Akhetaten. These small stones, called talatat, were much smaller than the ones used to build the pyramids. They could be easily transported, allowing building projects to progress at a faster rate than before. Unfortunately, they could also be destroyed with the same swiftness. After dismantling the abandoned city, workers used these same talatat as filler for buildings in Thebes. As a result of being able to study the stones and even reconstruct sections of the original walls they came from, we now know more about Akhenaten’s dynasty than perhaps any other Egyptian dynasty. But the stones were not the only thing uncovered by modern archaeologists. In 1922, Howard Carter made the discovery that has yet to be matched, the tomb of the boy king, Tutankamun. Hidden in the glory of the magnificent riches hung a depiction of King Tutankamun and his wife. Etched in pure gold, the king and his wife stand basking in the rays of the sun god, Aten.
SHORTSIGHTED
Divided We Fall
1020 BCE
The Jewish kingdom began its rise to being a regional power under King Saul in 1020 BCE. His successor, David, raised the status of Israel to that of a major local power using a combination of diplomacy and military successes. It was David who truly united the twelve Israeli tribes into a single kingdom, with its capital city at Jerusalem, when he defeated Ishbaal in 993 BCE. David was followed by Solomon, who ruled—well, okay, I have to say it—wisely until 931 BCE. At that point, Israel was a rich and fairly powerful state tied by treaty with all its neighbors, and it was more than capable of defending itself. Israel under Solomon was a rich trading crossroads; it had developed its copper and other metal industries, and many new cities and towns were founded and old ones fortified. It was under Solomon that the Temple in Jerusalem was built.
The problem arose after Solomon died. To begin with, Israel was prospering, but the Jewish people under Solomon had been subjected to an ever-increasing burden of taxation to pay for defense (including a strong army) and the Temple. So when Solomon died in 931, there was an open rebellion by the ten smaller northern tribes. Under the leadership of Jeroboam, a former court official, they split with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and founded a kingdom in the northern half of the formerly united Jewish land and established the new capital at Samaria. The two remaining tribes formed the new nation we call Judah, which was ruled by David’s son Rehoboam and whose capital remained Jerusalem; Judah continued to be ruled by the descendants of David.
Somehow during the split, the Jewish people lost the size and prestige needed to stay an important regional power. Less than 200 years later, the Kingdom of Israel was defeated by the Assyrians, and its people were scattered throughout the Assyrian empire, where they soon lost their identity. These are the ten lost tribes. Judah managed to hang on for more than another century before it was overwhelmed by the Babylonians, in 586 BCE. By deciding to split apart, the Jewish tribes may have dealt with immediate problems, but they forever lost the opportunity to become a realm strong enough to survive. Had the kingdom not split, the Jews would likely have been able to maintain themselves as a nation and a people. After all, Judah was able to survive its fall to the Assyrians, and a united Jewish kingdom might have done so as well. Who knows what such a state might have achieved?
4
MISPLACED TRUST
A Slave Changes History
480 BCE
It was a time when civilization in the West was divided between two cultures. The largest was the Persian centralized empire, which was based on having an all-powerful ruler with little regard for the individual. The other culture was much more dynamic, but smaller and poorer; it was the emerging democracy of Greece. In spite of the fact that there were places in ancient Greece with dictatorial and oppressive city-states, such as Sparta, individual heroism was honored. It is a divide we still see today in the different values found in Iran, Iraq, and the other nations that are descended from ancient despots, and Western cultures that are descended from the Greek traditions.
In 480 BCE, things had not gone all that well for Xerxes, ruler of the Persian empire, particularly in regard to his invasion of Greece. His object was to revenge his father’s loss at Marathon and to incorporate the impudent and pugnacious Greek city-states into the Persian empire. The free city-states were both a direct threat and a threatening example to the many diverse peoples in his empire, especially those of Greek descent.
The war had started well, with the construction of a remarkable bridge across the Hellespont (the Dardanelles now dividing modern-day Istanbul). This bridge still is considered one of the great engineering achievements of ancient times. The crossing was followed by the rapid conquest of Macedonia and a number of smaller Greek cities. Then Xerxes’ army marched south along the coast of Greece to Athens. Numbers in ancient battles are often exaggerated, but it is likely the Persian emperor had as many soldiers in his army as there were residents of the city itself. The people of Athens had fled to the safety of the Aegean islands, many to the nearby island of Salamis. The resistance of the few Athenians who had instead retreated to the city’s citadel was easily squashed. Then the most important and richest city in Greece was burned to the ground. This may well have been in belated revenge for the burning of the Lydian capital (see page 4) twenty years earlier. But Xerxes’ destruction of Athens had come only after his army took painfully high losses while forcing the pass at Thermopylae against the 300 Spartans and 6,700 other Greek warriors, mostly from Thespiae. These losses led to extremely low morale among the men of the Persian army, including the generals.
The Persian army continued to march southward, easily conquering smaller cities along the coast, while being well supplied by a steady stream of ships sailing from many of the empire’s ports, just across the Aegean Sea. Control of the seacoast was important because cargo ships were the only way Xerxes could supply his massive army. There simply was not enough food and fodder in all of northern Greece to keep his army fed. The need for the Persians to maintain this naval supply line was perhaps the only vulnerability the greatly outnumbered and often argumentative Greeks could exploit.
Since the time when Xerxes broke through at Thermopylae, there had been a series of violent storms on the Aegean Sea. Because there had to be a steady stream of supply ships and triremes to guard them, there was always a good part of the Persian navy at sea. The result was that more than a third of the navy had been lost in the storms. This, however, still left Xerxes with four times as many warships as those of all the Greek cities combined.
Things seemed to be looking up for the Persian emperor. It was the era of oared galleys, triremes, and larger vessels, and men rowed into battle and sunk their opponents using massive bronze rams. The Greek city-states had gathered all of their ships into one fleet, totaling about 370 triremes, under the command of Themistocles. Being so outnumbered meant that a battle in open waters just guaranteed they would be flanked, surrounded, and sunk. All of the Greek ships had fled into the narrow waters between the island of Salamis and the shore near Piraeus. There, in true Greek fashion, the captains vehemently debated whether to fight or flee in the hope of a decisive land victory that might come when the Persians fought an even more badly outnumbered Greek army led by Sparta. This army was preparing a defense at the narrow entrance to the southern peninsula of Greece, the Peloponnesus.
The remaining Persian fleet still consisted of over 1,200 triremes, all manned by Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian sailors who were experienced in battles fought on the open sea. Many of the Persian ships were also much larger, if less maneuverable, than the Greek ships, and they often held more than twice as many warriors. Those extra soldiers on the larger Persian ships were a significant factor at a time when the only two naval tactics were ramming and boarding. So Xerxes had every reason for confidence. His fleet was much larger than that of the Greeks, who were understandably reluctant to sail out into battle. They seemed to be cowering in the narrow passage even as the Persian emperor watched from the heights above. Xerxes was so confident that he had a throne built and scribes ready to record the names of his captains who distinguished themselves in the upcoming victory.
Understandably, Xerxes was more worried about the Greek triremes slipping out the other side of the straits than of losing the sea battle. He anticipated a retreat by the Spartan captains by sending a large contingent of Egyptian triremes around Salamis to close the “back door.” Even with them gone, Xerxes had a three-to-one advantage in number and larger ships; plus time was on his side. As long as the Greek fleet was penned up, his army could be supplied without interference as it moved down the Greek coast. If it broke through to the Peloponnesian peninsula, there would not even have to be a naval battle. And with the Greek fleet trapped between his ships, there was nothing to stop that march, and the Greeks knew this. All Xerxes had to do was wait for the Greeks to come out and watch the slaughter.
It was at this point that a slave named Sicinnus appeared. He had been Themistocles’ personal servant. When he swam ashore, he demanded to see Xerxes. The emperor met and questioned the escaped slave, who informed him the Greek fleet was in disarray. Disagreements were so intense that there was a good chance that the largest contingent, the Athenians, would side with the Persians in hopes of mercy and future prominence in a Persian-controlled Greek satrapy.
There is no way to understand why Xerxes chose to change his strategy of waiting for the Greeks to emerge based on the words of one escaped slave. Perhaps it was a case of overconfidence. Certainly Sicinnus was telling the emperor what he wanted and expected to hear. It would not be the first time that the fractious Greeks were arguing with one another, and they were easy prey. Xerxes’ decision to believe Sicinnus was a mistake that changed history forever. It was time, Xerxes thought, to end the standoff and complete his conquest while the enemy was divided and unready. Preparations were made for the Persian ships to enter the straits the next morning.
The problem for the Persians was that it was all a lie. Sicinnus was devoted to Themistocles and was soon both rewarded and freed by the Athenians. Later, he set up his own successful business in Thespiae, where he became a full citizen. Xerxes really should have gotten the hint and called the attack off when Sicinnus disappeared that night. But he didn’t.
The Battle of Salamis
So the next morning, based on no more than the word of an escaped slave of the enemy admiral who was nowhere to be found just hours after speaking with him, Xerxes ordered the Persian navy to enter narrow waters between Salamis and the Greek mainland. Rather than being in conflict, every Greek ship was prepared and ready to follow Themistocles’ battle plan.