by Tom Holland
51 Herodotus, 9.41. A claim to the contrary is made a few paragraphs later (9.45), but it comes as part of a message from the inveterately untrustworthy Alexander of Macedon. The king is supposed to have crossed no man's land in person, alone and by dead of night, in order to reveal the Persian battle plans to Aristeides: a hugely implausible story. The whiff of self-exculpation from a man who had been a notorious mediser is palpable.
52 Ibid., 9.39.
53 Ibid., 9.49.
54 Plutarch, Aristeides, 17.
55 Herodotus, 9.62.
56 Aeschylus, 816-17.
57 Herodotus, 9.71.
58 Ibid., 9.82.
59 Euripides, The Phoenician Women, 184.
60 Herodotus, 1.34.
61 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 2.2.6.
62 Herodotus, 8.109.
63 As Green (p. 281) points out, this is the only explanation that can make sense of the claim, asserted unequivocally by the ancient sources, that the battles of Plataea and Mycale were fought on the same day.
64 Herodotus, 9.100.
65 Ibid. Literally,'. . . which prove the hand of things that are divine'.
66 Diodorus Siculus, 11.36.
67 Lycu rgus, Against Leocrates, 81.
68 See Broneer.
69 Aeschylus, 584-90.
70 Ibid., 1024.
71 Xerxes, inscription at Persepolis (XPc).
72 It is all too depressingly typical of the general murk of Near Eastern history in this period that the revolt has also been dated to 482 bc.
73 Herodotus, 9.106.
74 Plutarch, Themistodes, 29.
75 Pindar, fragment 64.
76 It is unlikely — although controversy over the matter is endless - that this peace was formalised by treaty: the Great King was not in the habit of signing treaties with foreigners.
77 For this date, and indeed the authenticity of the whole story, see Stadter, pp. 201-4.
78 Plutarch, Pericles, 17.
79 Herodotus, 8.144.
80 Ibid., 7.228.
81 Thucydides,2.41.
82 Plato, Menexenus, 240e.
83 Pausanias, 1.33.2.
Envoi
1 Palatine Anthology, 7.253.
Bibliography
ABSA: Annual of the British School at Athens
AJA: American journal of Archaeology
CJ: Classical Journal
JCS: Journal oj Cuneiform Studies
JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies
TAPA: Transactions of the American Philological Association
Anderson, Greg: The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient
Attica, 508-490 bc (Ann Arbor, 2003) Anderson, J. K.: 'The Battle of Sardis' (California Studies in Classical Antiquity 7, 1975) Andrewes, A.: 'Kleisthenes' Reform Bill' (Classic Quarterly 27, 1977) Austin, M. M.: 'Greek Tyrants and the Persians, 546-479 bc:' (Classic Quarterly 40,1990) Badian, E.: 'Back to Kleisthenic Chronology' in Polls and Politics: Studies in Ancient
Greek History, ed. Pernille Flensted-Jensen, Thomas Heien Nielsen and Lene
Rubenstein (Copenhagen, 2000) Bakker, Egbert J., de Jong, Irene J. F. and van Wees, Hans: Brill's Companion to Herodotus
(Leiden, 2002)
Balcer, Jack Martin: 'Athenian Politics: The Ten Years after Marathon' in Panathenaia: Studies in Athenian Life and Thought in the Classical Age, ed. T. E. Gregory and A. J. Podlecki (Lawrence, Kansas, 1979)
--- 'The Greeks and the Persians: The Processes of Acculturation' (Historia 32,
1983)
---- Sparda by the Bitter Sea: Imperial Interaction in Western Anatolia (Chicago, 1984)
---- Herodotus and Bisitun: Problems in Ancient Persian Historiography (Stuttgart, 1987)
--- 'The Persian Wars against Greece: A Reassessment' (Historia 38, 1989)
---- A Prosopograplucal Study of the Ancient Persians Royal and Noble c. 550—450 bc
(Lewiston, Wales, 1993) Barnett, R. D.: 'Xenophon and the Wall of Media' (JHS&3, 1963) Basirov, Oric: 'Zoroaster's Time and Place' (Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, 1998) Beaulieu, Paul-Alain: The Reign oj'Nabonidus, King oj Babylon 556-539 bc (New Haven,
1989)
Bichler, Reinhold: 'Some Observations on the Image of the Assyrian and Babylonian Kingdoms within the Greek Tradition' in Melammu Symposia V: Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World, ed. R. Rollinger (Stuttgart, 2004) Bickerman, E. J. and Tadmor, H.: 'Darius I, Pseudo-Smerdis and the Magi'
(Athenaeum 56, 1978) Bigwood, J. M.: 'Ctesias as Historian of the Persian Wars' (Phoenix 32, 1978)
--- 'Ctesias' Description of Babylon' (American Journal of Ancient History 3, 1978)
Boardman, John: 'Artemis Orthia and Chronology' (ABSA 58, 1963)
---- Persia and the West: An Archaeological Investigation of the Genesis of Achaemenid Art
(London, 2000)
Boedeker, Deborah: 'TheTwo Faces of Demaratus' (Arethusa 20, 1987)
--- 'Protesilaos and the End of Herodotus' Histories' (Classical Association 7, 1988)
Boegehold, Alan L. and Scafuro, Adele C: Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore, 1994)
Borgeaud, Philippe: The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece, tr. Kathleen Atlass and James
Redfield (Chicago, 1988) Boyce, Mary: A History of Zoroastrianism, Vols 1 and 2 (Leiden, 1975)
---- Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London and New York, 1979)
Bradford, Ernie: The Year of Thermopylae (London, 1980)
Briant, Pierre: Bulletin d'Histoire Achememde I (Paris, 1997)
---- Bulletin d'Histoire Achemenide II (Paris, 2001)
---- From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, tr. Peter T. Daniels (Winona
Lake, 2002)
Broneer, Oscar: 'The Tent of Xerxes and the Greek Theater' (University of California
Publications in Classical Archaeology 1, 1944) Brosius, Maria: Women in Ancient Persia (559-331 bc) (Oxford, 1996) Brown, S.: 'Media and Secondary State Formation in the Neo-Assyrian Zagros: An
Anthropological Approach to an Assyriological Problem' (/C538, 1986) Brunt, P. A.: 'The Hellenic League against Persia' (Historia 2,1953) Budge, E. A. Wallis and King, L. W.: Annals of the Kings of Assyria (London, 1902) Burke, Jason: Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (London, 2004) Burkert, Walter: 'Damaratos, Astrabakos und Herakles: Konigsmythos und Politik'
(Muesum Helveticum 22, 1965)
---- Homo Necans, tr. Peter Bing (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983)
---- Greek Religion, tr. John Raffan (Oxford, 1985)
---- Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (Cambridge, Mass.,
2004)
Burn, A. R.: Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West (London, 1984) Byron, Robert: The Road to Oxiana (London, 1992)
Cambridge Ancient History: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries Be, ed.
John Boardman and N. G. L. Hammond (Cambridge, 1982) Cambridge Ancient History: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean, c. 525—479 bc, ed. John
Boardman, N. G. L. Hammond, D. M. Lewis and M. Ostwald (Cambridge, 1988)
Cambridge History of Iran: The Median and Achaemenian Periods, ed. Ilya Gershevitch
(Cambridge, 1985) Cameron, G. G.: History of Early Iran (New York, 1936) Carter, fane Burr: 'The Masks of Ortheia' (AJA 91, 1987)
Cartledge, Paul: Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History 1300 to 362 bc. (London, 1979)
--- 'Herodotus and "The Other": A Meditation on Empire' (Echos du Monde
Classtque 34, 1990)
--- ' "Deep Plays": Theatre as Process in Greek Civic Life', in The Cambridge
Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. P. E. Easterling (Cambridge, 1997)
---- Spartan Reflections (London, 2001)
---- The Spartans (London, 2002)
--- 'What Have the Spartans Done for Us?: Sparta's Contribution to Western
Civilization' (Greece and Rome 52 (2), 2004) Cawkwell, George: The Greek Wars: The failure of Persia (Oxford, 2005) Champdor, Albert: Babylon, tr. Elsa Coult (London, 1958) Clemen, C. (ed.): Pontes Historiae Religionis Persicae (Bonn, 1920) Cohen, Edward E.: The Athenian Nation (Princeton, 2000) Coldstream, ]. N.: Geometric Greece (London, 1977)
Coleman, John E. and Walz, Clark A.: Greeks and Barbarians: Essays on the Interactions between Greeks and Non-Greeks in Antiquity and the Consequences for Eurocentrism (Bethseda, 1997)
Connolly, Peter: Greece and Rome at War (London, 1998)
Connor, W. R.: 'Tribes, Festivals, and Processions: Civic Ceremonial and Political
Manipulation in Archaic Greece' (JHS 107, 1987)
Cook, J. M.: The Greeks in lonta and the East (London, 1962)
---- The Persian Empire (London, 1983)
Curtis, John (ed.): Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism
539-331 bc (London, 1997) Curzon, George N.: Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols (London, 1892) Dabrowa, E. (ed.): Ancient Iran and the Mediterranean World (Krakow, 1998) Dandamaev, M. A.: A Political History of the Achaememd Empire, tr. W. J. Vogelsang
(Leiden, 1989)
David, Saul: Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure (London, 1997) Davidson, James: Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (London, 1997)
--- 'Versailles with Panthers' (London Review of Books 13 (23), 2003)
De Jong, Albert: Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Leiden, 1997)
Derow, Peter and Parker, Robert: Herodotus and his World: Essays from a Conference in
Memory of George Forrest (Oxford, 2003) De Souza, Philip: The Greek and Persian Wars 499-386 bc (Oxford, 2003) De Souza, Philip, Heckel, Waldemar and Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd: The Greeks at War:
From Athens to Alexander (Oxford, 2004)
De Ste Croix, G. E. M.: The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972)
---- Athenian Democratic Origins, ed. David Harvey and Robert Parker (Oxford, 2004)
Dillery, J.: 'Reconfiguring the Past: Thyrea, Thermopylae and Narrative Patterns in
Herodotus' (American Journal of Philology 117, 1996) Dinsmoor, W. B.: 'The Hekatompedon on the Athenian Akropolis' (AJA 51, 1947) Donlan, W. and Thompson, J. G.: 'The Charge at Marathon: Herodotus 6.112'
(C/71, 1976)
--- 'The Charge at Marathon Again' (Classical World!!, 1979)
Dontas, G.: 'The True Aglaurion' (Hesperia 52, 1983)
Dougherty, Carol and Kurke, Leslie (eds.): Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece
(Cambridge, 1993) Drews, Robert: 'The First Tyrants in Greece' (Historia 21, 1972)
---- The Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Washington, D.C., 1973)
Ducat, Jean: 'Le Mepris des Hilotes' (Annates 6, 1974)
Dusinberre, Elspeth R. M.: Aspects of Empire in Achaememd Sardis (Cambridge, 2003) Ehrenberg, Victor: From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization during the Sixth and
Fifth Centuries bc (London, 1973) Evans, J. A. S.: 'Notes on Thermopylae and Artemision' (Historia 18, 1969)
--- 'The Oracle of the "Wooden Wall" ' (CJ 78, 1982)
--- 'Herodotus and Marathon' (Florilegium 6, 1984)
Fehling, Detlev: Herodotus and his 'Sources': Citation, Invention and Narrative Art, tr. J. G. Howie (Leeds, 1989)
Felton, D.: Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin, 1999) Fisher, N. R. E.: Hybris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece (Warminster, 1992)
Flower, M.: 'Simonides, Ephorus, and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae'
(Classical Quarterly 48, 1998) Fornara, C. W.: 'The Hoplite Achievement at Psyttaleia' (JHS86, 1966)
---- Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971)
Forrest, W. G.: 'Herodotus and Athens' (Phoenix 38, 1984)
Francis, E. D.: 'Greeks and Persians: The Art of Hazard and Triumph' in Ancient
Persia: The Art of an Empire, ed. D. Schmandt-Bessarat (Malibu, 1980) Francis, E. D. and Vickers, M.: 'The Agora Revisited: Athenian Chronology c.
500-450 bc:' (ABSA 83, 1988) French, D. H.: 'The Persian Royal Road' (Iran 36, 1998) Frost, Frank J.: 'A Note on Xerxes at Salamis' (Historia 22, 1973)
---- Plutarch's Themistocles: A Historical Commentary (Princeton, 1980)
--- 'The Athenian Military before Cleisthenes' (Historia 33, 1984)
--- 'Toward a History of Peisistratid Athens' in The Craft of the Ancient Historian:
Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J. W. Eadie and J. Ober (Lanham, 1985) Frye, Richard N.: 'The Charisma of Kingship in Ancient Iran' (Iranica Antiquita 4,
1964)
---- The Heritage of Persia (London, 1976)
Gentili, Bruno: Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece, tr. Thomas Cole (Baltimore, 1988)
George, A.: Babylonian Topographical Texts (Leuven, 1992)
Georges, Pericles: Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience: From the Archaic Period to the Age
Of Xenophon (Baltimore, 1994) Gershevitch, I.: 'The False Smerdis' (Acta Anliqua 27, 1979)
Ghirshman, Roman: Persia: From the Origins to Alexander, tr. Stuart Gilbert and James
Emmons (London, 1964) Gibbon, Edward: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3 vols, ed. David
Womersley (London, 1994) Gnoli, Gherardo: Zoroaster in History (New York, 1997) Golding, William: The Hot Gates (London, 1965) Gould, John: Herodotus (New York, 1989)
Graf, David: 'Greek Tyrants and Achaemenid Politics' in The Craft of the Ancient Historian: Essays in Honor of Chester G. Starr, ed. J. W. Eadie and J. Ober (Lanham, 1985) Grant, John R.: 'Leonidas' Last Stand' (Phoenix 15, 1961) Grayson, A. K.: Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (New York, 1975) Green, Peter: 77ie Greco-Persian Wars (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996) Hall, Edith: Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford, 1989) Hallock, R. T.: The Evidence of the Persepolis Tablets (Cambridge, 1972) Hamilton, Richard: Choes and Anthestria: Athenian Iconography and Ritual (Ann Arbor, 1992)
Hansen, M. H.: 'The Origins of the Term Demokratia' (Liverpool Classical Monthly 2, 1986)
--- 'The 2500th Anniversary of Cleisthenes' Reforms and the Tradition of
Athenian Democracy' in Ritual, Politics, Finance: Athenian Democractic Accounts Presented to David Lewis, ed. R. Osborne and S. Hornblower (Oxford, 1994)
Hanson, Victor Davis: The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989)
---- Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998)
---- The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (London, 1999)
--- 'No Glory That Was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 bc' in What If:
Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, ed. Robert Cowley (New York, 1999)
Harrison, Thomas: Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford, 2000)
--- 77ie Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus' 'Persians' and the History of the Fifth Century (London,
2000)
---- (ed.): Greeks and Barbarians (Edinburgh, 2002)
Hartog, Francois: Le Miroir d'Herodole: Essai sur la Representation de iAutre (Paris, 1980)
Hegel, G. W. F.: The Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree (New York, 1956)
Herzfeld, Ernst: The Persian Empire: Studies in Geography and Ethnograpy of the Ancient Near
East (Wiesbaden, 1968) Hignett, C: Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (Oxford, 1963)
Hodge, A. Trevor: 'Marathon: The Persians' Voyage' (TAPA 105, 1975)
--- 'Reflections on the Shield at Marathon' (ABSA 91, 2001)
Hodkinson, Stephen: Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (Swansea, 2000) Hodkinson, Stephen and Powell, Anton (eds.): Sparta: New Perspectives (Swansea, 1999)
Hope Simpson, R.: 'Leonidas' Decision' (Phoenix 26, 1972)
Huxley, G. L.: Early Sparta (London, 1962)
---- The Early lonians (London, 196
6)
--- 'The Medism of Caryae' (Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 8, 1967)
Immerwhar, H. R.: Form and Thought in Herodotus (Cleveland, 1966) Jameson, M: 'A Decree ofThemistokles from Troizen' (Hesperia 29, 1960)
--- 'Provisions for Mobilization in the Decree ofThemistokles' (Historia 12, 1963)
Jeffery, L. H.: Archaic Greece: The City-States c. 700-500 ec (London, 1976) Kakavoyannis, Evangelos: 'The Silver Ore-Processing Workshops of the Lavrion
Region' (ABSA 91, 2001) Karavites, Peter: 'Realities and Appearances, 490-480 bc:' (Historia 26, 1977) Kellens, Jean: Essays on Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism, tr. and ed. Prods Oktor Skjvaero
(Costa Mesa, 2000)
--- (ed.): La Religion Iranienne a VEpoque Achemenide (Ghent, 1991)
Kennell, Nigel M.: The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Chapel
Hill, 1995)
Kent, Roland G.: Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon (New Haven, 1953)
Kimball Armayor, O.: 'Herodotus' Catalogues of the Persian Empire in the Light of
the Monuments and the Greek Literary Tradition' (TAPA 108, 1978) Kingsley, Peter: 'Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks, from
Xanthus of Lydia to Plato's Academy' (Journal oj the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (5), 1995) Konstan, David: 'Persians, Greeks and Empire' (Arethusa 20, 1987) Kraay, C. M.: Archaic and Classical Greek Coins (London, 1976)
Kuhrt, Amelie: 'The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy' (Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament 25, 1983)
--- 'Usurpation, Conquest and Ceremonial: from Babylon to Persia' in Rituals of
Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon
