Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE

by Matt Waters

  The Invasion of Greece

  Preparations for Xerxes’ campaign, a display of Persian might and grandeur as much as a military expedition, were extensive. The force needed supplies, and earlier campaigns against Thrace, which also brought Macedon into the Empire, offered numerous depots for provisions along the planned route. A great pontoon bridge was constructed over the Hellespont at Abydos, a span that Herodotus measured at almost a mile. The first bridge was destroyed by a storm, and here Xerxes’ hubris was put on display. The Hellespont was whipped and branded – branding served as a mark of ownership – with Xerxes ordering the following curse (7.35): “O Bitter Water, your Master, who has done you no wrong, inflicts this punishment upon you. But King Xerxes will cross you, whether you will it or not. It is right that no one among men sacrifices to you, a foul and bitter river.”

  The Phoenician and Egyptian engineers responsible for the first pontoon bridge were beheaded. The second bridging attempt was successful; one might note that the second group of engineers clearly had greater motivation to make the second bridge sturdier. How much of this is apocryphal and literary is impossible to discern. Among other possibilities: the whipping of the Hellespont may have been a ritual misconstrued by the Greeks.9 Smaller bodies of rivers, for example the River Strymon in Thrace, also needed bridging en route. A far more involved work of engineering took place at the easternmost finger of the Chalcidian peninsula in the northern Aegean, the site of Mt. Athos. There a canal was dug, roughly a mile and three-quarters long, the work on which took three years according to Herodotus (7.22–24). He attributes one impetus for its construction to Mardonius’ fleet having been previously wrecked off Mt. Athos in 492 BCE and another to Xerxes’ wish (in his arrogance, of course) to leave a monument to his power – rather than to rely on the more sensible plan of dragging the ships across the isthmus instead. Arrogance perhaps, but Herodotus’ caricature of Xerxes here offers little historical insight. Kings frequently expressed their piety – if not their egos – through monuments and other construction works, and a parallel to the Mt. Athos project may be found in Darius’ work at Suez in Egypt (see p. 80). Practicality and vanity are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

  Infantry and naval forces were summoned from throughout the Empire, and we may readily visualize royal dispatches requesting troops and provisions according to each individual satrap’s means. The forces mustered in Cappadocia (southern Anatolia), with the infantry then moving along the road through Phrygia to Sardis in Lydia. From there, the road led to the Hellespont, at which point Xerxes himself offered sacrifices in person. After crossing the Hellespont, the forces reassembled again at Doriscus, one of the Persian depots in southern Thrace. Herodotus’ detailed account gives the names of many of the commanders and delineates the individual ethnic contingents, highlighting their appearance and equipment and the splendor of their jewelry and fine clothing, especially of the Persians themselves (7.61–100). Such prestige items were not worn for their effectiveness in battle but were marks of honor within the royal system.

  The mere passing of such a host was memorable in itself, as revealed by Herodotus’ precise itinerary and the occasional aside, for example, that the Thracians still held Xerxes’ path in reverence during his time (7.115). Much of Herodotus’ account focuses on Xerxes as a tourist, marveling for example at a particularly impressive gorge (7.128–130). These vivid descriptions permitted Herodotus the ethnographer to flourish in his own element. Herodotus juxtaposed his descriptions of Xerxes’ leisurely approach with divine omens that consistently prophesied certain doom for the expedition – just as he had done previously with his portrayals of Cyrus and the Massagetae, Cambyses and the Ethiopians, and Darius and the Scythians. The themes of hubris and imperial overreach are everywhere; the Persians are, once again, violating the natural order of things. So masterfully is this arranged, one tends to forget that Herodotus was imposing his artistry on a historical event. None of the preceding should be taken to imply that this was not a serious campaign, even at greatly reduced estimates of the numbers involved. Of primary concern here is gauging Persian aims and perspectives and, where possible, gauging the Greek response as the Persians saw it. (See Map 5.1 for the progression of Xerxes’ army.)

  Once the Greeks decided to hold the strategic pass of Thermopylae in northern Greece, the first line of battle had been drawn. It was here that Xerxes’ hammer would fall, accompanied by an attack on the Greek naval forces at nearby Artemisium. Thermopylae was well-suited for defense by a small number of men, in the end somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000, most famously the 300 Spartans who fought to the death under one of their kings, Leonidas. The narrow pass by the sea offered a bottleneck that would need to be forced. According to Herodotus, Xerxes’ best troops were singularly ineffective despite multiple attempts (7.210–212): Medes, Elamites (Cissians), even the Immortals were repelled. The Greek forces had chosen well. Unable to force the passage head-on, Xerxes seized on an offer of treachery by a man named Ephialtes, a local Greek: to lead the Persians around the pass by way of an obscure mountain trail. By sending a force around the pass, the Persians were able to trap the remaining Greek forces, mainly Spartans, who fought to the finish while the others retreated.

  This is one of the most celebrated battles in the western tradition, one that became equated with self-sacrifice and heroism, the stand of free men against tyranny. It has been told and retold countless times. And all retellings are indebted to Herodotus. Some take more liberties than others and add to an already weighty legend, with the result that the truth becomes even harder to discern. The symbolism and significance attached to the battle make it easy to forget that the pass was indeed forced. From the Persian perspective, Thermopylae was a victory. Despite heavy (exaggerated?) losses at sea, the Persians triumphed at Artemisium as well. That engagement is described in less detail by Herodotus. The Persians won mainly after news from Thermopylae arrived: once the Persians had gained the pass there was no point for the Greek fleet to wait there anymore, so they departed. These victories opened the road to southern Greece for the Persian army. The Greeks were not unified even at this point. Among those who chose to fight, members of the so-called Hellenic League (most prominently Sparta and Athens), there were incessant arguments over who would hold command and other strategic matters. Many Greek city-states, especially in the north, medized: some by choice, others by necessity. The oracle of Delphi had been depressingly pessimistic about the Greeks’ chances; careful and calculating, it operated on the assumption of a Persian victory.

  With Xerxes bearing down on southern Greece, many of the fissures between city-states became more pronounced. The Spartans and other Peloponnesians who yet fought argued strenuously that all their efforts should be applied to defense of the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that connected the Peloponnesian peninsula to the rest of Greece. Many of the allies were unhappy with such a strategy. Herodotus alludes to construction of a wall across the isthmus, fortifications to defend against a possible Persian attack there, but no archaeological evidence for such a wall has ever been found. Time and again, characters in Herodotus’ work offer Xerxes advice: Demaratus urges Xerxes to exploit the Spartans (7.235); Artemisia advises him to ignore Salamis and focus on the Peloponnese (8.68); the Thebans desired to use Persian financial resources to encourage factional strife among Greek city-states (9.2). Had Xerxes followed any of these courses he would have caused a complete rupture among his enemies. These anecdotes are also difficult to interpret. Are these accurate renderings of strategic considerations (however such may have been transmitted to Herodotus)? Or are they simply manifestations of Greek hindsight common in the later fifth century?

  Athens remained the main goal of the expedition. Once the remaining city-states of Boeotia – on Xerxes’ direct route toward Athens – had medized (8.34), there was nothing to stop the Persians. The Athenians decided to abandon their city, and the people removed from Athens across the Saronic Gulf to Troezen and s
ome of the nearby islands, including Aegina and Salamis, the site of the later decisive naval battle. The Persians sacked Athens and plundered and burned its sanctuaries upon the acropolis (8.53). This act was cast as retribution for Athenian involvement in the Ionian revolt and the burning of Sardis. We may assume, if the Persians believed that the Athenians had formally entered into a treaty relationship with them – because of the offering of earth and water made in Sardis in 507 BCE – that this sack was also understood in Persian ideological terms as due punishment for a recalcitrant vassal. Herodotus emphasizes the significance of this victory to Xerxes by noting that he sent a special messenger to Susa to relay the good news to Artabanus, his uncle and regent (8.54). Athens was his.

  The naval battle at Salamis in September 480 proved a turning point in the invasion. Herodotus attributes the Greek victory to the Athenian admiral Themistocles’ tenacity and trickery. His manipulation of his Greek allies to fight in the narrow strait gave advantage to the Greek triremes, fast and maneuverable ships with metal bows for ramming. Themistocles sent a slave to feign desertion and convince Xerxes that the Greeks were about to disperse, and Xerxes was thus led to believe that the opportune moment was at hand. Xerxes’ decision to attack played right into Themistocles’ stratagem: to force the Persians to fight in the narrow and shallow waters that favored the Greek ships’ maneuverability and speed over the more cumbersome ships in the Persian fleet. The clandestine, false message tricking the Great King makes great theater, but is it accurate? There is no way to know. Similarly, when Herodotus attributes the heavy Persian losses also to the Persian crews’ inability to swim (8.89) we must ponder the likely interplay between fact, stereotype, and anecdote. The Greek victory may be attributed to superior tactics or Persian ineptitude (or both, as per 8.86). In such contexts, it is useful to recall the historian Thucydides’ comments (e.g., 1.69 and 6.33) that it was Persian mistakes and misfortune that ultimately decided the day.

  Xerxes watched the Battle of Salamis accompanied by scribes who wrote down the names of those who fought valiantly and otherwise. This too may seem anecdotal, but we do have references to Assyrian scribes of the seventh century tracking such details of battles, so that fitting rewards might be distributed thereafter. In this case there is a historical parallel that supports Herodotus’ depiction. The Greek tradition suggests that the defeat at Salamis broke Xerxes. Herodotus tracks him and his escort making an ignoble retreat to Sardis, abandoning royal implements (such as the King’s sacred chariot), and at times eating the bark off trees in their plight. Yet it is clear that more than one version of Xerxes’ withdrawal was available to Herodotus (cf. 8.115 and 8.118), which implies that at least two versions – likely more – were yet circulating in the later fifth century. Furthermore, Xerxes left behind a picked force under Mardonius to continue the campaign, so a pell-mell withdrawal is hard to credit.10 In the end, we do not know what motivated Xerxes to depart, but a significant Persian force stayed in Greece for almost a year thereafter, with logistical support and aid from Greek vassals and allies.

  Mardonius encamped in Thessaly and the military maneuvering continued. The Greek fleet’s attempts to separate some Aegean Islands from the Persian cause, or to compel money from them for the war effort, met with mixed results. Much time remains unaccounted for between late fall of 480 and summer of 479. Herodotus and other sources offer little information for this critical interlude. Possibly the Peloponnesians continued work on the wall across the isthmus (9.7–8). In the summer of 479 Athens was again evacuated, before Mardonius invaded it a second time. Mardonius had previously sent Alexander I of Macedon (an ancestor of Alexander the Great of the fourth century), a Persian subject and friend of Athens, with an offer to the Athenians to join the Persian side with no further penalty: resistance, Alexander said, was futile. But he was rebuffed (8.143). The Athenians used this offer to compel the Spartans, who were still trusting in their isthmus wall, to assist them rather than watch the Athenians medize.

  Once Mardonius had sacked Athens a second time, destroying all that he could, he withdrew to Thebes: a friendly (medizing) territory and a place more suited to Persian cavalry. The next and main infantry engagement of the war took place at nearby Plataea. Herodotus attributes the Greek victory here to Greek superiority in armor: the hoplite panoply versus light-armed soldiers on the Persian side. It is generally granted that there is some truth to this assessment, but we know that not all Persian troops were light-armed. There is not enough data, despite Herodotus’ catalog of the Persian force en route to Greece, to discern the facts. The clash at Plataea resulted in the death of several noble Persians and of Mardonius himself, at which point the remainder of the Persian army under Artabazus withdrew from Greece. As tradition has it, on the very same day in late August 479 the Greeks also won a significant victory at Mycale in Ionia, considered by Herodotus proof that divine favor was supporting the Greek cause. The Persian navy was defeated at sea and, when the remnants disembarked on the beach, they were defeated there as well (9.99–102).

  The Greek repulsion of Persian forces from Greece was the beginning, not the end, of the matter. Ionia immediately revolted again (9.104), and much of the rest of the fifth century saw shifting in the strategic situation on the Persians’ far northwestern frontier. It was no longer an uncontested region but one in which the Persians were constantly forced to defend their territories and react against Athenian-led aggressiveness. On the other hand, the development of Athenian power was confined mainly to the Aegean world and occurred in the context of a constant Persian threat. In the immediate aftermath of Xerxes’ defeat, it was more than a hypothetical question. Were the Persians going to come back? The frenetic military activity in the Hellespont and Ionia during the early 470s was not only for “Greek liberty” but should be viewed through a strategic lens as well: the projection of Athenian power and influence, and control of territory, was as much to create a buffer zone as it was for any imperialistic pretensions. The Hellespont was an Athenian lifeline; it was the main supply route that fed Athens – literally, as the main sea lane for via grain imports from the Black Sea region – as the fifth century progressed. Athenian military activity not only served their economic and political interests but also enabled them to challenge Persian control in that region and, if necessary, forestall any further Persian advances into Europe.

  While Xerxes’ defeat certainly imposed new challenges for the Persians in the northwest, we discern no impact on the Empire in its integrity or its stability. Some previous scholarly treatments attribute the downfall of Persia to Xerxes’ defeat. But that “downfall” was 150 years in the making and, when cast in such terms, nonsense. Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale were not the first Persian setbacks in the field, nor were they the last. Xerxes’ defeat in Greece and Alexander the Great’s successful conquest of Persia are linked only in propaganda.

  Dio Chrysostom, a Greek philosopher and orator of the first century CE, relays that the Persians rejected outright the Greek version of events and had their own take:

  Xerxes invaded Greece and on the one hand defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae and killed their king, Leonidas, and on the other hand he captured the city of the Athenians and demolished it, and those who did not escape he sold into slavery. After he accomplished this he imposed tribute on the Greeks and returned to Asia.

  (11.149)

  The reliability of this report must also remain open to question, as has been the case with Herodotus and other accounts datable much closer to the events. But it seems reasonable enough as a Persian perspective – it echoes in outline what one would expect from a royal inscription (such as Bisitun) about a successful campaign. In the final analysis it is correct to view Thermopylae and Artemisium as Persian victories: the Greeks were slaughtered or routed and the Persian advance continued. The punishment of Athens (sacked twice) was one point of the campaign, and Xerxes could view that mission as accomplished.

  The Aegean Front and the Athenian Problem

/>   After the Battle of Mycale and into the year 478 BCE, Greek forces moved to push their advantage in Ionia and even to challenge Persian control in Cyprus. Initial Greek success in securing the Hellespont was soon bogged down by concerns and complaints about the Spartan general Pausanias, the leader of the expedition who had become flush with his own success and power and who, according to several sources, even made friendly overtures to Xerxes. This sort of treachery no doubt continued to feed concerns of another Persian expedition. The Spartans, always conservative and distrustful of foreign ventures, recalled Pausanias and gave way to Athenian leadership for the next phase.

  The formation of what was initially called the “Delian League” was thus dominated by Athens, the League’s premier power in terms of size and number of ships. The league took its name from the island of Delos, the original home to the league treasury until it was moved to Athens in 454. Under Athenian leadership, the League coerced several city-states in Ionia and southwestern Anatolia, in the territories of Caria and Lycia, to join them. These were Persian-held territories, and members of the League from those regions were, in effect, considered rebels by the King. There is no evidence that the Persians ever relinquished claim upon these territories.

  Attacks against Persian interests and forts in the Hellespont and Thrace also were a high Greek priority. Herodotus preserves record of a Persian named Mascames, in charge of the important Persian staging point of Doriscus; he was highly honored by the King because no one was able to dislodge him. The implication is that Doriscus continued to be controlled by the Persians, an ongoing thorn in the side of Athenian military activities in this region. Another Persian, Boges, was lauded by the King for his bravery and sacrifice. Boges was the commander of a Persian fort at Eion (along the Strymon River in southern Thrace) who fought to the bitter end and committed suicide rather than be caught in failure (7.106–107). The high point of Athenian aggression came in the early 460s BCE, when Athenian forces won successive victories over Persian naval and infantry sources at Eurymedon in southern Anatolia. But any Athenian designs eastward were short-lived. The Delian League did not have the cohesion or resources to sustain a challenge to the Persian Empire on a broad scale.