158 The Greek historians, Herodotus most of all, are our most complete source of information for Persian and Median history. However, due to a long-running hostility between Greeks and Persians (which produced several wars and caused troubles for Alexander the Great), the Greeks almost universally portrayed Persians as lazy, pleasure seeking, and corrupt; anything good in Persian culture was attributed to Median influence. This allowed them to admire (for example) Cyrus the Great, even though he is Persian, because his education took place under the direction of his Median grandfather. This bias undoubtedly makes the Greek accounts much less reliable. More recent attempts to write Persian history have attempted to supplement the Greek accounts with careful studies of the structure of the Persian empire, based on the coins, inscriptions, and administrative documents left by the Persians themselves. Nevertheless, the Persians left no narrative history behind them, so the Greeks remain our only source for the actions taken by Persian people, as opposed to the shape of the empire in which they lived. (See Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg’s preface to Achaemenid History I.)
159 Many scholars have argued that Nabonidus’s absence from his palace is the source of the tale of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness. The exile from Babylon is the primary similarity between the two events, but there are also significant differences.
160 The archaeological periods in central Europe are (naturally) different from those both to the east and west. They are, generally speaking, the Neolithic Age (before 2400 BC), the Copper Age (2300–1800), the Early Bronze Age (1800–1450), the Middle Bronze Age (1450–1250), the Late Bronze Age (1250–750), and the Iron Age (750–400). (See, for example, Marija Gimbutas, “European Prehistory: Neolithic to the Iron Age,” in Biennial Review of Anthropology 3 [1963], Chapter Eight–Chapter Nine.) The Hallstatt culture was preceded by earlier Bronze Age settlements north of the Alps; archaeologists call these Bronze Age Indo-European cultures the Tumulus (characterized by the huge earthen mounds, or barrows, which they built over their dead), and the Urnfield (who cremated their dead and buried the bones in urns, not unlike the Villanovan and Latial tribes farther south; see chapter 49, Forty-Five). The development of these cultures into iron-using tribes, which coincided with the Etruscan rise to power and the Greek colonization of Italy, produced the Hallstatt (See Daithi O’Hogain, The Celts, chapter 1, and Gimbutas, Chapter Nine.)
161 Possibly the Carthaginians had a bone of their own to pick with the Phocaeans; excavations at Marseilles have suggested that Phoenician settlers built a trading post of their own at Massalia before the Phocaean arrival, which may have driven the older merchant colony away.
162 The traditional date for the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, based on Livy’s account, is 509 BC, although Rome’s breaking away from Etruscan rule has been assigned dates as late as 445 BC. A detailed discussion of the evolution of Roman government after 509 BC is well beyond the scope of this work, but interested readers should consider consulting Gary Forsythe’s A Critical History of Early Rome (chapter 6, “The Beginning of the Roman Republic”) and H. H. Scullard’s A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 bc (chapter 3, “The New Republic and the Struggle of the Orders”).
163 Two thousand years later, Fair Promontory was still a dividing line between armies. In 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa were forced into surrender when General von Arnim surrendered at Cape Bon—according to the Guardian (May 13,1943), “on the extreme tip of the peninsula.” Two days earlier, the Allied forces had “cut off Cape Bon from the mainland and penned its enemy garrison in the mountainous roadless interior of the peninsula,” while Allied naval and air forces blocked any attempts to evacuate Cape Bon by sea—a strategy which E. A. Montague, the Guardian war correspondent, referred to as Germany’s “hope of a Dunkirk” (after the evacuation of Allied troops from occupied France in 1940, in the face of the German advance). (In “End of organised resistance in North Africa: Von Arnim captured at Cape Bon,” Guardian, May 13, 1943.)
164 The general consensus seems to be that the earliest population of Britain entered the island all the way back before the change in climate that brought an end to the Ice Age, and was then isolated by the flooding of the land bridge between Britain and the mainland of Europe which occurred by 6000 BC (the same shift in water levels which pushed the head of the Persian Gulf northwards in the days of the early Sumerian cities). See chapter 1. What they did in their millennia of isolation, before the arrival of the Celts, is completely obscure to us.
165 Our best source for the very early history of the sixteen states is the Pali Canon (also called the Tipitaka), an enormous collection of Buddhist scriptures transmitted orally and set down in writing during the first centuryBC. The Pali Canon is divided into three sections: the Vinaya Pitaka, which prescribes the conduct of monks and nuns living in religious communities; the Sutta Pitaka, which consists of hundreds of teachings attributed to the Buddha (a “sutta” is a discourse or teaching) and is itself divided into five parts, called nikayas; and the Abhidhamma Pitaka, which is a systematic theology based on the teachings in the Sutta Pitaka. The Pali Canon is used by all four of the major schools of Buddhism (the Theravada, Mahasanghika, Sarvastivada, and Sammatiya) and is the sole sacred scripture for Theravada Buddhism. The texts in the Pali Canon are concerned with spiritual practice, not politics; the history we can gather from them has to be gleaned from passing remarks or from stories told to illustrate the source of a particular Buddhist practice.
166 The most complete list is found in the sutta (teaching attributed to the Buddha) called the Visakhuposatha Sutta. The sixteen states and their alternate spellings are: Kamboja, Gandhar (Gandhara), Kuru (Kura, Kure), Pancala (Panchala), Malla (a kingdom that also included an alliance of eight clans called the Vajji or Vrijji Confederacy), Vatsa (Vatsya, Vansa), Kosal (Kosala), Matsya (Maccha), Surasena (Shurasena), Chedi (Ceti), Avanti, Ashuaka (Assaka), Kashi (Kasi), Magadha, Anga, Vanga. (See Anguttara Nikaya, VIIII.43, in Bhikkhu Khantipalo, trans., Lay Buddhist Practice; Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, Chapter Fifteen; and John Keay, India: A History, Chapter Three.)
167 By 600 BC, the Rig Veda—the oldest collection of hymns from ancient Aryan times—had been joined by three other collections of hymns: the Samaveda (a selection of Rig Veda hymns specially arranged for ceremonial use by singers), the Yajurveda (a combination of Rig Veda hymns plus newer texts, used by priestly specialists called adhvaryu, who carried out particular acts during religious rites), and the Atharveda (a collection not only of hymns, but of spells and rites for use in everyday life). (John Y. Fenton et al., Religions of Asia, frontmatter.)
168 The word caste was a sixteenth-century invention of the Portuguese. Ancient Indians are more likely to have used the Sanskrit word jati (“birth”) for the divisions.
169 In the sixth centuryBC, Hinduism underwent massive new developments (not unrelated to the political shifts) and put out branches in three different directions. The Way of Action was a Hinduism particularly dominated by the priests, who emphasized that the role of every man and woman was to carry out the duties of the caste into which he or she was born. The Way of Knowledge focused, not on action, but on the achievement of high spiritual enlightenment through the study of upanishads, new teachings written down beginning around the time of the sixteen kingdoms. The Way of Devotion emphasized instead the worship of the highest deity in the Indian pantheon (either Shiva or Vishnu) as the center of the good life. All three traditions offer rebirth into a better human existence or (eventually) into a heavenly existence as a reward for those who excel in action, or in enlightenment, or in devotion.
This is a very simple summary of an immensely huge and complicated religious tradition. Religions of Asia by John Fenton et al. is a standard introduction that gives a slightly more detailed explanation of Hinduism’s development. Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction by Kim Knott is another good overview. A more detailed (and academic, although still readable) resource is Hinduism: Originis, Beliefs, Practices,
Holy Texts, Sacred Places by Vasudha Narayanan.
170 Another simplified summary; for more, try the basic An Introduction to Jainism by Bharat S. Shah, or the more scholarly The Jains by Paul Dundas. The best-known modern follower of Jain principles is Gandhi, who made ahisma the center of his campaigns for nonviolent change. Gandhi was not himself a Jain, but grew up in a city where there was a large Jain population.
171 The traditional birth and death dates for both the Mahavira (599–527) and the Buddha (563–483) have been criticized in recent scholarship as about a hundred years too early, which would shift both men into the next century. Support for the later dates is widespread but not universal among scholars of India; as uncertainty remains, I have decided to use the traditional dates for the sake of consistency.
172 For more, try the basic Buddha by Karen Armstrong, and Michael Carrithers’s Buddha: A Very Short Introduction. A more comprehensive study of Buddhism is found in An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History, and Practices by Peter Harvey.
173 See chapter 43.
174 Jonathan Clements’s Confucius: A Biography is a good beginner’s guide to the life and times of the philosopher; the Analects are readable by non-specialists in either the 1938 translation of Arthur Waley (Vintage, 1989) or the more recent Simon Leys translation (W. W. Norton, 1997); An Introduction to Confucianism by Xinzhong Yao (Cambridge University Press, 2000) is a more detailed and academic guide.
175 Sun-Tzu’s dates are debated. His treatise the Art of War directly mentions the Yueh at the southeast, which tends to place it in the period after the Wu declaration of primacy and the Yueh objection: “Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yueh exceed our own in number,” he writes, “that shall advantage them nothing in the matter of victory” (VI.21).
176 The accounts refer to this man as Smerdis or as Gaumata; it is also not always clear who is the moving force behind the usurpation, Smerdis/Gaumata (the false Bardiya) or his older brother, who is also referred to as the Magus, as he had a priestly function at the court.
177 According to other accounts, Bimbisara retreated from the kingship (which he handed over to his son) and ceased to eat. However, the amount of trouble that accompanied Ajatashatru’s accession suggests that the more brutal account is accurate.
178 The brothers Macedon and Magnes were (according to the geneaologies found in Hesiod’s fragmentary Catalogue of Women) sons of Zeus; they “rejoiced in horses” and “dwelt near Olympus,” both characteristic of the Macedonians. They were cousins of the Greeks because their mother, Thyria, was the sister of Hellen, father of the three legendary Greek heros Dorus (ancestor of the Dorians), Xuthus (Ionians), and Aeolus (Aeolians).
The relationship was not accepted, by Greeks, with a great deal of joy. They considered Macedonians uncouth and semibarbarian. Even the royal family, which was likely more Greek than any other Macedonian clan, had to argue for its Greekness. When Alexander I, son of the Macedonian king who ruled during Darius’s advance, went down to Olympia to compete in the sprint at the Olympic Games, his competitors complained that he shouldn’t be allowed to take part, since the games were only for Greeks. Alexander trotted out his genealogy and was eventually declared, by the Olympic officials, to qualify as a Greek. He then won the race, which suggests that his rivals were motivated by something more than racial pride. (Herodotus V.22.)
179 The exact dates for events in Persia and Greece between 520 and 500 are unclear; it may have been 510 or even a little earlier.
180 Behind this sentence lies a whole complicated series of events. With Hippias gone, a leader with aristocratic backing (Isagorus) and a leader with democratic backing (Cleisthenes) maneuvered for power. Isagorus appealed to Cleomenes, who returned to throw his support behind Isagorus and drove out seven hundred Athenian clans; then the Athenian masses rose up, threw out both the Spartans and Isagorus, and acclaimed Cleisthenes leader.
This sort of convoluted negotiation within and between Greek city-states has its place in studies of the evolution of Greek forms of government, but if I were to continue to recount all of these internal events, this history would become impossibly long. From this point on, Greek crises that do not affect the broader world scene will be briefly summarized rather than covered in detail. Readers looking for a more comprehensive account of Greece’s political development would do well to consult Herodotus’s Histories, Aristotle’s Athenian Politics, or a standard history of Greece such as Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Sarah B. Pomeroy et al.
181 The Athenian politician credited with these reforms was Cleisthenes; he was himself aristocratic by birth, having belonged to the group of Athenians who went to Delphi and got on the good side of the oracle by building a temple, but Aristotle says that he had the loyalty of the masses.
182 This was the original long-distance run from Marathon. Plutarch, who lived centuries later, says that the victory of the Athenians over the Persians spawned another run: this one by Thersippus or Euclus (sources differ), who ran from the battlefield to Athens proper with news of the victory and died from his wounds as soon as he had delivered the message. This particular story may be true, although it may also be a myth based on the original run by Pheidippides (who is sometimes credited, probably erroneously, with the postvictory run). Whoever originally ran it (and at what distance), the feat of endurance is still remembered in the name of the longest modern Olympic footrace, the marathon.
183 There was never an “Athenian empire,” but many historians refer to 454 as the year when, for all practical purposes, the Delian League ceased to function as a “league” (an association of member cities) and became something more like an empire policed by the Athenian army.
184 The Peloponnesian War ran from 431 to 405. Some historians call the hostility between Sparta and Athens before the Thirty Years’ Peace the “First Peloponnesian War” and the fighting between 431 and 405 the “Second Peloponnesian War,” but since most direct fighting between the two armies took place in the second phase, I’ve chosen to name only one of the phases as an actual war.
185 Argument still rages over what the plague of Athens actually was. Thucydides makes no mention of the buboes which are usually described in accounts of bubonic plague. Typhoid is a possibility, but Thucydides does say that animals as well as humans suffer, which means that the epidemic may have been an animal disease which leaped hosts in the hot conditions of the Athenian summer of 430. John Wylie and Hugh Stubbs make a convincing case for tularemia, a bacterial infection which normally doesn’t spread from person to person, but which may well have mutated since its first appearance in 430 BC. The puzzle remains unsolved; see J. A. H. Wylie and H. W. Stubbs, “The Plague of Athens, 430–428 BC: Epidemic and Epizootic,” in The Classical Quarterly 33:1 (1983), frontmatter, for a summary of the various candidates.
186 There is some disagreement among scholars as to the exact dates of the Celtic attacks described in Livy.
187 We know the details of Shang Yang’s life from the brief biography set down by Sima Qian as chapter 68 of the Shih chi.
188 The exact location of Cunaxa is unknown. Plutarch says that it was “five hundred furlongs” from Babylon, and descriptions of the battle suggest that it lay on the banks of the Euphrates.
189 Xenophon, Ctesias, and Plutarch offer different versions of this encounter, which nevertheless all end up with Cyrus dead and Artaxerxes II alive but wounded.
190 This was not the end of fighting (naturally); in 366 the satraps in Asia Minor joined with Athens, Sparta, and Egypt to defy Artaxerxes II, but since the allies couldn’t agree on a strategy the revolt fell apart before Artaxerxes II had to do much about it. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus calls this the “Great Revolt of the Satraps,” and although it was indeed extensive, the end result was more or less as though it had never happened (Diodorus Siculus XV.90).
191 “Panegyric festival” (a “gathering together”) was another name for “pan-Hellenic festival.”
192 This treaty was known as the foedus Cassianum, or “Cassius treaty.”
193 The Carthaginian habit of sacrificing children up to the age of ten is attested to in a number of classical authors, including Plutarch, Quintus Curtius Rufus (a first-century historian who used earlier, now-lost sources), and Cicero. The Canaanite (Phoenician) roots of this practice are mentioned in the biblical accounts, such as Deut.12:31, which tells the Israelites not to sacrifice their sons and daughters in fire as the “nations around” do because this is detestable to the God of Abraham. Excavation near the ancient ports of Carthage has revealed the remains of the victims, although the statue Diodorus mentions has never been found. See David Soren et al., Carthage, for a review of the archaeological and literary evidence.
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