by Tom Holland
And why not, the Athenians began to wonder, of Greek brotherhood as well? In 449 bc, a direct accommodation was reached at last with the barbarians, bringing to a conclusive end, after half a century of warfare, all hostilities between the Great King and his greatest enemy.76 In the same year, an invitation was issued by the Athenians to the cities of Greece and Ionia, requesting them to send delegates to a congress on the Acropolis.77 The ostensible purpose of this proposed conference was to discuss whether the temples burned by the barbarians might now acceptably be rebuilt. But there was also, hovering over it, an altogether more elevated goal. 'Let everyone come and join in the debate on the best way to secure peace and prosperity for Greece,'78 the invitation declared. An idealistic appeal — and one that invoked, in the first months of the peace with Persia, the spirit of the Athenians' finest hour. 'We are all Greeks,' Aristeides had proudly asserted to the Spartan ambassadors, back in 479 bc, when countering the accusation that his city might side with Mardonius. 'We all share the same blood, the same language, the same temples, the same holy rituals. We all share the one common way of life. It would be a terrible thing for Athens ever to betray this heritage.'79 And the Athenians, rather than do so, had lived up to Aristeides' stirring words, and seen their city burn. The evidence of their sacrifice could still be seen cracked and blackened across the Acropolis. Why, the Athenians demanded now, did it require the barbarian to remind the Greeks that they were all Greek? Why could not their own example serve to inspire an era of universal amity and peace?
The Peloponnesians, led by Sparta, responded with scorn. Who exactly, they sneered, was to lead the cities of Greece into this promised golden age? The answer envisaged by the Athenians had been implicit in their invitation: cities that sent delegates to the Acropolis would effectively be ceding the primacy to Athens. Sparta, inevitably, refused point-blank to do so. Her allies in the Peloponnese dutifully did the same. The conference was aborted. Shrugging off this setback, Athens responded by tightening the screws on those that she could force to do her will. The war with Persia might have been brought to a close, but the Athenians were in no mood to see the league dissolved just because peace had come to the Aegean. Any hint of recalcitrance from a member-state, still more open rebellion, and their crack-down would be merciless. The subscriptions sent to the Acropolis, now nakedly revealed as tribute, continued to be extorted every year. The very word 'allies', having become hopelessly outdated, was replaced by the phrase 'cities subject to the Athenian people' — a description that at least had the merit of accuracy. Far from being united, the Greek world found itself divided instead into rival power blocs, each one led by a city that put her dependants humiliatingly in the shade, and justified her hegemony by boasting loudly of her record in the defence of liberty.
For Athens was not the only city which laid claim to the title of saviour of Greece. In the balance, Sparta, her former ally, and now increasingly bitter rival, could set Plataea and — above all — Thermopylae. To the rest of Greece, the Spartans remained peerless as models of heroism and virtue; and nothing, not even their most splendid victories, had done more to cement this reputation than the memory of the three hundred and their exemplary defeat.
'Go tell them in Sparta, O passer-by,
That here, in obedience to their orders, we lie.'80
These lines, carved on a simple stone memorial, could be read on the site of the famous last stand; an epitaph as laconic and stern as Leonidas himself. As immortal as well — for Thermopylae, of all the battles fought against the armies of the Great King, was the one most gloriously transfigured into legend. Yet the Athenians — as brilliant, as eloquent, as quick-witted as their Spartan opposites were sober — would nevertheless trump its memory. Late in 449 bc, a portentous motion was brought before the Assembly. Only a few months previously Sparta had refused to send her delegates to Athens and agree that the burned temples could be reconstructed; now the Athenians voted on the issue without reference to the opinion of the rest of Greece. The proposal to rebuild the monuments on the Acropolis was thunderously passed. Plans for a spectacular makeover of the sacred rock were put into immediate effect.
Such a scheme had been long in the preparation. The mover behind it was a Eupatrid grandee by the name of Pericles, a seasoned political-operator who had first demonstrated his passion for eye-catching cultural projects by sponsoring, back in 472 bc, Aeschylus' celebrated tragedy on the Persians. Pericles certainly brought an unrivalled pedigree to his taste for grands projets: the son of Xanthippus, he was also, on his mother's side, an Alcmaeonid. This meant, of course, that he was the heir to a long family tradition of sponsoring monuments on the Acropolis; but no Alcmaeonid had ever been presented with an opportunity such as Pericles was grasping now. The barbarian holocaust had ravaged the entire summit of the rock, so that it was not a single temple but the whole Acropolis that Pericles was planning to rebuild. By employing the cream of Athenian talent, including the great sculptor Phidias, he aimed to raise, as he put it, 'marks and monuments of our city's empire' so perfect that 'future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now'.81 In 447 bc, work began on a temple designed to be the most sumptuous and beautiful ever built. Subsequent generations would know it as the Parthenon.
However, bold and original though all the new monuments on the Acropolis were destined to be, they still had their foundations deep in the bedrock of what had gone before. The Parthenon, for instance, that daring monument to the new age of Athenian greatness, was being raised on the scorched base of an older, unfinished building: the great temple that had been begun in the 480s bc as a celebration of the victory at Marathon. Now, with his plans for the Acropolis, Pericles was looking to enshrine the memory of Marathon for all eternity. Remembrances of the battle were to be everywhere on the sacred rock. Whether in the ground-plan of the Parthenon itself, or in trophies raised to the victory, or in friezes illustrating the fighting, the greatest moment in Athenian history was to be celebrated with a brilliance that would proclaim Athens not merely the saviour of Greece, but her school and mistress, too.
For those who had fallen at Marathon were not altogether dead. Leave behind the dust and din of the building-site on the Acropolis in the morning, and an Athenian might reach the battlefield by nightfall. There, silhouetted against the stars, he would see the great tumulus which had been raised over the honoured ashes of the slain, and beside it a more recent monument, lovingly crafted out of white marble, barely a decade old. The most potent, and the eeriest, memorial, however, could not be seen — only heard. Every night, it was said, ghostly across the plain, strange sounds of fighting would disturb the midnight calm: the ringing of metal, the hiss of arrows, war-cries, trampling, screams. No other field of battle that had been contested with the barbarians could boast of such a visitation; and an Athenian, although he would have dreaded to approach the phantoms, would perhaps have found in their presence a certain source of civic pride. They had been actors, after all, in the greatest drama in history — when Athens had stood alone and preserved the liberty of all Greece. 'For they were the fathers not merely of children, of mortal flesh and blood, but of their children's freedom, and of the freedom of every person who dwells in the continent of the West.'82 Everything stemmed from Marathon; everything was justified by it, too.
Beyond the plain, with its monuments, tumuli and ghosts, the road wound on northwards, leading over empty hills to a single temple on a slope above the sea. This was Rhamnus, where it was said that Zeus, having pursued Nemesis across the whole world, had finally brought her to earth. From that one rape had been hatched Helen, the Trojan War and all the long, violent story of hatred between East and West. It had brought Datis the Mede and his great armada to Marathon, barely five miles to the south; 'and so sure was he that nothing could stop him from taking Athens that he had brought with him a block of marble, from which he intended to carve a trophy in celebration of his victory'.83 After the defeat of his expedition, the block of marble had been
found abandoned on the battlefield; and so the locals had hauled it off to Rhamnus. No better place for it could have been imagined — for the temple that stood there above the slope that led down to the sea was sacred to Nemesis herself. It was clearly her anger that had doomed the barbarians' expedition; and so plans had been made to build a second temple to her, and as a memorial to Marathon. It was intended to fashion the marble into a likeness of the goddess. The great Phidias had been asked to carve it. As on the Acropolis, so at Rhamnus, an Athenian might aim to glimpse the future. If he arrived where the marble block stood, waiting to be carved, he might easily imagine that he could see within the spectral purity of its whiteness a foreshadowing of the sculpture that was to be; that he was catching a glimpse of the face of Nemesis herself.
Envoi
In 431 bc, the growing tensions between Athens and Sparta finally erupted into open hostilities. The ensuing struggle, which the Athenians called 'the Peloponnesian War', lasted on and off for twenty-seven years. It ended in 404 bc with the total defeat of Athens. Her empire was dismantled, her fleet destroyed and her democracy suspended. Although in the following century she would stage a spectacular recovery, Athens would never again be the predominant power in Greece.
Nor, after 371 bc, would Sparta. One hundred and eight years after Pausanias had won his great victory over Mardonius, the Spartan army was brought to sensational defeat by the Thebans at the village of Leuctra, barely five miles from Plataea. The Thebans, pressing home their advantage, then invaded Lacedaemon. The Peloponnesian League was abolished. Messenia was freed. Sparta, deprived of her helots, was reduced overnight from being the hegemon of Greece to a middle-ranking power.
Over the following decades, the Greek cities would continue to tear themselves apart. Meanwhile, to the north, a new predator was readying itself for the murderous struggle to be the greatest power in Greece. In 338 bc, King Philip II of Macedon, following in the footsteps of Xerxes, swept southwards into Boeotia. An army of Athenians and Thebans, attempting to bar his way, was cut to pieces. 'We lie here because we strove to give freedom to Greece.' So it was written on the tomb of the fallen. 'The glory we enjoy will never age.'1 Proud words — but not even the most stirring epitaph could obscure the grim reality that Greek independence had effectively been brought to an end. Four years later, and Philip's son, Alexander, crossed the Hellespont to assault the Persian Empire. Now it was the turn of the Great King to have his power humbled into the dust. Three great battles in succession were lost to the invader. Babylon fell. Persepolis was burned. The last King of Kings suffered a squalid and thirst-racked death. Alexander laid claim to the Kidaris of Cyrus, and to an empire that stretched from the Adriatic to the Indus.
For the first time, Greece and Persia acknowledged the rule of a single master.
Even Nemesis, perhaps, might have permitted herself a smile.
Timeline
All dates are bc.
c. 1250: The Trojan War.
c. 1200: The destruction of the royal palaces at Mycenae and Sparta.
c. 1200—1000: The migration of the Dorians into the Peloponnese.
c. 1000—800: The migration of the Medes and Persians into western Iran.
814: The foundation of Carthage.
750—700: The Assyrian kings establish their control over the Medes of the Zagros.
c. 750—650: Sparta invades and conquers Messenia.
c. 670: The loss of Assyrian control over Media.
632: The failure of Cylon's attempt to become tyrant of Athens.
612: The Medes and Babylonians sack Nineveh.
608: The final collapse of the Assyrian Empire.
600: The exile of the Alcmaeonids from Athens.
594: Solon becomes archon.
586: Nebuchadnezzar sacks Jerusalem.
585: Astyages becomes King of Media. A peace treaty is signed with Lydia after an indecisive war.
566: Inauguration of the Great Panathenaea.
560: The first tyranny of Pisistratus. The return of the Alcmaeonids to Athens.
559: Cyrus becomes King of Persia.
556: Nabonidus becomes King of Babylon.
555: The second tyranny and exile of Pisistratus.
550: Cyrus conquers Media.
546: Cyrus conquers Lydia. The 'Battle of the Champions' between Sparta and Argos. The Battle of Pallene: the third tyranny of Pisistratus; the Alcmaeonids return into exile.
545—540: Cyrus pushes into Central Asia.
539: Cyrus conquers Babylonia.
529: The death of Cyrus. Cambyses becomes King of Persia.
527: The death of Pisistratus. Hippias and Hipparchus become the tyrants of Athens.
525: Cambyses invades and conquers Egypt.
522: Bardiya revolts against Cambyses. The death of Cambyses.
Darius and six accomplices assassinate Bardiya. Darius becomes King of Persia and puts down a revolt in Babylon.
521: Darius suppresses widespread rebellions across the empire.
520: Cleomenes becomes King of Sparta.
519: Athens at war with Thebes in defence of Plataea.
514: The assassination of Hipparchus.
513: Darius invades Scythia.
512—511: The Persian conquest of Thrace.
510: The expulsion of Hippias from Athens.
508: Isagoras becomes archon. Cleisthenes proposes democratic reforms.
507: The exile of Cleisthenes from Athens. Cleomenes and Isagoras are besieged on the Acropolis. Cleisthenes returns from exile and implements his reforms. Athenian ambassadors give earth and water to Artaphernes.
506: The defeat of Cleomenes' invasion of Attica. Athens is victorious over Thebes and Chalcis.
499: The failure of the Persian attack on Naxos. Aristagoras leads an Ionian revolt and travels to Greece in search of support.
498: The Ionians, with Athenian and Eretrian support, burn Sardis.
497: The death of Aristagoras.
494: The Ionians are defeated at the Battle of Lade. Argos is defeated by Cleomenes at the Battle of Sepeia. The sack of Miletus.
493: Themistocles becomes archon. Miltiades escapes from the Chersonese to Athens.
492: The trial and acquittal of Miltiades. Mardonius conquers Macedonia.
491: Darius' ambassadors tour Greece to demand earth and water; those who visit Athens and Sparta are put to death.
490: Datis and Artaphernes lead an expedition across the Aegean. Eretria is sacked. The Battle of Marathon.
487: The first ostracism in Athens.
486: Rebellion in Egypt. The death of Darius. Xerxes becomes the King of Persia.
485: Gelon becomes the tyrant of Syracuse.
484: Xanthippus is ostracised. Rebellion in Babylon.
483: A rich vein of silver is found in the mines at Laurium.
482: Aristeides is ostracised. Athens votes to build two hundred triremes.
481: Xerxes arrives in Sardis. A congress of Greek cities determined to resist the Persian invasion meets at Sparta. Envoys are sent to Gelon. Spies are sent to Sardis.
480: Envoys return empty-handed from Gelon. Xerxes crosses the Hellespont. The Athenians vote to evacuate their city. The battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium. The Battle of Himera. Athens is occupied and burned. The Battle of Salamis. Xerxes retreats to Sardis. Mardonius remains in Thessaly.
479: Athens is occupied a second time. The battles of Plataea and Mycale. Revolt in Babylon. Xerxes leaves Sardis.
472: Aeschylus stages The Persians.
470: Themistocles is ostracised.
469: The death of Pausanias. The flight of Themistocles to Susa. 466: The Battle of Eurymedon.
460: Athens sends an expedition to Cyprus and Egypt.
459: The death of Themistocles.
457: Aegina is forced to join the Delian League.
454: Destruction of the Athenian expedition to Egypt. The treasury of the Delian League is moved from Delos to the Acropolis.
449: Peac
e is signed between Athens and Persia. The Peloponnesians refuse an Athenian invitation to a pan-Greek conference. The Athenians vote to rebuild the burned temples on the Acropolis.
447: Work begins on the Parthenon.
Notes
Unless otherwise stated, author citations refer to the following texts: Aelian, Miscellany; Aeschylus, The Persians; Aristides, Aelius Aristides Orationes, ed. W. Dindorf (Leipzig, 1829); Athenaeus, The Learned Banquet; Cicero, On Divination; Ctesias, Fragments; Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History; Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Doctrines of Eminent Philosophers; Herodotus, Histories; Pausanias, Description of Greece; Polyaenus, Stratagems; Quintus Curtius, The History of Alexander; Strabo, The Geography; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.
Preface
1 From bin Laden's 'Declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places,' quoted by Burke, p. 163.
2 Gibbon, Vol. 3, p. 1095.
3 Herodotus, 1.4.
4 Ibid., 1.5. Literally, 'the Persians and the Phoenicians'.
5 Herodotus has long been derided as a fantasist: the father not of history but of lies. The past few decades have brought about a fundamental reappraisal of his accuracy: again and again, archaeological discoveries have demonstrated the reliability of his claims. A brief but excellent survey can be found in Stephanie Dalley's article 'Why did Herodotus not mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?', in Derow and Parker (eds), Herodotus and his World. For the counter-view, still not entirely routed, that Herodotus invented much of his story, see Fehling.
