Persian Fire

by Tom Holland

  Marathon had taught not only Athens but the whole of Greece a portentous lesson: humiliation at the hands of the superpower was not inevitable. The Athenians, as they would never tire of reminding everyone, had shown that the hordes of the Great King could be defeated. The colossus had feet of clay.

  Liberty might be defended, after all.

  The Gathering Storm

  Weeds in Paradise

  Marathon, trumpeted by the Athenians as the greatest victory of all time, was regarded by the King of Kings in an understandably different light. True, Persian propagandists were hardly in the habit of drawing attention to their master's setbacks — yet neither was it entirely stretching a point for them to dismiss the battle as a minor border skirmish. While it was certainly to be regretted that the pestilential Athenians had managed to wriggle free of their punishment, the failure to take their city detracted only mildly from an expedition that had otherwise been a great success. Anyone doubting this had only to watch the Eretrians as they were led cringeing through the streets of Susa. Darius, exceedingly gracious, responded to the spectacle of his captives' misery and submission by ordering their chains struck off and settling them just to the north of modern-day Basra. This region was already widely celebrated for the mysterious black liquid that bubbled up from beneath its sands, and the smell of what the Persians called 'rhadinake,hung heavy in the air — a far cry from the salt tang of the Aegean, just as the Judaeans had once wept beside the rivers of Babylon, so now the Eretrians mourned their homeland amid the oil wells of southern Iraq. 'Farewell, famous Eretria, our country no more. Farewell, Athens, once our neighbour across the straits. Farewell, beloved sea.'1 Their exile, as Darius had recognised, was punishment enough.

  Such magnanimity, of course, could only ever be the sunshine after the storm of the Great King's righteous anger. On Athens, that obdurate stronghold of daivas and the Lie, the death sentence still stood as immutably as before. But not on Athens alone. The sin committed by the Spartans in murdering the Great King's ambassadors had been neither forgotten nor forgiven, and Darius, reformulating his western strategy in the aftermath of Marathon, was now resolved that Sparta as well as Athens should be destroyed. By good fortune, his intelligence chiefs, always at the forefront of the Great King's military planning, had recently pulled off a particularly spectacular coup: the recruitment as an agent of none other than a former king from that closed and mysterious city. Demaratus, publicly insulted by Leotychides in the full view of the Spartan people, had finally snapped: making his way first by stealth and then in open flight to the court at Susa, he had been greeted there with lavish marks of favour — and pumped greedily for information.2 The defector, already homesick for his city, had duly answered his interrogators with an unstinting and embittered relish.

  Yet, for all that Demaratus found himself pushing at an open door when encouraging his patrons to consider an invasion of the Peloponnese, Darius' plans for conquest could not easily be hurried. Whereas Datis' expedition had been little more than a glorified razzia, the full-scale pacification of a land as remote and mountainous as Greece was a challenge of a wholly different order of complexity. The wheels of Persian bureaucracy ground both slowly and exceeding small. In June 486 bc, three years after Darius had first given orders for the mobilisation of his empire, the Egyptians, oppressed by their master's ceaseless demands for grain and levies, rose in sudden revolt. From Athens, the gaze of the Great King swung abruptly southwards. Egypt, so rich, so fertile, so golden, was far too precious a prize :o be risked for the barren wilds of Greece. A task force that had imagined Athens its target was duly ordered to prepare itself instead for an assault on the land of the Nile. As summer shaded into the blessed cool ot autumn, preparations were made for its departure from Persia. The King of Kings readied himself to ride in person at ts head.

  At court, everyone could recognise this as a potentially fateful moment. Darius had embarked on many expeditions before, but he was no longer, at the age of sixty-five, a young man, and rumours of his frailty were rife. Courtiers with painful memories of what had happened the previous time that a Persian king had set off for Egypt dared to contemplate the end of an era — and they dreaded it. Cambyses, after all, campaigning beside the Nile, had left behind him in Persia only a single brother; Darius, a serial wife-taker and proudly prolific, had bred any number of ambitious sons. War in the provinces, a looming succession: here, if the past offered any guide, was a recipe for disaster. Fratricide, its malignant effects threatening the foundations of Persian rule, had already brought one line of kings to extinction - who was to say it might not do so again!

  The aged Darius himself, however, having laboured all his reign to give to the world the fruits of truth and order, was hardly the man to regard the prospect of their ruin after his death with equanimity. An immense reservoir of able sons, far from threatening his empire, might, he preferred to believe, serve to buttress it. The Persian people could be reassured, rather than alarmed, by his fecundity. Not for nothing had it always been a fundamental principle of theirs that 'the surest gauge of manliness after courage in battle, is to be the father of a great brood of children’ Darius, scrupulous in all things, had certainly not neglected the education of his sons. Molly-coddling was the hardly the Persian way. Even the Greeks, who liked to reassure themselves that a people who wore trousers as their national dress could only ever be hilariously effeminate, were obliged to acknowledge that. Sheathed in brightly coloured patterns his legs might be, but a Persian prince was still raised to be very tough indeed.

  Granted, he might well pass the first years of his life amid the silken comforts of the women's quarters — but only so that the eunuchs there could better mould him, 'forming his infant beauty, shaping his toddler's limbs, straightening out his backbone'.4 From the age of five, he would find himself subject to a curriculum quite as exacting as the Spartan: woken before dawn by the blaring of a brass trumpet, a young prince would start his day with a brisk five-mile run, before embarking on a gruelling round of lessons, voice-training, weapons practice, and immersions in icy rapids. To teach him the arts of leadership, he would be given the command of a company of fifty other boys. To teach him a properly regal facility with the lance and the bow, he would go hunting with his father. To teach him the principles of justice, of the glories of Persian history, and of devotion to Ahura Mazda, he would receive instruction from the Magi. Born into the lap of luxury he might have been — but luxury existed to dazzle the gaze of inferiors, not to soften the steel of the elite. Even a princess, although she might own whole towns with no function save to keep her shod in exquisite slippers, was expected not to loll around in vapid idleness but rather to study hard under her governesses, to practise her riding, and perhaps, like her brothers, to prove herself 'skilled with bow and lance'.5 Much was expected of the children of the King of Kings. Awesome and splendid beyond compare as were the privileges of royalty, so too, and just as terrible, were the responsibilities that it brought. The inheritance of Darius' progeny, after all, was nothing less than the mastery of the world. No children in history had ever been born with quite such golden spoons in their mouths. Empire had become, under the artful and calculating management of Darius, a family concern — and it was in the interests of none of his children to scrap over the dazzling spoils. Prove themselves worthy of their father's favour, and they might all look forward to the rule of ancient kingdoms, of mighty satrapies, of splendid armies. The more deserving they were, of course, the more extravagantly they could hope to profit — with the supreme prize of Darius' own universal monarchy going, as was only fitting, to the most deserving prince of all.

  Darius had decided who that should be years previously.6 One son of his in particular shone out from the crowd: Xerxes was not the oldest of the royal princes, but he had long been the Great King's heir apparent. Many circumstances had combined to win him this title. Most crucially of all, perhaps, Xerxes, unlike many of his half-brothers, had the right mix of blood fl
owing in his veins — for his mother was the imperious Atossa, the best-connected woman in the kingdom, widow of both Cambyses and Bardiya, and daughter of Cyrus the Great. Yet such a pedigree, although certainly an advantage, would hardly have been sufficient to win Xerxes his father's blessing had he not possessed manifold other qualities, too. As a graduate of the most exclusive education in the world, he would have more than demonstrated his proficiency in riding, the handling of weapons, and the wisdom of the Magi — 'for no man could be King of Persia who had failed to be instructed properly in that'.7 Likewise, in the hunt and on campaign, leading from the front, he would have given ample evidence of his personal bravery. Perhaps the clincher, however, was that Xerxes, tall and handsome, looked a king. This was a crucial consideration: the Persians were a people so obsessed by physical appearance that every nobleman kept a make-up artist in his train; the must-have fashion item was a pair of platform heels; and false beards and moustaches were so valued, that the exchequer ranked them as taxable items. Not even Xerxes' father could compare with the prince for good looks: for Darius, who was otherwise reckoned a strikingly handsome man, had arms like a gibbon's 'that reached down to his knees'.8 Xerxes suffered from no such physical peculiarities: 'both in his stature, and in the nobility of his bearing, there was no man who appeared more suited to the wielding of great power'.9

  So it was that when the ailing King of Kings, in the late autumn of 486 bc, and before he could set out for Egypt, finally 'went away from the throne',10 as the Persians euphemistically put it, Xerxes was able to succeed to the monarchy of the world without opposition. Nothing, perhaps, became Darius’ reign like the leaving it: in the contrast between the violent illegalities of his own accession and the stately smoothness of his son's lay striking testimony to the order he had brought to his wide dominions. Coated with wax, laid upon a magnificently ornamented chariot, pulled by horses whose manes had all been cropped, the body of the dead king was borne from Persepolis amid scenes of awful mourning. Led by Xerxes himself, the whole population of the city spilled out after the bier, wailing and hacking at their hair, stumbling in the ostentation of their grief towards a distant line of rugged limestone cliffs, out of which, high up on the rock-face, had been carved the royal tomb. There the Great King was laid to rest; and all across Persepolis, and Persia, and every satrapy of the empire, wherever the blessings of Arta had been brought, the sacred fires kept alive for the thirty-six-year span of Darius' reign were solemnly extinguished, and the glowing embers left to fade away into dust.

  The altars would not blaze into life again, and the reign of the new king officially begin, until Xerxes, proceeding northwards to Pasargadae, had been inducted into certain secrets which only the wisest of the Magi, and the king himself, were permitted to know. As part of this initiation, Xerxes was obliged first 'to divest himself of his own clothes, and put on a robe which Cyrus had worn before becoming king'," and then to down various foul concoctions prepared for him by the Magi, necromantic brews of curdled milk and sacred herbs. A sceptre was placed in his right hand; the kidaris, the fluted tiara of royalty, upon his head. Xerxes was then led into the glaring brightness of the Persian day. The satraps, the high officials, the expectant, swirling crowds, all of whom had assembled at Pasargadae for just this moment, now fell to the ground, prostrating themselves, as it was their duty and their honour to do, whenever graced by the presence of their king. Heir of Cyrus and chosen one of Ahura Mazda, Xerxes stood resplendent before the Persian people as both.

  Not that he lingered long to enjoy the acclaim. LIrgent business awaited him. Taking up the reins of Darius' command, Xerxes was soon leaving his still festive capital for Egypt. descending on the rebels, he briskly demonstrated that he was indeed, just as his father had hoped he would prove to be, a chip off the old block: not only was the revolt summarily crushed, but Xerxes, showing that same eye for constructive nepotism that his father had always practised to such advantage, installed there as satrap one of his numerous brothers. The Great King himself, even more militantly than Darius would have done, regarded this as a triumph not merely over mortal adversaries but over the far more sinister forces of cosmic evil. That countries where daivas were worshipped should be attacked and brought low; that their sanctuaries should be obliterated; that territories once given over to the Lie should be reconsecrated to the cause of Truth: this, throughout Xerxes' reign, was to be the guiding manifesto of the Persian people. Just in case there should be any doubt, inscriptions set up at Persepolis proclaimed it sternly to the world, reminding Xerxes' courtiers that there was no path of righteousness save for that set out by their king: 'The man who respects the Law given by Ahura Mazda, who worships Ahura Mazda and Arta with the reverence that they are both due, he will find happiness in life, and become one with the blessed after death.'12 King of Kings though he was, 'King of Persia, King of the Lands', Xerxes never forgot that all his unexampled power had been entrusted to him for a holy and momentous purpose. The obligations laid upon his broad shoulders were hardly of the kind that might be shrugged off casually. Those who had chosen him to bear their heavy weight could not be disappointed. 'Darius had other sons', Xerxes freely confessed, 'but Darius my father made me the greatest one after himself And this, in turn, had been done as the expression of an even higher purpose: 'For all was done in accordance with the wishes of Ahura Mazda.'13

  Certainly, once Egypt h id been successfully pacified, there could be no question of neglecting the other great business left unfinished by-Darius' death. No sooner had Xerxes returned to Persia than any number of different interest groups, clamouring for the Great King's attention, began urging him to set in motion a new expedition, to push deeper into Europe, 10 punish Athens, to conquer Greece. Most insistent of all in the royal ear was Xerxes' cousin, Mardonius, long since recovered from the wound he had received in Thrace, and spoiling for a return to the Aegean, which he regarded as very much his personal sphere of expertise. Nor was he the only glory-hunter: one brother might have been installed in the pharaoh's palace, but there were any number of the Great King's other relatives eager to cut a dash, to prove their mettle, to revel in the glamour of high command. After all, conquering far-distant 'anairya' was what being a Persian was all about.

  Turning to his intelligence chiefs for information on the western front, Xerxes was gratified to be informed that all stood fair. Yes, Athens and Sparta remained implacably opposed to his ambitions, but the aristocracy in other areas of Greece — including, not least, the vital territory of Thessaly, just to the north of Boeotia and Thebes — would, so the intelligence chiefs reported, welcome any Persian invasion with open arms. Once Thessaly had fallen, Thebes herself and a host of other cities further south were bound to collaborate. Indeed, even Sparta and Athens might not be utterly lost causes — for Demaratus, comfortably ensconced at Susa, and the Pisistratids, now well into their third decade of life on the Persian payroll, could guarantee the support of a few clients still. The admirably proactive sons of Hippias, indeed, ventured to offer the Great King the support of the heavens themselves — 'describing to Xerxes how it was fore-ordained that a native of Persia should bridge the Hellespont, and expounding in detail on the triumphs that were bound to follow'.1'1 Source of these confident assertions was none other than Onomacritus, that same charlatan who had once been an intimate of the tyrants back in Athens, until falling out with them over accusations that he had been doctoring prophecies. Perhaps he was not the most reliable source of information — but the Pisistratids had an exile's desperation to see their homeland again and had returned desperately, pathetically, to trusting his every word.

  It is doubtful that the Persian high command had quite the same level of confidence in Onomacritus, but that hardly mattered. Already, within months of Xerxes' return from Egypt, the drive to war had become unstoppable. Those few doves opposed to the invasion found themselves powerless to halt it. If they did speak out, they were labelled cowards. Their warnings, however, despite impatient sno
rts from the war party, could not so easily be swept aside. That the Athenians, as they had proved at Marathon, were no push-over; that the provisioning of any task force was bound to prove onerous even for the Persians' practised bureaucrats; that the mountainous terrain of Greece was notoriously inhospitable: concerns such as these could hardly be dismissed as

  defeatist scaremongering. Yet even the perils of the venture, for all that they might inspire the occasional spasm of hesitation in Xerxes, served in the end only to stiffen the royal resolve. To have shrunk from risk, to have confessed that Persian power might be susceptible to overstretch, to have abandoned Athens and the continent beyond her for ever to the Lie, such would have been an abject betrayal of Darius and, even more unforgivably, of the great Lord Mazda

  Yes, the invasion was ripe with hazard — but then again, if it had not been, it would hardly have been a challenge worthy of the attentions of the King of Kings.

  How best to meet it? Deep within the innermost sanctum of Persepolis — beyond the looming entrance halls carved in the form of colossal bulls with human heads and the wings of eagles, beyond the brightly painted courtyards manned by officious eunuchs, beyond even the thousand bodyguards stationed on perpetual duty outside their royal master's door, their long robes gem-studded, the butts of their spears adorned with delicate apples of gold - Xerxes' most trusted advisers assembled before the royal throne to offer their opinions. Although they were sequestered within the nerve centre of Persian power, what was spoken there would in due course come to be shrewdly guessed at, thanks to rumour and to the progress of events.15 At issue, of course, once it had been resolved that the war should go ahead, was a single question: what kind of task force should be marshalled for the invasion and conquest of Greece?