Persian Wars Research Articles

Herodotus' Starting-Point

PROFESSOR GRUBE has for some years past taught a course of which the Histories of Herodotus formed a part. I hope, therefore, that he will be interested in the problem I wish to raise, since it is a problem for all readers of Herodotus, ancient and modern, who begin to read his Histories as he wrote them from the first book onwards. How did Herodotus construct an intelligible framework for his narrative of the Persian Wars and his account of the antecedents of the protagonists in that struggle, both Greek and barbarian, and in particular why did he begin the detailed narrative where he did, with the reign of the Lydian king Kroisos? Several recent critical studies have been concerned with the first question, and it is fortunately no longer necessary to defend Herodotus against the charge of being incompetent or casual in dealing either with the complexity of his varied materials or with the chronological structure of the Histories.' His data have been checked against external evidence: Oriental primary sources such as Assyrian records, the Nabonidus Chronicle, and the Behistun inscription; eclipses and other such phenomena mentioned by him and now dated by astronomers' calculations; Greek epigraphical sources such as the Athenian archon list, early ostraka, and dedications; archaeological corroboration from, for example, pottery, grave deposits, early buildings and statues, bronzes, ivories, or coins, for such events as the foundation dates of colonies; later chronographers, compilations; and so forth. As a result of this extensive and meticulous re-examination, advances have been made in understanding the chronology particularly of the period from the eighth to the end of

The Value of the Themistocles Decree

ALTHOUGH most students of the question seem to have concluded that the Themistocles Decree is a forgery,' this consensus does not imply that the question of authenticity has been decisively answered. The difficulties involved in proving an ancient document spurious are easily imagined, and so it should not be surprising that no item in the decree, except the prescript, is demonstrably anachronistic or false. The arguments against authenticity have, necessarily, been as inferential and perhaps only as plausible as the counterarguments excogitated to meet them.2 What has determined the prevailing negative attitude, therefore, is neither the intrinsics of the decree taken by themselves, though some seem suspicious, nor even its putatively fourth-century language.3 All this can be got around.4 The basic objection is that an important provision of the new version is contradicted by Herodotus, our major authority for the Persian Wars.5 For Herodotus explains the evacuation of Athens and the naval battle at Salamis as the unplanned consequence of the perfidy of the Spartans and their allies sometime after the Battle of Artemisium.? The Spartans, according to him, had engaged themselves to meet Xerxes somewhere in Boeotia, but turned instead to fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth and thereby necessitated the evacuation of Attica. The Themistocles Decree, on the other hand, provides for the evacuation of Athens and, probably, for a naval battle at Salamis before the issue of the

A Note on IG i2 114

The battered stone which bears the bouleutic oath and a decree of the demos about the boule has the same width as and is universally agreed to be a companion piece to IG i2 115. That text begins with a decree of 409–8 ordering the anagrapheis to obtain Draco's law on homicide (from the basileus, as R. S. Stroud will show) and write it on the stone. On the face of it, they are merely to make a copy, and, though the stray voice has been raised to suggest that they altered the text, most discussion has been about the age of the text before them and the changes that it might have undergone before 409.The bouleutic stone is unprotected by a decree, as it stands, and encouragement for those who might wish to suppose that it represents a revised text comes from Philochorus F 140, which suggests a change in legislation about the boule in 410–9. There has not, to my knowledge, been any very great enthusiasm for massive revision or new formulation. To put it at a minimum, (1. 34) and (l. 41) do not sound like consitutional procedure or even formal language of 410, and there has been at least one attempt to carry the whole document back beyond the Persian War. The archaisms convinced even Hignett ‘that it was to some extent a copy of an earlier law’, but he found it ‘incredible that in 410, when the full democracy had just been restored after an oligarchic interlude, a law on this subject should have been no more than a faithful copy of a previous law; some additional safeguards suggested by previous experience must have been inserted.’

The Dating of Fifth-century Attic Inscriptions

The study of Athenian history in the fifth century, and particularly in the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, derives much of its flesh and blood from inscriptions, but most inscriptions lose their full value if they cannot be dated. From the Peace of Nicias in 421 onwards it was customary to include the name of the archon in the prescript of decrees, but before the Peloponnesian War the practice was rare and random. The alliances with Egesta, Leontini and Rhegium (IG i2 19, 51, 52) were dated in this way, but not the treaty with Hermione (SEG × 15). The settlement imposed on Chalcis by Athens after the crushing of her revolt is not dated (IG i2 39), whereas earlier regulations for Miletus (IG i2 22) include the name of the archon of the year. Sometimes a single archon's name will date a whole series of records: the first tribute list, for example, is explicitly dated by archon, but the name is lost and the lists that follow are numbered only in relation to the first; the archon, however, is recorded in the thirty-fourth list, and the name is preserved, Aristion archon for 421/0, and from this we can safely infer that the first list records the payments of 454/3. Similarly the early accounts of the Parthenon, while recording the first secretary of the Boule, do not mention the archon and merely add the number in the series; but from 437/6 at least the archon's name was added, and the survival of the name of Crates, archon for 434/3, at the head of the thirteenth list enables us to date the remaining records in the series.

Herodotus and the Strategy and Tactics of the Invasion of Xerxes

IN the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Herodotus has received perhaps more than his fair share of attention from classical scholars. A number of very good books have been written on him, as well as other studies on his subject matter, the Persian Wars.' In addition, the scholarly journals contain so many excellent articles dealing with Herodotus that the present-day student can digest them only with considerable effort.2 Yet in recent years the veritable spate of books and articles on him has continued to appear.3 In one major area, however-Herodotus' understanding of strategy and tactics-there has been very little work. Nineteenthand twentieth-century historians of the Persian Wars have been so concerned with the problem of reconstructing their strategy and tactics along lines suitable to modern military academies that they have devoted little attention to the simple question: how well did Herodotus understand the principles of strategy and tactics ? Actually, he did comprehend the strategic and tactical problems of the Persian iinvasion, a comprehension he displays in many passages. At other times, however, a number of weaknesses appear in his narrative of military events; these weaknesses have too often caused scholars to overlook the perceptiveness of his account, but, as we shall see below, they illuminate a major aspect of his historical thought. This is not the ordinary view of most historians of the Persian Wars, who maintain that Herodotus had little or no knowledge of strategy and tactics. R. M. Macan, G. B. Grundy, Amedee Hauvette, W. W. How and

The Persian war of 1856–1857

In making a brief military appreciation of this Persian campaign Colonel Wylly stated that with much truth it had been said that it 'arose out of circumstances so complicated that it is difficult to bear in mind the relations of one to another. The existence of intrigues among contending parties in the State of Herat; the frequent strife between the Afghans of Kabul and Kandahar and those of Herat; the well-remembered and never-abandoned claims of Persia upon the lastnamed State; the open desire of Russia to obtain a hold over the Persian Court... the tendency of Persia to disregard those courtesies to Western nations which oriental potentates have never willingly conceded all were current causes in bringing about the British expedition to the Persian Gulf in 1856'.1 This is an admirably succinct appraisal of the varied and manifold motives which led to an obscure war owing its formal inception to the Persian assault upon Herat whereby, as Sir Henry Rawlinson observed, 'the object was accomplished at which Persia had laboured for twenty years and which we had as persistently opposed.'2 This short war, occasioned by the investment and capture of Herat, was resolved nearly a thousand miles away in the Persian Gulf; and thus, by repeating itself, history shows that so often that Gulf has been the Achilles' heel of Persia. Nor was this episode an isolated affair, for it stemmed from the events which had preceded it for a generation or more; its roots are found to have their depth in earlier times, since the Qajar Shahs had long cherished the illusion that they were the heirs to the Safavid kings whose realm extended into Afghan territories, whilst those roots were watered

Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles

PREFACEThe Greeks - not only the inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula, but also those settled in Asia Minor, Sicily, and places as remote as Marseilles or the cities round the Euxine (Black Sea) - all recognized their common racial kinship, and felt bound by a deep-rooted unity of language (despite various local dialects), religion, and mores in contradistinction to the world they termed 'barbarian' - that is to say, all those nations that spoke languages other than Greek. Yet the name of Greece - or rather, Hellas - never had any true political significance in antiquity; Greece, properly speaking, never formed a single 'state' until subjugated first by Macedonia and latterly by Rome. Though three cities with more strength and ambition than the rest - Athens, Sparta, and Thebes - did in fact sway the country's destiny through their successive hegemonies, the confederations which they formed were of short duration, and, most important, did not absorb by any means every city in Greece. Each city, however small its territory, was determined to remain absolutely independent, and possessed its own political, religious, and legal institutions; very often, indeed, it also had its own coinage and system of weights and measures. In the midst of such diversity, and confronted with such a scatter of sovereign states, how can one set about describing daily life 'in Greece'? The existence of the Spartan, enrolled for pre-military training at the age of seven, and kept under a most rigorous discipline of life till he reached sixty, differed radically from that of the Athenian, whose upbringing was more liberal, and whose obligations, in consequence, less exacting. We therefore have no option but to select - though our selection is to a great extent dictated by what literary and archaeological evidence remains available. Almost all the authors from the classical period whose works we still possess were Athenians; and obviously the bulk of the information they provide us with will concern their fellow-countrymen. As for the ruins that have been brought to light by the spade of the archaeologist, they confirm Thucydides' prediction (1.10.2) as to the relative impressiveness of the two cities in after ages; here, too, Athens is much luckier than most other Greek cities, Sparta in particular. It is true that as far as private houses are concerned, the site of Olynthus, in the Chalcidic peninsula, is far richer than that of Athens: but except for the ground-plans of their homes, what do we know about the daily life of the Olynthians?So it is primarily Athens, and the Athenians, that I shall be discussing in the present volume, though this will not prevent me from glancing at other cities intermittently by way of comparison. Besides, even in antiquity, Athens was already regarded as the Greek city par excellence.As for the period to be covered, I have found it impracticable to restrict myself to the years of Pericles' administration (from about 450 to 429 bc): too many crucial documents in my chosen field are of earlier - or, more often, later - date than this brief epoch. Even if we extend it to take in the fifty years - Thucydides' pentekontaetia - from the Battle of Plataea (479) to the death of Pericles (429), we should still have to exclude the vital testimony of Aristophanes and the fourth-century orators. I have at times even cited authors from the third century; but my general rule is to use the 'Periclean Age' , in its widest interpretation, as my chronological framework, defining it (conveniently if arbitrarily) as beginning circa 450 bc, after the major crisis of the Persian Wars, and ending a century later (350) before the Battle of Chaeronea in 338. Chaeronea ushered in the era of Macedonian domination, and was thus the prelude to those numerous radical changes, both political and social, which characterized what we now call the Hellenistic or Alexandrian Age. Athenians

Themistocles in Fifth Century Historiography

The inscription of Troizen published by M. H. Jameson x) once more draws attention to the ancient controversy on the Persian Wars, attested in documents both literary and epigraphical : Who saved Greece from the barbarians? One of the few points of agreement between modern scholars, whose opinions differ widely, is that the inscription bears testimony to a tradition according to which Athens and Greece owed their salvation to the great statesman Themistocles, son of Neocles from the deme Phrearrhoi. This tradition was not completely ignored, it is true, by Herodotus and his Athenian friends of the forties 2). Without Thucydides, however, we should have been largely in the dark. This historian with (moderate) oligarchic views and convictions is fair to Themistocles and proves his own greatness by acknowledging the extraordinary talents, diplomatic skill and military insight of the man who started as a democratic party-leader, but who developed into the real national statesman who in his finest hour saved

The Authenticity of the Themistocles Decree

RARELY does the historian of classical Greece acquire such a spectacular document as the stone inscription that Professor M. H. Jameson has recently discovered edited.1 It purports to record a united groupi of measures passed, on the motion of Themistocles, by the Athenian assembly in 480 B.C. T'his document will be widely discussed if accepted will entail revising part of the history of the Persian Wars, especially concerning the campaign of 480. It therefore seems imperative to draw attention to historical problems arising from the new text to lose no time in pointing out difficulties that warn against accepting everything in it as clearly authentic.2 Interpretation evaluation of this new document raise questions of historical method that are not limited to Greek history epigraphy. T'he document prescribes that Athenians resident aliens, in repelling the Persian invasion, shall remove their women children from Athens to the town of Troizen (where the inscription was found in I959); elderly men shall withdraw to the island of Salamis. Minute instructions are then given about the manning of two hundred ships whose commanders must have certain qualifications shall be chosen by lot. Half these ships shall proceed to the promontory of Artemisium on the island of Euboea to intercept the enemy (an indecisive naval battle was in fact fought here); the other one hundred shall lie in wait near Salamis and the rest of Attica to guard the home territory. T'he decree then records that men ostracized in earlier years shall go to Salamis wait for public action on their cases. Here the text breaks off. The problem of authenticity is raised immediately by the fact that the

Waiting for the Barbarian: New Light on the Persian Wars

Few periods in all ancient history are more familiar than the months from May to September of 480 b.c., when the enormous army and navy of Xerxes, King of the Persians, crossed from Asia to Europe and bore down upon the heart of Greece. Few battles are more famous than Salamis, where Xerxes, after carrying all before him, crushing Leonidas at Thermopylai and forcing the Greek fleet to withdraw from Artemision, sacking and burning Athens, saw his navy defeated by a far smaller force and the tide of Persian might begin to ebb. How did the Greeks prepare to face the Persian threat, the greatest they had ever met, and what planning achieved this remarkable result?

Orchomenus and the Formation of the Boeotian Confederacy in 447 B.C.

T HE purpose of this paper is to suggest that Orchomenus, not Thebes, took the lead in the liberation of Boeotia in 447 and the subsequent formation of the Boeotian Confederacy, and that for over twenty years Orchomenus had as large a representation on the board of Boeotarchs and in the federal council as Thebes and probably even larger. The particular constitution referred to, of course, is the one described in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia under which Boeotia had a representative government with eleven Boeotarchs and 660 federal bouleutai.1 On the first point the accounts of the rising, when viewed closely, leave little doubt. The second point is not equally clear. In the description of the constitution in the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia we are told that Thebes furnished four Boeotarchs and Orchomenus two. It will be argued below that under the constitution of 447 Thebes furnished only two Boeotarchs and Orchomenus probably three. Again, on the representation of Thebes there is little doubt, while it is less certain that Orchomenus ever furnished more than two Boeotarchs. Even so it is clear that it is necessary to discard the normal picture of Boeotia as continuously under the domination of Thebes throughout the fifth century and recognize a period of leadership by Orchomenus extending from 447 probably all the way to 431. The belief that the initiative in 447 came from Thebes was natural enough. Thebes appears to have been the leading Boeotian city before and during the Persian War, during the Peloponnesian War, and even more markedly so after the revival of the Confederacy in 479. Moreover, Thebes was the one Boeotian city to maintain its freedom between 457 and 447. Hence it was natural to credit her with the leadership in the rising of 447 and the subsequent organization of the Confederacy, but the evidence actually tells quite another story. It may be well to recall that in 457, after the victory at Oenophyta, Athens had secured control of all Boeotia, had set up democracies in the cities, and doubtless had exiled the oligarchic leaders. In this she was aided by civil strife, as her control in turn was to be overthrown with the aid of returning exiles and local revolution. The most plausible reconstruction of evidence that at first glance seems contradictory is that all Boeotia, including Thebes, was reduced, but that in the latter city the democracy set up by the Athenians was soon overthrown.2 This would mean that Thebes became, as it were, an independent island surrounded by a Boeotia under Athenian control. Such a situation need not surprise us. A walled city the size of Thebes was not easily captured. Moreover, if it was insulated from the outer world, its

Toward a Restudy of the Battle of Salamis

Previous articleNext article No AccessToward a Restudy of the Battle of SalamisW. Kendrick PritchettW. Kendrick Pritchett Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 63, Number 3July 1959 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/501846 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright © 1959 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: William C. West, III The Trophies of the Persian Wars, Classical Philology 64, no.11 (Oct 2015): 7–19.https://doi.org/10.1086/365438

The Modern Concept of History

Herodotus, who has been rightly called the Father of Western history, tells us in the first sentence of the Persian Wars that the purpose of his enterprise is to preserve that which owes its existence to men (ta genomena ex anthrôpôn), lest it be obliterated by time, and to bestow upon the glorious, wondrous deeds of Greeks and Barbarians sufficient praise to assure their remembrance by posterity and thus make their glory shine through the centuries.

Sources for Greek History between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars

Sources for Greek History between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars

Hill's Sources Revised - R. Meiggs and A. Andrewes: Sources for Greek History between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. Collected and arranged by G. F. Hill. Second edition. Pp. xx + 426. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951. Cloth, 30s. net.

Hill's <i>Sources</i> Revised - R. Meiggs and A. Andrewes: Sources for Greek History between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. Collected and arranged by G. F. Hill. Second edition. Pp. xx + 426. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951. Cloth, 30<i>s.</i> net.

Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars. Paul Friedländer

<i>Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars</i>. Paul Friedländer

Might and Right in Antiquity, "Dike" I: From Homer to the Persian Wars. Hartvig Frisch , C. C. Martindale

<i>Might and Right in Antiquity, "Dike" I: From Homer to the Persian Wars</i>. Hartvig Frisch , C. C. Martindale

Might and Right in Early Greece - Hartvig Frisch: Might and Right in Antiquity. I: From Homer to the Persian Wars. Translated by C. C. Martindale. (Humanitas, II.) Pp. 276; 8 plates. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1949. Paper, Kr. 30.

Might and Right in Early Greece - Hartvig Frisch: Might and Right in Antiquity. I: <i>From Homer to the Persian Wars</i>. Translated by C. C. Martindale. (Humanitas, II.) Pp. 276; 8 plates. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1949. Paper, Kr. 30.

Epigrammata, Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars. By Paul Friedländer.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsEpigrammata, Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars. By Paul Friedländer.Malcolm F. McGregorMalcolm F. McGregor Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 54, Number 2April–June 1950 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/500217 Copyright © 1950 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Might and Right in Antiquity, "Dike" I: From Homer to the Persian Wars

Might and Right in Antiquity, "Dike" I: From Homer to the Persian Wars