Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium

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CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE PERSIAN WARS

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Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars Antiquity to the Third Millennium

Edited by EMMA BRIDGES, EDITH HALL, and P. J. RHODES

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2007 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN

978-0-19-927967-8

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Acknowledgements Many people have helped us in the course of producing this book, especially the contributors, whose advice and suggestions have gone beyond their individual essays. We are, however, particularly grateful to Christopher Rowe, currently Head of the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, for his support of the project since its inception. At Durham we also owe thanks to Peter Heslin and Christine Flowers for all their help with the illustrations; to Charlie MacDougall for skilful work with musical software in the preparation of David Kimbell’s chapter; and to Esther McGilvray for continuous help with the typescript and administration. Assistance of other kinds was generously provided by Robert Auletta, John Lumsden, Ellen McLaughlin, Erin Mee, Pantelis Michelakis, William Turpin, and Amanda Wrigley. Hilary O’Shea and Jenny Wagstaffe provided warm encouragement at OUP; Kathleen McLaughlin was a calm and sympathetic production editor. We should also like to thank our copy-editor Tom Chandler, our proof-reader Sarah Newton, and Peter Andrews for providing us with the excellent index.


Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Note on Abbreviations

ix xii xvi

SECTION I. ARCHETYPAL THEME 1

Introduction Emma Bridges, Edith Hall, and P. J. Rhodes

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The Impact of the Persian Wars on Classical Greece P. J. Rhodes

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Xerxes’ Homer Johannes Haubold

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The View from Eleusis: Demeter in the Persian Wars Deborah Boedeker

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SECTION II. ANCIENT VARIATIONS 5

Plato and the Persian Wars Christopher Rowe

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The Persian Wars in Fourth-Century Oratory and Historiography John Marincola

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Images of the Persian Wars in Rome Philip Hardie

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De Malignitate Plutarchi: Plutarch, Herodotus, and the Persian Wars Christopher Pelling

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Contents SECTION III. RENAISSANCE AND ENLIGHTENMENT REDISCOVERY

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Aeschylus’ Persians via the Ottoman Empire to Saddam Hussein Edith Hall

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Operatic Variations on an Episode at the Hellespont David Kimbell

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‘Shrines of the Mighty’: Rediscovering the Battlefields of the Persian Wars Ian Macgregor Morris

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SECTION IV. NATIONHOOD AND IDENTITY 12

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From Marathon to Waterloo: Byron, Battle Monuments, and the Persian Wars Timothy Rood

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Enacting History and Patriotic Myth: Aeschylus’ Persians on the Eve of the Greek War of Independence Gonda Van Steen

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The Persian Wars as the ‘Origin’ of Historiography: Ancient and Modern Orientalism in George Grote’s History of Greece Alexandra Lianeri

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‘People Like Us’ in the Face of History: Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine 355 Clemence Schultze SECTION V. LEONIDAS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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Xerxes Goes to Hollywood D. S. Levene

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The Guts and the Glory: Pressfield’s Spartans at the Gates of Fire Emma Bridges

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Index

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List of Illustrations 1.1

Renaissance print reconstructing the spectacle of a Roman naumachia. Reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 1.2 Themistocles Receiving the Trophy, anonymous wood engraving after an etching by Bartolomeo Pinelli in Fulvia Bertocchi, Raccolta di no. 100 soggetti li più rimarchevoli dell’ istoria greca, inventati ed incisi da Bartolomeo Pinelli (Rome 1821). Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 114, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 1.3 A Greek hoplite triumphs over a Persian adversary in a scene on the tondo of a red-figure cup by the Triptolemus painter, c.470 bc. Image reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland. 1.4 Anonymous engraving of the battle of Marathon, reproduced from Bildergallerie zur allegemeinen Weltgeschichte von Carl Rotteck (Berlin, 1842), by courtesy of the APGRD. 1.5 The Pass of Thermopylae, wood engraving by M. A. Williams, after a design by Henry Sargent. Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 336, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 1.6 Jacques-Louis David’s Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814), reproduced courtesy of the Louvre, Paris. 1.7 Talma, Rôle de Léonidas, engraving taken from a design by E. Fauconnier. Frontispiece to M. Pichat, Léonidas (Paris, 1825), reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 1.8 Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Die Seeschlacht von Salamis (1858). Wallpainting in the Maximilianeum, Munich. Image reproduced courtesy of the Bavarian Parliament. 1.9 The Athenians Taking Refuge in Their Ships, wood engraving by John Jackson, after an etching by Bartolomeo Pinelli in Fulvia Bertocchi, Raccolta di no. 100 soggetti li più rimarchevoli dell’ istoria greca, inventati ed incisi da Bartolomeo Pinelli (Rome 1821). Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 77, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 1.10 Engraving of Leonidas taking leave of his family, frontispiece to Richard Glover, Leonidas: A Poem, 7th edn. (London, 1804). Reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 1.11 Engraving by Hal Ludlow and G. G. Kilburne illustrating the march of the three hundred, reproduced from Poems of Mrs Hemans (London 1885), p. 17.

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Illustrations 1.12 The Reception of the Ambassadors of Mardonius, wood engraving by T. Williams after a design by Bartolomeo Pinelli. Inspired by Herodotus (either 8.143 or 9.4–5). Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 183, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 1.13 Mount Cithaeron, and Tombs at Plataea. Engraving by William Evans after a design by Henry Sargent. Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 176, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 2.1 Detail from the central panel of the Aulian name-vase of the ‘Darius Painter’. 340–330 bc. Naples Archaeological Museum 3523. 7.1 ‘The Vatican Persian’, probably from the first century ad. Roman statue of a defeated Persian, copied from a Pergamene victory monument (photo: Vatican XXXVI.27/25/4, reproduced courtesy of the Vatican Museums). 7.2 Polychrome marble statue of an eastern barbarian, probably of Augustan date. Naples Archaeological Museum. 9.1 Cartoon clipped from a British newspaper believed to have been published in 2003 or 2004, depicting Saddam Hussein as an ancient Achaemenid King. Posted anonymously to Edith Hall. 9.2 Exile of Themistocles. Wood engraving by Orrin Smith after an etching by Bartolomeo Pinelli in Fulvia Bertocchi, Raccolta di no. 100 soggetti li più rimarchevoli dell’ istoria greca, inventati ed incisi da Bartolomeo Pinelli (Rome 1821). Reproduced from Christopher Wordsworth, Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical (London, 1840), p. 163, by courtesy of Clemence Schultze. 9.3 The raising of the ghost of Darius in Aeschylus’ Persians as represented in a chalk cartoon by George Romney (1778–9), inspired by Robert Potter’s translation of the play. Reproduced by courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the National Museums (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). 9.4 Scene from Karolos Koun’s Theatro Technis production of Aeschylus’ Persians (1966). Photograph reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 9.5 The design for a mid-twentieth-century production of Aeschylus’ Persians at Epidauros. Image reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 9.6 A scene from the performance of Part 2 of Orghast, by Ted Hughes and Peter Brook, at Naqsh-e-Rustam outside Persepolis (1971). Reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 9.7 Akilas Karazisis as the Messenger in the Greek National Theatre’s production of Persians at Epidauros (1999). Reproduced courtesy of the APGRD.

Illustrations 9.8

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Xerxes, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, expresses his despair in Ellen McLaughlin’s Persians, at the Actors’ National Theater in New York (2003). Image reproduced courtesy of the APGRD. 9.9 Cover of Fuad Rouhani’s Modern Iranian translation of Aeschylus’ Persians (Abex, Bethesda, MD, 1998). 10.1 Cover design from the programme distributed at the 1985 season of Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Xerxes by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum. 10.2 Musical excerpts. 11.1 Robert Wood, ‘Map of Thermopylae’ (Institute of Classical Studies, Wood Diaries). 11.2 James Stuart, ‘Map of Thermopylae’ (British Library ADD MS 15,326, folio 11). 11.3 Foucherot, ‘Cartes des Thermopyles, 1781’ (British Library ADD MS 15,326, folio 16). 11.4 Jean Barbie du Bocage, ‘Map of Thermopylae at the time of Xerxes’. 11.5 ‘Map of Thermopylae’, from W. Mitford’s History of Greece, vol. 1 (London, 1784). 11.6 ‘Plan of Thermopylae’, from W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (London, 1835). 11.7 Facsimile taken from W. Gell, Itinerary of Greece (second edition, London, 1827). 11.8 ‘The Tomb of the Spartans’, from E. D. Clarke’s Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa (London, 1810–23). 11.9 Thermopylae, from Edward Dodwell’s Views in Greece (London, 1821). 11.10 Thermopylae, from W. Haygarth’s Greece: A Poem, in Three Parts (London, 1814). 12.1 Benjamin Haydon, The Death of Eucles After Announcing the Victory of Marathon (1829). Image reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. 12.2 The Calton Hill Parthenon in Edinburgh, 1822–4. © 2003 EdinburghScotland. NET. 15.1 Fernand Cormon, Les Vainqueurs de Salamine (1887), mezzotint reproduced courtesy of Clemence Schultze.

List of Contributors Deborah Boedeker is Professor and Chair of Classics at Brown University. Her research interests centre on archaic and classical Greek religion, poetry, and historiography. She has published monographs and articles on archaic poetry, Herodotus, Euripides, and religious and mythical traditions, and has edited several collected volumes, including Herodotus and the Invention of History (Arethusa special volume, 1987); Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in Fifth-Century Athens, with Kurt A. Raaflaub (Cambridge, Mass. 1998); and The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire, with David Sider (Oxford 2001). She is currently working on Greek domestic religion and on the transmission of Sappho's corpus. Emma Bridges is an Associate Lecturer in Classics at the Open University. Her research interests include ancient Greek literature (with a particular focus on fifth-century drama and historiography), the reception of classical Greek history in post-Renaissance Europe and the USA, and the use of the internet for the study and teaching of Classics. Her doctoral thesis was written at the University of Durham (2000–2003) and focused on cultural responses to the figure of Xerxes from the fifth century bc to the Second Sophistic. Edith Hall took up an appointment as Research Professor of Classics and Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2006, after holding a Chair in Greek Cultural History at the University of Durham. Her publications include Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford 1989), an edition of Aeschylus' Persians with translation and commentary (Aris & Phillips 1996), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914 (Oxford 2005, with Fiona Macintosh), and The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society (Oxford 2006). She is also the co-editor of several volumes including Greek & Roman Actors (Cambridge 2002, with Pat Easterling). She is currently working on a study of the reception of the Odyssey. Philip Hardie is Senior Research Fellow in Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford 1985), The epic successors of Virgil : a Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge 1993), and Ovid’s poetics of illusion (Cambridge 2002). He is also the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Ovid (Cambridge 2002) and the Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (forthcoming). He is currently completing a commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses 13–15, and writing a book on fame, tradition, and rumour, from Homer to the early modern period.

Contributors

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Johannes Haubold is Leverhulme Lecturer in Greek Literature at the University of Durham. His research interests include early Greek epic and the relationship between ancient Greek and Near Eastern literature. He is the author of Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (Cambridge 2000), and (with Barbara Graziosi) Homer: The Resonance of Epic (London 2005). D. S. Kimbell is Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, where he served as Dean in the Faculty of Music 1988–93 and 1995–2001. His publications include Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge 1981), Italian Opera in the Cambridge University Press series National Traditions of Opera (1991), Vincenzo Bellini: ‘Norma’ (Cambridge 1998). With Roger Savage he also completed Michael Tilmouth's edition of Donald Francis Tovey’s The Classics of Music (Oxford 2001). He is currently working on an edition of I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata for the critical edition of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi (Chicago and Milan), and a study of the operas of Handel. D. S. Levene is Professor of Classics at New York University. He has written and edited a variety of books and articles, especially on Latin prose literature: these include Religion in Livy (Leiden, 1993) and Clio and the Poets (Leiden, 2002, co-edited with D. P. Nelis). He is currently writing a book entitled Livy on the Hannibalic War for Oxford University Press. Alexandra Lianeri is the Finley Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge. She has published articles on the translation and reception of Greek literature, and the history of Greek historiography. She is currently writing a book entitled Translated Democracy. Ancient and Modern Politics in NineteenthCentury Britain, co-editing (with Vanda Zajko) a volume on Translation and the Classic and editing another volume entitled Ancient Histories and Modern Historiographies. Models of Time in Western Historiography. Ian Macgregor Morris is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include the history of ideas and the classical tradition, especially in the long eighteenth century; early travellers in Greece and the Levant; ancient Sparta and the Persian Wars. His publications include several articles in these areas and The Sword-King: The Life and Legend of Leonidas of Thermopylae (Bristol 2005). John Marincola is Professor of Classics at Florida State University. He is the author of Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge 1997), Greek Historians (Oxford 2001), and, with M. A. Flower, Herodotus: Histories Book IX (Cambridge 2002). He is currently working on Plutarch's interest in the Persian Wars, as well as on a book on Hellenistic historiography.

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Contributors

Christopher Pelling is Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University. He has published widely on Greek biography and historiography, especially Plutarch and Herodotus, and his most recent books are Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (2000) and Plutarch and History (2002). His current projects include a commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Caesar and a study of historical explanation in fifth-century Greek historiography. P. J. Rhodes retired in 2005 as Professor of Ancient History at Durham. He has worked on various aspects of Greek history, especially politics and political institutions, but also on the relations between the Greeks and the Persians. His most recent book is A History of the Classical Greek World, 478–323 B.C. (Oxford 2005). Timothy Rood is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (1998) and The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination (2004) as well as a number of articles on Greek historiography. He is currently working on broader studies of Xenophon’s Anabasis and of the cultural significance of the battle of Marathon. Christopher Rowe is Professor of Greek, Durham University. He is the co-author, with Terry Penner, of a monograph on Plato’s Lysis in the series Cambridge Studies in the Dialogues of Plato (Cambridge 2005); he has also published commentaries on and translations of four other Platonic dialogues. He is the editor, with Julia Annas, of New Perspectives on Plato, Modern and Ancient (Cambridge, Mass. 2002) and, with Malcolm Schofield, of The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge 2000). He is presently writing a monograph entitled Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing. Clemence Schultze is Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Durham. Her interests include Republican Rome, historiography, and art history. She is particularly interested in Donysius of Halicarnassus, on whom she has published several articles and sections of whose work she is currently engaged in translating and editing. She has also published studies of Pliny on Curio’s theatre, and of the reception of ancient myth and literature in the novels of Charlotte M. Yonge. Gonda Van Steen earned a BA degree in Classics in her native Belgium and a Ph.D. degree in Classics and Hellenic Studies from Princeton University. As an Associate Professor in Classics and Modern Greek at the University of Arizona, she teaches courses in ancient and modern Greek language and literature. Her first book, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece, was published by Princeton University Press in 2000 and was awarded the

Contributors

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John D. Criticos Prize from the London Hellenic Society. She has also published articles on ancient Greek and late antique literature, on the reception of Greek tragedy, on Greek coinage, and on post-war Greek feminism. She is currently researching a book on theatre and censorship under the Greek military dictatorship of 1967–74.

Note on Abbreviations Abbreviations of the names of ancient authors and texts follow those used in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Abbreviations of journal titles are as in L’Année Philologique. Standard abbreviations are used for modern collections of texts.

Section I Archetypal Theme


1 Introduction

THE INVENTION OF A TRADITION Darius, Leonidas, Themistocles, Xerxes—the names of the leaders in the wars between Persia and Greece in the early fifth century bc remain familiar currency today, at a time when Aeschylus’ Persians has become a standard play in the repertory of the commercial theatre, at least in the USA, and Steven Pressfield’s Thermopylae novel Gates of Fire (1998) has achieved bestseller status. In the cinema, the Persian Wars are about to become prominent, with two major films about Thermopylae in preparation:1 in the blockbuster The Last Samurai (2003), Nathan Algren, played by Tom Cruise, has already used the example of the battle of Thermopylae in order to inspire Katsumoto before the final showdown between the traditional Samurai and the new Japanese government.2 Against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict between the USA and the Muslim world, classical scholars are being tempted into speculating publicly whether world history would have taken a different course if the Persians had won at the battle of Salamis.3 Yet these cultural phenomena represent only the very latest stages in a story that extends back two-and-a-half millennia. For the story of the Persian Wars began to emerge even before the final departure of the Persians from the Greek mainland in 479 bc (see further Rhodes, Ch. 2 below). This volume originated in a conference organized in July 2003 by Emma Bridges (then Emma Clough) within the Department of Classics and Ancient 1 Zack Snyder is directing 300, adapted from Frank Miller’s 1999 graphic novel of the same title, starring Gerard Butler as Leonidas; there have also been persistent rumours that a screenplay adapted by David Self from Pressfield’s Gates of Fire will soon be filmed by the director Michael Mann. See further Bridges, Ch. 17, p. 412 and n. 14. 2 The Last Samurai was written by John Logan and directed by Edward Zwick. A huge boxoffice success, it was also nominated for four Oscars. 3 See e.g. Hanson (1999), which appeared in a collection entitled What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been; similar arguments concerning the importance to the preservation of human freedom and democracy of the Greeks’ victory over Persia underlie Holland (2005), Strauss (2004), and Cartledge (2006).

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Emma Bridges, Edith Hall, and P. J. Rhodes

History at Durham University; the conference was accompanied by a series of research seminars also held at Durham. The contributors include six current and past members of that department as well as distinguished scholars from other British and North American universities. The fundamental aim of the project has been to show that the ‘reception’ of the Persian Wars has evolved continuously. The process was initiated at the very instant when ancient poets, patriots, and propagandists began to shape their memories of the recent past in ways that suited their immediate present and its cultural and psychological needs. Of course the invention of that tradition through the development of different narratives and images acquired fresh charges as the Athenians continued to wage war with the Persians in the Aegean: Simonides, Pindar, and Aeschylus all attest to different versions of the Persian threat. By the second half of the fifth century, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Timotheus, as well as Choerilus’ lost epic Persica,4 all show how the roles played by individual city-states during the Persian invasions became implicated in the motivations at work, and the propaganda used to justify actions, during the Peloponnesian War and afterwards.5 The seminal roles played by these authors, and by the visual arts, in the evolution of the Persian Wars traditions have rightly received considerable previous attention from many scholars, including ourselves.6 These ancient authors’ names, and passages from their works, naturally surface often in this volume. But we were also encouraged by, for example, Spawforth’s lucid analysis of the use of the Persian Wars in Roman imperial propaganda (1994) to focus on other ancient authors, genres, and media which have received far less consideration. These include the use of Homer by Xerxes’ propagandists (Haubold), fifth-century religion (Boedeker), Platonic philosophy (Rowe), the Greek orators and fourthcentury historiographers (Marincola), Augustan literature (Hardie), and Plutarchan biography (Pelling). We hope that these chapters offer fresh perspectives on our ancient theme, a theme which the Persians, Greeks, and Romans ensured would become a major element in the transhistorical western consciousness. For throughout antiquity and beyond, the ‘defence of Greece’ inspired both real historical developments and cultural phenomena, informing above all the conceptualization and later presentation of Alexander the Great’s Persian campaign.7 Augustus and Nero re-enacted Salamis in aquatic spectacles (see Fig. 1.1).8 The ancient novel drew on harem intrigues found 4

See POxy. 1399 with Winter (1933), 199. On Simonides see above all the new collection of essays edited by Boedeker and Sider (2001). A wide range of classical Athenian material is considered in Thomas (1992), 221–37 and Tuplin (1996), ch. 3. 6 Richard Glover’s epic Leonidas is discussed in Clough (2004), 365–71 and MacGregorMorris (2000a). For Aeschylus’ Persians and Timotheus’ Persians see Hall (1989), (1996), (2004), and (2006), chs. 7 and 9. 7 See Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1997), Flower (2000), Fredricksmeyer (2000), and Rhodes, below, Ch. 2. 8 See Coleman (1993) and Hardie, below, Ch. 7. 5

Introduction

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Figure 1.1 Renaissance print reconstructing the spectacle of a Roman naumachia

in Herodotus and Ctesias,9 while, for Philostratus, the exiled Themistocles stood for the disappointment of Greek sophistication, a picturesque tragic hero confined in a barbarous ornamental cage (Imagines 2.31). The figure of the vanquished Persian barbarian ultimately conditions much Byzantine writing, including (probably) the so-called Letters of Themistocles and (certainly) the work of Anna Comnena, while by the later sixteenth century the ancient defeat of Persia by Greece was becoming conflated with contemporary battles of western Christians against Ottoman Turks (see Hall, below Ch. 9). The reception of the Persian Wars has proved politically seminal. It lies at the foundations of political theory,10 and is implicated in the origins of notions of western liberty and democracy; it played defining roles in both the French Revolution and the Greek War of Independence (see Van Steen, below Ch. 13);11 9 Photius’ epitome of Ctesias’ Persica is available in English translation in Freese (1920), i. 92–110. 10 See e.g. Raaflaub (2004), and Euben (1986). 11 On the French Revolution, its aftermath, and its critics, see e.g. Parker (1937), 118, 142, 167–8, Hartog (2000), Avlami (2000), and Clough (2004), 371–3. On the Greek War of Independence see Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (1989), Macgregor Morris (2000b), and Constantini (2000).

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it has been at different times a crucial element in the formation of both Iranian and Greek national identity. But it has also proved a surprising spur to creativity in the aesthetic sphere; a wide variety of genres and media have appropriated parts of the Persian Wars narrative, and some of these are addressed in this volume. We look at some instances of reception in serious theatre (Hall), the opera house (Kimbell), archaeology and memoirs (Macgregor Morris), public monuments commemorating battles (Rood), philosophy and historiography (Lianeri), the visual arts (Rood, Schultze), cinema (Levene), and historical fiction (Bridges). There are, of course, other types of response to the Persian Wars that deserve much more attention.12 Examples include the Persian Wars as a topos in ancient rhetorical exercises and declamation, and the mysterious Persian court as an underlying element in the ancient novel.13 Other promising areas for new research are suggested by Early Modern and eighteenth-century stage plays about Xerxes and his court intrigues,14 verse dramas on the themes of Thermopylae or Leonidas,15 short stories, children’s literature, non-dramatic poetry, comic books, political cartoons, Heavy Metal music, military training academies, television, and radio.16 We hope that this book will prove a useful spur to further study of this fascinating topic, but it has not been conceived in any sense as a work of reference, and makes no claim to provide comprehensive coverage. Indeed, there are several other significant directions in which we are aware that the investigation could have taken us, such as the large sub-genre of literature and art both ancient and modern concerning Themistocles’ life and later days in exile (see e.g. Fig. 1.2),17 or the substantial issues related to the reception of ancient

12 Several of these topics were addressed in the Ph. D. dissertation by Emma Bridges (formerly Clough), and will be further explored in forthcoming publications by her. 13 For some observations on this topic, see Schwartz (2003). On Plutarch’s imaginary and highly rhetorical theatrical contest between the legacy of Greek tragedy and the leaders in the Persian Wars, staged in On the Glory of the Athenians, see Vasunia (2003). 14 See Duyf (1717) and Anon. (1790). A French tragedy performed in July 1728 and entitled La Mort de Xerxes has not been preserved. 15 See e.g. Tucker (1877) and Barling (1885). 16 Short stories include Leonidas in Hades in Couldrey (1914), 181–91. The many poems exploring Persian Wars themes by forgotten authors include, purely for the sake of example, a depressing comparison of a British military debacle in Natal with Thermopylae by Bencke (1879). Poems by important figures include the Persian Wars poems by Felicia Hemans (see below) and Cavafy’s early verses entitled The Sea-Battle and his Thermopylae (1903) as well as A. E. Housman’s The Oracles (1922). John Peter Roberdeau’s drama Thermopylae; or, the Repulsed Invasion was enacted by recruits at Gosport Naval Academy in April 1805 (Hall and Macintosh (2005), ch. 10, n. 7). Episode 25 of Cartoon Network’s cult animated action series Samurai Jack, directed by Robert Alvarez and Randy Myers, was entitled ‘Jack and the Spartans’ (first screened on 4 Oct. 2002). Jack encounters the 300 Spartans and succeeds in getting them to help him in an epic battle. 17 See e.g. the fragmentary dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades on the character of Themistocles preserved on POxy. 1608, with Winter (1933), 265; Moncrieff (1759). See further below Hall, Ch. 9, pp. 173–4.

Introduction

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Figure 1.2 Themistocles Receiving the Trophy, engraving after Pinelli

Spartan society.18 But some of these have been well treated by previous scholars, and in any case did not seem to be absolutely central to the focus of our project. For our intention throughout has been to throw the maximum possible fresh light on both the consistency of certain themes within the reception of the actual battles of the Persian Wars and the diversity of the ways in which they have been treated. The method has been to juxtapose a series of exemplary essays on the reception of individual ancient texts or events within discrete historical periods and cultural traditions.

THE REALITY BENEATH THE IMAGES In order to appreciate the longevity and vigour of the story of the Persian Wars in the western imagination, it is important to remember that it has emerged from what was a factual, historically real sequence of events, even if it is difficult to reconstruct them accurately from the varied, contradictory, and often 18 On which see above all Rawson (1969), the final chapters in Cartledge (2001), and several of the essays collected by Powell and Hodkinson (2002). For the particular case of Nazi Germany, see Rebenich (2002).

8


fragmentary or tendentious sources that are available. At the beginning of the fifth century the Persian empire, which had been the major power in the Near East for half a century, was unsuccessful in its attempt to expand into the not especially desirable area of Greece, to the north-west; but this failure was not particularly damaging: the unsuccessful king Xerxes continued to reign until his death fifteen years later, and the empire survived until it was conquered by Alexander the Great a century and a half later. At first sight it is preposterous that this minor failure should be seen as one of the crucial defining moments in the history of the world. But the war was soon seen as a defining success for the Greeks (and canonized as such in the history of Herodotus—but we have very little evidence from the Persian side later than this war), and they compared it with the legendary Trojan War as a war between the Greeks of Europe and the barbarians of Asia. To resist the invaders they had united, not totally, but to a greater extent than on any previous occasion; and, because they were afraid that the Persians would return, seeking revenge, the Delian League was founded under the leadership of Athens to continue the war against the Persians indefinitely. The Delian League was successful in keeping the Persians out of the Greek world; but in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, at the end of the fifth century, both sides tried to obtain Persian support, and Sparta finally did obtain Persian support and because of that was able to defeat Athens. In return, Persia wanted control of the Greek states on the west coast of Asia Minor, and in the King’s Peace of 386 the Asiatic Greeks were given back to Persia. That gave new strength to an already growing view that the Greeks had been great when they were not quarrelling amongst themselves but were united in fighting against Persia, and that to regain their greatness they ought to unite in fighting against Persia once more. In the third quarter of the fourth century Philip of Macedon, who for some Greeks had become the new barbarian enemy, united the Greeks in subordination to himself through a Greek-style organization which we call the League of Corinth; the League adopted a war of revenge against Persia as its objective, and the Persian empire was conquered and brought into the Greek world by Philip’s son Alexander. The Europeans came to see the world as divided into West and East, with the Near East, between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, claimed for both sides; this division has affected perceptions of our world ever since. After Alexander’s death his empire split into rival kingdoms, of which that of the Seleucids claimed the west of Asia (but abandoned the eastern provinces to an Indian kingdom). When the Romans took over the Greek world of the eastern Mediterranean, their conquests extended as far as what was left of the Seleucid kingdom, which fell to Pompey in the 60s bc. By then a new barbarian kingdom had arisen beyond Mesopotamia, that of the Parthians, which could be

Introduction

9

seen and saw itself as a successor to the Achaemenid kingdom of the Persians.19 In the third century ad the Parthians were superseded by the Sassanian kingdom of the Persians, which again saw itself as successor to the Achaemenid kingdom and again became a barbarian kingdom against which the Romans had to contend for the Near East.20 Because the Near East had been made part of the Greek, and then Roman, world of the Mediterranean, Christianity spread westwards into the Mediterranean world rather than eastwards into the Asiatic world, as it would have done if Jesus had lived five hundred years earlier. Mahomet lived in Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries, and so the rivalry of Rome in the West and the Persians in the Middle East developed into the rivalry of Christianity in the West and Islam in the East. Islam at its most successful extended, from the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, throughout North Africa and into Spain, and, from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries, through the Ottoman empire, into south-eastern Europe, for a time as far as Hungary: Greece, having resisted the Persians in the fifth century bc, was at last subject to eastern rule from the fifteenth century ad to the nineteenth in the south and the twentieth in the north, and the liberation of southern Greece from the Ottomans became not just a local concern but a cause to which many western Europeans rallied. The modern state of Greece grew until, in the settlement after the First World War, it was awarded a section of western Asia Minor centred on Smyrna (Izmir); but in 1922 after being defeated by Turkey it lost that, and there was a compulsory transportation of Greeks from Turkey to Greece and of Turks from Greece to Turkey. But the division between Greece as European and Turkey as Asiatic is not quite clean: Turkey retains a foothold in Europe, including Istanbul and the European shores of the Hellespont, Propontis, and Bosporus. The division between East and West is still with us. Eccentrically, the Cold War of the second half of the twentieth century divided Europe itself into a West allied to the USA and an East dominated by the USSR, but since then the frontier between East and West has been moved eastwards as the former satellites of Russia have realigned themselves with the West. Cyprus, already on the borders of East and West in the second millennium bc, is today divided between a Greek and Christian South and a Turkish and Muslim North. Israel, which since its foundation has been dominated by people who have gone there from Europe or North America and perceive themselves as western (although not all the Jews living there are from that background), is in competition with 19 A dedicatory inscription to the Roman emperor Nero was added to the east front of the Parthenon in Athens—perhaps in ad 61/2, to celebrate the Romans’ victories over the Parthians in Armenia: IG ii2. 3277, revised by Carroll (1982), cf. SEG xxxii. 251. Cf. below, p. 131. 20 More recently, the 20th-cent. Shah of Iran saw himself as a successor to the Achaemenids, and in 1971 he celebrated what he thought was the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian capture of Babylon but was in fact the 2,500th anniversary of Cyrus’ death: see Rhodes (2003), 109 n. 23, and Hall below, Ch. 9, p. 188.

10


the Palestinians, who (although some of them are not Muslim but Christian) are perceived as eastern. The ‘war against terror’ being waged by the USA and its allies is in danger of being perceived as, or as escalating into, a conflict between (a greatly secularized) Christendom and Islam. The failure of the Persian invasions of Greece at the beginning of the fifth century bc was indeed a defining moment in the history of the world.

THE CHAPTERS IN THIS BOOK The Persian invasions left a lasting impression on the visual culture (see e.g. Fig. 1.3) and the political face of Greece, and events of the fifth and fourth centuries bc were to a large extent shaped by the relationship—whether perceived or real—of individual Greek states with Persia. P. J. Rhodes opens this volume’s discussion of cultural responses to the wars by examining some of the key ways in which the memory of Darius’ and Xerxes’ campaigns influenced subsequent events (and the ways in which those events were portrayed) until the final overthrow of the Persian empire by Alexander in 330 bc. After examining the background to the enmity between Greece and Persia he demonstrates how the initial fear of Persian return and the later possibility of alliance with Persia impacted on the relations between individual Greek states. Crucially, the role which a state had played in the wars came to be manipulated for propaganda (most notably in Athens’ justification for her imperial dominance). Rhodes also illustrates some of the ways in which ambiguity towards Persia manifested itself in the literature and politics of the classical period; seen variously as either potential allies or enemies still waiting to pounce, the Persians were also alternately portrayed as terrifying despotic invaders or effeminate eastern weaklings. This binary approach to the image of Persia has persisted into modern times, as will be seen in several of the post-Renaissance responses to the theme treated elsewhere in this volume. There are at least two sides to every conflict, and the way in which the Persians perceived the Greeks has recently attracted an increasing amount of notice from scholars keen to emphasize that the cultural reception of the Persian Wars was informed and shaped from the outset by the Persians as well as the Greeks.21 Johannes Haubold argues in Chapter 3 that the reception of epic in wartime and post-war Greece was affected by an extended dialogue between both cultures. The Persian leadership used Homeric epic, especially the Iliad, 21 Important and/or recent bibliography on the Achaemenids includes esp. Briant (2002), but see also Gershevitch (1985, now patchy and in parts out of date), Cook (1983), Frye (1984), Dandamaev (1989), to be read with the critical review of Briant (1993), Wiesehöfer (1996), Kuhrt (1995), Van de Mierop (2004). For a selection of Near Eastern texts in translation, see Brosius (2000).

Introduction

11

Figure 1.3 A Greek hoplite triumphs over a Persian adversary. Tondo of a red-figure cup by the Triptolemus painter

in order to justify imperial expansion to the Greeks in their own cultural terms, just as they appropriated Babylonian and Judaic visions of history in order to validate their expansion elsewhere. Drawing on the Herodotean evidence for the Persians’ use of Greek oracle-mongers, and especially his account of Xerxes’ visit to Troy, which presented the king as the champion of Troy, seeking revenge for its downfall, Haubold suggests that Xerxes’ Iliad consisted of a set of wholly new glosses on familiar topics, pro-Persian interpretations, and selective enactments. Xerxes’ propagandists may have tried to persuade the Greeks that their gods sanctioned their conquest by Persia, but the Greeks remained convinced that they owed their salvation to divine help as much as to their own courage and military prowess. The gods to whom they prayed for assistance and to whom they subsequently gave thanks included Pan, Boreas, Artemis, Zeus, Athena, Nemesis, Poseidon, and Delphic Apollo. In Chapter 4 Deborah Boedeker explores another tradition in which Eleusinian Demeter played a particularly important role, especially at Plataea, where a fragmentary dedicatory inscription has been found in situ, but also at Mycale, Salamis, and Marathon. Having amassed and analysed the evidence in Herodotus and later authors, as well as

12


the archaeological and epigraphic data, Boedeker argues that Demeter’s role can be illuminated by her association throughout the Greek world not only with intransigent anger, but also with the defence of territory, and sovereignty. Moreover, her panhellenic status seems to have made her susceptible to the Athenians’ desire to develop their Eleusinian goddess’s importance in the theological explanation for the victory, a belief that developed in tandem with the better known Delphic tradition. Yet it was precisely the Athenians’ victory narratives that began to be subjected to a more searching, critical, and sceptical tradition by Plato. The questioning of the patriotic rhetoric had already been firmly established by the time he wrote his brilliant parody of a funeral speech, Menexenus, which, as Christopher Rowe shows in Chapter 5, wholly undercuts the Athenians’ formulaic idealization of their glorious past and the rhetorical conventions they had invented in order to consolidate this ideological procedure. The Atlantis of the Timaeus and Critias is more than an allegorical polis cryptically ‘standing for’ Athenian expansionist naval power: it plays a more ironic role in Plato’s use of the Persian Wars tradition; the Atlantis myth examines ‘what kind of victory Athens would have needed to win in order to deserve the encomium Menexenus denies it’. Crucially, the subject-matter of this paper offers a powerful corrective to the dominant traditions seen elsewhere in (primarily) Athenian sources that the Persian Wars were seen by all as a cause only for celebration. Marincola addresses his chapter to the very different presentation of the Persian Wars by fourth-century historians and by the patriotic Athenian orators, as writers of both forensic and political speeches, including the epitaphioi logoi at which it was customary to catalogue Athenian victories.22 He shows that it was the battles in which the Athenians were most involved (Marathon, Salamis) that unsurprisingly featured most prominently, building up an idealized picture of Athens in her finest hour and replacing the uncertainty and ambivalences in Herodotus’ narrative with a ‘smooth-flowing teleology, in which each battle marches the Greeks forward to an overall victory’; the discussions of Plataea are equally idealizing in their amnesiac erasure of conflict between different Greek states. The ‘patriotic’ and idealizing strand in the reception of the Persian Wars found its first cohesive and near-uniform expression in the panhellenic ideology of such authors. Hardie’s exposition in Chapter 7 of Augustan Rome’s use of the Athenian image of the Persian barbarian, especially the Actium–Salamis equation, is an expanded and revised version of an article originally published in Classics Ireland.23 He shows how complex were the reasons why Augustus—and his poets 22

On which see above all Loraux (1986). Classics Ireland, vol. iv (1997). The full text is available online at http://web.archive.org/ web/19971025140144/http://www.ucd.ie/~classics/97/Hardie97.html. 23

Introduction

13

Horace and Virgil—found in the Persian Wars material which helped in the creation of the new Roman sense of Self, a new identity which became a cultural requirement in the years following the end of the Republic. In particular, the chapter examines how the original Athenian fusion of the Amazonomachy and the Persian Wars narratives provided fresh poetic and ideological impetus in Virgil’s treatment of the Camilla story. At Rome, Xerxes and his army proved a versatile Other, as they were in turn conceptually reincarnated as Macedonians, Syrians, Parthians, Egyptians, and Armenians. But the views of the glories of classical Greek history expressed under the Roman Empire by Greek writers inevitably conflicted,24 and in Chapter 8 Christopher Pelling explores the complexities evident in the presentation of the Persian Wars, mediated heavily through the text of Herodotus, to be found in the Lives of Plutarch. Plutarch’s contribution to the development and later reception of the Persian Wars narratives is extraordinarily important, and yet has elicited very little specialist scholarly discussion. Plutarch’s Persian Wars are uniquely complex, since their author was a Greek intellectual writing at the site of some of the Persians’ worst acts of vandalism, but many centuries after the Persian Wars, under the Roman empire, an administration for which the archetypal image of the heroic Greek repulse of the tyrannical eastern invader had acquired many new and complicated resonances, not least in respect of the Parthians. Through a diachronic study of the uses to which Aeschylus’ Persians has been put, Hall’s chapter bridges antiquity and the post-Renaissance worlds by arguing that one of the most important factors underlying the longevity of the Persian Wars traditions has been the identification of the ancient Greeks’ struggle against Achaemenid Persia with the Christian West’s adversarial relationship with Islam. Although the image of the Ottoman Turk, with his turban, moustache, and curving sabre, certainly affected the iconography of other battles such as Marathon (see Fig. 1.4), the identification has been made most prominent culturally since the sixteenth century by authors revisiting the battle of Salamis, usually through adaptations of Aeschylus’ Persians. In one sense the equation of the ancient Persians with Ottoman Turks or contemporary Iraqis is almost inevitable given the play’s radical susceptibility to topical revisions ever since Hieron of Syracuse commissioned a revival of Persians in order to commemorate victories over Carthaginians and Etruscans. Yet the facile identification of the entire Islamic world with the caricatured ancient Persians staged by Aeschylus has also been a factor informing the West’s crude stereotype of the eastern tyrant, Muslim despot, and the polemical terminology of Freedom and Democracy that has often played an unhelpful role by fomenting aggression on both local and global scales.

24

See the pathbreaking article by Bowie (1974).

14


Figure 1.4 Early nineteenth-century engraving of the battle of Marathon

The Persian Wars attracted some nineteenth-century Greek composers searching for material with which to accumulate a national repertoire of ‘classic’ opera in the wake of the foundation of the modern Greek nation, including the composer Pavlos Karer’s Marathon-Salamis, which has recently been performed in Athens.25 But the ancient Orient—Assyrian as well as Iranian—had long before the establishment of the Greek nation provided the raw material 25 See Kathimerini, 5 Feb. 2003: his other operas included the distinctly patriotic Markos Botsaris.

Introduction

15

for an important sub-category of Early Modern operas. In a move reminiscent of the ancient romantic novel’s configuration of ancient Persia as a locus of sensuality and desire, itself a narrative trope inherited from the final chapters of Herodotus’ Histories and the Persica of Ctesias, eastern palatial settings provided a specific backdrop to certain styles of voluptuous singing, melodic ornamentation, and romantic intrigue. In Chapter 10 David Kimbell examines, from a perspective informed by his expertise as a historical musicologist, the vogue in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera for dramatizing the episode of Xerxes at the Hellespont. Thus one of the most important ways in which people were educated about the Persian Wars at this time was through the imaginative fictions sung by the stars of this hugely popular form of musical theatre. Kimbell examines the reason for this trend, as well as the way in which transformations of the familiar story illustrate the changing tastes in adapting history to the exigencies of the operatic stage. The discussion centres on Minato’s libretto Il Xerse as set by the leading Venetian composer Cavalli (1654), the remarkable Xerxes in Abydos by J. P. Förtsch (1688), who was a leading figure in the first German-language opera house at Hamburg, Bononcini’s Xerse (1694), and Handel’s Serse (1738). Treading similar paths to Pausanias, who had visited ancient sanctuaries where the Persian Wars were commemorated and recorded the importance of the victories over the barbarian in the panhellenic psyche as well as the polis-specific memory,26 Macgregor Morris discusses in Chapter 11 the role played in the Enlightenment by the battlefields of the Persian Wars, shifting the focus of the argument to Thermopylae and Marathon, and the canonization of their status as the places where Liberty was born. Although poets and writers, from at least as early as Samuel Madden’s oppositional Themistocles, the Lover of his Country (1729), had been identifying with the Athenians’ struggle for freedom, and in the 1730s and 1740s the spotlight had been thrown on Thermopylae by two popular and political narrative poems, the physical battlefields themselves had yet to attract much attention. This chapter therefore explores the attitudes of visitors to Greece and the Persian War battle sites—especially the scene of the heroic last stand of Leonidas at Thermopylae—from the earlier part of the seventeenth century until the nineteenth century (see Fig. 1.5, an early nineteenth-century engraving of the Thermopylae pass). Particular attention is paid to the British expedition in 1751, and the frustrations of scholarly travellers at the failure of the landscape they encountered to match precisely the topography described by Herodotus and Strabo. But the recorded emotional responses of the visitors on their pilgrimages to what they saw as the sacrificial shrine of western liberty ultimately transcended all their empirical anxieties.

26

See Arafat (1996) and some of the essays in Alcock, Cherry, and Elsner (2001).

16


Figure 1.5 The Pass of Thermopylae, wood engraving, c.1835

If the eighteenth century was ‘the age of Thermopylae’, Timothy Rood argues in Chapter 12 that Marathon began to overtake its main competitor in cultural prominence during the nineteenth century, a trend that seems to have been inaugurated in Britain by its equation with Waterloo both in the poetry of Byron (who visited the site of the battle of Marathon) and in wider public discourse. The particular focus is on the way the two battles were united in an exhibition of new paintings by Benjamin Robert Haydon that opened in London in March 1830. The centrepiece of the exhibition was Haydon’s Death of Eucles, which portrayed the Marathon messenger (not mentioned by Herodotus; most often called Eucles, according to Plutarch, but Lucian gave him the name of Herodotus’ messenger to Sparta, Philippides or Pheidippides) at the moment when he expired in front of his family, against the spectacular backdrop of the Athenian acropolis. But Haydon’s obsession can be traced back to the acrimonious national debate over the best form of public monument

Introduction

17

with which to commemorate the victory at Waterloo, when it was suggested that a replica of the Parthenon (believed by many to be a monument to the Persian Wars) should be erected on Primrose Hill. The failure of the London Parthenon campaign was followed, however, by the building of the ‘Calton Hill Parthenon’, in Edinburgh, the ‘Athens of the North’. While the British were quarrelling over their war memorials, the Greeks under Turkish domination were getting ready to launch their War of Independence. In Chapter 13 Gonda Van Steen examines the account written by the Comte de Marcellus, a French diplomat in Constantinople, of a reading of Aeschylus’ Persians, in ancient Greek, that took place at a literary evening held in that city in the year before the uprising was launched in 1821. Marcellus’ memoir describes a group of Greek intellectuals who embodied ‘classical’ nobility coming together to define a new Hellenism, through the regeneration of the spirit and glory of the Persian Wars. Marcellus’ writing is dependent partly on the writings of the militant liberal philhellene Chateaubriand, but much more on the inspiration taken from ancient Greece by Greek intellectuals and revolutionaries including Adamantios Koraes, and especially, the Orthodox cleric and pedagogue Konstantinos Oikonomos, who was responsible for proposing the recitation of Persians in the first place. The narrative of the Persian Wars, indeed, exerted a particular fascination in the half-century between the French Revolution and the 1840s, when the first volume of George Grote’s History of Greece (1846–56) appeared; this was the era of Romantics, revolutions, and reforms, and above all the establishment of democratic Athens—previously so distrusted by conservative historians such as William Mitford—as a respectable model of a polity. There were some republicans who wrote approvingly of Athens in the eighteenth century, but we do not really start to find a favourable treatment of Athenian democracy until the 1820s.27 Lianeri’s chapter turns to territory perhaps more familiar to Classicists—the new trends in academic discussion of the Persian Wars in the wake of the reforms of the 1830s, articulated above all in George Grote’s work in Greek history. Lianeri breaks new ground by relating Grote’s analysis of the Persian Wars not only to contemporary British legislation but also to German Idealism, in particular the Kantian notion of war as the supreme force bringing man to a state of civilization, and the Hegelian principle of historical dialectic. The Persian Wars, and the advances achieved through them, thus become the foundation text not only of Enlightenment notions of liberty, but of early Victorian civil-democratic society. Polygnotus had famously depicted the battle of Marathon in a patriotic mural in the Stoa Poikile (see Pausanias 1.15.1–4), and this ancient information was one reason why European artists of the Romantic era were attracted 27 See e.g. Grote’s first piece (1826) on the subject in a review of Henry Fynes Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici ii, which was published in 1824.

18


Figure 1.6 Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814)

to scenes from the Persian Wars. There was a great vogue for the creation of visual analogies between the twin heroic ‘last stands’ of the Greeks taken at Thermopylae and Missolonghi respectively. Perhaps the most famous example of Persian War art at this time is Jacques-Louis David’s Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814) (see Fig. 1.6). The Leonidas tradition in France was born out of the spirit of the French revolutionaries’ identification with Leonidas, but its resonance and importance shifted during Napoleon’s imperial reign, and especially after the Greek uprising.28 The painting also informed the actor Talma’s physical realization of the title role of M. Pichat’s Léonidas, an important tragedy performed in Paris at the Théâtre Français in 1825, and thereafter imitated on the London stage (see Fig.1.7).29 Meanwhile, in nineteenth-century Germany, it was Salamis that captured the imagination of the Bavarian artist Wilhelm von Kaulbach. In the 1860s, his massive painting of the battle of Salamis (Fig. 1.8) not only played on memories of victory over Napoleonic France (cf. Rood, Ch. 12), since Bavaria had received its independence in 1815, but also echoed the wider context of

28 29

See Athanassoglou (1981), and Clough (2004), 371–4. See further Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (1989), 57–9; Hall and Macintosh (2005), ch. 10.

Introduction

19

Figure 1.7 François-Joseph Talma in the title role of M. Pichat’s Léonidas (1825)

European affairs. Many German states had taken an interest in the Greek War of Independence: in 1826, King Ludwig of Bavaria had sent to Greece a party of officers under the command of Colonel Heidegger. After the conclusion of the war, Ludwig’s son Otho was chosen as the first king of Greece. By the time that Kaulbach finished his painting, Maximilian II, brother of Otho of Greece, was on the Bavarian throne; the painting, which plays on notions of idealized Bavarian state liberty and self-governance, was displayed in the Maximilianeum in Munich, a building which also housed a spectacular mosaic illustrating the liberation of Vienna from the Ottoman Turks. In later nineteenth-century France, it was not the noble physique of Leonidas at Thermopylae associated with David and Talma that fired the visual

20


Figure 1.8 Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Die Seeschlacht von Salamis (1858)

imagination, nor the emotional parting of the Athenians from their families after evacuating them to Troezen (see Fig. 1.9), nor even the close combat at Salamis portrayed in such heroic grandeur and detail by Kaulbach, but specifically the ordinary soldiers of Athens, depicted not at the moment of struggle but in jubilant mood, returning to their fellow citizens after Themistocles had led them to victory. Clemence Schultze’s study (Chapter 15) of the French academic painter Fernand Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine (1887) reveals how the Persian Wars chimed at this time with a mood of nationalist revanche and military reform. The War Minister General Boulanger enjoyed huge popularity, confronting Germany and passing measures to render the French army a citizen militia on ancient lines; Themistocles himself in the painting resembles Boulanger on his famous curvetting horse. It is little surprise that Cormon’s contemporaries read the work as showing the Greeks as ‘people like us’, in their vulnerable bodily reality, their fervent patriotism, and in their supportive womenfolk. The Persian Wars theme here expresses through history painting the aspirations of ordinary members of a community at a critical turning point of world history. Ancient Persia’s presence in Hollywood can be traced back at least as far as D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), in which Cyrus the Great was represented as the ruthless destroyer of Babylon. There were cameo Achaemenids who appeared briefly as defeated (and deserving it) in Robert Rossen’s Alexander the Great (1956), and as comically sensual harem-intriguers in Raoul Walsh’s

Introduction

21

Figure 1.9 The Athenians Taking Refuge in their Ships, wood engraving after Pinelli

Esther and the King (1961). Yet ancient Greek history never ‘took off ’ at Hollywood in the great era of the classical epic, which lasted from the mid1950s until the mid-1960s, but which preferred to inspect the self-image of North America during the heightening of Cold War tension in the mirror of ancient Rome.30 There were few cinematic versions of ancient Greek history ever made. But just one film, Rudolf Maté’s The 300 Spartans (1962), in the tradition of paeans to liberty centred on Leonidas extending back to Richard Glover’s Georgian epic (see Fig. 1.10), was a commercial success and has enjoyed perennial popularity, being consistently replayed on television. More people in the twentieth-century world acquired an understanding of the Persian Wars from this film than from any other single source. It has usually been interpreted as inextricably bound up with the Cold War, and the ideological responses of the NATO countries to the erection of the Berlin wall.31

30

See Elley (1984) 76–135, Wyke (1997) passim.

31

See e.g. Clough (2004).

22


Figure 1.10 Leonidas taking leave of his family, in the frontispiece to Glover’s Leonidas (1804 edition)

Introduction

23

But David Levene’s study draws on archival research into journalistic responses to the film in the USA at the time of its release, and discovers alternative political resonance far more in tune with the domestic concerns of the American heartland than those which have dominated the discussion: Thermopylae has always held a special place in the American imagination as the classical forerunner of the heroic deeds of 1836 when the Catholic mission-cum-fortress known as the Alamo became the ‘cradle of Texan Liberty’. Persia was identified with Mexico and Leonidas with David Crockett and the other heroes of Texas. This reading is supported by the numerous direct echoes in The 300 Spartans of camp and battle scenes in the film The Alamo, starring John Wayne (the director) and Richard Widmark, made just two years earlier in 1962. One artistic genre which has received comparatively little attention in studies of the reception of ancient history is that of the historical novel. Yet where the Persian Wars are concerned writers of historical fiction have found much material on which to draw. As Bridges shows in the concluding chapter of this volume, literary snobbery regarding such novels can to some extent be justified—many twentieth-century novelistic depictions of the conflict with Persia read simply as exercises in reproducing the Persian Wars topoi with little imagination and few attempts to engage the reader in a believable representation of the historical past. There are, however, some notable exceptions to such sanitized fictionalizations. Bridges takes as her focus the 1998 bestseller, Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire. This version of the Thermopylae story stands out from other novelistic treatments of the same theme largely because of Pressfield’s refusal to shrink from dealing with many of the less appealing aspects of Spartan society and military training, as well as his vivid imagining of the horrors of war and the—often unattractive—effects of conflict on the mentality of its very real human participants. What makes this novel compelling reading is its appreciation of the timelessness of the horror and tragedy of warfare—the setting and tactics of the Persian Wars may be alien to the modern reader, but the personalities and emotions drawn by Pressfield could be those of soldiers in any contemporary conflict. Bridges’ paper therefore brings up-to-date the two and a half millennia of cultural responses with a reminder of the continuing relevance of the Persian Wars theme in today’s society.

THE SILENCE OF THE TOMBS The chapters in this volume therefore range over two and a half millennia of international history, and a considerable variety of performance styles, literary

24


genres, and artistic media. It is assumed throughout that cultural responses to the Persian Wars have corresponded exactly neither with the factual events of which the conflict consisted nor with the actual relative importance of the historical battles. The most famous battle is probably the one that was lost, however heroically—Thermopylae. And one further inference that can be drawn from this collection of essays underlines the incommensurability of the significance of each battle at the moment it occurred with its ability to elicit cultural responses: the engagements at Artemisium and Mycale inspired hardly any responses at all. In the case of Mycale, this was presumably because it would not have suited Athens, as head of the Delian League, to stress Mycale, since this battle had been fought in Asia under Spartan leadership before the Athenians founded the League.32 The decisive confrontation of the Persian Wars was probably that between the Greeks and the Persian forces left under Mardonius by Xerxes, at Plataea in 479. Boedeker’s chapter shows that Plataea was crucial to the formation of religious ideology in the immediate aftermath of the Persian invasion, and Marincola shows how Plataea was idealized in Greek oratory. Yet, in proportion to the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, it has undeniably made a much fainter impression on subsequent cultural history. It is true that two novels by Gene Wolfe, who combines generic elements from both historical fiction and the fantasy novella, are narrated by Latro, a soldier who fought on the Persian side at both Salamis and Plataea and developed amnesia as a result of the head wound he incurred in the second engagement there.33 There were also a few earlier exceptions, for example Figs. 1.11 and 1.12 and W. H. Hamilton’s late Georgian picture The Tombs at Plataea (Fig. 1.13), which he created after he visited the site of the battle. This enjoyed a brief vogue in his own time; it underlies, for example, Felicia Hemans’ celebrated poem by the same title. Hemans composed several other Persian War poems, on Thermopylae, Marathon, and Delphi, which also date from the 1820s and all explicitly or implicitly equate the ancient Greek struggle with the war being waged as she wrote them against Turkish domination:34 Fig. 1.11 was created to illustrate her poem The Spartans’ March. But in The Tombs at Plataea, the argument that freedom has been obscured in Greece for many centuries is directly linked to the isolation of the tombs housing their forgotten sleeping heroes, in the place

32 This is assuming that the two land battles and two sea battles mentioned at Thucydides 1.23.1 are Thermopylae and Plataea, and Artemisium and Salamis, with Mycale left out because it was not in Greece. 33 Soldier of the Mist (1986) and Soldier of Arete (1989). For a discussion of Wolfe’s use of ancient Greek themes, see Crampton (2000). Jon Edward Martin’s recent Persian Wars novel, In Kithairon’s Shadow (2003) also has Plataea as its main focus. 34 e.g. The Sleeper of Marathon, The Storm of Delphi, The Spartans’ March, Modern Greece, all in Hemans (1885).

Figure 1.11 Engraving illustrating Felicia Heman’s poem ‘The Spartans’ March’ (c.1825)

Figure 1.12 The Reception of the Ambassadors of Mardonius, engraving by T. Williams after Pinelli

26


Figure 1.13 Mount Cithaeron, and Tombs at Plataea, engraving on wood (c.1830)

where once, long ago, ‘the pæan strains were sung, | From year to year swell’d on by liberty!’. Hemans’ attraction to Persian War themes is striking enough, given how few of the figures whose responses to these somewhat masculine archetypal scenes of battle and the defence of liberty have historically been female. The Battle of Marathon by Hemans’ slightly younger contemporary Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning), published in 1820, is one of the few exceptions, and by taking up Philhellene themes Hemans may well have been asserting her own claim to add the title of British Romanticism’s foremost female poet to her already longstanding reputation as an international Liberal. There is, however, another reason why it is worth concluding this Introduction with Hemans’ Plataea poem, and that is to offer some modest counterbalance to the domination of cultural history, witnessed in this book, by Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis. For the essays published here do not suggest that the passing of time since the 1820s has given much fulfilment to the hope with which Hemans concludes her poem—that Plataea will once again be revivified and sung by poets, when Greece has at last regained her freedom (41–5):

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Rest in your silent homes, ye brave! No vines festoon your lonely tree! No harvest o’er your war-field wave, Till rushing winds proclaim—the land is free!

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alcock, S. E., Cherry, J. F., and Elsner, J. (eds.) (2001). Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece. Oxford. Anon. (1790). Tragedia de Xerxes, en cinco actos. Barcelona. Arafat, K. W. (1996). Pausanias’ Greece: Ancient Artists and Roman Rulers. Cambridge. Athanassoglou, N. (1981). ‘Under the Sign of Leonidas: The Political and Ideological Fortune of David’s Leonidas at Thermopylae under the Restoration’, Art Bulletin 63.4: 633–49. —— (Athanassoglou-Kallmyer) (1989). French Images from the Greek War of Independence 1821–1830: Art and Politics under the Restoration. New Haven and London. Avlami, C. (ed.) (2000a). L’Antiquité grecque au XIXe siècle. Un exemplum contesté?, with a preface by Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Paris. —— (2000b). ‘La Grèce dans l’imaginaire liberal ou, comment se débarrasser de La Terreur (1795–1819), in Avlami (2000a), 71–111. Barling, F. H. (1885). Leonidas; or, The Bridal of Thanatos. London. Bencke, A. H. (1879). Thermopylae, BC 480; Rorke’s Drift, AD 1879. An Historical Parallel. Liverpool. Boedeker, D., and Sider, D. (eds.) (2001). The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire. Oxford. Bosworth, A. B., and Baynham, E. J. (eds.) (2000). Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction. Oxford. Bowie, E. (1974). ‘The Greeks and their Past in the Second Sophistic’, in M. I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society. London, 166–209. Briant, P. (1993). ‘L’ Histoire politique de l’empire achéménide: problèmes et méthodes’ REA 95: 399–423. —— (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire trans. P. T. Daniels (Winona Lake, Ind.). Brosius, M. (2000). The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I (LACTOR series no. 16). Oxford. Carroll, K. K. (1982). The Parthenon Inscription (GRBS Monographs 9). Cartledge, P. (2001). Spartan Reflections. London. —— (2006). Thermopylae: Turning-Point in World History. London. Clough, E. (2003). ‘In Search of Xerxes: Images of the Persian King’. Durham University Ph.D. thesis. —— (2004). ‘Loyalty and Liberty: Thermopylae in the Western Imagination’, in T. J. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea, 363–84.

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Coleman, K. M. (1993). ‘Launching into History: Aquatic Displays in the Early Empire’, JRS 83: 48–74. Constantini, M. (2000). ‘De Léonidas à Botsaris: combatants grecs dans la peinture troubadoure’, in Avlami (2000a), 223–38. Cook, J. M. (1983). The Persian Empire. London. Couldrey, O. (1914). The Mistaken Fury and Other Lapses. Oxford. Crampton, J. (2000). ‘Some Greek Themes in Gene Wolfe’s Latro Novels’, in the online journal Ultan’s Library, available at www.artsweb.bham.ac.uk/jlaidlow/ultan/latro. htm. Dandamaev, M. A. (1989). A Political History of the Achaemenid Empire, trans. W. J. Vogelsang. Leiden. (Originally published in Russian.) Duyf, J. (1717). De nederlaag van Xerxes, koning van Persie: treurspel. Amsterdam. Elley, D. (1984). The Epic Film: Myth and History. London. Euben, J. P. (1986). ‘The battle of Salamis and the origins of political theory’, Political Theory 14: 359–90. Flower, M. A. (2000). ‘Alexander the Great and panhellenism’, in Bosworth and Baynham (2000), 96–135. Fredricksmeyer, E. (2000). ‘Alexander the Great and the kingship of Asia’, in Bosworth and Baynham (2000), 136–66. Freese, J. H. (trans.) (1920). The Library of Photius. New York and London. Frye, R. N. (1984). The History of Ancient Iran (HdA III. vii). Munich. Gershevitch, I. (ed.) (1985). The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2. Cambridge. Grote, G. (1826). ‘Institutions of Ancient Greece’, Wesminster Review 5 (Jan.–Apr.): 269–331. Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian. Oxford. —— (ed.) (1996). Aeschylus’ Persians, Translated with Introduction and Commentary. Warminster. —— (2004). ‘Aeschylus, Race, Class, and War’, in E. Hall, F. Macintosh, and A. Wrigley (eds.), Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium. Oxford, 169–97. —— (2006). The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society. Oxford. —— and Macintosh, F. (2005). Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, 1660–1914. Oxford. Hanson, V. D. (1999). ‘No Glory that was Greece: The Persians Win at Salamis, 480 BC’, in Robert Cowley (ed.), What If ? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. New York, 15–35. Hartog, F. (2000). ‘La Révolution française et l’Antiquité. Avenir d’une illusion ou cheminent d’un quiproquo?’, in Avlami (2000a), 7–46. Hemans, F. (1885). Poems by Mrs Hemans, With 41 Illustrations by Hal Ludlow and G. G. Kilburne. London and New York. Holland, T. (2005). Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. London. Kuhrt, A. (1995). The Ancient Near East, c.3000–320 B.C. London. Loraux, N. (1986). The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. Alan Sheridan. Cambridge, Mass., and London.

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Macgregor Morris, I. (2000a). ‘The Age of Leonidas: The Legend of Themopylae in British Political Culture, 1737–1821’. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Manchester. —— (2000b). ‘To Make a New Thermopylae: Hellenism, Greek Liberation and the Battle of Thermopylae’, G&R 47: 211–30. Moncrieff, J. (1759). Themistocles: A Satire on Modern Marriage. Edinburgh. Parker, H. T. (1937). The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries. Chicago. Powell, A., and Hodkinson, S. (eds.) (2002). Sparta Beyond the Mirage. Swansea. Pressfield, S. (1998). Gates of Fire: an Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. London and New York. Raaflaub, K. A. (2004). The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, trans. Renate Franciscono. Chicago and London. Rawson, E. (1969). The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford. Rebenich, S. (2002). ‘From Thermopylae to Stalingrad: the myth of Leonidas in German historiography’, in Powell and Hodkinson (2002), 323–49. Rhodes, P. J. (2003). Ancient Democracy and Modern Ideology. London. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. (1997). ‘Alexander and Persepolis’, in J. Carlsen et al. (eds.), Alexander the Great: Reality and Myth. Rome, 177–88. Schwartz, S. (2003). ‘Rome in the Greek Novel? Images and Ideas of Empire in Chariton’s Persia’, Arethusa 36: 375–94. Spawforth, A. (1994). ‘Symbol of Unity? The Persian-Wars Tradition in the Roman Empire’, in S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography. Oxford, 233–47. Strauss, B. (2004).The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece—and Western Civilization. New York and London. Thomas, R. (1992). Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge. Tucker, J. (1877). Thermopylæ; or, The Grave of the Three Hundred. London. Tuplin, C. (1996). Achaemenid Studies (Historia Einzelschr. 99). Stuttgart. Van de Mieroop, M. (2004). A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 B.C. Oxford. Vasunia, P. (2003). ‘Plutarch and the Return of the Archaic’, in A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text. Leiden and Boston, 369–89. Wiesehöfer, J. (1996). Ancient Persia from 550 B.C. to 650 A.D. trans. A. Azodi. London. Winter, J. G. (1933). Life and Letters in the Papyri. Ann Arbor. Wyke, M. (1997). Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History. New York and London.


2 The Impact of the Persian Wars on Classical Greece1 P. J. Rhodes

PERSIA THE LATEST NEAR-EASTERN KINGDOM The Persians were not the Greeks’ national enemy from the beginning. Persia had risen rapidly under Cyrus II (559–530) from being a minor kingdom to the east of the Persian Gulf; apart from the occasional adventurous trader, there was probably no contact between the Persians and the Greeks before Persia’s conquests of the Medes in 550 and of Lydia and the Asiatic Greeks c.546.2 As far as the Asiatic Greeks were concerned, Cyrus was simply a new foreign master: he was much more distant than Croesus, so might be less disposed to interfere with them, but he might prove less sympathetic than Croesus. They appealed to Sparta, which forbade Cyrus to harm the Greeks but took no action against him (Hdt. 1.152–153.2). Persia’s conquest of the offshore islands presents a problem: they submitted immediately according to Hdt. 1.169.2, yet Thuc. 1.16 has Cyrus conquering the mainland but Darius the islands. Perhaps they made token submission to Cyrus but it had little practical effect, though an empire of Polycrates of Samos, in the islands and even on the mainland, c.532–522 (Hdt. 3.39.4, Thuc. 1.13.6) is hard to credit;3 Samos is said to have been the ‘first conquest’ of Darius, c.517 (Hdt. 3.120–8, 139–49, esp. 139.1); and Samos, Chios, and Lesbos—and from Europe Byzantium and Miltiades from the Chersonese—all took part in Darius’ Scythian expedition c.514 (Hdt. 4.97.2, 137–8). 1 Hornblower (2001) provides another short treatment of conflict between Greeks and Persians; Cawkwell (2005), published after this chapter had been written, a major new study. This is not the place to pursue agreements and disagreements. 2 Cyrus’ alleged call to the Ionians to defect from Croesus (Hdt. 1.76.3) was perhaps in fact a call to Croesus’ subjects whoever they might be. 3 There has been much discussion of the achievements ascribed to Polycrates: see, for instance, Shipley (1987), 74–80.

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There was no immediate sign that the Persians wanted to go further. Their first major entry into Europe (but the dichotomy of Asia and Europe was probably not as fundamental for Persia as Herodotus made it4) was the Scythian expedition of c.514, undertaken probably because of trouble with the (eastern) Scythians early in Darius’ reign:5 whatever Darius did north of Danube, it is wrong to doubt that Scythia was his objective.6 To reach Scythia he passed through Thrace, so he tried to take that over afterwards; but, if he received token submission from Macedon, that was ineffective, and the story of Alexander’s having Persian envoys killed (Hdt. 5.17–22) is surely a later invention.7 Megabazus had Histiaeus removed from Myrcinus (5.23–5); a retaliatory raid by the Scythians reached the Chersonese (6.40). Otanes then had to recapture Byzantium, Calchedon and other cities, and also captured Imbros and Lemnos (5.26–7). But whatever had been conquered was lost during the Ionian Revolt (below). The presence of the Persians in Thrace and Macedon gave no grounds for worry to the southern Greeks. Athens asked for Persian support when Sparta was hostile in 508/7, but had second thoughts when Persia demanded earth and water (Hdt. 5. 73),8 and complained when Hippias took refuge with the Persians c.504 (5. 96); the deposed Spartan king Demaratus fled to the Persians c.492 (6. 67–70). The first Persian attempt to go further was their attack on Naxos in 499: that was incited by Aristagoras of Miletus, and it resulted in a failure which would have to be avenged (Hdt. 5.28–34).9 It was followed by the Ionian Revolt, which secured support from Athens and Eretria but not from Sparta (Hdt.

4 In his opening chapters, 1.1–5, Herodotus conflates all the barbarians in opposition to the Greeks, and in 1.4.4 he attributes to the Persians a claim to Asia in contrast to Europe; in connection with the Scythian expedition he mentions Darius’ stelai at the Bosporus in 4.87, and in 4.89.1 states that Darius ‘crossed into Europe’; cf. also 1.209.1. Dr. J. H. Haubold points out to me that the near-eastern kingdoms had traditionally seen their world as bounded by the Upper Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Lower Sea, the Indian Ocean (e.g. Sennacherib, Annals, col. 1, 13–15; still in the Cyrus Cylinder (Brosius 12), 29), so that Lydia was ‘across the sea’ (Assurbanipal, Annals, col. 2, 95–9). Cf. Haubold, Ch. 3, 56–7. 5 Behistun Inscription (e.g. Brosius 44) §§ 74–5 cf. 6, 21. Herodotus perhaps conflates the expedition of c. 514 with an earlier one against the Budini, north-west of the Caspian: GardinerGarden (1987), after Hudson (1924). The distance between eastern Scythia and western Scythia was still underestimated in time of Alexander the Great: Arr. Anab. 4.1.1 with Bosworth (1980– ) ad loc.; Curt. 7.6.12, 8.1.7. 6 Doubt expressed notably by Grundy (1901), 58–64; cf. more recently Sealey (1976), 180. In Hdt. 3.133–8 Atossa urges that Greece is more desirable than Scythia, and an exploratory expedition enables the doctor Democedes to escape—but it may be doubted whether there is much truth in that story apart from the basic fact of Democedes’ return to Italy: Griffiths (1987); Austin (1990), 299, is less sceptical. 7 Submission rejected Errington (1981); accepted Badian (1994). 8 Second thoughts suspected of being later invention by Sealey (1976), 175. 9 I doubt the suggestion that a ‘first’ attack on Eretria (Her. Pont. fr. 58 Wehrli ap. Ath. 12.536 f–537 c) is to be accepted and dated now: Bosworth (1994).

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5.38–99); and the Greeks’ attack on Sardis was something else to be avenged (5.105). Athens was involved in 498 only (5.103.1);10 but it regarded the fall of Miletus in 494 as its ‘own misfortune’ (6.21.2); in 493, as the Persians were mopping up at the end of the revolt, Miltiades withdrew from the Chersonese to Athens, claiming that he had wanted to destroy Darius’ Danube bridge during the Scythian expedition (4.137–8), and he was prosecuted but acquitted on a charge of ‘tyranny’ (6.41, 104).11

PERSIA THE GREAT ENEMY12 Naxos, Eretria, and Athens were now on Persia’s agenda. If, as I believe, Forrest was right to detect an unsignposted flashback in Herodotus’ narrative,13 Darius’ heralds to Greece were sent in 493/2 (Hdt. 6.48); Mardonius in 492 (re)conquered Thrace and Macedon before being wrecked at sea and defeated on land (6.43–5); Greece will have been the Persians’ ultimate target, but it is not clear whether Mardonius was expected to go that far (as claimed by 6.43.4–44.1). The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes in 490 was aimed specifically at Naxos (which was sacked: Hdt. 6.95.2–96), Eretria (which was sacked and its people deported: 6.100–1) and Athens (which with Plataea defeated the Persians at Marathon: 6.102–20); but while sparing Delos they took troops and hostages from other islands, and after a siege from Carystus (6.97–9), and Lindus in Rhodes claimed to have been saved by a rainstorm (Temple Chronicle, FGrH 532, d. 1–60).14 By the time of Xerxes’ war of 480–479 the Persians had a double need for vengeance on Athens (Hdt. 7.1 Darius, 7.5.2 Mardonius to Xerxes); but the heralds of 493/2 (above) and 481/0 (7.32, 131–8) were sent to all the Greeks, and on both

10 Herodotus gives no reason for the withdrawal, and various explanations are possible. Eretria did not withdraw at the same time, if Plut. Her. Mal. 861 b–c records a correct detail in the wrong chronological position. 11 Ruling over the Dolonci in the Chersonese was hardly an offence in Athens: perhaps he was prosecuted because his rule was regarded as a hangover from the Pisistratid tyranny. 12 See Fig. 2.1 for an artistic representation of the enemy Darius as envisaged by a Greek vase painter of the 4th cent. bc. 13 Forrest (1969), 285, cf. Rhodes (2003), 60–1: this eases what all except Hammond (1955), 387–8, 406–11 = (1993), 355–95 at 371–2, 390–5, have considered to be an intolerably tight timetable, while keeping before Marathon the material which Hammond rightly insisted should be kept before Marathon. 14 Some, e.g. Burn (1962), 210–11, 218, follow Beloch (1912–27), ii. ii. 81–3, in referring this not to 490 but to 494, and their argument is strengthened by confirmation that Datis was in Ionia, travelled to Persepolis early in 494 and could have returned (Lewis (1980) = (1997), 342–4).

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occasions some Greeks gave earth and water.15 This war was represented afterwards as the ‘Great Patriotic War’,16 with an emphasis on those who joined under Spartan leadership to resist, and condemnation of the others as traitors: e.g. the oath to <destroy and> give a tithe from traitors to Delphi (Hdt. 7.132);17 the story of Athens’ refusal to be won over in winter 480/79 (8.136, 140–4, 9.4–7). However, Herodotus claims that if Athens had not resisted the others would have fallen away (7.139); Argos would rather submit to Persia than acknowledge Spartan leadership (7.149.3); the Thessalians were divided (7.6.2, 172.1, 174); at Thermopylae the Thebans went over to the Persians when they saw that defeat was inevitable (7.233);18 and in 479 Elis and Mantinea were late for Plataea (9.77), perhaps because they were afraid of finding themselves on the losing side. By no means all the Greeks saw union in resistance to the Persian invasion as taking precedence over their own concerns. But the Greeks who did resist were victorious, and they came to regard their defeat of the barbarian invaders as the supremely great Greek achievement. Herodotus’ main narrative ends at the end of 479, but nobody then knew the that war was over: the Persians had even more need for revenge, and the expectation must have been that sooner or later they would return. In 478 the Spartan commanders of 479 exchanged commands: Leotychidas went to Thessaly to punish Medizers, but took bribes (Hdt. 6.72);19 Pausanias went to Cyprus20 and Byzantium, but angered the allies, so the Athenians (who had already commanded against Sestos late in 479: Hdt. 9.114–21, Thuc. 1.89.2) founded the Delian League to continue the war against the Persians, and Sparta acquiesced (Thuc. 1.94–6).21 As for the purposes of the League, Thuc. 1.96.1 mentions only ravaging and revenge; but many of the members had no need of revenge, and there must surely 15 I therefore doubt the recent suggestion that, if the Persians had succeeded in sacking Athens in 480, they might after that have taken no further interest in mainland Greece: Osborne (2004), 80. 16 The title given in Russia to what we call the Second World War. 17 Cf. the ‘oath of Plataea’: in the fourth century inscribed (Tod 204 = Rhodes and Osborne 88. 21–51, trans. Fornara 57: Athenians at Plataea) and quoted by Lyc. Leocr. 80–2 (Greeks at Plataea) but denounced by Theopompus as a fake (FGrH 115 F 153: Greeks at Plataea); later quoted by Diod. Sic. 11.29.2–3 (the Greeks at the Isthmus on way to Plataea). Lycurgus’ version repeats the threat against traitors, and the inscription—set up at a time when Athens and Thebes were again enemies—singles out Thebes. 18 In Thuc. 3.62.1–4 this is not denied but blamed on the rule of an unrepresentative clique. 19 Diod. Sic. 11.48.2 records his death under 476/5 but where verifiable Diodorus’ dates for fifth-century Eurypontids are seven years too early: perhaps Leotychidas was exiled in 476/5 and died in 469/8 (e.g. Forrest (1980), 101); but I should guess that the campaign was in 478. 20 Cyprus for a long time had had a mixed population of Greeks (or people who chose to see themselves as Greeks) and non-Greeks, and was a place to be reclaimed for Greece when Greeks took an aggressive stance against Persia. 21 Sparta is more willing to acquiesce in Thuc. 1.95.7 than in Ath. Pol. 23.2 (unemended), Diod. Sic. 11.50. At any rate, Sparta continued to regard Medism as wicked: Thuc. 1.95.5, 128.3– 130.2, 132.5, 135.2.


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have been an intention to prevent any Persian return (cf. 1.100.1: Eurymedon) and to liberate Greeks still subject to Persia (e.g. 3.10.3: Mytilenaean speech).22 Thucydides’ intention in his account of the Pentecontaetia is to sketch the growth of Athenian power (1.89.1, 97.1; but 118.2 more general), which he does: probably there was a good deal of League activity against the Persians which he has not recorded. What matters for our theme is that the fear of a Persian return and the foundation of the Delian League, committed to permanent war against Persia, gave the Greeks in general and Athens in particular a reason for regarding the opposition between Greeks and Persians as fundamental and the successes of the Greeks against the Persians as their greatest achievement. A first major turning-point in the history of the League came c.460, after Athens’ breach with Sparta (linked with Ephialtes’ success over Cimon in Athens). Athens started building up its power in mainland Greece, but war against the Persians continued: an expedition to Cyprus accepted an invitation to Egypt (where the Greeks had been active for two centuries), and an inscribed Athenian casualty list adds Phoenicia (Thuc. 1.102–11; ML 33 = IG i3. 1147 trans. Fornara 78. 1–4).23 A second came c.450, when Cimon (back in Athens after a period of ostracism) campaigned again in Cyprus. After his death the Athenians were victorious but withdrew (Thuc. 1.112.2–4); and after that regular warfare against Persia ceased, whether or not the cessation was marked by a Peace of Callias.24 There was some hesitation: Sparta declined Athens’ invitation to a congress of all the Greeks whose agenda would include the rebuilding of the temples destroyed by Persians (Plut. Per. 17);25 but after that the Delian League was kept in being although the war against Persia had ended. In 447/6 the Acropolis building programme began; directly or indirectly the tribute from the League helped to pay for it; and Pericles’ opponents objected 22 e.g. Rhodes (1985), 7. In fact Adramyttium, at the head of the gulf opposite Lesbos, was in Persian hands in 422 (Thuc. 5.1) and is not known ever to have been out of Persian hands. Other Persian retentions: Whitby (1998), esp. 219–21. 23 It is possible that Dorus, assessed for tribute (Craterus FGrH 342 F 1), was near Mount Carmel and was assessed at this time, and that it was in 458 that the Persians sent Ezra to Jerusalem, perhaps in response to Athenian activity (Ezra 7.7–8—but it is uncertain whether Ezra was sent by Artaxerxes I or Artaxerxes II or III); it is more certain that Nehemiah was sent to Jerusalem in 445, when Egypt was still or again in touch with Athens (Nehemiah 2.1–8; Athens and Egypt 445/4 Philoch. FGrH 328 F 119). For two recent discussions see Littman (2001) and Ehrhardt (2001). 24 The bibliography is endless. Essentially, the Peace was known to all from the aftermath of the Peace of Antalcidas in 387/6 (Isoc. 4. Paneg. 120 with 117–18) onwards; but there is no certain allusion in Herodotus or Thucydides, and an alleged inscription of the treaty was denounced by Theopompus (FGrH 115 FF 153–4) as a fake; those including me who disbelieve in a treaty (a minority) suppose that it was invented to make more vivid the contrast between the glorious past and the humiliation of the Peace of Antalcidas, which surrendered the Asiatic Greeks to Persia (below). 25 Some regard this too as a later invention (e.g. Seager (1969) ), but I do not see why an invitation to a congress which never met, and which is absent from 4th-cent. propaganda as well as from 5th-cent. sources, should have been invented (cf. e.g. Griffith (1978) ).

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to the spending on buildings of money which was collected for war against the Persians (Plut. Per. 12.1–4). Early in the 450s the Persians tried unsuccessfully to bribe Sparta to invade Attica, to undermine the Egyptian campaign (Thuc. 1.109.2–3);26 the disastrous end of that campaign (1.109–10) perhaps led to a Persian resurgence and explains the removal of the League treasury from Delos to Athens in 454; in 440–439 Samos had Persian support against Athens (1.115.2–117). Both before and after c.450 a Persian threat could still be perceived. Victory over the Persians had thus become crucial for the Greeks and particularly for Athens. Herodotus, writing in the third quarter of the century, made the wars of 490 and 480–479 the primary focus of his history. The Athenians’ justification of their empire at Sparta in 432 starts with the Persian Wars, and leads on to the foundation of the Delian League, when ‘Sparta did not want to endure and the allies approached Athens’ (Thuc. 1.73.2–75.2); Aristophanes represents the Acharnians as veterans of Marathon (Ar. Ach. 692–702). The opening rituals of the Athenian assembly included a curse on anybody who made peaceful overtures to the Persians, and this was retained in the fourth century (Plut. Arist. 10.6, Isoc. 4. Paneg. 157, cf. Ar. Thesm. 336–8). Additionally, the Greeks came to see themselves as threatened by but successful against barbarians both in the East and in the West: that the battles of Himera and Salamis were allegedly fought on the same day was seen as a coincidence by Hdt. 7.165–7 and Arist. Poet. 1459a 24–9, but as the result of a plot by the eastern and the western barbarians by Ephorus (Diod. Sic. 11.1.4, 20.1; Thermopylae 24.1); Himera and the later Syracusan success against the Etruscans at Cumae could be set beside Salamis and Plataea (Pind. Pyth. 1.71–80).

PERSIA THE PROBLEM So Persia had become the national enemy; but fifth-century Greek attitudes to Persia were complex. Was Persia dangerous or feeble? The Persians were the enemy who presented the greatest challenge to the Greeks, yet another view saw them as slavish, effeminate, and luxurious in contrast to the Greeks who occupied a healthy mean between the uncivilized barbarians of the North and the overcivilized barbarians of the East (Hdt. 9.122, his last chapter, cf. Pausanias at Plataea, below).27 26 Cf. the problematic Athenian decree against Arthmius of Zelea, attested in the 4th cent. but not in the 5th: Dem. 19. Embassy 271–2, 9. Phil. 3. 41–4, etc. 27 The theme continues through Hippoc. Airs, Waters, Places 12–24, Plat. Rep. 4.435e–436a, Androt. FGrH 324 F 54 (a), to Arist. Pol. 7.1327b 18–36. Thuc. 1.5.3–6.6 operates with a different model: the more backward parts of Greece show what the more advanced parts used to be like, the barbarians show what the whole of Greece used to be like.


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Persian luxury could elicit envy as well as scorn, and there was room in Greece for Persian fashions. In 479 the Spartan Pausanias at Plataea mocked the Persian tent and a Persian dinner (Hdt. 9.82), but in 478 at Byzantium he adopted Persian trappings (Thuc. 1.130.1 cf. 95.3).28 Persian clothing is depicted on some Athenian vases and grave stelai.29 Parasols were already being used by upper-class women from the sixth century; and in the fifth century metics held them for Athenian women in the Panathenaic procession (Ar. Birds 1549–51 with schol.), and Eros held one for Aphrodite on the Parthenon frieze.30 There was a notorious gift of peacocks by the king to an upper-class Athenian called Pyrilampes about the middle of the fifth century (Antiph. frs. 57–9, cf. Ar. Ach. 63, Plat. Charm. 158a).31 Most striking was Pericles’ odeum, south-east of the Acropolis, which was said to have been ‘many-seated and many-columned’ (not a very practicable combination) and to have been an imitation of the Persian king’s tent (in fact of a Persian palace?) (Plut. Per. 13.9–10).32 But it seems that later élite fashion switched to Spartan austerity as Persian fashions spread down the social scale.33 In fifth-century art the Persians became the archetypal barbarians, so that Amazons and Trojans could be depicted in Persian costume.34 Yet Athenian writers (with the exception of Xenophon, who took part in Cyrus’ anabasis and who spent most of his adult life in exile from Athens) do not show much interest in or knowledge of the Persians; eastern Greeks (such as Herodotus and Ctesias), who had more contact with them, not surprisingly show more awareness.35 After the Persian Wars, no less than before, distinguished Greek refugees went to Persia: following in the footsteps of Hippias and Demaratus we see, for instance, Themistocles (Thuc. 1.135.2–138, etc.) and Alcibiades (Thuc. 8.45–6, 412/11; Plut. Alc. 37, 404). There was some traffic, but as far as we know less, in the other direction: Rhoesaces went to Athens in the 470s–460s (Plut. Cim. 10.9), and Zopyrus perhaps in the 430s (Hdt. 3.160.2). With the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the possibility arose that one side might enlist Persia as an ally: Sparta needed Persian money if it was to have a chance of defeating Athens at sea, and Athens needed at least to prevent that. At the beginning of the war both sides considered approaching Persia (Thuc. 2.7.1 cf. 1.82.1); in 430 and again in 425/4 the Athenians captured envoys travelling between Sparta and Persia (Thuc. 2.67, Hdt. 7.137.3; Thuc. 4.50.1–2; cf. Ar. Ach. 647–51); in 425 Aristophanes mocked an Athenian embassy which 28

Cf. Alcibiades’ Persian tent at the Olympics of 416: [Andoc.] IV. Alc. 30. Miller (1997), 153–87 ch. 7. But it is not clear how many of the wearers are Athenian. 30 Cf. Miller (1992). 31 Cf. Cartledge (1990). A sister of Pyrilampes became grandmother of Plato; Pyrilampes had a son to whom he gave the name Demos. 32 Cf. Miller (1997), 218–42 ch. 9. 33 Miller (1997), 243–58 ch. 10, cf. Thuc.1.6.3–4. 34 Boardman (2002), 162. 35 Tuplin (1996), 132–77 ch. 3. 29

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after enduring years of unbearable luxury failed to obtain money from Persia (Ach. 61–125). In 424/3 an Athenian approach was abandoned on Artaxerxes’ death (Thuc. 4.50.2–3); but almost all now accept a Peace of Epilycus made by Athens with Darius II once he had become established as king.36 In 412, provoked by Athens’ support of the rebel Amorges,37 and encouraged by Athens’ weakness after the failure in Sicily, the Persians approached Sparta (Thuc. 8.5–6), and made a series of agreements which would require the surrender of the Asiatic Greeks (8.18, 37, 58); the Spartan Lichas was afraid of greater claims which the first two versions of the treaty could imply (8.43.3– 4, 52), but told an unhappy Miletus that it must accept the agreement for the time being (8.84.4–5). Alcibiades after his break with Sparta encouraged hopes that Persian help could be diverted to Athens: in 411 negotiations failed (8.46– 56), but Athenian hopes persisted (8.81–2, 108.1) until as late as 408/7 (Xen. Hell. 1.3.6–14, 1.4.1–7). However, in 408/7 Darius sent his younger son Cyrus to support the Spartans, and D. M. Lewis has argued for a Treaty of Boeotius, by which the Asiatic Greeks would pay tribute but otherwise be autonomous (1.4.2–3).38 Lysander in 407/6 had a good relationship with Cyrus, but Callicratidas, his successor in 406/5, resented courting him, and claimed that he wanted to reconcile Sparta and Athens (1.6.7). Yet it was still possible to see Persia as a threat. In Ar. Knights 478 Cleon accuses the Sausage-Seller of intriguing with Persians; there are similar accusations in Peace 105–8, 406–8, and in Lys. 1128–35 we have the complaint that the Greeks are destroying one another while a barbarian army is at hand. We have noticed the fears of Lichas in 411 (above); Gorgias’ Olympic Speech (probably 40839) and Funeral Speech (unknown date) deplore the Greeks’ divisions and urge them to fight not for one another’s cities but for barbarian territory (Philostr. Vit. Soph. 1.9.4–5 = Vorsokr. 82 a 1.4–5).

FOURTH-CENTURY AMBIGUITIES Persia continued in the fourth century to be both a potential ally and a potential enemy. The Peloponnesian War was followed by the problem of the Asiatic 36 Omitted by Thuc.; but Andoc. 3. Peace 19, cf. ML 70 with 1988 addenda = IG i3. 227 with fasc. ii addenda, trans. Fornara 138 lacking addenda: it is unthinkable that Athens would have abandoned the Asiatic Greeks, but a non-aggression pact might have satisfied both sides. 37 Thus Andocides. Some cannot credit Athens with a wilful breach of Peace of Epilycus, and suppose that Persia’s decision to support Sparta provoked Athens’ support of Amorges (e.g. Westlake (1977) = (1989), 103–12 ch. 9); allusions in Thuc. 8 do not settle the matter. 38 Lewis (1977), 114–25; against, e.g. Tuplin (1987), 133–53. I accept the treaty, on the grounds that it is easier to understand how after the Peloponnesian War Tissaphernes might have broken that than that Sparta might have broken the treaty of 411. 39 Date Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1893), i. 172–3.


39

Greeks. In 404 Sparta neither liberated them nor surrendered them to Persia but took them over with the rest of Athenian empire (Diod. Sic. 14.10.1–2);40 In 402–401 Sparta and the Asiatic Greeks backed Cyrus against Artaxerxes II (Xen. Hell. 3.1.1, Anab. 1.1.6–7, 1.4.2–3, Diod. Sic. 14.19.2–6). In 400 Tissaphernes, reinstated as satrap of Sardis, demanded the subjection of the Asiatic Greeks; they wanted to be free and (despite Sparta’s earlier undertakings) appealed for Spartan support, which was granted (Xen. Hell. 3.1.3–4, Diod. Sic. 14.35.6). The war which began in 400 was punctuated by truces to consider a compromise which would combine tribute-paying with autonomy (Xen. Hell. 3.2.20, 397; 3.4.5–6, 396; 3.4.25–6, 395); meanwhile Sparta (re)installed harmosts in the Asiatic cities (cf. Xen. Hell. 3.2.20, 4.8.1). In the face of Spartan hostility, Persia sent money to Sparta’s enemies in Greece (Hell. Oxy. 10.2, 5 Chambers, giving a likelier context than Xen. Hell. 3.5.1) and the Corinthian War, in which former Spartan allies joined with Athens against Sparta, began in 395. The Athenian Conon after the Peloponnesian War made his way via Evagoras of Salamis (in Cyprus) to command a fleet for Pharnabazus, the satrap of Dascylium (Diod. Sic. 13.106.6, 14.39.1– 4). In 394 they defeated the Spartans at Cnidus. After that they ‘liberated’ the Asiatic cities, promising them autonomy and no fortified akropoleis (Xen. Hell. 4.8.1, Diod. Sic. 14.84.3–4), and an Athenian decree for Evagoras seems to have praised him as a Greek fighting on behalf of the Greeks (IG ii2. 20 = Tod 109 + new fragment Lewis and Stroud (1979) = Rhodes and Osborne 11), bringing the Greeks freedom/autonomy in place of slavery (Isoc. 9. Evag. 56, 68).41 Sparta was making no progress either in Asia or in Greece, so attempts begun in 392 (Xen. Hell. 4.8.12–17) and 392/1 (Andoc. 3. Peace, Philoch. FGrH 328 F 149)42 led in 387/6 to the Peace of Antalcidas or King’s Peace (Xen. Hell. 5.1.29–36, Diod. Sic. 14.110.3–4). As early as 391–388 Miletus and Myus were sufficiently under the influence of the Persians to refer a territorial dispute to them (Milet. i. ii 9 = Tod 113 = Rhodes and Osborne 16 trans. Harding 24). As the peace approached the Athenians became less happy about their friendship with Persia, and a decree of c.387 for Erythrae talked of ‘not giving up Erythrae to the barbarians’ (SEG xxvi 1282 = Rhodes and Osborne 17 trans. Harding 28. a). When the peace was made, the Asiatic Greeks were finally abandoned to Persia in return for a 40

For the Asiatic Greeks cf. Xen. Hell. 2.2.1, 3.4.2. Later the wires were embarrassingly crossed: Athens’ friend Evagoras came to be regarded by the Persians as a rebel, but pro-Persian Athens sent support to him and anti-Persian Sparta intercepted it (Xen. Hell. 4.8.24; later support got through, 5.1.10–12). And, while at the time Athens celebrated Cnidus as a Greek victory, it was later represented as a barbarian victory over Greeks, in Lys. 2. Epitaph. 58–9, Isoc. 4. Paneg. 119. 42 392/1 controversial: accepted e.g. Keen (1995), (1998); Philoch. interpreted as referring to 387/6 e.g. Badian (1991), 26–44. 41

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Persian-backed autonomy of all cities and islands elsewhere—and Sparta proceeded to decide what was to count as autonomy and what entities were entitled to it.43 This led to a revival of the view of Persia as the great enemy. In the Peace of Antalcidas and subsequent common peace treaties one Greek state threatened to invoke Persia (but action by Persia was never a serious likelihood) to enforce its own dispensation in Greece. But the abandonment of Asiatic Greeks was widely seen as a betrayal,44 and the Athenians contrasted the humiliation of the Peace of Antalcidas with the glory of the fifth-century Peace of Callias (actual or invented: cf. above). The theme which we have seen already in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Gorgias frequently recurs. Lysias 33. Olympic Speech, probably to be dated 384 and seen as a denunciation of the Peace of Antalcidas,45 called on the Greeks to unite under Spartan leadership against Syracuse (under the tyranny of Dionysius I) and Persia. Isocrates IV. Panegyric, c.380, was to be the first of a series of speeches in which he called on somebody to restore the glorious past and reunite the Greeks in a crusade against the Persians, continuing to 5. Philip, 346.46 Yet at the same time there was a continuation of the tradition that Persia was weak, and therefore easy to defeat if Greeks did unite (e.g. Isoc. 4. Paneg. 138–56, 160–2). When one Greek state had the Persian king’s backing, its enemies supported rebels against the king. After the Peace of Antalcidas Athens could not continue to support Evagoras,47 but the Athenian Chabrias supported Egypt—until c.380/79 when Persia protested, he was recalled to Athens, and Iphicrates was sent to fight on the Persian side (Diod. Sic. 15.29.1–4). The Second Athenian League was founded in 378/7 on the basis of Peace of Antalcidas (IG ii2 43 = Tod 123 = Rhodes and Osborne 22 trans. Harding 35. 12–19; cf. the paradigm alliance with Chios IG ii2. 34 = Tod 118 = Rhodes and Osborne 20 trans. Harding 31. 7–24). But in 367 Thebes gained the king’s backing (Xen. Hell. 7.1.33–40): Athens erased the pro-Persian clause in the prospectus of the League; and Athens and Sparta backed rebels against Persia in the Satraps’ Revolt. After the Greeks’ stalemate battle of Mantinea in

43

In 392/1 and 387/6 Athens was allowed the three north-Aegean islands of Imbros, Lemnos and Scyros. On problems in the interpretation of the terms see Rhodes (forthcoming). Remarkably, on occupying Thebes in 382, Sparta the friend of Persia had Thebes’ anti-Spartan leader Ismenias condemned for Medism—for accepting Persian money in the 390s when Sparta was not a friend of Persia (Xen. Hell. 5,2,35–6). 44 SEG xxvi. 1282 = Rhodes and Osborne 17 trans. Harding 28. A, Athenian decree for Erythrae before Peace; Isoc. 4. Paneg. 120–2 etc., after Peace; also, e.g. Dem. 15. Lib. Rhod. 29. 45 388, Diod. Sic. 14.109.3; 384, Grote (1869/84), ix. 291–2 n. 2, x. 312–3 n. 1 = (1888), viii. 72 n. 2, ix. 34–5 n. 1. 46 On his recycled arguments see Speusippus Letter to Philip 13. 47 Cyprus was explicitly mentioned in the treaty: Xen. Hell. 5.1.31.


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362, the participants in the latest peace treaty promised that they would not trouble the king if he did not trouble them (IG iv 556 = Tod 145 = Rhodes and Osborne 42 trans. Harding 57), but Chabrias went from Athens to Egypt as a freelance, and Sparta, excluded from the peace, sent Agesilaus to Egypt (Diod, Sic. 15.92.2–3). The Satraps’ Revolt of the 360s collapsed, but its beneficiary Artabazus revolted in the 350s. In 355–354 the Athenian Chares, after a defeat in the Social War against some members of Athens’ League backed by Mausolus of Caria, went to fight for Artabazus; but the king complained and there was a fear that he would support Athens’ rebels, so Chares was recalled and in 353 Athens’ enemy Thebes sent Pammenes to fight for Artabazus (Diod. Sic. 16.22.1–2, 16.34.1–2)—but Artabazus fell out with him, and later Thebes was reconciled with the king and he sent 300 talents to Thebes for Third Sacred War (Diod. Sic. 16.40.1–2). In 344/3, when Philip of Macedon was Athens’ chief preoccupation and the political pendulum was swinging, Athens would neither cooperate with Philip nor help Persia to recover Egypt (Philoch. FGrH 328 F 157).

AGAMEMNON AND ACHILLES REDIVIVI Xerxes had sacrificed at Troy (Hdt. 7.43) and had been persuaded to grant the alleged tomb of the Trojan War hero Protesilaus to Artayctes (Hdt. 7.33, 9.116).48 A parallel between the Persian Wars and the Trojan War was very soon drawn by the victorious Greeks (see ‘the new Simonides’, frs. 1–22 West2);49 and the paintings in the Stoa Poikile, built in the second quarter of the fifth century, included both the capture of Troy and the battle of Marathon (Paus. 1.15.1–3). Herodotus in many ways was a prose Homer, but he rejected the heroic period in favour of Croesus and his predecessors as the beginning of the conflict between Europe and Asia (Hdt. 1.1–5.2 contr. 1.5.3 sqq.); Thucydides in making the Peloponnesian War the greatest war of all time played down both the Trojan War and the Persian Wars (Thuc. 1.10.3–1.11, 1.23.1). But the shadow of the Trojan War remained, and Isocrates often looked back to that (e.g. 10. Helen 67–8, 12. Panath. 76–83); in 396 Agesilaus on his way to upgrade Sparta’s war in Asia Minor (cf. above) went like Agamemnon to sacrifice at Aulis—but the Boeotians interfered and he never forgave them (Xen. Hell. 3.4.3–4, 3.5.5).

48

Cf. Haubold, Ch. 3. POxy. lix. 3965 (1992), combined with the previously unattributed xxii. 2327 (1954). There have been many discussions: for a good collection see Boedeker and Sider (2001). 49

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From 346 onwards, though the opponents of Philip of Macedon regarded him as the Greeks’ new barbarian enemy, Isocrates (cf. above) looked to him to lead his Greek crusade against the Persians (5. Philip, Epp. 2–3. Phil. 1–2): neither Isocrates nor Persia will have been Philip’s highest priority, but by 341 a Persian war after defeat of Athens could be envisaged (Dem. 10. Phil. 4. 31–4), and Demosthenes secured Persian support against Philip in the Propontis (Dem. 9. Phil. 3. 71 with Arist. Rhet. 2. 1386a 13, [Plut.] Ten Orators 848 e). In 338/7 Philip incorporated the mainland Greeks except Sparta in his League of Corinth, and the League committed itself to a war against Persia (Diod. Sic. 16.89)—a Greek objective, not a Macedonian objective; in keeping with Philip’s clothing of his supremacy in Greek institutional garb.50 In 336, after sending out his advance forces, Philip was assassinated, but the war was carried on, to the conquest of the whole of the Persian empire (which Philip might not have done), by Alexander. Greek mercenaries fighting for Persia were treated as traitors to the Greek cause (Arr. Anab. 1.16.6). But Greek opponents of Macedon were in touch with Persia and hoping for a Persian victory: in 335 Thebes in revolting against Alexander called for the support of ‘those wishing to join the Great King and the Thebans in freeing the Greeks and putting down the tyrant’ (Diod. Sic. 17.9.5: cf. the ‘liberation’ of the Greeks from Sparta in 394 by Pharnabazus with Conon and Evagoras, above), and Demosthenes was said to be in receipt of Persian money (Diod. Sic. 17.4.7–8, etc.); the extremist Charidemus was exiled from Athens, and he and others joined the Persians (Arr. Anab. 1.10.6, etc.). The Spartans (who had not been enrolled in the League of Corinth) were in touch with the Persians (Arr. Anab. 2.13.4–6), and there were Greek envoys with Darius at Issus in 333 (Arr. Anab. 2.15.2–5). Alexander had been taught by Lysimachus, one of his tutors, to see himself as a second Achilles (Plut. Alex. 5.8); as he crossed to Asia, he enacted various reminiscences of the Trojan War, culminating in a visit to Troy with a particular focus on Achilles (Arr. Anab. 1.11.5–12.1, etc.). The Greek crusade ended in 330 with the destruction of the palace of Darius I at Persepolis (Arr. Anab. 3.18.11–12, etc.) and the discharge of the Greek ‘allies’ at Ecbatana— but many of them re-enlisted as mercenaries (Arr. Anab. 3.19.5–6, etc.) and Alexander’s campaign of conquest continued. A century and a half after the Persian invasions of Greece the Persian empire was overthrown, in what the Greeks could represent as a Greek victory, and the Persian empire was brought into the Greek world. But what the fifth-century Greeks had come to see as the fundamental divide between East and West was to persist, and it is still with us today.

50

See Brosius (2003).


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BIBLIOGRAPHY Austin, M. M. (1990). ‘Greek Tyrants and the Persians, 546–479 b.c.’, CQ ns 40: 289–306. Badian, E. (1991). ‘The King’s Peace’, in Georgica . . . G. Cawkwell (BICS Supp. 58), 25–48. —— (1994). ‘Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: A Study in Some Subtle Silences’, in S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography. Oxford, 107–30. Beloch, K. J. (1912–27). Griechische Geschichte, 2nd edn. Strassburg → Berlin and Leipzig. Boardman, J. (2002). The Archaeology of Nostalgia. London. Boedeker, D., and Sider, D. (eds.) (2001). The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire. Oxford. Bosworth, A. B. (1980– ). A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. Oxford. —— (1994). ‘Heracleides of Pontus and the Past: Fact or Fiction?’, in Ventures into Greek History < . . . N. G. L. Hammond>. Oxford, 15–27. Brosius, M. (2003). ‘Why Persia Became the Enemy of Macedon’, Achaemenid History 13: 227–38. Burn, A. R. (1962). Persia and the Greeks. London. Cartledge, P. (1990). ‘Fowl Play: A Curious Lawsuit in Classical Athens’, in P. Cartledge et al. (eds.), Nomos. Cambridge, 41–61 ch. iii. Cawkwell, G. L. (2005). The Greek Wars: The Failure of Persia. Oxford. Ehrhardt, C. (2001). ‘Athens, Egypt, Phoenicia, c. 459–444 b.c.’, AJAH 15 [nominally 1990]: 177–96. Errington, R. M. (1981). ‘Alexander the Philhellene and Persia’, in Ancient Macedonian Studies . . . C. F. Edson. Thessaloniki, 139–43. Forrest, W. G. (1969). ‘The Tradition of Hippias’ Expulsion from Athens’, GRBS 10: 277–86. —— (1980). History of Sparta, 2nd edn. London. Gardiner-Garden, J. R. (1987). ‘Darius’ Scythian Expedition and its Aftermath’, Klio 69: 326–50. Griffith, G. T. (1978). ‘A Note on Plutarch Pericles 17’, Hist. 27: 218–19. Griffiths, A. H. (1987). ‘Democedes of Croton: A Greek Doctor at Darius’ Court’, Achaemenid History 2: 37–51. Grote, G. (1869/84). History of Greece, ‘new edn.’ in 12 vols. London. —— (1888). History of Greece, ‘new edn.’ in 10 vols. London. Grundy, G. B. (1901). The Great Persian War and Its Preliminaries. London. Hammond, N. G. L. (1955). ‘Studies in Greek Chronology of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries b.c.’, Historia 4: 371–411. —— (1993). Collected Studies, i (Amsterdam). Hornblower, S. (2001). ‘Greeks and Persians: West against East’, in A. V. Hartmann and B. Heuser (eds.), War, Peace and World Orders in European History. London, 48–61. Hudson, G. F. (1924). ‘The Land of the Budini—A Problem in Ancient Geography’, CR 38: 158–62.

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Keen, A. G. (1995). ‘A “Confused” Passage of Philochoros (F 149A) and the Peace of 392/1 b.c.’, Historia 44: 1–10. —— (1998). ‘Philochoros F 149A&B: A Further Note’, Historia 47: 375–8. Lewis, D. M. (1977). Sparta and Persia. Leiden. —— (1980). ‘Datis the Mede’, JHS 100: 194–5. —— (1997). Selected Papers in Greek and Near Eastern History. Cambridge. —— and Stroud, R. S. (1979). ‘Athens Honours King Euagoras of Salamis’, Hesperia 48: 180–93. Littman, R. J. (2001). ‘Dor and the Athenian Empire’, AJAH 15 [nominally 1990]: 155–76. Miller, M. C. (1992). ‘The Parasol: An Oriental Status-Symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens’, JHS 112: 91–105. —— (1997). Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century b.c. Cambridge. Osborne, R. (2004). Greek History. London. Rhodes, P. J. (1985). The Athenian Empire. G&R New Surveys 17. —— (2003). ‘Herodotean Chronology Revisited’, in Herodotus and His World . . . G. Forrest. Oxford, 58–72. —— (forthcoming). ‘Making and Breaking Treaties in the Greek World’, in P. de Souza and J. France (eds.), War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History. Cambridge. —— and Osborne, R. (eds.) (2003). Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC, edited with Introduction, Translations, and Commentaries. Oxford. Seager, R. J. (1969). ‘The Congress Decree: Some Doubts and a Hypothesis’, Historia 18: 129–41. Sealey, R. (1976). A History of the Greek City States, ca. 700–338 b.c. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Shipley, D. G. J. (1987). A History of Samos, 800–188 b.c. Oxford. Tuplin, C. J. (1987). ‘The Treaty of Boiotios’. Achaemenid History 2 [nominally 1984]: 133–53. —— (1996). Achaemenid Studies. Historia Einzelschriften 99. Westlake, H. D. (1977). ‘Athens and Amorges’, Phoenix 31: 319–29. —— (1989). Studies in Thucydides and Greek History. Bristol. Whitby, M. (1998). ‘An International Symposium? Ion of Chios Fr. 27 and the Margins of the Delian League’, in E. Dabrowa (ed.), Ancient Iran and the Mediterranean World . . . J. Wolski (Electrum 2). Kraków, 207–24. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1893). Aristoteles und Athen. Berlin.


Figure 2.1 Darius and a Messenger. Detail of the ‘Darius Vase’. c.340–330 bc

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3 Xerxes’ Homer Johannes Haubold

INTRODUCTION In this chapter I argue that the cultural reception of the Persian Wars was from the beginning decisively shaped by the Persians themselves. More specifically, it is my contention that Xerxes and his advisors appropriated Greek epic as a charter for imperial expansion; and that Greek audiences hostile to the Persians responded by reclaiming it as a charter for a ‘free’, i.e. non-imperial, Greece. It is crucial to my case that what may appear to the modern observer as a specifically Greek phenomenon (what Edith Hall has influentially dubbed the ‘invention of the barbarian’) was in fact sparked by Persian attempts to fashion a cultural language that could speak to both rulers and ruled. The reception of epic in post-war Greece was informed by a complex and long-drawn-out dialogue between two cultures, one imperial, the other local. Imperial perspectives and voices predominated during the early stages of the encounter but were eventually sidelined as the possibility of imperial conquest became increasingly remote. The aim of this chapter is to recover imperial versions of the epic past, and to assess their impact on the reception of Homer. My argument is in two parts. After an introduction which sets out some of the relevant issues, I first study the ways in which Homeric and other epic traditions became part of the cultural discourse of the Persian empire. I then turn to the question of how and why they were reclaimed by Persia’s enemies. As will be apparent from the outset, I am indebted to the work of Pericles

The present chapter is a modified version of a paper which was first published in Italian under the title ‘Serse, Onomacrito e la ricezione di Omero’, in Canavero et al. (2004). Thanks are due to audiences at the research seminar of the University of Glasgow, the annual conference of the APA in San Francisco, and the conference on the early reception of Homer held in Milan. I would also like to thank Barbara Graziosi, Thomas Harrison, and the editors of this volume for commenting on drafts of the chapter.

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Georges on the relationship between Greeks and Persians.1 Georges argues that Persian propaganda spoke forcefully to the Greeks. Far from providing a passive target for projections of ‘the other’, the Persian kings and their advisors actively appropriated and refashioned existing Greek narratives.2 Georges also points out that Xerxes in particular draws on Homeric themes at crucial moments in his campaign, though quite how he does so, and with what effect on the reception of epic, he leaves largely unexplored.3 These two questions provide my starting point here: I ask how and why the Persians manipulated Greek epic, and how their manipulations affected the subsequent reception of Homeric poetry. By focusing on the reception of Homer in the wake of the Persian Wars, I join those scholars who insist that the history of Greek epic cannot be divorced from larger trends in the ancient Mediterranean. Recent work on near eastern elements in Homer has largely focused on the Hittite and Mycenaean background of the Trojan War, and the transmission of near eastern motifs to the Aegean during the so-called ‘Orientalizing Revolution’.4 By contrast, Homeric scholars have largely neglected the Persian Wars and their aftermath. Behind this neglect lies the apparently commonsensical assumption that the poems were largely fixed by the time of Darius’ and Xerxes’ attacks, and that cultural contact is only relevant to the meaning of a text as long as that text is still open to change. I call such a position ‘apparently commonsensical’ because there are in fact problems with it. To start with the most obvious one, the history of a text does not end with its composition, however understood. What a text means and how it speaks to its recipients crucially depends on such factors as audience expectation and modes of dissemination.5 Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case of Homer. Whatever view we take of the ‘Homeric Question’, it is clear that the Homeric poems continued to evolve long after they were committed to writing. A fifthcentury audience did not read Homer in the same way as one brought up on Aristarchus. Byzantine scholiasts had very different concerns from the modern-day oralist.6 Just as Homeric epic did not stop evolving after the advent of the first written texts, so the political and cultural context of the eastern Mediterranean continued to affect its meaning. The Persian Wars are a case in point. Prior to them, Greek literature makes little of the political and cultural differences between Greeks and non-Greeks. Epic in particular describes both sides in the Trojan War as worshipping the same gods, speaking the same language and adhering to much the same values. All this changed in the aftermath 1

Georges (1994). For Persian appropriations of Greek traditional narratives see Georges (1994), 47–75. 3 Some remarks can be found at Georges (1994), 60. 4 For Hittites and Ahhijawa- see Latacz (2004). For Greek epic and Near Eastern literature see Burkert (1992), West (1997), Haubold (2002). 5 See e.g. Hardwick (2003). 6 Some of the ancient responses to Homer are discussed in Lamberton (1992) and (1997). 2

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of Xerxes’ invasion of mainland Greece in 480/79 bc. Audiences now started interpreting the Trojan War as though it enshrined the Greeks’ military and cultural superiority over their eastern neighbours.7 The ‘invention of the barbarian’, which lies behind this sudden shift, deeply affected Greek epic, and there can be no question about its relevance to the student of Homer.8 What is less clear is how we should view this development, where it originated, and how much—if anything—it tells us about contact between Greeks and nonGreeks. In order to address these questions, we need first of all to get a better sense of how and why the Persians might have been interested in the literature of the Greeks.

PERSIAN POLYPHONY The Persian empire was multicultural at a very practical level.9 Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks, among others, were all actively involved in its administration. More importantly for our purposes, the Persians were surprisingly uninterested in spreading the authentic voice of Persia among their subject peoples. Much of the time, the aim was rather to create a hybrid discourse that could accommodate both imperial and local concerns. This was not simply a matter of dressing up Persian power in a local garb. Rather, the history and culture of the subject peoples, as articulated in their religious traditions and their classic works of literature, were seen to feed into, and converge with, the needs of the empire. As a result of Persia’s cultural policies, the Persian era saw an unprecedented proliferation of texts which claim a Persian pedigree without always showing obvious signs of being Persian. Scholars from different fields are faced with difficult questions: for example, are the Persian edicts and letters quoted in Hebrew scripture authentic, or are they local projections?10 Or, to give an example from the Greek world, does Herodotus reflect ‘genuine’ Achaemenid opinion when he reports the views of ‘Persian intellectuals’ in the Histories? Notoriously, Herodotus opens his work with an account of how the Persians explained the beginning of their hostilities with the Greeks. He summarizes the section by saying, ‘That is the Persian account; they date the origin of their hostility towards Greece from the fall of Ilium.’11 Taken at face value, this looks like a fascinating document of 7

E. Hall (1989); cf. J. Hall (2002), esp. ch. 6. Parallels between the Persian Wars and the Trojan War started to be drawn almost immediately after the Persian defeat: Georges (1994), 63. It took somewhat longer for the Trojans to become fully barbarized, but the transformation was more or less complete by the end of the 5th cent. See further p. 60 below. 9 Lewis (1977), ch. 1. 10 e.g. Bedford (2001), 114–81; Fried (2003). 11 Hdt. 1.5, trans. Waterfield. 8

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cultural dialogue: we might imagine ‘real’ Persians discussing the merits of their actions with ‘real’ Greeks. If that is a legitimate reading, then what Herodotus says should have implications for the reception of Homer. But of course there are problems. For a start, Herodotus’ Persians are suspiciously versed in traditional Greek narrative; ought authentic Persians not to have argued in a more obviously Persian way (whatever that might mean)? To make matters worse, the thinking of Herodotus’ Persians shows signs of the rationalizing approach associated with the sophists.12 Gods are systematically written out of the story, even where they are as central to it as Zeus is to the abduction of Europa. Instead of divine will, we find a marked emphasis on justice (dike-), a typical feature of classical Greek thought, and one which was explored in connection with the epic tradition by Aeschylus among others.13 Herodotus’ ‘Persian’ narrative, then, not only conforms to well-known Greek story-patterns but also updates traditional material in the light of recent trends. It would thus appear that his account is best described as a projection of Greek thinking on to non-Greeks.14 In fact, however, matters are more complicated. The Persians are well known for their ability to manipulate the iconographies of other cultures in art and architecture.15 What is true of their approach to material culture can be said with equal justification of their attitude to local languages and literature. The Persian empire was truly an ‘empire of languages’, as the kings themselves boasted in their inscriptions.16 The Persians went to extraordinary lengths to communicate with their subject peoples on their own terms. This meant not only that they adopted their languages,17 but also that they found subtle ways of manipulating their literatures.

LOCAL TRADITIONS—IMPERIAL INTERPRETATIONS Before returning to Herodotus, and hence to the question of what his account might mean for the reception of Homeric poetry, let us look at two examples

12

Asheri (1988), 263. e.g. Goldhill (1986), 33–56. 14 Asheri (1988), 263: ‘Le presunte “fonti” persiane e fenicie … sono quindi pura invenzione e convenzione letteraria.’ For further discussion along similar lines see Fehling (1971), 39–45. 15 Root (1979). 16 For the Persians’ boast to rule over ‘the lands of every language’ (ma-ta-te ša naphar liša-nu-), and similar claims, see the Akkadian texts of the Persian Royal inscriptions collected in Weissbach (1911) and Herzfeld (1938): Dar. Pers. a and g §§ 1 and 2 (Weissbach), NRa § 2 (Weissbach), Dar. Susa e § 2 (Weissbach), Dar. Elwend § 2 (Weissbach), Xerx. Pers. a § 2 (Weissbach), Xerx. Pers. b § 2 (Weissbach), Xerx. Pers. d § 2 (Weissbach), Xerx. Wan § 2 (Weissbach), Xerx. Pers. Daiva line 6 (Herzfeld), Artaxerxes I Pers. § 2 (Weissbach, restored). 17 A famous example of Persian kings adopting the language of their subjects is the Greeklanguage stele which Darius set up at the Bosporus: Hdt. 4.87. 13

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of how Persian propaganda affected local literatures.18 My first text comes from Babylon. The so-called Cyrus Cylinder tells us, in the form of a building inscription, how Babylon was ‘freed’ by Cyrus, how religious order was restored after a protracted period of crisis, and how as a visible sign of restitution the city walls were repaired.19 All this is done in Akkadian, the language of Assyrian and Babylonian official literature, and in full awareness not only of the generic conventions of such literature but also of current fashion.20 The Cyrus Cylinder, in other words, reads entirely like a sixth-century Babylonian text. In fact, it is such a text, though it is of course also the official Persian document par excellence to survive from the reign of Cyrus. In order to illustrate how this worked in practice, I would like to single out the passage which describes how Cyrus enters the walls of Babylon. Although Marduk has already approved of the new king, this is without doubt a critical moment. ba-lu qab-li ù ta-ha-zi ú-še- ri-ba-áš qé-reb ŠU.AN.NA.ki. URU-šu KÁ.DINGIR.MEŠ. ki. i-t¸i-ir i-na šap-ša-qí. Without battle and fighting he [i.e. Marduk] let him [i.e. Cyrus] enter Babylon. He [i.e. Marduk] saved his city Babylon from its oppression.21

The propagandistic message of the passage is not difficult to discern. We happen to know from the so-called Nabonidus Chronicle that there actually was a battle between Persians and Babylonians (at Opis).22 The Cyrus Cylinder suppresses any reference to armed conflict, suggesting instead that Persian and Babylonian history harmoniously converge at the moment of Cyrus’ arrival. The same message is also encoded at a deeper level. If we look at the second sentence that I have quoted above it appears at first simply to serve as a clarifying gloss: nobody should doubt that what is being described here is not a national disaster but a process of salvation (e¸te-ru = ‘to save’). However, there is much more to the passage than meets the eye. As Hanspeter Schaudig has pointed out, we have here a thinly-veiled allusion to a line from tablet vi of Enu-ma eliš, the Babylonian ‘Epic of Creation’, as it is often called.23 The relevant passage comes near the end of Enu-ma eliš and forms part of the solemn list of Marduk’s names. It sums up the defeat of Tiamat (tablet iv), the creation of the world (tablet v) and the building of Babylon (tablet vi). The Persian

18 The term ‘propaganda’ has been much discussed in recent scholarship. Here I use it as shorthand for the complex processes whereby rulers shape their subjects’ views of the world and are in turn affected by them. See Fowler and Hekster (2005), 16–18. 19 Brosius (2000), 10–11. For up-to-date edition and commentary see Schaudig (2001), 550–6. Schaudig also prints the related Persian Verse Account (pp. 563–78), which is translated into English in Pritchard (1969), 312–15. For discussion see Kuhrt (1990). 20 For discussion see Harmatta (1971), Kuhrt (1983) and (1987). 21 K2.1 17, in Schaudig (2001), 552; trans. Brosius (2000), 10, modified. 22 Chronicle 7, col. iii.12–14, in Grayson (1975), 109. 23 Schaudig (2001), 555, n. 906. The allusion is to E.e. vi.126. Cf. Dalley (2000), 265.

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takeover, in the allusive words of the Cyrus Cylinder, becomes part of this grand cosmic drama. Far from disrupting the familiar patterns of Babylonian thought and culture, it presents itself as the moment of ultimate restoration, not only of the city’s political and religious institutions, but of the cosmic order more generally. In the Cyrus Cylinder, then, the Persians cast their conquest of Babylon as the final act in the cosmic drama which, to Babylonian readers, guaranteed the very existence of their universe.24 Let me cite another example of how the Persians and their supporters reshaped local traditions, this time from the Levant. The part of Isaiah that is today called Deutero-Isaiah explains, in the voice of one of Israel’s most prestigious prophets, how and why the Persian king came to defeat Babylon and take on the mantle of the Messiah.25 Few modern readers would maintain that these ideas are in any strong sense Persian. Yet, for the very reason that they blend in so well with Jewish thought they furnish a particularly telling example of how the Persians and their allies sought to legitimize Persian rule: Isaiah was one of the sacred texts of early Judaism par excellence. To have their name inscribed in such a text was precisely what the Persian kings wanted and needed to happen all over their empire.26 To be sure, the creation of Deutero-Isaiah is not likely to have involved any actual Persians (however defined), let alone Cyrus himself. But that is not necessary: the discourse of empire as the Persians conceived it strives to blend into local culture to the point where it divests itself of any obvious signs of Persian authorship.

ONOMACRITUS, MUSAEUS, AND THE FUTURE OF GREECE We have seen two different examples of how the Persians transformed the literatures of their subject peoples. If processes of this kind could take place in Mesopotamia and Israel, there is no reason why they should not also have been possible in the Aegean. Homerists, it would seem, can no longer afford to ignore the reading of the Trojan War which Herodotus says ‘the Persians’ espoused.

24 In case it be objected that the Cylinder was a building inscription and cannot therefore have had any real impact on Babylonian audiences, we need to remember that archive copies were kept of important building inscriptions, and that the extant text of the Cyrus Cylinder may have been just such a copy: Schaudig (2001), 46. More generally, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White (1991), 74 emphasize the public nature of major building inscriptions such as the Cyrus Cylinder. 25 Isa. 44–5. For discussion and bibliography see e.g. Westermann (1969), Albertz (1994), 414–26. 26 For a suggestion that Deutero-Isaiah reflects Persian propaganda, see Kuhrt (1990), 145, van de Mieroop (2004), 277.

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With that in mind, let us return to our passage from Herodotus. Could it be that Herodotus was right after all, and that there really was a Persian version of the Trojan War story? I argue below that Herodotus’ narrative indeed testifies to imperial interpretations of Homeric epic, but first I consider another case of pro-Persian literary activities, this time from Greece itself. In the run-up to his Greek campaign, Xerxes secured the services of Onomacritus, an expert in epic oracles and close associate of the Pisistratids.27 According to Herodotus, Onomacritus showed the king how he could march his army to Greece; and he did so precisely by producing an imperial version of a Greek oracle collection along the lines of Deutero-Isaiah: They [i.e. the Pisistratids] had brought with them to Susa an Athenian called Onomacritus, an oracle-monger who specialized in collecting the oracles of Musaeus. The Pisistratids had patched up their quarrel with Onomacritus, who had been banished from Athens by Hipparchus the son of Pisistratus when Lasus of Hermione had exposed his insertion into the text of Musaeus of an oracle to the effect that the islands lying off Lemnos were going to sink out of sight into the sea. Hipparchus sentenced him to exile for this, despite the fact that he and Onomacritus had been very close friends before. At the time in question, however, he had gone with the Pisistratids up to Susa, and whenever he came into the king’s presence he would accompany their high-flown compliments of him with a recital of some of his oracles. He never mentioned any oracle in his collection which threatened catastrophe for the Persians, but selected only the most auspicious ones and recited those; in this way he expounded how the Hellespont was fated to be bridged by a man of Persia, and how Xerxes could get his troops to Greece.28

Onomacritus is introduced as a virtuoso performer, editor (diathete-s) and interpreter of traditional Greek literature.29 His chosen author Musaeus belonged to a canon of epic poets which also included Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer.30 The language of Musaeus is that of traditional hexameter poetry, and his themes overlap with those of other epic poets.31 We do not know much else about the shape and content of the Musaeus collection. The text is lost, and the few fragments that survive are not particularly illuminating. However, it is clear from the sources that Musaeus was immensely popular and widely regarded as authoritative. Herodotus himself is anxious to report that the outcome of the Persian Wars was in fact fully in line with what Musaeus had predicted.32 It clearly mattered what this author had to say about the future of Greece. 27 For the early evidence about Onomacritus see Slings (2000). Later sources often mention him in the context of Orphic poetry; see Heinze (2000). 28 Hdt. 7.6, trans. Waterfield. 29 Nagy (1990), 169–74, discusses Onomacritus’ activities prior to his arrival at the Persian court. 30 For Musaeus see West (1983), 39–44. 31 Overlap with Homer: Musaeus frr. 4 and 5 DK. Overlap with Hesiod: fr. 7 DK. Other oracular traditions, such as those of Pythian Apollo and Bacis, show a similarly close relationship with the language and themes of Homer and Hesiod. 32 Hdt. 8.96, 9.43.

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Herodotus makes no secret of his distaste for Onomacritus. According to him, the man is a consummate fraudster, someone who interpolates and manipulates traditional texts. Yet, once we filter out Herodotus’ hostile interpretation, Onomacritus’ project begins to look strikingly familiar. Like the authors of the Cyrus Cylinder, and like those thinkers who are behind DeuteroIsaiah, Onomacritus uses the literature of Greece with a view to rooting Persian rule in local thought. In so doing, he not only interprets an existing text but actively reshapes it through an act of selection. In effect, what Onomacritus does for Xerxes and his Greek allies is to produce a new edition of Musaeus, one that is favourable to their grand designs.33 Herodotus depicts Onomacritus as performing in front of the king, but it would be wrong to think that these performances were private affairs. The very nature of Achaemenid kingship suggests otherwise: what the king did and said, and what was said to him, was of crucial significance to the empire and its peoples.34 Of course, not all Greeks would have accepted that the great king had privileged access to their literature, nor would they have accepted his reading of Musaeus. However, even enemies of the king would have taken Onomacritus’ performances seriously as an attempt to reshape one of their most cherished texts; and to appropriate their political future in the process. If Onomacritus was right, then the future of Greece was indeed in the hands of Xerxes. Repeated performances of Musaeus ‘before the king’ were therefore of enormous importance to the Greeks, especially those Greeks who were either already under Persian rule or harboured sympathies with the invaders. We need not assume that Onomacritus ever wrote down his version of Musaeus, let alone that copies of such a text circulated widely. Yet, as a series of performances, his edited version of Musaeus was perceived to be important enough to survive in the consciousness of Aegean Greeks until the time when Herodotus was active.

XERXES’ HOMER The case of Onomacritus and his oracles shows that in the Aegean as elsewhere the Persians and their experts made an effort at controlling the shape and meaning of important local texts.35 Let us now turn to Homer as the single 33 The process closely resembles what we know to have happened to other Greek authors at the time. See Nagy (1990), ch. 6 for a discussion of how tyrants and other authority figures in late archaic Greece competed for control over traditional texts. 34 For the representative nature of the Persian king see Briant (2002), part 2, ‘The Great King’. The royal audience and its place in the public discourse of the Persian empire is discussed by Allen (2005). 35 Elsewhere, Herodotus reports that Mardonius mistakenly related a Greek oracle to the Persians. Once again, this involves distortion of the ‘genuine’ text of Musaeus: see Hdt. 9.43.

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most authoritative Greek author of the late archaic period. In book 7 of the Histories, Herodotus reports that the great king visited the site of Troy at the beginning of his campaign: When the army reached the Scamander, which was the first river they had come across since leaving Sardis and setting out on their journey that failed to provide enough water for the men and animals and that they drank dry—anyway, when Xerxes reached the Scamander he wanted to see where Priam had ruled, so he climbed up to the citadel, looked around, and heard the whole story of what had happened there. Then he sacrificed a thousand cattle to Athena of Ilium, and the Magi offered libations to the dead heroes.36

As has long been recognized, the visit of Xerxes to Troy was a carefully planned piece of propaganda, designed to cast the king as the champion of Troy in the eyes of a Greek audience.37 We do not of course know what exactly Xerxes was told in Troy; Herodotus does not say. But from his ‘reaction’—or rather, from his carefully staged public response—it is not difficult to see that what he heard, or was rumoured to have heard, was an imperial version of the epic past to match the prophecies of Musaeus. Onomacritus/Musaeus had ‘shown’ the king how he could conquer Greece. The anonymous expert(s) of Histories 7.43 explained the deeper reasons behind his mission. This time the point of reference was the story of the Trojan War, as known primarily from epic, and above all Homer. We need not assume that someone read out a full text of the Iliad or any other Homeric epic to Xerxes. Nor does one have to insist too much that what he heard was explicitly called ‘Homer’, although that is certainly possible and perhaps even likely.38 Finally, we do not know, in this case, who took the role of the expert. We could of course speculate that it was someone like Onomacritus or perhaps the man himself: after all, Herodotus emphasizes that Xerxes really was told all there was to know about the Trojan War (puthomenos ekeino-n hekasta), and Onomacritus, who may have been an expert on Homer as well as Musaeus, was in as good a position as anyone to tell the story in just the right kind of way.39 Be that as it may, the overall message was clear enough: Xerxes had declared himself the avenger of Priam.

36

Hdt. 7.43, trans. Waterfield. Georges (1994), 60. 38 Homer was regarded as the single most authoritative source on the Trojan War; cf. Graziosi and Haubold (2005), ch. 1. Alternative accounts did exist, but, with the partial exception of Stesichorus, they did not match Homer in terms of breadth and sheer authority. For the question of what texts were attributed to Homer at the time of the Persian Wars see Graziosi (2004). 39 For Onomacritus and Homer see schol. Hom. Od. 11.604, as well as the tradition that links him to the so-called ‘Pisistratean recension’: cf. F. Stoessl in RE xviii. 1 (1942), cc. 491–3 (s.v. ‘Onomakritos’). Herodotus’ formulation puthomenos ekein¯on hekasta can be compared with the ability of the Homeric Muse(s) to know ‘everything’ there is to know about the Trojan War: Il. 2.485, iste te panta. 37

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What Xerxes did at Troy, then, amounted to a striking reinterpretation of the Trojan War story. There is no reason why we should doubt Herodotus’ account, nor can we put it down to misunderstanding on his part or that of any other Greeks. The significance of Xerxes’ actions is plain enough, as is the fact that they formed part of a carefully thought-out strategy: not even the king of Persia put on sacrifices of 1,000 cattle on the spur of the moment. Moreover, the fact that Xerxes himself took such an active part in the proceedings suggests that the visit to Troy was an integral part of his campaign effort.40 In fact, the Persians were not content to preface their Greek campaign with a single statement of intent. After their visit to Troy, they marked their crossing into Europe by desecrating the shrine of Protesilaus in Elaeus.41 Protesilaus was the first Achaean to set foot on the Trojan plain,42 and the Persians seem to have singled him out as a paradigmatic ‘unjust man’. Despite Herodotus’ attempt to distance the king from the act of desecration, he does not deny that Xerxes gave his approval.43 In ‘punishing’ Protesilaus, the invaders kept alive the idea that their campaign was a continuation of the Trojan War. Another Homeric episode takes us back to the very beginning of the Trojan cycle. When the imperial army reaches Thessaly, a group whom Herodotus identifies as ‘the Ionians’ advise the Magi to make sacrifice to Thetis on the very spot where she had been raped by Peleus.44 We are here at the root cause of the Trojan War, and with the help of such documents as the Cyrus Cylinder we begin to discern a carefully calculated reinterpretation of the epic past. The resulting narrative can be reconstructed as follows: a Greek from the mainland (Peleus) rapes the goddess Thetis, setting in motion the fateful events that eventually lead to the clash between Achaeans and Trojans. In a second step, a Greek army sets out from the mainland, sacks an imperial city (Troy), and offends the local deity, Athena, in the process.45 That deity looks for a champion and finds it in the person of the Persian king. The idea of Troy as an imperial city was not as strange as might appear to modern readers. There was an ancient tradition in the Near East according to which successive kings defined their realm as stretching ‘from the upper to the lower sea’ (Akk. ištu tâmti eli-ti adi tâmti šapli-ti), i.e. from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.46 Cyrus uses this phrase to define the Persian empire in the 40 Notoriously, Alexander and others after him imitated Xerxes, thereby suggesting that the importance of the episode was not lost on Greek observers: Georges (1994), 64–5. 41 Hdt. 7.33, 9.116; the episode is discussed in detail by Boedeker (1988). 42 Il. 2.701–2. 43 Briant (2002), 548, rightly sees the incident as part of a sustained propaganda campaign. The objections raised by Flower and Marincola (2002), 304, carry little weight: neither is Briant’s suggestion ‘unlikely in itself ’, nor does Herodotus claim that the king was ‘ignorant of Artaÿctes’ design’ as far as his plan for punishing Protesilaus was concerned (cf. Hdt. 9.116, 3). 44 Hdt. 7.191; cf. Cypria fr. 1 (Allen), where the marriage of Thetis to Peleus is identified as one of the reasons for the Trojan War. 45 Greek audiences would have been familiar with the idea that the Achaeans offended Athena during the sack of Troy: see e.g. Od. 1.327, 4.502 and Proclus Chrestomathia p. 108 (Allen). 46 Going back to Sargon of Akkad; cf. e.g. E 2.1.1.1, 73–85 (Frayne) and Horowitz (1998), 29, 76.

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Cyrus Cylinder, thus casting himself as a successor of the Assyrian kings.47 His view of the world was of course not conceived with Troy in mind. However, it could easily accommodate Troy—which was after all situated on the Asiatic side of the Mediterranean—and thus provided an obvious starting point for Persian propaganda.48 Exactly how Persian conceptions of world rule might have been read into Greek epic becomes clearer from a passage in Ctesias’ Persica. Before proceeding any further, I must emphasize that I do not wish to enter into the debate over the veracity of Ctesias’ account. What interests me is not the factual reliability of the Persica, but what we can learn from it about popular perceptions of Persian policies.49 Like the Persian kings themselves, Ctesias looks back to the Assyrian empire in order to explain the rise of Persia. His starting point is Ninos, mythical founder of Assyrian might who first extended his sphere of influence from Persia in the south-east to the Hellespont in the north-west: He (i.e. Ninos) also brought under his sway the Troad and Phrygia on the Hellespont . . .50

Ctesias not only incorporates the Troad into his proto- world empire but also hints that, being situated near the edge of Asia, it represents a test of Assyrian power. The stage is set for the Trojan War: For when Teutamus, they say, was ruler of Asia, being the twentieth in succession from Ninyas the son of Semiramis, the Greeks made an expedition against Troy with Agamemnon, at a time when the Assyrians had controlled Asia for more than a thousand years. And Priam, who was king of the Troad and a vassal of the king of the Assyrians, being hard pressed by the war, sent an embassy to the king requesting aid; and Teutamus despatched ten thousand Ethiopians and a like number of the men of Susiana along with two hundred chariots, having appointed as general Memnon the son of Tithonus. Now Tithonus, who was at that time general of Persis, was the most highly esteemed of the governors at the king’s court, and Memnon, who was in the bloom of manhood, was distinguished both for his bravery and for his nobility of spirit. He also built the palace in the upper city of Susa which stood until the time of the Persian Empire and was called after him Memnonian; moreover, he constructed through the country a public highway which bears the name Memnonian to this time.51 47

K2.1 29, in Schaudig (2001), 553. The precise shape of the Asiatic continent was of course a matter of definition. Assurbanipal famously places Lydia across the Mediterranean from Assyria (Prism B II 93–4, discussed in Rollinger (2003), 344–6). The Persian kings, on the other hand, clearly thought of the continent as including Asia Minor. 49 Jacoby’s negative view of Ctesias is still widely shared: cf. RE xi (1922) colls. 2032–73. For a more sympathetic assessment see Stevenson (1997) who does, however, point out numerous errors on Ctesias’ part. The early books of the Persica, as well as the Indica, show a particularly high concentration of fictitious characters and events (Stevenson (1997), 7). 50 FGrH 688 (Ctesias of Cnidus) fr. 1, ch. 2; trans. Oldfather. 51 Ibid., ch. 22; trans. Oldfather. 48

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Ctesias’ account of the Trojan War does not correspond in every detail to the Trojan policies of the Persians, but it usefully illustrates how those policies might have been perceived, and further developed, by Greek observers. The Assyrians as the rulers of all Asia up to the Hellespont present themselves as the natural patrons of Troy. Their actions in turn foreshadow those of the Persians, not just in the general sense that the Persians succeed them as rulers of the Asiatic continent but more specifically in that central characters in Ctesias’ narrative are already busy building the Persian empire at the time of the Trojan War: Tithonus is introduced as the up-and-coming governor of Persis, a figure who embodies the promise of future grandeur. Meanwhile, his son Memnon is credited with building the Acropolis of Susa, a major centre of Persian power.52 Although much of Ctesias’ narrative is factually incorrect, we note that it is compatible not only with Persia’s historical claim to world rule (i.e. the Persian kings as successors of the Assyrians, ruling ‘from the upper to the lower sea’) but also, more specifically, with what Herodotus tells us about Xerxes’ approach to Greek epic. It thus seems that Xerxes’ interpretation of the Trojan War did have a certain resonance among Greeks of the classical period.53 At the same time, it is also clear that it failed to become widely accepted. The question then arises what became of Xerxes’ Homer and what impact it had on the reception of Homeric epic.

INVENTING THE BARBARIAN By retracing the history of the Trojan War from the sack of Troy to the rape of Thetis the Persian king and his advisers announced their intention to rewrite Greek epic. In practice, this meant that they recognized themselves in the narrative of the Trojan War and took steps to ensure that Greek audiences did so too. The move had obvious tactical advantages. Memories of the Ionian Revolt were fresh in people’s minds, and Xerxes must have looked for ways of strengthening the loyalty of his Ionian contingents.54 Homer was an obvious point of reference, for according to him Miletus fought on the Trojan side, not that of the Achaeans.55 Mycale too, where Herodotus locates the Panionium, appears among the list of Trojan allies in book 2 of the Iliad.56 Homeric epic could thus be seen to support the idea of a pan-Asian army that included 52 Herodotus too calls the royal palace at Susa and indeed the city as a whole ‘Memnonian’ (5.53–4, 7.151). See also Paus. 10.31.7. 53 Cf. also Plato, Laws 685c–d, once again casting Troy as an Assyrian city. 54 55 56 Georges (1994), 62. Il. 2.868. Il. 2.869; cf. Hdt. 1.148.

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the Ionians. Conversely, Homer does not include Ionians among his list of Achaean contingents in Iliad 2 and does not draw any strong connections between the coast of Asia Minor and the Achaeans/Greeks of the European mainland.57 It goes without saying that such connections were important in the early fifth century bc and that they posed a serious threat to Xerxes’ plans. According to Herodotus, Themistocles attempted to encourage defections among Xerxes’ Ionian contingents by reminding them of their shared ancestry with the Athenians.58 By contrast, Xerxes put on Homeric displays for his Ionian contingents to remind them of their ‘Asiatic’ identity, as borne out by a shared history of enmity against the Greeks of the mainland.59 The Persians thus appropriated Trojan War narrative with a specific propagandistic aim in mind. However, they also went much further than that, casting their campaign as the natural climax to the Trojan War and thus to cosmogony as the Greeks knew it. In archaic Greek thought, the sack of Troy and the attendant destruction of the heroes mark a decisive turning point in a much larger narrative about how the world came into being, from the time when Heaven mated with Earth to life among humans ‘as they are now’.60 Thanks to the ‘plan of Zeus’, the heroes die, gods and humans part company, and the present order of the universe emerges from a period of strife and suffering. As Cyrus had done with Babylonian cosmogony, Xerxes and his experts took Greek cosmogonic thought and extended it into their own times. Given that Priam was still waiting to be avenged—and Protesilaus still waiting to be punished—it transpired that the world had not yet reached its final shape. Cosmogony was not over. Only Persian intervention could bring it to its just conclusion. The Persians’ interpretation of the Trojan War is not likely to have resulted in revisions to the Homeric texts. As far as we can tell, nothing changed at the level of wording. We should rather imagine a host of new glosses on the old stories: interpretations, paraphrases, and selective enactments which could make them appear in a different light. One area on which the Persians evidently focused was the relative merit of the Trojan and Achaean causes: Priam, for example, is envisaged as a victim of Protesilaus and other ‘unjust men’. At one level, this must have been designed to denigrate the Achaeans/ Greeks as enemies of the empire. However, the ultimate aim of the Persians was hardly to emphasize political and cultural difference. By focusing on issues of justice they rather insisted on a shared framework within which a 57 There is only one mention of ‘Ionians’ in the entire Iliad: Il. 13.685, where the Athenians appear to be meant. See Janko (1994) 132. Homer’s Achaeans come from the Greek mainland and some of the islands of the Aegean but not the coast of Asia Minor: Il. 2.494–759 with Latacz (2003), 145–6. 58 Hdt. 8.22. 59 That such displays were aimed at the Ionians is clear in the case of the sacrifice to Thetis (Hdt. 7.191). 60 Graziosi and Haubold (2005), ch. 2.

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permanent settlement could be reached. After a period of transition during which the worst offenders such as Protesilaus were punished, justice and peace would be restored under the aegis of Athena and her champion, the great king. Not everyone accepted this view of the epic past. We have already seen that Herodotus regarded Onomacritus’ activities with suspicion, emphasizing the fact that he distorted the ‘genuine’ text of Musaeus. In a similar vein, most Greeks of the early fifth century would have accepted that the Achaeans were their forebears, but would have rejected the idea that this justified a Persian takeover. Rather than thinking of the Trojan War as culminating in a unified and peaceful world under Persian sovereignty, they saw it as enshrining the fundamental incompatibility of Greek and non-Greek culture. Yes, there was unfinished business left over from the heroic era; but that business was such that it could never be finished. ‘Barbarians’ and Greeks would not be reconciled. If the Persians did not actually rewrite Homeric epic, neither did their Greek opponents. Once again, the battle was over the meaning of the ancient texts, and it was fought with glosses and new enactments. Greek tragedy as the classical genre that most obviously re-enacts the epic past soon became a driving force behind the creation of a patriotic Homer.61 By the late fifth century bc, Euripides routinely calls the Trojans both ‘Phrygians’ and ‘barbarians’, and Thucydides’ caveat that Homer does not actually use the term ‘barbarian’ suggests that epic audiences were following suit.62 Tragedy was not an isolated case. Already Simonides in his Plataea elegy had juxtaposed the Trojan War (especially the story of Achilles) with the Persian Wars, implying that the ironage heroics of the Spartans were to be judged in light of Achilles’ exploits.63 Other poets and artists followed his lead.64 Meanwhile, imperial intellectuals too continued to invoke the epic past. The combined testimony of Herodotus and Ctesias shows that pro-Persia interpretations of the Trojan War remained a feature of Greek intellectual life for some time to come, though eventually it was the more oppositional picture of the barbarian that won the day. With the help of the dynamic and self-consciously Athenian genre of tragedy, which was fast establishing itself as the legitimate heir of Homeric epic, the heroic past was henceforth made to bear witness to the failure of imperial rhetoric. Xerxes’ Homer was ousted by Homer the philhellene.65

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62 E. Hall (1989). Thuc. 1.3. See Boedeker and Sider (2001), esp. the paper by E. Stehle (pp. 106–19). 64 Boedeker (2001), 125–6. 65 In time, the idea of Homer’s Greek bias became a cliché of Homeric scholarship. For Homer the philhellene see e.g. Schol. Hom. Il. 1.2b, and the other passages listed in Erbse (1983), section iii. 63

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CONCLUSION I have argued that Herodotus was right in at least one respect: the Persians and their Greek experts did have views about the Trojan War. Indeed, Greek epic traditions were from the beginning an important tool in Xerxes’ campaign. There is nothing strange or surprising about this: the same happened all over the Achaemenid empire. For various reasons, some of them more obvious than others, the Persians’ attempt to appropriate Greek epic triggered a reaction on the part of hostile audiences that was to prove decisive for the reception of Homeric poetry in classical Greece. Xerxes’ Homer quickly vanished, yet not without bequeathing us a successor, Homer the Greek patriot. For all the differences between them, these two figures share at least one striking resemblance: each of them stands for an approach that uses epic as a source of information about the Greeks’ relationship with their eastern neighbours. Henceforth, Homer would no longer be read primarily as an account of the heroic world as opposed to the age of ‘human beings as they are now.’ There was now one unbroken history that linked the Persian Wars to the sack of Troy. The Persians and their ‘wise men’ had suggested that Homeric epic justified an imperial takeover. Their enemies disagreed, emphasizing instead the eternal gulf that separated Greeks and barbarians.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Albertz, R. (1994). A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, trans. J. Bowden. London. Allen, L. (2005). ‘Le roi imaginaire: An Audience with the Achaemenid King’, in O. Hekster and R. Fowler (eds.), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, Stuttgart, 39–62. Asheri, D. (1988). Erodoto. Le storie, libro 1: la Lidia e la Persia. Milan. Bedford, P. (2001). Temple Restoration in Early Achaemenid Judah. Leiden. Boedeker, D. (1988). ‘Protesilaos and the end of Herodotus’ Histories’, ClAnt, 7: 30–48. —— (2001). ‘Heroic historiography: Simonides and Herodotus at Plataea’, in D. Boedeker and D. Sider (eds.) (2001), 120–34. —— and Sider, D. (eds.) (2001). The New Simonides. Oxford. Briant, P. (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. P. T. Daniels. Winona Lake, Ind. Brosius, M. (2000). The Persian Empire from Cyrus II to Artaxerxes I. London. Burkert, W. (1992). The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, trans. M. E. Pinder and W. Burkert. Cambridge, Mass.

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Dalley, S. (2000). Myths from Mesopotamia (2nd edn). Oxford. Erbse, H. (ed.) (1983). Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (Scholia Vetera), vi. Berlin. Fehling, D. (1971). Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot: Studien zur Erzählkunst Herodots. Berlin. Flower, M., and Marincola, J. (eds.) (2002). Herodotus: Histories Book IX. Cambridge. Fowler, R., and Hekster, O. (2005). ‘Imagining Kings: From Persia to Rome’, in R. Fowler and O. Hekster (eds.), Imaginary Kings: Royal Images in the Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome. Stuttgart, 9–38. Fried, L. (2003). ‘The Land Lay Desolate: Conquest and Restoration in the Ancient Near East’, in J. Blenkinsopp and O. Lipschits (eds.), Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period. Winona Lake, Ind., 21–54. Georges, P. (1994). Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience: From the Archaic Period to the Age of Xenophon. Baltimore. Goldhill, S. D. (1986). Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge. Grayson, A. K. (1975). Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Locust Valley, NY. Graziosi, B. (2004). ‘La definizione dell’opera omerica nel periodo arcaico e classico’, in G. Zanetto, D. Canavero, A. Capra, and A. Sgobbi (eds.) (2004), 2–17. —— and Haubold, J. (2005). Homer: The Resonance of Epic. London. Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy. Oxford. Hall, J. (2002). Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago. Hardwick, L. (2003). Reception Studies (Greece and Rome Surveys in the Classics 33). Oxford. Harmatta, J. (1971). ‘The Literary Patterns of the Babylonian Edict of Cyrus’, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 19: 217–31. Haubold, J. (2002). ‘Greek epic: a Near Eastern genre?’, PCPS 48: 1–19. Heinze, T. (2000). ‘Onomakritos’, in Der Neue Pauly, Altertum viii, cc. 1210–11. Herzfeld, E. (1938). Altpersische Inschriften. Berlin. Horowitz, W. (1998). Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, Ind. Janko, R. (1994). The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 4. Cambridge. Kuhrt, A. (1983). ‘The “Cyrus Cylinder” and Achaemenid Imperial Policy’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 25: 83–97. —— (1987). ‘Usurpation, Conquest and Ceremonial: From Babylon to Persia’, in D. Cannadine and S. Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies. Cambridge, 48–52. —— (1990). ‘Nabonidus and the Babylonian priesthood’, in M. Beard and J. North (eds.), Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World. London, 141–4. —— (1995). The Ancient Near East: c. 3000–330 B.C. London. —— and Sherwin-White, S. (1991). ‘Aspects of Seleucid Royal Ideology: The Cylinder of Antiochus I from Borsippa’. JHS 111: 71–86. Lamberton, R. (ed.) (1992). Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes. Princeton. —— (1997). ‘Homer in Antiquity’, in I. Morris and B. Powell (eds.), A New Companion to Homer. Leiden, 33–54. Latacz, J. (ed.) (2003). Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar Band II, Faszikel 2, Munich.

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—— (2004). Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, trans. K. Windle and R. Ireland. Oxford. Lewis, D. M. (1977). Sparta and Persia: Lectures Delivered at the University of Cincinnati, Autumn 1976 in Memory of Donald W. Bradeen. Leiden. Nagy, G. (1990). Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore. Pritchard, J. (ed.) (1969). Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Third Edition with Supplement. Princeton. Rollinger, R. (2003). ‘Homer, Anatolien und die Levante: Die Frage der Beziehungen zu den östlichen Nachbarkulturen im Spiegel der schriftlichen Quellen’, in C. Ulf (ed.), Der neue Streit um Troia. Eine Bilanz. Munich. Root, M. C. (1979). The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Leiden. Schaudig, H. (2001). Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen. Münster. Slings, S. (2000). ‘Literature in Athens, 566–510 BC’, in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (ed.), Peisistratos and the Tyranny: A Reappraisal of the Evidence. Amsterdam, 57–77. Stevenson, R. B. (1997). Persica: Greek Writing about Persia in the Fourth Century BC. Edinburgh. van de Mieroop, M. (2004). A History of the Ancient Near East, c. 3000–323. Oxford. Weissbach, F. H. (1911). Die Keilinschriften der Achämeniden. Leipzig. West, M. L. (1983). The Orphic Poems. Oxford. ——(1997). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford. Westermann, C. (1969). Isaiah 40–66: A Commentary, trans. D. Stalker. London. Zanetto, G., Canavero, D., Capra, A., and Sgobbi, A. (eds.) (2004). Momenti della ricezione omerica: Poesia arcaica e teatro. Milan.


4 The View from Eleusis Demeter in the Persian Wars Deborah Boedeker

How did the Greek allies defeat the Persian forces, in those battles that did so much to shape Hellenic identity and subsequent histories of the West? ‘It was not we who accomplished this,’ Herodotus has Themistocles say after the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, ‘but the gods and heroes, who did not want to see a single man ruling both Asia and Europe’ (8.109). Herodotus hardly casts this as a guileless remark: it comes in a speech where Themistocles is hedging his bets, trying to stake a claim for future favour with Xerxes, by persuading the Athenians not to pursue the Persian fleet farther. However cynically we the external audience should understand Themistocles’ purpose here, however, his attribution of success in battle to the gods was doubtless meant to ring true for the internal audience of Greek allies. Many gods in many places were thanked for their efforts on behalf of the Greeks who fought the Persians, according to traditions reported in Herodotus and later ancient sources. To mention but a few: the Athenians established new cults for Pan on the slopes of the Acropolis after Marathon (Hdt. 6.105.3), and for Boreas on the Ilissos river after Artemisium (Hdt. 7.189). Artemis too was much honoured at Athens, where five hundred goats were sacrificed annually to Artemis Agrotera after Marathon (Xen. An. 3.2.11–12)—not to mention Themistocles’ perhaps self-serving—so thought his fellow Athenians—private cult of Artemis ‘of excellent counsel’ (Aristoboul¯e) after Salamis (Plut. Them. 22.1–2). Zeus, of course, was thanked in many ways, including with a panhellenic altar and cult inaugurated for him as Eleutherius at Plataea,1 and a great bronze statue erected at Olympia (Hdt. 9.81.1). According to Pausanias’ report of monuments to be seen centuries later, the people of Plataea built a temple to Athena Areia with their share of spoils from the battle of Marathon (Paus. 9.4.1–2), and the Attic deme of Rhamnous commissioned Phidias to make a marble statue of Nemesis for her shrine there after the same victory (Paus. 1.33.2–3). The 1

See Raaflaub (2004), 102–17; Mikalson (2003), 99–101. For general discussions of these and other Persian War dedications and/or festivals, see Gauer (1968); Pritchett (1979b), 173–83; and esp. Mikalson (2003).

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Greeks prayed to Poseidon Soter after their partial sea victory at Artemisium (Hdt. 7.192), and a large bronze statue, paid for with spoils from Plataea, was dedicated by the allied cities to Poseidon at the Isthmus (Hdt. 9.81.1). Most conspicuously, Delphic Apollo received thanks and dedications. After the victory at Salamis in 480, the allies honoured him with the first-fruits of their spoils, from which a statue of the god was made, eighteen feet high. But Apollo was not satisfied; he demanded in addition the aristeia that had been awarded to Aegina for its valour in the battle (Hdt. 8.121–2). Then, after the battle of Plataea in 479, Apollo received a tithe of the spoils, and the famous bronze three-headed snake supporting a golden tripod was dedicated in his sanctuary (Hdt. 9.81.1). These and many other traditions preserve the memory of Apollo’s important role in the Persian Wars. It is commonly assumed that Herodotus had Delphic sources; such a perspective underlies the narrative at many points in the Histories, with stories of the oracle’s advice sought and heeded, or misunderstood or ignored, during the war. To take but one example, Greeks were told to ‘pray to the winds’ before the sea battle at Artemisium; this they did, and a well-timed storm helped to level the playing field by destroying a number of Persian ships (Hdt. 7.178). Herodotus tells us as well how Pythian Apollo, together with other Delphic gods and heroes, protected his shrine from the barbarians (8.35–39). This tradition might be seen to provide an explanation for the shrine’s remarkable escape from the marauding Persians who destroyed much of the surrounding territory, and perhaps even an apologia for the oracle’s rather discouraging warnings to the Greek allies as the invasion threatened. At any rate, it is not difficult (or controversial) to glimpse in Herodotus traces of a Delpho-centric view of the war, a tradition in which Pythian Apollo aided the Greek allies and fully deserved his many honours. I propose that parallel to this Delphic perspective there was another tradition, also traceable in Herodotus, in which the god who proved most supportive of Greeks, or most hostile to Persians, was none other than Demeter of Eleusis. Hers can be seen to be a less successful tradition in some respects; in contrast to the situation with other deities, we hear of few thank offerings or monuments to commemorate her assistance in the wars. A statue base found at Delphi appears to have supported images of Demeter and Persephone (and perhaps also of Klymenos, a local name of Hades); this work was dedicated to Apollo (part of the dedicatory inscription survives) at his panhellenic shrine by the people of Argive Hermione, who participated in the battles of Salamis and Plataea and helped to build the wall across the Isthmus (Hdt. 8.43, 9.28.4, 8.72).2 In addition to this statue group, a fragmentary dedicatory inscription to Demeter has been found in situ at Plataea.3 But despite the relative paucity

2

See Gauer (1968), 109, following H. Pomtow.

3

Discussed below, pp. 67–8.

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of attested physical thank-offerings, Eleusinian Demeter, giver of grain and founder of mysteries, turns out to be associated in a number of narrative traditions with all of the canonical Greek victories by land and sea: Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. This chapter will be concerned first with establishing, and then with attempting to explain that phenomenon.

I The most straightforward account is found in Herodotus’ narrative of the battle of Plataea: It is a wonder to me that although they were fighting next to the grove of Demeter, no Persian appeared either to enter the sacred precinct or to die within it, and most of them fell in the legitimately approachable ground near the sanctuary. I think—if it is necessary to judge the ways of the gods—that the goddess herself denied entry to those who had burnt the sanctuary (hiron), the Anaktoron at Eleusis (to en Eleusini anaktoron). (9.65.2)

Editors of Herodotus have long postulated a textual problem in the phrase printed in italic, because of the doubling of references to the structure that was burned—both to hiron and to en Eleusini anaktoron; I will return to this matter shortly. The remarkable phenomenon of the untrammelled Demetrion at Plataea may well be reflected in an earlier account, a poem composed soon after that battle. Among the fragments of Simonides’ recently published elegy on the battle of Plataea4 is a tantalizing strip of papyrus preserving only the first few letters of twenty-four lines (fr. 17W2). Attested here within short compass are the words De-me-t- ‘Demeter’ or ‘Demetrion’ (line 1), de-ron ‘a long time’ (line 5; according to Hdt. 9.62.2, the battle fought near the Demetrion was a long one), and rhysion, perhaps ‘reprisals’ or ‘delivering’ (line 7).5 It sounds very much as if this part of Simonides’ elegy mentions the same saving goddess at Plataea. W. K. Pritchett argues persuasively that the site of Demeter’s Plataean sanctuary can be identified with some early fifth-century foundations just west of the Pantanassa ridge at Hysiai above Plataea.6 There is no archaeological evidence that identifies these ruins specifically with Eleusinian Demeter, but there is excellent epigraphic evidence that a Demeter was honoured at the site. First, the extant part of an inscription on a large stone found in situ near the Hysiai foundations, written in Boeotian dialect, reads simply ‘they dedicated 4 5 6

For detailed discussions of the ‘new Simonides’, see Boedeker and Sider (2001). For rhysion as ‘saving’ or ‘delivering’ see Aesch., Supp. 150 (of Athena). Pritchett (1979a).

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to Demeter’ (IG vii.1671).7 Second, remarkably, another inscription from the same venue, now in the Thebes museum, appears to link the sanctuary with our period: Of [D]emeter this statue . . . here, to one looking, reverence . . . [T]eisamenos, Kudadas, and . . . (IG vii.1670, as revised by Pritchett)

This dedication to Demeter, evidently on a statue base, is dated by letter forms to the early fifth century. If Pritchett’s ‘[T]eisamenos’ is the correct restoration in the third line, which seems likely, it would point to the Spartans’ famous seer Teisamenos, who was so prominent at the battle (e.g. Hdt. 9.33–5); the co-donor Kudadas is otherwise unknown.8 The statue dedicated here may well have been another thank-offering to Demeter, commemorating her role in the battle. I note further that in Herodotus, the Demetrion near Plataea is associated especially with Spartans: it is here that the recalcitrant commander Amompharetus finally rejoins Pausanias and the rest of his fellowLacedaemonians (9.57.2), at which point the Persian cavalry attacks them; and it was Spartans who waged the long, hard-fought battle in which no Persian entered the nearby temenos (9.62.2). Whether or not the Demeter sanctuary at Plataea was associated specifically with Eleusinian Demeter at the time of the battle (479), it certainly had that reputation in later tradition. Pausanias, for example, mentions ‘a hieron of Demeter called Eleusinian in Plataea’ (9.4.3). The miraculous sanctuary is also featured in an elaborate tale in Plutarch’s Life of Aristides. Here, the Greek allies receive a confusing Delphic oracle advising Athenians to fight the battle of Plataea ‘on their own soil, in the plain of Eleusinian Demeter and Kore’ (Arist. 11.3). Conferring with local elders, the Plataean commander Arimnestos discovers that there is near Plataea ‘a very ancient temple bearing the names of Eleusinian Demeter and Kore,’ and plans are made to fight in that area, which the Plataeans even formally annex to Attica (Arist. 11.4–7). Plutarch is clearly following a tradition that makes much of the role of Eleusinian Demeter at this battle, even though by his time, according to Albert Schachter, the sanctuary had long fallen into disuse.9 Closely related by Herodotus to Eleusinian Demeter’s presence at Plataea is her sanctuary at Mycale in Ionia, the site of another great victory of Greeks over Persians, said by Herodotus to have occurred on the same day as Plataea. Before his description of the battle at Mycale, Herodotus conspicuously points out the goddess’ presence in both places: ‘And there was another coincidence, that there were sanctuaries (temenea) of Eleusinian Demeter at both battles; 7 8

Schachter (1981), 153. For discussion of this name see Pritchett (1979a), 146.

9

Schachter (1981), 154.


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for at Plataea the fight took place near the temple of Demeter (to De-me-trion), as I stated earlier, and at Mycale it was going to be the same’ (9.101). There is a Herodotean parallel to this doubling in the two Heracles sanctuaries where the Athenian hoplites encamped near Marathon, one near the battle-site itself, and one further south at Kynosarges, where they hurried when the Persians withdrew (Hdt. 6.116). At Plataea (9.65), Herodotus states that Demeter must have been actively keeping the Persians out of her temenos; here, much more typically, he merely calls attention to the coincidence of sanctuaries without explicitly attributing intervention to Heracles; his audience can put the facts together and draw their own conclusions. The primacy given to Eleusinian Demeter at Plataea and Mycale makes all the more significant, in retrospect, a famous passage from the preceding book: the vision encountered just before the battle of Salamis by Demaratus, the deposed king of Sparta, and Dikaios, an exiled Athenian, who is presented as Herodotus’ source for the story. Dikaios reports that the two men, together in the deserted Thriasian plain near Eleusis, saw coming from Eleusis a dust-cloud as if from some thirty thousand men. Amazed, they wondered from what men the dust-cloud was coming, and immediately heard a voice. The voice seemed to him [Dikaios] to be the mystic ‘Iacchus.’ When Demaratus, who was not familiar with the rites at Eleusis, asked him what was making this cry, Dikaios replied, ‘Demaratus, there is no way that a great disaster will not come to the king’s army. With Attica deserted, it is clear that this cry is divine, and is going from Eleusis to avenge the Athenians and their allies . . . ’ (Hdt. 8.65)

Herodotus will say no more about the phantom Eleusinian procession and the mysterious cry. But it is possible that he nods to them a little later, as he reports several disparate accounts of how the action at the battle of Salamis finally began. One version, whose source is unidentified, maintains that ‘the phantom of a woman appeared to them, and after she appeared she gave orders in such a way that the entire Greek fleet could hear, first berating them saying, ‘O fools (daimonioi), how long will you keep rowing backwards?’ (8.84.2). Herodotus does not identify the speaker, but his very next words are: ‘The Phoenicians were stationed against the Athenians, for they had the wing toward Eleusis and the west’ (8.85.1). The mention of Eleusis in the text here indicates that Herodotus may be suggesting a connection between the phantom female and the goddess of Eleusis.10 In any case, all of the canonical victories over Xerxes’ forces—Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale—have not only a Demetrian but specifically an Eleusinian connection in Herodotus. Why would such a tradition have developed? 10 A parallel to the phantom occurs in the same battle, near the sanctuary of a different goddess: when the Corinthian commander Adeimantus was sailing away from the conflict, as the Athenians tell the story, just as he passed the temple of Athena Skiras on Salamis, a mysterious boat appeared and its sailors asked him why he was treacherously leaving the battle, which the Greeks had won (8.94).

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Herodotus for his part, as we have seen, tells us in an unusually explicit authorial comment that he thinks Demeter was angry with the invaders because they had ‘burned the hiron, the Anaktoron at Eleusis’ (9.65).11 This comes as a surprise to his audience, for nowhere else does he mention the destruction of the sanctuary, even though the narrative as it stands offers fine opportunities to do so, depending on exactly when the event is supposed to have happened. In 9.14, for example, Mardonius’ forces (which Herodotus says had not yet ravaged Attica) attack and burn the city of Athens for the second time; then the Persian cavalry hurry westward through Attica into Megara—a route that leads through Eleusis—to engage an advance party from the Peloponnese. Here would be an obvious place to mention the atrocity of burning the sanctuary, but Herodotus says not a word about it. So too in the earlier story of the phantom Iacchus procession before Salamis (8.65): despite emphasizing that the Thriasian plain was deserted of people, the historian mentions nothing about a Persian attack on Eleusis. And again, when Herodotus has a messenger interrupt the Greek commanders debating about Salamis, bringing the news that Attica is being ravaged and Plataea and Thespiae are destroyed (8.50), nothing is said about the Eleusinian sanctuary. I find this a disquieting silence in an author so decidedly interested in the destruction of temples on both sides of the hostilities (e.g. 5.102.1, 8.32.2, 8.53.5). Moreover, the burning of the Eleusinian sanctuary is also omitted in non-Herodotean literary sources such as Pausanias, though he elsewhere mentions temples destroyed by the Persians.12 The burning of Demeter’s temple is mentioned by Herodotus only in retrospect, when the goddess refuses to admit Persians into her sanctuary at Plataea (9.65). Here I recall the textual problem, mentioned above, at the end of that passage—the doublet to hiron to en Eleusini Anaktoron. Valckenaer proposed deleting to hiron ‘the sanctuary,’ and most editors agree that these words are an interpolated gloss on to en Eleusini Anaktoron ‘the Anaktoron in Eleusis,’ explaining an unfamiliar term with a more common one.13 The interpolation could also have been the other way round, however, with Anaktoron a learned but mistaken gloss on Herodotus’ simple hiron.14 The hiron that was burned might have been, for example, the Athenian Eleusinion, a temple of the Eleusinian goddesses on the slope of the Acropolis. That building was certainly destroyed—as Margaret Miles 11 The closest parallel to such an explanation is in 8.129, when Herodotus agrees with his local informants that Poseidon caused a flood tide that drowned many Persians because they had violated his sanctuary and statue at Potidaea. See Mikalson (2003), 137 and T. Harrison (2000), 96–97. 12 e.g. 1.1.5, a temple of Hera between Athens and Phaleron—although quite unlike the sanctuary at Eleusis, this roofless, doorless structure doubtless appeared to Pausanias not to have been rebuilt after being burned in 480/79. 13 Most recently Flower and Marincola (2002), 222. 14 I thank my colleague René Nünlist for his observation that this is a common kind of error in annotated manuscripts.


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makes clear in her recent book on the Eleusinion—when the Persians burned Athens.15 The silence of our sources, compounded by the dubious reading in Herodotus 9.65.2, raises a discomfiting question: is it possible that the sanctuary in Eleusis really was not burned, and that Herodotus’ Demeter was angry because the Persians had destroyed a different (and lesser) temple? Archaeological evidence at Eleusis sheds some light on the question. Earlier archaeologists, their findings inevitably influenced by Herodotus’ text, maintained that the sanctuary was wholly destroyed by the Persians.16 Without discounting their reports of burned debris found at the site and other evidence of a possible attack, T. Leslie Shear believes that the late archaic Telesterion was no longer standing at the time of Xerxes’ invasion. He argues that the structure was deliberately dismantled in the early fifth century, its parts carefully preserved, and an expansion of the sanctuary begun. Construction was halted, however, at a point when the new foundations were only partly built, at the time of Xerxes’ invasion and plausibly because of it.17 Decades later, in the mid-fifth century, construction was renewed at Eleusis, with a significant enlargement of the sanctuary (the ‘Periclean’ phase). The main reasons for Shear’s hypothesis are epigraphic. Annual inventories of Eleusis from 408/7 and 407/6 (IG i2. 313.103–20) attest that much of the superstructure of the archaic Telesterion, including wooden doors and roofing tiles, was taken down from the building and stored. Another inscription shows that some of these materials were recycled to build in the late fifth century a footbridge over the Rheitos Lake (part of the Sacred Way to Eleusis from Athens).18 The reuse of essentially flammable components from the archaic Telesterion makes it highly unlikely that the structure was burned by the Persians—or, I would add, that damage to the sanctuary was as widespread as previously thought. According to Shear, however, the smaller Anaktoron hall, which was located inside the Telesterion and remained inviolably in place when later Telesteria were built around it, might have been left standing for the Persians to burn, as our text of Herodotus says they did.19 There is good reason to believe that Eleusis did not wholly escape Persian incursion and damage. The most direct evidence for this is an apparent breach in the archaic mud brick peribolos wall, which has been replaced for a distance of about 8.5 metres with fine masonry that dates to the second quarter of the fifth century.20 Shear, together with virtually all archaeologists who have worked at Eleusis, believes that ‘the archaic mud brick wall was breached at this point by Persian battering rams, and the damage was then repaired with

15 17 20

16 Miles (1998), 30–1, 41. Summary in Shear (1982), 133–4. 18 19 Shear (1982). Ibid. 130–1. Ibid. 136. Mylonas (1961), 93 and Fig. 28; Shear (1982), 133.

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porous masonry during the 470s or 460s’.21 Material evidence in this case helps to fill in some gaps in the written tradition, and to justify Herodotus’ explanation for Demeter’s anger at the Persians. Whatever exactly happened to the sanctuary at Eleusis during Xerxes’ invasion, however, and whatever the reasons for our textual sources’ virtual silence about it, the Herodotean passages about the presence of Eleusinian Demeter at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale are striking, as frequently noted in passing by commentators.22 What is very seldom recognized is that Demeter (together with Kore) was also associated with the Athenian victory ten years earlier, at Marathon. Our testimony for this comes from a source more than five centuries later than Herodotus, the sophist Polemon the Elder (ad 88–144). Polemon’s extant work consists of two lengthy declamations, each in praise of a brave Athenian who died at Marathon. The first purports to be a speech by Euphorion the father of Kynegeiros (and therefore also of his brother, the tragedian Aeschylus); the second, by the father of the war archon Kallimachos. Each speaker argues that his own son was the bravest of those who perished in the fight. Both Kynegeiros and Kallimachos are mentioned by Herodotus, who records their deaths in battle in the aftermath of his account of Marathon (6.114), and both were well known to later tradition—indeed, Polemon’s recent commentator William W. Reader considers them standard subjects of declamations.23 The father of Kynegeiros, apostrophizing the severed hand of his heroic son, proclaims, ‘On account of [you], Pan did not run from Arcadia in vain, nor did Demeter and Kore take part in the battle for no reason’ (Polemon A 35).24 In the parallel speech, the father of Kallimachos claims that Demeter and Kore sent away a Persian ship, even though Kynegeiros was foolishly trying to hold on to it (Polemon B 41). Reader is at a loss to explain why the two goddesses appear at Marathon: ‘The argument that Demeter and her daughter Kore— neither famed for martial feats—participated in the battle of Marathon does not seem to be rooted in the Greek tradition. The rationale . . . may be that the two, as central deities in the Eleusynian [sic] Mysteries, were Attic patrons par excellence. Further, the assertion of the presence of Kore (a winter-time resident of the underworld) may recall the memory of the battle occurring in the warm season . . . ’25 In view of Eleusinian Demeter’s role at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale, however, the appearance of the two goddesses at Marathon is not quite so surprising. What is more, Demeter—specifically called ‘the Eleusinian 21 Personal communication, September 2005. I am grateful to Professor Shear for gracious discussion and clarification of the archaeological evidence. 22 Most recently Mikalson (2003), 126, who notes that Demeter seems especially interested in protecting her own territory. 23 See the rich discussion in Reader (1996), 33–40. 24 Trans. Reader (1996), 121, modified (with thanks to A. L. Boegehold). 25 Reader (1996), 331.


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goddess’—and Kore were local gods at Marathon: both are mentioned several times in the sacred calendar of the Marathonian Tetrapolis.26 It may seem significant that the two goddesses do not appear in Herodotus’ account of Marathon, but neither do other supernatural figures associated with the battle by later textual and iconic sources. Where did Polemon get the notion that Demeter and Kore were among those who appeared at Marathon? For Reader, following Evelyn Harrison and earlier scholars who have considered this question, Polemon’s picture of the battle of Marathon derives in part from a real picture, namely the famous Marathon painting on the Stoa Poikile in the Athenian Agora.27 This prominent Cimonian monument from the 460s, mentioned by many later authors and probably best known from Pausanias’ description (1.15.1–3), remained on view until the fourth century ad; Polemon could well have seen it when he visited Athens to perform the dedication address for the temple of Olympian Zeus in ad 131.28 The Stoa Poikile depicted the victory at Marathon together with images of the Trojan War and Athens’ defeat of the Amazons. Unlike Herodotus, its painter did not hesitate to show gods and heroes present at the battle. In his brief description of the murals, Pausanias names Theseus, Athena, and Herakles, figures who also appear in Polemon’s declamation, as well as the heroes Marathon and Echetlos, and the Athenian fighters Miltiades and Kallimachos. Like our other written sources, Pausanias does not mention Demeter or Kore, but neither does he mention such important figures such as Kynegeiros, Datis, and Artaphernes, all of whom do appear in other references to the painting. As Harrison judiciously emphasizes, ‘The fact that Pausanias fails to mention Kynegeiros, the best-known figure of the painting both to the ancients and to us, is a valuable warning not to doubt the reality of things not mentioned by Pausanias.’29 For rhetorical reasons as well as the sheer difference in length, Polemon’s declamations give much more detail about Marathon than does the overview of Pausanias. If the Stoa Poikile was indeed Polemon’s source, as seems likely, then we have a tradition dating to the immediate post-war period that features Demeter in a defensive role at Marathon, along with her Herodotean presence at Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. All this evidence points to an early narrative and iconographic tradition about the Persian Wars that foregrounded the importance of Attic/Eleusinian Demeter, according to which she was one important answer to the question, ‘Why did the Greeks (or the Athenians) win the war?’ 26 IGii2 1358. According to E. Harrison (1972), 367 n. 89 (citing Vanderpool), however, ‘there is no clue as to where the sanctuary was located.’ 27 E. Harrison (1972), 359 and passim. Note esp. Demeter and Kore in Harrison’s Illustration I, p. 364, ‘Tentative placement of key figures.’ See now Gibson (2004), 127 on the use of the Stoa Poikile more generally as a possible source of ‘historical’ information on the period of the Persian Wars. 28 Philostratos, Lives of the Sophists 533, cited by Reader (1996), 33 and E. Harrison (1972), 359. 29 E. Harrison (1972), 370–1.

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But why should the Eleusinian goddess be so prominently associated with the defence of Greece? An easy answer is that this is good symbolic capital. Let us assume that Athens, as she extended her political and military influence in the fifth century, wished to solidify gratitude for her role in the two Persian invasions, legitimacy in her bid for hegemony in the Aegean, and prestige from an enhanced cult. All of these goals could be served by encouraging and preserving versions of the Persian War victories in which not only Athenians, but an Athenian god as well, played a prominent role. Still, why Eleusinian Demeter? Would other gods not have seemed more natural choices for the part? Poseidon and Artemis, we know, were honoured at Athens for their help in the wars, though we hear less about them in Herodotus’ master narrative. Or the city’s own Athena, perhaps as Polias, Nike, or Promachos, would appear to be a more suitable god to preside at all victories. In trying to understand how Demeter might have acquired this role early on in the Persian Wars tradition, I will propose two lines of explanation, one having to do with the trajectory of the cult at Eleusis, and the other concerned with cultic and narrative associations of Demeter more generally, both at Eleusis and elsewhere in the Greek world. Historians should be hesitant to invoke civic propaganda as a sufficient (and often cynical) explanation of religious developments at Eleusis and elsewhere, as if political reasons were separate from and more real than cultic.30 Still, the evidence is strong that in the sixth and fifth centuries Athens was interested in expanding the ‘catch basin’ of the Mysteries at Eleusis beyond the borders of Attica, and this tendency could have had an effect on the city’s readiness to champion a panhellenic role for the Eleusinian goddess. The early relationship between Athens and Eleusis is a contested topic. Against the widely accepted views that the Mysteries were derived from a Mycenaean cult and that they became part of Athenian state religion only in the archaic period,31 Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has made a strong argument based on archaeological and textual evidence, considered separately, that the Eleusinian Mysteries were from the beginning embedded in Athenian state religion. She argues further that the cult at Eleusis probably added initiation rites for the Mysteries only in the late seventh or early sixth century, by which time Eleusis was 30 So too Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 143 and passim. Against the ‘propagandistic fallacy,’ see also Morris (1993), 23. 31 Summarized in Shapiro (1989), 67. On Late Helladic origins see Mylonas (1961), 33–42; Dietrich (1982). Godart and Sacconi (2000) believe they have discovered a trinity of Mother Earth, Zeus, and Kore in Theban Linear B tablets, from which the Eleusinian cult may be derived, but I see no obvious connection with the Mysteries. Boardman (1975), 3 and passim posits that ‘in the early historic period the conduct of the Mysteries at Eleusis was exclusively in the hands of the Eleusinians’.


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very much a part of Attica.32 Be that as it may, by the late archaic period the relationship between Athens and Eleusis was firmly cemented, with the Mysteries regulated by the basileus in Athens (Aristotle, Ath.Pol. 57.1) as well as the hereditary priesthoods at Eleusis.33 By the same period, an ‘Eleusinion’ was constructed to the north of the Acropolis, a sanctuary that conspicuously linked festivals of Demeter in the city centre with her most important peripheral cult at Eleusis.34 The Athens–Eleusis relationship was further solidified during the course of the fifth century; from the 460s and later, Athenian inscriptions proclaim detailed regulations for the functioning and finances of the cult.35 At the same time, the Mysteries at Eleusis were becoming more panhellenic.36 Initiation, a voluntary rite that enabled full participation in the cult, was already opened up to non-Athenians at least by the late sixth century; this development was corroborated by the popularity in Athenian art of the initiation of the non-Athenian Heracles.37 The cult at Eleusis was growing considerably during this period, to judge by expansions of the Telesterion in the late sixth and again the mid-fifth century.38 Fifth-century inscriptions also indicate that the Eleusinian Mysteries were becoming (and were intended to become) ever more international and prestigious. From probably the 460s, we have an Athenian decree that concerns, among many other regulations, a sacred truce for initiates on their way to Eleusis (IG i3. 6). In the 430s or a little earlier, Athens issued a famous decree commanding its allies and inviting other cities to send first-fruits to Eleusinian Demeter ‘according to ancestral custom,’ in a regulation that claimed the imprimatur of the Delphic oracle (IG i3. 78.24–6). The importance of Eleusinian cult is also attested for most of the fifth century in Athenian vase paintings and sculptural reliefs, emphasizing Demeter’s gift of agriculture to Athens and its spread to the rest of a grateful world by Triptolemus.39 According to Isabelle and Antony Raubitschek, the mission of Triptolemus became especially popular on vase paintings after the Persian Wars, ‘perhaps as an acknowledgement of the aid given by the Eleusinian deities to the Athenians’ at Salamis.40 32 Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 139–41, 151. Padgug (1972), in an extreme view, would place the synoikismos of Attica, in particular the incorporation of Eleusis, in the Bronze Age. 33 On the role of the basileus and other officials see Rhodes (1981), 636–7; see also Clinton (1994), 162; Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 145. 34 Miles (1998), 19, 21–3, and passim. 35 See e.g. Cataldi (1981). For a helpful overview of the epigraphic and other material evidence, see Clinton (1994). 36 Clinton (1994). 37 Boardman (1975), 9 and passim; Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 153. 38 Shear (1982). 39 See Dugas (1950); Day (1980), 15–31; Raubitschek and Raubitschek (1982); Shapiro (1989), 76–7. 40 Raubitschek and Raubitschek (1982), 112 (erroneously assigning Demeter’s intervention in Hdt. 8.65 to the battle of Marathon.) According to Dugas (1950), 16, representations of Triptolemus were most frequent in the second quarter of the 5th cent. See also Clinton (1994), 163–9.

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It is clear that the Eleusinian gods and their cults were of central importance in Athenian civic religion.41 A concurrent narrative tradition positing Demeter of Eleusis as a defender of Greece would nicely complement the fifth-century expansion and panhellenization of her greatest sanctuary and festival. Although the goddess of agriculture and the Mysteries may seem a strange choice for a patroness in war, this role is not entirely incongruous—either within the limited parameters of Athenian self-aggrandizement or more generally. Eleusinian Demeter was closely connected not only to Athens; as Fritz Graf has shown, sanctuaries dedicated to her, as well as festivals and even months called Eleusinian, were widespread in the Greek world, including Ionia, Boeotia, Arcadia, Crete, Thera, and Lakonia.42 At Therai on Taygetus in Lakonia, Pausanias saw a shrine of Eleusinian Demeter that he must have considered ancient, for it boasted a statue (of Orpheus) of ‘Pelasgian’ date; Pausanias describes a rite in which a statue of Kore was carried up to the shrine from coastal Helos (3.20.5–7). The Lakonian testimony is especially significant when we recall that at the battle of Plataea it was reportedly Spartans, not Athenians, who regrouped and later fought long and hard by Eleusinian Demeter’s sanctuary, and the Spartans’ seer Teisamenos of Elis probably co-dedicated a statue to the goddess. The fact that Eleusinian Demeter was venerated in so many places makes it likely that a tradition (though most likely to be Attic, and probably Eleusinian, in origin) recounting her help in the war would be acceptable to a wider Greek audience. By Herodotus’ time at least, Demeter of Eleusis may well have been more broadly palatable than, for example, Athena of Athens, who came to be closely identified with the spread of Athens’ increasingly unpopular arche-.43 Herodotus himself, for one, seems to have been impressed by the goddess’ role in the wars, however reluctant he claims to be to pronounce on ‘the things of the gods’ (9.65.2). It is not possible to reconstruct exactly how the Demeter tradition began, but if panhellenic receptivity were a factor, she would be a good choice. Nonetheless—to move to my second line of explanation—a survey of how Demeter is characterized in a variety of cultic and mythic manifestations will show that there are more intrinsic reasons as well for her role as a hostile defender of territory. I will discuss three interconnected aspects of her persona, which appear in varying locales and cultural genres: the goddess’ anger, her territoriality, and her relationship to sovereignty. 41 See further Clinton (1994); Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 145 and passim. This interest extended beyond the Mysteries: Simms (1975) argues for Athenian influence on the Eleusinia, the annual agonistic festival held at Eleusis. 42 Graf (1985), 274–7, who supposes that Attic colonists brought the cult to Ionia as early as the early protogeometric period. 43 Cf. e.g. Hdt. 7.139, where the historian assumes that his audience would be reluctant to accept Athens’ central role in the Greek victory. On political uses of religion in the Delian League, albeit with an orientation toward ‘propagandistic’ interpretation, see Smarczyk (1990).


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The most familiar example of the first quality, anger, is undoubtedly the me-nis of Demeter in the great Homeric Hymn dedicated to her. When Kore/ Persephone is carried off by Hades at the instigation of Zeus, Demeter departs from Olympus and causes a worldwide famine until she and her daughter are reunited. Her response is one of the best-known expressions of a widespread pattern of anger, withdrawal, and return, which is attested in a number of Greek myths (not least that of Achilles at Troy), and has parallels as well in second-millennium figures such as Babylonian Ishtar, Hittite Telepinu, Baal of Ugarit, and Egyptian Telfut.44 In addition to the wrath and withholding so prominent in the Homeric Hymn, a number of Demeter’s cult titles refer to an angry or withholding god:45 in Phokis she is Steiritis (Sterile); in Arkadia she is Erinys (Fury/Avenger) and Melaina (Black), titles associated in local myths either with the rape of her daughter or with her own rape by Poseidon.46 In the Athenian law court too, the ready anger of the Eleusinian goddesses could be assumed. We have indirect evidence of this in the testimony of Andocides on his own behalf in 400, when accused of profaning the Mysteries. Had he in fact displeased them, he assures the judges, the gods (he does not name them) could easily have caused his demise at sea, but they did not do so (Andoc. 1.137–9). More impressive is the first extant passage of an incomplete speech against Andocides. The speaker tells how someone once tried to renege on his gift of a horse at Eleusis, taking it away at night from the temple doors. The perpetrator was punished in good Demetrian fashion: though not deprived of nutriment, he found that his food smelled so disagreeable that he starved to death. The speaker then warns the Athenian jury to take Andocides’ alleged sacrilege seriously, for ‘these two gods palpably avenge themselves on evil-doers’ (‘Lysias’ 6.1.1–4). Demeter’s anger is reflected in historiography as well. A Herodotean story, set probably in the late sixth century, shows how Demeter Thesmophoros dealt with transgression against her temple. Civil strife on Aegina once led to the capture of seven hundred citizens by the winning faction. As these prisoners were being led to slaughter, one of them, ‘escaping from his bonds, fled to the doorway of Demeter Thesmophoros, where he took hold of the door handles and held on to them. They could not tear him away by force, so they cut off his hands and led him away, and those hands were left clinging fast to the door handles’ (6.91). This violation, Herodotus tells us, leads to powerful retribution from the goddess:

44 On this pattern see Foley (1994), 89–97, and Nickel (2003), though neither considers the Persian War materials. Richardson (1974), 258–9 provides a succinct introduction to parallels from West Asia and Egypt; see Penglase (1994), 126–58 for fuller discussion and bibliography. 45 Cole (1994), 202. 46 Burkert (1985), 138; Cole (1994), 202.

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From this a curse befell them, which they were not able to sacrifice away despite all their devising; they were driven out of their island before the goddess became favourable to them. (6.91.1)

Here Demeter is implacable; those who violate her sanctuary are eventually exiled from their polis. Pausanias records a similar example of Demetrian intransigence: ‘The Megarians’, he writes, ‘never succeeded in propitiating the deities at Eleusis for having encroached on the sacred land’ (3.4.6). This points to the second characteristic that helps to inform Demeter’s anti-Persian role: even apart from the barbarian invasion, she is concerned with defining boundaries and protecting territory. According to François de Polignac, Demeter sanctuaries (at least those where the Thesmophoria was celebrated) tend to be situated ‘where the town adjoined the outlying territory’, reflecting the dual concerns of the goddess and her female celebrants for generating future citizens and also for guaranteeing ‘the cereals and fruits of the cultivated territory’.47 Susan Cole shows that de Polignac’s scheme applies better to colonial foundations than to mainland Greek cities, where Demeter sanctuaries appear in many different kinds of locations both extramural and intramural.48 Cole observes, however, that even when worshipped near a city centre, as she was at Corinth, the goddess ‘often seems to turn away from inhabited areas, the agora, and other sanctuaries’. While this orientation doubtless has to do with Demeter’s agricultural functions and perhaps with the seclusion required by some of her rites, it is also congruent with an interest in protecting the cho-ra that belongs to the polis.49 Sourvinou-Inwood also proposes that the sanctuary at Eleusis was symbolically linked with the definition and defence of boundaries. She recalls the battle fought at Eleusis by Athens against its ‘neighbours’ (presumably the Megarians), in the story that Herodotus’ Solon tells about Tellos the Athenian, the most fortunate man of whom he knows (1.30.3–5).50 Of relevance here is also the Herodotean tale in which a Peloponnesian army led by the Spartan king Cleomenes, coming to force Athens to instal Isagoras as tyrant, disbands in disarray once it reaches Eleusis. The Corinthians suddenly realize that what they are doing is unjust, and Cleomenes’ fellow-king Demaratus also decides to depart, ‘though,’ Herodotus adds, ‘he had had no previous disagreement with Cleomenes’ (5.74–5). According to his usual practice, Herodotus does not say that this debacle was caused by Demeter, but he highlights how unexpected was the sudden departure of Demaratus; his audience could come to their own

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de Polignac (1995), 72–3. 49 Cole (1994), 205–6. Ibid. 212–16 and passim (quotation, p. 213). 50 Sourvinou-Inwood (1997), 149–50. This battle is doubtless behind the remark of Pausanias about Megarian encroachment on the territory of Eleusis: 3.4.6, quoted above. Cole (1994), 206 notes that Megara also had a Demeter temple on its border with Eleusis. 48


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conclusions. Herodotus does however mention later that, for the Athenians, the reason Cleomenes went mad and ended so badly was that he had devastated the goddesses’ sacred land on this occasion (6.75).51 Demeter’s territorial interests are also attested in a story told on Paros (Herodotus differentiates this local tale from the version on which all Greeks agree) about the attempt of Miltiades, the commanding general of Marathon, to subdue the island for Athens. A Parian woman named Timo, ‘an underpriestess of the chthonic goddesses’, sends the unsuccessful besieger to the goddesses’ sanctuary, where mysterious things happen: Taking her advice, he went to the hill in front of the city and jumped over the enclosure wall of Demeter Thesmophoros, since he was unable to open the doors. After jumping over, he went toward the hall (megaron), in order to do something inside, either to move one of the immovable objects or to do something else. Right at the doors, he was suddenly overcome with shaking and went back by the same route. Jumping down from the fence he twisted his thigh, but some say he dislocated his knee. (6.134.2)

Timo escapes punishment when her violation of sacred mysteries is discovered; the Delphic oracle exonerates her as merely a necessary accessory to Miltiades’ unfolding evil destiny (6.135). The Athenian commander, however, pays dearly. He develops lethal necrosis in his injured leg and is convicted of deceiving the people back home in Athens. He ends up dying in disgrace, leaving his son Kimon to pay his immense fifty-talent fine (6.136). Significantly, Herodotus places this story immediately after the account of Miltiades’ transgression: the connection between cause and effect can easily be made.52 The case of Miltiades’ attempt to take Paros by (perhaps) stealing something from Demeter’s sanctuary suggests the third characteristic that makes the goddess an appropriate figure for her role in the Persian Wars. In addition to being vengeful and territorial, in several attested cults Demeter seems to be the key to local sovereignty and autonomy.53 Strabo tells us that the kings of Ephesus were hereditary priests of Eleusinian Demeter, as one of their ancient royal privileges (14.1.3/633C). On the other side of the Greek world, a tradition affirmed that the Deinomenid tyrant families of Gela and Syracuse owed their status to their ancestral relationship to the ‘chthonic 51 Just as Herodotus was silent about the Persian devastation of Eleusis several decades later (as discussed above), in the case of Cleomenes too the actual devastation of the sanctuary is not mentioned at its place in the narrative (5.74–5), but only alluded to by the historian’s later comment on Demeter’s vengeance (6.75). 52 Cole (1994), 209 briefly notes instances where Demeter sanctuaries were associated with violation of boundaries. To her list can be added another Herodotean example. A group of Chians, fleeing from the Ionian defeat by Persia at Lade, unintentionally violate the Thesmophoria festival being celebrated on the borders of Ephesus; the Chians are killed by the Ephesian men, who mistake them for brigands going after the women who are participating in the rites (Hdt. 6.16). 53 See Bremmer (1994), 18: ‘In various places the goddess was even closely associated with political power . . .’ On Demeter’s political importance see also Cole (1994), 210 (Thebes), 215 (Sicily); de Polignac (1995), 72–3.

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goddesses’ as well. A story in Herodotus connects this priesthood with the Deinomenids’ accession to power (7.153). It seems that their ancestor Telines migrated from the island of Telos to Gela in Sicily. At some point, Telines was able to restore a group of prominent exiles to Gela by using only the goddesses’ hira, no human dynamis—Herodotus explicitly calls his success a marvel. Telines effected this restitution, however, ‘on condition that his descendants would be hierophants of the goddesses’. Diodorus Siculus tells us further that Telines’ fifth-century descendant Gelon used Demeter to preside over his forced union of Syracuse and Gela, and that he made individuals of dubious loyalty swear oaths by Demeter and Kore in the sanctuary he had built for them in Syracuse (11.26.7).54 Demeter then was associated variously throughout the Greek world not only with intransigent anger but also with territorial defence and sovereignty. Local tales were told of how she reacted to those who violated her sanctuary or its cho-ra, including the cursed aristocrats of Aegina, the marauding Megarians, Cleomenes with his Peloponnesians intent on changing the sovereignty of Athens, and the over-stepping Miltiades on Paros. Her divine persona turns out to include a propensity for passive aggression against a hostile invader. Add to this the fact that Eleusinian Demeter did have sanctuaries at sites where battles were won by the Greek allies: at Marathon, Plataea, Mycale, and the great one near the bay of Salamis. All these conditions, together with understandable motivation on Athens’ part to claim its goddess’ fair share of fame for the role she played against the barbarians, make it plausible that there should have developed, along with a Delphic, also an Eleusinian perspective on the Persian Wars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Boardman, J. (1975). ‘Herakles, Peisistratos and Eleusis’, JHS 95: 1–12. Boedeker, D., and Sider, D. (eds.) (2001). The New Simonides. Contexts of Praise and Desire. Oxford. Bremmer, J. (1994). Greek Religion. Oxford. Burkert, W. (1985). Greek Religion. Cambridge, Mass. (German original 1977). Cataldi, S. (1981). ‘Un regolamento ateniese sui misteri eleusini e l’ideologia panellenica di Cimone’, in S. Cataldi, M. Moggi, G. Nenci, G. Panessa (eds.), Studi sui rapporti interstatali nel mondo antico. Pisa, 73–146. Clinton, K. (1994). ‘The Eleusinian Mysteries and Panhellenism in Democratic Athens’, in W. D. E. Coulson et al. (eds.), The Archaeology of Athens and Attica under the Democracy. Oxford, 161–72.

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Cf. Cole (1994), 215.


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Cole, S. G. (1994). ‘Demeter in the Ancient Greek City and its Countryside’, in S. E. Alcock and R. Osborne (eds.), Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece. Oxford, 199–216. —— (2004). Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience. Berkeley. Day, J. W. (1980). The Glory of Athens. The Popular Tradition as Reflected in the Panathenaicus of Aelius Aristides. Chicago. Dietrich, B. (1982). ‘The Religious Prehistory of Demeter’s Eleusinian Mysteries’, in U. Bianchi and M. J. Vermaseren (eds.), La soteriologia dei culti orientali nel’ Impero Romano. Leiden, 445–71. Dugas, M. C. (1950). ‘La Mission de Triptolème’, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire (École française de Rome) 62: 7–31 and plates. Flower, M. A. and Marincola, J. (2002). Herodotus: Histories Book IX. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge. Foley, H. P. (ed.) (1994). The Homeric Hymnn to Demeter. Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton. Frost, F. J. (1980). Plutarch’s Themistocles: A Historical Commentary. Princeton. Gauer, W. (1968). Weihgeschenke aus den Perserkriegen. Istanbuler Mitteilungen 2. Tübingen. Gibson, C. A. (2004). ‘Learning Greek History in the Ancient Classroom: The Evidence of the Treatises on Progymnasmata’, C Ph 99: 103–29. Godart, L., and Sacconi, A. (2000). ‘Tebe, Demetra ed Eleusi’, in Presenza e funzione della città di Tebe nella cultura greca. Atti del convegno internazionale, Urbino, 7–9 Iuglio 1997. Pisa, 17–26. Graf, F. (1985). Nordionische Kulte. Bibliotheca Helvetica Romana 21. Zurich. Harrison, E. B. (1972). ‘The South Frieze of the Nike Temple and the Marathon Painting in the Painted Stoa’, AJA 76: 353–78. Harrison, T. (2000). Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus. Oxford. Mikalson, J. D. (2003). Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Chapel Hill, NC. Miles, M. M. (1998). The City Eleusinion. The Athenian Agora, vol. 31. Princeton. Morris, I. (1993). ‘Poetics of Power. The Interpretation of Ritual Action in Archaic Greece’, in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (eds.), Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics. Cambridge, 15–45. Mylonas, G. E. (1961). Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton. Nickel, R. (2003). ‘The Wrath of Demeter: Story Pattern in the Hymn to Demeter’, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 73: 59–82. Padgug, R. A. (1972). ‘Eleusis and the Union of Attika,’ GRBS 13: 135–50. Penglase, C. (1994). Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. London. de Polignac, F. (1995). Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State. Chicago. (French original 1984). Pritchett, W. K. (1979a). ‘Plataiai,’ AJP 100: 144–52. —— (1979b). The Greek State at War. Part 3: Religion. Berkeley. Raaflaub, K. (2004). The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece. Chicago. Raubitschek, I. K. and Raubitschek, A. E. (1982). ‘The Mission of Triptolemus’, in Studies in Athenian Architecture Sculpture and Topography Presented to Homer A. Thompson (Hesperia Suppl. 20). Princeton, 109–17 and plates.

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Reader, W. W. in collaboration with A. J. Chvala-Smith. (1996). The Severed Hand and the Upright Corpse: The Declamations of Marcus Antonius Polemo. Atlanta. Rhodes, P. J. (1981). A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia. Oxford. Richardson, N. J. (ed.) (1974). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Oxford. Schachter, A. (1981). Cults of Boiotia, i: Acheloos to Hera. BICS Supplement 38.1. London. Shapiro, A. (1989). Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens. Mainz am Rhein. Shear, T. L., Jr. (1982). The Demolished Temple at Eleusis’, in Studies in Athenian Architecture Sculpture and Topography Presented to Homer A. Thompson. Hesperia Supplement 20. Princeton, 128–40 and plates. Simms, R. M. (1975). ‘The Eleusinia in the Sixth to Fourth Centuries B.C.’, GRBS 16: 269–79. Smarczyk, B. (1990). Untersuchungen zur Religionspolitik und politischen Propaganda Athens im Delisch-Attischen Seebund. Munich. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1997). ‘Reconstructing Change: Ideology and the Eleusinian Mysteries’, in M. Golden and P. Toohey (eds.), Inventing Ancient Culture: Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World. London, 132–64.

Section II Ancient Variations


5 Plato and the Persian Wars Christopher Rowe

There is a passage in the Laws that sets out to praise the quality of the institutions of fifth-century Athens by contrast with ‘the complete freedom from all kinds of rule’ (698a10–b1) that, by implication, characterizes her fourthcentury counterpart: it was, it seems, the strength of those institutions—or at least this among other things—that enabled that earlier Athens to defeat the Persians, not just once, but twice—first at Marathon, then at Salamis. The visitor from Athens who is the main speaker in the dialogue has just given an account of the decline of the Persian monarchy that matches that of the decline of democratic institutions at Athens; the whole context is designed to support the idea that decent government requires some kind of mixture of or compromise between monarchy and democracy. So far so good: Plato is, it seems, just another of those who looked back nostalgically to the past, when his city, endowed with old-fashioned virtues, managed achievements that would be beyond its present, enfeebled, counterpart. But if we look closely at the passage, it turns out that the Athenian’s view of his city’s past is rather more complicated. It starts out with what looks like simple praise of the past (I begin by using a modified version of Trevor Saunders’s translation): At the time of the Persian attack on the Greeks—on virtually everyone living in Europe, is perhaps a better way of putting it—we Athenians had a constitution, inherited from the distant past, in which some public offices were held on the basis of four different property assessments.1 We had a mistress (despotis) in us, a 1 Klaus Schöpsdau, in his fine commentary on Laws 1–3 (Platon Nomoi (Gesetze) Buch I-III. Übersetzung und Kommentar, Göttingen 1994) calls the constitution in question ‘timokratische’, and compares 746e ff.: ‘unter den Bürgern einer Demokratie ist Freundschaft nur möglich, wenn die Fassung den zweifellos vorhandenen Abstufungen der aretê unter den Bürgern . . . durch proportionale Zuteilung der Rechte und Pflichten Rechnung trägt, da eine absolut gleiche Verteilung bei Ungleichen ungerecht wäre (757a), Ungerechtigkeit aber Freundschaft verhindert . . . ’ (487). But, apart from the difficulty of supposing that we are meant to read forward in this way, such a reading already assimilates 5th-cent. Athens to Magnesia, when there will turn out to be rather important differences between them (even on Schöpsdau’s own analysis). See below. The point is rather just that the constitution made some sort of differentiation between citizens, so that at least some of the time most of them were used to being controlled/ruled (as opposed to ‘complete freedom from all kinds of rule’).

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sort of 2 sense of shame that made us live in willing subjection to the laws then in force. (698b2–6)

But there was another factor involved. The Athenian goes on: And in addition to these factors, the enormous size of the army that was coming at us by land and sea made us desperately afraid, and served to increase our slavery to those in office and the laws. For all these reasons we displayed a strong friendship towards each other. (b7–c3)

There follows a description of the fear inspired by Datis, ‘about ten years before the sea-battle at Salamis’—his defeat of the Eretrians, which his propaganda represented as their extermination: [Datis] sent to Athens a bloodcurdling report that not a single Eretrian had got away— propaganda which asked us to believe that Datis’ soldiers, hand in hand in a long line, had combed over every inch of Eretria. Well, whatever the truth or otherwise of this tale, it terrified the Greeks; the Athenians were particularly scared, and they sent off envoys in all directions, but no one was prepared to help them except the Spartans . . . [who] arrived at Marathon one day too late for the battle. (d2–e5)

So much for Marathon, which is reduced to a mere aside,3 except for the fact that it increases the Athenians’ fear when they hear of Xerxes’ invasion, thinking it aimed at them because of Marathon: And when they heard of the canal that had been dug through Athos, the bridging of the Hellespont and the huge number of Xerxes’ ships, they calculated that neither land nor sea offered any prospects of safety. No one, they thought, would come to help them . . . (699a2–6)

And so the Athenian goes on: his countrymen then were just petrified. They could think of only one hope, and a thin, desperate hope it was; but there was simply no other. Their minds went back to the previous occasion, and they reflected how the victory in battle had been gained in equally desperate circumstances. Sustained by this hope, they began to recognize that no one but they themselves and their gods 2

For despotis . . . aido¯s Trevor Saunders—in his well-known and now ubiquitously used translation—has a rather coy ‘Lady Modesty’ who is at the same time a ‘despot’. This misses the point that ‘we’ lived, albeit willingly, under slavery: aido¯s ruled over ‘us’ like an owner of slaves, who is female only because the noun happens to be feminine. (‘Our’ condition will have been ‘slavelike’, presumably, because the laws, and officers of state, in certain matters deprived us of freedom to do as we wished.) More importantly, Saunders’s translation misses the tis—‘a sort of sense of shame’, only, because it was not the real thing: in book 1 (646e–647d), the kind of ‘fear’ represented by aido¯s (fear of what others will say of us) is paired with fearlessness in relation to the enemy, while 5th-cent. Athenians’ aido¯s was not only accompanied by fear of the enemy but actually increased by it (‘served to increase our slavery to those in office and the laws’, 698c1–2; a habit of obedience might well be reinforced by extreme danger—not the time to start branching out on one’s own). For the importance of this, see e.g. n. 6 below (and for the possibility that tis be taken with despotis rather than with aido¯s, n. 17). 3 As Schöpsdau notes, there is not even a mention of the fact that it was a victory.

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could provide a way out of their difficulties. So all this inspired in them a friendship for one another—

but ‘all this’ does not, it seems, include that hope, as we immediately discover:4 So all this inspired in them a friendship for one another [with this reference to ‘friendship’, as the immediate sequel shows, the speaker here picks up again his theme in 698b–c]—the present fear [sc. of the enemy], and the one born out of those earlier laws, which through being slaves to the earlier laws they had acquired themselves; something5 that in the course of our earlier discussion we often called a sense of shame (aido¯s), to which we said that people who mean to be good6 must also be slaves; of which the coward is free and fearless;7 whom [i.e. the coward] if fear (deos) had not overtaken,8 he would never have come together to defend himself, nor would he have defended temples, tombs, fatherland, and the rest, relatives along with friends,9 in the way that he then came to their aid, but little by little each of us would have been split up and scattered, this one here and this one there.10 (699b3–d2)

It is no great surprise that this last section has been suspected of textual corruption; specifically, in the clauses that I have translated as ‘of which the coward is free and fearless; whom if fear had not overtaken’. If we take the more interesting items in the convenient list of the ‘main emendations’ known to England (1921), various alternative outcomes would be: (a) ‘of which the slave is free and fearless . . .’; (b) ‘of which the people (dēmos) is free and fearless . . . ’; (c) ‘by 4 i.e., the reference of ‘all this’ will immediately turn out to be, not hope, but other things— specifically ‘the present fear, and the [fear] born out of those earlier laws’; i.e., what caused the ‘friendship’ is what was said to have caused it before (the Athenian’s account is now circling round to a point it made earlier). At this point I more or less abandon Saunders’s translation, in favour of something more and more literal; it is an extraordinary, and extraordinarily unwieldy, sentence. 5 The Greek has ‘which’, referring back to the second kind of fear but attracted into the feminine by the following aido¯s. 6 For this phrase, compare 643b4–5: ‘… I say that anyone who means to be good at anything has to practise this very thing from childhood on’. Whether fifth-century Athenians are supposed to have practised aido¯s since childhood is, I propose, about to be thrown into doubt (that is, it is about to be thrown into doubt that they had a real aido¯s). 7 The genitive of the relative probably goes both with eleutheros (‘free’) and with aphobos (‘fearless’): cf. 647c4–5, where the Athenian talks of lawgivers who want to make each individual ‘fearless of many fears of a certain kind’—i.e. precisely those (more ordinary) fears which the Athenians of Salamis had in plenty. 8 The majority of commentators seem to conclude that the fear in question must be either that other, special kind of ‘fear’, i.e. aido¯s, or that plus the ordinary kind, which was earlier (698b8–c2) said to have increased the Athenians’ aido¯s. See Schöpsdau, who produces other arguments for identifying deos with aido¯s. (One reason why it is deos rather than phobos, I presume, is precisely to distinguish it from ‘the present fear’ (phobos)—whose own particular, and direct, effect on the coward is clear enough.) And in any case, one might add, if what is meant is ‘ordinary’ fear, ordinary fear can only have helped insofar as it increased the other kind (so bringing about the necessary ‘friendship’ (698b7–c3). But how is it that on the one hand the coward doesn’t have this special fear, and on the other it can ‘overtake’ him? See below. 9 Who are in this context, presumably, all his fellow-Athenians. 10 For the point of this idea of ‘splitting up’ and ‘scattering’, see 693a.

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which the people is free and fearless . . .’; (d) ‘whom if the absence of fear at that time had overtaken’; (e) ‘. . . whom if the people had not taken in hand [?]’; (f ) ‘. . . whom if no one had taken in hand [?]’. Now with the text as it stands11 the coward is said to have won the day, and apparently because of the onset of deos; that is, apparently, the very kind of ‘fear’ of which he has just been said to be free.12 This is, to say the least, a little odd, and it is hard not to sympathize with those who think the text at fault.13 But none of the proposed emendations—as e.g. England and Schöpsdau agree—seems to help much, however plausible they might be in terms of what a copyist, in all those long years when texts were being copied and recopied by hand, might or might not be likely to have got wrong. It therefore seems to fall to us to make the best of what we have. Here is a proposal, which will avoid our having to treat Plato as contradicting himself in the space of a single line. What he means the Athenian to be saying is (1) that the coward, insofar as he is a coward, is ‘free’ of aido¯s (he has the ordinary kind of fear, phobos, but is aphobos in relation to the other kind); but (2) that on this particular occasion, with the particular set of cowards in question, aido¯s14 did get a hold, so that even though they were cowards they managed to make a stand against the enemy. Now claim (1), that cowards lack aido¯s, takes us back to book 1, when aido¯s was introduced (at 646e ff.) as part of the most effective method for training people to resist pleasures, pains and fears, and generally to behave in the appropriate way—to be good, where goodness includes courage as well as self-control.15 So aido¯s, according to that account, goes along with the various excellences (including courage). But in the case of the Athenians at Salamis, their aido¯s was apparently accompanied by extreme fear (of the enemy), not by courage;16 not only that, but it was actually increased by that fear, which ‘served to increase our slavery to those in office and the laws’ (698b8–c2 again). This is where the tis in 698b6 really comes to matter (see above): it is only ‘a sort of sense of shame’ (aido¯s) that the Athenian’s fifth-century counterparts possessed, and not the real thing.17 I am tempted to compare the passage in the Phaedo where Socrates contrasts a kind

11 i.e. in Burnet’s text, which is my own starting-point; and Burnet’s text seems accurately to represent what the manuscript tradition, taken as a whole, has handed down to us. 12 See n. 8 above. 13 Or indeed with Saunders, who translates deos as ‘ “ordinary” fear’, and comments despairingly in a note that ‘[t]he Greek is confusing, and I insert [the] word [“ordinary”] to elucidate what I take to be the meaning’ (a measure which, however, seems merely to convey the ‘confusing’ nature of the text). 14 i.e. on the assumption that deos here is aido¯s: see n. 8 above. 15 See e.g. 647c7–d7. 16 Not for Plato, at least in the Laws, the Aristotelian observation that fear is actually a typical element in human courage. 17 It is just possible that the tis is to be taken with despotis (‘a mistress of a sort’: cf. Bobonich (2002), 348), or indeed with that as well; but that looks unlikely, given that the metaphor of masters and slaves is already in the air (see e.g. 698a6), and therefore stands in no need of apology.


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of virtue that consists in trading ‘pleasures for pleasures and pains for pains and fear for fear’ (69a7–8) with a different, and genuine, kind that involves wisdom (phrone¯sis), and operates without respect to ‘whether pleasures and fears and everything like that are added or are subtracted’ (b5–6). Here in the Laws we might be said to have a paradigm case of ‘trading fear for fear’, one that brings in a sort of aido¯s, and even a sort of courage, but a sort that is only a pale image of the real thing.18 In short, the Athenian victory at Salamis, and by implication that at Marathon, was won by cowards who happened to be saved by the fact that they also possessed a constitution that gave them the capacity to come together and jointly resist the Persian challenge. No reader could in any case miss the fact that the main theme of the whole passage, i.e. Laws 3. 698a9–699d2, is dominated by the theme of fear. Nor, I propose, should it pass any reader by—any reader who has read the whole earlier account of virtue, and of the nature of the education that produces it—that by treating the whole sequence in this way, and stressing how frightened the Athenians were, Plato means to tell us that what they managed to do was in spite of, rather than because of, their own qualities and characters. (That, I shall suggest, is ultimately why Plato’s Athenian seems so little interested in recognizing what his countrymen achieved:19 what matters for him, and for Plato, is not so much what people happen to do, but how good and wise they are. The victors of Marathon and Salamis were not worth much, the Athenian implies, under either head.) But the moral of the tale is spelled out in so roundabout, awkward, and opaque a way that it is easy for it to pass us by without us noticing it. That, I suggest, is part of the purpose of the passage; from a dramatic perspective, perhaps the Athenian is even suggesting a measure of embarrassment on his part. The Spartan Megillus’ response to the Athenian’s account (‘What you’ve said is right . . . and is appropriate both to yourself and to your fatherland’), along with the Athenian’s response to that (‘Quite right, Megillus; for it’s only just that I should tell you what happened at that time, since you were born with a share in your forefathers’ nature’), may be seen as

18 Certainly, the operation of true aido¯s might itself be said to be a kind of trading off between fears; but on the other hand true aido¯s is envisaged, in book 1, as merely part of a process that aims to produce the ‘complete citizen, one knowing how to rule and be ruled, with justice’ (Laws 1. 643e5–6); and one in whom true reason is in control (645b). The comparison between Laws and Phaedo here clearly needs more work, in light both of the well-known difficulties of the Phaedo passage and of the lack of clarity about the moral psychologies that are in operation in the two works; it nevertheless looks attractive enough to be worth pursuing—and in any case the situation in the Laws context actually is a kind of trade-off between two fears (and one where a larger wisdom, as distinguished from simple practical calculation, hardly has a role). 19 Earlier on, it is true, the Athenian has talked about there having been fine battles won in the wars against the Persians (692d1–3); but even that acknowledgement is made essentially in passing.

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acknowledging the delicacy of the lesson that has had to be taught20—even while also reminding us of the difference between the Athenians and the Spartans, conjured up by the reference to Megillus’ forefathers.21 They came to help, only a day late: 698e1–5. But then, as book 1 has told us, the laws of Sparta trained her citizens in military virtue, if not in other virtues. Megillus himself earlier cited with approval ‘what many say, that those Athenians that are good are exceptionally good . . .; for they alone are good not by compulsion but spontaneously (autophuo¯s), by divine gift (theiai moirai), and it’s genuine and not made-up goodness’ (1.642c6–d1). That is, of course, a compliment to the Athenian, but it is also, in the larger context of the Laws, a criticism of Athens: a city cannot rely on the spontaneous growth of the qualities it needs. So much is driven home, time and again, by the discussion of education that dominates the opening books of the work. To sum up so far: the aido¯s of the Athenians who fought and won at Marathon and Salamis is not the same as the genuine aido¯s that the three interlocutors in the Laws want to produce in the citizens of their imaginary city of Magnesia, despite the reference back to that genuine aido¯s (‘[i]n the course of our discussion’, the Athenian said, ‘we have called this [“fear” inspired by subjection to the law] “aido¯s” often enough’). Early fifth-century Athens is not a model of a good city even for the Plato of the Laws,22 even despite its outstanding part in the resistance to Persia; it was merely the nature of its constitution, and the (highly qualified) contribution of its lawgivers, that

20 The Saunders translation has Megillus saying ‘Yes, sir, you are quite right, and your remarks reflect credit both on your country and on yourself,’ and Socrates replying ‘No doubt, Megillus; and it is only right and proper to tell you of the history of that period, seeing that you’ve been blessed with your ancestors’ character.’ This way of taking the exchange (though I confess I cannot make much of Socrates’ response, in this version) seems to presuppose that the hugeness of the Athenian achievement in the two battles must in any case trump any spin that Socrates has put on it, at least as far as Megillus is concerned. But 642c-d (shortly to be quoted) may suggest that Megillus is actually abreast of the Athenian’s own diagnoses. 21 Saunders’s translation at 3.692e5–693a1, ‘[i]f it hadn’t been for the joint determination of the Athenians and the Spartans to resist the slavery that threatened them …’, might suggest a more positive view of the Athenians; but the Greek makes no reference to ‘determination’, only to a ‘joint intention’, or ‘thinking in common’ of Athenians and Spartans (to te Athe¯naio¯n kai to Lakedaimonio¯n dianoe¯ma), which is contrasted with the failure of others to share the same intention/thinking, i.e. to join in alliance. 22 I say ‘even for the Plato of the Laws’, because it is regularly supposed, especially in light of the conclusions of Morrow (1960) (see immediately below), that Plato’s attitude towards democracy, and especially Athenian democracy, mellowed over the years; even to the extent that, in the Laws, he could use its institutions as offering (mutatis mutandis) a kind of blueprint for the best practicable city. My analysis of the book 3 passage discussed above will, I hope, contribute towards a reassessment of this view. Plato may approve of, and appropriate, large parts of Athenian law, but he is no admirer of Athenian democracy as such at any period—just because, like every other city, with the partial exception of Sparta and her Cretan cousins, democratic Athens failed to provide for a thoroughgoing education in virtue.


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saved the citizens from catastrophe, and from their own cowardice.23 What seemed, to the generality of Athenians, a staggering achievement, appears hardly to have impressed Plato at all. This is, it must be admitted, not a standard view of Plato’s attitude towards Athens and its achievements. That view is closer to the one expressed by Glen Morrow in the following passage: Plato has not usually been regarded as an ardent patriot; in fact he has sometimes been presented as hating everything that Athens stood for [Karl Popper is cited as an example]. The evidence I have already presented shows that this is an exaggeration, to say the least. What his private feelings were towards his native city it is obviously impossible for us to discern with any certainty. But his Athens had a history extending far back beyond Solon’s time, and he evidently takes pleasure in recounting the legends of its ancient glories. In the Timaeus and the Critias, as in the Menexenus, he lets his imagination play upon the traditions of the heroic age and pictures Athens as embodying the best of all constitutions, as the historic replica of the ideal that Socrates had portrayed in the Republic. It is ancient Athens that he casts in the role of the victorious defender of Europe and Asia against the invaders from the island of Atlantis. Of all the Greeks, the Athenians claimed to be the only ones who were autochthonous, native to the soil, not immigrants from some other part of the world.24 Plato accepts this claim . . . [there follows a summary of the primitive Athens of the Timaeus–Critias and its defeat of Atlantis] These statements about the land, the institutions, and the heroic deeds of that antediluvian era are obviously the product of imagination, but it is imagination inspired by affection and respect for the Athens that Plato knew. For he insists always on the continuity of the stock that inhabited Attica [Timaeus 23b, c; Critias 109d; Menexenus 238c]; and the climax of the ancient tale, the repulse of Atlantis, is obviously but a prehistorical replica of the Athenian victory over the Persians, a matter of vivid historical memory. The Athenian state, ‘acting partly as leader of the Greeks, and partly standing alone by itself when deserted by all others, . . . after encountering the deadliest perils . . . defeated the invaders and reared a trophy.’ [Timaeus 25c, in Bury’s translation]. Thus he describes the victory over the forces of Atlantis in words which, without their context, would be taken as referring to Marathon. In similar terms Plato does in fact, on two separate occasions [i.e. Laws 699a–d, the passage I have discussed in detail above, with 692e (to which I have also briefly adverted), and Menexenus 239d–240e], celebrate the valor and intelligence of the ‘men of Marathon’—accepting apparently without reservation the thesis of Herodotus [7.139] that it was Athens whose resolution preserved the liberty of Greece and of the whole Hellenic race. 25

23 This does of course mean that up to a point the constitution worked as a constitution should, in Plato’s eyes: that is, it had some sort of effect on their characters (imbuing them with ‘a sort of aido¯s’), and on the quality of their actions. But only up to a point: the constitution of Solon did not make the citizens ‘good and wise’. See further below. 24 The reference is to Menexenus 237b. 25 Morrow (1960), 89–91.

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Plato must presumably have accepted that it was Athens who (with Sparta) ‘preserved the liberty of Greece . . . ’—that much would be reasonably uncontroversial; but I hope I have given sufficient grounds for doubt, from that central passage in the Laws, that he accepted that it was Athens’ resolution that was responsible for the achievement—and sufficient grounds, too, for supposing that his verdict on Marathon and Salamis is actually hedged about with reservations. Morrow, however, has two further texts26 up his sleeve: Menexenus and Timaeus–Critias. These, he claims, evince the same sort of affection on Plato’s part for Athens, despite all his criticisms of her. It is to these texts that I now turn. In brief, I shall argue that the Menexenus is—as some others have proposed—a parody; and that while Morrow is right to treat the Atlantis story in the Timaeus–Critias as (‘obviously’) based on the fight between Athens and Persia, he is wrong in supposing that the story is meant by Plato to reflect (unqualifiedly) well on Athens. Rather, I shall suggest, it is, or includes, a thoroughgoing critique of Athens; and what is more, a critique that holds almost as good for fifth-century Athens as it does for Athens in the fourth century. That, of course, would be entirely in line with, and may stand as a kind of confirmation of, the position that I claim to have uncovered in that passage from which I began this chapter, in Laws 3. First, the Menexenus. Here we may conveniently begin with Morrow’s judgement on one particular, and memorable, passage in the dialogue (the long excerpt from Morrow will also provide a convenient introduction to the Menexenus itself). The Menexenus, if we read it with caution, may afford a clue to the way in which Plato looked upon the Athens of his own time in relation to her more glorious past. This is one of the most puzzling of Plato’s dialogues, and I shall not attempt a full interpretation of it here. But it cannot be ignored, for it contains a statement about the ancient constitution, and this is clearly relevant if we can take it seriously. The body of the composition is a funeral oration, allegedly prepared for delivery shortly after the Peace of Antalcidas, at one of the big state funerals for the war dead which were a custom at Athens. It begins, as was customary in compositions of this genre, with a eulogy of the forefathers of the dead and of the land which gave them birth. This eulogy of the land and of its people parallels the praises of legendary Athens in the Timaeus [24c–d; cf. 23c] and Critias [109c–d, 112e]. Socrates then says that it is appropriate to speak briefly of the constitution ‘our ancestors devised’, for a constitution is a nurse of men. The ancient constitution was the same ‘for the most part’, he says, as that under which we are now governed, an aristocracy. ‘Some call it democracy, others apply other names to it; but it is in truth an aristocracy with the approval of the people (met’eudoxias ple¯thous aristokratia).’ (238d) Socrates goes on to explain that it could be called a democracy because the people is sovereign, by virtue of its right to elect its officials. 26 Two, just insofar as the small fragment that is the Critias in effect hangs off the end of the Timaeus, and continues the story with which the latter dialogue begins.


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Again it had and still has a king [sc. the king archon], and this suggests a monarchy. It can also be called an aristocracy, because it provides that the best (or those thought to be best) should hold office27 . . . How seriously are we to take this judgment? . . . [It is an example of a well-established genre, but] [i]t is notoriously difficult to divine Plato’s purpose in writing it. Was he simply trying to show that he could do as well as the professional rhetoricians if he tried? Or is it a satire directed at the art of rhetoric and the Athenian public which is so readily enchanted by it? Or is it a serious encomium of Athens, cast in an unfamiliar and for Plato a somewhat artificial form?28 The answers to these questions have been almost as varied as the commentators who have discussed them . . . But on the passage I have cited an opinion may be permitted. We can see that the description of the ancient constitution as a mixed one accords with the evidence previously adduced regarding Plato’s attitude towards the older Athens, so that this part at least can be taken as Plato’s real opinion. Could he also seriously maintain that the Athens of his day had retained enough features of that older constitution to justify the claim that they were still living under it, ‘for the most part’? An ardently patriotic Athenian could do so, feeling that the virtues that remained were more truly expressive of his Athens than the evidence of decline, that the relics of the ancient mixture represent the authentic spirit of his city through the ages. This would be an idealization of Athens, but so also was Pericles’ famous oration, to which this [sc. oration: the Menexenus] is dramatically attached in the introductory dialogue. Some such idealization would seem not only possible, but necessary for those who, like Plato and many of his contemporaries, dreamed fondly of a restoration of that ancestral constitution.29

As I have suggested, the Laws in fact gives little support for this reading of Plato as harking back to the glories of an older Athenian constitution. Indeed, if Plato’s position in the Laws is as I have proposed, almost the reverse will be true: Plato will have seen the constitution of fifth-century Athens as better than its present one, but nevertheless as still fundamentally, and indeed fatally, flawed. Now it is perfectly possible that Plato changed his mind, and that when he wrote the Menexenus—no doubt some time before the Laws—he had taken a different, and rosier, view. And it is possible to feel optimistic about such an interpretation when one reads much the larger part of the Menexenus; it so closely replicates the features of a genuine epitaphios that it may well seem, and indeed has seemed to many, to be a true member of the genre.30 Yet, as Nicole Loraux has shown in her brilliant treatment of the dialogue,31 it cannot in the

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For the ‘hidden meaning’ of the whole description, Morrow refers to Laws 712d–e. ‘The Athenians of later days apparently took it seriously. Cicero tells us that they liked it so much that it was appointed to be read each year at the ceremony in honour of the dead. Orator 44.151.’ If so, the opening exchange between Socrates and Menexenus must presumably have been omitted (see below). 29 Morrow (1960), 87–9. 30 ‘There is only a narrow gap between eulogy and parody’ (Loraux (1986), 310). 31 Loraux (1986), ch. 6: ‘Under the spell of an ideality’. 28

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end be anything other than a parody. There is no need to repeat the entirety of Loraux’s arguments; I shall offer a pair of examples, beginning with her treatment of the ‘prologue’ to the dialogue,32 before returning to what Socrates has to say about the Athenian constitution (‘an aristocracy with the approval of the people’, and so on: see Morrow’s comments as cited above). The philosopher is greatly indebted to ancient comedy, not only for a number of images but also for a method to undermine or at least to achieve a distance from the eulogy of Athens, as the prologue to the Menexenus, with its fairly obvious reference to Aristophanean comedy, makes clear. To begin with, Aristophanes’ definition of the bad eulogy as praise addressed rightly or wrongly to the city and to the citizens by an imposter [Acharnians 372–3; cf. Menexenus 235a2]33 might serve as an epigraph to this and several other Platonic dialogues. Furthermore, in accusing the epitaphioi of flattering the Athenians in order to transport them to the Islands of the Blessed, the philosopher borrows a passage from the Wasps in which the chorus, charmed by Philocleon’s words, declares that it has ‘grown while listening to them and imagined myself to be dikast in the Islands of the Blessed’ [Menexenus 235a6–b3 and 235c4–5; Wasps 636–41]. Of course Plato changes register, substituting the atmosphere of the demosion sema for the pettifogging coloration proper to Aristophanes; but, like the comic poet[‘s], his attack is directed mainly at Athenian narcissism: Socrates feels confirmed in his being by the oration, just as the old men are by Philocleon’s words. In fact there is not a single element that Plato does not borrow from Aristophanes: the inexhaustible character of the speech of self-celebration [Wasps 636–7; Menexenus 235a3–4], the picture of the illusions of grandeur that overcome the audience [Wasps 637–8; Menexenus 235b1–3], the euphoric effect of eloquence [Wasps 641; Menexenus (e.g.) 235b7–8], the imaginary voyage to the Islands of the Blessed [see above]. This last feature is the most important of all, for its presence in both texts shows that Plato plagiarized Aristophanes34 quite explicitly and deliberately . . . Thus Plato ridicules the funeral oration with the words of comedy. From the opening of the dialogue he borrows from the comic poets the weapons of parody and continues to use them throughout the text; this strategy is deliberate: parody is the only effective weapon against the mirage of the epitaphioi . . . 35

32 Indeed it is hard to believe that any reader, or at any rate any reader familiar with Plato’s habits as a writer, could fail to have his or her suspicions about the status of the speech that follows aroused just by the way it is introduced. (In any case if the Athenians of later periods really did adopt the Menexenus for regular public performance (see n. 28 above) they must have omitted this introduction.) 33 I here abbreviate a footnote of Loraux’s, as I do succeeding notes. 34 Not, I add, that there are not also Platonic parallels, i.e. other contexts in which Socrates claims to be carried away by what others have said. Cf., e.g., the end of the Crito, where it is the laws of Athens that have spoken—this will actually be a somewhat controversial case, insofar as some will suppose, and on reasonable grounds, that Socrates is in fact carried away by the laws’ arguments; a more straightforward case would be Phaedrus 234d (Socrates’ response to Lysias’ speech in favour of the non-lover, which he of course turns out to think a rhetorical disaster). 35 Loraux (1986), 311–12.


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Or take the Menexenus’ account of Athens’ defeat at the end of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides,36 followed by Lysias, claims that the defeat was due only to Athenian disunity; the Menexenus takes the next step, and argues that since Athens was defeated by herself, she was not just the defeated but the victor as well—or so Socrates comes as close as he can to suggesting without actually saying it (he¯meis de autoi he¯mas autous kai enike¯samen kai he¯tte¯the¯men—‘we ourselves, over ourselves, both won and were defeated’: 243d6–7). So, in a way, not only does the city have the reputation for being invincible, it actually is invincible (or even, always won, even at the end). This idea is especially ironic, as Loraux points out, given that according to the Laws, ‘the most shameful defeat is the one inflicted upon oneself’37: Athens, then, has been defeated only by itself: such, in Lysias’ epitaphios, is also the final interpretation of the ultimate defeat, reached at the end of an argument that is as specious as it is elaborate.38 This interpretation, which is paradoxical to say the least, is logical from an Athenocentric point of view. Plato understands this very well and, in his epitaphios, ends his account of the war with a sophistry in which, without innovating,39 he is content to say through the funeral oration what it dared not say openly: since Athens has not been defeated by an enemy, the ultimate defeat does not matter; and, going back to the last Athenian victory, the Menexenus immortalizes it, declaring that Athens won the war [243d1–2]. Athenian solipsism has obviously been forced back here to its last defenses, and the apparent logic turns out to be absurd. By praising the city for conquering itself, the epitaphioi inevitably attracted the irony of a philosopher for whom the most shameful defeat is that which one inflicts on oneself . . . 40

Of course Athens did win: at Marathon, and at Salamis, and elsewhere (especially in the Persian Wars—the record after them becomes at best a little patchy). The Menexenus gives her credit, or appears to give her credit, for that, and at some length. Why should we not take this seriously? Why should Plato not be offering genuine praise for what by any normal standards of military accomplishment were considerably more than moderate successes? (Why, in other words, should we suppose that Plato was not himself impressed by those achievements, even if41 he might have reservations 36

Commenting on Pericles and his successors: 2.65.12–13. Loraux compares Laws 1. 626e2–3: it is Clinias who is speaking, but the Athenian agrees, and the theme is developed at some length. 38 In effect, then, the parodist has hardly any work to do: that is a main part of Loraux’s point (and—I add—Plato immediately does what little is needed). 39 I should say: with only the smallest innovation (that merest suggestion that Athens actually won, as well as losing). 40 Loraux (1986), 140–1. 41 With this third question, I bring in the point about the way Plato has Socrates introduce the whole: even allowing that it is parody, there might be room—might there not?—for other elements too. Parody, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes; and there is such a thing as friendly satire. One can send one’s own friends up, as a gentle warning to them that they are in danger of becoming ridiculous. (That, however, is in my view not what Plato is offering us in the Menexenus; his underlying criticisms are harsher and more fundamental.) 37

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about them?) Because—and here I give what I take to be a simpler, cruder version of part of Loraux’s larger argument—Socrates’ praise is just not discriminating enough. Not only does he fail to discriminate between individuals: any, even the most intelligent, group-eulogy in such circumstances will stop short of distinguishing between those who won medals and those who, if the truth were told, were only pulled along by the rest, or by the sergeantmajor. That is something that is so obviously necessary that it would be an uninteresting subject for parody; in any case the provision of special awards, like medals, already partly takes account of the point (without actually drawing attention to those at the other end of the scale, those that the Athenian of the Laws would evidently call ‘cowards’; but then since that category will include most of us, it hardly needs any explicit attention). What matters, and especially in the context of my own present argument, is that Socrates fails to discriminate between the quality of those who fought at Marathon, or Salamis, or Plataea, and those who came after—not only those who lost the Peloponnesian War, but even, by implication, any Athenian whatsoever; even those who had never even set foot on a battlefield.42 For, as Loraux so beautifully shows, the praise is bestowed not just on ‘our forefathers’, but on the city, and so the citizens, as a whole, and ultimately without distinction. (Even in ‘it makes me proud to be an Athenian/an Englishman’, something of the same illicit credit-transfer is occurring; that is an essential part of Plato’s target.) Nowhere is this kind of move clearer than in Socrates’ treatment of the Athenian constitution: ‘[s]ome call it democracy, others apply other names to it; but it is in truth an aristocracy with the approval of the people’, to cite 238d1–2 in the translation favoured by Glen Morrow (see above)—though there is surely more to the word eudoxia here,43 in a context in which the good judgement of the people (or the ‘mass’, ple¯thos) is and must be at issue. It is those who appear wise and good to the people that are in control (kratein)44 and rule (archein), whether or not they be strong or weak, rich or poor, or from a well-known family or an unknown one (238d3–8); and the underlying explanation for this state of affairs is that everyone is born equal (e1).45 But now if what results is in fact an aristocracy, as Socrates claimed in 238c5–d2, then the people evidently do not go radically wrong in their 42 Socrates’ account at the beginning of the Menexenus of the effect on him of funeral speeches derives part of its force from the fact that he is pretending to stand in for just any—Athenian— member of the audience on such an occasion, when actually everybody knows of his proven prowess in battle (cf. Alcibiades’ speech at the end of the Symposium). 43 The phrase is met’eudoxias ple¯thous aristokratia. 44 The combination of agathos, ‘good’, and kratein will of course give us aristokratia. 45 This is how I interpret he¯ ex isou genesis (for which the Hackett translator has ‘our equality in birth’).


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choices. So the good and the wise rule,46 and the people not only go along with such a criterion for the allocation of power but actually ensure that it becomes a reality. So the Athenians are a people of high quality. That is, all of them, all individual Athenians, are of high quality (even if some are better, and wiser, than others). By implication, one only has to be Athenian to be good—just as the praise of the city’s courage or valour implies that each and every Athenian shares the courage and valour of the Maratho¯nomachai. But to the extent that—as any sober, dispassionate person knows—this is largely a fantasy so far as the present goes, its applicability to the past must also be in doubt. Socrates does of course enter a qualification, as Morrow pointed out: the constitution ‘then and now’ was the same ‘for the most part’ (Menexenus 238c7). So things have changed—but not so much as to alter the point, proposed in the immediately preceding lines and supposedly demonstrated in the sequel (i.e. 238d2–239a4, the gist of which appeared in my preceding paragraph), that ‘people now’47 are good, like their forefathers, because ‘nourished’ by a fine constitution (238c2–5, with c1–2). According to Morrow’s own account, this is to be taken seriously. I repeat part of a passage from that account which I cited above: Could [Plato] . . . seriously maintain that the Athens of his day had retained enough features of that older constitution to justify the claim that they were still living under it, ‘for the most part’? An ardently patriotic Athenian could do so, feeling that the virtues that remained were more truly expressive of his Athens than the evidence of decline, that the relics of the ancient mixture represent the authentic spirit of his city through the ages. This would be an idealization of Athens, but so also was Pericles’ famous oration, to which [the Menexenus] is dramatically attached in the introductory dialogue. Some such idealization would seem not only possible, but necessary for those who, like Plato and many of his contemporaries, dreamed fondly of a restoration of that ancestral constitution.

My own view, as will already be clear enough, is that this is to get the situation more or less upside down: the very implausibility of what Socrates says about contemporary Athens serves to undermine even what he says about the ‘older constitution’, just by virtue of the continuity claimed to exist between them.

46 Puzzlingly, Socrates says that they rule as ‘kings’ (238d2). Since we are already in the midst of a fantasy (see below), perhaps in one way such a detail hardly matters; but I am tempted to speculate that the reference to kingly rule is a way of slyly associating present and past also with the far distant past, when there really were kings worthy of the name (see e.g. 239b, and the reference to victories by Erechtheus and Theseus). And after all that is consistent with the rhetoric of the whole: it’s the same Athens, and the same people, all the way through, down, and back. 47 ‘To whom these people, the dead, actually belong’ (c4–5).

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This will fit snugly enough with the Athenian’s judgement on the fifthcentury constitution of Athens in Laws 4: that is, if we may take that ‘for the most part’ at Menexenus 238c748 as leaving room—in a parodic context—for the difference between a constitution with some sort of established hierarchy (which more or less exhausts what the Athenian has to say about the ‘older constitution’) and a constitution which operates on the basis of complete freedom.49 To put it in another way, what the Laws passage says about the fifth-century situation is not so complimentary as to be incompatible with what I have taken to be the implied criticism of that fifth-century situation in the Menexenus.50 The question now is about precisely what Plato might have thought was wrong with the ‘former constitution’. For the beginning of an answer to this question, we may turn to another passage in Laws 4. The interlocutors are discussing what attitude to take towards the sea, and especially fighting at sea, which the Athenian rather deplores, on the strange-sounding grounds that the credit for any victory will go to the steersmen, boatswains and rowers and not the fighting soldiers (707a–b). Critias protests: ‘. . . But in spite of that . . . it was by fighting at sea at Salamis against the barbarians that the Greeks saved their country—according to us Cretans, anyway.’ To which the Athenian responds: Yes, that’s what most people say, Greek and non-Greek alike. Still . . . we—Megillus here and myself—are arguing in favour of two battles fought on land: Marathon,

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‘It was the same constitution both then and now . . . for the most part.’ The reference to ‘complete freedom’ in Menexenus 239a5–6 (I quote the Hackett translation: ‘Because of this splendid polity of ours [in the Greek, this is merely hothen, “Because of which”], the fathers of these men—our fathers—and the [dead] men themselves, brought up in complete freedom and well-born as they were . . .’ perhaps refers primarily to the absence of tyranny and subjection. Given other aspects of the context, one cannot entirely rule out the possibility that another kind of freedom is supposed to be brought to mind—freedom from control, the sense that the same expression, pasa eleutheria, has at Laws 4. 699e4, when it is used to describe contemporary, 4th-cent. Athens. That Laws context did of course contrast the ‘complete freedom’ of the present with the greater discipline of the past, which might suggest that we precisely should rule out the possibility in question. However the issue throughout my argument is about just how much control there really was, in Plato’s view, under the old (5th-cent.) arrangements. To the extent that the city did not pay the kind of attention to the education of the citizens in virtue that Plato’s various texts seem to suggest that he thought necessary for a good society, his own proper view might well be that—from that very perspective—‘complete freedom’ was exactly what the victors of Marathon had; there was some sort of control over the citizens, and the citizens may to a degree have internalized it, but then—despite what the rhetoric of the Menexenus seems to say—they were still cowards. Or so says my account of the Laws 4 passage in the first part of this paper. 50 It would be useful here to compare in detail the account of the Persian Wars given in the Menexenus with that in Laws 4. I do not have the space here to carry out the comparison; but to begin with one might notice that what is said in Laws 4 to be Persian propaganda—about the scientific manner of Datis’ alleged annihilation of the Eretrians—is reported in the Menexenus as plain fact, which of course upset the Athenians not one jot . . . (Laws 4. 698d; Menexenus 240b–c). 49


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which first got the Greeks out of danger, and Plataea, which finally made them really safe. We maintain that these battles really improved the Greeks,51 whereas the fighting at sea had the opposite effect. I hope this isn’t too strong language to use about battles that at the time certainly helped to ensure our survival (and I’ll concede you the battle at Artemisium as well as the one at Salamis). That’s all very well, but when we examine the natural features of a country and its legal system [sc. as we are doing now in the case of our imaginary city of Magnesia], our ultimate object of scrutiny is of course the quality of its social and political arrangements. We do not hold the common view that a man’s highest good is to survive and simply continue to exist. His highest good is to become as virtuous as possible and to continue to exist in that state as long as life lasts. But I think we’ve already taken this line before.52

It is, in short, the citizens’ quality that matters, not merely their survival. ‘[Men’s] highest good is to become as virtuous as possible and to continue to exist in that state as long as life lasts’—or, more literally, ‘to become and to be as good as possible for so long as they are/exist’, which actually means that mere survival doesn’t figure in the account of the ‘highest good’ at all. If the Athenian here talks up Marathon and Plataea, it is only because these battles helped make those fighting into better people: specifically, because infantrymen have to learn to stand their ground and not flee, as sailors allegedly have a habit of doing (706c). But this is no more than a particular application of a larger point, namely that it is the function of a city’s ‘social and political arrangements’,53 i.e. its constitution, to make people ‘as good as possible’. And that is the problem (almost) as much with fifth-century as with fourth-century Athens: that she failed to concern herself systematically with the ‘improvement’ of her citizens. Her constitution may, from one perspective (that of Laws 4. 698–9), have been better; it may even have been responsible for saving Athens from the Persians. But that achievement, by the logic of the passage just cited (707b–d), is as nothing compared to its failure to fulfil its proper function of caring for its citizens, and their quality. When the Menexenus represents the rulers—‘kings’—of Athens as being good and wise, and as chosen by a discerning people, that is no more than a description of what should be, or should have been, the case (according to Plato). Pace Morrow, Plato never seriously entertained the idea that Athens was by virtue of its constitution, at any period,

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i.e. made them beltious. Laws 4. 707b7–d6, tr. Saunders. 53 What corresponds in the Greek to Saunders’s ‘our ultimate object of scrutiny is of course the quality of its social and political arrangements’ is actually no more than apoblepontes nun pros politeias arete-n; a more literal translation of the first part of the sentence in question might be ‘But in fact it’s because we’re looking now towards [the] excellence of a constitution that we’re considering both [the] nature of [the] land and [the] arrangement of [the] laws, thinking. . .’ . 52

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a ‘nurturer’ of virtue.54 To represent it as such is part of the parody, and nothing else.55 If Plato wants to talk about a city—an Athens—that really is as it should be, he has to make it up for himself (and then destroy it); and then the enemy—if he wants to portray Athens gloriously defeating an enemy many times her size—has to be constructed too. The lessons to be drawn from history are too meagre to drive home the main point,56 about what it is that real constitutions are for. 57 In short, Morrow’s suggestion about the implications of the Atlantis story for Plato’s attitude towards his

54 The reference here, once again, is to Menexenus 238c1–2: ‘For a constitution is what nurtures men, a fine one good men, the opposite sort bad men.’ 55 Two passages that will help fill out what I have said about Plato’s attitude here: (1) Gorgias 521d–522a, where Socrates claims, extraordinarily, to be (perhaps) the only true statesman alive—because he alone tells people what is best for them and their souls, not what is merely pleasant for them to hear; and (2) Republic 4. 443c9–e7: ‘But in truth [says Socrates], as it seems, justice was (we agreed) this sort of thing, but not in relation to a person’s external activity, but in relation to that within him, truly in relation to himself in the parts of himself—his not having allowed each thing in himself, each of the kinds of thing there are in his soul, to do what belongs to another thing, or to meddle with each other’s business, but in reality having set his own affairs in order and having established rule, himself over himself . . . [I here omit a substantial portion of text], and going on to act on this basis, if ever he does anything either in relation to the acquisition of money or looking after his body, or indeed some political act, or in relation to individual contracts, in all these things thinking and calling a just and fine action whichever action preserves and helps bring about this state [sc. of harmony] . . . ’ Here, as in Laws 707b–d, even if—as I claim Plato holds—the ultimate aim is the doing of fine, i.e. good and wise, things, the first priority is said to be the acquisition of the right sort of disposition of the soul—for how else will people reliably act in the best way? 56 Compare Sarah Broadie’s conclusion, in her 26–7: ‘The city that repulsed Atlantis is displayed as immemoriably senior to any historical version, and as unsupersedably archetypal.’ However Broadie’s grounds for this conclusion are rather different from mine: ‘[Socrates must avoid] seeming to set up the Athens [of the early fifth century] as any sort of political paradigm—not so much because Plato thinks badly of the Athens of that period as because, when it comes to framing a political ideal, reasoning from unanalysed empirical cases is no substitute for philosophical reflection’ (25–6). Kathryn Morgan (2000) sees the Atlantis story as offering a new ‘charter-myth’ for Athens, validated by Solon (who according to Critias got the story from the Egyptians); in a footnote, she says that ‘At Laws 698b the Athenian Stranger mentions with approval the “Solonian” constitution of Athens at the time of the Persian Wars, evidence that Plato could at least find something to work with in Athens’ “ancient constitution” (698b4)’ (p. 270, n. 50). I suspect that this ‘something’ is more than my argument in this paper would allow. (In his chapter on ‘The Status of the Atlantis Story’, Johansen (2004) mainly discusses the ambiguous position of the story, between myth on the one hand and ‘history’ on the other.) 57 Compare here the treatment of tyrannies, oligarchies and democracies, in Laws 8, as mere ‘faction-states’, or stasio-teiai (832b–c); the Statesman goes one better, and calls all existing constitutions ‘not correct’ (302b4), by comparison with the best—the constitution in which all power belongs to the expert statesman or king.


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city 58—that the story reflects the ‘affection and respect for the Athens that Plato knew’, and so on—at best needs heavy qualification. Morrow is surely right in saying that the Atlantis story is intended to recall Athens’ feats against the Persians. But the Athens that defeated Atlantis was precisely not the Athens of Marathon; it is something superior, and it is its superiority that is the main reason why it has to be constructed—why, that is, Plato cannot make do with a historical example but has to make up a new city (and a new opponent for that city) of his own. And then, of course, he also has to have it destroyed: destroyed, that is, to mark the fact that this Athens belongs to the world of the imagination. For no actual, historical city fulfils the criteria for the true city, and the true constitution. In particular, no actual city concerns itself in an organized way with the state of the souls of its citizens. One sketch of such a city is to be found in the Republic; another in the Laws. The Athens of the Timaeus–Critias is, apparently, the city of the Republic, projected back into an imaginary real past: founded by gods,59 and yet nourished and maintained by its institutions, and above all its education system, enshrined in its laws.60 Nor are we given any reason to question what Critias has to say about the resulting quality of the citizens, as e.g. at 112d3–e6:

58 I repeat here, for reference, a larger slice of the passage from which I take these words of Morrow’s (see above): ‘These statements about the land, the institutions, and the heroic deeds of that antediluvian era are obviously the product of imagination, but it is imagination inspired by affection and respect for the Athens that Plato knew. For he insists always on the continuity of the stock that inhabited Attica; and the climax of the ancient tale, the repulse of Atlantis, is obviously but a prehistorical replica of the Athenian victory over the Persians, a matter of vivid historical memory. The Athenian state, ‘acting partly as leader of the Greeks, and partly standing alone by itself when deserted by all others, … after encountering the deadliest perils … defeated the invaders and reared a trophy’. Thus he describes the victory over the forces of Atlantis in words which, without their context, would be taken as referring to Marathon.’ 59 The warriors are said to have been set apart ‘by godlike men’ (Critias 110c5–6), which may well be meant to refer to the philosopher-legislators of the Republic (fictionally, the interlocutors); a little later (110d4) there is a reference to the ‘guards presupposed [sc. by our conversation “yesterday”, i.e. the conversation represented by the Republic]’, where ‘guards’ are phulakes, the term typically used in Republic of what we have become used to calling the ‘Guardians’, i.e., ultimately, the philosopher-rulers. Cf. also 112d3 (cited in the main text just below). On why so little seems to be said, except somewhat indirectly, about this surely central aspect of Callipolis, see Rowe (2004). Sarah Broadie writes to me that ‘the important thing in the Timaeus about the ideal constitution is not that it contains philosophers as rulers, but that it [was] propounded by philosophers’. It is Socrates, in the Timaeus, who assumes responsibility for the construction of the ideal city ‘yesterday’; the point is not so much about who rules (which might make it seem as if the issue were merely between people-power and rule by the intelligentsia), but that the very nature of the constitution be determined by philosophy. I welcome this as a significant addition to my argument as presented in Rowe (2004). 60 See esp. 24b–d, which is sufficient to show that this aspect of the city of the Republic (for which education is the cornerstone of everything) certainly carries over into the Athens of the Timaeus–Critias.

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This was the manner of their life: they were the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the rest of the Greek world, which followed them willingly. And they kept their population stable as far as they could—both of men and women—with a view to the whole of time,61 maintaining the population of those who had reached military age or were still of military age at close to twenty thousand at most. Such, to conclude, was the character of the people and some such, always, was their way of governing, with justice, both their own land and Greece. Their fame for the beauty of their bodies and for the complete (pantoios62) excellence of their souls spread through all of Europe and Asia, and they were the most renowned of all men of their time . . .

No hint of parody, or of criticism, here; and the implication is that others’ judgement of these Athenians was spot-on. They were people of real quality, and what is more—thanks to their education system—they retained that quality, generation after generation. That is what enabled them, finally, to defeat Atlantis. It was no mere flash in the pan, but rather something for which, in retrospect, the city had been in training (as it were) since its foundation. But, sadly, that city no longer exists; it was destroyed (leaving us—one might add,63 on Plato’s behalf, with the Menexenus and Laws in mind—merely with those rather less useful paradigms of the more recent past, like the Athens of the early fifth century). And yet that primeval Athens, and Atlantis, do still relate to the real world: the Athens of the story is Athens (as it should be, but never was), and Atlantis is Persia (only Persia transformed, and transported from the east to the west, and way back from the fifth century to an earlier, dreamlike time). Or so I claim. I claim also that any Athenian reader would have taken the comparison between Atlantis and Persia as read.64 But now real fifth-century Athens only 61 If this is what pros ton aei chronon means (the Hackett translation, which I am otherwise following in this paragraph [not in the next], has ‘for generation after generation’). My provisional interpretation is that they kept numbers the same with a view to achieving a permanent stability for the city—an aspiration which was to be ruined only by natural forces. 62 Which I take to mean ‘of all sorts’—there weren’t any kinds, or aspects, or excellence/virtue, arete¯, that they were missing; we might think of contrasting e.g. the tis … aido¯s, the ‘sort of sense of shame’, in Laws 3. 698b6 (discussed at length in the first part of the present paper). 63 The suggestion is Sarah Broadie’s. 64 By implication I here reject Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s interpretation of Atlantis as standing for imperialistic Athens (Vidal-Naquet 1986). What Vidal-Naquet fails to consider is whether Plato shows any signs, elsewhere, of opposition specifically to Athenian imperialism; in my view, which is amply illustrated in the present paper, Plato’s targets are generally more fundamental. (Evidently Vidal-Naquet’s interpretation does not make Plato favourable towards an actual, earlier, non-imperialistic Athens, since he—Vidal-Naquet—seems to admire and accept Loraux’s treatment of the Menexenus in exactly the way that I do. The opposition, for him, is apparently just between present imperialism and the virtues of an imagined past.) This is not to rule out altogether a connection between Atlantis/Persia and imperial, maritime Athens; but I suggest that that connection is itself mediated through the figure of Persia as Atlantis—her imperial ambitions, it is perhaps implied, made her uncomfortably like the old enemy. But there are also other elements, as Vidal-Naquet himself accepts: there are, for example, strong Homeric echoes in the whole story. I should add, too, that Atlantis is sometimes figured precisely as an anti-Athens: this is my own preferred explanation of the fact that the number ten figures so prominently in Atlantean political arrangements: ten kings, versus ten tribes. (But see n. 48, for the role of kings in the Menexenus’ version of Athenian history.)


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defeated Persia by virtue of her having a constitution that made, somehow, for solidarity, so (somehow) managing to overcome her fear, and even her cowardice, standing her ground instead of running away. By contrast, the Athens of the Timaeus–Critias shows how it should have been done, simultaneously illustrating the very qualities that the parody of the Menexenus attributes, fantastically, to real fifth-century Athens. This may seem a perverse attitude on Plato’s part. Did Athens not, after all, pass the test, and defeat the Persian empire—an empire that had at its disposal virtually limitless resources whether human or material? But Plato’s position is uncompromising: it is not what you do, but what you are, that counts.65 Or, to put it in another way, one can do the things that courageous people do, but what matters—what is truly happy-making—is to do what courageous people do while actually being courageous.66 Take any other line, and one will be in danger of attaching value to mere survival. The point, for Plato (and for his Socrates) is about goodness and wisdom: take those away, and there will be no reason to prefer continuing one’s existence over ceasing to exist. That, ultimately, is the moral of Plato’s various different tellings of the story of the war between Athens and Persia. There is also a larger moral. It is this: that not even every Athenian of the fifth and fourth centuries was ready to repeat and endorse that apparently all-enticing tale of Marathon and Salamis as the triumph of city and citizens over empire, free men over king and subjects, Greek over barbarian. (There is nothing, for Plato, that is inherently valuable about living in a city, i.e. any city, or about just being autonomous, or even in being Greek: the question, again, is what one does with these supposed advantages.) Especially by targeting, and parodying, the genre—the funeral speech—which, above all, operated not only to preserve this tale but even to make it partly define what it was to be Athenian (then free, then Greek), Plato seeks—as ever—to expose the complacency of his fellow-citizens. We may not feel that he gives us, his modern readers, sufficient reason to accept his perspective, or his criticisms; nonetheless the very fact of his attack on this hallowed Athenian myth ought to help prevent us from too easy an acceptance of the modern, and surely brittler, version of that same myth—that at Marathon, and at Salamis, civilization was saved from barbarian, i.e. non-Greek, chaos. 65 For another, miniature, replication of the same theme, see Gorgias 515b–516e: the city’s business, Socrates argues there, is to make the citizens better. So, by implication, the statesman’s proper job is the same. How did the great Athenians of the fifth century fare? Not very well, to judge by their fates: if they were any good (to judge by the example of animal trainers), they ought to have made the people gentler, not wilder—yet look at what happened to Pericles, Cimon, Themistocles; and ‘didn’t they vote to throw Miltiades, of Marathon fame, into the pit . . . ?’ (516d9–e1). (Implication: he might have done well at Marathon, but when it came to the real business, he was a failure.) 66 Pace Richard Kraut (e.g. in Kraut 2003), Plato’s ideal is not one of inactivity, or ‘withdrawal’—or so I claim (see my reply to Kraut in the same volume, 168–76).

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Greek text: Burnet, J. (1900–07). Platonis opera (5 vols., Oxford). Translations cited: Saunders, T. (1970). Plato: The Laws. Harmondsworth. Cooper, J. M. (ed.) (1997). Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis, by various translators; includes Saunders’s Laws = ‘The Hackett translation’ References: Bobonich, C. (2002). Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics. Cambridge. England, E. B. (1921). The Laws of Plato: The Text Edited with Introduction, Notes, Etc. (2 vols). Manchester. Johansen, T. (2004). Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus–Critias. Cambridge. Kraut, R. (2003). ‘Justice in Plato and Aristotle: Withdrawal Versus Engagement’, in Robert Heinaman (ed.), Plato and Aristotle’s Ethics (Ashgate Keeling Series in Ancient Philosophy). Aldershot, 153–67. Loraux, N. (1986). The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City (trans. from the French by Alan Sheridan). Cambridge, Mass. Morgan, K. (2000). Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. Cambridge. Morrow, G. (1960). Plato’s Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws. Princeton. Rowe, C. (2003). ‘Reply to Richard Kraut’, in Robert Heinaman (ed.), Plato and Aristotle’s Ethics (Ashgate Keeling Series in Ancient Philosophy). Aldershot, 168–76. —— (2004). ‘The Case of the Missing Philosophers in Plato’s Timaeus–Critias’, in Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft, nf 28b, 57–70. Schöpsdau, K. (1994). Platon Nomoi (Gesetze) Buch I-III.Übersetzung und Kommentar. Göttingen. Vidal-Naquet, P. (1986). ‘Athens and Atlantis: Structure and Meaning of a Platonic Myth’, ch. 13 of id., The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World (trans. from the French by Andrew Szegedy-Maszak). Baltimore.

6 The Persian Wars in Fourth-Century Oratory and Historiography John Marincola

1. ‘DEFORMATION’ OR DIFFERENCE? That the Persian Wars were a watershed in Greek history, no one will deny. The Greeks themselves saw it that way, and the recent publication of Simonides’ poem on Plataea shows that the process of mythicization began almost immediately after the final battle at Plataea in 479 drove Persian forces from mainland Greece.1 At a later period, when Greece was subject to Rome, the Greeks saw the Persian Wars as the centre-piece of a glorious triptych, the second act of the conflict between Greece and Asia, following on from the Trojan War and later culminating in the conquests of Alexander the Great. There is no doubt that for each generation, including the first, there was a Persian Wars tradition—one need only think of the jibes hurled at the Marathonomachoi in the plays of Aristophanes.2 Discussions of the Persian Wars tradition after the fifth century tend to characterize the process as ‘deformation’ or ‘deviation’, and, when dealing with oratory, argue that the orators have a loose grasp of history and often ignore it to make rhetorical points.3 Yet it is useful to remind ourselves at the outset that most of the modern knowledge of the Persian Wars is dependent on Herodotus, and that what scholars mean when they talk of ‘deformation’ is often a difference from the events reported by Herodotus. We

Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at Durham in 2003 and Toronto in 2005. I am grateful to both audiences, and in particular to Christopher Pelling and Michael Dewar, for lively discussion and helpful suggestions. I thank also the editors for various corrections and improvements. Responsibility for the opinions expressed and for any remaining errors is mine alone. 1 For Simonides’ poems see Boedeker and Sider (2001). 2 See e.g. Arist. Acharn. 181, with Olson (2002), 128. 3 On the orators and history the most comprehensive treatment is Nouhaud (1982); see also Pearson (1941); Perlman (1961); Worthington (1991) and (1994).

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must ask ourselves the question, however, whether later writers, in differing from Herodotus, are deviating from history. It is, after all, pretty clear that Herodotus gives us a certain set of traditions on the Persian Wars, and while one need not impute to him fabrication or malevolence, one can still recognize certain serious omissions and problems with his account; like all good historians, Herodotus has a particular point of view. To take just one example, he focuses almost single-mindedly on the Spartans and Athenians, to the detriment of nearly every other Greek city-state. It is all too easy, for example, to think of Salamis as an Athenian victory, and one certainly gets that sense from Herodotus—even though he tells us that the first prize for valour in the battle went to Aegina, while Athens came in second (8.93.1). A recognition of Herodotus’ prejudice or orientation does not mean, of course, that fourth-century traditions have equal value with Herodotus; that would be simplistic and almost certainly erroneous. But it is no less erroneous to assume that Herodotus is always right, and later traditions never so.4 In any case, what must be emphasized is that if we are going to use such terms as ‘deformation’, we ought to recognize that Herodotus’ narrative, however reliable, is already a ‘deformation’, in that it has synthesized, accepted, rejected, modified, and adapted what must have been many oral traditions about the Persian Wars. There is, therefore, no reason to ascribe to Herodotus’ account some canonical status, such that other traditions, even later ones, are necessarily ‘deforming’ a standard account. More importantly, even if we accept Herodotus’ picture of the Persian Wars as the most reliable one, it is not necessarily the case that the Greeks of the fourth century did, even if they admired his history and appreciated its literary merit.5 In general, then, it is much better to abandon such terms as ‘deformation’, and realize instead that all histories are affected by present-day concerns; Herodotus’ history was no exception.6 We begin with the sad recognition that fourth-century historiography and oratory are poorly or partially represented. The forensic and epideictic oratory that survives from the fourth century is exclusively Athenian (and even here we have only a fraction of the thousands of speeches given in the courtroom and on ceremonial occasions), and so it will not be surprising that their focus is largely on the Athenians. Yet there is no reason to doubt that there must have been a thorough and wide-ranging Greek discussion in the fourth century—much of it in speeches—concerning the merits of each of the states in the struggle against the Persian in the previous century. The whole 4 The clearest statement against the value of sources after Herodotus is found in Hignett (1963), 7–25, concluding, ‘our reconstruction [sc. of the Persian Wars] must be based almost entirely on the text of Herodotus’ (25). See Green (2005), however, for the argument that the later tradition must be judged on a case-by-case basis. 5 On the influence of Herodotus’ history in the fourth century, see Jacoby (1913), 504–13. 6 For Herodotus’ history as a product of its time, see esp. Fornara (1971).

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Spartan portrayal of the Persian Wars, if it ever existed, is lost.7 No doubt the Corinthians would have had something to say about their participation and achievements (even if Herodotus did not).8 And what might we have learned if Sicilian oratory had survived? We would, almost certainly, have seen there many references to Gelon’s defeat of the Carthaginians, who were portrayed as the allies and western counterparts of the Persians.9 The loss in historiography is similarly great. The fourth century, a time of great innovation in historiography, saw the rise of continuous histories (at least three historians continued Thucydides), individual-centred history, universal history, and the series of local historians known as the Atthidographers. Of all this, Xenophon alone survives. We know nonetheless that several historians treated the Persian Wars in the fourth century. First of all, the Atthidographers, since it would have been impossible for them to overlook Athens’ activities from 490 to 479;10 second, Ephorus in his universal history treated the Persian Wars in his Books 10 and 11 (probably); third, Theopompus also seems to have made reference to them in a digression in his Philippica; and finally, Ctesias of Cnidus narrated the Greek–Persian conflict in his history of Persia. At the outset we should note one important aspect: namely, that in the fourth century the Persian Wars of the fifth century were considered the greatest of all wars, and Herodotus’ claim (7.20.2) that the Persian forces of 480–479 were incomparably greater than all that had gone before was echoed by later writers, or, to be more precise, by the Athenians, whose literature predominates in this period.11 Diodorus, probably reflecting Ephorus (more on that in a moment), says that the Persian armament was the greatest ever known (11.5.3), and Isocrates in the Panegyricus (71) says that the war against Darius and Xerxes was the greatest and had the greatest number of dangers. No doubt it was not only the fabled wealth of Persia that suggested such an evaluation; it was also

7 The Spartans loom large in Simonides’ poem on Plataea: see IEG 2 FF 11, 13. One might have expected some treatment of the Persian Wars from a Spartan perspective in Isocrates’ Archidamus of around 366. (In this work, Isocrates imagines Archidamus III, the son of Agesilaus, speaking to his fellow citizens and urging them not to accept Theban demands over Messenia.) Yet when he comes to speak of the Persian Wars (42–3) he speaks of Athens’ sacrifices and contributions, and urges the Spartans to similar behaviour. The speech is a good example of the limits of the Athenian imagination when it came to the Persian Wars—they could only tell the story one way. The contribution of Sparta to the Greek victory is consistently underestimated, but see now Cartledge (2004), 166–7, 171–2, 176–9. 8 For the Corinthians and Herodotus see below at n. 39. 9 On the Carthaginians as Persian allies see Diod. 11.1.4; for Pindar’s treatment of the western Greek victory over the Carthaginians, cf. below, at n. 34. 10 On the Persian Wars in the Atthidographers see Jacoby (1949), 106–7, 221. 11 Thucydides’ beliefs about the greatness of the Peloponnesian War were not, so far as we can tell, upheld in the fourth century, and the fact that several of his continuators brought their stories past the end of the Peloponnesian War suggests that they did not accept his interpretation of the unique greatness of that struggle.

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the case that these wars in particular resonated strongly because Persia was an omnipresent issue in the fourth century: Persian money had made it possible for Sparta to defeat Athens in the later years of the Peloponnesian War, and Persian support in the fourth century was crucial to any state that would claim hegemony among the Greeks.12 At the same time, some Greeks were becoming more interested in expeditions against Persia.13 The Persian Wars of the fifth century could thus serve both as a touchstone for such ambitions and as an exemplum of how a united Greece could defeat the wealthy and powerful foe. In treating the topic of the Persian Wars in the fourth century, I will say something first about historiographical revisionism in general; then I will focus on the debate over the decisive contribution; finally, I will look at how the battles of the Persian Wars—Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea—were portrayed in the fourth century. My treatment will necessarily be selective and I will not, for example, say anything on the long-standing discussion of possibly forged documents such as the ‘Oath of Plataea’ and the ‘Themistocles Decree’. It is noteworthy, however, that many of these documents do, in fact, concern the Persian Wars or the relationship of the Greeks and Persians, and this indicates at the very least that the individual states cared very much about how their actions were portrayed in the historical record.14

2. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVISIONISM Historians always seek to better their predecessors, so it is no surprise to find that some fourth-century historians sought to ‘improve’ the fifth-century record, and that record, for all intents and purposes, was Herodotus’ history. The first writer on a particular topic in the ancient world almost always sets the parameters for his followers; for better or worse, one had to address one’s predecessor, especially when it was one of the literary monuments of the previous century.15 That will explain, to some extent, the behaviour of Ctesias in his treatment of the Persian Wars. Photius says that Ctesias criticized Herodotus throughout and differed with him on many matters,16 yet it seems also to be the case that he relied on Herodotus a great deal.

12

On Persia’s role in the latter stages of the Peloponnesian War see Lewis (1977), 83–135. For possible 5th-cent. thoughts of an expedition against Persia see Flower (2000), 66–76. 14 On the topic of forged documents see Habicht (1961); Robertson (1976); cf. Flower and Marincola (2002), 323–5. 15 On historiographical one-upmanship, see Marincola (1997) 217–57; for the importance of the first writer in a tradition, ibid. 106–7. It cannot be known whether Diodorus’ criticism of Herodotus at 10.24.1 goes back to Ephorus. 16 FGrHist 688 T 8. 13


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Much has been written about the unreliable nature of Ctesias’ history and its small value for the historian, and this is perhaps so.17 It is difficult to tell, since we have no way of checking his sources, nor can we make out from Photius’ dry summary what the purposes and themes of the Persica were. In Ctesias’ account, Xerxes invaded Greece because the Greeks refused to give Datis’ body back after Marathon;18 he seems—though this is not certain—to have placed Plataea after Thermopylae and before Salamis. He has Mardonius escape from Plataea merely wounded and killed later in a hail storm at Delphi—and so forth.19 What is particularly difficult to tell, however, is where this was all leading. The usual characterization of Ctesias’ history as mainly palace intrigue and worked-up romance does not apply to this portion of the work. It is not surprising, then, that Jacoby proposed that it was simply historiographical one-upmanship.20 More recently, however, Dominique Lenfant has suggested that Ctesias’ account reflects some of the traditions put forward by the Achaemenid court itself, and Ctesias may thus have believed that he was in fact improving the record.21 One significant aspect of Ctesias’ treatment of the Persian Wars was its scale. Although he needed eleven books to reach the death of Cyrus, he then passed over the reigns of Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes in just two. It is likely that Herodotus’ pre-existing treatment determined the scale of Ctesias’ work here, and it was perhaps also the case that Ctesias saw no reason to dwell on one of the low points of Persian history. It seems, therefore, that in his treatment of the Persian Wars Ctesias contented himself with ‘bettering’ Herodotus in a few matters, and that he concentrated his efforts on those areas (such as Assyrian and early Persian history) where he felt he could add more details than Herodotus had provided. Theopompus in the Philippica had a fairly long digression in book 25 on Athenian leaders, where he treated both contemporary and earlier politicians. The whole approach was fairly scathing (like pretty much everything else Theopompus did). At least one fragment has relevance for our topic: The Hellenic oath, which the Athenians say the Hellenes swore against the barbarians before the battle of Plataea, is falsified, as is the treaty of the Athenians with King Darius against the Hellenes. Moreover, the battle of Marathon did not happen in the way that all celebrate it, and ‘all the other things’ he says, ‘that the city of Athens brags about and uses to dupe the Hellenes’.22 17

See Bigwood (1978) and Stevenson (1997). The Ionian Revolt played no part, so far as we can tell, in the causes of the war: Lenfant (2004), pp. lxxxv, lxxxviii. This is perhaps a kind of revisionism, since it would have dissociated the Greek city-states of Asia Minor from the battles in mainland Greece. 19 See FF 13 (22), 13 (25), and 13 (27–31) with Lenfant (2004) ad loc. 20 Jacoby (1922), 2050–6; for a survey of similar beliefs see Lenfant (1996), 355–7. 21 Lenfant (1996), 360–80. 22 FGrHist 115 F 153. 18

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Scholars have found the remark about the treaty problematic, and have emended the Greek text in various ways.23 Whatever the details, we can observe that Theopompus seems to have attacked the entire Athenian achievement of the fifth century, for whether the treaty refers to one with Darius II in or after 423 or to the more famous Peace of Callias of 465 or 449, the whole context of the fragment suggests an attempt to cut the Athenians down to size, and to challenge their claims about the Persian Wars. That brings us finally to Ephorus, the most important of the fourth-century historians for the Persian Wars tradition. Ephorus treated the wars as part of his universal history of Greece, and the Persian Wars appeared in book 10 and possibly book 11 (it is difficult to tell the arrangement of this part of the history). It is generally accepted that Diodorus’ account of the Persian Wars— those in mainland Greece and Asia Minor, at any rate—are largely dependent on Ephorus.24 Even if this is the case, we cannot be certain, of course, that everything in Diodorus comes from Ephorus, and we know that ancient historians often took the substance of a predecessor while adding their own slant on things, whether that be in motivation of characters or interpretation of events.25 Nonetheless, the close reliance of Diodorus on Ephorus seems as certain as these things ever get, and I shall in what follows be using Diodorus— with sufficient caution, I hope—as fairly representing Ephorus’ account. Such an assumption, by the way, often helps us to understand things in Diodorus that otherwise seem rather odd. For example, right before his narrative of Xerxes’ campaigns, Diodorus writes (11.3.1): It is useful to distinguish among the Greeks those who chose the side of the barbarians, in order that, incurring our censure here, their example may, by the reproach visited upon them, deter those who would be traitors of the common freedom (prodotas te¯s koine¯s eleutherias).

Given that no ‘common freedom’ of the Greeks existed in the first century bc when Diodorus published this book, the most likely explanation is that Diodorus has copied this from Ephorus, admiring the nobility of the sentiment—since it agrees with Diodorus’ own notion of history’s purpose— without worrying whether it fits the political realities of his own time.26 On the other hand, a reference to koine- eleutheria and choosing the side of the barbarian would have meant a great deal in the fourth century, both during the early part of the century, when the status of the Greek city-states of Asia Minor was uncertain, and particularly after the King’s Peace (386)—a 23

For full discussion see Connor (1968), 78–89; cf. Shrimpton (1991), 80. Volquardsen (1868); Schwartz (1907), 13–15 = (1959), 21–3; Stylianou (1998), 49–58; cf. below, n. 37. 25 Bosworth (2003); Marincola (1997), 218–36. 26 Haillet (2001), 122 suggests that there is an allusion here to the civil wars of the last decades of the Roman republic, but this seems rather far-fetched. 24


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situation in which Ephorus, as a resident of Cyme, had great interest. If it is the case, then, that Diodorus reflects Ephorus’ history fairly well, we shall see below that Ephorus saw Greek daring and Greek unity as the keys to success against the Persians.

3. THE DECISIVE CONTRIBUTION In Aeschylus’ Persians (produced 472), the Queen is told by the Chorus that Xerxes attacked Athens because by defeating the Athenians he would rule all Greece (234). Herodotus expressed the view that the participation of the Athenians was the decisive factor in victory over the Persians: they were the most active in rousing the rest of Greece against the Persians, and they provided the best naval force in a war decided by strength at sea.27 At the same time, Herodotus has Demaratus the Spartan king say to Xerxes that the Spartans were the greatest of warriors, and that if he could defeat them, Xerxes’ victory was assured.28 And Herodotus himself refers to Plataea, a Spartan victory, as ‘the fairest victory of all those we know’ (9.64.1). In the fourth century, the issue of whose contribution mattered most was still alive, and the claims of Athens, Sparta, and other states to have fought the decisive battle were put forth and challenged. This ‘contest’ can be most clearly seen in the Platonic Menexenus, where numerical rankings are actually assigned to the battles: Marathon is the most important battle because it was the first, and showed that the Persians could be defeated; Artemisium and Salamis are given second place because these demonstrated that the Persians could be defeated at sea; Plataea is ranked third, because it secured the ultimate salvation of Greece (239d–241a). That, of course, represents an Athenian viewpoint, and the recourse to rankings may indeed be part of the satire that some see in this dialogue, but satire only works if it is based on something real, and it is clear from fourth-century literature that there actually was an on-going debate about this issue.29 Not surprisingly, in the fourth century the Athenians continued to assert their primacy in the Persian Wars, and the importance of Marathon and Salamis in the overall Greek victory; they emphasize that they bore the greatest share of dangers (for it was really against them that the Persians marched), and they claim too that their efforts were such as to justify the rest of the Greeks

27 Hdt. 7.139. The 5th-cent. belief is nicely encapsulated by an Athenian speaker in Thucydides: ‘we provided the three most important things: the greatest number of ships, the most intelligent general [sc. Themistocles], and the greatest courage’ (1.74.1). 28 Hdt. 7.102–4, with Fornara (1971), 49. 29 On the parodic nature of the Menexenus see Henderson (1975); Pownall (2004), 38–64.

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handing over the leadership to them after the wars.30 They speak of Thermopylae with respect, and several speakers assert that the Spartans there were ‘destroyed’ but not ‘defeated’, since they held their ground and perished to a man.31 But the Athenians could afford to be generous, no doubt, since Thermopylae was a defeat, and one that in some sense highlighted the Athenians’ own claim never to have been defeated. And although they praise the rivalrous spirit of the Spartans, it is clear that the latter behave so only because the Athenians are the real leaders.32 That is as we would expect from the Athenians, but there is also evidence of opposing claims. One of the most interesting comes from a fragment of Ephorus concerning the Syracusan tyrant Gelon: Ephorus says that when Xerxes was preparing his armament against Hellas, envoys were present at the court of the tyrant Gelon, beseeching him to join the council of the Greeks. Envoys from Persia and Phoenicia were present at Carthage, ordering the Carthaginians to send as great an armament as they could against Sicily, and when they had defeated those who were allies of the Greeks there, they were to sail against the Peloponnese. Both sides did as the envoys requested: Hieron was eager to fight together with the Greeks, and the Carthaginians were ready to be Xerxes’ allies. Gelon prepared 200 ships, 2,000 horse, and 10,000 infantry when he heard that an armament from Carthage was sailing against Sicily, and by his victory he freed not only the Sicilians, but all Greece (diamache¯samenon me¯ monon tous Sikelio¯tas eleuthero¯sai, alla kai sumpasan te¯n Hellada).33

The scholiast who cites Ephorus here is commenting on Pythian 1, Pindar’s poem in honour of Hieron, Gelon’s younger brother. Pindar refers to the brothers’ victories over the Carthaginians at Himera in 480, and Hieron’s defeat of the Etruscans at Cyme in 474.34 Pindar says that the Syracusans by their victory ‘delivered Hellas from grievous slavery’ (Pyth. 1.75), and this must have been the clue that reminded the scholiast of Ephorus. Pindar also praises Athens for its victory at Salamis and Sparta for its victory at Plataea (75–8). Ephorus, by contrast, unless he was speaking simply exaggeratively, saw Gelon’s achievement as decisive for all Greece.35 30 See e.g. Dem. Cor. 202–3; [Dem.] Epit. 10 (Athens responsible for the common salvation of Greece); Isoc. Panath. 49, 59; Paneg. 92–9 (at 98 he remarks that winning Salamis meant winning the war), 157; Lyc. Leoc. 70 (Salamis fought ‘for all’ and brought benefits to all); Lys. Epit. 20, 42. On the portrayal of the ‘ideal’ Athens in the funeral orations, see Kierdorf (1966), 83–110, and the fundamental work of Loraux (1993). 31 See [Lys.] Epitaph. 31; Isoc. Paneg. 92; Lyc. Leocr. 108. 32 For Spartan ‘shame’ not to fall short of the Athenians, see Isoc. Paneg. 96–7; for Athenian primacy, ibid. 92. 33 FGrHist 70 F 186 = Σ Pind. Pyth. i. 146a (ii. 24 Drachmann); cf. Kierdorf (1966) 39–43. 34 On Himera see Asheri (1988), 771–5; Luraghi (1994), 304–21; on the synchronism of Himera and either Thermopylae or Salamis, see Gauthier (1966). 35 The scholiast also says that some people understand by ‘Greece’ Sicily, others Athens.


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But in what way decisive? Here we need to consider remarks in Diodorus which may go back to Ephorus. Diodorus’ account of Thermopylae concludes with a long eulogy of the Spartan dead, including a nine-line quotation from Simonides.36 In this eulogy, Diodorus provides an ingenious argument, namely, that one would be right in thinking the men who died at Thermopylae to have been ‘more responsible for the common freedom of the Hellenes than those who later were victorious in the battles against Xerxes’ (11.11.6). This is so for two reasons: first, because the Persians were frightened of the Greeks later on when they remembered the valour of the men at Thermopylae, and second because the Greeks themselves were spurred on to a similar bravery. Now this seems to contradict Ephorus’ opinion of the importance of Himera to the Greek victory, such that it might be preferable to assume that this claim is Diodorus’ own, rather than Ephorus’. Some pages later, however, in his account of Gelon’s victory over the Carthaginians, Diodorus provides what is probably the link by which we can contextualize Ephorus’ opinion. For here Diodorus says that many writers compare the battle of Himera with the battle at Plataea, and Gelon’s stratagem with Themistocles’. The reason is that ‘when the people of Greece on the one hand and those of Sicily on the other were struck with dismay before the conflict at the multitude of the barbarian armies, it was the prior victory of the Sicilian Greeks which gave courage to the people of Greece when they learned of Gelon’s victory’ (11.23.2). Gelon’s victory, he adds, took place simultaneously with Thermopylae, ‘as if the divinity deliberately made the fairest victory and the most renowned defeat take place on the same day’ (24.1).37 It is possible, then, that Ephorus explained Gelon’s victory as ‘the fairest’ in the way that Diodorus explains it, namely, that his victory provided Greece with the enthusiasm and confidence it needed to defeat the Persians. That would still allow room for Thermopylae as ‘the most renowned defeat’, with a similar effect upon the Greeks. However this all was worked out, it is undeniable that Ephorus gave far more weight to the western part of the Persian Wars conflict than did Herodotus, and by so doing tried to weaken the claims of any mainland Greek state to take primary responsibility for the victory over Persia. A fragment from Theopompus concerning Corinth may also be related to this debate over the decisive contribution: Theopompus says that the [Corinthian] women prayed to Aphrodite to inspire a passion in their husbands to fight against the Medes on behalf of Hellas…. He says that 36 Diod. 11.11.6 = PMG 531; the epigrams which end the account of Herodotus are saved for the end of the Persian Wars in general (11.33.2). 37 It is uncertain whether Ephorus was also Diodorus’ source for western history at this point in his narrative, but a good case can be made that he was, even if Diodorus occasionally also used material from Timaeus: see Stylianou (1998), 50–8.

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even now there is an inscribed elegiac poem to the left as you enter the temple: ‘These women, on behalf of the Hellenes and her close-fighting men | stand praying to the goddess Aphrodite. | For the goddess Aphrodite was not willing | to give the citadel of the Hellenes to the bow-bearing Medes.’38

The context of this is passage is unknown, but like Theopompus’ remark about Athens, it probably reflects the historian’s re-writing of the Persian Wars, and may have been part of his attempt to reassert the claims of the Corinthians about their participation in the Persian Wars, since they come off quite badly in Herodotus’ account: they abandon the Greeks at Salamis, only to be turned back by a divine voice announcing a Greek victory;39 at Plataea they disobey orders and arrive only when the battle is won (and cutting no good figure even then).40 In Theopompus’ version, on the contrary, the Corinthian women pray that their men will fight ‘on behalf of Hellas’, and Corinth is styled the ‘citadel of Greece’. This suggests that to take Corinth is to take Greece, and this may be a counter-claim to the prominence accorded to Athens and Sparta in Herodotus’ account. We thus see claims advanced for several of the battles as decisive: the Sicilian victory at Himera, the Athenian victories at Marathon and Salamis, and even the Spartan defeat at Thermopylae. Such claims were not academic: the issue of who was best suited to lead an expedition against the Persians was a real one, and the historians and orators were aware of how important a state’s performance in the past was to its claims for leadership in the fourth century.41

4. UNITY AND AGGRESSION IN THE FIGHT ‘FOR HELLAS’ Herodotus’ account of the victory over Persia portrays a divided Greece and a group of city-states often at odds with one another. The Spartans consistently threaten to withdraw behind the Isthmus, thus abandoning central Greece, while the Athenians before Salamis threaten to sail away to Italy.42 Before the battle of Plataea, the Athenians warn the Spartans that they will make whatever arrangement they need to with the Persians (Hdt. 9.11), while at Plataea

38

FGrHist 115 F 285b; Jacoby ad loc. suggests that it might come from Book 25. Herodotus is forthright enough to tell us that this is an Athenian tradition, and that the rest of Greece backs up the Corinthians (8.94.4)—yet he nevertheless denies them any role in his narrative. 40 Hdt. 9.52, 69.1, with Flower and Marincola (2002), 226. For complaints about Herodotus’ treatment of the Corinthians see Plut. Mal. Her. 867 c–868 e, 870 b–871 b. 41 A nice illustration of past and present can be found in the Anabasis (3.2.13), where Xenophon, in order to encourage his men, reminds them of the singular achievements of their ancestors in the victories of the Persian Wars. 42 For the Spartans and the wall, see Hdt. 8.40.2, 71.2, 9.7.1; for the Athenian threat, 8.62. 39


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itself, the majority of the Greek states are marked as cowardly and disobey Pausanias’ orders, taking no part in the battle (9.52). The Thebans, of course, are everywhere portrayed as deliberate Medizers (see esp. 9.40). In addition, Herodotus’ narrative often shows the Greeks at the mercy of the Persians: at Thermopylae the Spartans become victims when the pass is betrayed by Ephialtes of Malis and they are surrounded; at Salamis the Greeks are the victims of Themistocles’ ruse, fighting because they have been trapped by the movements of Xerxes’ fleet—a ruse Themistocles used precisely because he feared that the Greek contingents would retreat to the Peloponnese; and at Plataea the Spartans are attacked by Mardonius and must endure a punishing onslaught by the Persian archers until the omens finally prove favourable; only then do they spring forward into action.43 Fourth-century narratives reverse both of these Herodotean elements with a decidedly panhellenic perspective that plays out in two ways: first, individual states claim to have fought the Persians not for themselves but ‘on behalf of Hellas’; and second, the narratives that we find emphasize Greek unity and Greek aggressiveness against the Persians. The first is easy to demonstrate and can be seen in a variety of remarks both by historians and orators. In particular, and not surprisingly, Athenian speakers portray Athens’ actions, especially the selfless abandonment of their own land, as being for the benefit of all.44 The second aspect results in the portrayal of the Greeks as constantly on the attack and devising strategy that anticipates the actions of the Persians; in this construction, even losses, it turns out, contribute to the ultimate victory. Let us begin with Thermopylae. In Herodotus, this is a story of heroic resistance in the face of certain death: Leonidas has gone to prevent the Persians from entering Greece, and the Spartans have fought for two days heroically and successfully in the pass against the onslaught of Persians; only when they realize that they have been betrayed and are surrounded do they move out into the plain and fight to the death, trying to kill as many of the barbarians as they can (7.201–8). In Diodorus’ account (11.4.1–11.6)—and here I am presuming that he largely represents Ephorus—the contrast could not be stronger. The fatal nature of the campaign is brought forward at the very beginning of the story. When Leonidas is given command of the forces for Thermopylae he requests only 1,000 men. The ephors think these too few, and Leonidas 43

Epialtes’ betrayal: 7.213; Themistocles’ ruse: 8.75; Persian attack: 9.61. For Sparta see Diod. 11.4.4, where Leonidas claims that his men will die peri te¯s koine¯s eleutherias; and cf. 11.9.2, where they are ready to meet death hyper te¯s Hellados; for Athens see: [Dem.] Epitaph. 10; Neaira 96; Dem. Corona 208; Isoc. Paneg. 86, 92; Lyc. Leocr. 70; Lys. Epitaph. 20, 33, 44, 47 (where, unusually, the Athenians are credited with winning a secure liberty te¯i Euro¯pe¯i); for Corinth see Theopompus, FGrHist 115 F 285b, quoted above. Already at the beginning of the invasions of 480–479, the Greeks at the Isthmus wish ‘to struggle for the common freedom’ (synago¯nizesthai peri te¯s koine¯s eleutherias, Diod. 11.3.3; cf. 3.5). 44

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explains that ‘though ostensibly I am leading them to the defence of the passes, in reality I am leading them to die for the freedom of all; and so if a thousand set forth, Sparta will be the more renowned when they have died, but if the whole body of the Lacedaemonians take the field, Lacedaemon will be utterly destroyed, for not a man of them, in order to save his life, will dare to turn in flight.’45 When the men arrive at the pass, Xerxes sends a message offering alliance and increased territory for those who take his side, but he is rebuffed by Leonidas.46 The campaign in Ephorus/Diodorus has, like Herodotus’, two days of setbacks for the Persians, and it is after these that Xerxes learns of the pass by which the Greeks can be encircled. But the Spartans are informed of the betrayal by a certain Tyrrhastiadas, a citizen of Cyme.47 The Greeks gather together to plan strategy in the middle of the night, some wishing to flee, others to stay. Leonidas dismisses them because (as in Herodotus) he wishes to win for himself and Sparta great glory; but his injunction to them specifically is that they should go so that they can then fight together with the Greeks in the battles that remain. This order makes sense, of course, only if we accept that Leonidas knew from the outset that the campaign was doomed, and that the war would be won elsewhere. As the Persians make their way around the pass, the Greeks, choosing glory, with one voice (miai pho¯ne¯i, 9.9.3) ask their commander to lead them against the Persians before the Persians should learn that the Spartans were surrounded. They attack the Persian camp by night, striking the barbarians with terror, and in the tumult that follows, the Greeks slay many, while a great number of barbarians are killed by their own men. The Greeks make for the royal tent, but Xerxes had abandoned it in the first alarm, and the Greeks spend the rest of the night looking for him. When day dawns, the Persians see how few the Greeks are, but, still afraid to join battle, they shoot arrows and hurl javelins from every direction, and in this way destroy the Greeks to a man. Modern historians are nearly unanimous in dismissing the historical value of this account, and perhaps they are correct to do so.48 Possibly Ephorus 45 This thousand includes the 300 Spartiates, and Leonidas takes 3,000 from the rest of the Greeks. When he arrives in Thermopylae there are additional troops waiting: 1,000 Locrians, 1,000 Malians, about 1,000 Phocians and 400 Thebans ‘of the other party’, meaning those who did not Medize. 46 This offer parallels the one made by Mardonius to the Athenians before the campaigns of 479: see Hdt. 8.140α.2. 47 One of the reasons to think that this account goes back to Ephorus is that Cyme is Ephorus’ home town, and we know from ancient testimonia that he was fond of playing up his city’s role in history: see FGrHist 70 F 236. 48 But see the careful treatment of Flower (1998). It may be worth noting that Plutarch in de Herodoti malignitate (866 a) uses the account of the night battle in his attack on Herodotus, but this is not surprising, since Plutarch everywhere portrays the Greeks in the Persian Wars as proactive and on the offensive, as I shall demonstrate in a forthcoming work.


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had been influenced by Thucydides’ famous narrative of the night battle at Epipolae (there are a few similarities concerning confusion), but even so it does not explain why Ephorus thought it appropriate to use (or invent) that scene here. Now it has long been known that Herodotus’ account of Thermopylae is quite ‘epic’ in nature, and the struggle over the body of Leonidas is a clear recollection of the struggle for the body of Patroclus in the Iliad. As Michael Flower has pointed out recently, however, there are also Homeric aspects to this Ephoran account, particularly from Iliad 10, the Doloneia. Flower has also observed that the story as told here shows a Leonidas who goes to Thermopylae in full awareness of his and his men’s coming death, and the resolve he shows in the face of that certain death mirrors Achilles’ knowledge of his own fate.49 We can say a bit more. In Herodotus the actions of Leonidas and his men are heroic, but they are essentially the passive victims of the treachery of Epialtes. In Diodorus’ account, by contrast, the entire episode is cast from the beginning as a sacrifice, a deuotio by Leonidas who knows that he is about to die and is mainly competing for great fame. ‘Knowing’ that he and his men will be defeated, Leonidas acts in a way that will serve as an exemplum to inspire the remaining Greeks in the battles ahead. Leonidas’ foreknowledge of defeat removes its sting, and he can be portrayed as actively establishing a standard of behaviour for the battles that follow. For Salamis, we have two surviving accounts from the fifth century, the messenger speech in Aeschylus’ Persians and the narrative in Herodotus’ Histories. Although they are similar in places, the portrait they give of the struggle against Persia is quite different. In the Persians, for example, the messenger who recounts the battle of Salamis to the Queen and the Chorus portrays a united Greek force attacking the Persians in good order and encouraging one another with panhellenist rhetoric: ‘Sons of the Hellenes, onward, free your country, your children and wives, the shrines of your ancestral gods, and the tombs of your parents; for the contest now is for everything’ (403–5). The operation on Psyttaleia is similarly harmonious as the Greeks destroy the Persians who escaped from the naval defeat (447–71). Later in the play, when Darius prophesies what is to come, he makes reference to the battle of Plataea, the ‘victory of the Dorian spear’ (817) which will represent the peak of Persian suffering (kako¯n hypsist’ epammenei pathein, 807). Although the focus in the play is undoubtedly on Athens, there is throughout the suggestion that the Greeks are working together towards the same end, and in its narrative of Salamis, the Persians portrays a united, single-minded Greek force. In Herodotus’ account, the Greeks retire to Salamis because the Athenians wish to retrieve their goods and families from Attica and move them to a safe place. A council of war is held and ‘the majority’ lean towards fighting at the Isthmus in defence of the Peloponnese (Attica had been excluded as already 49

Flower (1998), 374–5.

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captured). When news comes that the Persian king is destroying Athens, some of the commanders hoist sail and depart, but the remainder agree (again?) to fight at the Isthmus. During the night that follows these discussions, Mnesiphilus visits Themistocles and explains why they should fight at Salamis. Themistocles repeats these arguments to the Spartan commander Eurybiades, at which point he is attacked by the Corinthian admiral Adeimantus; in response to this, Themistocles threatens to take the Athenian fleet and sail to Siris in Italy (8.40–62). Many of the Greeks nonetheless feel bitter resentment at what they consider the folly of Eurybiades, and Themistocles, now afraid that he will be outvoted, sends Sicinnus to the Persian king. Aristides arrives to tell the Greeks that the Persians are on the move, and a Tenian warship that had defected confirms the story; the Greeks now at last prepare for action. Herodotus’ account of the actual battle is patchy. The Athenians face the Phoenicians on the Persian left, the Spartans the ships of Ionia on the Persian right. (A few, but not many, of the Ionian ships held back.) There is very little on the development of the battle; Herodotus contents himself with generalities, noting that the Athenians and Aeginetans took the majority of the Persian ships, and the Greeks fought in formation while the Persians did not. Much of his narrative is taken up with the exploits of Artemisia, the queen from Halicarnassus. After the battle, the Aeginetans win first prize for their performance, Athens wins second. Polycritus of Aegina was adjudged the best individual, followed by the Athenians Eumenes and Ameinias (8.74–93). Ephorus’ account (again, assuming that he is Diodorus’ source in book 11) follows Herodotus closely, but with some important differences. After Thermopylae, a council is held where ‘all those entrusted with command’ (11.15.2) meet in council and deliberate about the place for battle. The Peloponnesians, thinking only of their own safety, suggest the Isthmus, which is fortified, and they offer the Peloponnese as a place of refuge for all. At this point, Themistocles offers Salamis, giving the strategic reasons for his choice, and ‘by presenting in like fashion many other facts pertinent to the occasion, he persuaded them all to vote with him for this plan’ (15.4). As in Herodotus, the crews are frightened, and no longer willing to obey their commanders. Themistocles, fearing that Eurybiades will be unable to overcome the troops, sends to Xerxes, who moves his own ships into position. Ephorus, it seems, completely avoided the colourful second meeting of Herodotus’ narrative with its barbed exchanges between Themistocles and Adeimantus, and the threats contained therein. At this point a Samian swims across to the Greeks and informs them that the Ionians are going to desert once the battle starts. This promise emboldens the Greeks who now, despite their fears, go down eagerly to board the ships. In the battle arrangement, the Athenians and Spartans are placed against the Phoenicians, while the Aeginetans and Megarians are placed against the


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Medizing Greeks. The Persian fleet advances but as the waters become narrow it loses its formation, and when the Persian admiral dies after fighting bravely, the barbarians are plunged into disorder, and some begin to try to withdraw. The Athenians, seeing this disorder, advance to the attack and do great damage to the Phoenician and Cyprian ships. They pursue these ships to the shore and then turn back; they force the barbarians to turn round against them, in this way causing them to lose many of their ships. Forty ships are lost by the Greeks, over two hundred by the barbarians (Diod. 11.16–19). The aftermath of the battle is especially interesting. Diodorus reports that because the Athenians were generally thought to be responsible for the victory, it was clear to everyone that they would be contending with the Spartans for the naval command. The Spartans, realizing this, decided to do all they could to humble the Athenians, and so used their influence to bring it about that Aegina, rather than Athens, won the prize for valour (Ameinias is named as the best individual, the Aeginetan named by Herodotus falling out completely). The Athenians are angry at this Spartan ploy and so the Spartans, now afraid that Themistocles might do them some hurt, honour him with double the number of gifts given to those who receive the aristeia. When Themistocles accepts these gifts, the Athenian assembly deposes him from his generalship and elects Xanthippus (11.27.2). The most interesting aspects of this account are its fairly strict fidelity to the fifth-century tradition, and a nearly completely different set of attendant circumstances. Gone, first of all, is the wrangling and suspicion that pervades Herodotus’ account; there is a harmony here that accords better with Aeschylus’ portrayal. Themistocles wins by argument, not threat, and his message to Xerxes (which is all his, of course—no Mnesiphilus to account for) results from his concern that Eurybiades simply will not be able to control the mass of the soldiers. In other words, the threat of dereliction ascribed to the rival commanders in Herodotus’ account is transferred to a group that is consistently criticized for its fear and indecisiveness in ancient historiography, namely the people (or, in battle, the common soldiers). The leadership emerges looking just fine, while the commons are the victims of fear, dread, and disorder. It also seems clear that the fifth-century success of Athens and the eventual eclipse of Aegina meant that there was little chance that Herodotus’ account of the Athenians and Aeginetans working in tandem would be maintained. It must have seemed inconceivable in the fourth century that Aegina had once been powerful enough to equal or even outdo the Athenians in the great sea battle of the Persian Wars, and no doubt the continued insistence by the Athenians throughout the fifth century would have played its role here. Yet it is also noteworthy that Ephorus did not therefore seek to change the tradition that Aegina had been accorded first honours; rather, he removed the credit of this achievement by postulating Spartan wheeling and dealing to bring it about. To do this, of course, he had to retroject the later naval power and desire for

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rule by Athens to the immediate aftermath of Salamis.50 No less than Herodotus then, it seems, Ephorus kept the focus nearly exclusively on Athens and Sparta. The final battle narrative to be examined is Plataea. In Herodotus, Mardonius makes overtures to the Athenians during the winter of 480/79, but they assure him and the Spartans that they will never make peace with the Persians. When spring arrives, however, the Spartans do not appear in central Greece and the Athenians send a delegation; at one point they are so frustrated with Spartan dilatoriness that they threaten to make whatever accord they need to with Persia. Meanwhile, Mardonius is on the march and reaches Athens, destroying it a second time. The Spartans eventually appear at the Isthmus, where the rest of the Greeks muster, and the troops now move to the lower slopes of Mt. Cithaeron. The Persian cavalry here begins a series of attacks that inflict heavy losses on the Greeks. At one point the Megarians, under the heaviest pressure, complain that they will have to abandon their position unless help comes. Three hundred Athenians volunteer, and they manage to kill the Persian cavalry commander Masistius. The Greeks now move down to Plataea, and the Spartans hold the right wing, the Athenians the left. For several days the Persian cavalry harasses the Greeks. The Greeks learn that Mardonius intends to attack the next day, and Pausanias decides to move his forces. All except the Athenians and the Tegeans (who remain with the Spartans) disobey orders and retreat all the way to the city of Plataea. Mardonius, seeing the movement of the Greek troops, mistakenly thinks they are withdrawing and so attacks. The Spartans and Athenians are separated, and the Spartans are under consistent attack from the Persian archers. Pausanias waits for favourable omens, and only thereafter allows the Spartans and Tegeans to attack (Hdt. 8.136–9.62.1). The battle is bitter and protracted, but once Mardonius is killed, resistance fails, and the barbarians flee to the palisade they have constructed, with the Spartans in hot pursuit. The other Persian commander, Artabazus, has held back his 40,000 troops, and when he sees the battle turn against the Persians, he flees, with none pursuing. Back on the field, the Athenians, cut off from the Spartans, have a long hard struggle against the Thebans—300 of the best and bravest Thebans are killed. Then the Greeks who had fled to Plataea see the tide of battle turn in favour of the Greeks, and run out in a disordered mass; some 600 of them are killed by the Theban cavalry. At the palisade there is a long and bitter struggle, and the Athenians and Spartans finally take the wall, with the Tegeans the first in. A slaughter ensues, such that fewer than 3,000 of more than 300,000 men survive. The total dead for the Greeks include 91 Spartans, 16 Tegeans, and 52 Athenians (9.62.2–70). 50 I cannot help but add that this is a very valuable indication of what might and might not have been acceptable ‘tampering’ with historical traditions—but that for another day.


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Ephorus’ account (again, trusting Diodorus) has quite a lot in common with Herodotus’, but differs in some crucial details. In the aftermath of Salamis, the Persians try to take advantage of the ‘rift’ that has developed between the Athenians and the Spartans by sending ambassadors. The Athenians give (in indirect discourse) the same speech they give in Herodotus, both to the Persians and the Spartans (Diod. 9.28.1–2). Mardonius waits in Boeotia, putting into effect the plan the Thebans had suggested, namely, that he send around to the states with bribes and try to win them away from the Greek alliance.51 When the Athenian reply comes, he makes for Athens in a rage and destroys it once again (11.28.3–6). After this, the Greeks who are gathered at the Isthmus (the sunedroi) decide to make common cause with the Athenians and advance to Plataea to fight to the finish for liberty (diago¯nizesthai peri te¯s eleutherias, 11.29), and they vow to the god that if successful, they will celebrate a festival in honour of liberty and will hold games at Plataea; they then all swear an oath, the famous ‘Oath of Plataea’. The Persians begin the battle, pouring out by night against them, the Athenians perceiving the attack before anyone else. The Greeks defeat the Persians everywhere, and only the Megarians have difficulty. But this, we are told, is because they faced the commander of the cavalry and the best horsemen the Persians mustered. Though pressed in battle, they do not leave their place (in Herodotus they had warned that they might) but send to the Athenians and Spartans. Aristides (who, apart from being commander of the Athenians, is not mentioned by Herodotus as playing any individual role in this battle) sends the picked Athenians who served as his bodyguard, and these rescue the Megarians while putting the Persians to flight and killing their commander. The Greeks are encouraged by this, because they had performed so well in the ‘dress rehearsal’ (proago¯n), to try for a decisive victory (euelpides … peri te¯s oloscherous nike¯s, 11.30.4). They move now to more favourable territory for themselves, and the account pointedly notes that the Greeks ‘planned thoughtfully’ (tois men Helle¯sin emphrono¯s bouleusamenois, 30.6) by picking a space that was narrow enough that the Persians could not use their numerical superiority. Pausanias and Aristides are confident enough of their position to lead their forces out against the barbarians, and Mardonius advances against them. Mardonius fights bravely, as do the men around him, but the Spartans oppose him and he is eventually killed, at which point the spirits of the barbarians are destroyed and they flee (11.31). Here the story diverges more from Herodotus. There is now a three-way flight: some flee to the wooden palisade (as in Herodotus), the Medizing Greeks flee towards Thebes, and Artabazus takes up about 400,000 of the men (ten times as many as in Herodotus) and leads them back through Phocis. This 51 In Herodotus this bribery had only been proposed, not carried out: Hdt. 9.2.3 with Flower and Marincola (2002) ad loc.

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threefold retreat is balanced by three groups of Greeks: the Lacedaemonians go after those in the palisade (as in Herodotus); the Athenians, Plataeans, and Thespiaeans make for Thebes and the Medizing Greeks; and the Corinthians, Sicyonians, Phliasians, and some others go after the forces with Artabazus. There is a battle outside the walls of Thebes, with the Thebans fighting brilliantly but eventually defeated by the Athenians. The latter then go back to help the Spartans and there is a stout battle by the palisade. The battle is strong especially because the leaders of Greece, the Spartans and Athenians, are vying to outdo each other. In the end the Greeks slaughter more than 100,000 of the barbarians. The Greeks themselves have more than 10,000 dead (11.32–3). What is noteworthy, of course, by contrast with Herodotus’ account, is the united Greek front in attacking the barbarian. There is no night-time desertion by the majority of the Greeks, with their consequent absence from the actual battle. The aftermath of the battle has also been fashioned with this in mind, since in this author’s account there is actually something for the Corinthians and others to do after the battle, namely to pursue Artabazus (who, in Herodotus’ account, slips away unnoticed). But we hear no more of this pursuit, not even whether there is a skirmish with Artabazus’ troops. After the battle, we are told, there was an award for valour and Aristides urged that the prize for cities be given to Sparta and for men to Pausanias. In Diodorus’ account the Greeks already know that this is the last battle, for they see this as their opportunity to ‘fight to the finish’ for their liberty (11.29). As in the other battles, gone is any suggestion of differences amongst the Greeks; gone too is the Athenians’ threat at Sparta to make whatever accommodation they might with the Persians. Most significantly, all of the Greeks are present to fight, and it is the Greeks themselves, confident from their excellent planning, who initiate the attack. Whereas the engagement in Herodotus is unintentional by the Spartans and they must for a long time endure the attack of the Persian archers, in Diodorus it is all straightforward and all the result of Greek confidence from their earlier engagement with the Persians and their desire to decide the issue. As with Thermopylae, no doubt, the essentially ‘passive’ nature of Greek engagement with the barbarians was transformed into a confident act: the timing was for Greeks, not for barbarians, to decide.

5. CONCLUSION I conclude with two points. First, we note that in the fourth century the story of the Persian Wars read rather differently than it did in the fifth (or in Herodotus, at any rate). The uncertainty, the back-and-forth, the struggle among the individual Greek city-states that is so much a part of Herodotean narrative is gone, and in its place we find a smooth teleology, in which the issue


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of victory seems never to be much in doubt, and each battle contributes in its own way to the ultimate success of the Greeks. Passive suffering at the hands of Persians is replaced with active effort by Athenians and Spartans. Even losses such as Thermopylae are deemed victories, and Thermopylae furnishes an important exemplum that will guide the Greeks in the battles to come: think again of Diodorus’ remark (possibly going back to Ephorus) that the men at Thermopylae were more responsible for victory than the victors in the later battles. Second, the responsibility for the Greek victory over Persia becomes a much contested question of the fourth century; again and again, in a variety of genres, the participants, whether Spartans, Athenians, or Corinthians, are claimed as fighting ‘on behalf of Greece’ or ‘on behalf of the common freedom’. The Athenian tradition, the one best represented for us, asserts everywhere the importance of Athens: she is never defeated in any battle in which she participates, and her victories at Marathon and Salamis are repeatedly asserted to be the most crucial for the ultimate Greek victory. In the historiographical tradition, however, it seems to be otherwise: the evidence for Theopompus is, alas, purely negative, but he clearly challenged Athenian claims. It seems too that Ephorus sought a greater balance among the players: not only Athens and Sparta, but also western Greece, which engaged in a struggle that could be portrayed as greater even than the one described by Herodotus—a perspective, perhaps, appropriate for universal history. Again and again, we see raised the question of the ‘most important’ victory: Ephorus thought that Gelon’s victory was the greatest (Diodorus calls it the ‘fairest victory’), while Diodorus’ praise of Thermopylae probably represents the ‘Spartan’ point of view. And quite a lot, after all, was riding on these arguments. With one eye on the Persian Wars of the fifth century both Greeks and Persians were waiting for the next act in their struggle to play out. That eventually would be left to a character from another area of Greece entirely, and his achievements against the Persians would, of course, eclipse those of the fifth century: in the later tradition it was Alexander, not Themistocles or Pausanias, who won ‘the fairest victory’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Asheri, D. (1988). ‘Carthaginians and Greeks’, in Cambridge Ancient History iv2: 739–60. Bigwood, J. M. (1978). ‘Ctesias as Historian of the Persian Wars’, Phoenix 32:19–41. Boedeker, D., and Sider, D. (eds.) (2001). The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire. New York and Oxford. Bosworth, A. B. (2003). ‘Plus ça change . . .: Ancient Historians and their Sources’, ClAnt 22:167–97.

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Cartledge, P. (2004). ‘What Have the Spartans Done for Us? Sparta’s Contribution to Western Civilization’, G&R 51:164–79. Connor, W. R. (1968). Theopompus and Fifth-Century Athens. Cambridge, Mass. Flower, M. A. (1998). ‘Simonides, Ephorus and Herodotus on the Battle of Thermopylae’, CQ 48:365–79. —— (2000). ‘From Simonides to Isocrates: the Fifth-Century Origins of Panhellenism’, ClAnt 19:65–101. —— and Marincola, J. (eds.) (2002). Herodotus: Histories Book IX. Cambridge. Fornara, C. (1971). Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay. Oxford. Gauthier, P. (1966). ‘Le Parallèle Himère-Salamine au Ve et au IVe Siècle av. J.-C.’, REA 68:5–32. Green, P. (2005). Diodorus Siculus, Books XI-XII.37.1. Greek History 480–431 BC: The Alternative Version. Austin. Habicht, C. (1961). ‘Falsche Urkunden zur Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter der Perserkrieg’, Hermes 89:1–35. Haillet, J. (2001). Diodore de Sicile: Bibliothèque Historique Livre XI. Paris. Henderson, M. M. (1975). ‘Plato’s Menexenus and the Distortion of History’, Acta Classica 18:25–46. Hignett, C. (1963). Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece. Oxford. Jacoby, F. (1913). ‘Herodotos (7)’, RE Suppl. ii.205–520. —— (1922). ‘Ktesias (1)’, RE xi.2032–73. —— (1949). Atthis: The Local Chronicles of Ancient Athens. Oxford. Kierdorf, W. (1966). Erlebnis und Darstellung der Perserkriege: Studien zu Simonides, Pindar, Aischylos und den attischen Redner. Göttingen. Lenfant, D. (1996). ‘Ctésias et Hérodote ou les réécritures de l’histoire dans la Perse achéménide’, REG 109:348–80. —— (2004). Ctésias. La Perse. L’Inde. Autres Fragments. Paris. Lewis, D. M. (1977). Sparta and Persia. Leiden. Loraux, N. (1993). L’invention d’Athènes: histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la ‘cité classique’ 2 (Paris); Eng. trans. of the first edition (1981): The Invention of Athens (Cambridge, Mass., 1986). Luraghi, N. (1994). Tirannidi arcaiche in Sicilia e Magna Graecia. Da Panezio di Leontini alla caduta dei Dinomedi. Florence. Marincola, J. (1997). Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography. Cambridge. Nouhaud, M. (1982). L’Utilisation de l’histoire par les orateurs attiques. Paris. Olson, D. (ed.) (2002). Aristophanes: Acharnians. Oxford. Pearson, L. (1941). ‘Historical Allusions in the Attic Orators’, CPh 36: 209–29, repr. in D. Lateiner and S. Stephens (eds.), Selected Papers (Atlanta 1983), 190–210. Perlman, S. (1961). ‘The Historical Example: Its Use and Importance as Political Propaganda in the Attic Orators’, SH 7:150–66. Pownall, F. (2004). Lessons from the Past: The Moral Use of History in Fourth-Century Prose. Ann Arbor. Robertson, N. (1976). ‘False Documents at Athens: Fifth-Century History and Fourth-Century Publicists’, Historical Reflections 3:3–25. Schwartz, E. (1907). ‘Ephoros’, RE vi.1–16 = id., Griechische Geschichtschreiber (Berlin 1959), 3–26.


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Shrimpton, G. S. (1991). Theopompus the Historian. Montreal. Stevenson, R. B. (1997). Persica. Edinburgh. Stylianou, P. J. (1998). A Historical Commentary on Diodorus Siculus Book XV. Oxford. Volquardsen, C. A. (1868). Untersuchungen über die Quellen der griechischen und sicilischen Geschichten bei Diodor Buch XI bis XVI. Kiel. Worthington, I. (1991). ‘Greek Oratory, Revision of Speeches, and the Problem of Historical Reliability’, C&M 42:55–74. —— (1994). ‘History and Oratorical Exploitation’, in id. (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action. London, 109–29.


7 Images of the Persian Wars in Rome Philip Hardie

In the long history of Orientalism two key moments in the self-definition of the West occur at turning-points in the history of European civilization: the first, the consequence of events that ensured that that civilization did indeed have a future was the fifth-century Athenian ‘invention of the barbarian’, to use Edith Hall’s phrase;1 while the second, crucial for the successful construction of the imperial idea that informs the history of western political systems for the next two millennia, was the Augustan demonization of Rome’s eastern enemies, in the first instance the ‘Egyptian’ threat of Cleopatra and her partner, and secondly the Parthians. Historically the Parthians were heirs to the empire of the Persians who confronted the Greeks in the fifth and fourth centuries bc; this fact was exploited both by the Arsacid rulers of the Parthians, and by their Roman opponents.2 Rulers, writers, and artists in Rome from the time of Augustus onwards were acutely conscious of their inheritance of the fifthcentury iconography of the barbarian Other. The question arises of whether they merely exploited a convenient stock of images and representations in the service of an imperial Roman agenda, or whether the Roman construction of their own barbarian Other cohered with a positive drive to equate the values of Romanitas with the ideals and achievements of fifth-century Athens.3 The issue is complicated by the fact of other restagings of the fifth-century polarization prior to the first century bc, above all in the representation of Alexander the Great’s victories over easterners,4 and then in the appropriation Earlier versions of this chapter were delivered at a panel on ‘Athens and Augustan Rome’ at the 125th Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in Washington, in December 1993, and published as ‘Fifth-Century Athenian and Augustan images of the barbarian other’, Classics Ireland 4 (1997), 46–56. 1 Hall (1989). 2 Arsacids’ claim to be the successors of the Achaemenids: Spawforth (1994), 241. 3 Athenian models do not figure to any extent in Dauge (1981) who rather (10–13) strives to separate the experience of the two peoples. An emphasis on the cosmopolitan aspects of Roman history and citizenship policy may have led to an underestimation of the role of the idea of the Barbarian in constructing the Roman sense of national identity: cf. Christ (1959); Herescu (1960). 4 On the temptation for Roman generals and emperors to conceive of themselves as heirs to Alexander in his war against the Persians see e.g. Hannestad (1986), 54.

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Figure 7.1 ‘The Vatican Persian’, Roman copy of a figure from a Pergamene victory monument

of the fifth-century iconography by the Hellenistic kingdoms, especially the Attalids of Pergamum. Many of the Pergamene victory monuments survive only in the form of Roman copies, for our purposes most notably the series of ‘Little Barbarians’, statues of defeated Giants, Amazons, Persians (see Fig. 7.1), and Gauls; these originated with a monument which was set up by an Attalid ruler on the Athenian Acropolis and which celebrated a Pergamene identity by inserting it within a sequence of mythological and historical victories of the Hellenic, and in particular Athenian, forces of reason and light over monstrous and barbarian enemies. Date and provenance of the Roman copies are uncertain: Andrew Stewart has recently produced detailed arguments for a date in the first quarter of the second century, in the reign of Trajan or Hadrian, and for a location in the Campus Martius, possibly in the newly rebuilt Saepta

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Iulia. Stewart assesses their likely function within their new Roman context as ‘an imperialistic spectacle of barbarian punishment’.5 How, then, do we distinguish between an Augustan (and later imperial) use of a Hellenistic koine¯ and a return to the Attic well-springs? And if such a return is visible, have we located a privileged use of fifth-century Attic models, or simply isolated one of the many sources in a self-conscious and totalizing eclecticism? In recent years a number of Roman historians and art-historians have discussed the exploitation, under Augustus and later Roman emperors, of fifthcentury Athenian celebration of the Persian Wars. I shall first review this evidence,6 and then consider the extent to which this imagery is reflected in literary texts. On a number of occasions Athenian history was transmuted into pageant preparatory to Roman military expeditions to the east. In 2 bc the Battle of Salamis was restaged as a naumachia (sea-battle) on an artificial lake on the right bank of the Tiber. Ovid, running through places and occasions in Rome good for picking up girls, remembers the time when ‘recently Caesar Augustus brought on Persian and Athenian ships in a naval battle show’.7 This formed part of the celebrations at the dedication of the temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum of Augustus, the grandest and most elaborate of Augustus’ monumental complexes whose architectural and sculptural iconography included (among other points of reference) a number of allusions to the monuments of the Athenian Acropolis.8 Karl Galinsky comments that ‘The Augustan forum was the equivalent of the Acropolis to express, through architecture and its decoration, the grandeur and the meaning of empire.’9 The Salamis naumachia was also timed as an auspicious send-off for Augustus’ grandson Gaius on a campaign to confront Parthian aggression in Armenia. Ovid reflects the official propaganda in presenting this as a great campaign of conquest, to avenge finally the Parthian defeat of Crassus in 53 bc (Ars 177–80); the reality was a far less heroic diplomatic settlement.10 Syme sums up the propagandistic purpose of the show: ‘This piece of pageantry advertised Rome as the champion of Hellas against the Orient.’11 Perhaps it would be fairer to say that by re-enacting Salamis in Rome a claim is made that Rome, a greater power

5

Stewart (2004), 136–52. The instances are listed by Spawforth (1994), 237–43. See also Schneider (1998). 7 Ovid Ars Am. 1.171–2 quid, modo cum belli naualis imagine Caesar | Persidas induxit Cecropiasque rates?; cf. Aug. Res Gestae 23; Dio 55.10.7; Vell. Pat. 2.100; Suet. Aug. 43.2; Schneider (1986), 64–7; Bowersock (1984), 174–5; Coleman (1993). See also above, p. 5 with Fig. 1.1. 8 Galinsky (1996), 200–4 on quotations from the Acropolis in the Forum of Augustus, 360–2 on Augustan Rome and the Athenian model more generally; J. Ganzert and V. Kockel (1988), 149–200; Wesenberg (1984). 9 Galinsky (1996), 203. 10 See conveniently Hollis (1977) on Ov. Ars Am. 1.177–228. 11 Syme (1984), 922. 6

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yet, has succeeded to the historical mission of Athens. In ad 57 or 58 Nero staged another naumachia to coincide with the launch in the winter of 57/8 of another war against the Parthians over Armenia,12 and much later, in 235, Gordian III put on a Greek agonistic festival in Rome in honour of Athena Promachos, who had protected the Athenians at Marathon, before a campaign against the Sasanid Persians who had by now taken over from the Parthian Arsacid dynasty. There is evidence also of the propagation of the Persian Wars analogy in more permanent forms of visual display. Tonio Hölscher has argued that some Roman neo-Attic reliefs showing Victory holding a ship’s stern-post, in allusion, it is claimed, to the battle of Actium, and setting up a trophy with eastern spoils, are related to reliefs with images of Nike and Athena originally produced to commemorate Salamis. This would imply a comparison between the two great naval victories of Greece and Rome over forces of the East: it was a central part of Augustan ideology that the battle of Actium had been a victory of the Roman and Italian West over the monstrous forces of the East.13 Rolf Schneider has made a persuasive case that a number of striking polychrome marble statues of eastern barbarians (see e.g. Figure 7.2) are related to a grand victory monument erected, perhaps in the Palatine sanctuary, by Augustus to celebrate the victory over Parthia of 21 bc, in reality another diplomatic settlement, but presented as a great military conquest.14 The monument is reconstructed in the form of three kneeling barbarians supporting a tripod, alluding to the famous tripod-column set up at Delphi to commemorate the battle of Plataea. Pausanias (1.18.8) describes a similar monument, a bronze tripod supported by figures of Persians in Phrygian marble, in the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, perhaps of Hadrianic (so Spawforth) rather than Augustan (as Schneider argues) date. A monument in this setting joins Roman emperor and his Athenian subjects as champions of Graeco-Roman civilization over the several waves of eastern threat.15 In this last case the dedicator is probably the Roman emperor, the philhellenic Hadrian acknowledging the great traditions of Athens at the same time as those traditions are absorbed into the greater power of Rome, which has taken on the mantle of defender of civilization against the East. In another example it is an Athenian who expresses both pride in his city’s past and gratitude to the present-day imperial power of Rome, in an honorific inscription to Nero in gilded-bronze letters set up on the eastern architrave of the Parthenon

12

Dio 61.9.5; Suet. Nero 12. 14 Hölscher (1984). See Schneider (1986). 15 Cf. also Kuttner (1995), 83 suggesting that the figures of Parthian captives in the Basilica Aemilia allude to the Persian Porch in Sparta, and also referring to Persian caryatids at the Villa Farnesina. 13


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Figure 7.2 Kneeling polychrome eastern barbarian, Naples Archaeological Museum

by Tiberius Claudius Novius in 61/2. Kevin Carroll suggests that the inscription establishes an analogy between Nero’s ongoing Armenian war against the Parthians and Greek victories over barbarians celebrated in the various monuments, not least the Parthenon itself, housed in the museum that was the Athenian Acropolis.16 16 Carroll (1982); Spawforth (1994), 234–7. Spawforth also adduces the levying of Spartan auxiliaries by Lucius Verus (161) and Caracalla (214) for their expeditions to the East, remembering Sparta’s part in the defence of Greece against the Persians. On the Persian Wars as a ‘shared symbol’ between Greeks and their Roman masters see also Alcock (2002), 82–3.

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In all of these cases, whatever the uncertainties of the lacunose evidence, the general significance of the Persian Wars iconography seems clear enough. Things are more problematic when we have to deal with a ‘bad emperor’. Suetonius tells of a curious episode at Life of Caligula 19 where the wiring of the communications system of imperial representation gets crossed at some point between transmitter and receiver:17 Besides this, he devised a novel and unheard of kind of pageant; for he bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, after which a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days, the first day on a caparisoned horse, himself resplendent in a crown of oak leaves, a buckler, a sword, and a cloak of cloth of gold; on the second, in the dress of a charioteer in a car drawn by a pair of famous horses, carrying before him a boy named Darius, one of the hostages from Parthia, and attended by the praetorian guard and a company of his friends in Gallic chariots. I know that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration by bridging the much narrower Hellespont; others, that it was to inspire fear in Germany and Britain, on which he had designs, by the fame of some stupendous work. But when I was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason for the work, as revealed by the emperor’s confidential courtiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses. (trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb)

Suetonius reports a number of different contemporary reactions: the palace gossip reported at the end casts doubt over the balance of the imperial mind even with regard to the first two motivations: megalomania, rather than prudent statecraft, even though Suetonius includes the episode in the deeds of Caligula reported as ‘those of an emperor’, rather than ‘those of a monster’ (Cal. 22). A favourable assessment is certainly possible: the main audience intended would be the Parthian hostages themselves and their folks back home, to be cowed into submission by this display of Roman might, all the more so given that the Parthians themselves claimed to be the successors to Achaemenid greatness: Caligula outdoes Xerxes.18 Interpretation is further complicated by the report in Dio (59.17.3) that Caligula wore the breastplate of Alexander the Great on the occasion. It is not impossible that the message is a layered one: like many other Roman generals and emperors, Caligula plays the game of imitating Alexander (who had defeated the Persian king Darius III), but at the same time plays the part of a Xerxes, in order to demonstrate Roman superiority to great technological achievements of the past. 17 18

The episode is reported also by Sen. De Brev. Vit. 18.5; Dio 59.17; Jos. Ant. Jud. 19.5–6. So Balsdon (1934), 50–4.


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But, from a hostile perspective, at the same time as the emperor proclaims the superiority of West over East by parading a hostage called Darius, he also identifies his own transgressive power over the elements with the proverbial eastern hybris of the successor of another Darius.19 A constant strand in the representation of the Roman emperor is the contrast between the good princeps, the all-powerful embodiment of rationality and virtue, and the bad tyrant, who abuses his omnipotence by inflicting on his subjects the excesses of the passions to which he himself is slave: the difference is often one of ideological perspective.20 The wise cosmocrator may flip into the acratic despot who projects his inner psychic disorder on to a disturbance of the physical order of nature, turning sea into land (Xerxes’ bridge of boats across the Hellespont) and land into sea (Xerxes’ attempt to dig a canal through Mount Athos). Roman fascination with the Persian king has not a little to do with the anxiety that the emperor might be tempted to play the part of an eastern tyrant; hence too, perhaps, a more urgent concern to reinforce the stereotype of the contrast between western virtue and eastern vice. The accusation of being a Xerxes could already be made against one of the great dynasts of the later Republic, notorious for his wealth and for the massive engineering works that he undertook in pursuit of his luxurious lifestyle. Velleius Paterculus (2.33.4) records the trading of insults between Pompey and Lucullus in their struggle to be awarded the command against Mithradates, after Lucullus had already won splendid victories in the east against Mithradates and the Armenian king Tigranes II. Pompey upbraided Lucullus with his greed for money, not without justification according to Velleius: ‘Lucullus, a great man in other respects, was the first to practise an immoderate luxury in buildings, feasts, and magnificence. Because of the great piles that he built out into the sea and the introduction of the sea into the land by digging out mountains, Pompey the Great wittily used to call him Xerxes in a toga (Xerxes togatus).’21 Pompey makes fun of his opponent’s unRoman love of luxury,22 with allusion to Xerxes’ proverbial confusion of sea and land, but the jibe may have added point when the target is someone with ambitions to continue a career of Roman conquest against eastern enemies.

19 For an interesting case-study of the way in which criticism of the ‘bad emperor’, in this case Nero, could be articulated through an Orientalism see Woodman (1992). 20 On the stereotype of the tyrant in rhetoric and historiography see Dunkle (1971). See Hall (1989) on the tyrant as barbarian. 21 Cf. Pliny Nat. 9.170 ‘Lucullus also excavated a mountain near Naples and built a canal that cost more than a villa, letting in the sea; for this reason Pompey the Great called him a Xerxes in a toga’; Plut. Luc. 39.3. For Lucullus’ gigantic building works on the Bay of Naples see also Varro Rer. Rust. 3.17.9. 22 Building out into the Bay of Naples became a cliché of Roman moralizing on behaviour à rebours: see Nisbet and Hubbard (1978) on Hor. Odes 2.18.21.

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Lucan uses the example of Xerxes in depicting the megalomaniac attempt to control nature by his anti-hero Julius Caesar, whose victory over Pompey in the Bellum Civile is Lucan’s foundation-legend for Rome’s enslavement to the emperor. In an attempt to prevent Pompey’s flight overseas from Brundisium Caesar blockades the harbour, first with huge chunks of mountain hurled about as if by one of the Giants who attacked the Olympian gods (BC 2.660–8), and, when that fails, by an enormous boom (669–79): So, after no amount of rocks could hold their mass in the sea, he decided to cut down forests and attach bonds to them, connecting tree-trunks with huge chains into a wide barrier. Tradition tells that such were the roads that the arrogant Persian built over the sea, when with great daring with his bridges he joined Europe to Asia, Sestos to Abydos, and marched over the waters of the fast-flowing Hellespont, without fear of the east or west winds, at the time when he led ships and sails into the middle of Athos. In such a way was the entrance to the sea narrowed by the felled woods; then the work rose in a great rampart and tall towers trembled over the sea.

Xerxes is one in a series of megalomaniac generals and kings with whom Caesar is explicitly or implicitly compared in the course of the Bellum Civile in order to show up the hypocrisy of his claims to be acting in the interest of Rome: at other times he is a Hannibal or an Alexander the Great. The last of Caligula’s acts that Suetonius reports under the rubric of ‘acts of an emperor’ was to begin digging a canal across the isthmus of Corinth (Life of Caligula 21), a project previously entertained by Julius Caesar (Suetonius, Life of Julius 44), and subsequently by the last of the Julio-Claudians, Nero, who got further with the excavations than any of his predecessors. The historiographical tradition shows clearly how this could be dressed up as either a great work of civil engineering or the mad project of a tyrant. According to the pseudo-Lucianic Nero (2) it was an attempt to imitate Darius and Xerxes: even the praise that it attracted from those who applauded the project could be given an unfavourable gloss: ‘Tyrannical natures are drunk, but to an extent they have a thirst for words of praise as well.’23 Xerxes’ hybristic attempts to control the elements were exploited by the rhetorical declaimers: two of the surviving seven Suasoriae of the Elder Seneca take Xerxes as their theme. In the second Suasoria, ‘The three hundred Spartans sent against Xerxes deliberate whether they too should retreat following the flight of the contingents of three hundred sent from all over Greece’, the Spartans are imagined as defying the man who pierces through mountains and paves the sea. These fantastical rhetorical exercises form a kind of Roman mythology, whose often remote and unreal situations may speak more closely to Roman 23 Other reports: Philostr. Apoll. 5.7 (favourable); Suet. Nero 19 (at the end of the list of Nero’s acceptable actions); see Traina (1987); Alcock (1994), pointing out the practical benefits of this engineering work. At [Sen.] Herc. Oet. 82–4 Hercules, looking for new labours in order to earn a place as a god, envisages joining the seas on either side of the Corinthian Isthmus.


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concerns than is often allowed. In Juvenal’s tenth Satire the vanity of military ambition is exemplified by three great generals whose successful defiance of the bounds of nature was followed by an ignominious end: Hannibal, who broke through the Alps with which Nature sought to block his path (147–67); Alexander the Great, for whom one world was not large enough (168–73); and Xerxes, who sailed on Athos and turned the sea into solid land (173–87). Juvenal introduces the theme of military ambition as something that tempts Roman, Greek, and barbarian generals alike, but gives examples only of the last two categories; but all three, Hannibal, Alexander, and Xerxes can be used as mirrors of (perverted) Roman ambition, as they had been by Lucan. All three are also all stock subjects of rhetorical declamation: ‘Go madman. Hurry over the cruel Alps, so that you can become something to amuse boys, and turn into the subject of a declamation’, Juvenal taunts Hannibal (10.166–7). The declamatory tradition delighted to point out the contrast between Xerxes’ extravagant military ambitions and his ignominious flight in defeat. Seneca the Younger echoes the declaimers when a messenger in his tragedy the Agamemnon reports that, after the storm that struck the Greeks on their way back from Troy, Agamemnon ‘returns more like one defeated, dragging with him a few battered ships left out of so great a fleet’ (Sen. Ag. 412–13). Richard Tarrant in his commentary, after noting the parallels in the declaimers, observes that ‘accounts of Pompey were similarly coloured’.24 Pompey, successor in the eastern command to Lucullus, and the greatest of the late Republican Roman conquerors in the East, is another whose pretensions called forth direct allusion to non-Roman potentates. Dio, reporting the murder of Pompey on his arrival in Egypt after the battle of Pharsalus, gives us his version of the ‘how are the mighty fallen’ topos (42.5.5): ‘Pompey previously had been considered the mightiest of Romans, so that he even received the nickname “Agamemnon”, . . . but now he was slaughtered as if he had been the lowliest even of the Egyptians.’ The interconvertibility for this purpose of Homeric and Persian kings appears in Appian’s report (Bell. Civ. 2.67) that Pompey’s peers at Rome, envious and scornful of his power over kings in the east, called him ‘king of kings and Agamemnon’: ‘king of kings’, a title used of Agamemnon in Seneca’s tragedy (39, in allusion to Agamemnon’s command over the other Greek kings in the expedition to Troy), was more especially associated with the kings of Persia and Parthia. Xerxes’ conversion of sea into land and land into sea had been a topos of the rhetorical schools since at least the time of Isocrates; for Lucretius it is so well-known a cliché that he does not even need to name Xerxes; Cicero uses it casually as an example of extreme human striving for achievement.25 We have 24

See Tarrant (1976), ad loc. As a rhetorical theme Xerxes has a long history: see Mayor on Juv. 10.173–84, referring to Isocr. Paneg. 89; Lucr. 3.1029–32; Cic Fin. 2.112. 25

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seen Pompey using it possibly in pointed connection with Roman wars in the East, and then Pompey himself tarred with the brush of aiming for the power of an eastern monarch. But the evidence surveyed above gives some grounds for suspecting that it was at the time of the civil wars at the end of the Roman Republic and the early years of Augustus that the analogy of the Greek defeat of the Persians became embedded in the Roman consciousness as a defining element of national identity.26 Despite the long—perhaps universal—history of defining the Self through contrast with the Other, and the extensive previous history of the use of the fifth-century Athenian Persian Wars model, the original model held an especial attraction for Romans in the 30s and 20s bc, offering as it did a myth of new beginnings and fresh power after a conflict almost fatal to the survival itself of the state, with the particular attraction that enmity between Roman and Roman could be projected on to a myth of enmity between Roman and an oriental foreigner. This can be seen in part as the precipitation of a rigid polarization out of a more general habit of drawing comparisons between present and past events. Already at the beginning of the series of civil wars that led to the principate we find Pompey in January 49 bc appealing to the example of Themistocles abandoning the city of Athens in the face of the Persian threat, in order to justify his own flight from Rome in the face of Julius Caesar’s advance on the city; Cicero retorts that fifty years later Pericles did not abandon Athens when the enemy were at the gates, nor had the Romans abandoned the Capitol when the Gauls had taken the rest of the city in 387 bc.27 Pompey may have chosen the example of Themistocles and the Persians partly in order to cast a slur on Caesar’s claim to be acting as a self-respecting Roman statesman, but if he did Cicero dilutes the force of this by casting more widely for examples of ‘the enemy at the gate’. But some of the rhetoric that demonized the enemy within as in truth the personification of unRoman vices had already been developed by Cicero himself in the representation of his own heroic conflicts with Catiline and Antony; Cicero may be, indirectly, another channel by which the fifth-century model comes to inform the Augustan version, to the extent that the Philippics are modelled on a Demosthenic ‘rhetoric of crisis’ that in turn looks back to the heroic prototype of the fifth century, as Cecil Wooten has argued.28 This would not be the only respect in which Ciceronian models are influential in the elaboration of what is familiar to us as Augustan ideology.

26

This is also the conclusion of Spawforth (1994), 240–1. Cic. Att. 7.11.3; cf. Plut. Pomp. 63. 28 Wooten (1983), 20; 170 ‘Demosthenes surely was inspired by the model of Pericles and saw the conflict with Philip in terms similar to that which had taken place earlier between Athens and the Persian empire.’ 27


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VIRGIL AND HORACE In the last part of this chapter I look at ways in which the Persian Wars model finds expression in the poetry of the early Augustan principate. In my study of the political iconography of the Aeneid I developed a lengthy analogy between the imagery of the Great Altar of Zeus at Pergamum, the most ambitious of Pergamene victory monuments, in particular its reliefs of Gigantomachy (the battle between the Olympian gods and the giants) and the use of Gigantomachic imagery for the mythological underpinning of the Augustanism of the Aeneid. I suggested that Virgil might be directly indebted to Hellenistic models, whether in the visual arts or lost epics.29 The Attic classicizing of the Pergamene altar is well known, in particular its use of ‘quotations’ from the Parthenon.30 One of the places where I detect Gigantomachic allusion is in the scenes of Roman history on the Shield of Aeneas in Aeneid 8, particularly in the comparison of the vast ships arrayed against each other at the battle of Actium to uprooted islands or mountains clashing, typical weapons of the battle between gods and giants. Now there is some evidence that the Homeric Shield of Achilles, the primary epic model for the Virgilian Shield of Aeneas, had already been appropriated by the imagers of Alexander the Great;31 but I also suggested that the Virgilian Shield might look directly to the shield of the Pheidian Athena Parthenos, with its scenes of Gigantomachy (painted on the inside) and Amazonomachy (carved in relief on the outside).32 This suggestion has been taken up by R. Cohon, who argues that the scene of the Gallic assault on the Capitol at the climax of the first series of scenes on the Virgilian shield (Aen. 8.652–62) alludes to the relief of the Amazon attack on the Athenian acropolis on the exterior of the Parthenos shield.33 Within an Athenian context images of Gigantomachy and Amazonomachy are mythical analogues for the historical encounter of Greeks and Persians: Virgil’s depiction of the battle of Actium on the Shield of Aeneas is one of the starkest examples of the representation of that battle as a contest between the civilized forces of Italy and Rome, championed by the Olympian gods, and the barbarian rabble from the East, supported by the monstrous gods of Egypt. It is a reasonable guess that the complex iconography of the Virgilian Shield draws both on Hellenistic ways of figuring victories over barbarians and on fifth-century models that had already been used in the Hellenistic period. 29 Hardie (1986), ch. 4. But see now the arguments against the substantial existence of Hellenistic epic in Cameron (1995), ch. 10. 30 See Robertson (1975), 539–40. 31 Hardie (1985). 32 Hardie (1986), 99, noting also the possibility of an allusion to the Parthenos shield in the description at Aen. 2.227 of the twin serpents nestling under the shield of the Trojan Minerva (following the suggestion of Petersen (1873) 338); cf. also Harrison (1987). 33 Cohon (1991). Picard (1936) suggests that the scenes of the Trojan War in the Carthaginian temple of Juno in Aen. 1 may allude to the Parthenon metopes of the same subject.

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Another Virgilian example is the figure of Camilla, the ally of Turnus against Aeneas in Aeneid 7 and 11. Camilla is a pure-bred Italian, a living embodiment of the native values vaunted by Numanus Remulus against the Trojan ‘invaders’ from the East at Aeneid 9.598–620. She is surrounded by maidens with impeccably Italian names (11.655–6): Larina, Tulla, Tarpeia. She is also an alien, an Amazon to be precise—and Virgil is precise, for this is what she is called at the height of her aristeia (11.648); metaphorical identity is reworked as simile at 659–63, a simile that points to the (probable) literary model in the early Greek epic the Aithiopis that narrated the exploits of the Amazon Penthesilea who came as an ally to Troy after the death of Hector (11.648–63): There in the middle of all this bloodshed, exulting in it, was the Amazon Camilla with the quiver on her shoulder, and one side bared for battle. Sometimes the pliant spears came thick from her hand; sometimes, unwearied, she caught up her mighty double axe, and the golden bow and arrows of Diana rang on her shoulder. Whenever she was forced to retreat, she turned her bow and aimed her arrows while still in flight. The girls she had chosen as her companions were all about her, Larina, Tulla, and Tarpeia brandishing her bronze axe, all of them daughters of Italy, chosen by the servant of the gods Camilla to do her honour by their beauty and to be her own trusted attendants in peace and war. They were like the Amazons of Thrace whose horses’ hooves drum on the frozen waters of the river Thermodon when they fight round Hippolyte in their brightly coloured armour, or when Penthesilea, daughter of Mars, rides home in her chariot and her army of women with their crescent shields exult in a great howling tumult. (Aeneid 11.648–63, trans. D. West)

But the archaic Greek model is only part of the story. Gransden in his commentary on Aeneid 11 claims that ‘There is no trace in V.’s Camilla of the idea of amazonomachy as a kind of gigantomachy, a fight against the monstrous and the barbarous, commonly found in Athenian art and literature.’34 This is wrong: one detail associates Camilla very firmly with the oriental barbarian, when we are told that (653–4) ‘even if, driven to flee, she withdraws, she turns her bow and aims arrows in flight’ (illa etiam, si quando in tergum pulsa recessit, | specula conuerso fugientia derigit arcu, 653–4). This is the tactic of the Parthian (cf. Virg. Geo. 3.31; Hor. C. 1.19.10–12; 2.13.17–18). The identification of the eastern enemy, in this case the Persians, with the Amazon is commonplace in Athenian iconography.35 Virgil’s use of the topos is complex, for in the one character of Camilla are combined images of the indigenous and 34 Gransden (1991), 22 n. 58. Horsfall (2003) on Aen. 11.654 is also unduly sceptical of the Parthian connection. 35 In general see P. Devambez s.v. ‘Amazones’ in LIMC i. 1 (Zurich and Munich 1981). In the Hellenistic period the use of the Amazon is complicated by the fact that a number of Greek cities in Asia Minor claim an Amazon as their founder; an example of the Athenian-type use of the Amazon as a figure of the enemy is provided by the Attalid dedication on the Athenian acropolis. On the possible use of Amazonomachy as image of Augustan victory see La Rocca (1985) (viewed sceptically by Gurval (1995), 116 n. 73); Fink (1964/65); Simon (1962) (griffins fighting Amazons interpreted as Apollonian defeat of barbarians).


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the alien, and a similar ambivalence characterizes the Trojan warrior who mesmerizes Camilla, the former priest Chloreus (Aen. 11.768–82), a devotee of the Magna Mater, the eastern goddess who in Aeneid 6 had been naturalized as a figure of Roma herself (6.784–7); but Chloreus here wears ‘foreign purple’, and his armoured horse makes of him an oriental cataphract (cf. Sall. Hist. 4.65; Livy 35.48.3).36 It is at such moments of ‘polarity deconstructed’, in another of Edith Hall’s formulations,37 that we see how the construction of the barbarian is really a way of talking about the Self, and not the Other. In these first battles between Trojans and native Italians what is at stake is the definition of what will become the Italian-Roman national identity, and at this stage the sharp boundaries are never far from collapsing into a chaotic lack of discrimination. But it was a danger that could never be entirely suppressed. Romanitas could be threatened by the barbarism both of civil war and of the tyrant. It is in fifthcentury Attic tragedy above all that the discourse of self-definition through contrast or coincidence with the barbarian Other is developed. In the case of Virgil I incline increasingly to believe that the presence in the Aeneid of analogues with fifth-century Athenian ideology reflects a profound restructuring of epic that allows it to mimic within Augustan culture some of the sociopolitical functions of Attic tragedy within the city of Athens.38 Within the imagistic economy of the Aeneid a line may be traced from Camilla to the battle of Actium, which at least in later Augustan art and pageant is associated with the Greek victory at Salamis. Camilla is an avatar of Dido, who in turn has much of Cleopatra in her. The indirect association of Amazon and Cleopatra is one also made in Propertius 3.13.39 The penultimate poem in Horace’s first book of Odes, 1.37, is the most famous poetic celebration of the defeat of the monstrous woman.40 In this poem Horace reaches back beyond the fifth century to the poetry of Alcaeus for a model to celebrate the defeat of tyranny; but the curious poem that follows and concludes the whole book, may suggest another orientation (Odes 1.38): I detest all Persian extravagance, boy. (Persicos odi, puer, apparatus) Garlands bound with bast of the linden displease. Quit the search for where in the neighbourhood late Roses may linger. 36

See West (1985). Hall (1989), 201 ff. ‘The polarity deconstructed’, discussing inter alia the use of barbarian stereotypes in the depiction of the perversion of the ‘natural’ order in the interaction of the Aeschylean Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. 38 See Hardie (1991) and (1997). 39 Wyke (1992), 117 for some reflections on why the analogy between Cleopatra and Amazons is never made totally explicit. 40 With Hor. C. 1.37.17–18 adurgens, accipiter uelut | mollis columbas (of Caesar) cf. Aen. 11.721–2 quam facile accipiter saxo sacer ales ab alto | consequitur pennis sublimem in nube columbam (Camilla and Aunus). If Virgil alludes to Horace here, he playfully transfers to the Amazon Camilla an image applied by Horace to the conqueror of an ‘Amazon’. 37

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Philip Hardie Mind you take pains not to elaborate on Simple myrtle. Myrtle’s not unbecoming Wear for you the waiter nor me while drinking Under a dense vine. (trans. Guy Lee).

Horace turns from the public celebration of the triumph41 (triumpho is the last word of Odes 1.37) to the private symposium; the modesty of the poet’s provisions is also contrasted with the orgiastic drinking-bouts of Cleopatra and her eunuchs (Odes 1.37.9–14). In a political context the proverbial luxuriousness of the Persians42 hints at something else: an Attic superiority to the decadence of the enemy now safely defeated.43 In support of a political reading of Odes 1.38 one may note that apparatus may be used specifically to refer to the paraphernalia of a triumph.44 The suspicion that the reference to the Persians in Odes 1.38 alludes by association to Octavian’s recent victory over his eastern enemy is strengthened by the well-known fact that Horace (and other Augustan poets) refer to the Parthians anachronistically as Medes or Persians.45 The sequence in Odes 1.37 and 38 of military and moral onslaughts on the eastern barbarian is repeated in the first two Roman Odes (the first of which picks up the odi of 1.38.1 in a similarly programmatic context). In the penultimate stanza of Odes 3.1 the list of luxuries useless to allay pain culminates with (44) Achaemenium costum ‘Achaemenian—or Persian—costume’. The poem’s closing dismissal of diuitias operosiores, ‘wealth and its troubles’, is answered by the first words of the next poem, angustam amice pauperiem pati, ‘to welcome pinching poverty’, and the young warrior trained in

41

Possibly in the form of a dithyramb: Hardie (1977) argues that Odes 1.37 is modelled on Pindar’s second Dithyramb. If Hardie is correct, Odes 1.37 is substantially modelled on a 5thrather than a 6th-cent. Greek model, although not one written for an Athenian patron. 42 See Nisbet and Hubbard (1970), ad loc. 43 See Toohey (1980); Nussbaum (1971) points to the shared ‘preoccupation with, and rejection of, the Oriental as exotic and degenerate’, the shared drinking theme, and the contrast between the ‘utterly private, intimate and dateless world’ of 1.38, and the ‘public, historic world of 37’. 44 OLD s.v. apparatus 3a. The sense ‘rhetorical devices, embellishments’ (OLD s.v. 3b) is in line with a metapoetic reading of C. 1.38: see Cody (1976), 42. 45 Hor. C. 1.2.22, 51; 1.21.15; 1.29.4; 2.1.31; 2.2.17; 2.9.21; 2.16.6; 3.3.44; 3.5.4, 9; 3.8.19; 4.14.42; 4.15.23; Carm. saec. 54; Prop. 3.12.11; 4.3.8 (Persicus Dousa: see Hutchinson (2006) ad loc.); Ov. Ars 1.225–6. Persae is already used to refer to the Parthians by Cicero, De domo sua 60. Cf. Campbell (1924), 110: ‘It would scarcely be possible to make too much of . . . the juxtaposition of the two concluding poems of Book I. Impotence, effeminacy . . . the qualities of Cleopatra whose defeat he celebrates in the 37th; in the 38th he denounces “Persian” . . . magnificence . . . This is . . . the reason for the prominence . . . assigned in many a passage of the Odes to anti-Parthian campaign projects; for Horace they are what he almost always calls them, “Medes” or “Persians”, and all that the name involves must be subdued.’


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this school of hardship is immediately dispatched to fight—who but Parthos feroces, ‘the fierce Parthians’? Yet the example of Odes 1.38 also shows how difficult it is to isolate a pure strain of allusion to fifth-century models, for the rejection of triumphal pomp must of course be understood in the context of a Hellenistic, Callimachean poetics, that may even reach out to claim for itself the racial epithet Persicos. The ‘Persian chain’ is the term opposed by Callimachus in the Aitia prologue to the techne¯, ‘art’, by which he wishes his poetry to be judged (fr. 1.17–18), in a passage that appears to allude to the very same work of Pindar that Alex Hardie has argued to be the model for the Cleopatra ode, namely the second Dithyramb. There Pindar begins by disparaging previous composers of dithyrambs who used excessively long sentences, ‘Earlier the song of the dithyrambs went stretched out like a rope (schoinoteneia) . . .’ (Pindar fr. 70B Maehler).46 The conjunction of Pindar and Callimachus may give point to the somewhat odd detail of the second line of Odes 1.38, displicent nexae philyra coronae ‘I do not like garlands woven out of linden-bast’, for philyra, ‘the fibrous membrane under the bark of the linden-tree’, like schoinos, ‘rush’, is a vegetable material for rope-making.47 ‘Persian’ is Callimachus’ own addition to the Pindaric image, one of a number of Oriental epithets applied to the wrong kind of poetry in both the Aitia prologue and the conclusion of the Hymn to Apollo, almost as if he were polemicizing against an Asianism avant la lettre. It may be that in these passages Callimachus is revitalizing a fifthcentury opposition between Oriental and Greek, or Attic, for his own purposes, thus mediating between the fifth century and Horace.48 In a closing poem like Odes 1.38 we should expect a high degree of literary selfconsciousness: Horace’s decisive rejection of something Persian looks back to the polarization of the fifth-century Athenian model (‘I hate Persians’), but in full awareness of the complicated developments that have intervened since, and which taken together constitute a genealogy for Horace’s own poetic and ideological position.

46 In later rhetorical writers schoinotenēs” is a term of criticism for prolix compositions. See Bowra (1964), 194–5. Cody (1976), 41 sees the Callimachean allusion in Horace’s Persicos. 47 Cf. Van der Weiden (1991) ad loc.; Newman (1985), 181. philyra: Plin. Nat. 19.31 ‘the name that the Greeks give the plant [i.e. schoinos] is evidence that they once used rushes for ropes; later it is clear that they used palm-leaves and linden’. It is perhaps relevant that philyra in both Greek and Latin may be used of a writing material. 48 Dilthey (1865), 25–6 takes the ‘sacred spring’ of Hy. Apoll. 112 to refer to the spring Callirhoe at Eleusis, which would then give an Oriental/Attic opposition, but F. Williams ad loc. regards this as ‘not a necessary inference’. On Callimachus’ antiquarian interest in things Attic see Hollis (1992).

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Hollis, A. S. (1992). ‘Attica in Hellenistic poetry’, ZPE 93: 1–15. Horsfall, N. (2003). Virgil, Aeneid 11. A Commentary. Leiden and Boston. Hutchinson, G. O. (2006). Propertius Book IV. Cambridge. Kuttner, A. (1995). Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the Boscoreale Cups. Berkeley and Oxford. La Rocca, E. (1985). Amazzonomachia: le sculture frontali del tempio di Apollo Sosiano. Rome. Malloch, S. J. V. (2001). ‘Gaius’ Bridge at Baiae and Alexander imitatio’, CQ 51: 206–17. Newman, J. K. (1985). ‘Pindar and Callimachus’, ICS 10: 169–89. Nisbet, R. G. M., and Hubbard, M. (1970). A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book I. Oxford. —— (1978). A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book II. Oxford. Nussbaum, G. B. (1971). ‘A Study of Odes 1.37 and 38’, Arethusa 4: 91–7. Petersen, E. (1873). Die Kunst des Pheidias. Berlin. Picard, C. (1936). ‘Virgile et l’Ilioupersis du Parthénon’, RÉL 14: 269–71. Robertson, M. (1975). A History of Greek Art. Cambridge. Schneider, R. M. (1986). Bunte Barbaren. Orientalstatuen aus farbigen Marmor in der römischen Repräsentationskunst. Worms. —— (1998). ‘Die Faszination des Feindes: Bilder der Parther und des Orients in Rom’, in J. Wiesehöfer (ed.), Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse/The Arsacid empire: sources and documentation. Stuttgart, 95–146. Simon, E. (1962). ‘Zur Bedeutung des Greifen in der Kunst der Kaiserzeit’, Latomus 21: 749–80. Spawforth, A. (1994). ‘Symbol of Unity? The Persian-Wars Tradition in the Roman Empire’, in S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford), 233–47. Stewart, A. (2004). Attalos, Athens, and the Akropolis: The Pergamene ‘Little Barbarians’ and their Roman and Renaissance Legacy. Cambridge. Syme, R. (1984). Roman Papers, iii. Oxford. Tarrant, R. J. (1976). Seneca Agamemnon. Oxford. Toohey, P. G. (1980). ‘A Note on Horace Odes 1.38’, Maia 32: 171–4. Traina, G. (1987). ‘L’impossibile taglio dell’Istmo (Ps. Lucian Nero 1–5),’ RFIC 115: 40–9. Van der Weiden, M. J. H. (1991). The Dithyrambs of Pindar: Introduction, Text and Commentary. Amsterdam. Wesenberg, B. (1984). ‘Augustusforum und Akropolis’, JdI 99: 161–85. West, G. S. (1985). ‘Chloreus and Camilla’, Vergilius 31: 22–9. Williams, F. (1978). Callimachus Hymn to Apollo. A Commentary. Oxford. Woodman, T. (1992). ‘Nero’s alien capital’, in T. Woodman and J. Powell (eds.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature. Cambridge, 173–88. Wooten, C. (1983). Cicero’s Philippics and their Demosthenic Model: the Rhetoric of Crisis. Chapel Hill. Wyke, M. (1992). ‘Augustan Cleopatras: female power and poetic authority’, in A. Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus. Bristol, 98–140.


8 De Malignitate Plutarchi Plutarch, Herodotus, and the Persian Wars Christopher Pelling

Nowadays the word ‘Xerxes’ does not mean all that much. Tap it into an internet search-engine, and you will find a fair number of firms under that name—but it is hard to see any clear connection with anything that features in this volume. You will find a fibreglass consultant; a fair number of computer hardware firms; a lot of heavy metal music. There is a firm that deals in drinkable water, one in graphic design, and one in security breaches. There is a gentlemen’s outfitters. There is a processing plant in Avon, Ohio, which had to close down because of complaints by local residents about the odours. There is a pretty butterfly (and there is a Themistocles butterfly too); there are certainly a large number of pictures of handsome cats, and most (not all) are at least Persian cats, even if one of them is ‘son of Agamemnon’. But not much of this suggests a public that knows much about the original Xerxes. It is a name that is a name, suggesting bigness and a vague exoticism and no more. Xerxes is one of those celebrities who is known for being a celebrity, but no-one can quite remember what they do or did. Then there is the opera Xerxes by Handel, treated by David Kimbell in Chapter 10 in this volume; but that has not had much chance to influence popular culture either. It ran for only five appearances in its initial run, and was hardly performed for 250 years afterwards, though it is true that it has enjoyed a considerable revival in the last twenty years. People know it best for ‘Handel’s Largo’, the opening aria (and actually a larghetto). It suggests deep love and wistfulness—but in the original it is sung by Xerxes to his plane tree, a man who is so bored and sex-deprived that he has nothing but a tree to fall in love with.1 And probably Xerxes’ story was no more familiar in Handel’s own My thanks to the editors for helpful comments, to Tim Duff and Alexei Zadorozhnyi for allowing me to see unpublished papers on Themistocles–Camillus, and particularly to Franco Basso for stimulating and sustained discussion of the passage in Epicurus makes even a pleasant life impossible and its relation to Malice. 1 My wife walked down the aisle to it at our wedding. (I hope I may be forgiven this personal note, which the editors have urged me not to suppress.) We too, rather obviously, were not fully aware of its original context when we chose it.

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day. His librettist borrows a few things and names from Herodotus, including indeed the plane tree (7.27, 31), but mixes them in a way which assumed his audience knew nothing about it at all. Thus Xerxes’ future bride Amastris is given an important role as she struggles against rivals for Xerxes’ hand, but it ends with the various complicated triangles all sorted out and Xerxes and Amastris getting together, admittedly with a certain by-play with a sword at his breast. It would complicate the scene considerably if the audience knew the story in Herodotus where she turns murderously vindictive a generation later against a younger rival (9.108–13): it is hard to think it is that sort of opera.2 Things were very different in antiquity. The story, especially Herodotus’ version of the story, was extremely familiar in Plutarch’s day, just as it had been in the fourth century:3 familiar enough to offer Plutarch all sorts of intertextual possibilities; familiar enough too to excite inventive ingenuity as people speculated on the background of the major and minor players. Take Themistocles, who was a famously recalcitrant pupil and had something of a contempt for liberal education (something which interested Plutarch, as we will see later). So how did he behave when he was a father himself? Not well, according to Plato: the only thing he managed to teach his own son was horsemanship (Meno 93d: there is an irony there, with this great sailor4). So the boy’s tutor Sicinnus may have been good for taking messages to Xerxes (thus Herodotus), but was evidently not so good as a teacher: he spent all his time dancing, and that was where the ‘sikinnos’ dance got its name (Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 1.7.55). How did Themistocles spend his own youth? If he was not learning his lessons, perhaps he was using his time more interestingly: so Athenaeus has a story of him riding a chariot into Athens pulled by four hetairai (12.533 d, 13.576 c = Idomeneus FGrH 338 F 4).5 Of course the thoughts which were provoked could be more serious, and here generic differences begin to matter. The most straightforward way of treating the theme—and always the most important, despite any other twists and turns—was simple glorification. This was Greece’s greatest hour; it was also Athens’ greatest hour, selflessly leading Greece in their quest for freedom. ‘There was something in the mentality of the people in those days, something we have now lost, which overcame the wealth of Persia and led Greece in freedom and was never conquered on land or on sea’ (Demosthenes, Third Philippic 36, cf. 42–6): there is a good deal of that sort of thing in fourth-century 2

See further Kimbell in this volume, Ch. 10. On this see Marincola, above, Ch. 6. 4 And perhaps a nastier irony too, if another son of Themistocles died of a bite from a horse (Plut. Them. 32.2). 5 Edith Hall suggests to me that this chariot story may originate from a garbled or burlesqued reminiscence of Aeschylus’ Persians, with the queen’s chariot-dream (181–99), or perhaps her chariot-entry (155, cf. 607 with Taplin (1977), 75–9), transferred to Themistocles, and military transposed into sexual conquest. 3

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oratory.6 Not that it is quite the same in every sort of oratory; when praise of a tyrant is in point, the Persians’ obedience to their king can be hailed as the source of their strength (Isocrates, Nitocles 23); the heroes of 480 are normally incomparable, but just occasionally figures of the present can outdo them.7 But the same keynotes keep recurring: how we Athenians chose to live free or die; how we ‘took to the ships’; how we led when others, especially the Spartans, faltered; how our triumph made us leaders as well as saviours of Greece—and how we deserved it.8 There is much in later oratory too, with Aelius Aristides interminably defending Miltiades and Themistocles in On the Four, i.e. the four Athenian great men whom Plato had derided in Gorgias. We also see that glorification in lyric poetry, as the publication of the new Simonides fragments has recently highlighted.9 Even before those discoveries, one could see how Simonides celebrated Salamis as ‘this noble and famous victory, the most brilliant achievement ever at sea by Greeks or barbarians’ (fr. 5 W2 = Plutarch’s quotation of Simonides at Them. 15.4):10 the new 6 Cf. esp. Isoc. 7.75–6, 8.75–8, 90–1, Dem. 19.271 with Aeschines 3.257–9, Dem. 23.198–9 ~ [Dem.] 13.21–2, Dem. 23.207–9 ~ [Dem.] 13.29–31, Lyc. Leocr. 68–74, Lysias 12.63 for similar then-and-now comparisons; Isoc. 4.82–99 and Lys. 2.27–47 for elaborate encomiastic narratives of the wars. 7 Thus Themistocles’ secret methods are less honourable than Conon’s open ones, Dem. 20.73–4; Leosthenes outdoes even the like of Miltiades and Themistocles, Hyper. Epit. 37–8. 8 Live free or die: Dem. 18.204–5, 208, Isoc. 6.42–3, Lys. 2.33, 47, Lyc. Leocr. 70, 73, cf. Plato Menex. 240e. ‘Taking to their ships’: Lys. 2.30, cf. Isoc. 12.49, 15.233, Thuc. 1.73.4, 74.2 and 4, and the ‘Themistocles decree’, ML 23 ll. 13–14.. Giving a lead to others (along with Plataea): Lys. 2.46–7, Dem. 9.36–7, [Dem.] 59.95–7 and Isoc. 14.57, [Dem.] 60.10, cf. Thuc. 1.73.4–74.4, Plato Menex. 240d–241c. Faltering Spartans: Isoc. 12.49–52 and 187–9, Isoc. 4.71–2, Lys. 2.44–5, cf. Thuc. 1.74.2–3, 75.2 (but Lyc. Leocr. 108–110 and 128 and, less surprisingly, ‘Archidamus’ at Isoc. 6.99 are more generous to Sparta). Saviours of Greece: West 1970. Hegemony: Isoc. 4.71–2 and 99, Lys. 2.47, cf. Thuc. 1.75, 6.82.3–83.1 (despite 83.2). Isoc. 6.43 and 15.233 puts it more starkly, with Athenians as ‘masters’ of Greece. Cf. Jost 1935, 134–5, 195–6. 9 See Boedeker and Sider (2001), esp., for Homeric echoes, Boedeker’s own chapter in that collection. 10 It is no easy matter there to disentangle what is (paraphrase of) Simonides and what is Plutarch: The others were equal in numbers to the barbarians, as they came one after another in the narrows and impeded one another: the fighting lasted till evening—as Simonides said—the Greeks winning that noble and famous victory, the most brilliant achievement ever at sea of either Greeks or barbarians. And it was won by the bravery and spirit of all those who fought, and the insight and shrewdness of Themistocles. See the discussion of Molyneux (1992), 188–9. It is not at all likely (pace Perrin and Scott-Kilvert, Loraux (1986), 59, tentatively Podlecki (1968), 267 and 273, and apparently Marr (1998), 39 and 111) that the last part (‘it was won . . . the shrewdness of Themistocles’) is Simonides; that looks to be Plutarch’s own comment (particularly if the suggestion of p. [18]) below is accepted). So Molyneux, and presumably also Page (1962), 278, Campbell (1991), 506, and West, who terminate the citation or ‘fragment’ before that point. The ‘as Simonides said’ could refer to what precedes it and/or to what follows. If it looks backwards (so Molyneux, Podlecki, and e.g. Schneidewin (1835), 9 and Bowra (1961), 344 n. 1), the focus is on the course of the battle, the tangling of the ships and the fighting till evening; if forwards, to the fine phrasing used to describe it. Plutarch is perfectly capable of using Simonides to illustrate tactics (cf. On Herodotus’ Malice 872 d), but his systematic use of poetic quotation elsewhere in the Life suggests that the phrasing is more the

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fragments make it clearer how Simonides emphasized the heroic qualities of the Plataean triumph with Homeric language and divine accompaniment. This is an achievement which gives glory; and glory should last for ever. This is a memory which the fighters at Plataea achieved (frs. 11.24–8, 14.6, 16 W2), just as the Trojan War heroes achieved ‘undying glory’ (cf. fr. 11.15 W2) before. That alignment of Persian War and Trojan War could be seen in art as well, especially on the Stoa Poikile, built (it seems) in the 470s or 460s: one of the scenes there portrayed Marathon, one the Trojan War, a third the battle of Theseus against the Amazons, and a (highly problematic) fourth a contemporary battle of Athens and Argos against Sparta in Oenoe. The Stoa provides a range of problems all its own, but one thing is clear, and that is the continuity between distant past and glorious present, especially the defeat of Persia.11 That is an achievement, at least when treated in this register, which is not up for deconstruction or qualification. This was grand and great, and the poet’s task is to do it justice. But there were other genres too. There was philosophy, and Plato was bothered about what Themistocles had done to the texture of Athenian politics, building the foundations of that distasteful democracy (Gorgias 503c, 515d, 519a–b); if Christopher Rowe’s argument in this volume is right, reservations can also be sensed in Plato’s treatment of the victories in the Laws (698b– 699d).12 Much earlier, there was tragedy. Aeschylus’ Persians was produced in 472, only eight years after the battle of Salamis. That play does not reduce the glory of it all, and there is an elaborate exoticizing and feminizing of the Persians: those are ways in which Greeks can find their victory intelligible and delight in the identity it affords them. Edith Hall writes about this elsewhere in this volume, together with the ways later generations interpreted the play.13 It is no coincidence that Edward Saïd gave this text such prominence in the early pages of his Orientalism as a foundation text of racism:14 one can see why he thought it presaged the western tendency to trivialize the ‘East’ and lump all

point, even if that need not exclude a backward-looking reference to the tactics as well: cf. esp. 8.2, 8.5, sadly and bitterly reversed in ch. 21, but with an elegant and correcting envoi at 32.6; below, p. [8]. In that case, the Simonides element probably extends beyond the simple and not specially striking ‘noble and famous’ to include the more sonorous ‘the most brilliant achievement ever at sea (enalion) of either Greeks or barbarians’: einalion, a poetic word in classical Greek, may confirm that (so Flacelière–Chambry–Juneaux 1961, 224), though it is true that Plutarch uses it elsewhere without any clear poetic resonance (Lucull. 39.3, On the Fortune of the Romans 324 b, Table Talk 669 d, 729 e). Frost (1980) and Marr (1998) glide over the problem. 11 And a similar continuity would be seen in 4th-cent. rhetoric, which developed various techniques for moulding Persian War themes and mythical themes to fit one another: Kierdorf (1966), 89–95, cf. Loraux (1986), ch. 3. But by then the Trojan War resonances were falling out of fashion (Kierdorf (1966), 98–9). 12 See Ch. 5. 13 Below, Ch. 9; cf. also esp. Hall (1989), ch. 2, and (1996). 14 Saïd (1978), esp. 56–7.


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those despised Orientals together—opulent, but also with a sense of devastation, measured against a greater past; and ripe for all those superior westerners to defeat and impose a different and (of course!) better set of values . . . But even so soon after the events—in this genre, in this privileged occasion and setting of the tragic theatre—there are other strands in the play too: how distinctively Persian is this transgressive and self-destructive expansionist excess which Xerxes has shown? His father Darius appears as a ghost to denounce the son as rashly departing from the pattern his predecessors had set: perhaps Xerxes is an aberration more than a reassuring pattern of how Persians always get wrong things that Greeks get right.15 And how much invitation is there in the closing scenes of the play to feel some identification even with Xerxes in his—doubtless feminized, but still moving—lamentation? Is this something that could happen to anyone, even to Greeks, at least in some form? Are friend and foe less distant at the end than we might have been led to expect at the beginning, rather as they are in the Iliad? There have been and are still different ways of reading this play, as a glance at the literature in the years since Edith Hall’s Inventing the Barbarian (1989) confirms; doubtless there were different responses in the theatre at the time.16 But there are strands there that go beyond heroic triumphalism. And how were historians to make this story interesting as well as uplifting? Self-congratulatory triumphalism tends to pall in an extended narrative, and anyway it was historiography’s way to prefer the thought-provoking and the analytical to the feel-good. What really explained the Greek success? There were strands in fifth-century speculation that cut deeper than dismissive ‘Orientalism’, wondering for instance whether there was anything in the climate or the constitutions of the Persian empire that made them ‘softer’, whether indeed the climatic softness led them to put up with such a servile constitution: we can see that in the Hippocratics,17 and we can also see echoes of such speculation in Herodotus.18 But, typically for Herodotus, he does not adopt them simply. It is a recurrent emphasis that ‘freedom’ may be inspiring but can also generate fragmentation and weakness as much as harmony and strength: this war could all so easily have gone the other way. By the end of book 9 we may anyway be wondering how different Greeks and Persians really are, once we have 15

I have developed this theme in Pelling (1997b), esp. 14–16; cf. also esp. Saïd (1981). Harrison (2000) offers a polemical but painstaking survey of recent scholarship. He himself reads the play as much more unequivocally unsympathetic to the Persians than e.g. Hall or I do; perhaps there were indeed some in the audience who saw things so simply. 17 Esp. Airs, Waters, Places: notice in particular ch. 16, where the combination and interaction of different causal schemata is complex. Cf. Thomas (2000), esp. ch. 3 on the complexities of Europe /Asia divisions in both Herodotus and Airs, Waters, Places. 18 Particularly important passages for ‘softness’ in Herodotus are 1.71, 89, 2.155.4, 5.49.3, 9.82, and esp. 9.122: the relation to environment is particularly clear in the last passage, though (needless to say) Herodotus’ treatment of the theme is subtle and thought-provoking. I discuss some of the issues in Pelling (1997c). 16

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seen Persians fighting so toughly at Plataea, once we have hints of the coming Athenian empire.19 And there were other ways of wondering about Athens too. We can see that with the way Thucydides treats Themistocles. There are interesting ideas at play there about the ways in which Athens treats her great men, and the difficulty the city has in accommodating them—especially when these great men embody qualities that are not too different from those the Athenians liked to think of as their own, intelligence, rhetorical power, insight, and venturesomeness. Thucydides also recurrently intimates the idea that Athens might be the new Persia, the domineering tyrant city that threatened rather than championed the liberty of the Greek allies.20 Those themes which sat so comfortably together in celebratory oratory—the freedom the Athenians fought for, the leadership they gained, the response of the other Greeks—now combine in other, much less comfortable ways. And fourth-century historians would occasionally take further their doubts about whether the events of 490 and 480–79 had happened quite the way that ‘the Athenian history of Athens’ claimed they did.21 All this, and more, introduces other strands as well as the triumphalism, but at the same time the stress on glory and memory remains: that is why Herodotus says he was writing, in his very first sentence (again with Homeric resonances)—so that great deeds, some performed by Greeks and some by barbarians, should not lose their fame, their kleos. In Thucydidean speech after speech, too, and indeed in Thucydidean narrative after narrative, memories of the Persian War are still felt to be active, and if Athens abuses the memories of her past that is a commentary on Athens now much more than on Athens then, or on Greece then. But once historians take up such triumphalist themes, what is commemorated has a way of becoming rather more complicated and nuanced. This emphasis on glory and memorialization is still there as we move on to Plutarch. Plutarch wrote his Lives in pairs, a Greek and a Roman going together, and Themistocles is paired with Camillus. In both those Lives there is a heavy ‘even now’ strand: eti kai nun, ‘even now’, one could see the memorials of what the great men of the past achieved; even today people were talking about it. You can still (says Plutarch) see the traces where the Persian corpses were burned after Artemisium (Them. 8.6); you can still see the Kynos se¯ma, the memorial of the dog of Pericles’ father Xanthippus, who could not bear to be left behind when his master left, but swam with the boat across to Salamis 19 This again is much discussed: my own contribution is Pelling (1997c). Now see also Flower and Marincola (2002), 37–9. 20 Yet another much-treated theme. See e.g. Jost (1935), 62–9, Kierdorf (1966), 100–10, Tzifopoulos (1995), and for a broader approach Rood (1999), concentrating especially on the echoes of the Persian Wars in the Sicilian narrative of books 6–7. 21 See Marincola, Ch. 6 above. ‘The Athenian history of Athens’ is the chapter-title of Loraux (1986), ch. 3.


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and died of exhaustion on the beach there (Them. 10.9); ‘in our own day’ you can still see a statue of Themistocles in the temple of Artemis Aristoboule, ‘Best in Counsel’, and he seems ‘heroic’—an interesting word—in appearance as well as in nature (22.3); the Life ends with honours to Themistocles ‘still to our day’ celebrated in Magnesia, which ‘our own friend Themistocles, a school-friend when we were both pupils of the philosopher Ammonius’ still enjoys (33.6). The story still matters.22 And there are some darker ‘still today’s as well: Themistocles’ statue is next to the place where the executioners throw out the dead bodies, a reminder that there is more to Athens’ story than glory and achievement. The ‘still today’s in the paired Life, Camillus, are darker still, the memorial of the Allia for example (19.2). In the narrative itself the protagonists are fighting for glory and honour, and indeed Themistocles’ love of honour, his philotimia, is one of his defining characteristics: he knows too how to appeal to that taste in his Athenians, and that is one of the secrets of his rise to power. He, and they, catch the glorious tone immediately, and there is a suitable profusion of quotations from the celebratory poems of Simonides (1.4 and 15.4, cf. 5.6–7 and 8.5)23 and Pindar (8.2). ‘Greatness’ is one of the leading themes of the Life;24 so is the service done to ‘the Greeks’—all of them, not just the Athenians—and the fame they gave him in return.25 The warriors at Salamis fought for everlasting glory, and the Life itself is one of the things that give it to them. That ‘glory’ and ‘fame’ has other aspects too, as Plutarch assumes in his audience—indeed, ostentatiously assumes—familiarity with the events, and also with much of the famous language used to describe them. This of course affords all sorts of possibility for intertextual suggestions, as we shall see; but the most important point is a more general one—that the more Plutarch shows he knows, and assumes his audience know, of the events and what Herodotus or Simonides said about them, the more he generates and conveys a complicity which itself suggests that memorialization. That fighting for everlasting recollection worked, they won that glory—otherwise Plutarch would not be writing a work like this and his readers would not be understanding the points he was suggesting. Plutarch is a past master at generating a sort of genial complicity with his audience,26 but in this case it has particular resonance. This is a very 22

And it had been remembered, and had mattered, in Persia too: later Persian kings would say to Greeks that ‘you will be greater in my court than Themistocles’ (Them. 29.9). 23 Cf. also n. 10 above. 8.5 may not be genuine Simonides (cf. n. 28), but Plutarch may have taken it as his, and it anyway contributes to the theme of poetic glorification. 24 Greatness: explicit at 11.1 (below, p. 158). 25 In particular 1.1 (Helle¯sin in the epigram), 3.5, 4.5–6, 5.4 (an initial unfavourable response from the Greeks), 7.4, 11.1, 17, 18.7, 21 (esp. 21.6), 22.2, 23.2–6 (where the notion of a Panhellenic court is historically very improbable: cf. Frost and Marr ad loc.), 24.7, 25.1, 28.2–4, 31.4. There is a sad irony that the Greek hero should find it appropriate to call his daughter ‘Asia’ (32.3, in a cluster of noms parlants). 26 I have written about this in Pelling (2002), ch. 12.

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different audience, clearly, from one that would simply find ‘Xerxes’ a good name for a cat, or for a smelly factory. There are times when we can suspect allusiveness even if we cannot prove it. The epilogue of Aristides and Cato maior compares the two heroes, in Plutarch’s regular manner, and gives Cato credit for ‘driving Asia out of Greece’, exe¯lase te¯s Hellados te¯n Asian (29(2).3). That is a very striking phrase. It refers to Cato’s victory at Thermopylae in 191 bc, and the narrative of that Roman victory in the Life makes great play of the memories, indeed in many ways the replay, of the Greek victory in 480: the famous ‘path’ (atrapon) by which Xerxes circumvented the Greek forces plays a big part in this later battle as well. The suggestion in the epilogue passage is one we find elsewhere in Plutarch (especially Flam. 11), that the can-do Romans managed to get things done for the Greeks that the Greeks never did for themselves. What about that phrase ‘driving Asia out of Greece’? Such sonorous language seems much more appropriate to 480 than to 191, and a further point supports the suspicion that the phrase is being borrowed from something about the Persian Wars. After the battle of Salamis the story goes that Themistocles famously suggested trapping Xerxes in Europe by sailing to the Hellespont and destroying his bridge. The phrase Plutarch makes Themistocles use is ‘let us capture Asia in Europe’, labein en te¯i Euro¯pe¯i te¯n Asian—again, very striking and aphoristic. It occurs in both Aristides and Themistocles (Arist. 9.5 and Them. 16.3–4). Were it just in Aristides we might wonder if Plutarch was coining it himself for that Life, then picking it up in the epilogue of the work; but as it comes in both Lives it seems more likely that he is alluding to something else that the audience would find familiar. For an audience who knew a passage which talked of ‘driving Asia out of Europe’, the talk of ‘capturing Asia in Europe’ sounds like a sort of alternative future, an alternative catastrophe to Asia but one that did not happen. What that ‘something else’ is one can only guess; but some guesses are better than others, and a good one would be that it was a phrase in Simonides. There are one or two passages in the new fragments that look similar, particularly a phrase, perhaps in a prophecy, ‘shall drive out of Asia’ with the approval of (presumably) Zeus (fr. 14 W2 = POxy. 3965 fr. 21):27 will these foreign troops, then, be driven not merely out of Europe, but out of their Asian homeland too? The point would be very oblique if there were not some more elaborate framework of Europe–Asia contrasts,28 and the arresting phrase we are seeking may well have figured there. 27 Simonides fr. 14 W2 (= POxy. 3965 fr. 21), perhaps Teisamenus’ prophecy: . . . ex A]si[e¯]s elasei, neusanto[s . . . (. . . ‘will drive out of Asia, when [?Zeus] has nodded his will . . .’]. 28 Just as there is in the epigram on the Cyprus campaign later attributed to Simonides (ep. xlv Campbell = AP 7.296), ‘from the time that Ocean separated Europe from Asia’; and in the Artemisium epigram quoted at Them. 8.5 and Malice 867 f (= Simonides ep. xxiv Campbell), whether or not that is genuine Simonides.


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But it is the allusiveness to Herodotus that is most striking, and here we do not need to rely on speculation. Time and again Plutarch’s narrative only works for someone who already knows the main outlines from Herodotus. As Xerxes approached ‘once again Themistocles played the demagogue with the oracle, saying that the wooden wall meant nothing other than the ships’ (10.3): ‘the oracle’, notice, one that the audience is clearly expected to know about, and ‘the wooden wall’ too is clearly a familiar thing; but in fact Plutarch has mentioned neither before. Themistocles was furious at the notion that the Greeks might ‘abandon the advantage they had from the location and the narrows’ (12.3): but that ‘advantage’ is not yet (and in fact not ever fully29) explained by Plutarch himself. After the battle ‘Artemisia’ recognizes a body and takes it to Xerxes (14.4)—obviously a familiar woman, but not yet mentioned by Plutarch.30 Were there only one such detail, we might suspect some carelessness on Plutarch’s part, with him misremembering what he had and had not said; but there are too many of these in too short a compass for this to be plausible.31 He simply did not need to say things which he knew his readers would already know: once more there is this complicity with an audience, one that Plutarch can exploit in various ways. One way is simply that he can be selective in what information he gives. The main lines of the account are drawn from Herodotus, just as the later part of the Life is largely drawn from Thucydides;32 but it is striking how little of Plutarch’s narrative reproduces Herodotus. Far more often he draws new details from other sources and incorporates them into a skeleton which was familiar from Herodotus. In particular, almost all of the details of the fighting at Salamis are non-Herodotean. At 14.3 he returns to that advantage of the narrows, and this time ‘it seems that Themistocles judged the timing of the battle as shrewdly as its place’. The shrewdness of the location is again taken as read: Plutarch dwells instead on the way the winds played a part, and that is non-Herodotean and new. A little earlier he has told of the gruesome human sacrifice (13.2–5), drawing it from Phanias, so it seems, a figure who is quoted several times (1.2, 7.7, 27.8, 29.11 as well as 13.5). Supplementing a narrative as familiar as that of Herodotus took some doing, and Plutarch snatches at 29

The nearest he comes is 15.4. A similar knowledge of Thucydides is also assumed: it was ‘what happened to Pausanias’ that afforded Themistocles’ enemies a hold, picked up a little later by ‘that traitorous activity of Pausanias’ and his ‘aspirations for things which were outlandish and risky’, 23.1–3. The audience are evidently expected to know from Thucydides 1 what all this means. 31 It is true that we can sometimes find cases of ‘carelessness’ elsewhere: I collect some in Pelling (2002), 21 and 24–5. Perhaps, too, Plutarch sometimes affects an air of casual composition for reasons of amiable self-presentation: Pelling (2002), 42 n. 142, 353, 361. But here the allusive manner is too sustained for either carelessness or deliberate casualness to be plausible. I say more about such allusiveness to Herodotus and Thucydides in Pelling (1992) and (2005). 32 So e.g. Gomme (1945), 61–3. The details may be traced in the commentaries of Frost (1980) and Marr (1998). 30

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that sort of opportunity, just as he does in other Lives when he is following Thucydides.33 There are subtler touches too. When Xerxes received Sicinnus’ first message in Plutarch he ‘was delighted’, he¯sthe¯ (12.5): the sort of deluded delight that so often typifies Herodotus’ tyrants,34 though as it happens it does not recur with Herodotus’ Xerxes here. Plutarch can still be picking up on that Herodotean pattern, and making it expressive of the way a Persian king can be counted on to react. One particularly interesting feature only becomes clear when we get to the paired Life, Camillus, dealing with that other great saviour of his country at a time of intense external peril.35 Camillus often points out moments when the events are similar to those of 480. What is interesting, though, is that several times these are parallels to things that Themistocles itself had not actually mentioned. Veii, for instance, is introduced as ‘a city whose numbers of arms and masses of soldiers were no less than Rome’s, and which revelled in its wealth and luxurious life-style and excesses and extravagances . . . ’ (Cam. 2.6): virtually an Oriental city, one would think—but it is the effeminate Orientalism of one strand in Herodotus’ narrative, not of Plutarch. The Gallic invasions are triggered by an Italian who, driven from his own land after a scandal, gets his own back by urging on the Gauls (15.4–6): that is another familiar pattern from Herodotus, where it is disaffected Greeks who play an important part in stirring up the Persian threat (esp. 7.6.2–5, but the earlier roles of Hippias, Demaratus, and even Democedes are important too); we had none of this in Plutarch himself. The scene of the old men waiting on the Capitol (Cam. 22.5–8) surely recalls the doomed Athenians who refused to leave the Acropolis (Hdt. 8.51–3); but Plutarch did not mention that.36 The Romans behave very dubiously in several embassies before the war (Cam. 17.6–18.4), uncomfortably for Roman confidence in their own moral superiority: there was similar moral dubiety about embassy-treatment in Herodotus 7.133. It is Camillus, not Themistocles, that has more of Delphi and oracles—and so on. What Plutarch does with all these extra comparanda is another question, and an interesting one: the Gallic king Brennus, for instance, is allowed some rather good points in response to a pompous Roman embassy, when he asks 33

Pelling (1992), 10–11 = (2002), 117–18. Thus with Croesus (1.27.5, 54.1, 56.1), Cyrus (1.156.2), Cambyses (3.32.2, 34.5, 35.3), Darius (3.119.7, 130.4, 4.91.1 etc), and Xerxes (7.28.3, 44, etc). See esp. Bischoff (1941), 36 n.1, Flory (1978), 150 and nn. 7–8, and on Xerxes Immerwahr (1966), 177 n. 85. Within Plutarch’s Life the King’s ‘pleasure’ takes new turns at 28.6 and 29.5 (he¯sthentos). 35 On the Themistocles-Camillus synkrisis see Stadter (1983–4), and Larmour (1992). I return to the synkrisis, building on some of the points I make here, in Pelling (2005). 36 Though interestingly he did mention the Athenians who were left behind ‘because of their age’, dia ge¯ras, Them. 10.9. If we put this together with Herodotus, we would assume that these were the ones who took refuge on the Acropolis. Yet in Hdt. it was not particularly the old, rather ‘attendants of the god and poor people’, 8.51.1. So Plutarch has made an implicit comparison closer, even though he does not mention the Acropolis scene itself. 34


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whether the Gauls are doing anything very different from what the Romans had always done themselves (17.1–5). That challenges comfortable national characterization in a way that Themistocles does not really do, but which might well be found in the closing books of Herodotus. By now Herodotus should seem much more than a simple ‘source’ for Plutarch’s Life: he offers a repertoire of possibilities, one which Plutarch knew extraordinarily well, and assumed his audience knew well too; and an author whose themes and subtleties he thoroughly understood. Yet that all makes the ill-tempered essay Herodotus’ Malice even harder for us to come to terms with. If ‘malice’, or more precisely ‘nastiness of character’, kakotheia, seems a strange description for Herodotus, whose genial openminded curiosity is such an attractive feature of his text, it seems equally out of character for Plutarch to be so carping. In his On Meddlesomeness (520 a–b) Plutarch takes issue with anyone who would ‘compile a treasure-store of other persons’ mistakes’: Malice would seem to be precisely that. In it Herodotus is continually taken to task for failing to give those great events and great actors their due: he picks the worse rather than the better possible motive, he brings in irrelevant misdeeds, he is more strident than he need be in criticism or too niggardly in praise, he favours the barbarian, and so on. What makes it worse is that ‘the man can write’, graphikos ane¯r (874b): that gives his prose an insidiousness that itself undermines the glory of Greece’s greatest moment. That, however, is not all that Plutarch thinks about Herodotus.37 Let us look at another passage, and a very fine one, in Epicurus Makes Even a Pleasant Life Impossible. The context is important. Plutarch is arguing that there are different types of pleasure, and the ones of the flesh are not the most interesting: the purer delights have no aspect of pain or regret, and these would come more naturally from the joys of the intellect. Histories are particularly rich in these sorts of pleasure, catering as they do for—though often leaving unsatisfied—a reader’s desire for truth. Even falsehoods can give pleasure: just think of the last book of the Iliad or Plato’s Atlantis: we cannot wait to see what happens at the end. Often the pleasures of reading involve pain: we may often be in distress and tears at what we are reading, but we must find out, we must read on, just like Sophocles’ Oedipus: ‘I am on the brink of saying what’s so dreadful!’ ‘And I of hearing, but hear I must . . . ’ Yet that seems to be a sort of incontinence and overflow of the pleasure of knowing everything, one which forces out rationality. But when a history and narrative has nothing harmful or painful about it, and besides dealing with noble and great deeds acquires in addition a presentation with power and grace—the affairs of Greece gaining that of Herodotus, for instance, or those of Persia gaining that of Xenophon, and 37 For a more comprehensive survey of Plutarch’s remarks on Herodotus in both Lives and Moralia, see Hershbell (1993).

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‘all the wondrous things which Homer knew and pronounced’, or the Journeys which Eudoxus described or the Foundations and the Constitutions of Aristotle or the Lives of Aristoxenus—the joy they give is not merely great and vast but also pure and with no element of regret. For who would prefer to eat the fare of the Phaeacians when hungry or drink it when thirsty than to read Odysseus’ account of his journey? Who would take pleasure in sleeping with the most beautiful woman alive rather than in staying awake with Xenophon’s account of Panthea or Aristobulus’ of Timocleia or Theopompus’ of Thebe?’ (Epicurus Makes Even a Pleasant Life Impossible 1093 b–c)

That is a delightful passage in several ways, not least the self-characterization it develops at the end: Plutarch cannot have thought that the answer to that final question, even among his enthusiastic followers, would be ‘no-one at all’. Just a few of his readers might surely be prepared to put their book down for a few minutes when in bed with a beautiful partner. But it is still a self-projection that an audience can find winsome and attractive: the rhetorical ploy is a subtle one, and one where over-argument does not impair the persuasiveness.38 What of those remarks here on Herodotus, which seem so appreciative? Is that ‘over-argument’ too? For Herodotus is surely quoted here as an instance of exemplary writing doing justice to exemplary substance: those ‘noble and great deeds’ are getting the narrative they deserve, one of power and grace. We seem to have moved from the grumpiness of Malice to a quite different strand of ancient criticism of Herodotus: ‘This is that Herodotus who wrote about the Persian battles in Ionic, the man who hymned our victories’ (Lucian, Herodotus 2); ‘the most panegyrical of those who have written history in panegyric style’ (Hermogenes, On Types of Style 408 R). What is more, the context in the essay makes it clear that Plutarch is concerned here with truth as well as with moral uplift: the reason why the pleasure is so ‘pure’ is that the events were the way the narrative describes them.39 Admittedly, the fact that the deeds, the substance, comes first matters to the rhetoric: once one is thinking of the greatest moment of Greek history, the text which describes it can only be Herodotus, and the tone of this passage is not such as to welcome lily-livered qualifications like ‘on the whole’ or ‘at least most of the time’. But the extremity of the phrasing still strikes one: nothing painful or harmful about this? Can this be the man who waxes so indignant at Herodotus’ expense in Malice? And the stress both on these themes as ‘the affairs of Greece’, Hellenika, and on the ‘grace’ of Herodotus’ writing makes the issue more difficult still. In Malice it is precisely 38 I say more about this and compare it with some similar passages in Pelling (2002), 238 and 277–8. 39 It is the thirst for truth, te¯n ale¯theian, which history aspires to satisfy, 1092 d; the desire to learn the truth is as great as for life itself, 1093 a. It remains striking that this concern with truth a page earlier has now transformed into describing the substance as ‘noble and great’: is it that when items are noble and great one has a moral duty to represent them as ‘true’? That may be too simple, not least because (as we shall see) that moral duty can vary with Plutarch’s generic mindset; but nonetheless the interconnection of the uplifting and the true has nuances that a modern may easily miss. Fox (1993), discussing Dionysius of Halicarnassus, has some remarks which are most pertinent here.


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the ‘grace’ which makes Herodotus so insidious (855 a, 874 b),40 and precisely the fact that it is Greece’s great glory which makes Plutarch demand a more satisfactory moral treatment than Herodotus gives. There are at least two ways of approaching this. One is to assume that the mindset in the passage from the Epicurus essay is so irreconcilable with that of Malice that we must suppose that Plutarch changed his mind. (Probably it would be the Epicurus essay that was earlier and Malice that was later.41) The other would be to take this as an extreme example of the sort of generic malleability that we saw earlier: in one train of thought or one sort of essay Plutarch can say one thing, and in another something very different. Let us sidle up to this issue obliquely: let us look at those passages in Themistocles which cover the points of Herodotus’ account which, to judge from Malice, Plutarch thought the most morally unsatisfactory. Does he handle them in his own narrative in ways that Malice would lead us to expect? Or, when he comes to tell the story himself, does he adopt a different mindset and adopt a more generous attitude to the source-narrative, so that an essay in virtuoso Herodotus-critique requires one thing, a historical narrative another? (This is by no means the first time this exercise has been conducted, but it has not usually been done with quite this generic focus.42) If that enables us to detect Plutarch tweaking his own approach to Herodotus’ narrative in the light of the different generic demands, that will make it more likely that the ‘different mindset’ approach is the right one. First, the night before Salamis, and Themistocles’ insistent advice, first to the commander Eurybiades and then in general debate, that the Greeks should fight in the straits. In Herodotus, the arguments that influence Themistocles are not his own ideas, but suggested to him by Mnesiphilus (8.57–8). Themistocles then puts them to Eurybiades ‘making them out to be his own’ (heo¯utou poieumenos). That struck Plutarch, as it has struck many scholars since,43 as 40 Notice also Progress in Virtue 79 b–c, where Plutarch is scathing on those who read for the pleasures of style alone, without caring about the moral benefit they might derive. 41 Malice probably belongs to the period when the Lives were being composed (so Ziegler (1949), 235 (= R-E xxi. 1 (1951), 872), and e.g. Theander (1951), 32–3, Wardman (1974), 189, Bowen (1992), 2–3), i.e. over a substantial period after 96 (Jones 1966). The reference to a projected (but as far as we know unwritten) Life of Leonidas, 866 b, may suggest a date not long before his death. The Epicurus essay seems to belong closely with Against Colotes (cf. 1086 c–d), and that work can very tentatively be dated to around 98–9, when its dedicatee L. Herennius Saturninus was proconsul of Achaea (Jones (1966), 72 = Scardigli (1995), 120, cf. Ziegler (1949), 126). But none of this is altogether secure. 42 Cf. esp. Theander (1951), 32–7; Wardman (1974), 189–96; Lachenaud in Cuvigny and Lachenaud (1981), 118–22. I approached this issue myself from a different angle in Pelling (1990), 32–5 = (2002), 150–2. 43 e.g. Hignett (1963), 204; Cawkwell (1970), 41–2; Marr (1998), 74. But, as e.g. Lazenby (1993), 157–8 and Masaracchia (1977), 184 on 8.57 observe, it is not at all clear that Herodotus’

picture is so ungenerous: from Homer on it is a good thing to learn from others as well as to have

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extremely ungenerous to Themistocles (Malice 869c–f): ‘do you see how he stamps the impression of malice on the man, making him present the plan of Mnesiphilus as if it is his own?’ On the face of it Plutarch’s own narrative is in line with what Malice demanded. In Them. 11 there is no mention of Mnesiphilus, and Themistocles simply ‘opposes’ Eurybiades. Eurybiades had command of the ships thanks to the prestige of Sparta, but was cowardly in the face of danger and wanted to weigh anchor and sail for the Isthmus, where the Peloponnesian land force lay. Themistocles opposed him . . . (Them. 11.2)

This is in a chapter which is listing Themistocles’ ‘great’ deeds in the campaign, and we would assume that he is showing his own insight as well as his courage in standing up to Eurybiades.44 But that is not all, because we have had Mnesiphilus already, in the carefully wrought second chapter of the Life where Plutarch is discussing Themistocles’ education. His tastes were not for ‘liberal arts’ but for practical wisdom (there is some play here on the ‘freedom’, eleutheria, which Themistocles guaranteed for Greece by his taste for the practical rather than those ‘liberal’, eleutherioi, pursuits). It is plausible, says Plutarch, to think that he learnt less from those studies than from his later association with Mnesiphilus: More plausible is the claim of those who say Themistocles was a follower of Mnesiphilus of Phrearrhii, a man who was not an orator himself nor one of the so-called natural philosophers, but someone who had studied wisdom as it was then understood, which was a matter of political shrewdness and practical skill, and preserved this as a sort of inheritance from Solon . . . (Them. 2.6).

Once we realize that the audience are taken to know their Herodotus, that looks more intriguing. It is surely in dialogue with Herodotus, but how? Is it suggesting that Mnesiphilus did indeed deserve praise for all this (a generosity of spirit which fits the principles formulated in Malice)—but praise not for producing the idea but for influencing the sort of person Themistocles was?45 ideas oneself, and it is also a commonplace of Greek rhetorical conceptualization that one can add weight to an argument by having the right person express it. (Plutarch himself, as it happens, formulated that principle in a specially elegant way: Precepts on Public Life 801 b.) But what is at stake here is not the correctness of Plutarch’s opinion of Herodotus’ story, but the fact that he held it and the question how far he could put it aside if his narrative thrust required. 44 But notice that we are not told what Themistocles argued: this is another case where an audience who know their Herodotus might fill in the missing pieces. 45 This idea of Mnesiphilus as Themistocles’ ‘teacher’ is also found in Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.14.65.3: Frost (1971) thinks that the tradition had formed by the end of the fourth century, and argues from the surviving ostraka that the historical Mnesiphilus was already seen as an éminence grise behind Themistocles. But of course we cannot be sure that the Themistocles connection was the only thing that contemporaries held against him.—In Banquet of the Seven Wise Men Plutarch makes ‘Mnesiphilus’ argue that every human and divine activity is directed towards a product: a builder is building a temple rather than mixing mortar, etc (156 b–c). One of his examples is drawn from the Muses, whose business is moulding character. Is there a hint that Mnesiphilus’ own ‘product’ is the person for whose character-moulding he was famed—Themistocles?


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That would suit the way that Mnesiphilus’ description here is echoed in the closural summary of the battle, won as it was ‘by the bravery and spirit of all those who fought, and the insight and shrewdness (gno¯me¯i . . . kai deinote¯ti) of Themistocles’ (15.4). Like master, like pupil . . . Or is that ‘not an orator’ in Mnesiphilus’ description a nod towards the Herodotean account, giving an explanation, but one left discreetly vague and inexplicit, why Mnesiphilus should not have been the one to deliver the speech himself? It might at least look as if it is preparing for a version which might mention Mnesiphilus when the time comes—but when the time does come, he does not. Whichever way we look at it, Plutarch has certainly manipulated and displaced his material in such a way as to give a more generous version of the whole sequence, and in this case Malice and the Life are on the same moral wavelength. Secondly, the issue of bribery. In Malice Plutarch is indignant at the story that Themistocles accepted a thirty-talent bribe from the Euboeans to fight at Artemisium, and passed on some but not much of it to Eurybiades and others: why, that is to regard this glorious battle, so praised by Pindar, as a matter of ‘bribery and theft’ (or possibly ‘deceit’: do¯rodokias kai klope¯s, 867 c). In the Life (7.5–6) he quotes Herodotus for this very story, except that he bowdlerizes it a little: simply the Euboeans were afraid that the Greeks might abandon them, and talked secretly to Themistocles, sending Pelagon with a vast amount of money. Themistocles took it, as Herodotus says, and gave it to Eurybiades and his associates (tois peri ton Eurybiade¯n)

(or possibly just ‘Eurybiades’: (tois peri ton Eurybiade¯n can mean either in Greek of this period). So there is no mention of Themistocles keeping the lion’s share of the bribe for himself, and Plutarch, like most of his readers, would doubtless have regarded his own version here as more generous.46 And yet this ‘keeping the lion’s share’ is not the point that Plutarch objects to, or even mentions, in Malice; it is rather that it is all presented as a business of ‘bribery and theft’ (or ‘deceit’), that ‘the commanders’—all of them—are corrupt. That emphasis is one that Plutarch keeps. Nor can we say that the citation ‘as Herodotus narrates’ is ‘distancing’ Plutarch from taking responsibility for this: ‘distancing’ is usually the wrong way of looking at such citations,47 and here Plutarch even adds another anecdote, one he draws explicitly from Phanias, to show Themistocles using bribery (or at least the suspicion of bribery) of a further person, a certain Architeles (7.7). His earlier narrative too has collected several instances of Themistoclean sharp practice, for instance where he bribes the demagogue

46 So Marr (1998), 88–9, with good remarks on how ‘Plutarch doctors Herodotus’ account’ here. But once again (cf. n. [43]), it is not clear that Herodotus’ contemporaries would all have regarded this story as so ‘flagrantly anti-Themistocles’ (Marr) or been so dismissive of a man who knew how to do quite well for himself. 47 On this see esp. Cook (2001). Cf. n. 53 below.

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Epicydes to stand down and allow Themistocles himself to be strate¯gos for the struggle (6.2). That is the way Plutarch begins the whole sequence, not as in Herodotus with Themistocles’ interpretation of the oracles: he is highlighting the theme, just as later he stresses the riches Themistocles acquired and the deceit he continued to practise.48 The interest in the Life is in the paradox that it is the more dubious rather than the more uplifting and sonorous Greek national characteristics which proved so crucial, and that suggestion is not far away from the emphasis of Herodotus’ own text. In the interest of developing the theme Plutarch has not cleaned up the bribery allegations to the degree that the demands of Malice would lead us to expect. There are other cases where Plutarch avoids themes he criticized in Malice by simply ignoring them in the Life: nothing really on Thebes’ Medism, for instance,49 and nothing on Corinth or its general Adeimantus, someone whom he defends ferociously at Malice 870 b–f. Indeed at one point (11.3; Hdt. 8.59) a grumpy remark of Adeimantus is transferred to Eurybiades, who acts in Plutarch’s account as a sort of negative flypaper, attracting unsympathetic themes which had attached in Herodotus to others.50 In Malice he objected to Herodotus’ talk of Greek dre¯smon, ‘running away’ (867 c–f);51 in Themistocles he avoids the word (e.g. at 9.4 and 11.2). Sometimes the technique is subtler, but still in line with the sort of moral generosity that Malice commended. Thus he nods to those Platonic criticisms of Themistocles for what he did to Athenian politics (above, p. 148), but eventually plays them down by stressing how necessary and salutary his actions were at the time (4.4–5: for the biographical principle cf. Cim. 2.5).52 At 16.5–6 the second Sicinnus message

48 Riches: charges at 21.4, reality at 25.3, 29.11, 31.3. It is a typically Plutarchan irony that it is the prospect of their own personal gain which makes his pursuers so eager to capture him, 26.1. Bribery and deceit: 20.1–2, 25.2 (where, just as with Architeles at 7.7, he skilfully uses suspicions of bribery to inculpate others), 26.5–6, 31.2. Both themes are focused in 19, where Plutarch mentions the two alternatives of bribing or tricking the Spartan ephors. The indicatives of 19.2–3 suggest that more weight is given to the Thucydidean account of trickery, but the phrasing of 19.1 certainly does not exclude the Theopompean bribery version. 49 Notice how blandly that theme is treated at 7.2 and 9.3 (with Marr’s n., ‘an embarrassing problem, which [Plutarch] slides over here’); then 20.3. 50 A little later another anti-Athenian remark of Adeimantus (Hdt. 8.61) is recounted under a bland ‘when someone said’ (11.5). Eurybiades as a negative figure: thus at 7.1 he is ‘terrified’, a stronger formulation than at Hdt. 8.4–5 and one which reflects Herodotus’ picture of the general panic more than Eurybiades’ own. The mirror-opposite technique is seen at 16.3–4, where some insightful remarks of Eurybiades (Hdt. 8.108) are transferred, with some adjustment, to Aristides. 51 Cf. Bowen (1992), 136 on 867 e. 52 Other hints of political reservations about Themistocles—but not much more than hints, and usually with subtle techniques to disarm and displace the criticisms—at 3.3–5 (Arist. 2–3 makes similar points less generously), 5.7, 19.4–6. Those Platonic hints, though, may be enough to suggest a contrast with Camillus’ Rome: in Athens a great external war generated uncomfortable internal divisions; Rome preferred to use external wars, more or less creditably, to damp down internal divisions when they threatened (Cam. 9.2–3, 39.3, cf. 40.1–2).


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is recast to give an impression of shrewd Themistocles–Aristides co-operation rather than (or at least more than) Themistoclean self-seeking. In the awkward story of the human sacrifice (13.2–5) there is some move to exculpate Themistocles himself: in Pelopidas 21.3 the victims are uncomplicatedly slaughtered by Themistocles himself, whereas here he is stunned by the seer’s advice, and the people force his hand.53 But even in that case the story is not very flattering to the Greeks as a whole, indeed rather less flattering than the principles of Malice should demand; and we shall see something similar in one last example where Plutarch treats a specific point raised in Malice. After it was all over, Herodotus has the famous story of the prizegiving: each of the Greek generals voted for himself in first place, and most put Themistocles second (8.123–4). In Malice Plutarch is most displeased by Herodotus’ treatment of this: he ought to have criticized the generals for their excessive glory-hunting (philotimia), he says, but instead leaves it as a nasty and gratuitous example of Greek envy, phthonos (Malice 871 c–d). Yet when Plutarch comes in the Life to tell the story himself, he does exactly the same as Herodotus, with the minor difference that he makes ‘everyone’ vote for Themistocles in second place, not just ‘most’ (Them. 17.2).54 Just like Herodotus, he does not criticize the generals for their philotimia; just like Herodotus, he takes this opportunity to insinuate that idea of ‘envy’, the envy that is such a major theme in the Life55—and in the pair, for Camillus too is going to be hounded by phthonos. Like Herodotus, Plutarch was not going to let a chance like that escape him, not when he was writing historical narrative. It does indeed appear that Plutarch can have different mindsets and follow different principles at different generic moments. That is no surprise. 53 At Arist. 9.2 the matter is left vague: the victims were taken to Themistocles and ‘are said to have been slaughtered’. Marr (1998), 106 on Them. 13.5 also suggests that the attribution of the story to Phanias there distances Plutarch from it: he ‘seems to suggest that he has some doubts about the veracity of the story. He uses the same slightly distancing expression (men oun) with regard to Phanias’ authority at 7.7.’ If so, that gives a reading even more generous to Themistocles. But, as Marr concedes, any such ‘distancing’ would sit uncomfortably with the praise of Phanias’ authority here (‘a philosopher and a man who was not unversed in historical literature’). As at 7.7, this is not it seems a case of corrective men oun (Denniston (1954), 478–80), but ‘retrospective and transitional’ (ibid. 470–3) and/or ‘emphasizing a prospective men’ (ibid. 473–4), with the men complemented by the de at the beginning of 14.1: Phanias is one sort of reliable source, Aeschylus (14.1) another. For more general doubts about ‘distancing’ cf. n. 47. 54 In fact that simplification of Herodotus is also there in Malice 871 c–d: ‘because each of the generals awarded himself the first prize and Themistocles the second’. 55 The theme is skilfully insinuated at 2.8, both by the malicious slanders spread against him and the way his father used the ships (a charged theme in this Life), worn-out and neglected as they were, to warn of the ingratitude of the people. After the prizegiving of 17, the collection of anecdotes in 18 then gives more hints, esp. at 18.4–6. The Timocreon collection in 21 starts with a private grudge and moves into public phthonos (22.1, 22.5), especially the way that he was forced to fuel that envy by combating the hostility with self-praise (22.1–3). By 23.4 envy at home is combining with the fears and hatred of the other Greeks (cf. n. 25); at 24.3 domestic envy seems to him more perilous than any old foreign grudge borne by Admetus. But even at the Persian court he cannot escape phthonos: the pattern repeats itself there (29.5–6, 31.2).

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This is the person who can treat Alexander-themes very differently in the Alexander essays and in the Life, for instance the theme of Alexander as ‘a philosopher in arms’ civilizing the East:56 that is an inspiring big idea which suits a laudatory essay very well, but not one to survive scrutiny in a historical narrative, and so it is dropped almost completely from the Life. This is the person too who can write thoughtfully about the different demands of history and myth in the proem to Theseus, and develop the idea with delightful playfulness through the Life and the pair.57 Even within the more historical Lives, it is at least arguable that he applies his principles of historical criticism in different ways and degrees to different types of theme and hero.58 Those cases also give some guidance on how we should put the ‘generic’ point. Doubtless there was no clear pre-existing generic template for how to write a ‘Life like Theseus’, and here too we need not assume any neatly defined rhetorical genre ‘exercise in Herodotuscriticism, making the most of every argument one can’—though it is true that there were precedents of this sort of literature, especially Dionysius’ Letter to Pompeius,59 and even more precedents for this brand of violent attack when a historian criticized his predecessors.60 That may not amount to a ‘genre’ before Plutarch comes to it, but there are certainly pre-existing audience expectations there that he can build on: and he can still be defining the ‘genre’ as he goes and expecting his audience to define it along with him, assuming as he would assume that the rules of this game are not those he would always apply elsewhere. So in Plutarch we have a spectrum of different attitudes to Herodotus, a very negative one in Malice, a more measured and more selectively critical one in the Life, a very positive one in the Epicurus essay. The fact that we can fit the first two into Plutarch’s capacity for different mindsets makes it more likely that we can fit the third as well. In his own work, then, Plutarch provides a microcosm of the different sorts of tune that the Persian Wars and its great historian could suggest, the different sorts of register appropriate in different genres, and the different sorts of thought that this great thought-provoking moment could provoke: a repertoire of possibilities, indeed. 56 On this see Hamilton (1969), pp. xxiii–xxxiii, lvi–lvii: Frazier and Froidefond (1990), esp. 90–1, 104–8; Pelling (1990), 27–8 = (2002), 147. 57 Pelling (2002), ch. 7. 58 That is what I argued in my earlier discussion of the relation of Malice to the Lives (n. 42): Pelling (1990), 32–5 = (2002), 150–2. 59 Marincola (1994); cf. also Woodman (1988), 67–8 n. 252 (‘Clearly both Dion[ysius] and Plut[arch] are adopting a standard technique’). 60 Marincola (1997), esp. chs. 3 and 5. On the relevance of this background to Malice, see also Marincola (1994) and Homeyer (1967, speaking of ‘eine Typologie in der historiographischen Kritik’, 183). Homeyer further relates Malice to an anti-Herodotus intellectual fashion in the 2nd cent. ad (so also Hershbell (1993), 161–2): this is less pertinent, given that other works of Plutarch tell so different a story.


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Loraux, N. (1986). The Invention of Athens, trans. A. Sheridan. Cambridge, Mass., and London; French original 1981. Marincola, J. M. (1994). ‘Plutarch’s Refutation of Herodotus’, The Ancient World 25.2: 191–203. —— (1997). Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography. Cambridge. Marr, J. L. (1998). Plutarch: Lives. Themistocles. Warminster. Masaracchia, A. (1977). Erodoto: La Battaglia di Salamina: Libro VIII delle Storie. Firenze. Molyneux, J. (1992). Simonides: a Historical Study. Wauconda, Ill. Page, D. L. (1962). Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford. Pelling, C. (1990). ‘Truth and Fiction in Plutarch’s Lives’, in Russell (1990), 19–52, repr. in Pelling (2002), 143–70. —— (1992). ‘Plutarch and Thucydides’, in Stadter (1992), 10–40, repr. in Pelling (2002), 117–42. —— (ed.) (1997a, ed.). Greek Tragedy and the Historian. Oxford. —— (1997b). ‘Aeschylus’ Persae and History’, in Pelling (1997a), 1–19. —— (1997c). ‘East is East and West is West—or are they? National Stereotyping in Herodotus’, Histos (Durham electronic classical journal) 1 (http://www.dur.ac.uk/ Classics/histos/1997/pelling.html). —— (2002). Plutarch and History. London. —— (2005). ‘Synkrisis revisited’, in A. Pérez Jiménez and F. B. Titchener (eds.), Historical and Biographical Values of Plutarch’s Works. Studies devoted to Professor Philip Stadter by the International Plutarch Society. Málaga-Utah, 325–40. Perrin, B. (1914). Plutarch’s Lives ii. Cambridge, Mass. Podlecki, A. (1968). ‘Simonides: 480’, Hist. 17: 257–75. Rood, T. (1999). ‘Thucydides’ Persian Wars’, in Kraus (1999), 141–68. Russell, D. A. (ed.) (1990). Antonine Literature. Oxford. Saïd, E. (1978). Orientalism. London. Saïd, S. (1981). ‘Darius et Xerxes dans les Perses d’Éschyle’, Ktema 6, 17–38. Scardigli, B. (ed.) (1995). Essays on Plutarch’s Lives. Oxford. Schneidewin, F. G. (1835). Simonidis Cei Carminum Reliquiae. Brunswig. Stadter, P. A. (1983–4). ‘Searching for Themistocles’ (review-discussion of Frost 1980), CJ 79: 356–63. —— (ed.) (1992). Plutarch and the Historical Tradition. London and New York. Taplin, O. (1977). The Stagecraft of Aeschylus. Oxford. Theander, C. (1951). Plutarch und die Geschichte. Lund. Thomas, R. (2000). Herodotus in Context. Cambridge. Tzifopoulos, Y. Z. (1995). ‘Thucydidean Rhetoric and the Propaganda of the Persian Wars Topos’, PdP 281: 91–115. Wardman, A. (1974). Plutarch’s Lives. London. West, W. C. (1970). ‘Saviors of Greece’, GRBS 11: 271–82. Woodman, A. J. (1988). Rhetoric in Classical Historiography. London. Ziegler, K. (1949). Plutarchos von Chaironeia. Stuttgart.

Section III Renaissance and Enlightenment Rediscovery


9 Aeschylus’ Persians via the Ottoman Empire to Saddam Hussein Edith Hall

The Persians were the most powerful empire the world had ever seen. The Persians’ army was the biggest war machine ever assembled. The Persians marched off to destroy their most hated enemies. The Persians lost the war and the world. The revolution is about to begin . . . let us entertain you!

INTRODUCTION These ominous phrases are calculated to make the reader equate ancient Persia with the modern USA, immersed in a gruelling conflict in Iraq. They were written in 2005 in order to advertise the latest show—an adaptation of Aeschylus’ Persians—staged by Waterwell Productions, an experimental New York theatre company. The ancient tragedy had been transformed into a new musical satire, The Persians . . . a comedy about war with five songs, directed by Tom Ridgely.1 At almost every stage the production invited its audience to identify the ancient Achaemenids with their contemporary North American compatriots. This was achieved by combining elements from ‘a reality TV show and nifty nightclub act’. The result was ‘a sometimes jarring . . . but always mesmerizing indictment of the war in Iraq’.2 Moreover, this is only the

1 See http://waterwell.org/. The production opened in May at Under St. Marks, but proved so popular that it extended its run by transferring to the Perry Street Theater until the end of August. Copies of the script and other materials are housed at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, within the Classics Centre at Oxford University. 2 Barbara and Scott Siegel, ‘Persia on my mind’, review of Waterwell Productions’ The Persians in The Siegel Column, 22 July 2005, last accessed at http://www.theatermania.com/content/news. cfm/story/6375 on 20 Dec. 2005.

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last in what has become, since a landmark 1993 production by Peter Sellars in which Xerxes was associated with Saddam Hussein (see below, ‘Xerxes and Saddam Hussein’), a remarkable revival of interest in Aeschylus’ play within both the USA and northern Europe. The revival extends beyond theatre to, for example, Heavy Metal music.3 This can only be explained by the pervasive equation of the ancient defence of Greece against Persia with the two recent wars fought by the West against the Iraq of Saddam Hussein; Xerxes, indeed, is not the only ancient Achaemenid monarch to have been equated with the former Iraqi president: a British political cartoon published in 2004 configured Saddam Hussein as an archer-king facing aerial bombardment (Fig. 9.1). The scene is partly inspired by the famous mosaic found in the House of the Faun at Pompeii, depicting Darius III struggling in battle against Alexander. Just four years before The Persians . . . a comedy about war, the Greek tragedy also featured in Erasure (2001), a novel by Percival Everett, a notable AfricanAmerican author. The novel is for the most part a satire on the ruthlessness and vanity of the literary market, and on the grim choice facing any writer who is black between effacing, signalling, or indeed exploiting his or her ethnicity. The hero, Thelonius Ellison, has written experimental novels on Greek myth, and also a Persians, which a fictional reviewer criticizes because ‘one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus’ The Persians has to do with the African American experience’.4 The earnest reviewer, so anxious to dictate the themes proper to a black writer, is wittily sent up as being unaware of the place that Aeschylus’ Persians has widely been accepted as holding in the annals of western racism, at least since Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism (1978). Here the Greek tragedy forms part of the postmodern archive of emblematic texts in the history of ‘identity politics’.5 Although it has attracted attention at some important historical moments, Persians has, however, hitherto hardly enjoyed the kind of cultural prominence in the post-Renaissance western canon that has been achieved, for example, by Sophocles’ Oedipus or Euripides’ Medea.6 Such third-millennial manifestations of interest in the earliest surviving Greek tragedy therefore 3 There is a considerable amount of extravagant adaptation of the more warlike passages of Persians, including a dialogue between Xerxes and a messenger figure, in ‘The Splendour of a thousand swords gleaming beneath the blazon of the Hyperborean Empire’, the 7th track of an album released in 1996 by the Heavy Metal band Bal-Sagoth, Starfire Burning Upon The IceVeiled throne of Ultima Thule. This is available on London’s Cacophonous Records label (available through Vinyl Solution). Thanks to Helen Tarbet for this reference. 4 Everett (2001), 2. 5 Persians is discussed in Said (1978), 56–7. For the political and psychological importance to Europe of its fantasies of eastern despotism, see esp. Grosrichard (1998). There is an excellent collection of papers both reacting to Said’s work and placing it in its historical and intellectual contexts edited by Macfie (2000). Said himself felt that the ideological constructs he had criticized had become more, rather than less damaging and tenacious in the last years of the twentieth century. See Said (2003). 6 See e.g. Hall and Macintosh (2005), chs. 1, 3, 8, and 14.

Aeschylus’ Persians and Images of Islam

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Figure 9.1 British political cartoon (c.2004)

require some investigation. This chapter traces some other episodes in the history of the reception of Aeschylus’ Persians in order to discover the ancestry of such consciously relevant productions—what theatre theorists are now labelling contemporary ‘retopicalizations’. This exercise will show that these versions belong to a long tradition—over four centuries old—which has conflated the ancient victory of the Greeks over Persia at the battle of Salamis with the more recent confrontations between the West and its subject peoples, in particular the Islamic world. This in turn requires, in the section below, ‘From Byzantium to the Renaissance’, something of a detour into the era of the early crusades, in order to appreciate the cultural origins of the fusion of Achaemenid and Muslim in versions of Aeschylus’ Persians in 1571 and especially in Shelley’s 1822 Hellas. This poem, written at an early stage of the Greek War of Independence, set the seal on the corrosive western identification of cosmic Freedom with the war against the Islamic faith. But the argument will also examine diachronically the influence exerted by Aeschylus’ play, in order to reveal one of the more controversial shadows cast long over ensuing centuries by responses to Xerxes’ invasion of mainland Greece. It argues that Persians has been profoundly germinative ideologically, from

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its first performance at Athens in 472 bc until its revival in the postmodern theatrical repertory. It has helped both to create the dangerous ideology of Orientalism, but also, most recently, to find a new role in which it speaks less for the western aggressor than for a more humane and pacific world order.7

AESCHYLUS’ PERSIANS IN ANTIQUITY When Aeschylus’ contemporaries first watched Persians in the Athenian theatre of Dionysus in 472 bc, they were presumably not aware that it was destined to become the earliest surviving European drama,8 the only surviving Greek tragedy on a historical theme, and the only extended account of any of the battles of the Persian Wars by an eyewitness (indeed, probably a Marathonomach);9 it is even more certain that they were not to know that the text of the drama they were watching was destined to play an exceptional role in the history of the western imagination and its negotiations with race and empire. The theatrical representation of Persia was developed in early fifth-century Athens not only by Aeschylus in Persians, but by his near contemporary Phrynichus in a tragedy entitled Phoenician Women (on which Persians was to an unknown degree dependent). 10 But their plays also represented the foundational stage in a much more widespread tendency in Greek and Roman culture and indeed subsequent western culture—the histrionic impersonation of Asiatic barbarians for exotic or comic effect.11 A statue of Themistocles, with an attendant captive Persian, stood alongside those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Miltiades in the theatre of 7 There has been an almost exactly contemporaneous revival of another tragedy which has, since the early 19th cent., been theatrically neglected: Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. The historical reasons lying behind that revival are similar to those which illuminate the recent interest in Persians: see Hall (2005). 8 This has been the widely accepted view of Persians for the last half-century, although note that Scullion (2002), 87–101 has attempted to give the Supplices an earlier date. 9 Ar. Frogs 1296–7; Life of Aeschylus 11. There has of course been a long-standing debate on whether Persians is dominantly patriotic and triumphalist in tone or a remarkably humane and sympathetic delineation of a defeated enemy. The more nuanced recent discussions include Pelling (1997) and Griffith (1998). My own position (which tends towards the former view, while acknowledging the flexible potential of the form and content selected by Aeschylus) is laid out in Hall (1989), 56–100, developed in Hall (1996), and recently modified and elaborated in Hall (2006), ch.7. 10 See the hypothesis to Aeschylus’ Persians (= 3 TgrF F 8) with Hall (1996), 7–8, 105–6. Phrynichus also composed a tragedy called The Capture of Miletus, which may or may not have included barbarian characters in the cast. For a discussion of his history plays, see Roisman (1988). 11 See e.g. MacKenzie (1995), ch. 7, and, for cinema, Shoat (1997) and Nadel (1997).


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Dionysus at Athens.12 Memories of the Persian Wars did not disappear from the tragic theatre, since there were subsequent new tragedies on these themes, such as the fourth-century play which included a fragmentary dirge for Persian royalty (tr. fr. adesp. 685 TgrF), perhaps the same play that inspired the famous Apulian ‘Darius vase’ (Naples 3523).13 The sole fragment of Moschion’s third-century tragedy Themistocles is a vivid description of a battle (97 TgrF F 1), echoing Aeschylus’ Persians, and another Hellenistic Themistocles tragedy is attributed to the dramatist Philicus.14 The narrative of the Persian Wars, of Salamis, and indeed of Themistocles’ role in them, clearly underwent a process of canonization in the tragic theatre as well as in oratory and historiography.15 Something not dissimilar can be said for comic drama. The Sicilian Epicharmus and the Athenians Chionides and Pherecrates all wrote comedies entitled Persians. Aristophanes enjoyed bringing barbarizing Persians into the action of Acharnians.16 Indeed, the detailed familiarity of Eupolis as well as Aristophanes with Aeschylus’ Persians strongly suggests that it enjoyed a second fifth-century Athenian performance, perhaps in 425, when we know Aeschylean plays were revived.17 In Frogs, however, Aristophanes may have been the first to refract the famously patriotic text of Persians through an ironic prism in order to criticize the recent Athenian maladministration of the Peloponnesian War. There are some signs that he is using the status of Salamis as archetypal heroic naumachia in the repertoire of the Athenian democratic theatre precisely in order to provide a contrast with the recent terrible death toll in the highly compromised naval victory at Arginusae. This confrontation is derided by Dionysus’ slave Xanthias as either ‘the corpse-battle’ or ‘the run-for-your-life’ battle (191), depending on which of the two MSS readings, both going back to antiquity, is favoured.18 The useless rower Dionysus is ‘unSalaminian’ (asalaminios, 204), and Aristophanes’ pompous Aeschylus proudly declares that he composed Persians, ‘an excellent work, in order to make my audiences always long for victory over their enemies’ (1026–7). Conspicuously ignoring the call to oars and arms, Dionysus retorts, ‘Yes indeed, I really loved that bit about the dead Darius’ (1028), with a sly allusion, behind the reference to the invocation of the

12

See the scholion on Aristides 3, p. 535 in the edition of Dindorf (1829). Naples 3523, see above, Fig. 2.1 and Anti (1952). 14 See Bazzell (1932), 13–24; Hall (1996), 7–9. 15 There was even a satyr-play entitled Persians performed in the 2nd cent. bc. See Csapo and Slater (1995), 47. 16 See esp. lines 100 and 104 with the comments and further bibliography in Olson (2002). 17 See Ar. Ach. 10 and Hall (1996) 113, 135, 151–6, 177. 18 te n peri to-n nekro-n or te-n peri to-n kreo-n. 13

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theatrical ghost of Darius I, to the historical Darius II, currently pouring untold resources into the Peloponnesian fleet.19 Around the same date, Timotheus of Miletus’ less politically motivated citharodic aria Persians requires its star solo singer to impersonate a whole series of Asiatic barbarians, including Xerxes the King himself.20 Such impersonations can be found in a slightly different form as late as the Second Sophistic, which enjoyed dramatic enactments of the arrogance and frivolity of the barbarian character, delivered during the course of showcase declamations. The repertoire of the sophist Scopelianus of Clazomenae, a famous declaimer, included speeches involving Darius and Xerxes (probably including the Xerxes composed by his own teacher of rhetoric, Nicetes); these histrionic enactments involved ‘lurching around like a Bacchant’ (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 519–20).21 Another of the several ‘firsts’ achieved by Persians is that it is the first Athenian play which we know to have been exported and revived in another Greek city. It was performed in Syracuse, in 470 bc, on the invitation of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron (Life of Aeschylus 18). The production was presumably connected with Hieron’s fondness for equating his defeat of the Carthaginians and Etruscans in another naumachia, the battle of Cumae, with the mainland Greeks’ victory over Persia (Pindar, Pyth. 1.71–6). This makes the Etruscans and Carthaginians the first of a large number of other barbaroi in world history to have been conceptually equated with the Persians in Aeschylus’ tragedy. More surprising, however, is the use made of Persians in Exago-ge-, a tragedy dating from the second century bc, by the Jewish writer Ezekiel, on the subject of the Jewish exodus from Egypt (128 TgrF). The substantial fragments include a speech by an Egyptian messenger reporting the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. His account of the Pharaoh’s army is almost certainly dependent upon military passages in Aeschylus’ Persians.22 Here the Jewish writer seems implicitly to identify the persecuted followers of Moses with the spirited, freedom-loving ancient Greeks, and the mighty Egyptian army with that of Xerxes the Persian king. But at the same time the picture of Moses seated on a mountain-top, counting the stars as they pass before him in review, and an apparent association of Moses’ parting of the Red Sea with the Persian crossing of the Hellespont, suggest that Ezekiel is rather more interested in the aesthetic, poetic

19

See Sommerstein (1996), 5–6. On which see Hall (1994), revised and updated in Hall (2005), ch. 9. 21 For a fine discussion of the mimetic elements in the performances of the orators of the second sophistic, and their attraction to themes from the glory days of the classical Athenian past, see Conolly (2001), esp. 84–5. 22 See lines 193–242 in the edition of Jacobson (1983), who collects the echoes of Persians at pp. 136–41. 20


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prototype than in making political points. The Moses–Xerxes parallel also becomes less remarkable when it is recalled that virtually the only good press Xerxes gets in the ancient Mediterranean world (outside of Persian royal inscriptions) is from other Jewish authors. 23 Although the spectacular enactments of the sea-battle between Greeks and Persians commissioned by Augustus and subsequently Nero owed something, at least, to the tradition of representing Salamis in the theatre which had been inaugurated by Phrynichus and Aeschylus, specific uses of the tragedy Persians are thin on the ground under the Roman empire. Aelius Aristides may provide one exception. In his archaizing Panathenacius the Persian Wars narrative is based around a contrast between the wise old Darius and the senseless, arrogant Xerxes, a contrast rarely found in Greek authors other than Aeschylus (116–17). Specific elements in the picture of Xerxes also have unusually clear antecedents in Aeschylus, especially where he threatens to set fire to sanctuaries and destroy ancestral tombs (see Aeschylus, Persians 809–10 and Panathen. 166), flees after seeing the sea brimming with corpses and wreckage, and sings a ‘recantation’ (see Aeschylus’ Persians 420, 465).24 One other significant trace of the cultural impact of Persians occurs in the epistolary novel The Letters of Themistocles, variously dated from the late first/early second century ad to as late as the ninth century, from which its manuscript—Palatinus Graecus 398—dates.25 This work is especially interesting if it really was written under the Roman empire, because it is an ambitious and complex piece of historical fiction unlike any other ancient ‘historical’ novel. The novel belongs to the considerable sub-category of Themistocles literature and art, devoted rather to the story of his later years—his exile, experiences at the Persian court, and death, rather than to his role during the wars themselves (see, for example, Fig. 9.2, and above, Ch. 1, pp. 5–6). From the perspective of the reception of Aeschylus’ Persians it is nevertheless frustrating that so little is known about its author, because it presents Aeschylus himself (along with his father Euphorion and brother Ameinias), as one of Themistocles’ correspondents. Indeed, the very first letter is to Aeschylus, later described as ‘superior throughout his life in learning and good sense’ (11.5, kata paideian kai so-phrosune-n diapherontos). This does imply a distant cultural memory of Persians, as do the regular references to Themistocles’ benefaction to the Athenians, which had taken the form of victories in naumachiai (e.g. 13.1).

23 Here I am much indebted to Tessa Rajak (1974), ii. 121 and to Emma Clough’s dissertation (2003), 174–89. 24 Clough (2003), 349–40. 25 See Doenges (1981), 49–63, who argues for an early date.

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Figure 9.2 Orrin Smith, Exile of Themistocles (c.1839)

FROM BYZANTIUM TO THE RENAISSANCE If, however, The Letters of Themistocles is a Byzantine text, then it is a fascinating document showing how the Persian Wars narrative was developed in a time and a place which had its own ‘barbarians’ and its own issues with the maintenance of ‘Greek’ identity. For in the late Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine eras the complexities of ethnic and religious identity surpassed anything that had gone before, as notions of Greekness, ‘Roman-ness’ (or Ro-maiosyne-), and Christianity were constantly contested and redefined. This process acquired a fresh intensity after the Normans attacked Byzantine territory in the late eleventh century, and the supreme Others of the medieval Byzantines actually became the western Christians: Anna Comnena could even call them barbaroi.26 Yet it may have been the earlier Byzantines’ need for texts reinforcing their own ethnic self-definitions that helped to ensure the 26 Browning (2002), 270–1. For the Arab perception of the Byzantines at this time, see El Cheikh (2004).


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place Persians earned in their Aeschylean ‘triad’, along with Prometheus Bound and Seven against Thebes. It is nevertheless indisputable that Aeschylus was always much less popular than Sophocles and Euripides amongst the Byzantines because they, like everyone else before and since, had considerable difficulty understanding his Greek. Interest in him seems to have been first seriously reawakened in the tenth century, from when the earliest and best manuscript, the Codex Laurentianus (M) dates; in the eleventh century Michael Psellus is to be found commending Aeschylus’ ‘obscure profundity’; by the fourteenth both Thomas Magister and Demetrius Triclinius were producing annotated editions of the triad.27 Thereafter the attention of the sixteenth century was drawn to Aeschylus primarily through the first rudimentary Aldine printed edition (1518), the superior editions of Adrianus Turnebus (1552), and Petrus Victorius & Henricus Stephanus (1557), and Jean Saint-Ravy’s influential early Latin translation Aeschyli poetae Vetvstissimi Tragoidiae, published in Basel in 1555.28 But these early editions of Aeschylus, and Saint-Ravy’s seminal Latin translation, came into a world that had changed greatly since the triumph of Christianity, above all in the arrival as a world presence of the Ottoman Turks. Between 650 and 1100 Islam made strikingly little impact as an identifiable fact in western minds, a situation which began to change rapidly in about 1100, just after the first crusade, which begin in late 1095. The shedding of the blood of the Jews of Jerusalem was as much a cause for celebration as the victories over Islam, but it was indeed this crusade which made both the religion and the prophet-founder of Islam familiar concepts in the West.29 The picture was therefore born in triumph after the Christian taking of Antioch and Jerusalem, and gave rise to the popular image—comprising savagery, depravity, sexual profligacy, pagan darkness, and satanic evil—which has consistently resurfaced, in slightly modified forms, even to our day. It was born at more or less the same time as the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne, and contained as little truth value when it comes to the depiction of near-legendary foes. It formed the picture of the abominations practised under Muslim faith to be found in all the western epics and chansons de geste of this period, from the Song of Roland onwards; the Saracens are uniformly idolaters, and often seen as worshipping three gods—Tervagan (or Termagant), Mahomet, and Apollo (a picture formed in photographic negative to the Christian trinity).30 But in other, similar epics they accrue concatenations of other gods—Lucifer, Jupiter, Diana, Plato, and Antichrist—a process which reveals an astonishing misunderstanding of the essential monotheism 27

See Hero (1991), 28. For an excellent discussion of the impact of the Saint-Ravy Aeschylus in terms of the reception of the Oresteia, see Ewbank (2005). 29 Southern (1962), 27–8. 30 Metlitzki (1977), 209. 28

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of Islam,31 suggestive of the reasons why ancient pagan Persian, and Renaissance Muslim, could subsequently be so easily conflated. An additional factor was the identification, in a medieval poem entitled Vita Mahumeti, of the historical prophet Mohammed with a magus, or Asiatic magician forced to flee from Jerusalem in the late fourth century, during the reign of the emperor Theodosius.32 Mahumet uses his magic to influence Mamucius, a slave of the Libyan consul, who is strangled so that Mamucius can marry his widow. Mahumet’s erotic magic ensures that she is suitably infatuated. Mamucius thus becomes ruler of Libya and the magus introduces the corrupting religion that threatens the Christian church.33 This eleventhcentury narrative clearly conflates the classical stereotype of the oriental wizard with intrigues worthy of the classical Ctesias’ court harems and the crusaders’ terror of Saracen abominations. The knots of ancient and medieval prejudice are becoming difficult to disentangle. Even the appearance in 1143 of the first translation of the Koran into Latin, by the English scholar Robert of Ketton, did little to correct misperceptions.34 The Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon may have thought that the crusades actually impeded the process of conversion to Christianity, advocating the peaceable use of persuasion instead. But in the seventh and final section of his Opus Majus (c.1268), an early attempt at comparative religion, Bacon discussed the Saracens, Tartars, pagans, idolaters (Buddhists), Jews, and Christians. He criticized the Muslims for the sensuality associated with Venus, and classified the Saracens as devoted to the end of pleasure—the main aim in life according to Darius in Aeschylus’ Persians (841), and Xerxes’ central objective according to Cicero (De Finibus 2.111–12).35 The increasing disputations and schisms within Christianity nevertheless actually led, by the mid-fifteenth century, to a situation in which many intellectuals developed a far greater respect for Islam. Amongst Church reformers such as John Wycliffe, one of the major forerunners of Protestantism, it had become possible to compare the schisms of the West with the unity and cohesiveness of Islam, and the perceptibly devout way of life led by many Muslims with the perceived decadence of many followers of Christ.36 Indeed, the vices for which Islam was blamed were felt to be no less common in Latin Christendom, and Muslims (along with Greeks and Jews) were regarded as no further from salvation than many Latin Christians.37 At this time the great Muslim authors were well-respected in intellectual circles, and the Arabic translations of the Greeks were esteemed. 31

Southern (1962), 28–33; Metlitzki (1977), 199. See the edition of Huebner (1935), with Metlitzki (1977), 201–2. 33 Metlitzki (1977), 201–2. 34 Southern (1962), 37. It had been commissioned by Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny. 35 On the medieval manifestations of ‘Orientalist’ thought in Bacon and other authors, see now esp. Cohen (2001) and Ganim (2005). 36 Southern (1962), 82–3. 37 Rodinson (1987), 30. 32


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It is also remarkable to observe the ease with which doctrinal parallels with Islam could be found by Christians, provided only that it was to their military or political advantage, once the Ottoman empire had advanced into the Balkans. In the late fifteenth century the Pope could meet the Sultan to ask for help in winning Venetian backing against the French; in 1497, Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, and Florence financed an Ottoman attack on Venice. Francis I forged an alliance with Suleiman the Magnificent against Charles V in France. As late as 1588, Elizabeth I could inform Sultan Murad II that Spain was a nation of idolaters, and propose an alliance with him based on ideology—strict monotheists against untrustworthy Catholics.38 In our current political climate it is worth dwelling on these vicissitudes in relations between Christianity and Islam when assuming that their polarization is either ancient or permanent and ineradicable. Indeed, the Turks, who were by the Early Modern period synonymous with Islam, were being given positions either within or outside the European ethnic fold by the kind of artificial genealogy then popular. Some said that the Turks were the descendants of the Trojans, indeed of Priam, which would legitimize Ottoman rule in Anatolia and indeed present the Ottoman conquests of Greece and the Balkans as retribution for the deeds of Agamemnon. Other westerners, more hostile to these non-Christians, argued that they were descendants of the Scythians and thus the obvious heirs to all the traits attributed to the ancient Pontic barbarians by ancient Greek and Roman writers. This xenophobic view legitimized constant military action against them—not as a war against infidels but as a bellum contra barbaros: as Rodinson puts it in Europe and the Mystique of Islam, ‘to those Europeans brought up on Herodotus and Xenophon, this was an enticing notion’.39 But Europeans were destined to define what they had in common with each other ‘against the recurrent threat of an Asiatic tidal wave that would engulf the entire continent’, a threat that seemed all too real when the Turks arrived at the gates of Vienna in 1529.40 Tragically, it became inevitable that it was the ancient Greek polarity, with all its attendant prejudices, that eventually prevailed. And this is the context in which Aeschylus’ Persians first dawned upon the European Renaissance. Indeed, the earliest surviving Greek play to have been performed in antiquity became, appropriately enough, the first ancient Greek drama known to have enjoyed some kind of performance in the Renaissance. It was recited at an event which explicitly equated Achaemenid Persia with the Ottoman empire, thus, for the first certain time in the western tradition, seeing Aeschylus’ Persians through a lens that was not only triumphalist but conditioned by Christian views of Islam. It celebrated the 1571 victory of a western naval alliance, including

38

Ibid. 34–5.

39

Ibid. 36.

40

Baudet (1965), 4.

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the Venetians of the Heptanesian islands and led by John of Austria, which had defeated the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. This feat has entered the European tradition as one of the defining moments in the creation of western liberty.41 The performance of Persians took place (possibly in an Italian translation now lost to posterity, more probably in Saint-Ravy’s Latin), in the private house of a member of the Venetian nobility who then ruled the Heptanesian island of Zante (Zakynthos). Unfortunately a nineteenth-century earthquake destroyed the island’s administrative office where the original records of this event were housed, so it is necessary to rely on secondary sources stemming from the mid-nineteenth century.42 But the reported event is unsurprising in the context of the increasing Italian interest in ancient Greek authors during the mid-sixteenth century: the dissemination of the text of Aeschylus’ play to these western Greek islands would have been greatly facilitated by the channels of communication linking Greek intellectuals and Italian centres of scholarship. Michael Sophianos of Chios, for example, translated Aristotle, collaborated on the seminal 1552 edition of the tragedies of Aeschylus published by Francisco Robortello in Venice, and became a professor of Greek at Padua.43 Familiarity with the Latin translation of Persians may explain the apparent echoes of the Greek tragedy in the depiction of the oriental conqueror-antihero, along with his military processions and extravagant deeds, in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great (c.1588), a play which was certainly reacting to the contemporary views of the Ottoman empire. And for the Christian identification of Xerxes with everything in opposition to Christian doctrine, it is unnecessary to go further than Milton’s outspoken comparison of Satan’s bridge from heaven to hell in Paradise Lost book 9 with Xerxes’ Hellespontine contrivance: So, if great things to small may be compared, Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke, From Susa, his Memnonian palace high, Came to the sea: and, over Hellespont Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined, And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves.

41 See e.g. G. K. Chesterton’s rousing poem ‘Lepanto’ (1911), in Untermeyer (1920), no. 91. The narrator speaks of the Christian captives let out of their prisons in the keel of the Sultan’s ships, now ‘White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty’ (133); this is followed by the refrain (134–7), ‘Vivat Hispania! | Domino Gloria! | Don John of Austria | Has set his people free!’ Thanks to Walter Donlan for this reference. 42 See Protopapa-Mpoumpoulidou (1958), 9–11; Valsa (1960), 164; Knös (1962), 303, 654. 43 On Greek intellectuals at the universities and publishing houses of Venice and Padua, Geanakopoulos (1976), 63–6.


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THE TRAGEDY OF ROMANTIC HELLENISM Aeschylus suddenly became far more accessible in the late eighteenth century, when the first translation of his complete dramas into any modern language (the French version of 1770 by the Marquis J. J. Le Franc de Pompignan) was followed in 1777 by the much more influential English-language translation by Robert Potter.44 Aeschylus had previously been unavailable to any reader without the ability or desire to read extended texts in either Greek or Latin. And it is revealing that in the first artistic response to Potter’s translation, some chalk pictures by George Romney drawn in the 1780s, the inspiration for the illustrations to Persians is plainly Turkish rather than Achaemenid (Fig. 9.3). This is revealed in the costumes, the drapery, and above all the obeisant salaam of the chorus of Persian councillors. Romney had recently painted a portrait

Figure 9.3 Chalk cartoon by George Romney (1778–9), depicting the ghost-raising scene in Aeschylus’ Persians 44

For Potter’s impact see further Hall and Macintosh (2005), 209–11.

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of Potter, and the chalk sketches seem to have resulted from their conversations about the new translation of Aeschylus that took place during the sittings.45 But Romney’s visual imagination plainly prefigured the uses which were to be made of the play by the time of the Greek uprising against the Ottomans in 1821. The late eighteenth century thus intuitively visualized the ancient Persians as contemporary Turks. It must not be forgotten that the Ottoman forces were still attempting to besiege Vienna in 1683; they failed, but between that year and the treaty of Jassy in 1792 there were no fewer than forty-one years of war between Turkey and either Austria or Russia. The Turks made notable advances in the years leading up to 1740, and it was not until the 1760s and 1770s that the Ottoman empire ceased to look like an immediately pressing threat to Christian civilization at large, and more like a promising pawn in northern European superpower politics. The turning-point was the Russian–Turkish war of 1768–74, by the end of which the Austrians and everyone else agreed that the Russians were a far worse threat to European stability than the Turks could now ever be. The possibility was considered of reviving the spirit of the crusades in order to re-annexe Constantinople, whose 1453 seizure by the Turks, and its status as the capital of Islam, had remained a constant irritant to western Europeans.46 The sudden availability of Persians in accessible modern languages must also be set against a background of countless abduction plays and operas of the eighteenth century, in which a Christian woman has been abducted and taken prisoner at the court of a Muslim monarch, to face threats of torture and sexual slavery.47 The best known of these—and one of the least xenophobic—is Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which had its premiere in Vienna in 1782, and in which the janissary Osmin is a greedy, gullible, sadistic, and lecherous Muslim stereotype. The early stages of preparation for the Greek uprising of 1821 thus took place in a cultural environment that had new access to the plays of Aeschylus as well as a set of popular conventions for impersonating Ottoman Turks in the theatre.48 Greek thoughts of independence seem always to be ideologically affected by the cultural presence of Greek tragedy. A French Les Perses, inspired by Aeschylus, was in the early nineteenth century dedicated to Alexandros Morouzis, Phanariot Prince of the Danubian principality of Moldavia, and may have been produced at his court in Jassy; Sophocles’ Philoctetes—a profound statement of the pain of exile from the fatherland—had been staged in 1818 by the Phanariot community at Odessa.49 Moreover, as Gonda Van 45 For another of Romney’s illustrations to Persians, and his relationship with Potter, see Hall and Macintosh (2005), 209–10 with fig. 7.3. 46 Wilson (1985), 81–2. 47 See the excellent discussion in Wilson (1985). 48 On which see also Puchner (1996). 49 On the Jassy play, see Knös (1962), 656. For further bibliography on the Odessa Philoctetes, see Taplin (2004), 148 and n. 7. See also Hall and Macintosh (1995), 264–5.


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Steen shows (below, Ch. 13), the partisan Comte de Marcellus, a Philhellene French diplomat to the Ottoman Porte in Constantinople, organized a recitation of Persians there on the eve of the uprising. This audience had come to this literary evening with an agenda: the play reading of the Persians served to sanction and strengthen ambitions of patriotic military action that remained subject to Ottoman-Turkish suspicion and retaliation. It is likely that Shelley had heard about this Constantinopolitan reading when in Pisa he began work on his Hellas, which he himself described as ‘a sort of imitation of the Persae of Æschylus’.50 It was published in 1822 and dedicated to the Phanariot Prince Alexandros Mavrokordatos (who as a refugee from the Turkocracy in Pisa had recently been instructing Mary Shelley in ancient Greek). It was the result of a sudden inspiration, conceived and produced when Shelley was intensely excited by the historical circumstances in southern Europe. His daughter-in-law Lady Jane Shelley describes this process: The south of Europe had awakened from its lethargy into a state of high political excitement, and it seemed as if the age of liberty were dawning in several places. Spain and Naples had been revolutionized in the previous year; and the northern and central parts of Italy now endeavoured to follow the example . . . Greece declared itself independent of Ottoman domination; and these combined attacks on the general foe filled Shelley with the utmost enthusiasm.51

Shelley was, therefore, equally enthused by the promise of world Liberty suggested by the rebellions against autocratic monarchs within Catholic countries and by the rebellion of the Orthodox Christian Greeks against Ottoman rule. It will become important to keep this in mind when the configurations of freedom and despotism within his poem are investigated. Lady Shelley also recalls the extraordinary moment, earlier detailed in Mary Shelley’s correspondence, when Mavrokordatos called on the Shelleys on 1 April 1821, to inform them that his cousin, Prince Ipsilanti, had in Odessa pronounced the outbreak of the War of Independence;52 Mavrokordatos set sail for Greece in June. Shelley’s interest in the Greek insurrection was therefore intensely personal as well as political. It was at this time that he completed the thousand-line drama, and it is scarcely surprising that more than a third of it involves direct commentary on the war between the Greeks and the Turks.53 Shelley’s Preface twins the Aeschylean Greek tragic vision of the struggle for freedom with the 1821 uprising. Shelley writes, 50 In a letter to Mr John Gisborne from Pisa, dated 22 October 1821, quoted in Wise’s preface to Shelley (1886), xii. 51 Lady Jane Shelley (1859), 148–9. For an extended discussion of the historical events preceding Hellas, see Cameron (1974), 375–7. 52 Lady Jane Shelley (1859), 149; see Cameron (1974), 378. 53 See Barrell (1967), 183–4.

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the Persae of Æschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians.54

He therefore replaced the Aeschylean lament for the dead of Salamis with his captive Greek chorus’s visionary account of the utopian future which the liberation of Greece might offer the whole world. It was in the Preface to this drama that Shelley made his famous declaration, ‘We are all Greeks . . . our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece’; he seems to have been genuinely convinced that the world awaited ‘only the news of a revolution in Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise’.55 The insurrection in Greece was for Shelley both emblem and most urgent example of a much more international and epochal revolutionary endeavour. Shelley was drawing on a tradition already inaugurated by the time of Thomas Maurice’s The Fall of the Mogul (1806), a tragedy ‘attempted partly on the Grecian model’, which borrows from the Sophoclean Oedipus, but also from Aeschylus’ Persians. The latter play is especially apparent in Maurice’s battle narrative and the laments of his mutinous choruses of Brahmin and Zoroastrian priests, who predict that the persecution their religions have suffered will become worse under their newest Islamic ruler, Nadir Shah, before the subject Hindu and Parsee peoples will one day be liberated from imperial oppression.56 The political thrust, Islamic principal characters, Indian slaves, eastern palace setting and transhistorical vision of Maurice’s choruses directly anticipated those of Shelley’s Hellas. Shelley also synthesized contemporary Turk with ancient Achaemenid Persian. His scene is set at Constantinople, in the seraglio of Mahmud II, who was the Ottoman sultan between 1808 and 1839. From our point of view, however, the poem marks a pivotal moment. It is now through a major canonical author that all the ideological weight of the Persian Wars becomes associated not only with the Ottoman Turks’ occupation of Greece but with Islam as the enemy of western liberty.57 Critics do not agree on which is the most important point of difference between Shelley’s Hellas and Aeschylus’ Persians.58 One significant alteration is the replacement of the chorus of male Persian elders in the Greek tragedy with a chorus of Greek captive maidens. The shift from masculine to feminine seems to allow Shelley to write much less warlike sentiments, thus creating an opportunity for more spiritual expansiveness;59 this chorus’ fundamental role 54

55 Shelley (1886), p. vii. Ibid., p. x. 57 See Hall and Macintosh (2005), 266–7. See esp. Scrivener (1982), 292–7. 58 Important recent comparative discussions of Persians and Hellas, taking very different trajectories from this one, include Erkelenz (1997) and Ferris (2000), 108–13. 59 Hogle (1988), 293. 56


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is to translate the specific events unfolding in 1821 into events of diachronic and cosmic significance, in which the current struggle is emblematic of, and an important step in, the march of history towards a transcendental notion of human Freedom. In the fifth stanza of their first ode, while Mahmud sleeps on his couch surrounded by opium petals, they invoke the idea of Freedom, the mighty mistress; by stanza nine they are warming to the theme. ‘In the great morning of the world, | The spirit of God with might unfurl’d | The flag of Freedom over Chaos’. It turns out that Freedom’s splendour first ‘burst and shone’ from ‘Thermopylae and Marathon’. With this move, the ancient Greek resistance against Persia and the contemporary struggle are explicitly associated. In a truly memorable image, maternal Greece is figured as mourning at the funeral of the infant Freedom, whose bier she follows through Time.60 The nub of the problem is Shelley’s stance on Christianity. Himself an agnostic moral idealist, with leanings towards the epistemological and metaphysical theories of George Berkeley,61 in this poem he had the chance to divorce the question of the political domination of Greece from the religious conflict between Islam and Christianity. But faced with the history of monotheisms, he stepped back from such a radical step on its very brink. In the second long choral lyric, the famous ‘Worlds on worlds are rolling over’, the universe is run by the mysterious cosmic figure of ‘the unknown God’. But this unknown deity, in Shelley’s conception of the history of religion, has from time to time sent forth to humanity individual figures, including the ‘Promethean conqueror’, who trod the ‘thorns of death and shame’. This chorus argues that Olympian polytheism died in the face of the star of Bethlehem (‘Apollo, Pan, and Love, | And even Olympian Jove | Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them’). Islam subsequently arose, but will be shortlived: ‘The moon of Mahomet | Arose, and it shall set: | While blazon’d as on heaven’s immortal noon | The cross leads generations on’.62 All this is in the mouth of the Greek chorus. They are presumably Orthodox Christians, although they are endowed, like the chorus of Prometheus Unbound, with a vision that transcends their specific identity and place in space and time. Yet their own religious stance can never offer a parallel to the eclectic, mystical, and global spirituality of the better known, mythical poem, which was profoundly affected by Shelley’s interest in both Platonism and Hinduism.63 Shelley was well aware that in the issue of religion he faced a real 60

Shelley (1886), 6. For detailed discussions of Shelley’s religion and its presentation in Hellas, a complex matter involving Platonism, Reincarnation, and Pantheism as well as the polarization of the cross and the crescent, see esp. Barnard (1964), 85–95. 62 Shelley (1886), 12–14. 63 See Drew (1987), ch. 7: ‘Shelley: Prometheus Unbound and a vale in the Indian Caucasus’. 61

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problem in Hellas, for he appends an extensive note to this chorus, in which he attempts to explain what exactly it is that he means. Here he tries to have his agnostic cake and eat it; Christianity is on the one hand just another temporary and contingent manifestation of humanity’s relationship to the supreme Being; but, on the other hand, it was in the past superior to, and more truthful than, pagan polytheism; it is now superior to the Islamic religion, and will undoubtedly outlast it. He writes, The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal.64

He continues in this note to argue coherently and precisely for the necessity for agnosticism: that ‘there is a true solution of the riddle [of the universe], and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain’.65 Yet in Hellas Shelley has found it impossible to configure the Greek War of Independence in terms solely of the human need for ethnic self-determination and political self-government. The true extent of Shelley’s absorption of the Christian imagery of the infidel emerges in the interchange between Mahmud and his henchman Daood. The Janizars have apparently not been paid, but Mahmud is unsympathetic: ‘Go ! bid them pay themselves | With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins | Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? | No infidel children to impale on spears?’66 The poet has been unable to liberate his verse sufficiently from the contemporary stereotypes of Islam, and the Christian rhetoric of the crusade, in order to leave the notion of a religious war back in the medieval period where it surely belongs. This, to me, shows the extent to which the still stirring politics and utopian idealism of Hellas are compromised by its complicity in the ideology of the Christian crusade. Hellas represents truly, from this point of view, the singular tragedy of Romantic Hellenism. It was certainly in imitation of Shelley’s work that a whole tradition of patriotic Salamis texts was established in Victorian literature, including William Bennett’s The Triumph for Salamis, a ‘lyrical ballad’ for twin choirs of young men and (female) virgins, whose imaginary setting is a circle on an Attic beach around the victory trophy. These young Athenians sometimes even forget that they are pre-Christian pagans, as when they execrate ‘the fell barbarian’, who was ‘accursed of God’, and lusted ‘to crush the guiltless and the free’.67

64 66

65 Shelley (1886), 55. Ibid. 57. 67 Ibid. 14. Bennett (1855), no. 2, pp. 7, 12.


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MAKING PERSIANS TOPICAL AGAIN It is not the point of this chapter to deny that Aeschylus’ Persians has been adapted, revived or performed in relation to any conflict other than the West versus Islam. The tragedy has a reception history that embraces several other wars. It may underlie, for example, Cervantes’ play La Numancia (c.1585), which portrays the plight of the Numantians when they had been defeated by the Romans under Scipio Aemilianus in 133 bc;68 Cervantes had himself been wounded at the battle of Lepanto, so quickly associated with Salamis. Thomas Rymer considered redesigning Persians as a theatrical commemoration of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.69 Persians was used to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon in the battle of the Nile and the victories of the British fleet over the Chinese during the Opium Wars.70 In the early twentieth century, Irish Republicans equated the spirit of the Greeks in Persians with their own rebellion against British imperialism.71 Yet the same British imperialists, at the end of the First World War, identified themselves with Aeschylus’ glorious Athenians, the persecuted citizens who had finally prevailed, when The Times newspaper of 22 November 1918 published the part of Darius’ speech in Persians about hubris flowering and reaping a crop of calamity;72 at the very beginning of World War II, Gilbert Murray’s translation of Persians was broadcast by national BBC Radio as the first in a series of ‘great plays’, and starred Sybil Thorndike as the aged queen. Germany (Nazi this time, not Prussian) was thus once again equated with Aeschylus’ presentation of Persia.73 Yet between 1960 and 1971 three performances within different traditions created the type of theatrical reading which made possible the most recent wave of revivals of Persians, which can be dated to 1993 onwards. Although the play’s patriotic sentiments have long since made it a favourite in Greece,74 Karolos Koun’s landmark staging of Persians was perhaps the first to use the play to criticize ‘the barbarian within’, the internal tyrant embodied in the hard right wing of Greek politics; this famous production, which had its premiere at the World Arts Festival in London in 1966, achieved great fame and certainly helped to foster the philhellene sentiment that was soon to put pressure

68

69 De Armas (1998), 86–93. Rymer (1693), 11–17. See the anonymous text The Battle of the Nile: A Dramatic Poem on the Model of the Greek Tragedy (1799) and the burlesque (also anonymous) of Persians entitled The Chinaid (1843). 71 See Macintosh (1994), 14–15 and Hall (1996), 1–2. 72 Persians 821 ff.: ‘For the grain | Of overweening Pride, after full Flower | Beareth a sheaf of Doom, and garners in | A harvest of all tears.’ 73 The broadcast took place on 16 April 1939. Thanks to Amanda Wrigley for researching this production. 74 It was performed, for example, in the 19th cent. at the wedding celebrations of Crown Prince Constantine and the Prussian Princess Sophie (1889). 70

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Figure 9.4 The Queen, the Chorus, and the Messenger in Koun’s Persians (1966)

on the Greek dictatorship of 1967–74 (Fig. 9.4). During subsequent revivals, the figures equated with the tyrannical Persian king become, paradoxically, Greeks themselves: the loathed dictators. In the German Democratic Republic a famous production by Mattias Braun, revived several times between 1960 and 1969, was partly an unusual (for the GDR) retrospective denunciation of fascism, and up to a point equated Xerxes with Hitler.75 The play put the reaction of the ‘people’ at the centre, focusing on how a nation could allow its leaders excessive power.76 And yet it was also interpreted at the time as an attack on American imperialism; it was perceived as a reaction to the Korean War, and subsequently, in the ensuing revivals, to ongoing American involvement in Vietnam. The Berliner Ensemble produced another version in 1983 in which the Persian court was the epitome of ‘western’ military decadence, identified more with the Latin American dictatorships of that era than with North America (Xerxes wore the khaki uniform of a junta commander and his mother a cocktail dress).77 75

See Trilse (1975), 150–1.

76

Ibid. 151–2.

77

See Kuckhoff (1987), 19–20.


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Figure 9.5 The design, based on the architecture of Persepolis, for a production of Aeschylus’ Persians at Epidauros

In the Greek and East German traditions, therefore, precedent was set by the end of the 1960s for using Persians to criticize the government of the theatre company’s own country, and to protest against western imperialism, especially the military policies of the USA. There is one further production that is required to fill out the picture, and that is Peter Brook’s remarkable Orghast of 1970–1. Here Aeschylus’ Persians was taken, almost certainly for the first time in history, to the land where it is actually set—the heart of the ancient Achaemenid kingdom of Iran, an architectural backdrop that had so frequently inspired the imagination of set designers in Greece and elsewhere (see Fig. 9.5). The Orghast project, politically speaking, rested on an uncomfortable paradox from the outset: Brook was combining Persians with several other texts, in an attempt to forge a whole new international theatrical language. But he was also taking the opportunity offered by the Shiraz-Persepolis festival, which had been founded in 1967 as a public-relations event, designed to display the advanced culture of what was then a western-facing country by the last Shahanshah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The festival’s political and

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propagandistic dimension was undeniable, and yet it paled into insignificance beside the extravagant celebrations organized in October 1971 to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the Persian empire: the Shah was anxious to emphasize his countrymen’s cultural ancestry in Achaemenid Persia, especially the connection he perceived between himself and Cyrus I.78 Moreover, the festival was culturally important as the venue for the last few major theatrical productions in Iran before the fundamentalist revolution of 1979. Accepting the invitation, despite the poor reputation of the regime in the largely progressive and anti-authoritarian world of theatre artists, Brook developed his idea for a collaborative production that could discover a radically new medium of global theatre. His original decision to use as his venue the ancient Persepolis royal tomb of Artaxerxes II was certainly intended as a compliment to the earliest surviving Greek tragedy, Aeschylus’ Persians, in which the ghost of Darius arises from his tomb.79 But during the preparations for the production Brook drove the ten minutes out from Persepolis to Naqshe-Rustam, the imposing mountain cliff where Darius I and Xerxes I (among others) are buried, and instantly decided that at least one performance of Orghast had to take place at this imposing site (see Fig. 9.6).80 In the end the play was divided; while Part I was to be performed in front of Artaxerxes’ tomb at Persepolis, Part II was to be performed in what Brook regarded as the ‘epic space’ of Naqsh-e-Rustam, at the very site of the tomb of Xerxes. ‘Here, the action was explosive, the sound declamatory’; five hundred lines (basically, all the choral and lyric sections) of Persians ‘were chosen for their power’, and delivered, in order to inject into them the maximum transhistorical emotional force, mainly by the actors who were themselves Persian.81 Orghast was Brook’s first production as director for the Paris-based International Centre for Theatre Research, which used actors from all over the world, from Japan to Africa, the USA to France, in an idealistic attempt to discover theatrical means for transcending—if not entirely abolishing—the barriers created by different languages.82 Orghast used Avestan, a pre-Iranian sacred language, but in order to create a new phonetic dialect where sound took priority over meaning, Brook also confronted the actors with transliterated passages of Aeschylean Greek. The poet Ted Hughes, who collaborated with Brook on Orghast, had recently been working on Aeschylus. At first most of the Greek tragic language elements were derived from Prometheus Bound, but Hughes gradually turned to the text of Persians as he shaped both plot and aural impact.83 Seminal phrases from Persians included lines from the antiphonal lament between Xerxes and the 78 79 80 81 82 83

See above, Ch. 1, p. 9 n. 20. Aeschylus’ play is actually set in Susa, where it incorrectly locates the tomb of Darius I. Smith (1972), 104–6. Ibid. 133. See further Williams (2002), 41–2, 45, and Brook (1987), 108–10. See Smith (1972), 48.


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Figure 9.6 A scene from the performance of Part 2 of Orghast, at the site of Xerxes’ tomb (1971)

chorus, with all their phonetic cries (e.g. 1074–6), and long, aurally rich compound words such as hippiocharme-s (29).84 The performance thus attempted to erase even the linguistic distinction alienating Greek from Persian, as any one language group from any other.85 The preparation of the actors included Brook’s exploring with them the emotions depicted in Persians; Brook wanted his actors to transfer the sensual power of the ancient Persians’ experiences to the experience of Orghast. During rehearsals he said to them that the reception of the news contained in Aeschylus’ play was ‘a profound experience for the whole 84

Ibid. 78, 121.

85

See Hall (2004a), 40.

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nation . . . Many strong, tragic things were the consequence . . . We have a chance of discovering what it meant to be the people who experienced it. We seldom go through experiences of this force.’86 The story they told in Orghast is a new invention, intended as an impersonal epic history of the human spirit, consisting of a massive complex of myths interwoven around a central story with several elements from the story of Prometheus and his Aeschylean tragedy. Orghast related the original violation of the natural world, and the revenge taken by the cosmic Creatress on the Violater, the mental tyrant, whose name was Holdfast. In Part II, Holdfast was held in the Underworld, where his ego gradually decomposed amongst his victims. His son Agoluz (a congener of Hercules as well as Xerxes), after returning to his mother, attempted to raise his father up. The action moved into ever greater despair when the Messenger from Salamis began to move across the valley, and the mother-figure Moasha became Atossa, lamenting the fate of Xerxes that she had seen in her dream. Death brought at the end of the performance an apocalyptic vulture-woman. There are apparently no audio- or video-recordings of Orghast, and it was not created with the intention of producing a coherent, publishable script. It was all along conceived as a one-off theatrical event, never to be repeated. But eyewitness accounts of Part II can offer glimpses into the scale of the production, and the way that it reworked Persians: Fires were lit on the clifftops half an hour in advance. The action is announced by a slow drum beat, on the amplifiers. From the tomb of Xerxes, at the top of a ladder, the Vulture shrieks. Screams and firelight utter [sic] from a pit in the recessed corner of the cliff, below the Vulture . . . From the distance comes the sound of Avesta . . . Moasha recognizes the voice of her son . . . Across the valley, on top of the low mounds, the other action begins. A Persian with a flambeau is crying the names of Xerxes’s commanders at Salamis. A deep, apprehensive chant comes over the amplifiers, as the rest of the chorus, with flambeaux, rush across to him, through the audience. The procession forms up . . . the Persians sweep wildly through them, scrambling upon the carvings in the rock face, clamouring in Greek their terror of defeat at Salamis . . . 87

Darius was brought forth from his tomb ‘with Aeschylus’ invocation of the great emperor’, and his Aeschylean speech was delivered over the amplifiers, followed by more Avestan and percussion. Andrew Porter, the Financial Times reviewer, was awestruck by the choral invocation of Darius: ‘when from the darkness of Darius’s tomb-mouth the solemn shape stepped forth, the effect was overwhelming, and the impulse to fling oneself to one’s knees along with the actors proved hard to master . . . The playgoer who has entered into Orghast has passed through fire, and can never be the same again.’88 This represents 86

87 Smith (1972), 122. Ibid. 182. This review was published in the Financial Times for 16 Sept. 1971, and is here quoted from Smith (1972), 236–7. 88


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only about 50 per cent of the action of Orghast Part II, but it demonstrates that it derived from Aeschylus’ text not only considerable chunks of its text, but the fundamental plot shape, the father–mother–son triangle, the ghostraising, the theme of tyranny, the threnodic, bleak, apocalyptic ending, and the tombside setting.89 Darius and Xerxes’ presences are felt continuously, but ‘as in a dream’; Agoluz ‘becomes Xerxes at the moment when he is completely defeated’.90 In terms of the history of the reception of Persians this production represents a crucial turning-point for at least three reasons. By performing parts of the play in the ancient Persian archaeological setting, with the blessing of the Shah, it broke new ground in bridging the western and eastern perception of the ancient conflict between Achaemenids and mainland Greeks. It was the first significant production organized by a primarily English-language team, and since Peter Brook is probably the most influential director of his generation, Orghast was undoubtedly responsible for bringing the tragedy to the attention of avant-garde, experimental theatre practitioners in western Europe and North America. Most importantly, in attempting to use Persians to eradicate all ethnic distinctions in a new, international theatrical medium, with a global team of actors and performers, it adumbrated the wave of protest productions that was to be inaugurated at the time of the Gulf War.

XERXES AND SADDAM HUSSEIN This was the theatrical backdrop against which Aeschylus’ Xerxes found his most recent Doppelgänger in the figure of Saddam Hussein. The equation was first made in Peter Sellars’ new 1993 version of Aeschylus’ Persians, written by Robert Auletta, and staged in Edinburgh, California and Los Angeles. It fundamentally challenged the American image of the ordinary people on the enemy side in the Gulf War. Certain stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims—in particular relating to their perceived sensuality, effeminacy, and irrationality—had been increasingly exposed in the West, at least since the publication of Said’s Orientalism, as fictive ethnicities belonging to the now obsolete ideology of imperialism. But the Gulf War (which unlike the 2003 war knew no ‘embedded journalists’ or live relays of footage of the Iraqi carnage to the West) showed how easy it was to fill the void, created in the western imagination by avoidance of authentic pictures of an Asian enemy, with conjured images of all Iraqis as inherently hard, tyrannical, cruel, militaristic, and above all terrifyingly different. This is what was so remarkable about the 89

Smith (1972), 133.

90

Ibid. 133, 214.

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challenge to stereotypical thinking posed by the humanized Iraqis of Sellars’ Persians.91 The action was transposed from ancient Susa to modern Baghdad, and the disaster the cast lamented was the bombing of Iraq by the USA in early 1991. The production was not remotely blind to the faults of the Iraqi regime— indeed it emphasized the gassing of the Kurds, and it portrayed Xerxes, in his modern form, as a megalomaniac and narcissist perversely and personally intent upon defying America.92 But the repeated insistence was that the casualties suffered by the Iraqis must have caused them terrible suffering and hardship; moreover, Auletta used the text of Aeschylus’ Persians as a springboard for turning American propaganda on itself, when the chorus explain that the Americans ‘are terrorists, you see. | Force always seems to work for them’.93 The vision of Sellars and Auletta was simple enough: Aeschylus, whatever his own intentions, allowed the voice of the ancient Athenians’ defeated enemy to be heard, or at least impersonated, in the theatre. Although the tyrant Xerxes and Saddam Hussein were shown as sharing many unpleasant features, the play exposed the brutality and senselessness of US militarism. Persians could therefore be used to allow the West to imagine, at least, what it felt like to be a citizen of Baghdad under fire. That the ‘message’ of this production was addressed to advanced global citizens, aware of the need to abandon militarism and transcend ethnic and national loyalties, was fully demonstrated by Sellars’ insistence on a fully international team of actors, and the use of traditions of performance and gesture extending from Javanese dancing to North African music and western deaf signing.94 It is certain that Sellars’ production of Persians after the Gulf War made it more likely that, as the second war with Iraq began to loom, someone would again consider staging the play. There have been several significant productions in Europe, including, for example, a Greek realization powerfully updated through costume and acting style at Epidauros in 1999 (see Fig. 9.7), a polemical and satirical performance at the Dresden Staatsschauspiel in 2002, a revival by the Istituto Nazionale Dramma Antico at Syracuse, Sicily in the ancient theatre in 2003, and an English-language production by the Pearl Theater Company in New York in January–February 2004. But the most controversial and widely publicized has undoubtedly been Ellen McLaughlin’s entirely new version, staged almost immediately after the end of the Iraq war of 2003 by the National Actors’ Theater in New York.95 In this deliberately timely and poetic revival, commissioned, according to McLaughlin, as a ‘response to a crisis in 91

For a detailed discussion of this production, see Hall (2004b), 169–85. See Auletta (1993), 33, 37, 47, 88. 93 Ibid. 33. 94 Hall (2004b), 197. 95 McLaughlin’s translation has not yet been published; there is a copy at the APGRD in the Classics Centre in Oxford University. The production was directed by Ethan McSweeney. 92


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Figure 9.7 The Messenger brings the bad news in Persians at Epidauros (1999)

American diplomacy’ immediately after the outbreak of war’,96 Aeschylus’ ‘us-and-them’ polarity became dissolved in an unprecedented way. Although Aeschylus’ criticism of Persian expansionism was relevant to Saddam Hussein’s regime, the use of western clothes, and the harrowing performance of Michael Stuhlbarg as Xerxes (see Fig. 9.8), brought home the identification of the Persian royal family with the American government. Auletta and Sellars had proposed an uncomplicated identification of the ancient Persians with the contemporary Iraqis, whereas in McLaughlin’s interpretation parallels to the international conduct of the USA are to be found on both sides of Aeschylus’ ethnic divide. Both Greeks and Persians, Anglo-American forces and Iraqis, have contributed to the nightmarish suffering reported in the play. One reviewer wrote: ‘You can hear the audience at a performance of Aeschylus’ 2,500-year-old play The Persians draw in its communal breath when one of the characters speaks movingly of the terrible consequences of a superpower making war just because “it was a thing we could do”. ’ The performance, wrote the reviewer, ‘is a revelation to playgoers battered by the current debate over 96

Quoted in Tallmer (2003).

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Figure 9.8 The return of Xerxes in McLaughlin’s Persians (2003)

whether the United States was justified in invading Iraq earlier this year’.97 It was in this production, which was described as possessing a ‘docudrama flavour’,98 that the conflation of ‘self’ as Greek and ‘other’ as Persian, so fundamental to Aeschylus’ play, had in the USA for the first time become completely inverted. With exception of Koun, hardly any other agent in the history of the reception of Persians has produced a version in which Xerxes’ aggressive policies have been so unequivocally associated with those of the adaptor’s own country. McLaughlin’s version was revived, very successfully, at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley, California, in the autumn of 2005. This followed close on the heels of a revival of the Auletta adaptation in the summer of 2005 by the Scena Theater company, at the Tivoli Theatre in Washington, DC, directed by Robert McNamara; the revival seemed to the reviewer in the Washington Post to be artistic but thinly-disguised liberal ‘agitprop’.99 Together with The Persians . . . a comedy about war with five songs in New York, these revivals result in the remarkable position that three major versions of Aeschylus’ long-neglected play have played in North America during the year when this book went to press.

97 Anonymous review posted on United Press International, 27 June 2003 last accessed through www.quickstart.clari.net Dec. 2005. 98 Sommer (2003). 99 See Pressley (2005) and http://www.scenatheatre.org/s0405.htm.


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Figure 9.9 Cover of Rouhani’s translation of Persians (1998)

When in 1971 Peter Brook took inspiration from Persians and performed large sections of it at the very tombs of Darius and Xerxes, some of his contemporaries were concerned that their Persian hosts—the Shah’s administration—might take offence at the play’s emphasis on a Persian defeat.100 Their fears were not realized, and the Shah had only eight more years to rule before he was ousted by the fundamentalist revolution of 1979, suffering a loss of empire and high estate that reminded more than one western commentator of the story told by Aeschylus’ Persians.101 Aeschylus’ Persians has also recently (1998)—and probably for the first time—been translated, apparently without any obvious polemical spin, into modern Iranian (Fig. 9.9). The 100

Smith (1972), 130–1. Raphael (1979): ‘had the Shah read Aeschylus’s “The Persians”, he might have had the wit to save his throne’. 101

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translator, Fuad Rouhani, was an urbane, western-facing and moderate Iranian citizen, who also translated Plato. He had a distinguished career in international law behind him by the time he was made first Secretary-General of OPEC, stationed at Geneva, in 1960, his tenure of which office was characterized by a naive determination to keep politics and religion out of the oil business. He was a true cosmopolitan, which may be the main reason why Rouhani chose this particular Greek tragedy to translate (rather than the kind of nationalist pride in the ancient Persian legacy exhibited by the last Shah). It is tempting to speculate on how long it will take for his translation of Aeschylus’ Persians to find a performance in his own country, and on what type of interpretation it might be given. Who might be the chastened imperialists in any Iranian reading of the play? But this may be a day long in coming, for theatre is still not a safe occupation under the current fundamentalist government.102 Within Iran, however, there has also been one striking consequence of either the recent international revival of Persians or the availability of Rouhani’s version. This is the interest generated by Aeschylus’ presentation of Xerxes’ mother among Iranian campaigners for the liberation of women from the strictures imposed on them by Islamic law. A recent anonymous article in the online Persian Journal which is patently hostile to the fundamentalist regime, and especially to the oppression and veiling of women, has cited, in support of Iranian women’s right to respect, the reverential titles bestowed on the ancient queen in Aeschylus’ The Iranians [sic].103 This is surely the first sign of Aeschylus’ play being used in a critique of the internal regime within the very land once ruled over by the protagonists of his remarkable theatrical response to the Persian Wars.104

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anon. (1799). The Battle of the Nile: A Dramatic Poem on the Model of the Greek Tragedy. London. Anon. (1843). The Chinaid, or the ‘Persae’ of Aeschylus Burlesqued. Oxford. 102 The British tour by the tiny Iranian company Theatre Bazi in 2002, for example, was the first since the 1979 revolution. It is revealing that the director of Theatre Bazi is Attila Pasyooni, a survivor of anti-idolatry legislation, who worked with Peter Brook on Orghast. 103 ‘Atossa, the celestial and terrestrial Lady of ancient Iran’, in the ‘Women’ section of Persian Journal, 13 Nov. 2004. The article, which is anonymous, was last accessed Dec. 2005 at the address www.iranian.ws/iran_news/ publish/article_4461.shtml. 104 Versions of this paper have been read to the Ancient Historians of the Atlantic States at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, The University of Ohio at Oxford, Scripps College in California, and the research seminar in the department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham. I am extremely greatful to my audiences on all those occasions for useful feedback, and in particular to the shrewd remarks of William Turpin, Edward Harris, Christopher Rowe, Johannes Haubold, Walter Donlan, David Roselli, and Peter Rose. The input of Emma and Peter has been incalculable.


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Anti, C. (1952). ‘Il vaso di Dario e I Persiani di Frinico’, Archaeologia Classica 4: 23–45. Auletta, R. (1993). The Persians by Aeschylus: A Modern Version. Los Angeles. Barrell, J. (1967). Shelley and the Thought of his Time. Hamden, Conn. Baudet, H. (1965). Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of NonEuropean Man. English translation by Elizabeth Wentholt. New Haven. Bazzell, D. (1932). Zur Geschichte des historischen Dramas im Altertum. Zurich. Bennett, W. C. (1855). The Triumph for Salamis. London. Bernstein, M., and Studlar, G. (eds.) (1997). Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film. London and New York. Brook, P. (1987). The Shifting-Point, 1946–1987. New York. Browning, R. (2002). ‘Greek and Others: From Antiquity to the Renaissance’, in T. Harrison (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians (Edinburgh), 257–77. Originally published as ch. 2 of Robert Browning, History, Language and Literacy in the Byzantine World (Northampton, 1989). Cameron, K. N. (1974). Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, Mass. Clough, E. (2003). ‘In Search of Xerxes: Images of the Persian King’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Durham. Cohen, J. (ed.) (2001). The Postcolonial Middle Ages. New York. Conolly, J. (2001). ‘Reclaiming the Theatrical in the Second Sophistic’, Helios 28: 75–96. Csapo, E., and Slater, W. J. (1995). The Context of Ancient Drama. Ann Arbor. De Armas, F. A. (1998). Cervantes, Raphael and the Classics. Cambridge. Dindorf, W. (ed.) (1829). Aristides ex recensione Guilielmi Dindorfii. vol. i. Hildesheim. Doenges, N. (1981). The Letters of Themistocles. New York. Drew, J. (1987). India and the Romantic Imagination. Delhi, Oxford, and New York. El Cheikh, N. M. (2004). Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 36). Cambridge, Mass. Erkelenz, M. (1997). ‘Inspecting the Tragedy of Empire: Shelley’s Hellas and Aeschylus’ Persians’, Philological Quarterly 76: 313–37. Euben, S. P. (1986). ‘The Battle of Salamis and the Origins of Political Theory’, Political Theory 14: 359–90. Everett, P. (2001). Erasure. Hanover and London. Ewbank, I.-S. (2005). ‘ “Striking too short at Greeks” ’, in F. Macintosh, P. Michelakis, E. Hall, and O. Taplin (eds.), Agamemnon in Performance. Oxford, 37–52. Ferris, D. (2000). Silent Urns: Romanticism, Hellenism, Modernity. Stanford, Calif. Ganim, J. (2005). Medievalism and Orientalism. New York. Geanakopoulos, D. J. (1976). ‘The Diaspora Greeks: the Genesis of Modern Greek National Consciousness’, in N. P. Diamandouros, J. P. Anton, J. A. Petropoulos, and P. Topping (eds.), Hellenism and the First Greek War of Liberation (1821–1830): Continuity and Change, 59–77. Thessaloniki. Griffith, M. (1998). ‘The King and Eye: The Rule of the Father in Greek Tragedy’, PCPS 44: 20–84. Grosrichard, A. (1998). The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East, Eng. trans. by Liz Heron. London and New York. Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford.

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Hall, E. (1994). ‘Drowning by Nomes: The Greeks, Swimming, and Timotheus’ Persians’, in H. Kahn (ed.), The Birth of the European Identity (NCLS 2). Nottingham, 44–80. —— (ed.) (1996). Aeschylus’ Persians. Warminster. —— (2004a). ‘Why Greek Tragedy in the Late Twentieth Century?’, in Hall, Macintosh, and Wrigley (2004), 1–46. —— (2004b). ‘Aeschylus, Race, Class, and War’, in Hall, Macintosh, and Wrigley (2004), 169–97. —— (2005). ‘Iphigenia and her Mother at Aulis: A Study in the Recent revival of a Euripidean Classic’, in J. Dillon and S. E. Wilmer (eds.), Rebel Women: Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today. London, 3–41. —— (2006). The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society. Oxford. —— and Fiona Macintosh (2005). Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660–1914. Oxford. —— , —— and Wrigley, A. (eds.) (2004). Dionysus since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium. Oxford. Hero, A. C. (1991). ‘Aeschylus’, The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. London and New York, i. 28. Hogle, J. E. (1988). Shelley’s Process: Radical Transference and the Development of his Major Works. New York and Oxford. Huebner, F. (ed.)(1935). Vita Mahumeti, in Historische Vierteljahrschrift 29: 441–90. Dresden. Jacobson, H. (ed.) (1983). The Exagoge of Ezekiel. Cambridge. Knös, B. (1962). L’Histoire de la littérature néo-grecque. Stockholm and Uppsala. Kuckhoff, A.-G. (1987). ‘Der Friedensgedanke im antiken Drama’, in Maria Erxleben (ed.), Der Friedensgedanke im antiken Drama. Stendal, 9–29. Macfie, A. L. (ed.) (2000). Orientalism: A Reader. Edinburgh. Macintosh, F. (1994). Dying Acts: Death in Greek and Irish Tragic Drama. Cork. —— (1997). ‘Tragedy in Performance: 19th- and 20th-Century Productions’, in P. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 284–323. MacKenzie, J. M. (1995). Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. Manchester and New York. McLaughlin, E. (forthcoming). Stage translation of Aeschylus’ Persians. Metlitzki, D. (1977). The Matter of Araby in Medieval England. New Haven, Conn., and London. Nadel, A. (1997). ‘A Whole New (Disney) World Order: Aladdin, Atomic Power, and the Muslim Middle East’, in Bernstein and Studlar (1997), 184–203. Olson, S. D. (ed.) (2002). Aristophanes’ Acharnians. Oxford. Pelling, C. (1997). ‘Aeschylus’ Persae and history’, in Pelling (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian. Oxford, 1–19. Pressley, N. (2005). ‘In Scena’s “The Persians,” Artful Agitprop’, The Washington Post, 1 Aug., p. CO4. Protopapa-Mpoumpoulidou, G. (1958). To theatron en Zakyntho-i. Athens. Puchner. W. (1996). ‘Die griechische Revolution von 1821 auf dem europäischen Theater’, Südost-Forschungen 55: 85–127.


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Rajak, T. (1974). ‘Flavius Josphus: Jewish History and the Greek World’. D. Phil. dissertation, Oxford. Raphael, F. (1979). ‘If the Shah had read Aeschylus’, The New York Times, 25 April, p. 23. Rodinson, M. (1987). Europe and the Mystique of Islam, trans. R. Veinus. Seattle. Roisman, J. (1988). ‘On Phrynichos’ Sack of Miletus and Phoenissai ’, Eranos 86: 15–23. Rouhani, F. (1998). The Persians (Persian trans.). Bethesda, Md. Rymer, T. (1693). A Short View of Tragedy, its Original, Excellency, and Corruption. London. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. London. —— (2003). ‘A Window on the World’, The Guardian Review, 2 Aug., 4–6. Scrivener, M. H. (1982). Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Princeton. Scullion, S. (2002). ‘Tragic dates’, CQ ns 52: 81–101. Shelley, Lady Jane (ed.) (1859). Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources. London. Shelley, P. B. (1886). Hellas: A Lyrical Drama, with the author’s prologue and notes by Dr Garnett and Mary W. Shelley, edited by Thomas J. Wise (Shelley Society Publications, 2nd series, no. 5). London. Shoat, E. (1997). ‘Gender and Culture of Empire: Towards a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema’, in Bernstein and Studlar (1997), 19–66. Smith, A. C. H. (1972). Orghast at Persepolis. London. Sommer, E. (2003). ‘The Persians’, review in CurtainUp, 16 June 2003, last accessed December 2005 on www.curtainup.com/Persians.html. Sommerstein, A. H. (1996, ed.). Aristophanes’ Frogs. Warminster. Southern, R. W. (1962). Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Mass. Tallmer, J. (2003). ‘A New Persians Offers Insight on New Imperialism’, The Villager 73, no. 7 (18–24 June). Taplin, Oliver (2004), ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Seamus Heaney’s, and Some Other Recent Half-Rhymes’, in Hall, Macintosh, and Wrigley (2004), 145–67. Trilse, C. (1975). Antike und Theater heute. Berlin. Untermeyer, L. (ed.) (1920). Modern British Poetry. New York. Valsa, M. (1960). Le Théâtre grec moderne, de 1453 à 1900. Berlin. Williams, D. (2002). ‘Towards an Art of Memory: Peter Brook in Paris’, in David Bradby and Maria Delgado (eds.), The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages (Manchester and New York), 37–52. Wilson, W. D. (1985). ‘Turks on the 18th-Century Operatic Stage’, Eighteenth-Century Life 9.2: 79–92.


10 Operatic Variations on an Episode at the Hellespont David Kimbell

Of Handel’s forty-odd surviving operas1 Serse, first performed in London at the Theatre Royal in the Haymarket on 15 April 1738, is today one of the most admired; on stage none is more entrancing. Like the majority of his operas, it is based on a historical theme. Ultimately its principal source is book 7 of Herodotus’ Histories, from which, as its point of departure, it selects a few incidents at or near the Hellespont in 480 bc as the Persian king Xerxes (Serse) prepares to lead his army over the straits into Europe. It was not Handel’s first excursion into matters Persian. Siroe (1728) purports to depict an episode of Persian history, and there are incidental Persian details in the two Alexander operas, Alessandro (1726) and Poro (1731). These three operas are among Handel’s most decorous; two of them, indeed, Siroe and Poro, being based on drammi per musica by that great arbiter of eighteenth-century taste, Pietro Metastasio. Serse, however, disconcerted some of Handel’s early admirers by its very different tone. Properly speaking it is not his ‘only comic opera’, as has sometimes been claimed; but Charles Burney (to cite the most authoritative of eighteenth-century voices) deemed it to have ‘one of the worst [librettos] Handel ever set to Music’, and deplored what he described as its ‘mixture of tragi-comedy and buffoonery’, though he did concede that it gave the composer an opportunity of indulging ‘his native love and genius for humour’ (Burney (1935), ii. 822). Elsewhere, in a letter from Lord Shaftesbury to James Harris, written on 4 May 1738, we learn that Serse was being talked about as if it were a ballad opera: ‘My own judgement’, says his Lordship, ‘is that it is a capital opera notwithstanding tis called a ballad one.’ (Burrows and Dunhill (2002), 49) The modern critic is likely to paraphrase such contemporary judgements in an altogether positive spirit: in Winton I am grateful for the assistance and advice of Frau Helga Heim, Dr Eva Horváth, and Dr Jürgen Neubacher at Hamburg; Dr Roger Savage and Dr Michael Turnbull at Edinburgh; and Dr Ruth Smith at Cambridge. 1 The exact number will depend on how one regards the different versions of operas that were revived in radically different forms.

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Figure 10.1 Programme cover from Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Xerxes at the ENO (1985)

Dean’s reading, for example, Serse is ‘a sophisticated comedy with passionate undertones that, magnified by Handel’s genius, touch the springs of tragedy.’ (Dean (1995), 140) To clarify the nature of the case, here is a brief account of the start of the opening scene, in which Serse, encamped at Abydos on the point of crossing the Hellespont, falls in love with Romilda, the betrothed of his brother Arsamene.

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The curtain rises to discover him reclining under a plane-tree, which he apostrophizes rapturously; his enthusiasm attains an almost hymnic depth as string-accompanied recitative leads into song, ‘Ombra mai fu’, one of the world’s great melodies. Arsamene and his clownish servant Elviro arrive, evidently after a long journey; for while Arsamene is eagerly making for the house of his beloved Romilda, the exhausted Elviro is interested in nothing but sleep. Snatches of distant music, gorgeously coloured with two treble recorders and four-part strings muted over pizzicato bass, float in on their conversation, and prove to be the accompaniment of an aria which Romilda is singing from the summer house in her garden. Its faintly melancholy tone disguises the fact that it is chiefly a comment on Serse’s curious infatuation with the plane-tree. Arsamene and Elviro, and a little later Serse himself, punctuate the song with snatches of recitative. Nervous of the interest the king is showing in Romilda, Arsamene pretends not to know her. She breaks into song again, this time a sprightly number which is not so much an aria in the usual sense but, so-tospeak, a favourite song, warbled for her own pleasure, and with many a pause in the flow where the recorders take over, as if the tune were echoing in her mind even when she is silent. Serse is bewitched, and declares that she must be his mistress. Apart from the utterly beguiling beauty of the music, what will strike any listener who comes to Serse from an even modest acquaintance with Handel’s earlier operas will be the variety of the musical forms, the range of different dramatic functions they serve, the flexibility with which the elements of opera—recitative, song, instrumental music—are combined and interwoven, the unstilted characterization, the lightness and irony of tone. These, one feels, were probably the very things that troubled Burney; they are certainly the qualities that for modern sensibilities make Serse seem so congenial, so eminently stageworthy. Some light can be shed on the opera’s unique beauty and its unique curiousness by exploring its genealogy. For while many of Handel’s operas have an interesting pre-history, none is more interesting, both for the light it sheds on Handel and for its own sake, than that of Serse.

VENICE 1655: MINATO AND CAVALLI We need not trace this genealogy further back than January 1655, when il Xerse by Pier Francesco Cavalli was staged at the SS. Giovanni e Paolo theatre in Venice. Cavalli was at the peak of his career in the ‘peak period’ of Venetian opera (Glover 1975–6), and Xerse was his twenty-first opera; but it was only the second libretto (and the first acknowledged one) of his collaborator, Nicolò Minato.

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Jane Glover’s term ‘peak period’ evidently signifies that the experimental age of opera was over; it was now an established art-form with its own understood aesthetic. One thing that displayed the growing confidence of its practitioners was the expanding range of the subject-matter: from its pastoral-cum-mythological origins, via such themes as the Trojan War and its aftermath, which combined mythology and legend with some admixture of history, opera had progressed to genuinely historical—or, to put it another way, purely human— themes, beginning with Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in 1642.2 The collaboration with Minato, which was to continue for ten more years, turned Cavalli definitively (though not exclusively) from the mythological–legendary subjects he had treated in the past to ‘history’—in inverted commas because, from the start, librettists had asserted a right to treat their sources, whether legendary or historical, as fancifully as they pleased, ‘[building] up the subject with invention as I deemed necessary’, to quote Giacomo Badoaro, librettist of Ulisse errante in 1644 (Rosand (1991), 62). It was Minato who formalized the rules of the game, in Xerse apparently for the first time, his Argomento differentiating ‘quello che si ha dall’historia’ (the historical data) and ‘quello che si finge’ (the feigned verisimilitudes). It was a procedure that served librettists well for the best part of a century, and for that reason it deserves quoting in some detail. [For ease of reference I have set out and numbered the paragraphs; some later librettos do the same.] Minato continues: argument [1] Xerxes was the son of Darius and of Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, from whom he inherited the Persian Crown. [2] He had many brothers, of whom Arsamenes was perhaps the dearest. [3] He was given in marriage to Amestris, daughter of the Persian nobleman Otanes, who had followed Darius’s party in the wars against the Magi. [4] Having succeeded to the crown in the place of his dead father, Xerxes pursued the expedition against the Athenians which had already been planned by his father, because, in alliance with Aristagoras of Miletus, a fugitive Persian slave, they had burned Sardis, a Persian city. [5] In order to facilitate his passage into Europe in pursuit of this enterprise, Xerxes had a very long bridge built of boats, over which he passed with all his army; but before he could do so, the Hellespont, whipped up by fierce winds and gloomy tempests, destroyed the boats that supported the bridge; so he had to have it rebuilt. 2 Opera began with pastoral and mythology because in such contexts it was felt to be more plausible for characters to sing. Of course, all these operas—mythological, pastoral, legendary, historical—are essentially literary in origin, whether the literature is Homer, Virgil, or Ariosto; Tacitus, Livy, or Herodotus. An exception need be made only for the group of freely invented operas produced by Cavalli in collaboration with the librettist Giovanni Faustini.

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[6] It chanced also that Xerxes came upon a plane tree so beautiful that he adorned it with precious stones set in gold; and when he had to depart he left one of his Immortals to guard it. All this according to Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Histories, Book Seven. In order to bring the drama to its final objective, which is to say, the marriage of Xerxes with Amestris, and to have means wherewith to weave a pleasing intrigue, the following verisimilitudes have been feigned: [1] That Darius, in gratitude towards Otanes, the Persian nobleman who had followed him against the Magi, bestowed on him the crown of Susia, and established him Lord of that region. [2] That the Moors had brought an army to besiege Susa, the capital of Susia, because Otanes had been unwilling to give his daughter Amestris in marriage to their king; and that Otanes had summoned to his aid Xerxes, who had gone there in person with a large army; there he had fallen in love with Amestris and she passionately with him. [3] That urged on by the Persian Senate to set out on the enterprise against the Athenians to avenge the outrage of the burning of Sardis, Xerxes had had to leave one of his generals, Ariodates, Prince of Abydos, with his army to assist Otanes in his enterprise against the Moors; and because of the affection he felt for Amestris, and in the interests of her safety, had persuaded Otanes to send her to Aracca, another Susian city; and this her father had done. [4] That Xerxes had then betaken himself to Abydos, a town on the Hellespont, in order to assemble his army there and, because it was most convenient for the purpose, to pass over from there into Europe by means of a bridge across the Hellespont, which he was having built on boats. [5] That in Abydos were two sisters, daughters of Prince Ariodates, the general Xerxes had left behind with Otanes, the elder called Romilda and the younger Adelanta: both were in love with Arsamenes, brother of Xerxes, and he returned the love of the elder; and that Xerxes likewise fell in love with Romilda, though this was never returned. [6] That then, after Xerxes’ confidant, the eunuch Eumenes, had been appointed field-marshal, and while Xerxes was in Abydos assembling his forces for the European enterprise, a decisive battle had taken place at Susa, the enemy had been routed, and Ariodates had returned to Abydos. [7] That meanwhile Amestris, disguised as a man, had left Aracca with her old tutor Ariston and come to Abydos to see her beloved Xerxes; and that there she learned of her father Otanes’ victory against the Moors, and discovered that Xerxes was in love with Romilda. [8] That from Susa Otanes sent an ambassador to Xerxes, to thank him for his assistance in putting the Moors to flight, and to offer him the Kingdom of Susia and his daughter as consort.

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On this history together with these feigned verisimilitudes is the drama invented.3

Minato’s list of characters (and his spellings of their names) had also better be supplied. I omit those in the Prologue: xerse, King of Persia. amastre, finally his wife; daughter of the King of Susia; dressed as a man. arsamene, Xerse’s brother. romilda & adelanta, sisters; daughters of Ariodate, Prince of Abydos. ariodate, Prince of Abydos; vassal of Xerse. eumene, Eunuch; a confidant of Xerse, and his field-marshal. aristone, Amastre’s old tutor, a nobleman of Susa. periarco, Ambassador of Otanes, King of Susia. elviro, Arsamene’s servant. clito, Romilda’s page-boy. sesostre & scitalce, Mages. captain of Xerse’s guard. persians of Xerse’s guard; lady companions of Romilda; soldiers under Ariodate; pages attending Periarco. choruses of Spirits guarding the plane-tree and of Sailors in the boats on the Hellespont. ballets of Pages playing games and of Warriors fighting.

Evidently, as has long been recognized, we have here the same ‘dramma per musica’ which, more than eighty years later, was to serve for Handel’s Serse. Such durability was a tribute to its excellence. A complex intrigue is adroitly unfolded in exactly twenty scenes per act, and within that frame is accommodated all the theatrical prodigality for which Venetian opera was famed: the spectacular scenes of chorus, dance, and machinery; the interludes of broad comedy. Most crucially, Minato shows a shrewd understanding of how song can best be employed to dramatic ends.4 Without in any way turning his back on the entrance aria and the mid-scene aria as the ‘reformed’ opera seria was to do later in the century, he does focus particularly on the way a character exits from the scene. Often this is where the most important aria is placed; when he retains dramatic monologues to be delivered in the grand old Monteverdian style of arioso,5 he helps the composer make them memorable by incorporating 3

A certain amount of rather curious obfuscation is going on here. Despite Minato’s apparently punctilious discrimination between the historical and the fictitious, he is capricious in deciding which incidents to allocate to which category. Why, for example, are historical details about the bridge of boats included among the feigned verisimilitudes? Why is Xerxes’ devotion to a brother called Arsamenes claimed as historical fact? And it is curious to find Amestris–Amastre, known to readers of Herodotus only for her exceedingly nasty ways with rivals, appearing as a long-suffering promessa sposa. 4 Pirotta (1990), 129–34 suggests that Minato regularly introduced characters (Eumene in Xerse is one such) whose principal function was to serve as virtuoso vocalists. 5 That is to say, when he writes the climactic verses in a free combination of endecasillabi and settenari (as if for recitative) rather than in rhyming stanzas.

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refrains. With these resources he can create scenes that present the character in a notably effective manner: (i) the mood is defined in an opening aria; (ii) the character becomes the focus of a passage of dramatic action; (iii) the exit follows a second aria or a dramatic monologue. The crux of the matter is that the emotional ups and downs and transformations of mood are charted in song. On the poetic qualities of his libretti Minato made helpful observations in his various prefaces: extravagant poetic embellishment had to be curtailed, he explains, because in opera the passions must be expressed clearly and in a theatrically effective way (Pirrotta (1990), 139–40). One further quality gives Xerse its very particular tone: the ironic, deflationary, almost subversive way the action is handled.6 I select two passages based on historical data from Herodotus [Arguments §5 and §6] to illustrate these qualities, and to suggest what Cavalli was able to make of them.

(1) The plane-tree incident It was a whimsical notion to introduce the Persian King of Kings not in regal or military vein, but at his most capriciously self-indulgent, with the plane-tree anecdote. And things are promptly nudged further in an anti-heroic direction: Xerse’s command for guards to protect the tree leads us from familiar historical ground into more bizarre manifestations of the operatic impulse; for his attendants, Sesostre and Scitalce, turn out to be Magi, and the guard they set, far from being chosen from the Immortals, comprises a troupe of tartarean spirits, summoned with much hocus-pocus from ‘the flaming world of murky Dis’. Subsequently, after Arsamene and Elviro have arrived, we learn that Xerse has been observed by Romilda from her nearby balcony; and her entrata, beginning apparently as a melancholy love-song, ‘O voi che penate’, promptly turns into a mocking commentary on his condition: ‘O you who languish for some cruel beauty, consider Xerse, who has fallen in love with a rough tree trunk, which can respond to his love only with a rustling of leaves. [. . .] If he tries to kiss it it will make his lips sting; this must be one of Cupid’s jokes, to create a fire from green branches.’ The song, nonetheless (because Xerse is not paying much attention to the words, and, as Herodotus has him remark in another context, ‘a man’s soul is in his ears’), inflames the king’s love for her, turning him into Arsamene’s rival, and so introducing the first and most crucial of the feigned verisimilitudes [Argument §5] out of which the operatic intrigue is to be spun.7 6 The role of irony in Venetian perceptions of history is discussed in Fenlon and Miller (1992), esp. ch. 3. 7 As if all that were not enough, the plane-tree scene has a farcical postlude in iii.x, where Clito and Elviro meet by chance beside it and begin to harvest its precious ‘fruits’ (a ludicrous two-strophe air for Elviro); however, they are frightened off by two Moors, whom they mistake for devils. Herodotus’ remark about the ears is at 7.39.

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It would be fruitless to search in Cavalli’s music for any traces of exoticism. One should perhaps not overlook the fact that in seventeenth-century Venice the exotic was the everyday; but, if anything, the choice of a near-oriental theme had a rather different thrust from what a modern audience might suppose. Pirrotta has observed that in the early days of historical opera remoter and more exotic themes were often preferred to more familiar ancient Roman ones, and that they tended to be treated with less respect for historical exactitude (Pirrotta (1990), 140–1). Distance permitted a quasi-legendary fancifulness. And that, from a seventeenth-century perspective, was the point: an art that had been fashioned to give a voice to gods, legendary heroes, and Golden Age nymphs, could use such far-away and long-ago history as a way of approaching the merely (which is to say the fully) human. It is certainly the fully human that Cavalli aims to express, using all the resources of the post-Renaissance Italian composer’s art. Though arias and ensembles stand out less self-assertively from their surroundings than in later operatic idioms, the scene is saturated with lyricism. The musical numbers, all distinguished metrically from the rest are: (1) Xerse’s song to the plane-tree; (2) the invocation and appearance choraliter of the infernal spirits; (3) Arsamene’s first words—an apostrophe of the ‘Caro tetto felice’ where his beloved lives; (4) Romilda’s song about Xerse as the most absurd of lovers. Both externally, in terms of structure, and in its inherent expressive qualities, Cavalli’s music is often designed to serve as an ‘ideogram’ of the words he is setting.8 In ‘Ombra mai fu’, Minato’s shapely lyric (4 lines of quinari as refrain, framing two verses of 4 settenari + 2 endecasillabi) results in a rondo-like form in classic 3/2 bel canto manner, with orchestral ritornellos functioning as postludes to the refrain.9 The refrain achieves a notably languorous effect through the ‘plagal’ harmonic progression (heard three times) that sets the opening words, and an almost motionless vocal line, eased towards the cadence points by the gentle flow of the strings, on ‘cara ed amabile’. The longer lines of the verses prompt more extended musical phrases, unfolding in freer patterns. They are periodically organized by touches of canon between voice and bass (also a feature of the ritornellos); and syncopations, sequentially rising repetitions, and the melismatic pointing of ‘austro rapace’ provide a focus for the singer’s rhetorical gifts. (See Fig. 10.2a.)

8 The term is Luigi Dallapiccola’s, and he seems to have coined it to discuss the music of Monteverdi: the composer’s notes mirror or depict the thought contained in the poet’s words. 9 On the 17th-cent. style dubbed ‘bel canto’, see Bukofzer (1947), 118–20. It has been objected that the term is anachronistic. So is a very large part of the terminology employed by musical scholarship. ‘Bel canto’ has the advantage of being elegant and intelligible, and of singling out what we may be pretty sure Cavalli would have been pleased to have recognized as a cardinal feature of his musical language, namely a type of ‘beautiful singing/song’. The aria ‘Ombra mai fu’ is printed in Rosand (1991), 534–6. The English paraphrase of its refrain, produced for Handel’s opera, is too charming to forgo: ‘No, never vegetable made | A dearer and a lovelier shade; | And never from the sun’s fierce heat, | Was more agreeable retreat.’

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Figure 10.2a

(2) The bridge of boats A little more synopsis is required: Eumene meditates on the misery of the human condition. Aristone persuades Amastre to refrain from suicide. Arsamene learns from Elviro of Romilda’s supposed faithlessness; reluctant though he is to credit it, he finally succumbs to bitter despair. Eumene, who has been reflecting on the transience of beauty,10 is taken by Xerse to admire his bridge of boats: a chorus of sailors acclaim the king. The woebegone Arsamene approaches, and Xerse, believing him to be in love with Adelanta, thinks to comfort him by approving his marriage with that lady; Arsamene vigorously disabuses him: arsamene: ‘Dunque Romilda | a me non concedete?’ xerse: ‘Eh, che non la volete.’ arsamene: ‘La voglio, e l’otterrò, | e se del ciel havrò nemici i Numi | le forze di Cocito invocherò.’ xerse: ‘Non la volete, no.’ arsamene: ‘E s’havessi nemico anco l’Inferno | in onta de le stelle, e de gl’Abissi | la voglio e l’otterrò.’11 10

Eumene’s aria ‘La bellezza è un don fugace’ is printed in Rosand (1991), 513. Translation: Arsamene: Then you don’t grant me Romilda? Xerse: Come now! you don’t want her. A: I want her and I’ll get her, and if I should have the heavenly powers as my enemies, I shall invoke the powers of Cocytus. X: No. you don’t want her. A: And even if Hell itself should be my enemy, in despite of the stars and of the depths, I want her and I’ll get her. 11

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Xerse has to accept that, and tells Adelanta that she is mistaken in supposing Arsamene loves her: she must forget him. Elviro, making his way across the bridge in search of Arsamene, is terrified as a storm springs up and the bridge begins to collapse. The reader, perhaps by now a little perplexed, will nevertheless have noticed that the scene interweaves the most spectacular of the historical incidents used by Minato with what is evidently a climax in the amorous intrigue, and that the feigned verisimilitudes are carrying much the larger part of the dramatic burden. What Minato has selected as his starting point again reminds us of one of Xerxes’ more notorious follies. But instead of going on to show anything of the hubris and savagery which Herodotus reports when Xerxes hears of the destruction of the bridge, Minato undermines the king’s accomplishment in more mischievous ways: with Eumene’s worldly-wise arias; with grandiloquent choral acclamation of the mighty work shortly before it falls down; by depicting the all-powerful monarch at the moment of his grandest undertaking helplessly bewildered by the emotional lives of those around him; by using the storm to unleash not violent passions but cowardly buffoonery from Elviro, and, at one stage removed in a later scene, a comic duet in a rowing boat for him and his rescuer Clito. The musical numbers are less profuse here than in the opera’s opening scene. We have (1) the two quasi-philosophical arias of Eumene ‘Non ha pace, non ha bene’ and ‘La bellezza è un don fugace’ (the first of which seems to have disappeared in later revivals); (2) the chorus of acclamation; (3) Arsamene’s lament ‘Sciocco è ben chi crede a femina’; (4) Adelanta’s aria with refrain, ‘Non amarlo, e non morire’. But Elviro’s solo on the collapsing bridge is more like a commedia dell’arte lazzo than an operatic scena, and its musical substance is slight. The confrontation between Xerse and Arsamene (quoted above to illustrate Minato’s use of refrain) is in recitative throughout.

PARIS 1660: CAVALLI, MAZARIN, AND LULLI In Cavalli’s time the circumstances of operatic production precluded the possibility of anything much resembling the modern idea of standard repertory works. Nevertheless Xerse was one of two or three of his operas so much enjoyed as, for a number of years, to come close. At least nine revivals are recorded in various Italian cities before Cavalli’s death. The kind of enthusiasm it aroused can be judged from a letter written by Atto Melani, a distinguished castrato, to Prince Matteo de’ Medici in September 1654: ‘the first act has arrived [in Florence] from Venice, and really this music is marvellous . . . all those who have heard it cannot find words to praise it highly enough’; and a few days later, ‘this is the music of paradise; one cannot imagine ever hearing

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anything more beautiful’.12 Melani’s enthusiasm for Cavalli’s latest music will have helped keep the composer’s name fresh in Paris (where Egisto had already been performed in 1646); for that was where Melani spent most of his time, enjoying the patronage of the Queen Mother, and of Cardinal Mazarin, the First Minister. The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), terminating thirty years of continuous war with Spain and establishing French hegemony in Europe for the rest of the century, was the crowning political achievement of Mazarin’s life-work; it was to be sealed with a royal wedding between the young king Louis XIV and the Spanish Infanta Maria-Teresa. An event so momentous required celebration in style, and Mazarin was clear that no expense should be spared: even if it meant ‘tossing money out of the windows . . . Europe must be dazzled’ (letter to the Queen, 8 July 1659, Prunières (1913), 213). Mazarin, Giulio Mazarini by birth, and a friend and associate of the Barberini family in Rome in the 1630s as opera was beginning to flourish there, had already been instrumental in introducing Italian opera to France; a forthcoming royal wedding offered the opportunity for a grander enterprise of this sort, and Mazarin addressed himself to the matter zestfully. In June 1659 he had commissioned a libretto from Abbé Francesco Buti and was seeking advice on musicians from his Italian contacts (Prunières (1913), 213). He was intent on assembling a company which, as he put it to Buti, ‘gives no grounds for mockery, for, as you know, the French are much disposed to that’ (Prunières (1913), 231). Encouraged by Melani’s enthusiasm, Mazarin engaged Cavalli for the occasion; a request for the composer’s release from his official duties in Venice reached the Doge’s court in March 1660;13 Cavalli was in Paris by July, and forthwith began setting a libretto, Ercole amante, which Buti had designed in tribute to King Louis as hero and as lover. Meanwhile, Mazarin had decided that the première of such an opera offered the perfect opportunity for France to catch up with Italy in the arts of theatre architecture, and that a new theatre, unprecedentedly grand and opulent, must be erected within the royal apartments. Giacomo Torelli, one of the great wizards of Italian baroque theatre architecture and machinery, was living in Paris at the time, but had made himself obnoxious to some influential people. So Mazarin decided to summon Gaspare Vigarani from Modena, where he had recently completed ‘the largest and most sumptuous theatre in existence’ (Beaussant (1992), 223). At first Vigarani accepted Mazarin’s idea of building a wooden theatre, but insisted on having it moved into some of the recent building between the Louvre and the Tuileries; only later was it decided to build in stone. The Théâtre des Tuileries was the largest and most luxurious 12 The two letters are quoted from Alessandro Ademollo’s I primi fasti della musica italiana a Parigi (Milan 1884) in Prunières (1913), 252. 13 The official letter is extensively quoted in Prunières (1913), 230.

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theatre ever built in Paris, and it catered to Mazarin’s taste by being decorated in Roman baroque style (Beaussant (1992), 226). This overweening exercise in cultural politics proved a disaster. The decision to build in stone helped to delay the theatre’s completion for well over a year, and contributed to its dreadful acoustics. When it was finally ready for use, for the première of Ercole amante in February 1662 (by which time Mazarin had been dead nearly a year), the voices of the singers were all but lost in the vast funnel of perspective space behind them, and what little remained was drowned out by the noise of the monstrous machines. However, the fact that the Tuileries theatre episode was such a fiasco makes it relevant to my story. For if the opéra d’occasion could only be ready far too late for the occasion it celebrated, some expedient must be found to make good the loss. Mazarin was persuaded, presumably by Melani and perhaps Cavalli himself, that a revival of Xerse would fit the bill. Vigarani set up a temporary theatre hung with tapestries in the Galerie de Peintures in the Louvre; and there a French rifacimento, Xerxès, was first staged on 22 November 1660. Between then and 5 December it had a short run of performances before an exclusive public; in January 1661 one last performance was given in Mazarin’s own palace. During the performance Mazarin was taken ill, and two months later he was dead (Prunières (1913), 256). Despite all his aspirations for the royal wedding opera, then, Mazarin had to be content with warming up an established favourite, which had to be performed without machines or scene-changes. But in constructive ways too, Xerxès differed from the Venetian original, for it had been adapted to French taste. Cavalli wrote some additional music; and since the French had never much taken to castrati, two of the castrato roles, Xerse himself and Periarco, were transposed for basses.14 The most significant alterations, however, were made to accommodate a new Prologue and six Entrées de Ballet: the mages Sesostre and Scitalce and all the choruses were cut; so was Romilda’s page-boy, Clito; and the three acts of the Italian opera were reorganized into five.15 Cavalli’s opera was in effect being expropriated by the young dancer-composer Giovan-Battista Lulli, currently compositeur de la musique instrumentale to King Louis, but soon to transform himself into Jean-Baptiste Lully, the creator of French opera, and altogether the most formidable figure in seventeenth-century French music. What was intended to mark the definitive triumph of Italian 14 Of the additional Paris items, an aria for Aristone in ii.vi (‘Con tuoi vezzi lusinghieri’) and a duet for Arsamene and Romilda in iii.xiii (‘Arsamene mio bene’) are both included in René Jacobs’ recording of Xerse (Harmonia mundi 1985). Except at recitative cadences, the rewriting of the two castrato roles entailed little more than octave transposition. (Clinkscale (1970), i. 267) 15 Paris Act I = Venice i.i–ix; Paris Act II = Venice i.x–xix; Paris Act III = Venice ii.i–xiii; Paris Act IV = Venice ii.xiv–xvi and iii.i–x; Paris Act V = Venice iii.x–xx.

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opera at the French court proved instead to be a landmark in the development of French theatre music. Having composed the ballets and prologue, Lulli also played a leading role as a dancer. ‘He was everywhere; . . . appearing as a Basque, a peasant, Scaramouche, a ship’s captain, a sword-dancer, and Bacchus, he took part in the six entrées, surrounded by the finest professional dancers of the court. . . . Without doubt the grimaces of Lulli–Scaramouche . . . enchanted the public much more than the tender laments of Adelanta’ (Prunières (1913), 258). Critics who find Lulli’s dances of no relevance to the drama are surely judging them by false criteria. The prologue is naturally addressed to the political-dynastic significance of the event, ‘for at last the two greatest monarchs on earth have put an end to war with a joyful marriage’.16 Entrées three, four, and five all replace intermezzo-like scenes in Cavalli’s original, the fourth, for example, rounding off the bridge-scene with a maritime ballet. The closing entrée is a perfectly proper celebratory finale. In any case, it was these ballets rather than Cavalli’s opera that really triumphed; and in May 1661, immediately after Louis’s assumption of personal rule, Lulli was appointed surintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi, the highest musical office in the land.

HAMBURG 1689: POSTEL AND FÖRTSCH Despite Cavalli’s failure in Paris, Italian revivals of Xerse in Milan and Verona (1665), Turin (1667), Cortona (1682) show that the opera was still admired (Glover (1978), 162); and evidently Minato’s contribution not less than Cavalli’s, for his text began to take on a life of its own. In 1689 it reached Hamburg in a German adaptation by Christian Heinrich Postel, set by Johann Philipp Förtsch: Der Mächtige Monarch | der Perser | Xerxes, | in Abidus | In | Einem Sing=Spiel | vorgestellet.17 Though only the libretto and a fraction of the music survive, it will be worth spending a few moments with this piece. Hamburg was the scene of the most

16

Text from the Prologue, quoted Isherwood (1973): Depuis enfin les deux plus grands rois de la terre ont terminée la guerre par un mariage joyeux, et que touchez des maux, par leurs peuples soufferts, Ils ont fait retirer la Discorde aux Enfers; Que d’harmonieux sons et de cries d’allégresse L’air doucement troublé retentisse sans cesse, Et que par cent chansons leurs sujets réjouïs, Exaltent les vertues de Thérèse et Louis. 17 This is the form of the title in the published libretto. Librettos survive both for the première in 1689 and for a revival in 1692.

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important episode in the history of German opera before Mozart. Postel was the best of the Hamburg librettists, and Förtsch one of the most fascinating, if most elusive, musicians of the age. Moreover, Handel was to serve his operatic apprenticeship in Hamburg, working in a theatre whose musico-dramatic traditions Postel and Förtsch had been influential in shaping. Förtsch first came to Hamburg as a singer in the Ratschor (from 1674).18 Soon he came under the patronage of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorf, at that time in exile in Hamburg, whose Kapellmeister he later became; and he is likely therefore to have been involved in the earliest plans for setting up an opera company in the city. When the Gänsemarkt theatre opened in 1678, Förtsch was one of its principal singers. He also provided it with translations; for he had, according to J. G. Walther’s Musikalisches Lexicon (1732), ‘a total mastery of German verse, as also of the Italian and French languages, and was fluent (habil) in all of them’. And he composed: in fact he composed fully a dozen operas for Hamburg, and between 1684 and 1692 was evidently the best liked opera-composer in the city. In the 1689 season Xerxes was one of no fewer than four Förtsch operas premiered, Lully’s Acis et Galathée being the only nonFörtsch opera produced that year (Marx and Schröder (1995), Kalendarium). In the meantime he had been practising as a physician (in his youth he had also studied Law): first in Husum; then, after the restoration of the Gottorf dukes, as court physician in Schleswig; finally at Eutin, where, furthermore, he became the Bishop of Lübeck’s privy counsellor. If his involvement in the new territory of German opera, not to mention the range of his other professional activities, suggests an enlightened and thoroughly modern outlook on the world, Förtsch was also deeply rooted in the more mysterious, even occult, traditions of the composer’s craft. He shared in the speculations of those seventeenth-century ‘alchemist–contrapuntists’— the expression is from Yearsley (2002, ch. 2)—who had embarked on a quest for the miraculous transformation of commonplace material in the hands of the contrapuntal artificer. On record is his view that ‘the unfathomable nature (Unergründlichkeit) of music is certainly to be perceived in [canon and double counterpoint] more than in other pieces of music’ (Yearsley (2002), 91). It seems doubtful whether such convictions will have been much in mind as he composed his operas, and in any case generalizations on the basis of such meagre survivals need to be cautious. All the same, as we shall see, some of Förtsch’s seemingly guileless ditties do indeed manifest a delight in contrapuntal device. Postel’s libretto may be said to confirm his high reputation. Every detail of the plot and a great deal of Minato’s diction has been preserved. But characterization is more individualized; language (not unduly abstract in Minato) 18 In the free city of Hamburg a choir established to serve the governing authority may be very roughly compared with the Chapel Royal in England.

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is more specific and vivid (and for modern taste oppressively overladen with extravagant imagery); the articulation of the drama into recitative and song is more clear-cut. We should read this text bearing in mind Postel’s preface, where, after making a pretty close translation of the whole of Minato’s Argomento, he adds a further paragraph: From this history and from these feigned verisimilitudes the present drama was prepared by a talented and ingenious Italian; and because of its uncommon inventiveness and the complexity of the intrigue we wished to revive it upon our Hamburg stage for the delight of those who love opera. They must however be advised that the translation is not always a literal one, for that would give laboured results. Instead, while it keeps closely to the story, it does add a number of honnêtes plaisanteries, in accordance with the genius loci; these, however, do not at all affect the essence of the piece.

The ‘seemly pleasantries’ added in tribute to Hamburg taste clearly mean the newly-designed Elvirus scenes, primarily in Act II. He sings several of his numbers in plattdeutsch, and, being disguised not just as a flower-seller but as a flower-girl, his comic exchanges with Amestris (disguised as a man) and Clito become rather grosser. For the bridge-scene he changes his disguise again: he is now a purveyor of quack-medicines, to the praise of which his lengthy soliloquy and the first of two arias, ‘In dem edlen Würmer Orden’, are dedicated. Further recitative, stage-effects, a second aria, ‘Höre Neptunus kan ich nicht entlauffen’, and a sailors’ dance accompany the storm and the shattering of the bridge. The most interesting change in the bridge-scene comes a little earlier, however, and has nothing to do with Elvirus or Hamburg taste. After Eumene’s aria ‘Prächtige Schönheit’ (= Minato’s ‘La bellezza è un don fugace’) and a sailors’ chorus, and in place of the larger part of Minato’s choral scene, Postel adds a new solo passage for Xerxes, comprising a stage-direction (‘After this Xerxes’s people cross over the bridge from Asia into Europe; Xerxes sits on a seat prepared for him and watches the procession; after some contingents have passed by, however, he begins to weep’) and two new arias, the first beginning ‘Der Trähnen-Wolck umhült der Augen Schein’. All this takes up an idea, untouched upon by Minato and unmentioned in Postel’s preface, but undoubtedly stemming from Herodotus: the conversation between Xerxes and Artabanes during the review of the troops at Abydos (Herodotus, 7.45–6).19 Xerxes’ reflections on mortality offer opportunity for a more rounded portrayal of the king, and in an introspective vein that might have been expected to appeal to a composer with Förtsch’s interests. Regrettably, however, only one aria, Eumene’s ‘Prächtige Schönheit’, survives from the bridge scene.20

19 For the sake of comparison with Herodotus, it will be worth translating the whole text of this aria: ‘The cloud of tears veils the brightness of my eyes when I reflect that with the passing of time all that will be left of so many valiant warriors will be bones, ashes, and decay.’ 20 No music survives from the plane-tree scene.

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In all, seven of Förtsch’s arias for Xerxes survive in a seventeenth-century manuscript (ND VI 1023) recently returned to the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (Neubacher 2001). Though a welcome addition to our knowledge of the repertory, the arias tell us less about Förtsch’s qualities as a composer of opera than we could wish. Since the manuscript is a miscellaneous collection of arias, designed, it would appear, for private use, none of them is provided with instrumental accompaniment other than continuo, none has a tempo-marking, and all of them (and there are arias for Amestris (2), Romilda (2), Adelanta, Eumene, and Clito) are copied (and in some cases presumably transposed) for soprano voice. Not that the continuo-song presentation is likely to misrepresent the music in any serious way: in the vocal line there are no breaks in musical sense and few in continuity, and the simplicity of the vocal style, which makes only rare and modest use of melismatic sallies or rhetorical gestures, suits the modesty of the medium. Even in those arias that may have had full-scale instrumental accompaniment, one could imagine the orchestra best employed with closing or occasionally punctuating ritornellos. In ‘Prächtige Schönheit’, for example, where echo effects provide an image of ‘Flüchtigkeit’ or ‘Nichtigkeit’, instrumental echoes might well be intended at bars 7–8 and 15–16. (See Fig. 10.2b.)21 Exceptionally, I propose, in Förtsch’s case, to step beyond the limits of plane-tree and bridge scenes, to consider ‘Ich sterbe gern’, sung by a despairing Amestris in II.13. (See Fig. 10.2c.) Superficially it bears a close resemblance to the bel canto style of the Italian Xerxes composers, being in sarabande-like 3/2 metre, with regular hemiola broadening of the rhythm at cadences. But surely its most fascinating feature is the way it is pervaded by contrapuntal thinking. The counterstatement of the opening phrase in bars 10–16 is tantamount to a fugal answer; the middle section (bars 16–32) is launched with canonic imitations; the reprise (bar 33 to the close) contains a series of fragmentary stretti (anticipated in the instrumental interlude at 8–9), and climaxes with a subdominant entry of the ‘subject’ under the long-held ‘wolt’ at 42–4. Perhaps our alchemist-contrapuntist did not quite succeed in producing pure gold from his hard-worked elements, but it is intriguing to see Förtsch in this contrapuntal-bel canto amalgam anticipating Handel, who certainly did.

ROME 1694: STAMPIGLIA AND BONONCINI Giovanni Bononcini’s Xerse belongs to the first phase of his long career in the opera house, the years 1692–6, which he spent in Rome in the service of Filippo 21

The copyist omitted the bass of bar 23, so that for the remainder of the aria voice and continuo were out of step. I have added the b flat in 23 and adjusted the rhythm in 23–4 to bring the two parts into a correct relationship.

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Figure 10.2b

Colonna. It was one of at least three operas produced at this time in collaboration with the poet Silvio Stampiglia, who had worked for the Colonnas since the 1680s, and staged at the Teatro Tordinona. Stampiglia was soon to become one of the most admired librettists of the age; at the time of this collaboration

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Figure 10.2c

with Bononcini, however, he was still serving a kind of operatic apprenticeship, adapting old Venetian operas to the tastes of his Roman patrons. While it is of course back in Italian, Stampiglia’s version of Xerse is a more radical revision than Postel’s German version. For we have entered an age

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of reform in Italian literature, and Stampiglia, one of the fourteen foundermembers of the Arcadian Academy (where he went under the name of Palemone Licurio) was a standard-bearer for this reform. He was, that is to say, one of those writers who—to quote a characteristic eighteenth-century tribute from Francesco Saverio Quadrio—‘moved by compassion [for the deplorable state of literature] took poetry by the hand [. . .] and with great labour cleaning away the infinite number of its defects, rendered it, if not perfect, at least fairly tolerable’ (1743, V. 434). Stampiglia’s al lettore, part of the introductory material of the printed libretto of the opera, provides some clues to his approach. ‘Palemone Licurio, by command of a highly esteemed personage it is his duty to serve, has taken in hand Xerse . . . ; in order that it may comply with the spirit of the modern age he has been obliged to remove some scenes and to add a few new ones, including sixty arias, and here and there to change many of the recitatives, as you will be able to see for yourself if you compare it with the old piece. I beg you therefore to have compassion on this rough Arcadian shepherd who so boldly ventures forth from his hut into the palace. . . . ’ The cast is reduced to ten: Xerse, Amastre, Arsamene, Romilda, Adelanta, Ariodate, Aristone, Eumene, Elviro, and Clito.22 No choruses are mentioned, though they do feature in the libretto; two ballets are promised, of ‘ostriches and clowns’ and of sailors. Stampiglia makes only a very small number of changes to Minato’s Argument, but they are instructive ones: from the historical data he omits that part of §6 that mentions a guard being set on the plane tree, for no Arcadian could warm to the mumbo-jumbo of Sesostre, Scitalce, and the Mages; of the feigned verisimilitudes he omits the last, evidently judging that the action would benefit from a sharper focus. He also makes Eumene a more plausible figure, simply a confidant for Xerxes, neither field-marshal nor eunuch. Despite what is implied in the Preface, by no means all of Stampiglia’s arias are new: he retains eight of the original ones with negligible alteration, and devises others from lines of Minato’s recitative. What he says about ‘changing many of the recitatives’ may be clarified as follows: he simplifies and condenses the action; he sometimes adopts more fastidious vocabulary;23 above all he redesigns scenes to help the composer.24 While Stampiglia retains plenty of mid-scene arias, when a phase of dialogue needs to be 22 No women being permitted to appear on the stage in Rome at this period, all parts were sung by men. 23 Here is one simple example from the bridge scene: Minato: (Xerse) Voglio sposarvi a colei che bramate. (Arsamene) Ancora mi beffate? Stampiglia: (Xerse) Voglio sposarvi Al bel, che v’innamora. (Arsamene) E mi schernite ancora? 24 This topic is fully discussed in the first instalment of Powers’ article (1961), 483–4.

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summed up in a vivid or emphatic way, nevertheless the overall tendency is for the musical weight to shift decisively to its close. Minato’s scene-closing recitatives, those impassioned monologues that represent one of the most venerable resources of the art of opera, have, however, had their day, and are turned into aria texts; conversely arias that had been used to begin scenes are, unless they follow a change of stage set, generally broken down into lines of recitative. Our two selected scenes illustrate these tendencies, and again I shall use my comments on the libretto as a cue to suggest some of the qualities of the music. In Xerse’s opening scene, Minato’s strophic aria text is reorganized into six lines of recitative, largely derived from the first strophe of the original aria,25 while Minato’s refrain is used as the aria text. The recitative clarifies (the specific reference to the famous plane-tree is new) and deftly concentrates the original without losing anything of its vividness:26 minato: Ombra mai fu di vegetabile cara ed amabile, soave più. Bei smeraldi crescenti, frondi tenere e belle, di turbini o procelle importuni tormenti non v’affligano mai la cara pace, nè giunga a profanarvi Austro rapace. Ombra mai fu di vegetabile cara ed amabile, soave più. [There follows a second verse and a further repetition of the refrain.]

stampiglia:

Frondi tenere e belle Del mio Platano amato Per voi risplenda il Fato. Tuoni, lampi e procelle Non v’oltraggino mai la cara pace, Nè giunga a profanarvi Austro rapace. Ombra mai fu Di vegetabile Cara, ed amabile Soave più.

Omitting the scene with the Mages, Stampiglia cuts directly to Minato’s third scene. Typically Minato had begun this with brief self-revelatory soliloquies, comic and romantic, for Elviro and Arsamene respectively. Stampiglia moves straight into the action, which is then interrupted no fewer than six times by fragments of off-stage sinfonia or song, before Romilda 25 The second strophe is omitted, as it evidently was in some early performances of Cavalli’s opera. 26 Translation: (Minato) Never was a plant’s shade more precious, more gracious, more sweet. Fair green shoots, tender beautiful branches, may the unwelcome torments of whirlwind or tempest never afflict your dear peace, nor the rapacious South Wind approach to desecrate you. (Stampiglia) Fair green shoots of my beloved plane-tree, may Fate shine upon you. May thunder, lightning, and tempest never ravage your dear peace, nor the rapacious South Wind approach to desecrate you.

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launches into her complete aria: one verse only now, and gently mocking in tone, without any of the satirical inventiveness of Minato’s. This passage represents a striking inversion of Minato’s scheme, where, once Romilda’s distant song had begun, it dominated the scene, and the comments of the two men were tucked into the interstices of its continuing triple-metre flow. Finally Stampiglia adds a new song at the point where Arsamene cuts short his conversation with Xerse to say ‘I’d like to hear her again’; Romilda obliges, and this second aria directly prompts Xerse’s declaration of love. Minato’s already accomplished scene has been masterfully adapted for the requirements of the new style. Since Powers published his article, Bononcini’s setting of ‘Ombra mai fu’ has been known to be the model for Handel’s. We should not, however, limit Bononcini’s credit to his being a source of Handelian ‘borrowing’, for this is a most accomplished opener in its own right. One might almost fancy, moreover, that Bononcini in turn had picked up a few hints from Cavalli: the triple-time bel canto style, and more specifically the four-note opening figure (after the four-bar introduction) which remodels Cavalli’s opening (the harmonic progression I–IV–I becomes I–V–I), antiphonally overlapping between voice and strings; the repeated note figure of Bononcini’s postlude (cf. Cavalli bars 5–6). Bononcini ignores opportunities for a rhetorical or tone-painterly setting of the text, but his music is tonally stronger and harmonically richer, and makes particularly effective use of those 6/3 progressions that caught Handel’s fancy. It is salutary to find the supposedly effete young Italian intensifying a phrase by part-repeating it with varied harmony, before carrying it higher in a climactic quasi-sequential extension (bars 9–14). None of which is to belittle the series of brilliant strokes by which Handel transfigures the aria, and makes of it something immeasurably grander: the pensive lingering on the first note of the melody; the replacement of Bononcini’s (and Cavalli’s) simple antiphony with a relationship of subject and answer between voice and orchestra; the strategic holding in reserve of the moment of greatest harmonic intensity; the fusing of Bononcini’s statement and harmonically varied restatement into one single glorious melodic arc. (See Figs 10.2d(i)—Bononcini, and 10.2d(ii)—Handel.) During the bridge-scene (ii. vii–x), Stampiglia plays down any spectacular opportunities and highlights the emotional lives of his characters. Nothing is made of the scene where Xerse and Eumene survey the bridge: Eumene has lost his aria, and the unison chorus sings just one primitive phrase of recitative. On the other hand, Arsamene is given an arioso at his entrance, ‘Per dar fine alla mia pena’, and, at the close of a scene otherwise little altered, what had been a recitative with refrain, ‘La voglio e l’otterrò’, is reorganized so that his unflinching determination to get the woman he loves can be expressed in aria. In the Adelanta–Xerse scene, a dialogue identical in substance is

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Figure 10.2d(i)

Figure 10.2d(ii)

expressed with a more measured eloquence, from which Minato’s note of testiness is eliminated. Stampiglia keeps Minato’s text, ‘Voi mi dite, ch’io non l’ami’, for Adelanta’s aria (reducing it to a single stanza), but then extends the scene with a brief soliloquy and aria for Xerse, who confesses his impotence before the power of woman’s beauty. In Minato’s libretto Elviro’s solo had closed the bridge scene almost in the manner of a comic intermezzo or a commedia dell’arte lazzo; Stampiglia refashions it into a dialogue for Elviro and Clito with closing duet. It is difficult to feel much excited, or much amused, by Bononcini’s setting of this last passage. Other episodes of the bridge-scene show him to better advantage, notably Adelanta’s aria. Without having Metastasio’s flawless eloquence, the text reminds us of some of the great bard’s most famous lyrics, and the music too has something of the simple speaking eloquence of the Metastasio generation of Italian composers. If the voice-continuo imitations are limited in resource, they are admirably reconfigured in the middle section (this is a da capo aria), inverted, and placed in keys (B flat major, C minor) that nicely

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mirror their expressive purport. In a closing ritornello the all-pervasive figure supports rich four-voice polyphony. Note must also be taken of the Arsamene scene, for this is another of the episodes characteristically paraphrased by Handel. Bononcini defines the shape of the scene, a brief continuo song at the start set over against a fully scored aria at the close. The former, ‘Per dar fine’, is a ternary form piece of which it is difficult to discern the expressive point: 3/8 vivace in F major, it sounds remarkably jolly until a sudden turn to the minor steals in in the last 7 bars—a touch not lost on Handel. ‘Si, la voglio’, on the other hand, is highly effective, employing exclamation, energetic melisma, repeated phrases to underline the vigour of Arsamene’s mood. The orchestra is used to excellent effect to reinforce all this: ding-dong antiphony with the voice; vigorous motifs punctuating the melismas; making even the long held tones fizz with energy (see below, Fig. 10.2e(ii)).

LONDON 1739: HANDEL Unlike Cavalli’s Xerse, Bononcini’s was not, so far as we know, one of its composer’s outstanding successes. But it was still well enough regarded in 1707 for the 17–year old John Blathwayt, an accomplished musical amateur, in Rome on the Grand Tour with his elder brother, and on the lookout for worthwhile music to take home with him, to get a copy made— probably that which is now in the British Library Add MS 22102 (Gibson (1989), 61). It may have been sheer coincidence that Handel was in Rome at this time, and there is no evidence of any association between him and the Blathwayts;27 but in later years John Blathwayt was to become one of the directors of the Royal Academy, 28 and in due course his score (we presume) came into the hands of (or was borrowed by) Handel, who dipped into it regularly between 1734 and 1738 for miscellaneous appropriations (Roberts (1986), Preface; Best (2003), xv). Gradually Handel became so fascinated with this youthful work of his old rival, that he decided to reset the whole opera, a resetting that entailed ‘borrowing’ on a comprehensive scale. His indebtedness to Bononcini has been much discussed: in addition to Roberts’ preface, much of Powers’ pathbreaking essay (1961–2) is devoted to the topic, and more recent essays by Dean (1995) and Lindgren (1999) pursue it further. 27 Though given the number of their common acquaintances and associates, it seems almost impossible that they should have missed each other. See Gibson (1987), 144–5. 28 That is to say, the Royal Academy of Music set up in London in 1719 under Letters Patent ‘for the Encouragement of Operas’.

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Obviously Handel starts from Stampiglia’s libretto rather than Minato’s. He eliminates three more characters—Aristone, Eumene, and Clito—Eumene only after two acts had been drafted; the recitative is abbreviated, particularly in the third act; and roughly a third of the aria texts disappear, some of them turning up in different positions.29 This is all common Handelian practice, and it is not known whether he had anyone to help him make the changes, or simply did the job himself.30 Altogether more startling is what happens to the preface to the libretto (printed in both Italian and English). Those historical data and feigned verisimilitudes which in earlier librettos had been particularized with such seeming scrupulousness are tossed away and replaced by the following ‘To the Reader’: ‘The contexture of this Drama is so very easy, that it wou’d be troubling the reader to give him a long argument to explain it. Some imbicilities [sic = Qualche debolezza] and the temerity of Xerxes (such as his being deeply enamour’d with a plane tree, and the building a bridge over the Hellespont to unite ASIA to Europe) are the basis of the story; the rest is fiction.’ Ruth Smith (2003) remarks that this preface is ‘a tease—it tells the audience to expect very little of the Xerxes they know, while triggering recollection of what every schoolboy did know about Xerxes.’ And her comment serves to sharpen our sense that, in fact, Minato’s preface had been a tease too—very different in tone from Handel’s, because of the spoof erudition with which an almost entirely fictional drama is bedecked. What she goes on to say about the contemporary political resonances for an English audience of a drama based on the Persian Wars helps us to perceive from yet another perspective the curious nature of this opera. Since there is no Greek opposition to set against a Persian empire that, for educated contemporary audiences, functioned as ‘the synonym for arbitrary rule and absolute power’ (Smith 2003), the message had to come from within: from a choice of historical incident designed to undermine Xerxes’ megalomaniac pretensions; by depicting him as much the helpless plaything of outer circumstance and inner compulsion—both alike uncontrollable—as his vassals; by exposing everything he does, says and feels (his ‘imbecility’ and ‘temerity’), to the commentaries— sometimes moralizing, sometimes satirical, sometimes purely human—of those who turn out to be not so much his subjects as his fellow-men. While Handel’s bridge scene retains the overall shape that had come down from Minato, with two spectacular elements of acclamation and storm framing a tangled climax in the love intrigue, the proportions and tone are significantly different. Compared with Stampiglia’s version this is a place where Handel has intervened most effectively. The transfer of all secondary 29

For fuller details, see Best (2003), p. xvi. In the interests of clarity I shall, for the rest of this essay, assume that Handel was responsible for the treatment of the text. In fact this would surely have been true even if he had engaged a librettist to assist him. 30

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dramatic functions (allied subject/prince; soldier; father) to Ariodate makes him, during Serse’s contemplation of the bridge, a more effective collocutor than Eumene; and their debate is effectively framed by a chorus which has been supplied with a coherent observation to sing, not mere exclamations. Stampiglia had already given the Arsamene scene the kind of shape that Handel loved, more Minato-like than Minato’s, one might say, introduced by a mood-setting ‘cavatina’ and rounded off by a more substantial aria, and Handel’s compression of this is absolutely to the point: the cavatina is reduced to two lines of text, the recitative is abbreviated by the omission of any merely literary effects (non-functional graces like ‘Letal portento è, che favelli un mostro’), and of a conversation of drawn-out cross-purposes (in part quoted above at p. 209) that will depend on acting and timing to be of slightest interest. In the Atalanta scene the recapitulation for her benefit of what we have just witnessed for ourselves is reduced to a functional minimum. The last trace of Minato’s all-embracing irony in the opening lines of Serse’s solo scene disappears. Elviro’s solo draws us back to the bridge, and since Clito has been eliminated from the cast, it does so in a manner closer to Minato than to Stampiglia, with the verses restored to their original monologue form. Perhaps to avoid too heavy a dependence on spectacular effects, in the later stages of the recitative, as the bridge begins to break, the text turns in a new direction. In the words of the English translation, ‘The wat’ry Elements I ne’er did like. | In Bacchus’ liquid realms, I own, | I wou’d my habitation chuse.’—so we have a cue for a drinking song rather than the lazzo-like antics demanded in the Italian settings of this scene.31 The aria sung by Serse at the emotional climax of this climactic scene, ‘Il core spera e teme’ is one of the arias for which, to the best of my knowledge, no ‘source’ has yet been discovered. It certainly bears no resemblance to Bononcini’s setting, of which the only memorable feature is an elaborate obbligato for archlute. Handel’s aria looks, on the face of it, more conventional; a full-scale da capo aria accompanied by four-part string orchestra, following a brief recitative to clarify the singer’s frame of mind.32 But it deserves a moment’s pause because

31 Best (2003), p. xvi, observes that this is the only new aria text added by Handel. Together the two stanzas are composed into binary form. Each part of the aria moves from a bold unisono opening; into a harmonized second phase; closes with spinning repetitions of fast short figures, again in unisono style; there follows an instrumental postlude rather in the style of a characteristic dance. Imagining a performance of it that graduates, in response to the music, from swagger; to a fleeting moment of poise; to incoherent reelings; to an antimasque-style closing dance, one sees that it is perhaps not so very far from the lazzo spirit after all. 32 A full-scale, ‘conventional’ da capo aria sets the text (in this case two quatrains in settenario metre) in two substantial sections of music, of which the first is repeated ‘da capo’ after the second. The first section (and often the second section too) presents the text at least twice, giving the composer space to draw out his thematic material through a range of related keys; the vocal phrases of the aria are framed and punctuated by orchestral ritornellos, giving the whole something of the character of a vocal concerto.

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it illustrates beautifully that combination of apparently effortless tunefulness with compositional and expressive sophistication which is so typical of this opera. Of twenty fully-scored arias in Serse this is one of the least concerto-like and most song-like: its ritornello is essentially a tune, drawn-out at the close with a cadential epilogue; and its vocal style is gently syllabic, with decorative interjections from the orchestra. In this crisis of self-confidence Serse delivers his words with exceptional restraint, rising to ruminative melisma only in woe and self-doubt. Each statement of the tune is different, even where it recurs in the tonic: bars 1–4; 7–10; 27–30. There seems no ‘point’ in this, it simply illustrates Handel’s inexhaustible inventiveness. The little ‘epilogue’ at the close of the opening ritornello is the source of much of what happens. It serves as a linking motif sustaining the flow of the music in the interstices between vocal phrases; and it becomes, either in itself (bar 23 f) or in dialogue with other ideas (bar 15 f) the source of the gentle melismas on ‘penando’ and ‘goderà’. Though they look entirely inconsequential, the hollowed-out recurrences of this motif (violin 2 and viola drop out) in the middle section of the aria coincide with Serse’s cries of ‘sì sì’ and ‘nò nò’, and may possibly be designed to give him the opportunity to act out his inner voices: hope evaporating on the ‘sì sì’; the grim inevitability of the ‘nò nò’ for a moment forlornly questioned. Besides the overall dramatic design of the bridge scene it is the confrontation between Arsamene and Serse, with its sequence of ‘cavatina’—recitative—aria, that shows most clearly Handel’s indebtedness to Bononcini. The ‘cavatina’ ‘Per dar fine’ is a continuo song, reflective rather than despairing, and imitating Bononcini only in its sudden turn to minor in the closing phrase; its brevity, its gentle tempo, and a certain harmonic intensity make it incomparably more apt to its purpose. The aria ‘Si, la voglio’, on the other hand, is one of Handel’s most teasing ‘borrowings’, and in that capacity has been discussed by Powers, Roberts,33 and Dean. (See Figs 10.2e(i)—Handel, and 10.2e(ii)—Bononcini.) In the principal section Handel works almost entirely with ideas whose effectiveness has already been demonstrated by Bononcini: but none of them is merely ‘borrowed’; all are in some way or another reworked, and then put together again in such a way that rhetoric, musical energy, and that sheer tunefulness which is so marked a characteristic of Serse, function together in a fully coordinated fashion. The opening six bars will suffice for illustration: Bononcini’s vigorous ‘vamping’ chords are extended; instead of treating the ‘si, si’ as a detached motto, Handel launches into a tune,34 and the tune breaks into 33 Roberts identifies three ‘sources’ for the aria, the other two in Scarlatti’s Marco Attilio Regolo; but he is as perplexed as most of us are as to what exactly the observation means. (Cf. his comments at (1987), 181) The imagination is overtaxed when it tries to envisage Handel laboriously rummaging around in manuscripts for commonplaces which he could have shaken out of his sleeve without a moment’s reflection any time he sat down at the harpsichord (or the writing desk). 34 This emerged at the second attempt: Handel’s first version of the aria had begun with detached exclamations. It is quoted in Roberts (1987), 184.

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Figure 10.2e(i)

Figure 10.2e(ii)

energetic melisma, all in the same three-bar space; the forward momentum thus established is reinforced by making the third of the vamping chords not a stable root position but a first inversion; and all these things demand that the bass give up its detached-note style and evolve into a purposefully moving line. The phrase is clinched with an orchestral ritornello (as in Bononcini, there has been no introductory ritornello) which, one imagines, might accommodate fitting gestures and movements from the singer. At bar 6 we return to the melodic continuation of Bononcini’s ‘motto’ (= Bononcini bar 2). Handel departs from his model in the middle section. The scale and energy of his principal section (30 bars cf. with 16 in Bononcini) required something proportionate if Stampiglia’s

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‘cruel monsters and horrid shades of Cocytus’ were to be given their due, and declamatory singing against a concitato-style orchestral background is adopted, something in the manner of an accompanied recitative. Partly prompted by the comment of Lord Shaftesbury quoted near the opening of this essay, partly by having noted the impact of the recent Licensing Act (June 1737) on popular forms of musical entertainment such as genuine ballad operas, Lowell Lindgren has suggested that Handel may have been moved to choose such old-fashioned models for Serse because of his desire to bridge the gap between ballad opera and the type of heroic opera he had composed in the past (Lindgren (1999), 71–2). While that can be nothing more than an intriguing conjecture, it is certainly the case that Bononcini’s Xerse inspired Handel’s Serse in a way for which there is no real parallel in all the other forty operas. Though Bononcini and Handel were in fact rather uncomfortable rivals for significant parts of their careers, in the Xerxes operas the musical genius of the young Bononcini has become, one is tempted to say, Handel’s familiar spirit. It is almost as if the pair of them were engaged in imaginary conversation about how best to set Stampiglia’s text, a conversation which, on Handel’s part, took the form of many a ‘That’s beautiful; let’s use that’ or, ‘I really like that, but if I were doing it I’d try to make a little more of it’, or ‘I see what you mean, but wouldn’t it more effective like this?’, or ‘Move it along a bit’, or ‘Take your time’. And that ‘conversation’ surely contributes not a little to the superlative musical quality of Handel’s opera and its unique theatrical effectiveness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY The musical sources: CAVALLI: The original Venice version of Xerse has been edited in vol. ii of Clinkscale (1970); her edition includes in its ‘Supplement’ the additional music Cavalli wrote for Paris. Five arias are published among the music examples in Rosand (1991). LULLI: His overture and ballet music were issued in vol. ii of the ballets in J.-B. Lully: Oeuvres complètes, ed. H. Prunières, Paris 1930–9. FÖRTSCH: Seven arias from Xerxes survive in the manuscript ND VI 1023 in the Staatsund Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg. BONONCINI: Roberts (1987) provides a complete facsimile edition of an early copy of Bononcini’s opera. HANDEL: Of several modern editions of Serse, Best (2003) is conspicuously the best. Other bibliographical items: Beaussant, P. (1992). Lully ou le musicien du soleil, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Paris. Best, T. (ed.) (2003). Serse (Hallische Händel-Ausgabe II.39). Kassel, Basel, London, etc.

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Bukofzer, M. (1947). Music in the Baroque Era. New York. Burney, C. (1935). Charles Burney: a general history of music [1776–1789] (ed. Frank Mercer). London. Burrows, D., and Dunhill, R. (2002). Music and Theatre in Handel’s World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1789. Oxford. Clinkscale, M. (1970). Pier Francesco Cavalli’s ‘Xerse’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota. Dean, W. (1995). ‘Handel’s Serse’, in T. Bauman and M. P. McClymonds (eds.), Opera and the Enlightenment. Cambridge, 135–67. Della Corte, A. (ed.) (1958). Drammi per musica dal Rinuccini allo Zeno, Vol. 1. Turin. Fenlon, I., and Miller, P. N. (1992). The Song of the Soul: Understanding Poppea, RMA Monographs 5. London. Gibson, E. (1987). ‘The Royal Academy of Music (1719–28) and its directors’ in S. Sadie and A. Hicks (eds.), Handel: Tercentenary Collection. London, 136–64. —— (1989). The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728: the Institution and Its Directors. New York. Glover, J. (1975–6). ‘The Peak Period of Venetian Opera: the 1650s’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 102: 67–82. —— (1978). Cavalli. London. Isherwood, R. M. (1973). Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century. Ithaca, NY. Lindgren, L. (1999). ‘To be a Bee in 18th-Century England, as Exemplified by Handel’s “Serse” ’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge VII. Marx, H. J. & Schröder, D. (ed.) (1995). Die Hamburger Gänsemarkt-Oper, Katalog der Textbücher (1678–1748). Laaber Verlag. Muraro, M. T. (ed.) (1990). L’opera italiana a Vienna prima di Metastasio, Studi di musica veneta 16. Florence. Neubacher, J. (2001). ‘Drei wieder zugängliche Ariensammelbände als Quellen für das Repertoire der Hamburger Gänsemarkt-Oper’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 18: 195–206. Olsen, S. (1973). Christian Heinrich Postels Beitrag zur deutschen Literatur. Amsterdam. Pirrotta, N. (1990). ‘Note su Minato’, in Muraro (1990), 127–63. Powers, H. (1961/2). ‘Il Serse trasformato’, Musical Quarterly 47: 481–92; 48: 73–92. Prunières, H. (1913). L’opéra italien en France avant Lulli. Paris. Roberts, J. (ed.) (1986). Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel’s Borrowing. Vol. 8: Il Xerse, Giovanni Bononcini. New York and London. —— (1987). ‘Handel and Charles Jennens’ Italian Opera Manuscripts’, in N. Fortune, (ed.), Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean. Cambridge, 159–202. Rosand, E. (1991). Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford. Schneider, H. (1981). Chronologisches-Thematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Werke von Jean-Baptiste Lully. Mainzer Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 14. Tutzing. Schröder, D. (1998). Zeitgeschichte auf der Opernbühne: barockes Musiktheater in Hamburg im Dienst von Politik und Diplomatie (1690–1745). Göttingen.

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Smith, R. (2003). ‘What would Handel’s Audience have Expected of Xerxes?’, unpublished lecture text, delivered at a study day on Serse, Cambridge 3 May 2003. Weidemann, C. (1955). Leben und Wirken des Johann Philipp Förtsch (1652–1732). Basel. Wolff, H. C. (1957). Die Barockoper in Hamburg. Wolfenbüttel. Yearsley, D. (2002). Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint. Cambridge.

11 ‘Shrines of the Mighty’ Rediscovering the Battlefields of the Persian Wars Ian Macgregor Morris

Clime of the unforgotten brave! Whose land from plain to mountain-cave Was Freedom’s home, or Glory’s grave! Shrine of the mighty! can it be, That this is all remains of thee? Approach, thou craven crouching slave: Say, is this not Thermopylae? These waters blue that round you lave, Oh servile offspring of the free, Pronounce what sea, what shore is this? The gulf, the rock of Salamis! Byron, The Giaour, 103–9

Byron’s enigmatic eulogy to the battlefields of the Persian Wars was much more than a simple call for revolution against the Ottoman empire. It was a symbolic cry to an abstract ideal of liberty; a concept that played a fundamental part in the revolutionary process we call the Enlightenment. These shrines of the mighty were the ultimate paradigm, and indeed source, of the very concept of liberty. With the rise of Hellenism, Greece was increasingly seen as the origin of liberty. Yet the ultimate embodiment of this liberty lay not in her literature or art, nor in her philosophy; it lay in the deeds of her people. And it was in the heroic struggle against the Persians that this liberty was both confirmed and best revealed. Of course, the Persian Wars had served as a powerful paradigm and exemplar in the thought and literature of the western world since antiquity itself. The role those wars played forms the subject-matter of this volume. However, it was in the eighteenth century that the Persian Wars, and the battle of Thermopylae in particular, became especially significant in the European imagination. The Enlightenment was, at its heart, a search for alternatives to the Christian ancien régime of modern Europe. And this search inevitably became, in the

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words of Peter Gay, an ‘appeal to antiquity’.1 Within this context, Enlightenment thinkers were turning from a Rome indelibly associated with the Church and already the provence of the ancien régime, to a vision of Greece free from such associations. Such philosophical developments both propelled, and were themselves propelled by, changes in other aspects of European culture. A general reaction against the Augustan models of literature began to emerge in the last decade of the seventeenth century, fuelled by Whig readings of Longinus, which led to an increasing preference for Greek literature over Latin;2 a development that would be mirrored in the visual arts by Winckelmann a generation later. The ongoing ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns’ found new ammunition for both camps in the almost unexplored cultures of ancient Greece. For the first time since antiquity, the term ‘Greek’ was no longer, as it had been for Shakespeare, an insult. It was a virtual Greek renaissance. It was the publication of two best-selling poems that brought the Persian Wars, and the battle of Thermopylae in particular, to the very forefront of the European imagination: in Britain Richard Glover’s Leonidas, A Poem (1737), and in the Netherlands Willem van Haren’s Leonidas (1742). Both enjoyed huge success and carried considerable political impact.3 Yet the vision of the Persian Wars they engendered was an abstract one, distant in both time and space. They held what Mikhail Bakhtin famously described as the ‘absolute epic distance’ necessary for the paradigm they had become, part of a ‘valorised past’.4 To all intents and purposes, the battlefields of the Persian Wars were located in the past. Yet new factors were at play. The well-established Grand Tour had already acquainted the élite of northern Europe with the antiquities of Italy. The natural consequence of the Greek renaissance was the idea of visiting Greece herself. This idea was itself fuelled by another eighteenth-century idea: that of landscape and place. The notion that a locale, through association with events 1

Gay (1966–9), i.43 ff. Key among these is the Earl of Shaftsbury, who followed Longinus in asserting that great literature could only flourish in a free society. John Hall’s translation of Longinus had been published in 1652 under the title Peri Hypsous. Or, Dionysius Longinus of the Height of Eloquence. Rendered out of the originall by J. H. However, the 1674 French translation of Nicolas BoileauDespréaux reached a much wider audience, and spawned several English editions. 3 Richard Glover’s Leonidas (1737), often misinterpreted as a simple attack on Walpole’s government, enjoyed huge success, being translated into numerous languages and being adapted for the stage. Willem van Haren’s Leonidas (1742) was translated from the original Dutch into French, drawing ecstatic praise from Voltaire, and forced the government of the United Provinces into a humiliating back-down over honouring their treaty with Maria Theresa of Austria. On Glover see Macgregor Morris (2000), 211–14, and (2003), 46–53; Clough (2004), 365–71. On Van Haren, see Meijer (1971) 166–7; van Vloten (1874), 134–7, 160–1; Smit, Kalliope in de Nederlanden (1983), 349 f. A volume edited by Ian Macgregor Morris including the full first edition of Glover’s poem, and an English translation of Van Haren, is due to be published by the University of Exeter Press in 2007. 4 Bakhtin (1981), 13, 19. 2

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and ideas, attained an almost mystical power, would find its fruition in the Romantics. Yet its roots lie in the rationalists of the Enlightenment. One of its first and most eloquent proponents was Robert Wood (1717–71). Scholar, traveller, and politician, Wood’s ideas would prove pivotal in the later Enlightenment and the development of Romanticism, to say nothing of his contribution to scholarship. Wood travelled through much of the eastern Mediterranean in the 1740s and 1750s, searching for and more often than not finding, the fabled sites of antiquity. An often quoted passage from his Ruins of Palmyra (1753) reveals his revolutionary methodology, a methodology which would dominate travel to ancient sites for generations, and in some senses still does. There is, he insists to his armchair-bound readers, good reason to travel to the great locations we know from literature: Circumstances of climate and situation, otherwise trivial, become interesting from that connection with great men, and great actions, which history and poetry have given them: the life of Miltiades or Leonidas could never be read with so much pleasure, as on the plains of Marathon or at the Streights of Thermopylae; the Iliad has new beauties on the banks of the Scamander, and the Odyssey is most pleasing in the countries where Ulysses travelled and Homer sung. The particular pleasure, it is true, which an imagination warmed on the spot receives from those scenes of heroick actions, the traveller can only feel, nor is it to be communicated by description. But the classical ground not only makes us always relish the poet, or historian more, but sometimes helps us to understand them better.5

Crucial to Wood’s approach was the idea that a text can only be fully appreciated within its geographical context; and, just as importantly, that a locale can only be understood in light of the text. To some degree Wood is drawing on contemporary ideas concerning landscape and the picturesque; and also on notions, developed by writers such as Thomas Blackwell, which interpreted ‘primitive’ writers such as the early Greeks as being able to portray reality in a more faithful manner than modern writers, who are constrained by their culture and society.6 Yet he is also taking these ideas much further. There is some form of connection between a location and the events which took place there. Wood’s diaries of his travels reveal an often intense reaction to locations he visits, and in his published work at times he feels the need to apologize for his excessive enthusiasm.7 Such notions would become increasingly prevalent as the eighteenth century progressed. Samuel Johnson, writing in the 1770s, reveals the idea that a location can imbue a moral quality to the traveller: 5

6 Wood (1753), Preface. Blackwell (1736). e.g. at Troy: ‘However wild and unreasonable these feelings may appear to judgements of a more sober cast, I must still confess a return of their influence, whenever I indulge in a grateful review of those happy days, which we passed together, examining the Iliad on the Scamandrian plain, and tracing Ulysses, Menelaus, & Telemachus, through the various scenes of their adventures, with the Odyssey in our hands.’ From An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1775). 7

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To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were to be endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon.8

Johnson’s choice of Marathon is no coincidence; indeed, considering he was recounting his journey through the Scottish islands it may appear a surprising example. Yet it shows the degree to which the battlefields of the Persian Wars had come to dominate the imagination. The notion that a location, by virtue of the events that had taken place there, could act upon the moral character of the individual was well established by the end of the eighteenth century. The greater the events, so the greater the location. Johnson’s choice of Marathon to illustrate his journey to the island of Iona shows that the battles of the Persian Wars provided the most powerful examples of this idea. Travel to Greece, therefore, could be seen as a form of pilgrimage, a journey to locations sanctified by the glorious actions of antiquity. These travels were not just scholarly explorations of the past, but quests of a spiritual nature. They were not just about the past, but about the present, and even the future. Above all, they were about the individuals who undertook them. At the sites of great actions, a traveller could imbibe the virtue which those actions had instilled into the landscape itself. Certainly, in some travellers this idea is only metaphorical; but in others, it seems to border on the literal. Edward Dodwell explained the sense of power that seemed to lie in the very landscape itself: The reader must never forget, that a classic interest is breathed over the superficies of the Grecian territory; that its mountains, its valleys, and its streams, are intimately associated with the animating presence of the authors, by whom they have been immortalized. Almost every rock, every promontory, every river, is haunted by the shadows of the mighty dead. Every portion of the soil appears to teem with historical recollections; or it borrows some potent but invisible charm from the inspirations of poetry, the efforts of genius, or the energies of liberty and patriotism . . . A deep interest seems, as it were, to breathe from the ground, and there is hardly a locality which is not consecrated by some attractive circumstance; or which some trait of heroism, of greatness, and of genius, has not signalized and adorned.9

The intensity of a traveller’s relationship to such a ‘locality’, can be illustrated by Edward Daniel Clarke. When he arrived at Marathon in 1801, he reports that he felt he was touching eternity:

8

Johnson (1971), 148.

9

Dodwell (1819), vol. i, Preface p. vii, 2.


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The stillness of Nature, harmonizing with the calm solitude of that illustrious region which was once the scene of the most agitated passions, enables us, by the past, to determine of the future. In those moments, indeed, we may be said to live for ages;—a single instant, by the multiplied impressions it conveys, seems to anticipate for us a sense of that Eternity.10

These are the reactions of Romantics, yet the way they interacted with the locations was deeply rooted in the patterns of travel by the turn of the nineteenth century. Such a spiritual reaction, however, does not preclude scholarly analysis of the locations visited. During the process of the rediscovery of the battlefields of the Persian Wars, spiritual and academic responses were inseparable, and although they varied from one traveller to another, they can be found in them all. Space does not allow an in-depth discussion of all the battlefields, and therefore it will be necessary to concentrate on one example.11 The choice of Thermopylae, however, is not merely one of personal preference. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, during which time the rediscovery of these sites was taking place, the battle of Thermopylae, and Leonidas in particular, was serving as one of the most potent symbols of virtue and excellence in European thought, a veritable ‘Age of Leonidas’.12 Moreover, the dramatic changes in the landscape at Thermopylae since 480 bc added further interest to the site, and a further challenge to the travellers. The one obvious error in Herodotus’ description of Thermopylae (7.176) is his claim that the pass runs north–south, while it actually runs east–west.13 This detail would lead to some confusion among the early travellers. The points of the compass apart, however, his description has been broadly confirmed by the geological surveys recorded by Szemler, Cherk, and Kraft.14 The changes could hardly have been more dramatic: alluvial deposits have widened the Pass into a plain up to four kilometres in width; the ground level has risen by about twenty metres, so that

10

Clarke (1812). Of the other battlefields associated with the Persian Wars, only Marathon can be said to have excited a comparable interest to Thermopylae. Most of the travellers discussed below also visited Marathon. Salamis, for the obvious reason of being at sea, provide little opportunity for exploration. More perplexingly, Plataea received little attention; indeed, since the Middle Ages, Plataea has been regarded as the least significant of the major encounters of the Persian Wars. 12 See Macgregor Morris (forthcoming). I coined the phrase ‘Age of Leonidas’ to describe the second half of the 18th and early 19th cent., during my doctoral research, as a follow-on to Elizabeth Rawson, who described the 17th and early 18th cents. as the ‘age of Lycurgus’. Since then the phrase has apparently proved popular, with certain other scholars seeking to pass it off as their own. 13 This error has been corrected in most modern translations. 14 Szemler, Cherk, and Kraft (1996), 16–19, 46–9. 11

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the hill of the last stand, which stood at about thirty metres in antiquity, is now barely ten; and finally, the slopes of Mount Callidromos, which hang over the pass, have weathered considerably in the last two thousand years, so that they no longer present the same formidable barrier.15 Moreover, these authors claim that most of the accretion has occurred since 1800, arguing that a sketch by the French traveller François Pouqueville ‘shows Thermopylae much as it appeared for many millennia’ and suggests that the Pass was still relatively narrow in the early nineteenth century.16 W. K. Pritchett, however, dismisses Pouqueville’s sketch as ‘a highly romantic and distorted view’, and recommends Edward Dodwell’s painting of the Pass (Fig. 11.9) as a more accurate depiction.17 The disagreement between these authors highlights the problem of establishing the state of the Pass in the eighteenth century. Szemler et al. in arguing that Thermopylae, in the middle of the eighteenth century, bore any resemblance to its state in antiquity, are displaying an ignorance of contemporary accounts. While the travellers’ descriptions of the Pass often differ wildly, they all concur that it bore little relation to that of Herodotus. However, the differences between these accounts remain problematic. Thus, while Robert Wood, in 1751, maintained that the Pass was ‘a mile in the narrowest place if not more’,18 William Haygarth, sixty years later, claimed that in ‘one part, between the rock and the sea, the breadth even now is only a few feet’.19 However, one would expect the alluvial sediment deposits to have been increasing the width of the Pass in the years between Wood’s and Haygarth’s visits. A key factor here is the time of year at which travellers visited the Pass, although even seasonal patterns of flood and drought do not fully explain the differences.20 Therefore, any study of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century travellers to Thermopylae must take account not only of the change in the landscape over the period in question, but also of the particular differing perspectives and timings of the authors. Here, after an examination of the earliest travellers to the Pass and the all-important

15 Szemler et al. go on to allege that Thermopylae was not the main route from northern to central Greece, preferring a route further to the west, and thus dismiss the battle at Thermopylae as a minor action of little consequence. In this they have been answered by W. K. Pritchett. For those interested in this debate see ibid, and Kase and Szemler (1987) 182–98; Kase et al. (1991). For Pritchett’s response, see Studies in Ancient Greek Topography: Part IV (1982), 176–285, Part V (1985), 190–216; and Part VI (1989), 116–22. 16 17 Szemler et. al. (1996) 15. Pritchett (1989), 118–19. 18 In Wood’s manuscript diaries, ‘Journell from Athens thro’ the Attica, Boeotia etc. From May 16 1751 to the 1st of June.’, Entry for 20th May, 1751, The Wood Diaries, vol. 10. Held at the Institute of Classical Studies, London. 19 Haygarth (1814), 146. 20 For example, Wood visited the pass in May, a time of year at which one would expect the floodwaters to be at their strongest; while Haygarth visited in September.


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Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition of 1751, the travellers will be separated into the categories of ‘topographers’ and ‘romantics’.21 The effect of the topographical changes at Thermopylae on eighteenth-century travellers, was, as will be shown, considerable. How each of travellers reacted to it, and their reaction to the location in general, would play a pivotal role in the understanding of the site of Thermopylae.

EARLY TRAVELLERS TO THERMOPYLAE The very notion that a site is ‘rediscovered’ is a problematic one. Thermopylae lay on the main road from Constantinople to central Greece, as central a thoroughfare in the modern world as it had been in the ancient. What number of the many who travelled through the pass were actually aware of its historical significance remains unknowable. What is clear, however, is that few cared. Thermopylae and the Persian Wars were much more part of the western tradition: the Ottomans had their own histories, while the Greeks who lived under Ottoman rule identified with the decidedly Christian, and pre-Ottoman, society of Byzantium. A typical example of early ‘travel’ to Thermopylae can be seen in the writing of Henry Blount. Blount’s Voyage into the Levant makes fascinating reading, primarily due to his uncanny ability to be wrong. He was accompanied for part of his journey by a companion to whom he refers as ‘the Jew’, and who supplied him with local knowledge. In 1634, he reached what he believed to be Thermopylae: At last we came to a high and large mountain of a day’s journey over; the Jew held it to be the Thermopylae, a place as stoutly contested for of old, as now the Valtoline with us.22

This, however, was not Thermopylae. It was actually Potarzeek, near Pharsalus. Blount, to his credit, seems a little unsure of this, but gives his companion the benefit of the doubt. This same companion goes on to convince Blount that the ‘Eastern custom of wearing turbans’ actually originated from the battle at Thermopylae, where, when the Spartans marched into battle ‘each of them

21 This categorization follows that of Pierre Mackay, who divides the travellers into ‘two broad categories’: ‘On the one hand there is the scholarly, critical topographer, best represented by [William Martin] Leake, and by almost all important later classical travellers; on the other is the more naive, uncritical enthusiast, often wildly incorrect in his identifications, but at the same time of invaluable assistance for his descriptions of sites which, since they are not of immediately ascertainable historical significance, do not hold the attention of a Leake.’ Mackay’s definitions provide useful criteria for classifying the travellers to Thermopylae. See Mackay (1965), 243. 22 Voyage into the Levant (1636), 45.

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carried his winding [burial] sheet wrapped about his head’. The Persians are said to have been so struck by this that in honour of the Spartans they wear the turban to this day.23 To the modern reader Blount appears decidedly credulous. Yet the man who was prepared to suggest that the famous Spartan black broth was in fact coffee could hardly be expected to ignore stories such as these. In some sense his writing is reminiscent of Herodotus, eagerly recording each story as it is told, and leaving questions of veracity to the reader. Certainly, simply to dismiss Blount as naive is to misunderstand him. Blount was a highly respected figure, a child prodigy who graduated from Oxford at the age of seventeen, and who would later be described by the eminent critic Charles Gildon as the ‘Socrates of his age’. Blount’s failure to identify the site of Thermopylae correctly is fundamentally a product of his time. For his contemporaries the site of an ancient battlefield was of a certain antiquarian interest, but held no greater importance than that in the scheme of things. The fashion for Greece, and the concentration on location, had yet to arise. The seventeenth century saw the beginnings of serious antiquarian travel in Greece. The French ambassador the Marquis de Nointel spent five years in Greece during the 1670s, but focused on collecting antiquities. In the same decade Jacob Spon and George Wheler made what can be described as the first antiquarian expedition to Greece. Yet once again sites of ancient battles held little interest.24 This type of antiquarian travel became more common as the eighteenth century dawned. Richard Pococke (1704–65)25 spent five years touring the eastern Mediterranean. The first volume of his travels, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), dealt entirely with Egypt, and met with considerable success.26 Two years later he published a sequel, recounting his travels in various countries, including Greece. Pococke approached Thermopylae from the north: Our road was between the sea and the high mountains; these mountains are called Coumatia, and are doubtless the old mount Oeta, so that I began to look for the famous passage called Thermopylae, where the Spartans with a few men opposed the great army of the Persians . . . It is certain, that this pass is mentioned as sixty passes wide, and in some parts only broad enough for a single carriage . . . the sea must have lost, and left the passage wider, though possibly it was a way round the cape by the sea side, where there might be some narrow passes. After going about six miles to the east, our road was to the south between the mountains . . . 27

Pococke expressed little surprise at the changes he discovered in the landscape. He displayed an initial interest in finding the Pass, but once he was there the

23 24 26

Voyage into the Levant (1636), 45. 25 See Constantine (1984), 7–33. On Pococke see Stanford (1976), 133. 27 Spencer (1974), 152–3. Pococke (1745), vol. ii, Part II, bk. 3, 156.


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changes in topography were of no great interest to him. Pococke had not set out specifically to visit Thermopylae, and his comment that Thermopylae lay ‘possibly . . . round the cape’ does not betray any disappointment that he may have missed the Pass altogether, nor suggest any interest in investigating whether the Pass was indeed around the cape. Thus although Pococke had indeed passed through the ‘famous passage called Thermopylae’, he remained unsure as to whether he had actually done so.28 Moreover, he was not particularly concerned. His interest, as the most cursory examination of A Description of the East reveals, was in monumental remains. It was his descriptions of these remains which fascinated his readers, and which would later serve as the inspiration for Shelley’s sublime poem on the transience of power and the vanity of man-made monuments, Ozymandias (1818). Thermopylae, however, was only noteworthy as the location of an event, and the passion for landscape, and its significance, had not yet developed. As for Blount before him, it did not really matter. This would be the prerogative of the next travellers of note to Thermopylae.

THE WOOD–DAWKINS–STUART EXPEDITION Of all the eighteenth-century expeditions made by travellers to Thermopylae, the most significant must be that made by Robert Wood,29 James Dawkins,30

28 He refers to the river Boagrios, implying that, after travelling east from the Sperchius river, he took the route south through the Derveni, or Fontana Pass, some fourteen kilometres east of Thermopylae. Thus he passed directly through the Pass. 29 Robert Wood, as mentioned above, had travelled throughout the Greek islands and Asia Minor with Dawkins. Their discovery of the lost cities of Palmyra and Balbec, recorded in lavish volumes illustrating the ruins of these cities, cemented their reputation. See The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor in the Desert (1753); The Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Celosyria (1757). This reputation was immortalized in Gavin Hamilton’s painting Wood and Dawkins discovering Palmyra. (National Gallery of Scotland). Terence Spencer suggested that Hamilton had given the public ‘a powerful rendering of the moment of their first sight of Palmyra’ (1957), 76. However, it was upon his later work on Homer and Troy that his subsequent reputation rested. See A Comparative View of the Antient and Present State of the Troade. To which is Prefixed an Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1767), later republished with illustrations as An Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, with a Comparative View of the Ancient and Present State of the Troade, ed. J. Bryant (1775). Wood argued that the key to understanding Homer lay in the landscape, and this emphasis on landscape can also be seen in his attitude to Thermopylae, as will be seen below. On his return to England he entered politics, serving as under-secretary of state from 1756 to 1763. 30 1722–57. Although not enjoying the reputation of either of is travelling companions, Dawkins was neverthless a respected member of the Society of Dilettanti himself. Moreover, it was his considerable fortune that had funded their travels throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

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and James Stuart31 in May 1751. Later topographers would analyse the Pass and publish accurate maps, and philhellenes would visit and mourn over a lost Greece. However, the Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition was the first attempt to analyse the changes that had taken place since antiquity, and in doing so made Thermopylae a place of interest for travellers. The reputation established by Wood and Stuart as the leading experts on classical Greek archaeology of their generation ensured that although no account of the expedition was published, the very fact they had been there became in itself a matter of great interest, whilst the information they collected was used by other writers and cartographers. Several manuscripts survive: both Wood and Stuart drew maps of the Pass; Wood and Dawkins kept diaries; and Stuart later recorded the visit in a manuscript note. Through these surviving sources, their expedition can be reconstructed.32 Having toured much of Asia Minor, Wood and Dawkins arrived at Athens in May 1751, where they met with Stuart and Nicholas Revett. Leaving Revett in Athens, the three men departed Athens on 16 May 1751. The expedition was nominally to examine various sites in Boeotia and Phocis, but later commentators have described it as an ‘expedition to Thermopylae’.33 This emphasis on Thermopylae and disregard for the other objects of the expedition suggests that, although the travellers did visit several ancient sites, Thermopylae proved to be of the greatest interest. The expedition sailed from the island of Negropont (Euboea) and arrived at the Malian Gulf on the morning of the 20th of May according to Wood, the 21st according to Dawkins. From the ship they viewed the bay and the shoreline 31 James Stuart (1713–88), along with Nicholas Revett (1720–1804), had been commissioned by the Society of Dilettanti to examine the ruins of Athens. Their endeavours lasted from 1751 to 1753, and resulted in The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated (1762). The work was an instant success, and further volumes were produced over the next fifty years (vols. ii, 1789; iii, 1795; iv, 1814). Stuart received the lion’s share of the acclaim for the work, earning the epithet ‘Athenian’, a matter which bothered Revett to the extent that he sold his rights in the work to Stuart. The fact that Revett did not join the expedition to Thermopylae suggests that relations between the two men were already strained in 1751. On his return to England Stuart became a respected architect, and played a central role in promoting the ‘Grecian’ style of neo-classical architecture. 32 The diaries of Wood and Dawkins are held at the Library of the Institute of Classical Studies, London, as part of the Wood Diaries. The authors of the various volumes of the diaries have been identified by Hutton (1927), 103. Wood’s account of the visit to Thermopylae is in vol. x, entitled ‘Journell from Athens thro’ the Attica, Boeotia etc. From May 16 1751 to the 1st of June’. Dawkins’ account is in vol. viii, entitled ‘From the 18th of April 1751 to the 8th of June’. A French translation of Stuart’s note and copy of his map were made in 1782 for Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, the author of Voyage of the Young Anacharsis. These are held at the British Library (ADD MS 15,326, fos. 11–12). References to each author will be made by name only, and in the case of Wood and Dawkins, the date of the entry. 33 Hutton (1927, 103) gives a complete list of the destinations the party visited: Marathon, Egrippo, Thermopylae, Lake Copais, Thebes, Livadia, Delphi, Galaxidi, Corinth, Sicyon, the Isthmus, Megara and Eleusis. In terms of the battlefields of the Persian Wars, Plataea is conspicuous by its absence. C. Hughes (‘James Dawkins’, DNB) and Spencer (1974, 163) both characterize the journey as ‘an expedition to Thermopylae’.


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along the south-eastern coast. It is at this point in his diary that Wood entered his description of Thermopylae. The description is considerably more detailed than that provided by Dawkins or Stuart, and attempts to explain the cause of the change in the landscape. Moreover, the lack of any surprise at this change suggests that Wood was prepared for what he witnessed. In all likelihood he had read Pococke’s account.34 His description is worth quoting in full: Even tho’ we had no account from the antients to judge by, the present face of this country sufficiently shew, the change it must have undergone, and that the morass at the bottom of the Gulph is an acquisition from the sea occasion’d by the violence of the river in winter and helped by these plentiful springs of the Thermae which flow into the morass, in three or four places with a smart current is evident from the nature of the morass, and the accounts of the river which answer in every circumstance to the same cause and effects of the mouth of the Nile, Scamander, Cayster, Meander, Archelaos etc, all which rivers have by producing a new flat shore, destroy’d parts, alter’d situations, and occasion’d some of the most puzzling difficulty’s in the comparison of Antient and modern geography; if we don’t attend to this circumstance there is no part of these Streights which will agree at all with the antient accounts of Thermopylae, there being a passage everywhere between the mountains and the sea of a mile in the narrowest place if not more; but there is one spot where the road under these mountains may be as near as I could guess thirty foot broad, anything beyond that thirty foot towards the sea is eight or ten feet lower than the road and bears visible marks of resemblance to all the marshy plain already taken notice of whereas the road is a firm champaigne gravell entirely different from that of the marsh and having no appearance of suffer’d any change; there is no other part of the shore that will answer to the action of Leonidas but this which allowing the marshy part of the shore to be acquisition since from the sea is exactly the thing, or will appear by comparing the place with the action.35

Wood correctly determined the cause of the change in the landscape. His discussion of the difficulties of equating ancient with modern topographies reveals his belief in the role which an understanding of landscape could have in appreciating the ancient world. This lengthy description must be put alongside the map Wood drew the following day (Fig. 11.1). Wood’s map, with his description, illustrates the changes the landscape had undergone. The text on the map is quite revealing.36 It informs us that the area was heavily cultivated, 34 Indeed, Stanford suggests that Wood was ‘prompted’ by Pococke’s descriptions, especially that of the Troade (1976, 136). 35 The spelling is Wood’s, from the entry for 20 May. 36 The text curved around the ‘coast’ refers to the marshy ground between the dry land and the sea, and reads as follows: ‘All included between these cross lines is a morass, some part of it containing much stagnating water when we pass’d it but in winter eventually overflows, in some parts of it they sow rice when the water is of [illegible] part of it, especially towards the S + SW, there is a salt flower, we pass’d severall little channells which let [illegible] water of [illegible] are we [illegible] to the river.’ The middle piece of text refers to the waters of the Gulf, and reads: ‘Upon all this shore shallow water so that ships can come no further up in the Gulph than to the scale [i.e. the scale marked ‘scale of Zitoun’ in the lower left hand corner of the map].’ The lower piece of text refers to the River Sperchieos, and reads: ‘The river is rapid and muddy and sometimes by its defordments stops travellers who pass | this way to Constantinople.’

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Figure 11.1 Robert Wood, ‘Map of Thermopylae’

especially for rice,37 and was a site of salt production.38 It informs us that the Gulf was only navigable to a point slightly to the west of Thermopylae in the south, and on the north coast to a small village that served as a port for Zeitoun. Finally, the map records that the river Spercheios was wont to flood in the winter, blocking the route to Constantinople. Wood’s map is the earliest extant map of Thermopylae, the first cartographic attempt to represent the modern state of a location viewed by many as a historical, rather than geographic, entity. Its dubious quality as a piece of cartography suggests that it was composed on the spot. Thus, the information it contained and the circumstances of its production render it of the greatest importance. The party attempted to land at the ‘Thermae’, but there ‘was not water enough for us to come near the shore’,39 and so they landed on the north side 37 Helen Angelomatis noted that paddy fields were ‘common and extensive’ in Greece at the time (1990, 33). 38 Also noted on Leake’s map. See below. 39 Wood, 20 May.


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Figure 11.2 James Stuart, ‘Map of Thermopylae’

of the Gulf, where they spent the night.40 The following day they set off around the Gulf to the town of Mola, on the south coast. Wood recorded that the purpose of the trip was ‘to make a tour of the of the bay as far as might be necessary to appraise ourselves if possible of the famous spot where Leonidas so long withstood the Persian army.’41 This extract reveals not only that Wood was at Thermopylae in order specifically to locate the site of the battle of 480 bc, but that he was prepared to take as long as was necessary to do this. This provides a sharp contrast to the almost nonchalant approach of Pococke. Wood was displaying an emphasis on an ancient location, not merely as the setting of an historical event, but as important as the material ruins of antiquity. The route the party took can be seen in Stuart’s map (Fig. 11.2).42 40 They landed at a village where ‘ships anchor to load corn’ (Wood, 20 May). Stuart specifically said that they did not visit Zeitoun, which according to Wood was four hours to the north. 41 Wood, 21 May. 42 This map is a copy made in 1782 of Stuart’s original. In the note accompanying the map, Stuart claimed that ‘Dawkins and Wood took the map I had made of the Gulph of Zeiton; I did not keep a copy and I have not seen the original since.’ This raises several difficulties concerning the subsequent history of the map. For what purpose did Wood and Dawkins take it, and why did they fail to make any use of it? Furthermore, how did a copy of the map reach Barthélemy in 1782, and how did it come about that Stuart was writing a note to accompany a map which he no longer possessed? These questions cannot be answered without considerably more research into the matter.

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The first point of interest noticed by the party was recorded by Dawkins. As the party rounded the bay, he noticed a ‘road winding up the hill and turning to the [illegible] afterwards which goes to Salona and may be the road which Ephialte shew’d the Persians’. It is difficult to know to which route Dawkins was referring. The route the Persians took to outflank the Greek position at Thermopylae, the path Herodotus called the Anopaea (7.216), remains a matter of debate among historians. However, Dawkins’ comment remains the first attempt by a modern traveller to speculate about this route.43 At the Spercheios River the party halted at a bridge that attracted Stuart’s interest. It was ‘badly made’, but included ‘four or five ancient fragments, two or three of which are elegant mouldings, and were once part of some beautiful structure’.44 The comment reflects the findings of many travellers in Greece during this period: namely, the tendency to use fragments of ancient architecture to build vastly inferior structures, often destroying ancient buildings specifically for the purpose. Near the bridge the party discovered a source of hot water, which Dawkins assumed to mark the beginning of the Pass of Thermopylae: ‘now we ride along what I take to be the Pass of Thermopylae’.45 From this point, records Stuart ‘we walked towards the south, a distance of about two miles first by the river, and then with the sea to our left and a chain of inaccessible mountains to our right’.46 In this passage Stuart betrays the first sign of an error that would persist, and determine the understanding of the topography of Thermopylae, until corrected by Leake in 1805. Following Herodotus, Stuart assumed that from the Spercheios, the pass continued in a southerly direction. However, from the river, Thermopylae and Mola, their eventual destination, lie directly to the east. At the village of Mola they boarded their ship and returned to Negropont. Stuart estimates the distance from Thermopylae to Mola as two and a half miles, although it is at least five.47 Wood recorded that the journey, from the north side of the gulf, was completed in a total of eight hours. Thus ended the first serious attempt to explore the site of Thermopylae. Stuart passed through the site for a second time some two years later, when he joined the pasha of Athens on his return to Constantinople. In his note, he described his brief second visit, confessing that he ‘was travelling too quickly to be able to make observations’, but remarks that he ‘saw a tomb with columns, but did not have time to investigate as to whether it was built

43

Dawkins, 22 May. It seems likely that Dawkins was referring to a path that followed the same route as one of the modern roads over the mountain: either that leading to the village of Eleftherochori, or perhaps the Damasta monastery. 44 45 46 Stuart. Dawkins, 22 May. Stuart. 47 Taking Alpenos as the eastern end of the Pass. From the ‘hot waters’ it is about seven.


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for a Turk or a Spartan’.48 Stuart also refers to this ‘tomb’ in the preface to the fourth volume of the Antiquities of Athens.49 Little is made here of this ‘tomb’, but it clearly influenced Edward Clarke, who found such a structure on the tumulus he incorrectly identified as the ‘Tomb of the Spartans’ some fifty years later.50 Stuart’s map of the pass would prove the most influential result of his visits to Thermopylae. Although the history and whereabouts of the original copy of his map is unknown, a copy was made for Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, the author of the best-selling Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis (1788), in 1782. Jean Barbie du Bocage produced a volume of illustrations, including a series of maps, to accompany Barthélemy’s Voyage.51 This work proved to be of considerable influence: William Gell, himself one of the most respected topographers of the period, dedicated his Itinerary of the Morea to Bocage, claiming that his ‘researches have been of the greatest importance to Grecian topography’.52 Pierre Mackay claims of Bocage’s map of Thermopylae that ‘until the publication of the first well-surveyed map of the region by Lapie in 1825, the map of Barbie du Bocage furnished all the basic topographical foundations for the study of the region.’53 In the notes to the 1825 edition of Barthélemy’s Voyage, Bocage revealed his debt to two travellers in the composition of his map of Thermopylae: It is designed from a particular plan taken on the spot by M. Foucherot in 1781, and the coast of Paralia is laid down from another manuscript plan of M. Stuart, who arrived at Thermopylae on this [north] side.

Little is known about the expedition of Foucherot. Pierre Mackay commented that ‘one would very much like to know how much of his map derives from Foucherot and how much merely seemed appropriate’, going on to suggest that Bocage ‘despaired of getting back to the true appearance of the ancient pass by way of modern landmarks’, implying that Bocage’s imagination played an important role.54 However, Mackay did not know the whereabouts of Foucherot’s plan, and therefore has not been able to compare the two.55 Unknown to Mackay, Foucherot’s map is still

48

Note of Stuart; see Appendix II. Published in 1814, after Stuart’s death. 50 See Figure 11.8. 51 The first English edition was Maps, Plans, Views and Coins, Illustrative of the Travels of Anacharsis the Younger In Greece (1817). The maps were reproduced in an 1825 edition of the Voyage, in a separate volume. 52 Gell (1817). 53 Mackay (1965), 243. Leake, who noticed the errors in Barbie du Bocage’s map when he surveyed the pass in 1805, did not publish his map until 1830. 54 Ibid. 244. 55 Ibid. n. 29. 49

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in existence.There is a volume of manuscripts held at the British Library, the title page of which announces it to have been originally in the possession of Bocage.56 Not only does this volume include the copy of Stuart’s map and note, but on the folio immediately preceding them is a map of Thermopylae, entitled simply ‘Carte des Thermopyles, 1781’ (Fig. 11.3). 57 Although the cartographer’s name is not recorded, the fact that it was drawn in 1781, that it corresponds to Bocage’s description of Foucherot’s map, and that it was in his possession, all imply, beyond any reasonable doubt, that it is the map of Foucherot. A comparison of the maps of Stuart and Foucherot, with that produced by Bocage (Fig. 11.4), show that he used both maps in his reconstruction of

Figure 11.3 Foucherot, ‘Cartes des Thermopyles, 1781’ 56

ADD MS 15,326.

57

Ibid. folio 10.


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Thermopylae ‘at the time of Xerxes’. According to Mackay, the map is replete with inaccuracies: He invented such detail as he thought necessary to correct present day topography, and to include all relevant ancient place names. But the chief failing of this map lies in the compass indication, which records a desperate attempt to make the physical landscape conform to the text of Herodotus.58

This error on Bocage’s part, argues Mackay, led later travellers to repeat it. However, while Bocage may have used his own creativity in locating ancient settlements, he must be exonerated from mistaking the compass indication. The source of this error, as Mackay rightly points out, was an attempt to make the topography of Thermopylae conform with the account of Herodotus.59 Nor

Figure 11.4 Jean Barbie du Bocage, ‘Map of Thermopylae at the time of Xerxes’

58

Mackay (1965), 244.

59

Ibid. 243–4.

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did the error originate with Bocage. The belief that Thermopylae ran roughly north–south was clearly present both in Stuart and Foucherot, and Bocage was merely following their accounts. Moreover, this error highlights one of the key problems facing early travellers in Greece and the Levant. The passion for antiquity that pervaded European culture left classical texts as being almost sacrosanct. Travellers hoped that their voyages would confirm the validity of these texts, and, to quote Wood, ‘help us understand them better’. The relationship between a location and the text was innate. In his attempt to find Troy, Wood desperately tried to reconcile the accounts of Homer and Strabo with the geographical reality; and his failure to do so irritated him. Yet, perhaps somewhat remarkably, Wood, the very traveller who proposed the notion of the innate connection between text and location, did not let it determine his conclusions: of all the travellers who searched for Troy, he alone had the courage to admit that he had not found it; and his map of Thermopylae, rough as it is, seems to bear a closer resemblance to the true compass orientation than that of Stuart. Perhaps for the very reason that he tried to reconcile his map with the text of Herodotus, Stuart’s map proved more influential than that of Wood. Bocage was not the only cartographer to use Stuart’s map. L. S. de la Rochette, who published a map of Greece in 1791, acknowledged his indebtedness for ‘details about ancient Attica and the Passes of the Thermopylae to the papers of Mr. Stuart’. 60 The map of Thermopylae that accompanied the first volume of William Mitford’s History of Greece (1784) (Fig. 11.5) also appears to be based on Stuart’s sketch: although his version is not credited, the similarity with the maps of Stuart and Bocage suggests a common source.61 Thus, one of the main sources of topographical information about Thermopylae, until the expeditions of Leake and Gell in the early nineteenth century, was from the Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition of 1751. Only the map of Foucherot added anything to Stuart’s, and this was in the main noticeable not for its portrayal of Thermopylae itself, but for that of the area to the south. The Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition was of immense importance for understandings of Thermopylae over this period, and the theories of Wood ensured that Thermopylae was seen as a prime example of the modern Greek landscape as a continuity with antiquity. Wood brought Thermopylae to contemporary interest as a location, which could not but be associated with the historical Thermopylae, epitomized in the eighteenth-century imagination in 60

Quoted in Hutton (1927), 103 n. The map of Thermopylae is the only illustration present in the first edition of Mitford’s epic History, further evidence of the primacy of the battle of Thermopylae in the 18th-cent. imagination. 61


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Figure 11.5 ‘Map of Thermopylae’, from Mitford’s History of Greece (1784)

the work of Richard Glover and Willem van Haren. At the same time, the work of Stuart provided information for cartographers to produce maps of the Pass. Thermopylae was re-established as a real geographical location, a continuity with the excellence of the ancients.

THE TOPOGRAPHERS: LEAKE AND GELL In the early years of the nineteenth century, the two most highly respected topographers of Greece of their generation visited Thermopylae. The fruits of their work provided accurate information concerning the Pass which remains in use to this day. William Martin Leake (1777–1860) is generally recognized to have been the most accurate and influential of the early topographers in Greece, and his work is still considered useful by modern scholars.62 A British officer and consul, believed by some to be a spy, he spent much of the period 1799–1815 mapping Greece and Turkey. Among a string of important works

62 On Leake’s accuracy see: Gordon (1838), 9; Angelomatis (1990), 14; Spencer (1974), 207. Scholars still using Leake include Mackay (1965) 242–3; Szemler et al. 15 n.22.

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on Greek subjects, his Travels in the Morea (1830) and Travels in Northern Greece (1835) stand as definitive accounts of the geography and topography of Greece. It is the latter which concerns us here. Leake visited Thermopylae twice during the year 1805, in July, and again in November. His account of the Pass63 includes a physical description, a detailed historical account of the three major battles at the Pass,64 thoughts on the Anopaea path, and observations on the changes in topography. From these, two passages are particularly revealing. First, his account of the varying width of the Pass according to the season: The strength of Thermopylae as a Pass now depends on the season of the year, for as the sea, instead of bordering the defile, is now at a distance of three or four miles from it, the difficulty of passing Thermopylae depends on the dry or marshy state of the plain. At the Phoenix, or western Pass, there is still in winter only a narrow road at the foot of the hill, bordered by marshes; but as these in summer afford intervals for cultivation, they would likewise admit of the passage of troops into the plain of Anthele. In the Eastern Pass, or proper Thermopylae, there is in like manner a plain, more than half a mile in breadth, between the pass and the Spercheius, and this plain also, although marshy and sometimes impassable in winter, is partly cultivated in summer, and presents no difficulty of passage.65

This passage reveals a careful examination of the Pass. Certain details had appeared in earlier travellers: Wood had noticed the seasonal cultivation of the marshes, and the tendency for the Spercheios to become impassable in winter. However, Leake was not merely making general observations, but attempting fully to delineate Thermopylae. Thus, he was the first to divide the Pass into the three parts that are still used by topographers today: Thermopylae appears to have been the name generally applied to the whole road or passage at the foot of Mount Callidromus, from the plain of the Asopus to the woody slopes which commence a little beyond the modern derveni [guard-house]. But it is distinctly divisible into three parts, the pass of the Phoenix, the plain of Anthele, and Thermopylae proper. The latter was the only part very defensible against a great disparity of numbers.66

Important as his discussion of Thermopylae was, the most significant part of his work on Thermopylae was his map (Fig. 11.6). He corrected the erroneous compass indication present in Stuart and Bocage, and, for the first time, produced an accurate map of the state of the modern pass in a widely read publication. Even today it remains one of the best maps of

63

Leake (1835), ii. 32–65. 480 bc; the Gallic invasion of 279 bc; the battle between Antiochos III and the Romans under Acilius and Cato in 191 bc. 65 Ibid. 40. 66 Ibid. 51. 64


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Figure 11.6 ‘Plan of Thermopylae’, from Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece (1835)

Thermopylae available, while his account remains the starting point for any serious study of the Pass. 67 Sir William Gell (1777–1836) travelled extensively and became known as one of the foremost topographers of Greece.68 Travelling with Edward Dodwell, he reached Thermopylae on 24 May 1805. He could not, like Dodwell, be described as a Romantic, and did not produce a prose account of his visit. 67 The account of Major General Thomas Gordon is certainly of a comparable quality, but Gordon’s work was not as widely read as Leake’s and he concerned himself with the Anopaea path rather than Thermopylae. See Gordon (1838). 68 See Spencer (1974), 208 f. Byron referred to Gell in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809): ‘Of Dardan tours let Dilettanti tell, | I leave topography to classic Gell’ (1033–4). His original manuscript had read ‘coxcomb Gell’, but the DNB records that he became acquainted with Gell while the poem was printing, and altered the line. In the 5th edn. Byron altered ‘classic’ to ‘rapid’, in reference to the fact that Gell had mapped the plain of Troy in only three days.

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Rather, he included Thermopylae in what can be described as the first modern guide books to Greece.69 Two volumes appeared, The Itinerary of the Morea: Being a Description of the Routes of That Peninsula (1817), and The Itinerary of Greece; Containing One Hundred Routes in Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and Thessaly (1827). Gell described the aim of the publications himself: This work being intended as a guide to travellers in Greece, and consequently to be carried in the pocket, it was impossible to enter a more detailed description without defeating the purposes of the publication.70

Such an idea was revolutionary at the time, and he explained the reasoning behind it: To those who travel in the North of Europe, the enumeration of every rivulet, source, or habitation, which occurs on the road, must appear totally devoid of interest or utility; and the notation of tiles, broken pottery, or blocks of stone, yet more frivolous and absurd. To the Grecian traveller, however, these may be circumstances of the more importance. Almost every brook has its value to history or geography.71

The volumes therefore appeared in the form of a printed timetable, with distances recorded in terms of the time it took to travel them. An example can be seen in Figure 11.7, showing Gell’s description of the approach to Thermopylae. Each site of interest was identified, be it a ruin or a geographical feature, and the reader was advised on the best vantage points and views. Spencer remarked that Gell ‘carried to impossible lengths his identifications of the smallest allusions’.72 This may well be true, but, as will become clear in the work of Edward Clarke, this was an increasingly common habit. The production of such publications suggests that travel to Greece was becoming considerably more common. They mark the beginning of tourism in Greece: travellers were becoming tourists rather than explorers. Greece had been explored and Gell’s publications left little room for future travellers to discover things anew. The inclusion of Thermopylae as one of his ‘routes’ through Greece reflects the importance of the site to contemporary travellers, and served to ensure that the Pass would feature as an important part of future tourist itineraries. Moreover, Gell’s guide ensured that upon any such visit the traveller would be well informed. The work of Leake and Gell mapped Thermopylae and placed it firmly on the itinerary, not only of the adventurous, but of the standard tourist to Greece. In effect, they completed one aspect of the work that the Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition had begun: after Leake and Gell, Thermopylae was, quite literally, firmly on the map. It was up to another group of travellers to complete the transition of the location of the Pass of Thermopylae into a paradigm. 69 71

Angelomatis (1990), 8. Gell (1817), Preface p. vii.

70

Gell (1827), Preface p. v. 72 Spencer (1974), 208–9.


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Figure 11.7 Facsimile taken from Gell’s Itinerary of Greece (1827)

ROMANTIC TRAVELLERS TO THERMOPYLAE It has been argued that Romanticism was not a literary or political ‘movement’, but a ‘state of mind’.73 Peter Gay claims that Romanticism was a mythic backlash against the Enlightenment emphasis on science, rationality, and progress: he visualizes Enlightenment thinkers ‘defending science against fancy, rigour against vagueness, and criticism against a resurgence of myth-making’.74 Similarly, Marylin Butler refers to what she describes as the ‘watershed in European art at or near the year 1800, when Enlightenment confidence and universalism retreats into an irrational and generally gloomy introversion’.75

73

Massie (2000).

74

Gay (1966), i. 88.

75

Butler (1981), 113.

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The key here is twofold: the idea that Romanticism was a reaction against Enlightenment positivism, and that it involved ‘myth-making’, was ‘irrational’. However, Romanticism was also a product of the Enlightenment: it inherited the political ideas of liberty and liberalism, whatever they were taken to mean by individuals; and it is clearly present in both Wood and Johnson. In terms of Hellenism the results were far reaching. The philosophes had used classical Greece to present models which ‘affirmed life, the body, knowledge and generosity’ against the ‘ascetic, superstitious enemies of the flesh’.76 The Romantics inherited these models, but used them in them in the very ‘mythopoeic’ manner the philosophes had developed the models to combat. In terms of a geographical location such as Thermopylae, Romanticism implied a tendency to view the landscape and the action that took place there as being inextricable. Thermopylae was not merely the location of a sublime action, but was an integral part of that action. This is the sense in which the following travellers should be considered. There was, without doubt, an element in the approach of the travellers so far discussed that could be described as ‘romantic’; as seen, for example, in Robert Wood’s description of the ‘particular pleasure’ that an ‘imagination warmed on the spot receives from those scenes of heroick actions’. By the early years of the nineteenth century, travellers tended to react in considerably more emotional terms. Their descriptions became less those of disinterested antiquarians, and more those of individuals identifying with the location on a personal level. These were the Romantic travellers to Thermopylae. The Romantic approach to Thermopylae was summed up by François Pouqueville, when relating the experiences of two Frenchmen who were imprisoned with him in Constantinople in 1799. He related their journey north from Athens: In the course of this route they passed one of the most celebrated among all the celebrated spots of antiquity—a spot the name of which is associated with all the noblest ideas of valour and patriotism—the Straits of Thermopylae. What heart, what imagination is not fired at this name! The soul is absorbed in the fate of Leonidas and his brave followers; human nature seems elevated in the recollection of such deeds.77

Pouqueville was not only elevating Thermopylae as one of the highlights of antiquity and setting it up as a paradigm of ‘valour and patriotism’. He was suggesting that the very act of contemplating the action of Leonidas was itself conducive to self-improvement, and that this effect would be magnified at Thermopylae itself. Pouqueville wrote this before he himself visited the Pass, basing his claims on the accounts of two other travellers. His sentiments at that time are therefore a useful illustration of the attitude with which the Romantic traveller approached Thermopylae. 76

Butler (1981), 33.

77

Pouqueville (1813), 247.


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One of the first of these ‘Romantic’ travellers to Thermopylae was Edward Daniel Clarke (1769–1822). Clarke had travelled extensively through Europe, much of the Middle East, and finally Greece. He set about publishing an account of his travels in 1810, eventually producing six volumes under the title Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, (1810–23). The first edition alone earned him almost £7,000, and the praise and friendship of many prominent figures, including Byron. He was well aware of what he termed the ‘Classical Reader’, who would ‘anticipate, by his imagination, what is impossible to describe’.78 It was with such an audience in mind that he composed his account. He reached the Pass of Thermopylae in December 1801. The time of year proved crucial; for the winter floods had left much of the marsh land impassable, and thus he assumed that the landscape was little changed since antiquity,79 an assumption to which Clarke was especially prone. He set about identifying the remains of antiquity; yet his desire was not that of the antiquarian, but of the Romantic. He sought to identify not out of an antiquarian fascination, but from a genuine desire to connect with the virtue of the past. And he found that past everywhere. The road they followed to Thermopylae, he thought, must surely be ‘the antient military way, mentioned by Livy . . . and, consequently, that we were now treading in the footsteps of those Spartans who with Leonidas guarded this defile at the invasion of Xerxes’.80 Soon after, they passed ‘an antient tumulus, whereon the broken remains of a massive pedestal, as a foundation for some monument, were yet conspicuous’. Its shape and form were enough to convince Clarke: It is hardly necessary to allege any additional facts to prove to whom this tomb belonged: being the only one that occurs in the whole of this defile . . . there can be no doubt but that this was the place alluded to by Herodotus, where those heroes were interred who fell in the action of Thermopylae; and that the Tumulus itself is the polyandrium mentioned by Strabo.81

Conscious that not all would agree, Clarke presents a detailed defence of his identification.82 Gell, at least, appears to have agreed,83 but Clarke’s impassioned tone implies that others did not. He supports his ‘discovery’ with an illustration of the mound (Fig. 11.8); this firmly establishes him as a Romantic explorer, finding the tomb of the ancient heroes. The identifications continue. In an innovative piece of thinking, Clarke surmises that Herodotus’ famous description of the Spartans combing their hair implies the presence of a fountain:

78

79 Clarke (1812–19), Part II, § ii, 460. Ibid. 249–50. 81 82 Ibid. Ibid. 240–1. Ibid. 242–4. 83 Gell (1827), 238–9. Gell does not refer to Clarke’s identification, but his description of the location of the mound corresponds with that of Clarke. 80

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Figure 11.8 ‘The Tomb of the Spartans’, from Clarke’s Travels in Various Countries (1810–23)

this operation of cleansing the hair is also accompanied by ablution, and that it takes place, of course, by the side of a fountain . . . it might be expected that a fountain still exists denoting the spot where the Spartans were seen upon this occasion . . . Upon the left hand, is seen the fountain before alluded to; precisely in the situation that must have been occupied by the Spartans, when reconnoitred by command of Xerxes.84

This passion for connecting each object with Leonidas reached its climax with the local flora. By the fountain he noticed a Platanus Orientalis, or Oriental plane-tree. On the basis of the considerable age that these trees, according to ancient authors, could reach, Clarke postulates that this very tree ‘might only be considered as an immediate offspring of some venerable plant found here on that occasion’.85 He therefore took several seed pouches from the tree, because he was ‘being desirous of bearing away a living memorial from a spot so celebrated’.86 The seeds were later planted at Jesus College, Cambridge,

84

Clarke (1812–19), ii. 243–4, 245.

85

Ibid.

86

Ibid. 246.


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where, he informed his readers, one tree ‘sprang up’.87 The effect of the battle was such that even the trees present at the time became ‘venerable’, and the seeds of their supposed offspring were relics of the place.88 In each case Clarke’s desire to connect with the past determined what he believed he had found. More pertinently, in each case he was also wrong. Yet while his identifications may border on the ridiculous to a modern observer, they were a natural progression from the ideas propagated by Wood half a century earlier. Yet while Wood tempered his enthusiasm with reason, Clarke’s approach to the site of Thermopylae was essentially spiritual. Indeed, he marvelled at the effect which the events of the past had on the location. To any neutral observer, Thermopylae was no place of beauty: without the interest thrown over it by antient history, [it] would be one of the most disagreeable upon earth. Unwholesome air, mephitic exhalations bursting through the rifted and rotten surface of a corrupted soil, as if the land around were diseased; a filthy and fetid quagmire . . . [such a scene] can only become delightful from the most powerful circumstances of association that were ever produced by causes diametrically opposite;—an association combining, in the mere mention of the place, all that is great, and good, and honourable; all that has been embalmed as most dear in the minds of grateful prosperity. In the overwhelming recollection of the sacrifice that was here offered, every other consideration is forgotten; the Pass of Thermopylae becomes consecrated; it is made a source of the best feelings of the human heart; and it ‘shall be had in ever lasting remembrance.’89

It was, in effect, impossible to be a neutral observer. The ‘circumstances of association’ render Thermopylae sacred, and thus any visit becomes a pilgrimage. How literal Clarke intended his account to be remains difficult to determine. He certainly appears to believe in his identifications; but his parting words suggest that much of his response to the location is figurative. What is clear, however, is that the success of his Travels ensured that his account of Thermopylae would become well known. Another traveller to Thermopylae during this period who can be described as Romantic was Edward Dodwell (1767–1832), who visited the Pass in May 1805 with William Gell. A prisoner of war of the French government, Dodwell nevertheless attained permission from his captors to tour Greece, and built a reputation as a ‘cultivated traveller and an ardent collector’.90 His account of his travels, A Classical and Topographical Tour Through Greece, During the Years 87

Ibid. 265 n. 1. The tree still stands today in the gardens of Jesus College. Although, to be fair to Clarke, botany was one of his interests, and he collected specimens throughout his travels: his desire to take seeds from a tree at Thermopylae was not merely Romantic enthusiasm. 89 Ibid. 251–2. 90 Spencer (1974), 208. His collection included the Dodwell Vase, later sold to the Munich Glyptotek. 88

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1801, 1805, and 1806 (1819), was accompanied by a lavish volume of thirty colour prints, entitled Views in Greece (1821).91 As seen in the extract quoted above, Dodwell can be said to be as much of a Romantic as Clarke. Although he travelled with the distinctly unromantic Gell, the two men shared a passion for rediscovering sites of antiquity, albeit for differing reasons.92 His account of his visit to Thermopylae, if a little more discerning than Clarke on matters of archaeology, is no less a Romantic encomium. Of the many sites he visited in Greece, Thermopylae was one ‘that is peculiarly fitted to kindle the glow of classical enthusiasm in the breast’.93 However, Dodwell differed from Clarke in the manner in which this enthusiasm was expressed. He remarked upon ‘how very difficult it is to identify the remains which are seen at present in this country, with the descriptions of them which have been left us by ancient authors’.94 At Thermopylae this was especially pertinent: It may be necessary to observe that if the traveller takes Herodotus or Strabo for unerring guides in his examination of this celebrated spot, he will be liable to be misled at almost every step of his way. Nor will the dubious light which they afford enable him to identify scarcely any thing but the pass itself, and the thermal spring, which remain as they were in their time.95

This awareness of such dangers and difficulties marks Dodwell’s entire treatment of Thermopylae; indeed, the passage could almost be taken to be a comment on the less discerning traveller, such as Clarke. Dodwell had read Clarke’s account of Thermopylae, and referred to it in his own,96 and although no explicit criticism appears there, Dodwell’s own approach was more acute. His identification of a small hill as the mound of the last stand was made with care: I conceive the derveni hill to be the spot to which Herodotus alludes. It is probable also, that these devoted heroes were buried where they fell, and that this hill served as their common sepulchre.97

Dodwell’s statement seems a far cry from the bold assertions made by Clarke. Moreover, his conclusion differs from that of Gell, who had identified the same hill as Clarke.98

91 Although an accomplished artist himself, he was accompanied on his travels by an Italian artist named Pomardi, and between them they produced 1,000 drawings. Dodwell selected thirty of the sketches for the Views. 92 The MS notebooks of Gell, held at the British School at Athens, reveal a close relationship between the two men, with Gell sometimes playfully mocking his companion’s enthusiasm. 93 94 95 Dodwell (1819), ii. 68. Ibid. 62–3. Ibid. 68. 96 97 98 Ibid. 69, 76 n. 8. Ibid. 68 See the discussion above.


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It is, however, in his reaction to the location, and in particular to the scenery, that his Romantic enthusiasm can be seen. On his approach to the Pass, the scenery itself appeared to him to reflect the character of the location: As we approached the pass of Thermopylae, the scenery assumed at once an aspect of more beauty and sublimity. To our left were the lofty and shattered precipices of Oeta, covered with forests, while silver lines of descending springs sparkled in the shade . . . Our way led through a forest-shade of various trees of stately growth, beneath which a dispersion of odoriferous and flowery shrubs scented the air, while the clustering vine hung its fantastic garlands from the wide-branching platanus. The scene was one of voluptuous blandishment. No gratification was wanting which the enraptured lover of landscape could desire. Nature here displayed all her multiform charms . . . We now approached the spot where the best blood of Greece, and of other nations, had so often been spilt.99

This description of the physical nature of the Pass could hardly be more different from that written by Clarke. In part, the difference of opinion may have resulted from the timing of their respective visits, the site appearing more ‘bountiful’ in May than in December. However, the difference in their reaction to the landscape primarily reflects the different ways in which their Romantic enthusiasm manifested itself. Clarke found the Pass beautiful despite its appearance, because, for him, its beauty lay in the events that had occurred there rather than its physical appearance. Dodwell, however, found the physical beauty to be an integral aspect of the Pass: that the events that had taken place there were in some way reflected in the beauty of the location. Dodwell emphasized this idea in his print of the Pass (Fig. 11.9). That he selected Thermopylae as one of the thirty views to be published is itself a testament to the importance of the Pass to him. His ‘Description’ attached to the plate further illustrated his attitudes to Thermopylae: This view was delineated on the approach to Thermopylae from Locris Hypoknemis . . . The sun was setting behind the mountain, which was enveloped in a tint of aerial blue, and threw its long shadows over even the surface of the Locrian plain. The Pass of Thermopylae is at the extreme foot of the mountain . . . wherever the hand of industry directs the plough the soil teems with exuberant fertility, and the climate is so happily tempered that the crops are never nipped by the frost, nor parched by drought.100

The comments Dodwell attached to his print echo the descriptions he gave of the Pass as a scene of natural beauty, ideal climate, and fertile soil. In terms of nature, Dodwell’s descriptions suggest an Arcadian paradise, an image reflected in plate. For Dodwell, the natural perfection of the Pass was not unrelated to the events that had occurred there. Many travellers to Greece speculated on the 99 100

Dodwell (1819), ii. 66–7. ‘Description to Plate of Thermopylae’, in Dodwell (1821).

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Figure 11.9 ‘Thermopylae’, from Dodwell’s Views in Greece (1821)

relationship between ideal climate and nature, and the development of the virtues.101 He considered that the ‘beauty of the scenery was illuminated by many reflections from the lustre of the classic page’.102 He almost seemed to be suggesting that the beauty of the landscape could be explained—‘illuminated’—by the heroic actions that had taken place there. It was not merely that Thermopylae appeared beautiful in light of the actions of Leonidas, as it had been for Clarke. It was beautiful because of the actions of Leonidas. The land had, as it were, in its physical appearance taken on the sublimity inherent in the battle. This integral link between the landscape and what occurred there also appeared in Dodwell’s description of the changes in the landscape: But the whole country has since experienced great physical as well as moral revolutions. The sea has retired; rivers have altered their courses; and towns, castles, and temples, have been swept from the face of the earth, or engulfed in the marshes, and overgrown with reeds and bushes.103

Dodwell was drawing a link between the moral degeneration of modern Greece and the physical changes at a location synonymous with the excellence of ancient Greece. Indeed, the changes at Thermopylae could be considered a 101

See Constantine (1984), 139–41.

102

Dodwell (1819), ii. 72.

103

Ibid. ii. 69.


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degeneration, when the Pass is thought of as the Gates of Greece. Thermopylae, once considered the entrance to Greece proper, had repeatedly been the scene of defence against invasion. However, the changes in the landscape had rendered any Leonidas-style defence of Greece impossible, and thus the repetition of Leonidas-style virtue improbable. This link between the physical and moral degeneration of Greece can be read on a metaphorical or literal level. While Dodwell’s text concentrates on the former, it hints at the latter. However, as has been discussed, Dodwell’s account of Thermopylae was a far from negative one. The beauty of the landscape was a more prominent theme in his account than the degeneration it had undergone. Although he hinted at the link between the degeneration of land and people, he placed a far greater emphasis on the idea that the land still possessed some quality with which it was imbued by the events that had taken place there. Indeed, within his writing lies a passionate philhellenism. Dodwell’s attitude can be seen as a fulfilment of the Romantic enthusiasm for Thermopylae as a location. While Clarke’s enthusiasm had been primarily metaphorical, Dodwell’s, as evidenced by his comment on degeneration, hinted at the literal. The image of Thermopylae as a location consecrated by the past would prove popular with the philhellenes. Among them was William Haygarth, who imagined that the key to Greek liberation lay in the very land itself. His account of Thermopylae was central to his poetic travel journal, as is shown by his choice of the site as one of the nine illustrations that accompany his poem (Fig. 11.10). Moreover, while Haygarth acknowledged the changes in the landscape, his watercolour concentrates on that which remains the same: namely, Mt Oeta, that ‘Bulwark of Greece, whilst Greece had still a name’.104 In so doing, he was stressing the very concepts of continuity with antiquity which were the hallmark of travellers in Greece. Haygarth’s ideas, and his account of Thermopylae in particular, would prove highly influential, especially on Byron, whom Haygarth met in Athens in 1810.105 Byron lifted Thermopylae to the very pinnacle of the philhellenic imagination in works such as The Giaour and Don Juan. Haygarth and Byron, in some sense, represent a fulfilment of the visions of ancient sites which originate with Robert Wood. The story of the rediscovery of Thermopylae is hardly typical of the sites of the Persian Wars; indeed, only Marathon might be said to have excited anything like a comparable response in the modern imagination. Yet, in terms of its location, Thermopylae proved of far greater interest, since its location is entirely dependent on its topography: its choice as a defensive position, and the events that occurred there in 480 bc, were results of its geography. Even its name—the Hot Gates—refers to its geography. Thus the idea that the location 104

Haygarth (1814), i. 601. There is very little scholarship on Haygarth. See Spencer (1974), 281–6; Randel, (1960), 86–90; Macgregor Morris (2000), 224–6. 105

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Figure 11.10 ‘Thermopylae’, from Haygarth’s Greece (1814)

is innately connected with the events of the battle becomes much more credible. Moreover, the dramatic changes in the landscape, when placed into such a context, become all the more relevant. The connotations become as dramatic as the changes themselves. Since the Greek War of Independence, Thermopylae has become a regular haunt of travellers of various persuasions. Scholarly work is still being carried out, albeit somewhat intermittently: by Marinatos in the 1930s; by Szemler et. al. in the 1980s; and by a smattering of ancient historians.106 At the present time a series of expeditions under the direction of Andrew Yiannakis continues to search for the route of the Anopaea.107 Romantic travellers too, still make the pilgrimage: William Golding’s account of his visit in the 1960s betrays a Romanticism which surpasses even that of Clarke and Dodwell.108 Moreover, although the site lacks the instant appeal of the Athenian Acropolis, it remains

106 In the last fifty years, valuable contributions have been made by A. R. Burn, W. K. Pritchett, and P. W. Wallace. 107 The results of the ongoing expeditions are forthcoming. We hope to produce an article delineating our initial findings within the next year. More recent updates can be found at http:// playlab.uconn.edu/pylae.htm. 108 The Hot Gates (1965), 1–20.


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a regular stop for the coach tours through central Greece. This is quite remarkable, when one considers that few tourists today carry the classical allusions that defined their Enlightenment predecessors, and that, to a ‘neutral observer’, there is in fact very little to see. The modern tourist travels, in some sense, in the shadow of those early travellers, who rediscovered, mapped, and gave new meanings to the place called Thermopylae.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Angelomatis, H. (1990). The Eve of the Greek Revival: British Travellers’ Perceptions of Early Nineteenth Century Greece. London. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. M. Holquist; trans. Holquist and C. Emerson. Austin. Barbie du Bocage, J. (1817). Maps, Plans, Views and Coins, Illustrative of the Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece. London. Blackwell, T. (1736). An Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer. Blount, H. (1636). A Voyage into the Levant. London. Butler, M. (1981). Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries. London. Clarke, E. D. (1812–19). Travels in Various Countries, 6 vols. London. Clough, E. (2004). ‘To Make a New Thermopylae: Hellenism, Greek Liberation, and the battle of Thermopylae’, in T. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea, 365–71. Constantine, D. (1984). Early Greek Travellers and the Hellenic Ideal. Cambridge. —— (1989). ‘The Question of Authenticity in some early Accounts of Greece’, in G. Clarke (ed.), Rediscovering Hellenism. Cambridge, 1–22. Dodwell, E. (1819). A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece in the Years 1801, 1805, and 1806. 2 vols. London. —— (1821). Views In Greece. London. Gay, P. (1966–9). The Enlightenment, 2 vols. London. Gell, W. (1817). An Itinerary of the Morea: Being a Description of the Routes of That Peninsula. London. —— (1827). The Itinerary of Greece; Containing One Hundred Routes in Attica, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, and Thessaly. London. Gordon, T. (1838). An Account of Two Visits to the Anopaea or Highlands Above Thermopylae, Made in June and July 1837. London. Haygarth, W. (1814). Greece, A Poem in Three Parts; with Notes, Classical Illustrations and Sketches of the Scenery. London. Highet, G. (1951). The Classical Tradition. London. Hutton, C. A. (1927). ‘The Travels of “Palmyra” Wood in 1750–1’, JHS 47: 102–28. Johnson, S. (1971). A Journey to the Western Islands, repr. in The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, vol. ix. New Haven. Kase, E., and Szemler, G. (1987). ‘The Pass at Thermopylae, Greece’, Journal of Field Archaeology 14: 182–98. —— Wilke, N., and Wallace, P. W. (1991). The Great Isthmus Corridor Route: Explorations of the Phokis–Douris Expedition. Dubuque.

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Leake, W. M. (1835). Travels in Northern Greece, 4 vols. London. Macgregor Morris, I. (2000). ‘To Make a New Thermopylae: Hellenism, Greek Liberation and the Battle of Thermopylae’, G&R 47: 211–30. —— (2003). ‘Richard Glover: A Reassessment’, Eighteenth Century World 1: 46–52. —— (2004). ‘The Paradigm of Democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment Thought’, in T. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea, 339–62. —— (forthcoming). ‘The Refutation of Democracy? Socrates in the Enlightenment’, in M. B. Trapp (ed.), Socrates From Antiquity to the Enlightenment. Ashgate. Mackay, P. (1965). ‘Procopius’ De Aedificiis and the Topography of Thermopylae’, AJA 67: 241–55. Massie, A. (2000). ‘Review of A. Brookner, Romanticism and its Discontents’, Daily Telegraph, 19 Aug. Meijer, R. P. (1971). Literature of the Low Countries. Mitford, W. (1796–1818). The History of Greece. London. Pococke, R. (1743–45). A Description of the East and Other Countries, 2 vols. London. Pouqueville, F. C. (1813). Travels in the Morea, Albania, and Other Parts of the Ottoman Empire. London. Pritchett, W. K. (1989). ‘Skarpheia and the Aphamios River’, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography Part VI. London, 116–22. Randel, W. (1960). ‘William Haygarth: Forgotten Philhellene’, in Keats–Shelley Journal 9.2: 86–90. Smit, W. A. P. (1983). Kalliope in de Nederlanden. Spencer, T. (1957). ‘Robert Wood and the Problem of Troy in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes 20: 75–105. —— (1974). Fair Greece, Sad Relic. Bath. St. Clair, W. (1972). That Greece Might Still Be Free. London. Stanford, W. B. (1976). Ireland and the Classical Tradition. Dublin. Szemler, G., Cherf, W., and Kraft, J. (1987). ‘The Pass at Thermopylae, Greece’, Journal of Field Archaeology 14: 182–98. —— —— —— (1996). Thermopylai. Myth and Reality in 480 bc. Chicago. van Vloten, J. (ed.) (1874). Leven en Werken van W. En O. Z. van Haren. Deventer. Wood, R. (1753). The Ruins of Palmyra. London. —— (1775). An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer. London.

Section IV Nationhood and Identity


12 From Marathon to Waterloo Byron, Battle Monuments, and the Persian Wars Timothy Rood

In April 1816, dogged by debt and scandal, Lord Byron agreed to a separation from his wife and left behind his baby daughter and his native land, neither of whom he would see again. He sailed from Dover to Ostend and toured some of the familiar sites of the Low Countries—Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp. He had hoped to push straight for the Rhine, but had to stay a number of days at Brussels for repairs to his carriage—an elaborate vehicle modelled on Napoleon’s. There he met Pryse Lockhart Gordon, a former officer who had moved after the peace of 1814 to Brussels, where he lived off his wife, a friend of Byron’s mother. Thirteen years later, Gordon included an account of Byron’s stay in Brussels in the ‘Sketches from the Portfolio of a Sexagenarian’ which he wrote for the New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal. Gordon recalled that he offered to act as cicerone for Byron for the mandatory excursion to Waterloo. Byron accepted the offer, but his spirits seemed depressed as they journeyed out to the battlefield. When they arrived at Mont St Jean, the poet ‘gazed about for five minutes without uttering a syllable’. ‘Silent, pensive, and in a musing mood’, he then rode off to look at the rest of the battlefield. But before riding off Byron did turn to Gordon to express his satisfaction: ‘I have seen the plains of Marathon, and these are as fine.’1 Gordon’s account brings together the poet, Byron, and the battlefield, Waterloo, that were to play a major role in the development of the legend of Marathon in the nineteenth century. It is not that Byron’s remark was in any way daring: comparisons with the Persian Wars, and with Marathon in particular, had already been made by earlier visitors to Waterloo, and the Napoleonic Wars had been compared with the Persian Wars long before the battle of Waterloo. In his long polemic The Convention of Cintra, published in 1809, Wordsworth wrote that ‘the cause of Spain is the most righteous

1 Gordon (1829), 191–3. The account was published anonymously but reprinted the following year in his Personal Memoirs (Gordon 1830, ii. 319, 322–3).

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cause in which, since the opposition of the Greek Republics to the Persian Invader at Thermopylae and Marathon, sword ever was drawn’.2 The Persian Wars analogy magnified the resistance of the Spanish patriots and the achievements of the British armies in the peninsula, and made more cutting Wordsworth’s criticism of the agreement that had allowed defeated French troops to leave Portugal with booty intact. It was also easy to cast the British alone in the role of the Greeks. Towards the end of his long travel poem of 1814, Greece, William Haygarth looked to the role Britain could play in the resurgence of Greece and then addressed the broader role of his homeland: . . . Thou stand’st alone With the few warriors in the narrow pass, The world’s Thermopylae.3

The Persian Wars analogy gathered steam in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat. It explains the indignant British response to the letter Napoleon sent to the Prince Regent when he handed himself over to Captain Maitland on board the Bellerophon: ‘I come, like Themistocles, to seat myself at the hearth of the British people.’ The press was angry that Napoleon was casting the British in the role of the Persians—not realizing that Napoleon was alluding to Themistocles’ supplication of the Molossian king Admetus rather than to his later domicile in Persia.4 Even though Byron was following an established tradition when he paired Marathon and Waterloo, the analogy between those battles—and still more the lines Byron devoted to Marathon itself—contributed significantly to the shift that occurred in the relative importance of the battles of the Persian Wars in the course of the nineteenth century. If, as Ian Macgregor Morris has argued,5 the eighteenth century was the age of Thermopylae, then the nineteenth century was, if not quite the age of Marathon, at least the era in which Marathon overtook its main competitor in the battle of the battles. There is no space in this chapter to offer a detailed account of the varied uses of Marathon in the nineteenth century so I shall concentrate on just one aspect of the magic of Marathon—its role in the contemporary obsession with the memorialization of Waterloo. It will be helpful to start by looking fifteen years beyond the battle to see how Marathon and Waterloo were united in an exhibition of new paintings by Benjamin Robert Haydon that opened in London in March 1830.

2

Wordsworth (1974), i. 229–30. Haygarth (1814), 114. Haygarth acknowledged in a note that he had taken the image from a sermon by Robert Hall delivered in 1803. 4 I hope to explore this topic in more detail elsewhere. 5 Macgregor Morris (2000); cf. also Ch. 11 in this volume. 3

From Marathon to Waterloo

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‘AN HONORABLE ASYLUM’ Haydon himself had chosen the subject for the star of his new show—The Death of Eucles (see Fig. 12.1). The choice showed that he was still clinging— despite his debts and his difficulty in finding commissions—to his ambition of reviving British art with heroic history paintings. The painting showed the story (from Plutarch’s essay On the Glory of the Athenians) of the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens and died after announcing the news of the Athenian victory—the story that was later to inspire the most prominent cultural response to the Persian Wars in the modern world, the Marathon race.6 Haydon had chosen to depict the moment when Eucles collapsed at home, in front of his father, wife, and children. And to add grandeur to the pathos of the scene he had chosen to give Eucles’ house a spectacular backdrop—the Acropolis, anachronistically adorned with the Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the statue of Athena.

Figure 12.1 Haydon’s The Death of Eucles (1829)

6 Haydon’s use of Plutarch explains why his messenger is called Eucles rather than Pheidippides, the name (taken from Lucian) that is now more familiar. On the tradition and name of the messenger see Frost (1979) and Badian (1979).

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Haydon’s painting of the Marathon messenger has been read as ‘a fitting production for a society that saw itself, in the continuing euphoria of victory, as the heir to Athens after the Persian Wars’.7 This patriotic reading of the Eucles fits well with Haydon’s own fixation on Waterloo. When news of the battle reached London, he read the Gazette through four times in one go (‘How this victory pursues one’s imagination!’) and again last thing before bed: ‘I dreamt of it & was fighting & waking all night.’ The battle remained a personal yardstick for him: revolutionary events in France in the year of the Eucles exhibition haunted him ‘like Waterloo’, while at the time of the Reform Bill he was ‘never so excited since the battle of Waterloo about Politicks’.8 A few years later he received a commission to paint Wellington musing at Waterloo and seized the excuse to visit the battlefield; and he also wrote a short piece on the battle for the main military journal, the United Service Magazine, in which he rejected claims that the battle had been won by luck, and proudly proclaimed that he felt ‘all the old thoroughbred delight at Britain’s beating every other nation in the world’.9 The euphoria of victory was apparent in two of the works displayed alongside the Eucles. The other great attraction, Mayday, or Punch and Judy (one of Haydon’s more popular works, currently on display in Tate Britain) showed a busy London street-scene that included a sailor with ‘Trafalgar’ written in gold letters around his blue ribbon and ‘a Waterloo hero’—two figures, Haydon’s catalogue explained, that were meant to be ‘representative of the noble services to which they belong’. The exuberant mood was kept up in the background to the picture—the grand Corinthian portico of the new Marylebone Church, finished in 1818 at the start of the wave of post-Waterloo church-building, and (together with St Pancras) rated by one contemporary as the finest church architecture in London since Wren’s day.10 Also on display was a smaller picture showing Napoleon musing at St Helena— an image that became one of Haydon’s few regular money-spinners in the years that followed (he is known to have painted 23 versions). The former emperor stood with his back to the viewer on a rocky cliff gazing into the sunset, where the sails of the Northumberland, the ship that had dropped him and his entourage on the island, gleamed in the distance. Beside the lonely figure was a broken pedestal carrying the inscription: Ainsi passe la Gloire! Austerlitz–Friedland Jena–Wagram Waterloo!

A painting on the Death of Eucles could scarcely be all triumph. Haydon’s painting inspired a poem on ‘The Death of Eucles’ by Charles Swain (published 7 9

Brown (1996), 19. Haydon (1844), 279.

8

Haydon (1960–3), i. 456–7, iii. 481, 559. 10 Haydon (1830), 9; Alison (1823), 13.


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two years later in the Christian journal The Amulet alongside an engraving of Haydon’s painting) that ended with a lament for the destruction caused by war: O War! upon thy shrine, How many hearts are piled! How many orphan homes are thine— Dark graves, and mourners wild! How many hopes hath thy dread name Struck blind, as with the lightning’s flame!11

Even a reading such as Swain’s, however, can be accommodated within the British perception of themselves as resorting to war only by necessity and for the cause of freedom. And the death of Eucles could be still more readily accommodated within the neoclassical ideology of civic self-sacrifice. Indeed, the pictorial appeal of the story was perhaps that a single image could encapsulate two different aspects of the battle—victory and sacrifice—while distancing itself from the less academically respectable genre of battle painting.12 The temporal frame created by Haydon’s anachronistic backdrop opened up the issue of the commemoration of battle. Knowledgeable as he was about the history of Greek art, Haydon was well aware that the Parthenon was built several decades after the battle of Marathon. Why then did he choose to show it? Perhaps his anachronism can be excused on the grounds that Haydon could have had little idea what the Acropolis looked like in 490 bc.13 None of the reviews, at any rate, called attention to the problem. But Haydon did not have to make the Acropolis his backdrop at all. Perhaps, then, we should remember that the Parthenon itself could be seen as a commemoration of the Persian Wars—even though it had been financed by tribute from Athens’ allies. A link with the Persian Wars was marked both in the decorations and in ancient perceptions of the Periclean buildings: the Greeks were said to have sworn an oath that they would not rebuild the temples destroyed by the Persians until they had seen off the Persian threat, and in the fourth century Demosthenes could even speak of the Propylaea and Parthenon as spoils from the Persians (22.13). As we shall see, the view that the Parthenon was a Persian Wars monument was also current in Haydon’s day. By including the temple in the background of his Eucles, Haydon was showing the far-off 11

Swain (1832), 208. On the role of battle painting in British culture in the aftermath of Waterloo, see Hichberger (1988), 10–35: it is telling that the premium offered in 1815 by the British Institution for a painting celebrating the victories over the French was won by an allegory. 13 It was only established by excavations in 1835 that there had been an earlier temple on the site of the Parthenon (now thought to have been started after Marathon and destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC), and it was only half a century after that that Dörpfeld discovered the foundations of an older temple to the north of the Parthenon (Hurwit 1985, 329–30). 12

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fruits of the successful resistance to Persia—the glorious artistic heritage of fifth-century Athens. The Periclean building programme was not the only temporal frame suggested by the presence of the Parthenon in the Eucles. Clearly visible on the building were the sculptures of the west pediment, some of which were among those brought to Britain by Lord Elgin and purchased by the British government in 1816. Haydon himself had been a fervent supporter of the purchase of the Marbles: he hoped that they would inspire a great revival of British art that would match the achievements of the Periclean era. Nor was he alone in the ideological importance he attached to the Marbles. The initial discussion in Parliament on their purchase had been postponed by news of Waterloo, but the victory itself may have boosted the sense of national importance manifest in the Special Report produced the following year: ‘No country can be better adapted than our own to afford an honorable asylum to those monuments of the school of Pheidias, and of the administration of Pericles.’14 And a link between Waterloo and the purchase of the marbles was further suggested by medals designed by Benedetto Pistrucci to commemorate the two events (though the Parthenon medal was never executed).15 The Athenian example could, however, also be used by those who objected to the cost of buying the Marbles: one MP warned that there was a danger that the British might succumb to luxury, as the Athenians themselves had done. But those concerns were in turn answered both in Parliament and in the press by John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty, with an allusion to the arguments with which Pericles had overcome economic objections to his building programme.16 If Haydon’s Eucles encouraged hopes of a British resurgence to rival fifthcentury Athens, the background presence of the Parthenon could suggest a different reading to the viewer alert to the way Haydon justified his chosen setting in his catalogue. Haydon explained there that he had departed from Plutarch in one key respect. In Plutarch’s account, Eucles died at the house of ‘the first people’. Haydon had been unsure about the meaning of that phrase: had Eucles died at the first house he came to, or in the presence of the first men in the city, that is, the magistrates? He decided to consult the Professors of Greek at Oxford and Cambridge about the meaning of the phrase, but the two professors gave different answers. So he departed from Plutarch by having Eucles die outside his own house. This simple setting enabled him to make a political point: as he explained later in the catalogue, ‘the Greeks reserved all their splendour and richness for their great public buildings, which were adorned, as all public buildings ought to be

14 16

15 Quoted St Clair (1998), 262. Jenkins (1992), 17, 19. Hansard 34: 1034 (7 July 1816); Croker (1816), 546, alluding to Plut. Per. 12.


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adorned, with statues and pictures, as well as architecture.’17 ‘As all public buildings ought to be adorned’: far from suggesting pride in Britain as the modern Athens, Haydon’s parenthesis gives a hint of his anger at the contrast between the patronage of art—and of painting in particular—in ancient Athens and contemporary Britain. Haydon’s painting does not just celebrate the British victory at Waterloo as the modern Marathon. It also casts doubt on the validity of that comparison. It is not that Haydon was undermining his beloved Waterloo. What made him indignant was the British failure to commemorate the battle. And to understand his indignation we must turn back to the immediate aftermath of Waterloo and examine the British debate on memorializing the victory over Napoleon—and the role played in that debate by the Parthenon and the Persian Wars.

THE PARTHENON OF PRIMROSE HILL Back in 1815 Benjamin Haydon had had no reason to feel angry at British patronage of arts. On 29 June, a mere eleven days after the battle of Waterloo, the House of Commons agreed to erect a national monument to celebrate the victory, and Haydon was ‘so excited by the idea of this monument’ that he spent all day at Hampton Court studying the Raphael cartoons and then ‘stayed from sunset in the fields a great part of the night planning a series of national subjects’.18 The following spring, his excitement was doubtless increased by the decision to build a monument for the great naval victory of Trafalgar too. The government sponsorship seemed to mark a radical break with earlier plans for military monuments. Several monuments to fallen officers had been erected at public expense in St Paul’s Cathedral. But a subscription started in 1799 for a monument to Britain’s naval victories did not raise enough money, and a few years later Parliament rejected the Royal Academy’s proposal for a Dome of National Glory.19 Even after Waterloo there was some hostility to the monuments: some would have preferred to see hospitals expanded or churches built, and the proposal could even be contrasted with the example of the Greeks who, it was argued, only celebrated victories with temporary trophies.20 There was particular concern over the expense of the monuments, which had been left vague. Despite such objections, a competition for designs for the two monuments was announced. As the closing date for the competition approached, Benjamin

17

Haydon (1830), 5. Haydon (1926), 215. On British plans to commemorate Waterloo, see in general Crook (1962), 80–4; Yarrington (1988), 167–216; Hoock (2003), 273–6. 19 See Hoock (2003), 257–85. 20 See Hansard 34: 103; ‘Publius’ 1818. 18

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Haydon became more and more agitated. He weighed up in his diary some of the rival proposals—and made his own preference clear: Of what possible use will a senseless Column be on Greenwich hill? or a tower? The objections made against the Parthenon are equally applicable to the Column or the Arch. What is there in a Column or an Arch more original than in the Parthenon?21

For Haydon the attraction of a Parthenon lay in the space offered by the interior for large-scale history paintings: two decades later, he was himself to propose a Doric Greek temple full of paintings for the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square. For some supporters of a Parthenon, the fact that the temple was linked with the Persian Wars was more important than its potential for paintings. A letter in The Times from a reader in Paris (‘Non Gallus—Non Anglus’) argued that there were plenty of precedents in Paris for copying Roman victory monuments (the triumphal arch, Trajan’s column), but that an imitation of a Greek temple would be much finer. And it was precisely the Parthenon that he cited in defence of the idea of commemorating war with a temple rather than ‘inferior monuments, such as columns and triumphal arches’: what else is represented on the metopes of the Temple than the triumphs of Theseus and Hercules over the barbarous nations in the vicinity of their country, directly or allegorically represented? or the triumphs of the Lapithæ over their uncivilized enemies? Can we conceive that, when Pericles was straining every nerve to prevail upon his countrymen to brave the expenses of building this Temple, he did not remind them of the illustrious deeds of their ancestors—their victories over the Persians?22

The dismissal of the Roman monuments of Paris suggests a further reason why the Parthenon—with its pure Greek Doric, an order not copied by the Romans—might be appealing to the British. It was not just that they saw themselves as the heirs of Athens, it was also that that self-definition offered a neat contrast with the French.23 A similar mode of self-definition can be seen at this time in Prussia, where the first steps towards the construction of the Walhalla—a Doric temple on the banks of the Rhine—were made at the same time as the competition for the Waterloo Monument.24 21

Haydon (1960–3), ii. 109 (16 April 1817). The Times, 29 April 1817, p. 3; there had been an earlier letter from ‘B.’ in support of the plan, 8 April 1817, p. 3, arguing that a Parthenon monument would support British architecture, sculpture, and painting. 23 The importance of the French ‘other’ in the creation of a sense of British self-identity is stressed by Colley (1992). 24 See Watkin and Mellinghoff (1987), 157–62, esp. their comment on p. 161: ‘Like the Parthenon, the pediments of the Walhalla are filled with historical and allegorical sculpture. . . . The iconographical programme [showing Arminius’ defeat over Varus and the recent recovery of provinces from Napoleon] suggests a parallel between these victories and the Greek victory over the Persians from which Greek unity was supposed to have been derived.’ (The last clause perhaps overstretches the parallel.) 22


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The idea of a Parthenon in London was the brainchild of Andrew Robertson, a Scottish miniature painter living in London. All that we know of the thinking behind the scheme comes in two letters written by Robertson to a friend in Aberdeen and included in his daughter’s edition of his journal and correspondence. Robertson explained that he had not at first intended to offer a plan for the Monument, but then an idea occurred ‘so noble, so appropriate, and so economical’ that he could not resist offering it. And what seems to have suggested the idea to him was another aspect of the British identification with Athens—the Elgin Marbles. He would ‘re-build the Parthenon—since we have now in this country its most valuable remains’.25 Robertson’s Parthenon evoked the original in its decorations as well as in its form. On the pediment was ‘sculpture expressing the contention of Nepture and Minerva renewed—not who shall have the honour of naming Athens, (see the history) but who shall produce the greatest heroes for Great Britain. In one, Minerva brings in her Car, or is surrounded by Wellington, Abercrombie, etc. . . . In the case of Neptune, Nelson, Howe, etc.’ These decorations would ensure that the monument subsumed Trafalgar as well as Waterloo. Robertson also thought that London had an appropriate setting—Primrose Hill, with the Parthenon planned as part of an ensemble of grand buildings in the same style, including new palaces for the King and Wellington. Primrose Hill was a popular site for the neoclassical imagination: the architect James Elmes drew up (though he did not submit) a plan for a copy of the temple of Theseus as a victory monument on the same site (‘history has scarcely had to record, since the days of the heroic Theseus, a more perfect hero, or one blessed with more manly qualities, than the hero of Britain, a country that has not inaptly been called the Modern Greece’).26 Even though Robertson was modifying the decorative scheme of the Parthenon, he was concerned to defend himself against the charge of copying—a charge that, as Haydon’s diary shows, was in fact brought against his plan. Robertson was responding to a widespread anxiety about the use of classical models: the paradox for the British in emulating the achievements of the Athenians of the Persian Wars was that originality was one of the hallmarks of the Athenians’ achievements. In his defence Robertson cited two modern precedents: St Paul’s was an imitation of St Peter’s and Bonaparte’s column a copy of Trajan’s. Haydon cited the same examples in support of the Parthenon, while also claiming that the Greeks had reached a timeless standard of excellence: ‘We don’t want eccentric vagaries to be built in stone but work on sound, legitimate principles.’ Haydon was echoing here the arguments used to defend the use of classical dress for statues of modern heroes: modern dress would soon look unfashionable. Another of his arguments showed a more

25

Robertson (1895), 280.

26

Elmes (1818), with quote from p. 33.

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literary bent: ‘are Shakespeare’s plots not all borrowed, but is Shakespeare not original?’ In one respect, though, Robertson outdid even Haydon in the boldness of his defence: ‘it is not a copy, it is the thing itself revived, and excepting the sculpture, which will be respectable, will be equally good.’27 Robertson’s Parthenon would have been reached by 22 steps28 at the bottom of which would have been a terrace with ‘ample space for cenotaphs to the memory of those who fell, and to record the names of every private’.29 The notion that the Waterloo monument should commemorate the name of every soldier who had died at Waterloo had been proposed by Charles Wynn, a Tory MP from a famous Welsh family, during the original debate in the Commons. The proposal had been supported by the radical MP for Norwich, William Smith, with the argument that ‘some of the most famous actions of antiquity were so recorded, and the record has even come down to the present age’.30 The following week The Times devoted an editorial to the proposed commemoration. The paper was able to mention a more specific ancient precedent: there ought undoubtedly to be a Mausoleum, or Monumental Pillar, to the memory of every individual who fell on his glorious occasion. ‘After the battle of Marathon,’ says pausanias, ‘all the Athenians who fell in it were honoured with one common monument, another being also erected to their allies the Plateans. miltiades, as the Leader, had his own separately; but on that of the Athenians were placed funereal tablets, on which were read the names of the men, and the tribes to which they belonged.’ Certainly British gratitude ought not to be inferior to Athenian; and the battle of Marathon was neither in magnitude nor in its consequences at all comparable to that of La Belle Alliance.

The paper favoured an inscription of the most durable marble, listing the dead ‘man by man, regiment by regiment’.31 The spaces within Robertson’s Doric structure would have allowed for another way of imitating the Greeks. The poet and journalist Leigh Hunt made an angry reply in the paper he edited, The Examiner, to the suggestion in one evening paper that the Waterloo monument should be adorned ‘by the genius of the country in Architecture and Sculpture, and ultimately perhaps of Painting’: ‘Ultimately perhaps! Would this have been the language of ancient Greece? We are going to imitate her in engraving the names of those who fell 27

Robertson (1895), 282; Haydon (1960–3), ii. 109. Perhaps corresponding to the 22 years of the war: another proposal was for a pyramid with 22 decorated tiers forming an annalistic narrative. 29 Robertson (1895), 280. 30 Hansard 31: 1052, 1054. For the backdrop to this democratic form of commemoration, see Penny (1987). 31 The Times, 5 July 1815, p. 3. La Belle Alliance was a name often used for the battle of Waterloo in its immediate aftermath, after the house where Wellington and Blücher met on the evening of the battle. 28


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in the immortal battle:—let us imitate her in the public encouragement of this art.’32 As we have seen, it was the prospects for painting that made the Parthenon attractive to Haydon, a friend of Hunt’s—and Hunt was in fact borrowing from a letter Haydon had sent him earlier in the week.33 Haydon may well have had a specific Greek precedent in mind—the Marathon painting in the Stoa Poikile at Athens, known from a detailed account in Pausanias (1.15.1-4) and from allusions in other sources, and perhaps the most famous Greek painting of a battle.34 It was certainly that painting that William Wordsworth had in mind in his ‘Thanksgiving Ode’, composed in 1816, where he echoed Haydon’s wish for a pictorial commemoration of the recent victories: Victorious England! bid the silent Art Reflect, in glowing hues that shall not fade, Those high achievements; even as she arrayed With second life the deed of Marathon upon Athenian walls; So may she labour for thy civic halls.35

The painting in the Stoa Poikile had indeed played an important role in the historiographical tradition on Marathon. In his highly influential history, first published in the 1730s, Charles Rollin had borrowed the moralistic interpretation of the painting in Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Miltiades. Nepos claimed that at Athens, as at Rome, distinctions had once been few and valuable but had later become many and worthless. And as an example of the good state that had once been obtained in Athens Nepos argued that the only honour conferred on Miltiades for freeing Athens and the whole of Greece was to have his portrait given the first place among the generals (6.3). The strong civic emphasis of Nepos and Rollin was followed by William Young in his 1786 History of Athens. The Marathon painting offered Young the opportunity to digress on the harmful effects of financial rewards: ‘When pecuniary, or other recompence of worldly value is bestowed on a great or good deed, and the gift to virtue is the same with the hire of vice, the distinction is much impaired; . . . Public virtue is then lost, and with it the republic.’36 It was to this civic spirit

32

Examiner, 9 July 1815, p. 447; cf. also 23 July, p. 475. ‘They are going to imitate Greece in engraving the names—let them imitate her also in voting grand pictures’ (Haydon 1876, i. 285–6; letter dated 5 July 1815). 34 Perhaps a reference to the painting can be detected in a diary entry for 21 December 1812 where Haydon objected to the trend for sculptures as monuments to fallen heroes and contrasted Greek practice: ‘Hardy & Nelson would have graced every Public Hall in the Country, like Miltiades & Themistocles at the battle of Men, Salamis’ (1960–3, i. 268). The last phrase seems rather weak for Haydon, and not only because Miltiades was dead by the time of Salamis: the emendation ‘the battles of Marathon & Salamis’ is tempting (though somewhat bold without an inspection of the manuscript). 35 Wordsworth (1940–9), iii. 147. 36 Rollin (1763), iii. 93–4; Young (1786), 86. 33

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that Haydon and Wordsworth were heirs as they expressed their hopes for the public spaces of Britain to be adorned with paintings of Waterloo. Robertson’s Parthenon, then, would have cemented the British sense of themselves as heirs to the Athenians of the Persian Wars. But the Parthenon of Primrose Hill was not to be. It was merely one of sixty-odd entries for the competition, and many of the other entries gestured towards different architectural traditions (pantheons and pyramids were among the proposals). The prize was scooped by William Wilkins and J. M. Gandy with a design of ‘an ornamental tower’ some 280 feet high of ‘three orders of columns around the base of which is a circular colonnade which resembles one of the most admired remains of antiquity, the Temple of Sibyls Tivoli’.37 And as it turned out, even though £200,000 was allowed for the Waterloo monument and £100,000 for its naval counterpart (designed by Robert Smirke38), enthusiasm for the projects soon waned. Part of the reason lay in the post-war economic difficulties. Perhaps, too, a monument celebrating all the soldiers was felt to be too democratic at a time when the movement for parliamentary reform was gathering pace.39 At any rate, parliamentary zeal was deflected towards a plan for building new churches. As the years went by, Waterloo and Trafalgar were at least to be celebrated on Richard Westmacott’s reliefs to the Marble Arch designed by John Flaxman and John Nash to stand as entrance to the newly redesigned Buckingham Palace. The influence of the Parthenon frieze was apparent in Westmacott’s reliefs40—perhaps another sign of Britain’s Athenian aspirations, albeit on a structure modelled on Roman (and French) precedents.41 But plans for this monument too faltered when Parliament investigated expenditure on the palace after the death of George IV. The reliefs were used instead partly on the façade of Buckingham Palace and partly on the new National Gallery, and the arch was later moved away from the palace to where it now stands, commemorating a tube stop. And so ‘two sterile votes of the House of Commons remain as the only national monument for the greatest and most glorious triumphs which ever immortalised the history of a nation in modern times’.42 37 Quoted (from a contemporary account in the Gentleman’s Magazine) by Liscombe (1980), 111–12. 38 In view of Robertson’s Parthenon, it is intriguing that Smirke’s preference had in fact been for a single monument for both battles consisting of ‘two simple obelisks connected by a Church or Chapel [dedicated to the God of Peace] in the form of an ancient Temple—the Parthenon for instance’ (cited by Crook (1962), 81 n. 6). 39 Hoock (2003), 254. 40 Cf. Whinney (1988), 382–3 (and cf. more broadly 376–83 on the influence of the Elgin Marbles on contemporary sculpture). 41 French precedents also underlie the remodelling of St Paul’s as a Pantheon by the addition of military monuments (Hoock (2003), 259) and the use of enemy cannon in the construction of the Hyde Park Achilles statue erected in honour of Wellington, as in the Vendôme Column in Paris. 42 Alison (1853–9), i. 130. On the Marble Arch project, see Crook and Port (1973), 293–302; Yarrington (1988), 229–45; Busco (1994), 57–62.


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A Persian Wars precedent could be found, nonetheless, for one of the smaller celebratory monuments that was completed—the Waterloo Vase, at one time displayed in the National Gallery, and now in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. The Vase—some 15 feet high—had a frieze of the battle of Waterloo by Westmacott which, like the frieze originally designed for the Marble Arch, bore traces of the Parthenon frieze. And a writer in the Naval and Military Magazine was able to point out a more unexpected link with Athens. The vase was made with a block of marble chosen by Napoleon for the commemoration of French victories—just as Phidias, according to Pausanias, made the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus from marble brought by the Persians to commemorate the victory they expected to achieve over the Greeks.43 It was disappointing, all the same, to have to scour Pausanias for an Athenian parallel to an actual Waterloo monument—and a fairly coincidental parallel at that. But artists with Athenian aspirations could at least turn their hopes to Scotland—towards the city that was beginning to style itself ‘the Modern Athens’ or ‘the Athens of the North’.44

‘A FAR FINER THING THAN THE ACROPOLIS’ In November 1820 Benjamin Haydon paid his first visit to Edinburgh. He dined with Sir Walter Scott, and the following day recorded his first impressions of the city: ‘Came to Edingburgh [sic] by night—astonished at the city next morning—wild dream of a great Genius—finest city in Europe—may be in time [in] the World. . . . The only city in the World where the Parthenon might be erected with something of its ancient splendour.’45 Haydon’s hopes for a Parthenon in London had been disappointed: perhaps the sublime setting of Edinburgh would fare better than Primrose Hill. Plans for a Scottish National Monument to commemorate the victory over Napoleon had first been announced in 1816. The earliest suggestion had been for a church modelled on the Pantheon, but in 1819 the Whigs started pushing for a Parthenon on Calton Hill. Though ‘a more obvious symbol of progress and enlightenment could hardly have been conceived’,46 the Parthenon soon 43 ‘W. H.’ (1827), 369. On the Waterloo Vase, see Yarrington (1988), 226–9; Busco (1994), 55–7 (who downplays the influence of the Parthenon frieze on Westmacott). 44 The term ‘the Modern Athens’ is attested by 1819 (Alison (1819a), 384); according to Crook (1995), 104, the term ‘the Athens of the North’ was made popular by ‘Grecian’ Williams in the early 1820s, though Allan (2001), 398 n. 24 quotes an instance from 1762. 45 Haydon (1960–3), iii. 294–5. 46 Cookson (1999), 74. On the Calton Hill monument, see Youngson (1966), 159–60; Allan (2001), who focuses on the treatment of Athens by historians of the Scottish enlightenment; and Lowrey (2001), who sets the project in the context of the creation of the neoclassical Edinburgh.

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attracted support from Tories too, but Parliament refused to contribute any funds. It was decided to raise the money by subscription instead, and, when an appeal for £42,000 launched in January 1822 did not raise enough money, to build what could be afforded anyway. Work began on the monument in 1824 under the direction of the architects C. R. Cockerell (who was proposed by Lord Elgin) and W. H. Playfair, and it proved laborious: the stones, every one of the same dimensions as the corresponding piece in the original, had to be carried up in special carriages drawn by 12 horses and 100 men. When funds ran out in 1829, the monument was left as it is today (see Fig. 12.2)—according to one of its promoters, ‘the finest restoration of Grecian architecture which the British Islands can exhibit’.47 The pretensions of the Calton Hill project were mocked by Robert Mudie, a Scottish journalist based in London, in his Modern Athens, a satire focusing on George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822. Mudie noted how the Tories had suddenly changed tack by abandoning their earlier plan for a church and instead addressing ‘the vanity of the Athenians’ (as the inhabitants of Edinburgh are called throughout the work): They began with a long and learned parallel between the overthrow of Bonaparte and that of Darius and Xerxes; and then, coming gradually nearer home, they hinted, that, in his encouragement of the arts, Lord Melville was the express image of Pericles. This brought them to the marrow of the subject: Edinburgh was very much like Athens, or the Athens Restored; the Calton Hill was a far finer thing than the Acropolis; the free-stone of Craighleith excelled in beauty and durability the marble of Pentelicus; . . . Then, to make the parallel perfect, and indeed to make the Modern Athens in every way outstrip the Athens of old, only one thing was wanting, and that was, that there should be erected upon Calton Hill, a copy of the Temple of Minerva Parthenon, to be called the national monument of Scotland, as that had been called the national monument of Greece . . .48

Mudie was accurately catching the language used by supporters of the scheme. The Edinburgh-based artist H. W. ‘Grecian’ Williams compared the settings of Edinburgh and Athens in his Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands, published in 1820, which ended with an appeal for the Calton Hill project.49 But the main object of Mudie’s attack was a number of articles written by the conservative historian Archibald Alison, a member of the committee and later author of the first detailed history of the French Revolution in English.50 While the advocates of a London Parthenon had opposed Roman Paris to Athenian London, Alison argued that ‘while London is the Rome of 47

Alison (1883), i. 220. Mudie (1825), 128–9. 49 Williams (1820), ii. 279 n. (but Stirling was even closer to Athens); 456–7. 50 See Alison (1883), i. 175 for his acknowledgement that he had written these articles, all of them published anonymously. 48


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Figure 12.2 The Calton Hill Parthenon, Edinburgh

the empire . . . Edinburgh might become the Athens’—that is, establish itself as the artistic and scientific centre of the British Isles. He also related the proposed building to the recent development of the New Town in Edinburgh: ‘From Prince’s Street it would form the appropriate background to the magnificent vista of Waterloo Place, and exhibit at the close of that beautiful Grecian street the most splendid of Grecian triumphal edifices.’ The symbolism of the modern street name and the classical vista was obvious.51 The Persian Wars played an important part in Alison’s propaganda. He argued that preserving the memory of the recent battles was necessary to maintain the martial spirit and so preserve the safety of the nation—just as when statesmen in Athens wanted to appeal to the deeds of the ancestors to rouse the people they pointed to ‘the acropolis crowned with the monuments of their valour; and invoked the shades of those who died at Marathon and Plataea’. And he drew a historical parallel with Athens to support his argument that an artistic revival in Britain was now likely: ‘Like the Athenian republic, we have just terminated, 51 Alison (1819a), 385–7. Compare T. H. Shepherd’s engraving of this vista in Britton (1829), 34—a volume called Modern Athens! and a sequel to James Elmes’ account of London (with engravings by Shepherd), Metropolitan Improvements, where George IV was seen as the new Augustus and London as ‘the rome of modern history’ (1828, pp. iv, 1–2).

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with unexampled glory, a contest of unparalleled duration and interest; and like them, the vigour and public spirit, which was called forth during the struggle which had preceded, in the defence of the state, is now turned towards its embellishments and decoration’. Like the supporters of the London Parthenon, Alison also drew on the traditions about the function of the Parthenon: ‘This celebrated temple, . . . erected after the glorious termination of the Persian war, was, under the name of a temple, in fact the national monument of athens.’ And as his rhetoric gathered momentum he proclaimed that the new Parthenon would commemorate ‘triumphs yet more momentous to mankind than those which the original was intended to celebrate’—an attitude satirized by Mudie with the claim that ‘Plataea and Marathon had nothing in them comparable with Pinkie and Preston Pans’ (an alliterative incongruity: the former was an English, the latter a Scottish, victory).52 Mudie’s pastiche departed in two ways from the rhetoric of the Parthenon’s supporters. Mudie wrote that ‘to make the Modern Athens in every way outstrip the Athens of old, only one thing was wanting . . . a copy of the Temple of Minerva Parthenon’—when the proposers of the monument often spoke of the restoration of the Parthenon in Edinburgh. And Mudie went on to claim that another thing too was needed—namely that ‘the independence of the modern city and the modern land should survive the building of the monument as long as that of the old had done’. Mudie’s sarcasm is directed against the idea of the Greeks as timeless models of excellence. The supporters of the Parthenon did not want British power to collapse as soon as Athenian power had (though the Greek example often did rouse thoughts of the mutability of fortune and so hint at the transience of British power). But by praising the Parthenon of Athens as a monument inspired by the Persian Wars they were making it possible for Mudie to puncture their pretensions by recalling Athens’ subsequent fate. As we have seen, the subsequent history of Athens was also used as an argument against the purchase of the Elgin Marbles. The Calton Hill Parthenon differs in several ways from Robertson’s proposal for London. While Robertson’s plan was just one entry in a public competition, the plan for Edinburgh was a concerted venture by a group of leading citizens—a venture, moreover, that reflected a widespread aspiration towards the creation of a classical city. As such it was more successful than the London Parthenon—but only just. From the start there were objections, in particular to the use of a Greek model for a Scottish national monument (it was as if Sir Walter Scott were to earn immortality by translating Homer or as if a sumptuous edition of the Persae published in Edinburgh

52

Alison (1819a), 391; (1819b), 139, 140 (cf. 1823, 136); Mudie (1825), 128.


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were to be considered a national tragedy53). And the subscription itself fell far short of what was needed. It was left to Haydon to restore the Parthenon in the background of his Eucles as a rebuke to his fellow-countrymen: as he moaned when he presented Parliament in 1826 (the year he started planning the Eucles) with the latest of his petitions for the cause of history painting, ‘would any other nation, any other Government in the world but ours, have passed by the glories of the Peninsula and Trafalgar, or have suffered such a mighty battle as that of Waterloo to lapse without one single pictorial remembrance of its glory?’54

‘THE IMMORTAL MEED!’ One man with even more reason to feel annoyed than Benjamin Haydon was William Wilkins, the winner of the Waterloo competition. In 1826, the same year as Haydon’s petition, he pointedly exhibited his winning design at the Royal Academy as a reminder of the government’s failure to execute it. And six years later, in a polemic directed against the government’s handling of the arts, he hit at Wellington, claiming that the Duke could not admire ‘a Parthenon of Parian marble or Portland stone’, but only sculpture ‘directed to the repair of broken or lost limbs—not of statuary, but of flesh and blood!’: what was needed instead was ‘a Pericles . . . to support the conceptions of a Phidias’. Wilkins then turned to the Waterloo competition, dismissing claims that the Marble Arch (a ‘pretty bauble’) could properly be regarded as a Waterloo monument. He closed by contrasting the Athenian attitude to battle monuments: Eulogy which costs nothing has, indeed, been liberally bestowed wherever the military deeds of the heroes of Waterloo and Trafalgar have been the subject of remark; but where are the monuments which, after a lapse of two thousand years, are to tell posterity, in the words of the Potidæan inscription [‘in compensation for their lives they won in exchange excellence and made their fatherland glorious’] . . . The little ‘republic of Athens’ rose to ‘importance or splendour’ by measures such as these for although frequently ungrateful to the heroes who led her armies to victory she never omitted to record her obligations to those who obtained them at the expense of life. I forgot what Greek author has said, andro–n athanato–n pasa ge– taphos. [‘the whole earth is the tomb of immortal men’] 53 Anon. (1819), 77; Cohen (1822), 328–9 (Francis Cohen, later Palgrave and father of the anthologist). 54 Haydon (1876), i. 139.

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A sentiment that cannot fail to be highly appreciated by English economists, who appear to think that the memory of her heroes is best perpetuated by the sod that covers them, and every other kind of monument unnecessary.55

Wilkins’ polemic shows how easily the Greek model could work both ways. He praises a monument put up by ‘the little “republic of Athens” ’ (the use of ‘republic’ is pointed), and he is even able to take on board the ingratitude of the Athenians, a stock element in the anti-democratic denigration of Athens—as if to imply that the British (who had rewarded Wellington handsomely, albeit not on the Blenheim scale) had their priorities wrong. But he also illustrates a contrary viewpoint by quoting one of the classic expressions of Athenian democratic ideology, Pericles’ funeral oration for the Athenian war dead—a telling speech to cite in a discussion of a modern battle monument. The eulogy on the cheap that Wilkins was attacking can be illustrated from the writings of two Waterloo tourists. The Reverend James Rudge expressed his gratitude for Britain’s victory in A Peace-Offering, a sermon he delivered and published a few months after the battle in support of the Waterloo subscription. In the published version he included an appendix (subsequently excerpted in The Times) describing his visit to the battlefield. He described the new sensations he felt as he travelled from Brussels through the ‘dark and gloomy’ forest towards Waterloo. The village itself he found small and not unpleasant—but ‘it has, to an Englishman, something much more calculated to excite his admiration, and awaken his patriotism. In such a place “to abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. . . .” ’ Rudge was starting to quote from a meditation on the sentiment of place that, though written only forty years earlier, had already established itself as a classic: he did not at that time need to name its author, Samuel Johnson. He continued quoting until the stirring finale: ‘That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!’56 The implication of the quotation was clear: to visit the battlefield of Waterloo was to feel the same upsurge of patriotism aroused by the sight of Marathon. Another visitor to Waterloo soon after the battle was Charlotte Eaton, later author of a popular guidebook to Rome. Writing as ‘an Englishwoman’, she described her visit to the battlefield in her lively and strongly patriotic Narrative of a Residence in Belgium during the Campaign of 1815; and of a Visit to the Field of Waterloo, a work often reprinted in the nineteenth century. Her book closed by celebrating the fact that England had now ‘won the immortal meed!’—in contrast to ‘the nations of the East’ 55 Wilkins (1832), 53, 54, 78, 79–80. The second Greek phrase is a slight misquotation of Thuc. 2.43.3 (read gar epiphanōn, ‘distinguished’, for the rather odd athanatōn, ‘immortal’). 56 Rudge (1815), 42–3; The Times, 8 Nov 1815, p. 4. See above, p. 234.


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that were ‘possessed of unbounded wealth, magnificence, and power’, and yet ‘their antiquities are unexplored,—their history neglected,—their very existence almost forgotten;—for they have left no proud remembrance, no ray of glory, to immortalize their names’. England was following instead in the footsteps of Greece and Rome: ‘Why does the traveller still traverse distant countries, to explore with hallowed respect their mouldering temples, and linger with silent awe amidst the ruins of the Parthenon, or on the site of the Capitol? Why does generation after generation contemplate with veneration the plains of Marathon, and the heights of Leuctra?’ 57 Like the Rev. James Rudge, Eaton was thrusting on to her visit to Waterloo the sort of distanced historical perspective experienced by travellers to Marathon—a typical manoeuvre among the British as they sought to magnify a battle they found unprecedented. As the ‘pilgrims’ wondered at the tranquillity of the battlefield, they would pick up ‘relics’ or buy them from the prolific hawks—bullets, letters that had never been sent, cuttings from a tree where Wellington was said to have stationed himself during the battle. They were celebrating the opening of a new era, but fascinated all the same with imagining how the present would seem to the future.58 And there was one poet to whom they could scarcely help turning to feed—and to challenge—that twin fascination for the memorialization and the transitoriness of glory: the poet who had seen the plains of Marathon, and found those of Waterloo to be as fine.

BYRON’S MARATHON In his recollections of Byron’s visit to Waterloo, Pryse Lockhart Gordon recalled that, on their return to Brussels, Byron agreed to take coffee with Gordon and his wife later the same evening. He was in high spirits when he arrived, and he stayed until two in the morning, not touching any wine, but talking animatedly all the same of his travels in Greece and Albania. As he left Gordon’s wife asked him to write a few verses in her scrap-book— just as Sir Walter Scott had done a few months earlier, after his visit to Waterloo. Byron returned the following morning with ‘two beautiful stanzas’ that were later that year published in the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The lines started with an ‘arresting appeal to the reader as Waterloo pilgrim’:59 57

Eaton (1817), 347–9. Semmel (2000) provides a lively account of the links between tourism and memorialization after Waterloo. 59 Shaw (2002), 179. 58

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Timothy Rood Stop!—for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust! An Earthquake’s spoil is sepulchred below! Is the spot mark’d with no colossal bust? Nor column trophied for triumphal show? None; but the moral’s truth tells simpler so, As the ground was before, thus let it be;— How that red rain hath made the harvest grow! And is this all the world has gained by thee, Thou first and last field! king-making Victory!60

Like the two earlier visitors to the battlefield who alluded to Marathon, Byron was here setting the battle of Waterloo in a broad historical perspective. The opening words of the stanza evoked Lucan’s description of Julius Caesar’s visit to the ruins of Troy (9.975–7): ‘Securus in alto | Gramine ponebat gressus; Phryx incola manes | Hectoreos calcare vetat’ (‘Oblivious, he placed his footsteps in the deep grass: the Phrygian local tells him not to tread on the shade of Hector’, trans. Braund). But the tone of Byron’s evocation of the past is very different from the patriotic triumphalism of the Rev. James Rudge and Charlotte Eaton. Byron focuses on defeat, not victory—‘an Empire’s dust’, not Britain’s winning the immortal meed; and he pointedly rejects any monumental commemoration of the battle. The distant perspective established by the allusion to Caesar is especially striking because it is only in the following stanza that Byron made clear that the field on which the reader was treading was ‘The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!’. Byron’s readers are placed in the position of Caesar visiting Troy as they (figuratively) tread on ground that, it emerges, was the site of a battle fought one year earlier. And the precedent of Lucan’s tyrannical Caesar is by no means comfortable. In its setting in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron’s meditation on the memorialization of Waterloo acquired a resonance with the battle of Marathon. Byron had drawn on his own visit to Marathon in the second canto of Childe Harold, published in 1812, where he lamented Greece’s political subjection and saw in the ruins of her ancient monuments an emblem of the failure of her modern inhabitants to live up to their heroic past. But he still found the landscape hauntingly evocative: Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold Defies the power which crush’d they temples gone: Age shakes Athena’s tower, but spares gray Marathon. The Sun, the soil—but not the slave, the same;— Unchanged in all except its foreign Lord . . .

60 Gordon (1830), 325; Byron (1980–93), ii. 82 (CHP iii. 145–53). On Byron and Waterloo, see Wilson (1992) and Bainbridge (1995).


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As he turned to describe ‘the morn to distant Glory dear, | When Marathon became a magic word’, Byron added a note that is echoed in his later account of Waterloo: ‘ “Siste Viator—heroa calcas!” was the epitaph on the famous Count Merci;—what then must be our feelings when standing on the tumulus of the two hundred (Greeks) who fell on Marathon?’61 The words Byron later penned on Waterloo—‘Stop!—for thy tread . . .’—are almost a translation of Count Merci’s epitaph: ‘Stop traveller—you are treading on a hero!’ Despite the words Byron allegedly uttered as he looked over the site of Waterloo, the lines he wrote in the album of Pryse Gordon’s wife in fact suggest a contrast in Byron’s conception of the two battles. While Byron would like to deprive the plain of Waterloo of any triumphal column or statue, it is the great burial mound of the Athenians that awakens the poet’s historical sensitivity at Marathon: Such was the scene—what now remaineth here? What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground, Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear? The rifled urn, the violated mound, The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around.62

Here too the traveller to the battlefield is directly invoked in the poem, but whereas Waterloo is figured as a scene of imperial collapse, Marathon is ‘hallow’d ground’, damaged by time and by the recent intrusion of archaeologists (‘the violated mound’ alludes to Fauvel’s excavations). If Byron starts his account of Waterloo in the third canto of Childe Harold by hinting at a contrast between Marathon and Waterloo, that contrast is enhanced by the account Byron gives of his own expedition to Waterloo in the notes to Childe Harold: I went on horseback twice over the field, comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain, Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chæronea, and Marathon; and the field around Mount St Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of these, except, perhaps, the last mentioned.63

Byron here makes an exception of the ‘last mentioned’ plain—Marathon—as the most interesting of all the battlefields he has seen. And he also makes a general objection to Waterloo: the cause for which the battle was fought. Byron’s objections to the cause of Waterloo were expressed forcefully in the poem itself. ‘Deadly Waterloo’ is a ‘place of skulls’, site of a ‘king-making Victory’: ‘is Earth more free?’ The long futile war is contrasted with a much nobler action from antiquity—the Athenian tyrannicide: 61 Byron (1980–93), 73 (CHP ii. 834–8, 842–3), 198. Cf. Shaw (2002), 180–6 on Byron’s handling of the Marathon/Waterloo parallel. 62 63 Byron (1980–93), ii. 74 (CHP ii. 850–4). Ibid. ii. 303.

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Timothy Rood all that most endears Glory is when the myrtle wreathes a sword Such as Harmodius drew on Athens’ tyrant lord.64

And later in the third canto Byron contrasts Waterloo with the noblest of all Athenian deeds. The poet pauses before crossing the Alps to dwell on a spot that ‘should not be pass’d in vain’—‘Morat! the proud, the patriot field!’, where the Swiss repelled the assault of Charles the Bold in 1476: While Waterloo with Cannae’s carnage vies, Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand; They were true Glory’s stainless victories, Won by the unambitious heart and hand Of a proud, brotherly, and civic band, All unbought champions in no princely cause Of vice-entailed Corruption . . .65

Byron expanded on the contrast in a note where he picked up his earlier allusion to the tyrannicide Harmodius. The final Athenian tyrant Hippias (brother of the man slain by Harmodius) had sought refuge in Persia and later accompanied the expedition to Marathon in the hope of regaining power at Athens. In his note, Byron pointed out that Hippias, ‘the Athenian Bourbon’, had at least fought at Marathon rather than keeping ‘the respectful distance from danger of the Ghent refugees’—that is, the Bourbons. The difference between Marathon and Waterloo was that at Marathon the Athenians were resisting an attempt to restore one-man rule while after Waterloo a cowardly monarch was restored to the French throne. Byron also went on, however, to modify his inversion of the favoured Marathon/Waterloo parallel: ‘the English and Prussians resembled the Medes and the Persians as little as Blucher and the British General did Datis and Artaphernes and Buonaparte was still more remote in cause and character from Miltiades.’ Byron makes problematic the search for comparisons ‘after the manner of Plutarch’, suggesting that neither the simple parallel of Greek and English nor a straight inversion of that parallel catches the complexity of actuality.66 Why then had Byron told Major Pryse Gordon that the plain of Waterloo was as fine as that of Marathon? That was as much a moral as an aesthetic assessment. Perhaps then he did not wish to offend his guide. He could be a bit more forthright in his poem—and still more forthright in a letter he wrote soon after the Waterloo visit to his old travelling companion John Cam Hobhouse: ‘The Plain at Waterloo is a fine one—but not much after Marathon and Troy—Cheronea—& Platea.—Perhaps there is something of prejudice

64 65

Byron (1980–93), ii. 82–4 (CHP iii. 155, 154, 153, 164, 178–80). 66 Ibid. ii. 100–1 (CHP iii. 607–14). Ibid. ii. 307.


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in this—but I detest the cause & the victors—& the victory.’67 But there is also another possible explanation of Byron’s enthusiastic remark to Gordon: that Gordon invented it. Some of the details of Gordon’s sketch of his visit to Waterloo with ‘the illustrious Byron’ are open to doubt. Gordon presents a stock romantic image of a temperamental poet, silent and pensive. He also misdates the trip to Waterloo by three months. That mistake may have been due to the faulty memory of the sexagenarian. More decisive evidence against Gordon’s reliability is offered by the journal of Byron’s physician, John Polidori, himself to achieve fame as writer of the gothic story ‘The Vampyre’. In his journal (possibly written with publication in mind), Polidori does not mention Pryse Gordon in his account of the visit to Waterloo. His Byron is also a bit more jolly at Waterloo: he rides off singing Turkish songs. It is only on the day after the Waterloo visit that Polidori introduces Gordon and says Byron dined with him.68 By the time Gordon wrote his account, Byron had died in Greece and Polidori, faced with large gambling debts, had committed suicide. Gordon could truthfully claim to have accompanied Sir Walter Scott to Waterloo. When he came to write his sketch, perhaps the temptation to present himself as escort to the other literary legend of his day was too great. He was commemorating a visit that had never been and neutralizing Byron’s challenge to the established myth of Waterloo. Many admirers of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage followed Gordon’s lead by ignoring or distorting the politics of commemoration embedded in Byron’s poem. Travellers reading up on the battle of Morat in John Murray’s 1838 Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland would find quoted Byron’s account of the ‘bony heap, through ages to remain, | Themselves their monument’ (that is, the bones of the French dead which had been kept in an ossuary but scattered by the French invaders in 1798), but not the following stanza with its twinning of Waterloo with Cannae.69 And even before publication disapproval of Byron’s political message had led to changes in the text itself. When he was lent a copy of the third canto of Childe Harold before publication, John Wilson Croker enthused to Byron’s publisher John Murray that ‘all the descriptive part is peculiarly to my taste, for I am fond of realities, even to the extent of being fond of localities’: 67

Marchand (1973–82), ix. 76 (dated 16 May 1816). Polidori (1911), 61–9. Gordon’s account has been taken as reliable by notable Byron scholars such as Marchand (1957), ii. 611 (who does, however, express some surprise at Gordon’s absence from Polidori’s account) and McGann (in Byron 1980–93, ii. 303), who even glosses the ‘guide from Mount St Jean’ mentioned in Byron’s own note on his visit as Gordon, even though the phrasing seems to imply a local guide. Polidori’s biographer is more sceptical (Macdonald 1991, 68). Note also that while Gordon implies that the stanzas Byron wrote were new ones written overnight, Polidori speaks of Byron writing 26 stanzas on the day of the Waterloo visit, and this is confirmed by a manuscript of 26 stanzas that includes the two Byron wrote in the album of Gordon’s wife. 69 Noted by Buzard (1993), 125. 68

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A spot of ground a yard square, a rock, a hillock, on which some great achievement has been performed, or to which any recollections of interest attach, excite my feelings more than all the monuments of art. Pictures fade, and statues moulder, and forests decay, and cities perish, but the sod of Marathon is immortal, and he who has had the good fortune to stand on that sacred spot has identified himself with Athenian story in a way which all the historians, painters, and poets of the world could not have accomplished for him.

Croker added, however, that he ‘did not read with equal pleasure a note or two which reflects on the Bourbon family. What has a poet who writes for immortality, to do with the little temporary passions of political parties? Such notes are like Pope’s “flies in amber”.’ Croker gives a distorted impression of Childe Harold by confining the political content to the notes—and to ‘two or three lines of prose’ at that.70 His message was heeded by Murray all the same. Although Shelley had taken the printer’s copy of the manuscript to England and thought that he was authorized to check the proofs, Murray entrusted the editing to the Tory William Gifford rather than the radical Shelley, and the note in which Byron called Hippias ‘the Athenian Bourbon’ was suppressed.71 John Wilson Croker’s remarks on Marathon were exploited by Sir Walter Scott in a review of the third canto of Childe Harold for the Quarterly Review, the Tory periodical published by John Murray and edited by William Gifford. Scott praised strongly some aspects of the poem: ‘the wild, powerful and original vein of poetry’ and the evocation of the historical resonances of place. It was here that Scott drew (with permission) on Croker’s letter, which Murray had shown him:72 ‘Pictures fade and statues moulder and temples decay, and cities perish: but the sod of Marathon is immortal . . .’ Scott, however, placed this paean to Marathon before a criticism of the section of the poem that he found most offensive—Childe Harold’s visit to Waterloo, ‘a scene where all men, where a poet especially, and a poet such as Lord Byron, must needs pause, and amid the quiet simplicity of whose scenery is excited a moral interest, deeper and more potent even than that which is produced by gazing upon the sublimest efforts of Nature in her most romantic recesses’. Scott went on to lament that Byron, ‘duped by the mere cant of words and phrases’, did not share his own sentiments about Waterloo, ‘a field of glory such as Britain never reaped before’; and to object in particular to Byron’s attempt to assimilate Waterloo with Cannae, a famous and bloody Roman 70

Croker (1884), i. 94 (letter dated 18 Sept. 1816), quoted in Rutherford (1970), 82. For the publication history of the third canto, see McGann’s discussion at Byron (1980–93), ii. 299. 72 Semmel (2000), 20 claims that Croker’s passage was ‘inserted by Murray into a Walter Scott essay’, but in fact Scott himself chose to include the passage, and also made some alterations: he replaced, for instance, Croker’s ‘forests decay’—which breaks the focus on the transience of manmade objects—with ‘temples decay’ and he used the simpler—and more Byronic—‘he who has trode it’ for Croker’s ‘he who has had the good fortune to stand on that sacred spot’. 71


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defeat. Scott attempted to defuse Byron’s political message by arguing that Byron did not mean what he wrote—and that he in any case contradicted himself: the Napoleon whose defeat at Waterloo was regretted in the third canto was after all the same man arraigned in the first canto as a tyrant for his invasion of Spain.73 The implication of Scott’s review of Byron was clear. It was not that Scott was like the men Wilkins later attacked in his polemic on the government funding for the arts—the ‘English economists, who appear to think that the memory of her heroes is best perpetuated by the sod that covers them’: Scott in fact headed the lists of subscribers to the Calton Hill Parthenon. But by moving straight from Croker’s effusions on Marathon to a criticism of Byron’s treatment of Waterloo, Scott was making the same point that the Rev. James Rudge had made by quoting Samuel Johnson’s famous description of his feelings on landing at Iona: the sod of Waterloo was as immortal as that of Marathon.74

DECISIVE BATTLES When the Irish classicist John Pentland Mahaffy wrote up his Rambles and Studies in Greece sixty years after the publication of the third canto of Childe Harold, he could claim: ‘Byron is so much out of fashion now, and so much more talked about than read—though even that notice of him is fast disappearing— that I will venture to remind the reader of the splendid things he has said of Greece, and especially of this very plain of Marathon.’75 It was true that Byron mania had waned with time, but Mahaffy’s claim still seems overblown—and nowhere more so than in the context of Marathon.76 At the time Mahaffy was writing, there cannot have been many foreign visitors to Marathon who did not approach the plain with Byron in mind, reciting Childe Harold and also what a recent biographer has called Byron’s ‘most famous lines’: The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dream’d that Greece might still be free.77

73

Scott (1816), 191. The debate on the relative nobility of Marathon and Waterloo also played a minor role (with some allusion to Byron) in the argument on the merits of Athenian democracy carried on in the periodicals of the 1820s, but there is no space to discuss that here. 75 Mahaffy (1876), 190. 76 See Roessel (2002) for a fascinating study of Byron’s influence on later travellers to Greece. 77 Eisler (1999), 251; Byron (1890–93), v. 189. 74

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That passage from ‘The Isles of Greece’ in Don Juan was often recalled with scant regard for the possible ironies of the context (the song is sung by a timeserving bard who is compared with the poet laureate Robert Southey, himself author of a patriotic Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo, but whose career also in some ways resembles that of Byron himself 78). And any tourist who did not have Byron’s Marathon in hand or to heart could find the Marathon narrative from Childe Harold quoted in the standard guidebook, John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers to Greece.79 While his excuse for quoting Byron seems lame, Mahaffy did go on to ask a pertinent question: Byron may well be excused his raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics—perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism—how is it that this conflict has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by any of the great battles of the world, from that day down to our own?80

The collapse of the syntax within the sentence well brings out a sense of bafflement: Mahaffy invites us to question both the significance of the great battle and its hold on the nineteenth-century imagination. Whatever the merits of Mahaffy’s attack on Marathon itself, the appeal of the battle can be readily explained. It had been strengthened by the parallel seen between Greece and Britain at the time of Waterloo and still more by Byron himself: Byron’s lines were often cited or imitated in later writings on the battle or its location. Since the time of Byron, moreover, the fame of Marathon had been further boosted by John Stuart Mill’s famous pronouncement (in a review of the first volumes of Grote’s History of Greece published in 1846) that ‘the Battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more important than the Battle of Hastings’.81 The context of that claim reflected a further advantage that Marathon now enjoyed: the shift of focus from admiration for Sparta to a more sympathetic appreciation of democratic Athens. Five years after Mill’s comment, the position of Marathon was further cemented by E. S. Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo. Creasy’s book—which became one of the best-selling history books of the nineteenth century (it reached its fortieth edition in 1894)—itself showed the influence of changing views of Athenian democracy (he stressed, for instance, that it was a vote of the Athenian generals on which ‘the destiny of all the nations of the world depended’82); and the last

78 80 82

79 See McGann (2002), 42–51. Murray (1872), 218. 81 Mahaffy (1876), 191. Mill (1978), 273. Creasy (1851), 13.


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words of its title were to be immortalized in the song W. S. Gilbert wrote in 1879 for the ‘very model of a modern major-general’ in The Pirates of Penzance (‘I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical | From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical’). But it is also necessary to look back beyond Byron to explain the hold of Marathon. For Byron too ‘the mood of Marathon was an inheritance’.83 As we have seen, it was Marathon that the Tory Samuel Johnson chose to illustrate the patriotic feelings that could be awakened by historical associations. Part of the reason for Marathon’s success was that it was amenable to all political views. Even those who were critical of Athenian democracy could exempt from blame the Athenian achievements in the Persian Wars, attributing them to the generals who later suffered from the ingratitude of the demos, and locating the calamitous shift to full-scale democracy in the period after the wars (on the familiar neoclassical model of success breeding decadence). Mahaffy himself offered a more distant and compelling explanation of the power of the myth of Marathon: ‘This battle became the literary property of the city, hymned by poet, cited by orator, told by aged nurse, lisped by stammering infant; and so it has taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the great decisive battles which assured the liberty of the West against Oriental despotism.’84 That is, the fame of Marathon was a reflection of its place in Athenian rhetoric and culture and of the literary ability of the Athenians. While the Athenians tried to extract Marathon from history and give it the power of timeless myth, the story of the reception of Marathon is not one of the constant repetition of a few hallowed clichés. Paradoxically, the modern fame of the battle rests on an incident that was not part of the Athenian myth at all—the story of the Marathon messenger depicted by Haydon. And by a further paradox the race invented for the first modern Olympics has led to a change in the associations of Marathon: it is now a paradigm not of liberty but of toil, endurance, and longevity. At the time of Waterloo, the significance of Marathon (and the Persian Wars in general) was no more straightforward. The battle did not function as an ancient paradigm that simply glorified a modern achievement. Rather, citations of the great Athenian victory were part of a wider debate on the historical significance of Waterloo and on the appropriate way to commemorate the modern battle—part of a debate, indeed, on the propriety of using classical precedents at all.

83 84

Spencer (1954), 2. Mahaffy (1876), 194. The last phrase is a clear hit at E. S. Creasy and his ilk.

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13 Enacting History and Patriotic Myth Aeschylus’ Persians on the Eve of the Greek War of Independence Gonda Van Steen

[W]e must do something more than read the Persae, we must act it . . . [I] have lived to find even Aeschylus insipid. I pant for action. Benjamin Disraeli in his philhellenic novel, The Rise of Iskander 1

INTRODUCTION Aeschylus’ Persians as the charter myth of Greek revolutionary patriotism? To modern sensibilities, this may be an unlikely proposition. However, this agenda defined the modern Greek interpretation of Aeschylus’ tragedy until well into the twentieth century. The Greeks sought and found their heroic and ‘patriotic’ forebears in the ancient Greeks, whom the play does not even bring on as stage characters: they placed naval and other military triumphs over the Ottoman Turks on a par with the Greek victory over the Persians in the sea battle of Salamis in 480 bc. The Persians, Aeschylus’ oldest extant and ‘historical’ tragedy (staged at the Great Dionysia of 472 bc) became the direct link with military and other, ‘national’ glories of the classical period.2 At the start of its new lease on life in the emerging nation-state of Greece, this tragedy was not the disquieting play that modern scholars have uncovered but the exemplum of a soothing genre of patriotic (self-)assurance and moral confirmation. Aeschylus had told the story from an oblique—and more sensitive—angle, (as if) from the perspective of the vanquished. He had restricted his cast to Persian characters only and had set his play in the Persian capital of Sousa. But none of 1

Disraeli (1934), 217, 218. The secondary literature on Aeschylus’ Persians as a historical or a historicizing tragedy is vast. For interpretations of the play, see Conacher (1996), 3–32 and passim; Hall (1989) and (1996); Harrison (2000); Meier (1993), 63–78 and passim; and Rosenbloom (1995). 2

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those factors tempered Greek patriotic enthusiasm. The modern Greek public ‘saw’ a composite of the classical tragedy, the real-life military feats, and perhaps also the heroic images from the Persian Wars depicted by Herodotus. After the French Revolution, the Persians was a play waiting to be enlisted in the cause of modern Greek nationalism: it called for patriotic action before action itself took over. One significant early reading of the Persians, which has hitherto excited little interest, occurred in 1820. It reconceptualized the tragedy as theatre of history, political and cultural memory, and patriotic nationalism: it revealed important strands of Greek patriotism and (emerging) performance; it also presented the Persians as performative (because the presumed patriotic model engendered demands of performativity). When the Greeks began their liberation struggle in 1821, they joined—and inspired—western philhellenes (Byron (1788–1824) and Shelley (1792–1822) among them) to apply, liberally and purposefully, Greek patriotism to readings and stagings of Aeschylus’ tragedy. For the Greeks and for their western observers and sympathizers, the decisive victories of the Greek War of Independence proved the scenario of the Persians true all over again. With considerable support from abroad, Aeschylus’ play helped to shape the military and political and also the literary and theatrical history of the new nation. Comte de Marcellus (1795–1865) described this 1820 reading version of Aeschylus’ Persians in his unique memoir, first published in 1859.3 Marcellus was a French diplomat to the Ottoman Porte turned travel-writer and folklorist.4 For him, the play and its readers fulfilled Greece’s nationalist mission, which overlapped with the performing of their cultural mission. Marcellus unearthed the vestiges of an élite Greek dialogue on patriotism through Aeschylus’ Persians, which began months and years before the outbreak of the Greek Revolution and the making of more formal performance, of ‘real’ actors, and of broader Greek audiences. He described as in slow motion a performance that constituted a primer for Greek patriotic self-formation and a beacon guiding collective and imminent action. Though it was technically only a reading of the Persians that took place in Constantinople in 1820, the initiative was one of and for performance, theatrical and political alike: the live reading took place before a purposefully gathered audience. This audience had come to this political—rather than literary—evening with a common ideological agenda: the play-reading of the Persians served to articulate, sanction, and strengthen ambitions of Greek patriotic military action, which remained subject to Ottoman Turkish suspicion and retaliation. Marcellus related an 3

Minimal references to this record appeared in Eliade (1991), 114, and Tambake (1995),

256. 4 I use the name Marcellus as a shorthand for ‘de Marcellus’, or for the author’s full name, Marie-Louis-Jean-André-Charles Demartin du Tyrac.

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ethos of patriotic example and tradition that called for loyalty, commitment, rational restraint, and personal sacrifice. He presented the patriotism that he witnessed to Greeks and philhellenes as both effective and inspiring, while the struggle to ‘redeem’ more Greek territories continued during the decades after 1821. The perspective and contribution of the foreigner, as observer, narrator, or second-hand recipient of the play-reading, rekindled a sense of Greek national and western identity. Marcellus lent his unstinting cooperation to the process of presenting 1821 as the rebirth of tragedy, Greek nationhood, and Greek conscience. The new version of the play transformed Aeschylus’ Persians from tragedy into a hymn to Greece and its ideals and brought forward images of Greek antiquity, ancestry, tradition, and authenticity. In Marcellus’ record, patriotism and memory function as operative components of story interwoven with history.

PATRIOTIC HEROISM AND PHILHELLENIC MEMORY IN THE MAKING I hear! I hear! The crash as of an empire falling . . . (Shelley, Hellas, 723–4)

Around 1820, Shelley and other avowed philhellenes interpreted Aeschylus’ Persians as a paraenetic model for the Greeks’ liberation struggle against the Turks. In his Hellas, Shelley replaced the Persian queen with the Ottoman Turkish sultan Mahmud II, in whose palace the action is set. He envisioned that the Greeks of the 1820s could still recapture Constantinople and liberally granted them the coveted pedigree from the illustrious victors over the Persians.5 But while Shelley was rounding off his Hellas and its important preface (first edition, 1821) in Italy, far removed from the actual Greek sites, our French nobleman had the special opportunity to attend an early performance of Aeschylus’ Persians. Marcellus was no novice to the Greek or Turkish scene: he held the position of secretary to the French Embassy at Constantinople, where he, at the age of 20, had been dispatched in 1815. He was a French royalist, who benefited from the restoration of the Bourbons to the French throne.6 His account established a firm, detailed analogy between the ancient and the modern Greeks based on Aeschylus’ tragedy. The performance’s message was cast in weighty pedagogic and moral-didactic terms, which all the 5 On the influence of Aeschylus’ Persians on Shelley’s Hellas, see recently Erkelenz (1997) and Ferris (2000), 108–33. See also Constantinidis (2001), 37, 39–41, and Hall, Ch. 9 in this vol. 6 Augustinos (1994), 231–2. For a more comprehensive biographical sketch of Marcellus, see Dumaine (1928), 1–64.

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participants readily accepted. Marcellus also linked the historicity of the category of revival tragedy, discovered in modest forms, to the historical context of the Greek nation’s uncertain early development. He displayed an acute awareness of the possibilities—or rather, impossibilities—of contemporary Greek theatre and its actors within the theatre of history. For him, revival tragedy was a means to a political end and contributed to founding a revival culture. Didacticism, moral impulses, and historicizing pressures would remain attached to modern Greek revivals of the Persians and of classical history in theatrical re-enactments.

SETTING THE SCENE In 1820, Marcellus witnessed a group of élite male Greeks ‘spontaneously’ engage with Aeschylus’ paradigmatic classical text: he chose to remember the event in this way because he did not want to acknowledge any foreign inspiration or instigation. When he published his memoir forty years after the event, he even ignored the influential poem of Shelley, although he shared Shelley’s esteem for the ancient Greeks as those few who had practised genuine freedom under the rule of law. To have credited an external model would have spoiled Marcellus’ aim of presenting the reading as Greeks rediscovering Aeschylus’ tragedy, and its dramatic and patriotic capacities and performative impetus, for themselves. He did not fathom that the Greek intellectuals invited him to their unique event precisely because they strove to mobilize a foreign as well as an internal public. He portrayed this Greek intelligentsia as united in its aims with the Greek warriors out at the front and waxed in true Romanticist mode: Là quelques Hellènes, fiers de leur antique gloire, attendaient impatiemment le signal de l’indépendance. Ils aiguisaient leurs armes, en relisant leurs propres annales, et ils admiraient la valeur de leurs ancêtres, comme si le triomphe de Salamine leur eût présagé déjà les exploits libérateurs de Canaris. (302)7 Here were some Greeks proud of their ancient glory, who waited impatiently for the signal of independence. They sharpened their weapons as they reread their own annals, and they admired the valour of their ancestors, as if the triumph of Salamis had foretold them already of the liberating exploits of Kanares.

7 References to Marcellus’ publication of 1859 appear in parenthesis in the regular text or at the end of the French quotations. Translations from the French, modern or ancient Greek are my own, unless otherwise noted. Admiral Konstantinos Kanares of Psara was one of the heroes of the dashing naval exploits of the Independence War. He destroyed the Turkish fleet off Chios in July of 1822.


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Like Shelley, Marcellus allowed fictionalization and historicization to go hand in hand in his memoir (in which he resorted to the word ‘annales’, ‘annals’). He made it impossible to distinguish strict reality from the accepted—or, at least, acceptable—truth of an idealized present of reawakened Greek patriotism. He celebrated Aeschylus’ Persians as the earliest beginning and the epitome of Greek patriotism on the dramatic stage and mused: [Aeschylus] fit entendre sur la scène qu’il venait de dresser, le premier et le plus noble accent de la muse patriotique. Il célébra . . . les victories contemporaines où il venait d’être lui-même acteur et témoin. Et, deux mille ans plus tard, ces sublimes inspirations devaient faire battre le cœur et rallumer la vaillance de ses descendants toujours éclairés par ce même idiome aux termes sonores, toujours opprimés par cette même race asiatique, et attendant toujours un autre Alexandre pour les venger! (331) [Aeschylus] let the first and the most noble tone of the patriotic muse be heard on the stage that he had recently set up. He celebrated . . . the contemporary victories in which he himself had been an actor and witness. And, two thousand years later, that sublime inspiration must make the heart of his descendants beat [faster] and must rekindle bravery in them, in those who remain forever enlightened by the same tongue with its sonorous words, forever oppressed by the same Asiatic race, and still waiting for another Alexander to take revenge on their behalf!

Marcellus collapsed historical time and mixed diverse episodes of Greek military achievement when he invoked not a new Themistocles or Miltiades, but Alexander the Great, the Macedonian ‘avenger’ and conqueror of the East. Like many before and after him, Marcellus affirmed Alexander’s Greekness because he fought the cause of aggressive Greek revenge. If there was one historical sequence that the Greeks had to regenerate, it had to be the glory of the Persian Wars. The dates (490 to 479 bc), however, mattered less than the sites of the battles: Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea. The names of those ‘sacred’ topoi resonated through early literary philhellenism, backed by close readings of Herodotus’ vignettes of Greek heroism.8 As topoi, in the double meaning of the word, these names situated or anchored memories and resounded in the unmitigated rhetoric of modern Greek patriotism and nationalism. References in homage of the leading ancient heroes, too, became more common; their names permeated the more popular strata and unlocked a more dynamic relationship with the mythical, historical, and literary past. Even though Thermopylae stood for defeat, it was remembered as the defeat (resulting from treason but not from military inferiority) of the heroic Spartans who defended their own and other Greek city-states in the virtuous, patriotic, and martyr-style struggle for liberty, and so Thermopylae became the exemplar of the modern Greeks’

8

Roessel (2002), 27.

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moral and political regeneration. Marcellus was a keen reader of Herodotus.9 He read even more avidly, however, the writings of the prolific and—after 1824—militant liberal philhellene Chateaubriand (1768–1848) on his real or imagined journeys to eastern lands.10 Outside France, Byron was the best known and the most widely celebrated among the many philhellenes who sang the praises of Leonidas, equated the modern Turks with the ancient Persians, and tried to resuscitate the classical Greeks.11 As a classically trained scholar and self-made folklorist, Marcellus collected and translated modern Greek folk songs and developed an eye for performances of a non-traditional nature. Nevertheless, he followed his ‘informants’ in situating the ‘act’ of the 1820 staged reading of Aeschylus’ Persians in the enduring modern myth that was the historical survival of classical Greece. He posited Greek history, performance, and patriotism as topoi of unity among Greeks and as meeting points for Greeks and Westerners. Marcellus’ account was imbued with animosity against the Turks, an animosity which he shared with his Greek friends and protagonists. While he idealized the Greeks at the expense of their eastern occupiers, Marcellus further showed how nascent Greek nationalism adopted antiquity in the name of the struggle for freedom and how antiquity itself, therefore, needed to be infused with Greek protonationalism. This nationalism avant-la-lettre was imported into the glorydays of the fifth century bc under the flag of the patriotic sentiment that was thought to reverberate in Aeschylus’ Persians. Marcellus describes a ‘performance’ densely packed with meaning, not only for the participants, but also for later Greek theatrical and political developments. His philhellene sympathies secured him access to a literary evening held in the early months of 1820, at the private mansion of the prestigious Manos family, located on the Bosporus in Ottoman-ruled Constantinople.12

9 Marcellus (1839), ii. 395–402. In Britain, Richard Glover (1712–85), author of a 5,000 lines long but popular epic poem entitled Leonidas (1737), had found his inspiration mainly in Herodotus’ Histories: Morris (2000), 211–12. Another widely read book influenced by Herodotus was the historical novel Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece), written by the Abbé Barthélemy (1716–95) and first published in 1788. Among the later admirers of Herodotus was Gustave Flaubert (1821–80): Eisner (1991), 27, 82, 128. 10 On the vicomte de Chateaubriand’s Romanticist literary leadership, his view of the modern Greeks as descendants of the ancients, and his—shifting—political affiliations, see AthanassoglouKallmyer (1989), 10, 25, 35, 100, 101; Eisner (1991), 96–7. 11 For further philhellenic references to the Persian Wars that originated in Britain and the United States, see Roessel (2002), 37–8, 72, 73, 85, 147. On older (pre-Byronic) English literary impressions of Greece and the Greeks, see Spencer (1954). On the symbolic meaning that Thermopylae, in particular, held for western philhellenes, see Morris (2000) and AthanassoglouKallmyer (1989), 38–65. For the resonance of the Greek War of Independence and of the Persian Wars in France, see Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (1989). For examples of modern Greek references, see Demaras (1982), 178. 12 The exact location of the secret meeting was Büyük Dere, part of Constantinople’s Therapeia district.


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The private reading (or, rather, oral solo-performance) of Aeschylus’ Persians was delivered in ancient Greek by a young student who attended the School of Kydonia. The student performed under the direction of his master, the Orthodox cleric–teacher, theologian, and champion of the Greek Revolution, Konstantinos Oikonomos (1780–1857), who had proposed the recitation.13 The host gave the start signal by dismissing the servants. Oikonomos then introduced his well-prepared disciple to the select circle of five established Greek intellectuals, who knew and trusted each other, and to our Marcellus, who lived to tell the story. Marcellus cast a company of Greek friends and plausible heroes, who, for him, embodied classical nobility and racial purity, and functioned as the harbingers of a new ‘heroic’ Greek age. As representatives of a far-flung network of expatriate or mobile Greeks, they personified, in his view, the unity of different Greek territories and cultures. But Marcellus divulged few personal details about those characters, constructing them less as personalities and more as Greek national subjects who died as martyrs for the Greek patriotic cause. The Turks made Marcellus’ host and friends undergo a gruesome death: Quelques mois à peine après cet entretien intime et presque furtif, les deux princes Morusi [i.e. Konstantinos and Nikolaos Mourouzes] devaient périr sous le glaive musulman, à l’ombre du serai, et l’archevêque d’Ephèse [i.e. Dionysios Kalliarches] allait succomber sous le lacet, . . . notre hôte [i.e. Manos] mourut en exil sur le sol étranger; et l’élève de Cydonie . . . disparut dans la guerre de la Morée. (331)14 Barely a few months after that intimate and almost furtive meeting, the two Mourouzes princes were to perish by the Muslim sword, in the dark of the serai, and the archbishop of Ephesus was to succumb under the knife . . . Our host died in exile in a foreign land; and the pupil of Kydonia . . . disappeared in the war in the Morea. 13 For more information on Oikonomos, see below and also Demaras (1982), 47–8 and (1993), 376–7; De Herdt (2003), i. 77–9. 14 The host Demetrios Manos was a former high-ranking official (grand postelnik) in the administration of Wallachia, one the Danubian principalities, where sizeable expatriate Greek communities lived. The Ottoman Sublime Porte had delegated the rule over these principalities and other (Greek) territories to educated and prominent Constantinopolitan Greeks (the Phanariots, named after the Phanari, the Greek district of Constantinople). Manos had served as an aide also to the father of the Mourouzes brothers, Alexander Mourouzes, who himself had been appointed hospodar, or the Ottoman sultan’s viceroy, of Moldavia and Wallachia. The ‘blue-blooded’ Mourouzes sons were reputedly interested in music, literature, and the arts. On the Mourouzes family’s interest in theatre, including revolutionary and patriotic student performances, see Puchner (1997), 409–10, 412–13. The brothers were only a few years older than Marcellus, who was 25 at the time of the reading. Konstantinos rose to the rank of the Porte’s grand dragoman (chief interpreter who could affect foreign policy decisions) in January of 1821 but was put to death by the sultan shortly after the proclamation of the Greek Revolt. His brother Nikolaos was dragoman of the Turkish fleet and held de facto power over many of the Aegean islands. Nikolaos was assassinated in May of 1821. The Turks retaliated brutally against the Greek individuals who served in the prized positions opened up by their administration: they branded such high-ranking Greeks as traitors, because they bit the hand that fed them. See further Clogg (1992), 21, 23, 24–5 and (1996), 23.

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Marcellus responded with a sense of obligation toward his Greek friends who gave their lives: [J]e crois leur être resté fidèle, puisque quarante ans se sont écoulés, et que tous ont disparus avant que j’aie osé romper le silence. Moi seul, après tant d’amis perdus, je leur survis encore pour ranimer leur mémoire et pour l’honorer. (303, 331) I believe that I have remained loyal to them, because forty years have passed and all have vanished before I dared to break the silence. After so many friends have been lost, I alone am still alive to rekindle their memory and to honour them.

Oikonomos might even have invited Marcellus to test whether the performance he was supervising would appeal to an educated foreigner and could enlist him for the Greek patriotic cause. In his early career, Oikonomos took an active interest in the writings and thinking of the expatriate Adamantios Koraes (1748–1833). This ideologue of Greek independence was also a prolific (self-made) classical scholar, national educationalist, and founder of a nationalist philology. He was home-based in Paris, where he shared in French Enlightenment thought. Throughout 1821, Oikonomos followed the model of Koraes as a secular ‘evangelist’. With him, he believed in Greek culture’s civilizing power and in its potential to unite the Greeks in revolt against the Turks.15 While Koraes advocated a programme for a ‘compromise language’ (which formed the basis of the later Katharevousa, a ‘purist’, Atticizing Greek that integrated many vernacular roots), Oikonomos, on the other hand, wanted his students to learn how to communicate in ancient Greek. He therefore opposed the use of translations of the ancient Greek texts and of the Gospels. Oikonomos taught Greek and theology at the Smyrna Gymnasium, which he managed from 1813 on. In 1817 he published his encyclopaedic work Grammatika, intended for use in Greek schools. Although, like Koraes, he realized the need to write and publish educational and patriotic materials to further the nationalist struggle, Oikonomos took a more active interest in theatre and dramaturgy than Koraes.16 A distinct performative quality defined the work of contemporary expatriates and (armchair) philhellenes, who enjoyed recognition for their support of Greek nationalism in a measure equivalent to their own output. In 1819 Oikonomos encountered the violent opposition of Greek detractors and conservative opponents in the Church. The bitterness of the dispute forced the closure of the Smyrna Gymnasium. Oikonomos then established closer working relations with the School of Kydonia and solicited support in high-ranking Greek circles in Constantinople.17 Situated on the coast opposite Lesbos and centrally located in between Constantinople and 15 Clogg (1976), p. xix. On Koraes as the intellectual mentor of emerging Greece and on his views of classical theatre, see further Van Steen (2000), ch. 1 and esp. 18, 20–21. 16 Van Steen (2000), 33. 17 See further Clogg (1972), 640 n. 27, and 660–61, cited from the 1819 missionary report of Reverend Charles Williamson; Demaras (1993), 376.


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Smyrna, Kydonia (modern Ayvalık) housed a substantial Greek population of approximately twenty thousand and functioned as a centre of educational and cultural life in the early decades of the nineteenth century.18 The new school had been erected in 1803, when its predecessor, founded in 1798, had become too small. As Marcellus revealed, until shortly before its destruction by the Turks in June 1821, the School of Kydonia maintained close contacts with the cosmopolitan city of Smyrna and the Orthodox religious seat of Ephesus, through the figures of Konstantinos Oikonomos and Dionysios Kalliarches, director of the Kydonia School and metropolitan (archbishop) of Ephesus, who was also present at the reading. One of only a handful of contemporary Greek educational institutions, the Kydonia School trained an all-male student population primarily for the Orthodox priesthood.

ACTING THE SCENE On 25 March 1821 (the conventional date), the Greeks rose in revolt against the Turks and began a decades-long liberation struggle. In the Constantinople of 1820 the ferment of rebellion was in the air, and it was in that context that five prominent Greeks gathered and chose Aeschylus’ Persians for the centrepiece of their secretive meeting. This intimate circle fully expected the tragedy to yield the desire for and promise of victory by equating the conditions of 1820 with those of the Persian Wars and, through the play’s subtext, even with those of the Trojan War.19 Aeschylus’ Persians framed their conception of the destiny of a nation soon to be reborn. The nightly act, for the invited few only, was a stage rehearsal of the battle-cry of the freedom fight. In theatrical-historical terms, it had to be a mere reading or recitation, because an actual stage revival would have been too public an act, given the Turks’ distrust. Because this reading enacted the perceived patriotic mission of Aeschylus’ tragedy, posited its unquestioned relevance, and revived its historical momentum, the student performer and ‘cast’ could not possibly stage it as an open and uncensored performance act but had to keep it hidden behind private and closed doors. 18

Clogg (1972), 635–6; Augustinos (1994), 248–9; Tatakes (1951), 138–40. The ancient Greeks and esp. Herodotus had drawn the same links between the Trojan and the Persian Wars in a—politically motivated—effort to create, as it were, a new heroic age. Herodotus 9.27 recorded the Athenians’ list of their time-hallowed exploits: by invoking the Trojan War among other feats, the Athenians managed to secure shared command of the Greek troops (along with the Spartans) before waging the battle of Plataea. Fragment 11 of Simonides likens, in language reminiscent of epic, those leaders, mainly Spartans, who fought and fell at Plataea with Homeric heroes (Achilles). See further Stehle (1996). When Isocrates in his Panegyricus (158–9) advocated a panhellenic policy to oppose the barbarians, he did so by recalling the Trojan War. Otherwise, however, allusions to the Trojan War remain conspicuously absent from the funeral orations that catalogue and specify Athenian feats. See further Loraux (1986), 69–72. 19

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The reduced role of those who were present, however, did not turn them into passive listeners, as Marcellus was quick to point out in a deliberate choice of words: he called the select few ‘assistants ou acteurs’, (literally) ‘assistants or actors’ (302). They were receptive spectactors, as history would soon prove. Marcellus was, of course, well served by the committed meaning of the French ‘assister’, which implies more than merely ‘attending’ a performance. The loss of the Greek student performer saddened Marcellus. In his memoir he cut from that memorable evening to anticipate the fate that the young man met only a few months later, when he died fighting the Turks in the Peloponnese (302). He highlighted the exemplum of fearless love of freedom that the young reader of Aeschylus had set. The student had pledged his life to his fatherland. The actor had ceased to be a performer on stage and became a lead player in the historical destiny of the Greeks, which he and the others had found expressed in Aeschylus’ Persians. The classical tragedy functioned as a passageway for those eager to become worthy citizens of the destined free Greek nation. It inspired its public, too, to grow beyond the mere act of witnessing such self-sacrificing love of the fatherland. The student took the lead in acting his new-found patriotic identity into existence, as it were, and embodied the new nation of Greece that would perform itself into being. Aeschylus’ Persians was literally and metaphorically a scenario on the path to full nationhood. The playwright’s own epitaph (Life of Aeschylus 2.24–5) famously stressed his military valour; courage in arms and in art was the student’s defining quality, too. Marcellus composed a substitute narrative epitaph to commemorate the untimely death of his ‘miniature Aeschylus’. He eulogized the brave and talented Greek who embodied both the old and the new Greece in parallel universes. The younger Greece was different or ‘other’ (autre) only in time, though not in nature or character: la voix animée, ardente et harmonieuse de l’écolier de Cydonie qui devait sitôt se mêler aux sanglants combats du Péloponèse, et mourir les armes à la main, luttant encore contre d’autres Perses pour l’indépendance d’une autre Grèce. (302) the animated, ardent, and harmonious voice of the pupil of Kydonia, who was soon to join in the bloody combats of the Peloponnese and to die arms in hand, while fighting against other Persians for the independence of another Greece.

The devotion of the student was the devotion of a soldier to his country and of a possible future cleric to his faith. In the young man was lost also an inspiring teacher for Greece. On him rested the expectation that he would continue to share the enthusiasm for classical literature that fuelled Greek nationalism. An exchange recorded by the Reverend William Jowett with his hosts at the Kydonia School proves this point: ‘I asked how many Masters they had furnished for Greece? They enumerated about twelve schools in various towns and islands which had sprung from them.’20 20

Jowett is quoted by Clogg (1976), 80 (see also n. 30 below). Cf. Tatakes (1951), 140.


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Konstantinos Oikonomos posited a political and patriotic meaning for Aeschylus’ Persians, which Marcellus dutifully quoted in an extensive passage in direct speech (303–4). This tragedy, Oikonomos lectured, offers us ‘a martial dithyramb in honour of our ancestors rather than a tragedy in the strict sense’ (‘un dithyrambe guerrier en l’honneur de nos ancêtres, bien plutôt qu’une tragédie proprement dite’, 303). Oikonomos abandoned the original tragedy’s division in epeisodia and choral songs, arranging the script for the reading into five manageable acts, conforming to contemporary aesthetic norms. Each act was followed by a session of commentary delivered by Oikonomos, who also responded to a few brief contributions from the others. Commenting is, of course, a strategy that guides, controls, and ‘protects’ interpretation. After the first act, Oikonomos compared Aeschylus’ play to Homer’s Iliad. He thus bestowed an epic dimension on the impending freedom struggle as on the battle of Salamis, which he placed on a par with the Trojan War (306–7): Salamis, which the ancients had already employed as a tool for cultural and political self-representation, once again gained a normative symbolic meaning.21 Trojans, Persians, and modern Turks became equally fierce and daunting eastern enemies, whom—again—time separated, whereas their perceived despotic nature and godless hybris linked them together. Marcellus contributed to the recent tendency to mythify Salamis and to invoke it as the locus classicus, indeed, of the ‘salvation’ of western civilization. His recollection of the comments made was selective and carefully constructed: he recalled the language, imagery, and analogues that other philhellenes would comprehend and appreciate and that evinced the magnitude of the Greek revolt. He celebrated the near-mythical, epic proportions of those Greeks who, by 1820, boasted a ‘tradition’ of defeating their eastern adversaries, even if that tradition diffused part of history and transformed it into myth. Oikonomos had trained his student and directed the interpretative interludes. The master’s function at this guided reading was not only didactic but also hierophantic: he merged into one the roles of teacher, stage director, commentator, and spiritual leader or ‘father’ (the words for ‘priest’ and ‘father’ are cognates in modern Greek). Neohellenic Enlightenment was not yet secularized and stagecraft here was still priestcraft.22 This combination of educational, ideological, and performative duties was a common load in later nineteenth-century Greek cultural life, in which guided student and amateur performances of ancient tragedies outnumbered commercial or professional revival productions. The rebirth of classical drama, whether in schools or in certain restricted public settings, was a weighty aspiration of Oikonomos: 21 In her seminal study, The Invention of Athens (1986), Nicole Loraux provided further insight into this and other related processes of mythification. 22 On the theme of ‘religion at war’ and the leadership roles assumed by priests, see also Athanassoglou-Kallmyer (1989), 19–21: she identified this theme as one that held special appeal for conservative supporters of the Bourbon Restoration.

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he disclosed that he had been planning to mount an ancient tragedy, such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes or Euripides’ Hecuba, at the Kydonia School to build up patriotism among the students. But, he pondered out loud (in the direct speech cited by Marcellus), even though the Turkish authorities might allow those choices, neither one of those dramas satisfied his own patriotic and didactic agenda. Oikonomos regarded those plays as too tame; in his judgement they recalled mere mythical events ‘of little risk’ (‘peu périlleux’, 303), of the distant Trojan War. The Turkish censors, who watched the school’s activities closely, would, on the other hand, never permit a full-blown production of Aeschylus’ Persians ‘with all its allusions to our recent history’ (‘avec toutes leurs allusions à notre histoire récente’, 303). Oikonomos did not shy away from interjecting defamatory ethnic stereotypes about Xerxes and the enemy troops that were, in every sense, ‘allusions to recent history’. In the ultra-nationalist and Orientalist vein (in the definition established by Edward Said in his study Orientalism), he aggrandized Greek love of freedom and citizen patriotism by the sheer contrast of Greek self-discipline with Persian excess and intemperance. He contended: Xerxès nous présente l’image du présomptueux trompé dans ses desseins; mais il pleure, et n’agit point en monarque. . . . tout s’efface devant la valeur des Grecs célébrée par l’enthousiasme du guerrier et le patriotisme du citoyen. (330) Xerxes presents us with the image of the presumptuous trumped in his designs; but he weeps and does not act like a monarch. . . . everything bows to the valour of the Greeks that is being celebrated by the enthusiasm of the warrior and the patriotism of the citizen.

Aeschylus’ Persians, the tragedy that struck a closer chord for being ‘historical’ and for relating to the ‘less distant’ Persian Wars, had been cited on several occasions prior to 1820 as the herald of the proud struggle for Greek freedom from the eastern despotism of modern times. The three plays that interested Oikonomos and his students, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Euripides’ Hecuba, and Aeschylus’ Persians, had actually been staged a few years earlier (1817–18) by the free Greek community of Odessa, which was heavily exposed to Russian and western European influences.23 The local Philike Hetaireia (Society of Friends), a secret organization founded in 1814, was preparing the Greek insurrection and counted among its members students, teachers, and professionals as well as representatives of the mercantile bourgeoisie. The Society strove to rehabilitate Greek language, culture, and political autonomy and also to resurrect the ancient tragedians. It voiced through theatre its Enlightenmentinduced nationalist ambitions of liberty, equality, and self-determination. The Society also put on foreign neoclassical adaptations of ancient mythical and 23 Van Steen (2000), 45–6. On the 1818 Philoctetes production that was staged at the Greek theatre of Odessa in an adaptation by Nikolaos Pikkolos, see further Spathes (1986a).


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historical themes, centred on such ‘freedom-loving’ heroes as Themistocles, Pericles, and Demosthenes. It frequently staged the Greek neoclassical tragedy Achilles of Athanasios Christopoulos.24 Georgios Lassanes, author of a classicizing play Harmodius and Aristogeiton, was an important member of the Society.25 This secret group’s selection and its reliance on student performers and, subsequently, student fighters prefigured Oikonomos’ circle and its disciple–reader. The pre-revolutionary intelligentsia realized the nationalist potential of instructing the populace in the values of heroism, cultural dignity, and political emancipation via the pioneering stages of amateur and semi-professional theatres, and even of private homes. The spiritual and military leadership found in the story of the Persian Wars the potent myth they needed—the promise of patriotic victory, a most convincing blend of history, myth, and regeneration (despite overwhelming odds). They used that myth to drive the religious-style patriotic conversion and broad civic conscription to the struggle of 1821. The manipulation of Aeschylus’ Persians appeared sanctified by the enthusiasm among western philhellenes for the classical texts and the historical sites, events, and heroes. Oikonomos and Marcellus presented the Turkish enemy as well aware, too, of the lineage, pride, and prestige of the Greeks and their drama: because they threatened with censorship rules and sanctions, the new eastern opponents ‘recognized’ the ‘immortal spirit’ of their subjects and their theatrical culture and, in particular, the powerful hold of Aeschylus’ Persians. Marcellus cited a telling statement of Oikonomos: Néanmoins les [i.e. Persians] bannir de notre théâtre public à sa renaissance, ce n’était pas les écarter de la mémoire des étudiants. Et si le jeune Hellène que vous allez écouter a l’air de lire les vers du poëme, sachez d’avance qu’il peut fermer le livre et les réciter en entier. (303) Nevertheless, banning it [Persians] from our public theatre at the time of its rebirth was not to remove it [Persians] from the students’ memory. And if the young Greek to whom you are about to listen seems to be reading the lines of the poem, know well in advance that he can close the book and recite them in their entirety.

Just as the student’s furtive reading was a performance waiting to go public, a surrogate for the real communal event, so, too, was the victory (indirectly) depicted in Aeschylus’ Persians waiting to happen all over again. While

24

The Italian play Themistocles of Pietro Metastasio was performed in Odessa in 1817. See Van Steen (2000), 45–6. 25 Harmodius and Aristogeiton were the celebrated but questionable Athenian tyrannicides. In 514 bc, they had killed Hipparchus, brother of the Athenian tyrant Hippias (Herodotus 5.55–6; Thucydides 6.54–9; Aristotle, Ath. Pol., 18). The pair had captured the public imagination and enjoyed a local cult as defenders of democratic liberty. Statues were erected for them in the Athenian Agora. Their reputation as the exemplary founding-heroes of classical Athenian democracy lived on and was revived during the Greek War of Independence.

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the realization of the play’s regular dramatic form and full content remained pending, this Greek intellectual circle settled for the format of a recitation. Marcellus consistently referred to the private reading as ‘une lecture’, as in his title of 1859, ‘Une lecture d’Eschyle à Constantinople en 1820’ (‘A Reading of Aeschylus in Constantinople in 1820’). The student’s ‘lecture’ was a performance in embryonic form and a broadcast of the ‘proper’, ancestral Greek language. Marcellus’ publication, then, was a first-time display, elaboration, and commemoration of a performance that did not have access to a regular public, an uncensored stage, or a free theatre building. The student’s act stated the political value of Greek educational achievement, reflecting the linguistic, pedagogical, and ideological agenda of many members of the Greek intelligentsia living and working in Constantinople, whose influence had spread to the Greek regions of Asia Minor. The intricacies of this agenda may have been lost on Marcellus, who rendered the student’s reading in French only. He did sense, however, that the event supported a broader Greek quest for effective classical precedent and historical reward. Dionysios Kalliarches, director of the Kydonia School, must have listened with special attention. In 1809 he had complained that some of his students failed to appreciate the ancient Greek language instruction which was offered to them, and in which his institution prided itself. ‘We have been informed’, Kalliarches wrote dourly, ‘that there are some students here who maintain that the teaching of writing and, in particular, the instruction in orthography are of no benefit: in their obvious foolishness, they rant without knowing what they are talking about.’26 Konstantinos Oikonomos and his protégé proved that, a decade later, the opposite held true. Marcellus conveyed an overriding sense of privilege for being part of the club that night. He drew as little attention as possible to what went missing from his memoir: the ancient Greek text. He was well-read and knew his Aeschylus but needed some assistance with the ancient Greek to which the student applied the modern Greek pronunciation.27 The host translated some passages into French for Marcellus (319–20), who, most obliged, abandoned his struggle to catch the finer points of the spoken classical language. For Oikonomos led his unanimous ‘converts’ in his own growing belief that the language of antiquity would be able to resurrect the political as well as the cultural glories of classical Greece. Using a modern Greek translation of the Persians was therefore out of the question—besides, the group had to shield itself from eavesdroppers. The reading thus provided an early snapshot of the more conservative linguistic programme that Oikonomos was advocating by the late 1830s.28 Marcellus’ willingness to settle into the role of uncomprehending foreigner and outsider holds some advantages, nonetheless. Instead of sharing philological 26 27 28

Kalliarches is quoted by Demaras (1982), 228. Dumaine (1928), 5, 10–11, 12, 17. See further De Herdt (2003), i. 77–9, 84–97; Demaras (1982), 47–8 and (1993), 377.


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minutiae about language, accent, or pronunciation, he concentrated on aspects of the performance itself: the student’s reading strategies, the evocative setting, the select audience members and their reactions, the nuances of his own admiration for their patriotism in action, and the memory of their mutual recognition of common Greek revolutionary sympathies. He showed appreciation also for a performance that was not a bland copy of the neoclassical models produced back in France at well-equipped commercial and professional venues. For Marcellus, the rudimentary event was a learning experience; it allowed him to examine the ancient text under a modern spotlight and to study its contemporary performers. His readers, too, are encouraged to return to the tragedy and to comprehend for themselves. Marcellus’ sense of obligation is not an act of disinterested authorship but expresses his desire to get right what he, as a student of oral and folk performance, did understand. Like Plato before him, Marcellus added lively touches to his account that show it off as a ‘thick description’ and that invite the reader to imagine vividly the characters, but that are not necessarily true. These efforts, however, may have strengthened the mnemonic hold of the performance and his ability later to record it. Nevertheless, by conjuring up circumstances, times, participants, and comments, even direct quotations, Marcellus mythified the encounter in the very process of releasing information. He thus created an illusion of authenticity and credibility, even for memories that were nearly forty years old. In Marcellus’ defence, however, it can be said that his methods would have been approved by his contemporaries, and that his account is all we have to reconstruct the stage of this reading set on the eve of the Greek Revolution. The young age and exceptional loyalty of the unpretentious student protagonist provided proof that Oikonomos’ ideal of a reinvigorated Greek education and nationalist-patriotic training was ambitious but attainable. Youth, dedication, and education played exceptionally formative roles in the Greek Revolution. Marcellus referred to the model student as an écolier or élève (‘pupil’), which implies that he was only a high school student. Other foreigners writing about the Kydonia School, however, employed terms that denoted not so much the higher educational level or the older age of some students as the prestige accorded to this flourishing institution. The Reverend William Jowett, a British missionary with the Church Missionary Society, visited the Kydonia School in May of 1818 and marvelled at this ‘college’ that housed about one hundred foreign ‘scholars’ in addition to another one hundred local students. All of them, he noted, received instruction from a mere four ‘masters’, at least one of whom had studied in Paris. The more senior students, however, also taught the younger ones.29 The college library counted about

29 On this informal version of the practice known as the ‘Lancastrian’ system, see further Angelomatis-Tsougarakis (1990), 127–8; Augustinos (1994), 249.

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seven or eight hundred volumes; among those was its pride, a ‘complete set of the Greek classics’.30 Reciting ancient texts behind closed doors was nothing new to the students and teachers at the Kydonia School. In 1817 Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790–1876), the Greek scholar, editor, printer–publisher, and active philhellene, visited the School equipped with a letter of introduction from Koraes, who had acted as his tutor in Paris and who regularly shipped off books (mainly editions of the classics) from Paris to the School. Firmin-Didot was duly impressed that the Kydonia School was privately funded and did not have to charge tuition. He stayed in residence for nearly two months and visited classes, marvelling at the students’ self-imposed discipline, fiery devotion, and absolute respect for their masters. He observed, however, that this training in self-discipline and fervour was as much a training in bypassing the Turkish authorities, who, reportedly, easily took offence and would welcome any pretext to close down a school which educated promising youth in the Greek language, culture, and nationalist ethos. Firmin-Didot also noted that the students eagerly read some of the ancient poets and that they organized declamations of Euripides’ Hecuba. His memoir lends credence to Marcellus’ later report of Oikonomos’ plan to stage a Greek tragedy such as the Hecuba in order to instil patriotism in the students. Firmin-Didot further recorded an interesting ‘law’ and described the secretive meetings of a kind of ‘dead poets’ society’, which, he contended, he helped to found in March of 1817. All student members of this society had to underwrite a resolution that committed them to conversing in ancient Greek, called the ‘paternal tongue’, the ‘Hellenic language’, or the ‘language of Demosthenes and Plato’.31 Nearly twenty students signed the ‘law’ under oath. Their swearing to secrecy was functional but was also a way to establish the resolution’s special urgency. The students attached to their own Christian baptismal names and signatures the (pagan) names of ancient worthies and role models, mainly of historical heroes of the battlefield (Themistocles and Miltiades among them). Modern characters acted to imitate or at least to partake in the heroism of the ancient archetypes. The trend toward name identification ‘without much reflection as to the respect and duties which such names demanded’ (in Firmin-Didot’s contradictory qualification) increases the likelihood that the anonymous student of Marcellus’ memoir thought of 30 Jowett’s journal entries on his visit to the Kydonia School were included in Richard Clogg’s collection of documents that illustrate the growing movement for Greek liberation between 1770 and 1821. Clogg (1976), 77–80. Jowett’s original journal entries differ from the account that he edited and published in his Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820 (London, 1822), 53, 60–64, 70–76. Clogg (1976), 77, used Jowett’s records to discuss ‘higher education’ in the Greek world and he referred to the Kydonia School as the ‘Academy of Ayvalιk’. See also Tatakes (1951), 138. 31 Firmin-Didot (1826), 385, 386.


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himself as an Aeschylus.32 The society’s ‘law’ itself was composed in ancient Greek and referred to the school as Kydonia’s Hellenomouseion (shrine to, or abode of, the Greek Muses), after the Mouseion of ancient Alexandria.33 It stipulated a penalty for violators or for those who fell short of the ideal of practising ancient Greek: ‘Whoever does not do this, is, as a punishment, to recite a page of Homer before us.’ Firmin-Didot probably took too much credit for inspiring the students’ resolution. The desire among educated Greeks to communicate in ancient Greek was older and more widespread. That language could become a strategy to master one’s environment and to secure liberty was an ideal deeply rooted in the Enlightenment. The students at the Kydonia School, for whom reciting Homer was a ‘punishment’, grew all excited about presenting ‘nationalist’ classical Greek plays. They welcomed the opportunities in theatrical works to transform themselves into ‘patriotic’ amateur actors and to dress the parts. Notice the shift from an emphasis on recitation to performance, ‘great spectacle’, and ‘actors’ in Firmin-Didot’s recollection: Different conversations, the reading of the ancient poets or the recitation of Euripides’ Hecuba, which we presented with great spectacle in the cellars of the College, occupied all our evenings. The doors were then carefully closed, for fear lest one could see from outside the arms which the actors carried. This excuse alone would have sufficed to close the gymnasion, as it had the previous year, when the Turks, seeing a French music master beating time to the pupils, claimed that in this way they were being instructed in the military art.34

Frustratingly, Firmin-Didot left little information on how the students interpreted Euripides’ Hecuba. But because the occasion for the students to dress up as victorious Greek warriors (‘the arms which the actors carried’) was apparently the play’s main attraction, I suspect that their interpretation may have emphasized Greek male conquest and revenge, not the suffering of the vanquished Trojan and ‘enemy’ women. An alternative identification of these women with the oppressed Greeks would have jeopardized the Greeks’ desire to cast off Orientalist biases of effeminacy and weakness. Equating the Trojan women with the Turkish opponents, on the other hand, allowed the Greek students to indulge in similar Orientalist prejudices about the enemy. The patriotic and masculinist mission, captured in the weaponry that the characters liked to sport in front of rallying spectators, outweighed any emotions of empathy

32 Clogg incorporated Firmin-Didot’s record of the student resolution in his collection of documents that attest to the growing movement for Greek independence. My quotations from Firmin-Didot, here and below, are cited in Clogg’s translation (1976), 81. Firmin-Didot’s original record appeared in French, in his Notes d’un voyage fait dans le Levant en 1816 et 1817 (Paris, 1826), 381–9. 33 Tatakes (1951), 138. 34 Firmin-Didot, cited in Clogg’s translation (1976), 81. See also Spathes (1986b), 49.

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and broader literary or theatrical-historical reservations. Even though neither Firmin-Didot nor Marcellus elaborated on the theme of masculinity, the former did convey the young men’s zeal when they rediscovered Greek male values in the past and found another prefiguration of Greek military victory. The production was one of a ‘patriotic’ repertoire by ‘patriotic’ players and for approving in-house spectators, who may have been emboldened by their geographical proximity to Troy, the setting of Euripides’ poignant play—in an odd and aggressive twist on what Lawrence Durrell called ‘spirit of place’. In evaluating the reading of 1820, Marcellus, too, endorsed the projected patriotic ideals and paid little attention to alternative moral messages.

THE SECRET SCHOOL SETTING: ORIENTALIST SCENE Marcellus characterized the reading of Aeschylus’ Persians as ‘intimate and almost furtive’ (‘intime et presque furtif ’, 331). His iconic depiction of dedicated and pious learning recalls the idealized picture of the krypho scholeio, or the ‘secret school’, which was run as a basic night school by Greek Orthodox clerics who instructed young children in the Greek language, Orthodox religion, and other subjects forbidden to the Ottoman-occupied Greeks. Correspondingly, children’s textbooks have credited the clergy with preserving Greek faith and culture under the Tourkokratia. The secret school has served, to this day, as a synecdoche for the emerging Greek nationalist, patriotic, and educational movement. The 1820 gathering resembled a secret school setting for sharing the emblematic features of instruction conducted at night and behind closed doors, in a session led by a cleric with an ‘enlightening’ mission, to preserve Greek culture and to awaken patriotism in a semi-spiritualized experience of the fatherland. A Frenchman cognizant of the Enlightenment ideal of harnessing drama for moral and political reform had no trouble accepting that revolutionary performance went hand in hand with ‘revolutionary’ pedagogy. For the Greeks and for Marcellus, education through the sharing of nationalist knowledge and zeal, whether in performance or in publication, played a crucial role in fostering patriotism and assumed secret, mystical, or transforming powers. The secret school setting to which Marcellus was invited symbolized also the secret that was the resilient and still-spiritual Greece, which was emerging as a nation from four centuries of Turkish occupation: free Greek citizens, ‘innately’ eager to reinvigorate learning and civilization, would surprise the Turks, who stood to lose much for prohibiting learning. The secret school analogy confirmed unequivocal stereotypes and prejudices about the Turkish enemies, who were seen to live in faithless time and undifferentiated cultural and political territory. The analogy thus turned the four centuries of Tourkokratia


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into an amorphous block of time, whose main characteristic was its reversing effect (a ‘backwardness’ that held the Greeks, too, back in time). In this dominant Greek portrayal, the Turks lived without a literary or spiritual tradition to enlighten them or to credit them in advance with values that remained to be put into practice. Assumed Turkish suspicion and ‘innate’ sullenness were deemed to be both the cause and the result of an ‘Oriental’ behaviour that ran counter to widely held didactic and ethical principles. Being opposed to Greek schooling was only one aspect of such supposed shortsighted comportment. In his second publication of 1861, with the new full (chapter) title of ‘Les Perses d’Eschyle à Constantinople. Scène orientale’ (‘Aeschylus’ Persians in Constantinople. Oriental Scene’), he invited instant curiosity and played to Orientalist stereotypes of the time. Of course, Westerners commonly incorporated Greece into their mysterious and exotic ‘Orient’ of the nineteenth century and mapped it culturally as they mapped Asia Minor or the Levant. Marcellus produced an ‘Oriental’ stage from which Turkish characters were technically absent, because he kept it confined to one closed room in a private Greek mansion. But his stage was still in need of villains to set apart the obligatory heroes and martyrs. Even dispossessed of words, the Turks were— paradoxically—present to act out Orientalism. Marcellus cast the Turks in the wings, so to speak, and projected cruelty, treachery, and barbarism on to them. The executions by the Turks took place offstage and in the aftermath of the reading. By then, Marcellus had left Constantinople and was no longer close to the dénouement. His account, nonetheless, by foregrounding the clash between the good of Hellenism and the evil of the forces opposed to it, is a moralizing parable for western European reading pleasure and Orientalist voyeurism. Edward Said, as is well known, characterized Aeschylus’ Persians as one of the earliest written records of European Orientalism, because he saw in the ancient text the seeds of the dialectic focused on tyranny, excess, decadence, effeminacy, and emptiness.35 In its extreme, antagonistic, and ethnocentric form, this hegemonic dialectic and its symptomatic binary oppositions (West versus East, us versus them, self versus other) coloured the modern Greek reception of Persians for many decades; its ethnic stereotypes continued to act long after the framework of western imperialism, which had engendered such perceived ethnicities, had started to crumble. Readings of Aeschylus’ Persians in light of Said’s characterization have, therefore, produced reductive or weak interpretations.36 Such later, twentieth-century, reflections could naturally have no effect on the nightly gathering at Manos’ house, which exemplified the will of the educated few to discover Greek patriotism in and through ancient Greek texts and to perpetuate the neoclassical predilection for tragedy. The broader 35 36

Said (1979), 21, 56, 57. Constantinidis (2001), 43; Ferris (2000), 228 n. 16; Hall (1989) and (2004), 177.

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Greek population, however, related to the myth of the secret school, which inspired a form of communal resistance activity.37 Manos’ élite Greek friends corresponded to philhellenic, idealizing, and purifying notions of Greekness, whereas the peasant population did not. Marcellus portrayed a nationalism that emerged in well-positioned and interconnected, privileged circles, which often incorporated family circles (such as the Mourouzes and the Manos family). Language and theatre functioned as vehicles of group identification for such élite and at the same time ‘family-style’ nationalist and patriotic loyalties. Marcellus offered his readers confirmation of the norms to which they held the modern Greeks by focusing on the preserved ancient texts from which they saw that the Greeks deduced their own. His protracted didacticism foregrounded the links with the classical past. Marcellus’ public was invited to discover Greece as an oasis of ‘authenticity’ in the midst of a barren ‘Oriental’ desert. Any cultural preserves therefore had to be traced back to antiquity, according to an ‘archaeological’ paradigm of Greek culture which dominated the nineteenth century, when the foundations of Greek archaeology and historiography were being laid. Greek intellectuals familiar with philhellene literature often translated its views back into modern Greek conceptualizations for younger generations of Greeks and Europeans to rediscover—again—as ‘authentically’ Greek.38 Marcellus was an exponent of such a dialogic relationship. His case raises the question of just how genuine any revival of a classical tragedy might have been under the watchful eyes of a foreigner, whom the well-connected, cosmopolitan company tried hard to impress. Marcellus produced imported literary, cultural, and ideological images of Greece and the Greeks, at a time when examples of ‘authentic’ survivals and renewals could still be manipulated by the persistent drive of inventing tradition (i.e. tradition that invents, in a slight twist on the formulation of Eric Hobsbawm). Oikonomos adapted the ethos of Aeschylus’ Persians to the standards of the Greek Orthodox faith. He predicted that, just as the Olympian gods had punished Persian hybris in due course, so would divine Christian retribution overcome the Muslim threat. He transformed the pagan nemesis and machinery of justice, which, in the ancients’ belief, always overtook the immoderate, into the Christian divine approbation and condemnation (307). In his modern reincarnation, the fifth-century bc warrior and freedom-fighter still functioned as the hand of a divine will, force, and authority; he was a facilitator of scripted destiny and an auxiliary or proto-martyr to fated Greek continuity. According to the Greeks, the eastern opponent should know better, because the tragedy’s message and the divine will were both given, as were nature’s sympathy and the primacy bestowed by tradition. Even for a priest, a touch of Schadenfreude or Greek glee was not out of order: ‘Theatre was

37

Doumanis (1997), 88–9.

38

Roessel (2002), 40; Morris (2000), 226–8.


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thus at the same time a vivid pleasure and a profitable lesson’ (‘Le théâtre était donc alors à la fois un vif plaisir et une profitable leçon’, 307). That such glee would have been completely absent from Aeschylus’ representation of the Greeks and from their minds has become a—dubious—article of faith among certain scholars. Some have engaged in a search for sympathy in Aeschylus’ tragedy; others have identified this concern as a reading produced by sensibilities of the last decades of the twentieth century.39 Edith Hall recently stated that the Persians ‘combines a deeply anti-Persian tenor, emerging above all in the vain and incompetent figure of Xerxes, with a striking acknowledgement that Persian casualties must have caused terrible misery, especially to Persian widows and parents’.40

AESCHYLUS, PERSIANS 402–5 Oikonomos interrupted his student’s reading of the second act to place in relief the chorus-leader’s responses to the questions of the queen about Athens (Persians, 230–45). Special emphasis was received by the answer to the question under whose ‘despotic’ rule the Greeks remained: ‘Of no mortal man are they called the slaves or subordinates’ (Persians 242). Oikonomos commented: ‘[t]his dialogue is not only a magnificent homage to the independence of Athens, but also an apt preparation for the disasters to follow’ (‘[c]e dialogue n’est pas seulement un magnifique homage à l’indépendance d’Athènes, mais encore une habile préparation aux désastres qui vont suivre’, 310). The climax of the reading followed towards the end of the second act: with heightened emotion, the student delivered a modern version of the Greeks’ famous paean, which they chanted while fatally attacking the Persian fleet (313). This battle-cry is incorporated into the messenger’s speech (Persians, 402–5); it gains potency from being delivered by the crushed enemy. Marcellus referred to the student’s version of the paean as ‘the war hymn that the Orient kept repeating and that Lord Byron had translated’ (‘l’hymne de guerre que répétait l’Orient et qu’avait traduit lord Byron’, 313). The ‘East’ repeated this ‘hymn’, not after Byron, however, but after Regas Velestinles (or Pheraios, 1757–98). It was in the celebrated ‘Greek Marseillaise’ that the lines of Aeschylus’ paean were revived for pre-revolutionary Greece. Regas, a businessman of the diaspora and an early but inspiring champion of Greek independence, was the likely author of this popular war song, whose opening

39 See Harrison (2000), 21, 55, 111, who observed that Aeschylus hinted to his public that the destruction of the Persians might delight the Greeks (1034; cf. 843–4). 40 Hall (2004), 179.

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lines recall those of the original French Marseillaise (1792; ‘Allons enfants de la Patrie | Le jour de gloire est arrivé ’) and which read in Byron’s rendering (1811; ‘Translation of the Famous Greek War Song’):41 Sons of the Greeks, arise! The glorious hour’s gone forth, And, worthy of such ties, Display who gave us birth.42

Influenced by the ideology of the French Revolution, Regas espoused a radical–liberal nationalism. He urged the Greeks to fight their war with literary and cultural awareness as well as with arms. To help regenerate the Greek people, he published patriotic tales, poems, lectures, and detailed maps and he drafted a constitution from a supranationalist perspective. He also wrote the famous patriotic Thourios of 1797, a poetic call to arms addressed not only to the Greeks but to all the ethnic groups oppressed by the Ottoman Turks. The Turks had executed Regas in 1798 and had ‘forbidden’ or banned his writings (proscrites, 313). Nonetheless, Oikonomos’ student declaimed about half of his Marseillaise and poignantly concluded: ‘this is how we recite the Persians at Kydonia’ (‘c’est ainsi que nous récitons les Perses à Cydonie’, 314). He stamped Regas’s war song with the classical seal of Aeschylus—and Aeschylus’ play with the militancy of Regas’s call to arms. The modern but pedigreed high-voltage lines had a hypnotic effect on his listeners, who responded with ‘gestures of sympathy, . . . cast glances, . . . and contained sighs’ (‘gestes de sympathie, . . . regards réprimés, . . . soupirs contenus’, 314). Marcellus accorded a similar purpose to Regas’s war song and to the student’s act: to resurrect an eternal, ‘noble’ Greek character and the patriotic impetus for the Greek liberation movement. Regas and the student bestowed a diachronic patriotism, rooted in canonical literature and morality, on to a new and forbidden war. Marcellus marvelled at the student’s effortless mingling of texts from different ages to express the Greek quest for freedom and to spread knowledge and courage. He wondered at the young disciple’s revolutionary zest, which motivated him to disrupt the order of the canonical text as well as the rules of strict chronology. The talented student had thus far displayed great discipline and had not missed a beat in his recitation from memory—as a good contemporary student was supposed to do in the presence of his instructor and élite older spectators, who would have frowned on any creative alteration of the

41 On Regas’s life and work, see further Woodhouse (1995), who included excerpts of his writings. 42 Byron (1980), 331. The British traveller, Baron John Cam Hobhouse Broughton (usually referred to as Hobhouse, 1786–1869), a travel companion of Byron, may have been the first to record four stanzas and the refrain of the Greek Marseillaise (even though the original poem was probably longer) and to attribute it to Regas. For Hobhouse’s record, see Broughton (1813), 586–8. See further Van Steen (forthcoming).


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ancient text. At this turning point, however, the model student unveiled his own, political personality: he was a rebel for the right cause—a young Regas.43 It took the cause of patriotism to have a diligent student make such a bold intervention and to add the few bellicose stanzas composed by Regas (in Marcellus’ French translation): Vous qui fûtes les valeureux cadavres des Hellènes, âmes éparses, revenez aujourd’hui à la vie. Rassemblez-vous tous à la voix du clarion. Marchez vers les sept collines; et une fois pour toujours soyez vainqueurs. Prenons les armes, montrons-nous les vrais enfants des Grecs; et que le sang de l’ennemi coule par torrents sous nos pieds! Sparte, Sparte, pourquoi dors-tu d’un profond et léthargique sommeil? Réveille-toi, appelle Athènes ton éternelle et antique compagne. Souvenez-vous de Léonidas, le héros immortel, le redouté, le terrible, le glorieux guerrier. Prenons les armes, montrons-nous les vrais enfants des Grecs; et que le sang de l’ennemi coule par torrents sous nos pieds. (313–14)

Byron translated freely (1811; ‘Translation of the Famous Greek War Song’): Brave shades of chiefs and sages, Behold the coming strife! Hellenes of past ages, Oh, start again to life! At the sound of my trumpet, breaking Your sleep, oh, join with me! And the seven-hill’d city seeking, Fight, conquer, till we’re free. Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet. Sparta, Sparta, why in slumbers Lethargic dost thou lie? Awake, and join thy numbers With Athens, old ally! Leonidas recalling, That chief of ancient song, Who sav’d ye once from falling, The terrible! the strong!

43 The reader wonders if Marcellus was influenced at all by Claude Charles Fauriel (1772– 1844), another French author and folklorist who had published a popular two-volume collection of modern Greek songs in 1824–5 (partly with Firmin-Didot). Fauriel (1825), 18–19, recounted the story of an 1817 encounter with a young baker’s apprentice in Epirus, who is moved to the core upon hearing Regas’s martial poetry read aloud: he knows it well but cannot read it for himself, which does, however, not temper his patriotic enthusiasm for Regas and for the impending struggle.

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Gonda Van Steen Sons of Greeks! let us go In arms against the foe, Till their hated blood shall flow In a river past our feet.

Regas extended the scope of the military engagements of the Persian Wars beyond the battle of Salamis and commemorated the heroic Spartan stand-off at Thermopylae. He mustered the then ‘dormant’ Spartans to awaken and to initiate revolt. He also alluded to the differences that set Athens and Sparta against each other on many historical occasions. He ended his own paean with a repeated invocation to all the Greeks to prove themselves ‘real children’, or true descendants, of the ancients. Marcellus equated the performance of the reading with revolutionary action and, in a parallel manner, he marked the paean, in Regas’s version, as the battlecry that hailed and also kicked such action into life. The patriotic zest bottled up in the paean struck at the core of the fighter spirit in modern Hellenism, which had great revolutionary potential because it unabashedly deduced from classical Greece the archetype of a resilient, freedom-loving democracy. Moreover, this model stayed within the topographic tradition and pecking order and proved that it could outshine later and lesser eras. Laden down with the baggage of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political discourse, the battlecry also sealed the trope of tyranny, which was the trademark attributed to the Persians and, by analogy, to the Turks.

A STORY TO TELL Marcellus inscribed an ideal of unity and collective belonging that accorded him, an outsider, the historical chance to become an insider and to advance from a position of observation to involvement. His memoir offered a guide much less to its author’s historical placement or ideological positioning than to the exemplary programme attributed to Aeschylus and his descendants. Marcellus waited to tell his story until Oikonomos, too, had passed away. Within two years of Oikonomos’ death, but nearly forty years after the reading had occurred, he published his first account in the October 1859 issue of the well-known French periodical Le Correspondant. Western European magazine readers and those interested in travel literature had long had some (Romanticist) ‘exposure’ to Greece and the Middle East. Marcellus himself had written about the Kydonia School in his 1839 travel memoir Souvenirs de l’Orient (Memoirs of the Orient, i. 188–9) but did not mention there the reading of the Persians performed by one of the school’s star students. His Souvenirs merely repeated the by then known facts about the institution. But, in 1839, Oikonomos was still alive and could potentially be hurt or compromised by


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any detailed published record of his revolutionary activities. Marcellus’ own death came in 1865, at the age of 70. He had had, by then, many chances to alter and renegotiate his memories. He could re-remember memories within himself and allow his impressions to become malleable, distorted, or timewarped. However, he insisted on the clarity with which he remembered despite the vagaries of time—which should place the reader on the alert. Marcellus left Oikonomos with the opportunity to write about the meeting or to encourage his son to record it, in any form percolated through their own memory. Both failed to do so. Oikonomos’ son produced a twice-removed summary description, which he derived from Marcellus’ memoir. This deprives the reader of an independent report with which to contest or corroborate Marcellus’ writing. Marcellus cared enough about the event and his own legacy to publish his memoir twice, first as a journal article, then as a chapter in his travel book entitled Les Grecs anciens et les Grecs modernes (The Ancient Greeks and the Modern Greeks). The second publication, identical to the first, followed after an interval of only two years (1861); it reveals the author’s fascination with his own incandescent visualization of the memory-laden event. If publishing his narrative had been merely about reconstructing his extraordinary experience from memory, a second publication would not have been necessary. Marcellus, however, subscribed to the idea that theatre had schooled the ancients and would school the moderns as well. The next best thing to the actor or interpreter delivering the lines of the master teacher Aeschylus was, in Marcellus’ view, his double record of it. By 1861, Marcellus seemed more interested in encoding and memorializing not just the lived experience but also his interpretation of the experience. After taking forty years to shape his memory, he wanted to make this memory immutable. But the seamless composition of his stacked records does not entirely conceal the history of their making and publication. Neither does it hide the author’s satisfaction with the end products. For Marcellus, these actors in the ‘epic of 1821’ had earned a glory akin to that of the fighters of the Persian Wars. He owed them proper commemoration in writing and published the memoir of a personal experience which he had willed to temporary oblivion. Even though Marcellus’ account was a ‘dramatic’ restaging of the event and its historicity, his purposeful remembering also had components of forceful forgetting. The shift from Greek to French was not merely practical and functional but also indicated that the interpretation was now his to steer. Aware of the liabilities inherent in memory and the dangers of forgetting, Marcellus ensured that his Greek friends’ sacrifice would not be obliterated and was not in vain, even though they had died without the sure knowledge that the Greek nation would go on to exist. The participants’ abject fate, however, was probably not the direct result of information that had been leaked about the meeting. They died for their involvement in revolutionary activities on the eve of the War of Independence. The spectators were among the high-profile victims whom the Turks executed in reprisal for

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the outbreak of the revolution. Marcellus, however, created a near-causal relationship between participation in that remarkable reading and a martyr-style death at the hands of the Turks. By conjuring up a highly meaningful death for noble ideals, tied to religious and patriotic beliefs, Marcellus demonstrated how his Greek friends lived up to the ethos that the reading of Aeschylus had inspired. They joined the ranks of an expanding circle of martyrs to Greek freedom. The theme of martyrdom was pervasive in the earliest forms of modern Greek theatre of pre-revolutionary and revolutionary times. The martyr was, of course, etymologically a ‘witness’—here to the parallel creation of a new order and a new theatre. Marcellus had seen the strategies for devising such a cult and theatre of martyrdom at work in post-revolutionary France. He knew well that actors on the conventional stage do not normally suffer the consequences of the deeds that they portray and that the public is reassured in that awareness. But his actors of 1820 did suffer the consequences of dramatic illusion that foreshadowed reality. The modern and accepted notion of actor–audience complicity had to be taken painfully literally. The participants ran real risks; total cooperation, absolute discretion, and special, near-sacred communality were prerequisites to the meeting. Marcellus’ readers could not but empathize with the Greeks and become accomplices in the conspiracy that was the intimate but forbidden performance. Any later reader, too, was drawn into the performance of readership and spectatorship. From inscribing his own experiential memory, Marcellus moved to affect contemporary and subsequent readers and directed their factual and emotional memory. The need for (the recording of) testimony, memory, and recognition permeated Marcellus’ thinking about theatre and patriotism. In the Greek language, the word for a ‘reading’ or anagno-se- makes literal the process of ‘recognizing’ and therefore remembering what letters stand for. Recognizing and remembering make up reading and commemorating. Marcellus transformed the reading into an emblematic prelude to the war of 1821 and handed down the decanted memory of a ‘heroic’ Greek national character. His memoir never alluded to or defined anti-patriotic thinking or activity. His friends won immortality in the philhellene annals. Even if their own actions were doomed to fail, they remained true to the memory of past glories and prerogatives and raised expectations for the future. Their death in the present was a transitory phase but also a restorative act, because the Greek Revolution restored the successes of old to the new nation and future generations and sublimated the death of these and other individuals. In philhellene and later Greek depictions, the 1821 reconquest became a worthy pendant to the heroic feats of antiquity, because, in the final analysis, the Greeks had once again humbled a rich and powerful eastern enemy. Marcellus’ memoir performed history and commemoration and committed personal to collective memory. History and performance served memorial


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use; collective memory assumed a performative role. Marcellus stressed that his friends had met a unifying fate in a noble death for Greece, as they had been in agreement on the reading’s meaning and message. They anticipated what meanings the lecture would evince and what kind of uniform action it would inspire. In the terms and categories of Stanley Fish, this closely-knit circle was an example of an ideal interpretive community, because it shared strategies to read, receive, integrate, and perform-for-real the ancient text of Aeschylus. The model community functioned also as a mnemonic community and partook in ‘dreaming the nation’ and imagining its promised, free land of the future.44 Marcellus anticipated by a few decades the thinking of Ernest Renan on the cohesive role that shared memories of important sacrifices and experiences of battles play in the process of nation-building. Aeschylus’ play and the Persian Wars became timeless and irresistible metaphors for Greek victories. Literary memory became prophecy, as Marcellus confirmed (cette prophétie à longue portée, ‘this longrange prophecy’, 317; keyword présagé, ‘foretold’, 302, quoted p. 302 above). The tragedy acted as a more highbrow prophecy for emerging Greece, as a literary and theatrical equivalent to the many religiously-inspired predictions of Greek regeneration that pervaded popular culture. To see the popular and the literary, as well as the quasi-religious and the political, so intertwined invites a permeable and reflexive understanding of nationalism and patriotism. The group’s performance of unifying patriotism through classical drama compensated for the lack of a detailed revolutionary agenda and of a blueprint for a free society, once liberation had been achieved. Marcellus’ retrospective on the reading staged a new audition for Aeschylus’ play, for continued philhellenism, and for an interest in Greece beyond the nominal liberation date. Elements of idolization and special pleading for the Greek case manifested themselves. The ‘humane’ and civilized West was asked to continue to support—still civilized—Greece after bringing it back to the fold. The Greek psychology that confounded autonomy from the Turks with a colonial-style dependency on the West (operating within the strong Orientalist frame of reference) was at work before Marcellus’ eyes and influenced his writings. Ironically, the select company of Greeks recruited a royalist to introduce other Westerners to the Greek revolutionary mind-set. Yet their argument that tyranny of the eastern type had no place in the land that housed the cradle of democracy was generic enough for broad external consumption. Marcellus might have seen the Greek Revolution as a more noble, ‘purer’, and more abstract model than the deteriorating French Revolution and Second Republic. He may have welcomed the atavistic pull of Aeschylus’ tragedy as a stay against the speed with which French revolutionary pathos was degenerating into autocratic rule. Marcellus’ writings may have prompted some reassessment as well, because, by 1860, Greece had developed into an unsteady 44

On mnemonic communities, see further Zerubavel (2003), 8 and ch. 5.

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monarchy afflicted by internal discord and foreign interference. Relating to Greece’s fragile freedom and nascent modernity must have helped Marcellus to come to grips with the decaying of order, the creation of the first and second Napoleonic empire, and the failure of overreaching military campaigns back home in France. Even as he conformed with the established doxology of de facto victorious and ‘reborn’ Greece, Marcellus unhesitatingly enlisted history, patriotism, and performance in the cause of trying to remake a people into what it once was, even if only forty years earlier. By 1859, Marcellus’ story had been validated by multiple Greek victories. Would he still have written his account if the Greek War of Independence had been lost?

CONCLUSION The Greek élite wisely singled out the grand but engaging genre of tragedy as the chosen medium to relate to itself and to the West. It was thus performing (phil)Hellenism upon itself. As a privileged guest Marcellus had entered into a set of unspoken obligations. He was reminded—and encouraged to remind others—that the West owed Greece a tremendous debt, precisely because classical Greek culture had so profoundly shaped western civilization. Marcellus repaid his debt of guest-friendship and turned the literary reminder or monument that was Aeschylean tragedy into a living memorial. He made his—presumed—philhellene reader see with the patriotic gaze with which the listeners had admired the student performer. His testimony was an eyewitness account, an act of bearing witness, and also a call for more witnesses. His publications bridged the gap between pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary generations and between insiders and outsiders, or Greeks and philhellenes. Marcellus’ royalist sympathies did not prejudice him against a reading of Aeschylus’ Persians, the ancient play that Shelley and his circle and also exponents of the French Revolution had redefined as rebellious and oppositional.45 His Greek friends, however, were the more enthusiastic children or students of the French Revolution, which had adopted theatre as its art of choice and had made of nationalism the peg on which to hang individual patriotism. Marcellus shifted focus and cast the company of like-minded Greek witnesses as a small community of harbingers of the progress designated by Enlightenment and Neohellenism. He established the Neohellenic patriotism, the bedrock of the student performance, as the common ground in which he as well as the select circle could cultivate liberation through the corrective of the performance of and in ancient Greek. No real dialogue or confrontational exchange

45

See also Hall (2004), 174.


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of perspectives occurred. Stage manager Oikonomos did not have to contend with any opposition from this handpicked audience, but real and dangerous Turkish opponents were waiting in the wings. Moreover, the views of women, ordinary Greeks, or other, more popular freedom-fighters (such as the klephts) remained absent. Marcellus’ memoir therefore raises some puzzling questions. Did he know about any anti-patriotic Greek activity or treason and choose to remain silent? Can plays that resort to conventional forms hope to foster radical revolutionary thinking? Could the highly educated and upper-class ideologues with their western education and contacts become genuine rebels and inspire or join popular insurrection, while enjoying power and prosperity at the mercy of the Turks? Marcellus’ answer was that the group’s initiative may have seemed like a confined, ‘in-house’ effort of élite males showing off their patriotic fervour and taking for granted that the same zeal would drive the rest of the Greek population, but that its members could hardly have been more closely involved with history raging outside. With the knowledge of hindsight, Marcellus mythicized and broadened this Greek nationalism, as if, already in 1820, he had witnessed a divinely inspired, widespread, and unified insurrection. Or, if the Greek nationalist movement did not feed on such a broad revolutionary base, then at least the few he saw in action posited a moral imperative for the many and managed, in his view, to instil in them a new, civic sense of political responsibility. While Marcellus articulated some of the dynamics between performer and spectators, he did not pay enough attention to the interchange (or lack thereof) between the small, homogeneous group as performers and the—absent—audience, which was the very real public of Greece. Revival productions of select ancient tragedies helped to pave the new Greek nation’s road to modernity. Greek education, too, in its more structured or institutionalized forms, was developing as another apparatus of modernity that served the nationalizing and (still) androcentric mission. The modernist function, ‘sanitized’ identity, and militant attitude of Aeschylus’ Persians were hung on the peg of idealized nationalism and revival theatre, which the Greeks placed at the centre of their earliest domestic patriotic identity. Marcellus successfully painted himself as a harbinger of the modernist legacy of the Persians for the Greeks and the West and of the equally modernist positing of Greek performance and history as cogent places of unity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, H. (1990). The Eve of the Greek Revival: British Travellers’ Perceptions of Early Nineteenth-Century Greece. London and New York. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, N. (1989). French Images from the Greek War of Independence 1821–1830: Art and Politics under the Restoration. New Haven and London.

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Augustinos, O. (1994). French Odysseys: Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era. Baltimore and London. Broughton, J. C. Hobhouse (1813). A Journey through Albania, and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the Years 1809 and 1810. London. Byron (1980). Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, vol. i, ed. J. J. McGann. New York and Oxford. Clogg, R. (1972). ‘Two Accounts of the Academy of Ayvalik (Kydonies) in 1818–1819’, Revue des études sud-est européennes, 10.4: 633–67. —— (ed. and trans.) (1976). The Movement for Greek Independence 1770–1821: A Collection of Documents. London. —— (1992). A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge. —— (1996). ‘Sense of the Past in Pre-Independence Greece’, in Anatolica: Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Aldershot, Hants., xi. 7–30. Conacher, D. J. (1996). Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies. Toronto. Constantinidis, S. E. (2001). Modern Greek Theatre: A Quest for Hellenism. Jefferson, NC, and London. De Herdt, K. (2003). ‘ “Je crains que vous ne me trouviez trop moderne pour un Grec.” Over Griekse vertalingen van Oudgriekse teksten, ca. 1860–1910’, 2 vols., Ph.D. diss., University of Ghent, Belgium. Demaras, K. Th. (1982). Greek Romanticism (in Greek). Athens. —— (1993). Modern Greek Enlightenment (in Greek). 6th edn. Athens. Disraeli, B. (1934). The Rise of Iskander, in Popanilla and Other Tales, The Bradenham Edition of the Novels and Tales of Benjamin Disraeli. New York, iii. 213–96. Doumanis, N. (1997). Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean: Remembering Fascism’s Empire. Hampshire, London and New York. Dumaine, A. (1928). Quelques oubliés de l’autre siècle. Paris. Eisner, R. (1991). Travelers to an Antique Land: The History and Literature of Travel to Greece. Ann Arbor. Eliade, M. (1991). ‘List of Productions’ (in Greek: Parastasiographia), in K. Topouzes (ed. and trans.), Aeschylus’ Persians (in ancient and modern Greek) Athens, 113–26. Erkelenz, M. (1997). ‘Inspecting the Tragedy of Empire: Shelley’s Hellas and Aeschylus’ Persians’, Philological Quarterly, 76.3: 313–37. Fauriel, C. (1824–5). Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne. 2 vols. Paris. Ferris, D. S. (2000). Silent Urns: Romanticism, Hellenism, Modernity. Stanford, Calif. Firmin-Didot, A. (1826). Notes d’un voyage fait dans le Levant en 1816 et 1817. Paris. Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford. —— (ed.) (1996). Aeschylus: Persians. Warminster. —— (2004). ‘Aeschylus, Race, Class, and War in the 1990s’, in E. Hall, F. Macintosh, and A. Wrigley (eds.), Dionysus Since 69: Greek Tragedy at the Dawn of the Third Millennium. Oxford, 169–97. Harrison, T. (2000). The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century. London. Jowett, W. (1822). Christian Researches in the Mediterranean from 1815 to 1820. London.


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Loraux, N. (1986). The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. A. Sheridan. Cambridge, Mass., and London. Marcellus, M.-L.-J.-A.-C. Demartin du Tyrac [Comte de Marcellus] (1839). Souvenirs de l’Orient, 2 vols. Paris. —— (1859). ‘Une lecture d’Eschyle à Constantinople en 1820’, Le Correspondant, 48: 301–31. —— (1861). ‘Les Perses d’Eschyle à Constantinople. Scène orientale’, in Les Grecs anciens et les Grecs modernes Paris, 225–89. Meier, C. (1993). The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, trans. A. Webber. Cambridge. Morris, I. M. (2000). ‘To make a new Thermopylae: Hellenism, Greek Liberation, and the Battle of Thermopylae’, Greece and Rome, 2nd ser. 47.2: 211–30. Oikonomos, Konstantinos (1817). Grammatika (in Greek). Vienna. Oikonomos, Sophokles K. (ed.) (1871). Prolegomena (in Greek), in The Preserved Philological Treatises of Konstantinos Oikonomos (in Greek). Athens, i. 5–37. Puchner, W. (1997). Texts and Countertexts: Ten Studies on Theatre (in Greek). Athens. Roessel, D. (2002). In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination. Oxford and New York. Rosenbloom, D. (1995). ‘Myth, History, and Hegemony in Aeschylus’, in B. Goff (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama. Austin, 91–130. Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York. Shelley, P. B. (2002). Hellas, in Shelley’s Poetry and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Criticism, selected and ed. by D. H. Reiman and N. Fraistat, 2nd edn. New York and London [1977], 430–64. Spathes, D. (1986a). ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes Adapted by Nikolaos Pikkolos: The First Presentation of Ancient Tragedy in Modern Greek Theatre’ (in Greek), in The Enlightenment and Modern Greek Theatre (in Greek) Thessalonike, 145–98. —— (1986b). The Enlightenment and Modern Greek Theatre (in Greek). Thessalonike. Spencer, T. (1954). Fair Greece Sad Relic: Literary Philhellenism from Shakespeare to Byron. London. Stehle, E. (1996). ‘Help Me to Sing, Muse, of Plataea’, Arethusa, 29.2: 205–22. Tambake, A. (1995). ‘A Theatrical Production in Constantinople in 1821: The Testimony of R. Walsh’ (in Greek), Ho Eranistes 20: 256–60. Tatakes, V. N. (1951). ‘The Rebirth of Greek Education and the Academy of Kydonies’ (in Greek), Anglo-Hellenike Epitheorese, 5.4: 136–40. Van Steen, G. A. H. (2000). Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece. Princeton. —— (forthcoming). ‘Translating—or Not—for Political Propaganda: Aeschylus’ Persians 402–405’, in F. Billiani (ed.), Translation and Censorship. Manchester. Woodhouse, C. M. (1995). Rhigas Velestinlis: The Proto-Martyr of the Greek Revolution. Limne, Greece. Zerubavel, E. (2003). Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago and London.


14 The Persian Wars as the ‘Origin’ of Historiography Ancient and Modern Orientalism in George Grote’s History of Greece Alexandra Lianeri

The Persian Wars are not over yet, and one might be tempted to see in the repeatedly uttered accusations of ‘hellenocentricism’ and ‘iranocentricism’ in scholarly literature a sign of continued warfare. Amélie Kuhrt and Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History II. The Greek Sources (1987)

In a discussion of the role of the Greek sources in Achaemenid historiography Amélie Kuhrt and Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg observe the continuing part played by the Persian Wars in shaping history writing. The repercussions of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, they argue, are still with us (1987, p. ix). The event of the wars, inseparable, in its very substance, from the ways ancient historians defined and evaluated it, continues to underlie its historical narration. In other words, the event cannot be distinguished either from contemporary or from subsequent narrativizations of its meaning. The famous battles have not only underlaid the formation of the ancient records, but also have permeated current scholarly debates about ancient history. They have survived through the ways in which western historiography has formed pedigrees and genealogies to distinguish monuments and narrations, stories and historiographies, evidence and fiction. History, Kuhrt and Sancisi-Weerdenburg suggest, in the sense that we conceptualize and practise it, is, at least partly, the result of the conflict between Greece and Persia. In its beginning, it embodies a binary and partial logic that opposed the Greek or subsequently European self, to the Persian or Oriental other (ibid.). What are the implications of this inaugurating moment? How

I would like to thank Yorgos Avgoustis, Paul Cartledge, Matt Edge, Geoffrey Lloyd, Robin Osborne, and the editors of this volume for constructive comments and criticism.

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has Greek history (as both Geschichte and Historie, event and historical narrative) shaped our view of antiquity by establishing the meaning of historical enquiry? In what sense are the Persian Wars not merely an event of the past, but also a still active opposition, a clash that lasted beyond its time by providing the founding narrative of historiography? The discipline of history, Hugh Bowden states, ‘was originally begotten to explain the causes of the Persian Wars, and to tell their story’ (1998, 101). How has this legacy defined our investigation of Greek and Persian history? How has it affected the forms and methods of western historiography? What is the significance of conflict for a practice that began its life in the form of war stories? Kuhrt and Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1987, pp. ix–xi) trace the afterlife of the ancient battles in two distinguishable and conflicting scholarly frames, which are roughly delimited by the Greek and the Persian perspectives. The former is established by historiographic traditions which find authorization in the Greek sources and perceive the wars through the mediation of Greek historians. The latter is configured by archaeological, linguistic, and anthropological studies which assume a structural approach to early Persian history and analyse their material in terms provided by its own tradition. The divide, as Kuhrt and Sancisi-Weerdenburg argue, while by no means absolute, is useful in demonstrating that Greek historiography, far from offering the first ‘historical’—in the sense of critical and, to an extent, impartial—representation of the Persian Wars, records a biased and oppressive viewpoint, formed for the purposes of the opposition. In a structural study of Achaemenid history, Iranologists maintain, the writings of Greek historians are of limited value and, at times, even an obstacle to understanding antiquity. ‘However great, generous and honest the first historian of Persia may have been’, he nevertheless wrote as participant in a conflict that was no longer perhaps explicit, but was still lingering on. In this context, ‘[s]trict neutrality, if such a thing is ever possible for a historian, was beyond even the reach of Herodotus, although he made a serious attempt’ (ibid.). While this claim involves the juxtaposition of the two original conceptual frameworks, the Greek and the Persian, with the aim of deploying the latter in order to identify gaps and silences in the former, what we are dealing with as historians is not a direct encounter of these discourses, but their reconstruction from the viewpoint of a third one, that of modern scholarship. It is precisely in this third language, the medium through which we perceive the ancient conflict, that the event of the Persian Wars has acquired an eminent position in history. The peculiarity of the Persian Wars lies less in the Greek bias against an opponent, and more in the subsequent standing of the conflict. Historiography, as Bowden observed, has long celebrated as a world-shattering event a set of local encounters: some battles between a group of barely united eastern Mediterranean communities against another eastern Mediterranean, or near eastern, power (1998, 110). The success of the former, while unsurprisingly

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celebrated by the victors, would have probably been forgotten had it not come to stand for the triumph of an entire worldview and tradition over another. How could a parochial antagonism come to be seen as the inaugural conflict between East and West, civilization and barbarism, liberty and despotism, rule of law and subjection to oppression? What is the relationship between Greek visions of Persia and their modern counterparts? How have Greek historians figured within the discourse which Edward Said, in 1978, described as ‘Orientalism’: the distinct European style and narrative which evoked the binary opposition Europe vs. the Orient to sustain western domination over Asia (1995, 3)? If, as Kuhrt and Sancisi-Weerdenburg suggest, the Persian Wars continue to reverberate in scholarly literature, how can one account for their survival within the broader context of a history of Orientalism? This essay responds to these questions by focusing on the role of the Persian Wars in one of the pioneering contributions to the investigation of Greek history, originally published in England between 1846 and 1856, George Grote’s (1794–1871) History of Greece.1 This work holds a key position in the history of Greek historiography. Written by a self-educated historian, professional politician and banker, at a time when the subject of Greek history had as yet no position in university education, Grote’s multi-volume publication has been celebrated as the first modern history of its kind; the book which first deployed the new critical methods for the study of antiquity and lifted the debate on its subject ‘to a plateau far above where he found it’ (Chambers (1996), 21).2 Whilst the originality of Grote’s enterprise has recently been disputed,3 there is as yet no critical discussion of the meaning and political implications of the category which sustained his distinction, namely the ‘modernity’ of his historical methods. The question of a historian’s novelty, albeit crucial from the viewpoint of the history of classical scholarship, becomes less significant when assessing the concepts through which this history is constructed. In this perspective, the issue at stake is not the discovery of the real beginning of modern historiographies of Greece, but the very significance of the term ‘modern’ as part of a wider genealogy of European historical thought and its proclaimed links to the Greek historians. Grote’s account of the Persian Wars will be examined in this essay as central to Europe’s attempt to construct this historiographic past by rewriting the Greek vs. Persian opposition in order to authorize the modern conceptual polarity between the West and the Orient. In shaping such a genealogy, Grote 1

The edition referred to throughout this chapter is that of 1862. Chambers follows Arnaldo Momigliano’s appraisal of Grote in Momigliano (1994 [1952]). 3 Oswyn Murray has claimed that Bulwer Lytton’s history of 1837 anticipated Grote in deploying the new critical methods of German scholarship (Lytton (2004), 32), while there is a recently opened discussion on the role of yet marginalized 18th-cent. historians of Greece, such as Temple Stanyan (1707–39), Oliver Goldsmith (1774), and Charles Rollin (1730–8): see Ceserani (2005) and Vlassopoulos (2005). 2

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configured the Persian Wars as the founding moment and narrative frame of a world history, whose centre and point of origin was the Graeco-European tradition. Attributions of origin have, however, an ideological character, not only because they abstract a distinct moment from the historical process, but also because this abstraction privileges a certain course of historical development and a certain end to it. It outlines a conclusion—in our case, modern critical historiography—already predicated by the locus of the alleged beginning. The concept of modern historiography conveys a teleological and self-validating view of history within which Europe, as Dipesh Chakrabarty points out, works as a silent reference and starting point of historical knowledge (1992, 2). Grote’s approach to Greek history, by grounding itself in an inaugural divide, the war between Greece and Persia, also crystallized a distinct privilege: the practice pertaining to Graeco-European historiography made a claim to universality by excluding the Orient from the realm of historical consciousness. This claim acted in turn to reinforce the political divide between western European liberal politics and Oriental despotism, already established by Montesquieu in the eighteenth century and previously proclaimed as an antithesis between western liberty framed by law and eastern autocracy by James Harrington and the other defenders of parliament in the English Civil War.4 At the same time, however, Grote’s History also recognized a cultural and political continuity between Europe and the Orient, thus creating a conceptual space for disputing the binary opposition and exploring the internal antinomies and contradictions of Orientalist discourse.

THE STORY OF ORIENTALISM: CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES The ‘prejudices’ of the Greek ‘sources’—and Herodotus in particular—have, over the last few decades, been extensively discussed in the fields of both Achaemenid and Greek studies. The Persian Wars, approached within the frame of near eastern politics, have been shown to be less grand and, perhaps, less consequential for the relationship between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Barbarians’, than the Greek records made them to be.5 This approach has further involved the 4

See esp. Harrington (1992), 20. I am indebted to Matt Edge for this reference. From the viewpoint of military planning, as Osborne observes (1996, 342–3), the resistance to Persia was ‘to an uncomfortable degree a result of luck, rather than judgement,’ though it did sustain Greek military confidence. The defeat of the Persians, as Kuhrt argues, while partly impeding Persia’s long-term Aegean policy to extend a measure of control to European Greece, had a marginal impact on the empire as a whole and hardly prevented Persia from subsequently interfering in Greek affairs and exploiting the war between Athens and Sparta to her own advantage (1995, 670–2). See also above, Ch. 1, p. 8. 5


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reconfiguration of concepts that described the battles in terms of the opposition between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Barbarians’. Research into Achaemenid cultural and institutional history has interrogated the stereotypical representation of the Persian king as weak, irrational, and supposedly effeminate, as opposed to Greek rationality, bravery, and masculinity (see Kuhrt (1995), 648). At the same time, an increasing number of scholars focusing on the Greek tradition has explored the political and ideological dimensions of the opposition, and has discussed its role as an exclusionary classification of identities aiming to reinforce domination and power relations both within and outside Greece. Greek writers, including historians, began to be examined not so much for the things they reveal and define—be they events, people, relations, or processes— as for the things they obfuscate and marginalize as well as the manner in which they deploy definitions to construct historical subjects and designate their conflicting identities. In this view, Herodotus’ account of the Persian Wars was read by François Hartog as a mode of articulating the complex relation between subjective agency and discursive identity, placing ‘the “we” on stage . . . in the struggle against “them” ’, and, as it did so, shaping for the Greeks ‘a representation of the recent past’ and elaborating a new collection of memories centred on the Hellenikon (1988, 375). Likewise Edith Hall studied Aeschylus’ Persians (1989) to explore Greek writing about the barbarians as an exercise in self-definition that negotiated ideas of Greek ethnic self-consciousness arising from the combined Greek military efforts against the Persians.6 Hellenists have systematically engaged with the role of Greece as a crucial, or perhaps the key, factor in the forging of the opposition between the East and the West, which formulated the discourse of Orientalism.7 Yet despite a large number of studies that locate Greek binary concepts within a politics of conflict, control, and power relations, the question of how these concepts were 6 See also Hall (1993). The reading of the Greek tradition as a discourse of cultural self-identification grounded in the opposition between the European self and the Oriental other has been developed further by Vasunia (2001) and Harrison (2000). On the development of the Greek ‘political concept of freedom’ through the use of the conflict between Greece and Persia see Raaflaub (2004), 58–89. Raaflaub’s most interesting point, from the viewpoint of this study, is that the awareness of the Persian Wars as a conflict for political freedom, while present in 480–479 bc, was nevertheless consolidated as a dominant discourse in the years following the wars (2004, 63). This means that it was not the event of the wars that produced the opposition— the experience of which, as Raaflaub points out, was at the time wide-ranging and resembled previous military conflicts—but its subsequent historiographic and political reconstruction. 7 As Hall has argued in one of the first works that deployed Said’s concept for the study of Greek culture, Aeschylus’ Persians offers ‘the first unmistakable file in the archive of Orientalism, the discourse by which the European imagination has dominated Asia ever since by conceptualizing its inhabitants as defeated, luxurious, emotional, cruel, and always as dangerous’ (1989, 99). The opposition Greek vs. barbarian, as Vasunia points out, had nevertheless been an enduring concern of Hellenists long before the publication of Orientalism, a concern that dates back at least to Julius Juethner’s Hellenen und Barbaren of 1923 and Walther Kranz’s Stasimon of 1923 and includes Arnaldo Momigliano’s Alien Wisdom, published in 1975 but based on lectures delivered some years earlier, which may be seen as anticipating Said’s Orientalism (Vasunia (2003), 89).

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appropriated and redefined by modern Orientalism remains largely unanswered. Phiroze Vasunia has rightly observed that there is, today, no developed history of classical scholarship that takes into account the intersection of classical studies with European colonialism and imperialism from the 1700s to the 1900s. For reasons which themselves call for further reflection ‘scholars seem to be unable or uninterested in exploring the collusion between Classics and empire, despite the indisputable evidence for such a collusion’ (2003, 91). This lack of methodical research into the history of Orientalism is evident in the widespread assumption of a linear development of the ‘Greek vs. Barbarian’ opposition into the conceptual pairs that designated the self-definition of Europe and the West. Kuhrt’s and Sancisi-Weerdenburg’s division between the Greek and the Iranian perspectives leads them to suppose a degree of continuity for each of these traditions, which in turn allows them to proclaim the transformation of Hellenocentrism into Eurocentrism (1988, p. xiv). Writing in the context of conceptual history and the history of ideas, Reinhart Koselleck (1985, 163) provides a theoretical explanation for this continuity by arguing that asymmetrical conceptual pairs, such as the Greek vs. barbarian one, seen from the viewpoint of their structure, ‘can be separated from their original conditions of emergence and their former concrete context: they are historically transferable’. The Greek vs. barbarian polarity is thus described as abstracted from the ancient context and transformed into the European vs. non-European, or western vs. non-western. Such an approach, however, while apparently confirmed by Europe’s self-positioning as Greece’s progeny, stumbles upon the internal conflicts and gaps that defined this imaginary kinship. I have discussed elsewhere how Europe’s construction of its classical past involved a ruptured and fragmented lineage, which proclaimed as much the continuity as the radical divide between the Greek and the modern European traditions.8 One may further consider the ideological implications of a linear Orientalist discourse. To trace the roots of Orientalism back to Greece, as Vasunia argues, while assuming, simultaneously, a continuity between antiquity and modernity, is to bestow on the Greek past a sanctity of origin and ignore how such a sanctity was founded on self-legitimation, denial, and violence. ‘The idea that a post-Enlightenment discursive formation could be traced back in any unmediated sense to ancient Greece was itself a self-validating European construct and fantasy’ (2003, 89). Nor can the link between ancient and modern Orientalism be found by reversing a linear temporality and approaching the Greek vision as the product of modern (mis)representations of antiquity. While such a hypothesis would question the foundational position of Greece within European narratives of identity, it would fail to identify how the Greek sources did indeed 8 One thinks for example of the opposition between the Greek and Roman heritage and Europe’s identification with the latter against the former until at least the late 18th cent., or the interlinking of continuity and discontinuity patterns in the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns. For a further discussion of this issue see Lianeri (forthcoming).


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play an inaugurating role in European intellectual and cultural history at the very moment when they were recognized as the origin of modern views of the Orient. Said’s Orientalism (1995, 2–3) points towards this duality of Greece’s position by specifying two distinct, but nevertheless interconnected, categories of Orientalism. On the one hand, he argues, there is Orientalism in a more general meaning of the term, which describes a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’, and thus accommodates both Aeschylus and Victor Hugo, Dante and Karl Marx. On the other hand, there is a specific category of Orientalism, which is more historically and materially defined than the previous one, and whose starting point is roughly located in the late eighteenth century. This latter form is not, however, a singular manifestation of the former. On the contrary, it is Orientalism in this second sense that provides the term with its special political meaning, as a mode of domination and power over the Orient. This implies that the Greek image of the Orient precedes the modern chronologically, but not conceptually, in so far as only modern Orientalism, according to Said, crystallized the links between discursive and political domination, between literary representation and the colonial domination of the Orient. Herodotus, as the historian of the Graeco-Persian encounter, precedes Grote’s reconstruction of the conflict. Yet Herodotus, as the first narrator of the East–West opposition, follows Grote in so far as it is the latter’s history which located Herodotus within a history of historiography postulating European unity in order to legitimize European rule over Asia. This duality of meaning invites us to reopen questions of directionality and causality with regard to the relationship between ancient and modern constructions of Europe’s other. It enables us to explore how Herodotus cannot be traduced as the origin of modern colonial historiography, if only because his history lacked the authoritative status of James Mill’s history of India. However influential or representative of stereotypical views of the other within Greece, his vision of the Persians was never imposed on the Persians, nor did it acquire a hegemonic position in Achaemenid culture, for the obvious reason that, at the time when he wrote his history, the Achaemenid empire was not colonized by a ‘western’ power.9 At the same time, Said’s definition allows us to recognize Greece’s foundational role in the discourse of Orientalism through the mediation of modern historiography. This role, however, is not to be found in the terms of successive conceptual pairs per se, but, as will be argued, in the process of constructing a Graeco-European tradition which positioned modern historical consciousness within the frame of a Greek conflict with the Orient. 9 As Osborne argues, the very use of the term ‘colonization’ to describe the Greek relationship to the East before Alexander is problematic, in so far as its ‘statist’ overtones denote a colonial centre of power and thus obscure the fragmented and internally conflictual status of the Greek mainland cities that established the ‘colonies’ (1998).

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In this respect, it is useful to remember that the emergence of the so-called ‘modern’ histories of Greece was marked not by the endorsement of the Greek sources, but rather by a conscious act of self-distancing from them. Grote distinguished himself for his critical stance towards his sources, rather than their rearticulation.10 Furthermore, all historians of Greece who immediately preceded him, from John Gillies (1786) and William Mitford (1835 [1784–1810]) to Connop Thirlwall (1835–44) and the recently rediscovered Edward Bulwer Lytton (2004 [1837]), made a similar claim. Gillies stated that his history was based on ‘[h]aving diligently studied the Greek writers, without adopting their prejudices, or copying them with servility’ (1786, i. p. vi). Likewise Mitford also sought a critical distancing from the sources, which enabled him to formulate a relatively balanced view of the Achaemenid institutions.11 Connop Thirlwall drew on the critical methods of German scholarship, and Barthold Niebuhr’s History of Rome (1812) in particular, to reduce the numbers of the Persian horde at Marathon to 120,000, at the ‘utmost limit,’ and thus qualify the glory of Greek victory (1835–44, ii. 244). Finally Lytton’s Athens (2004, 38–9) also evoked the German theoretical tradition to advance a ‘critical’ reading of the Greek texts and suggest new links between political, cultural, and moral history. What united these histories was not their adherence to the Greek sources, but their loyalty to a certain concept of historiography and a certain idea of historical method, which they traced back to the Greek tradition. Their ‘modern’ orientation lay in asking questions about the sources or, in the most radical cases, in directly questioning these sources, and thus formulating a new position from which one could talk about antiquity. Their idea of modern critical history was, however, formulated by reference to the Greek historians. Indeed ‘modern’ histories of Greece were created together with the authorization of the Greek category of historiography: their emergence was predicated on the idea of ancient critical history and the assumption of a clearcut division, finally made by Grote, between myth and history. This division has been conventionally described as crystallized in Grote’s opposition between mythical and historical sources; an idea that led Grote to designate two distinct periods in Greek antiquity, each defined by the availability of surviving accounts of it, the legendary (ending in 776 bc) and the historical one.12 There is, however, an aspect of Grote’s History for which this reading fails to account. Forms of periodization are themselves meaningful not simply as a means of discriminating historical sources, but also as narrative frames for interpreting these sources against the background of the entire historical process. In this sense, Grote’s category of legendary times does not 10

See esp. Momigliano (1994 [1952]), and Chambers (1996). On this issue see Brosius (1990). 12 See e.g. Grote (2004 [1843]); Mill J. S. (1978 [1846]); Lewes (2004 [1847]); Momigliano (1994 [1952]); Huxley (1996). 11


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present itself as a period proper, but as the outcome of a metahistorical category (myth), which explicitly claims not to correspond to a historical world as a whole. As Grote notes in the preface to his work, one cannot ‘undraw the curtain’ of myth and disclose the historical picture. ‘The “curtain is the picture.” . . . [It] conceals nothing behind, and cannot by any ingenuity be withdrawn’ (1862, i. p. viii). This contention, I would argue, is not merely the result of Grote’s critical stance towards myth; it is also significant for the way his historiographic narrative posits a historical frame around itself. Once the period before 776 bc is dissociated from the historical process and even the years between this date and the historical period narrated by Herodotus are seen as inadequate claimants to the status of history owing to the ‘faulty state of evidence’ (1862, i. p. vi), then the Greek past acquires a new time-frame around which it constructs itself; a frame that differs both from those used in antiquity and from those deployed by Grote’s predecessors. The assumed centre of this frame, as we shall see in the next section, was the very conflict that allowed Graeco-European historiography to pronounce and defend its unity: the Persian Wars. This meant that the Persian Wars acquired a dual function in Grote’s History. They were both an event of the past and the foundation of a metahistorical discourse, the moment that set out the limits of historiography and legitimized the exclusive right of the Graeco-European tradition to conceptualize and represent limits.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS WAR: DEFINING EUROPEAN HISTORY In a review article written in 1846 John Stuart Mill (1806–73) proclaimed the importance of Grote’s History by stating that [t]he true ancestors of the European nations are not those from whose blood they are sprung, but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance. The battle of Marathon even as an event in English history is more important than the battle of Hastings. (1978, 273)

Mill spoke with the passion of a keen student of the classics, who began to learn Greek at the age of 3. Yet he also spoke with the authority of a British official who, at 17, succeeded his father at the examiner’s office of the India House and, in 1836, acquired charge of the British East India Company’s relations with Indian states. The two roles, that of a Hellenist intellectual and that of a citizen of an imperial power, merged fully in Mill’s figuration of European history. On the one hand, his classical education (a typical qualification of Victorian officials in colonial administration) instilled in him a deep admiration for Greece, which he saw as the foundation of modern (European)

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civilization. ‘Philosophy, mathematics, arts and historical literature,’ he wrote, ‘in short, every aspect of the tradition of which the modern world makes its boast began with the Greeks’ (ibid. 273–4). On the other hand, Mill’s involvement in colonial politics confirmed his belief in the unique right of Europe to lay claim to the Greek heritage. His Hellenism was thus mediated by the assumption of a direct link between the Greek and the modern European traditions. It was conditioned by the dual premise that the Greeks were the ancestors of European nations and also that the latter were Greece’s privileged successors and beneficiaries. There was, however, a major rupture in the line linking Greece to modern Europe. The first major ‘heirs’ to the Greek world, apart from Rome and the eastern Byzantine empire, were to be found outside European boundaries. They belonged to the continent against which Europe defined its identity, namely Asia. Mill was well aware that Europe’s engagement with the Greeks would have been unthinkable without the mediation of Asiatic, and particularly Arabic, scholarship. From the sixth- and seventh-century Syriac and Persian translations of philosophy and science to the remarkable Graeco-Arabic translation movement of Baghdad between the eighth and tenth centuries (see Gutas 1998)—an enterprise that was vital for the Renaissance’s engagement with antiquity—Asian cultures had played a key role in the modern European revival of the Greek heritage. Greece itself, as a cultural territory of the modern world, represented in histories and travel writing, had had an ambiguous geographical status, which was no less linked to the East, the Balkans, and the presumably Orientalized southern Europe, than it was to the alleged spiritual heir of Greek antiquity, namely western Europe. If Mill was passionate about declaring ancient Greece’s cultural superiority and primacy, he was equally zealous to disallow its eastern heirs to draw the boundaries of European civilization by affirming a direct link to the Greek tradition. It was precisely this exclusive relation that formed the link between Hellenism and Orientalism. Indeed, it made Hellenism the very foundation of Orientalist discourse, if we understand by Orientalism not only the specific views of Asia, but also the right to speak for and in the name of the Orient. Said’s Orientalism, as Talal Asad has argued, was not merely a catalogue of western misconceptions and biases. Neither was it principally an evaluation of the scholarly acceptability of western studies of the history of Asia. It was both of these things, but not only and not principally. The book’s outstanding contribution, according to Asad, rather lay in analysing the ‘authoritative structure of Orientalist discourse’, ‘the closed, self-evident, self-affirming character of that distinctive discourse’. Its fundamental contention was not therefore that western scholarship on the ‘Orient’ must be reappraised and rejected (whether altogether or in part), but that ‘the authority of orientalist discourse—that which enables this discourse to reproduce itself essentially unchallenged—must


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be seen as a problem, and understood as such within the context of the institutional, political and socio-economic conditions in which Orientalism has flourished’ (1980, 648). This enterprise could not only ground itself in a narrow ‘battles’ view of the ancient heritage, despite the significance attached to the Greek War of Independence by nineteenth-century Philhellenism and the latter’s attempt to reclaim the newly established modern Greek state for Europe. The selfpositioning of Orientalism also needed a broader frame of cultural, intellectual, and institutional conflict between Europe and Asia. This means that Mill’s lineage required a beginning beyond the event of war, a principle that would legitimize the Graeco-European cultural voice, while confirming the silence of the other. Such a beginning was provided by Grote’s configuration of the Persian Wars as the inaugural moment and structural centre of both historical and historiographic time in Greek antiquity. In order to understand this contention it is, first, important to note that Grote’s main source on the Graeco-Persian opposition, Herodotus, offers a frame for the Persian Wars which extends back to the furthest possible historical and temporal boundaries. As Hans van Wees aptly puts it, ‘Herodotus’ interest in the past knew no limits’ and took in ‘the origins and achievements of all known nations’ of his time (2002, 321). This choice allowed Herodotus to include in his history both Greek and non-Greek accounts of the opposition, however distorted the latter may be considered to be. If one chooses to read Herodotus’s preface literally and approach the Histories as an account of the great deeds of mankind, rather than of a region, then the war between Greeks and barbarians, as van Wees suggests, is not the whole, but only the end of his story (ibid.). In other words, it is books 1–5 of the Histories that determine the position of the Persian Wars in historiography, not books 6–9, that is, not the war narrative, but the choice of historical and temporal frame.13 While this frame is structurally grounded in the opposition between Europe and Asia, it nevertheless posits a cycle of conflicts which are—at least in principle—determinable by both participants, in so far as these participants occupy a shared historical time, rather than emerging from an inaugural—and therefore timeless—dividing moment. By contrast, Grote removes the Persian Wars from a worldly context by excluding from history those aspects of the past that are not strictly related to the outcome of the battles. What only matters for world history, as he claims at the outset of his narrative on the ‘Persian invasion’, was the chain of events that took place after the wars, the ‘glories’ of the two centuries between 500 and 300 bc, which gave Greece its significance for ‘the destinies of mankind’ (1862, iii. 223). The restriction of Greece’s temporal frame is evident in Grote’s use of geography as the key narrative code for organizing the events that preceded the 13

I am greatly indebted to Robin Osborne for the formulation of this argument.

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wars and were not directly linked to their political outcomes for Greece. His first volumes on ‘historical Greece’ characteristically privilege spatial over temporal categories. Their aim is to draw a map of the Greek, and by implication European, world and what lies outside its limits. They thus begin with a chapter entitled the ‘general geography and limits of Greece’, and include chapters on the ‘Asiatic Ionians’, the ‘Lydians–Medes–Cimmerians–Scythians’ the ‘Phenicians’ (sic), the ‘Assyrians’, the ‘Egyptians’ and so forth. Yet such a geography entails a static image of non-Greek cultures, which acts in turn to remove them from the historical process by dissociating them from the dynamics of time. Meanwhile Herodotus perceives the same cultures through an evolving temporal frame, which follows the Persian military enterprise and political transformation. As Thomas Harrison points out, it is the Persians’ gradual expansion that ‘provides the narrative hook on which Herodotus hangs the descriptions of the customs or nomoi of foreign peoples’ (2002, 555). What is more, the cultural frame to which Herodotus links political history designates, in Virginia Hunter’s terms, a complex and diffusionist process, whereby civilization develops through indigenous discoveries which get to be transmitted from one people to another (1982, 272). Grote transforms this narrative of the past as process14 into an immobile moment centred on the event of the wars. It is not coincidental that the only chapter titles of Grote’s History which evoke a temporal frame for the period before the wars are those that are strictly linked to the Greek political and institutional history which followed the conflict: the formation of the Peloponnesian League and the political condition of Sparta, the age of the ‘Grecian Despots’, the ‘Solonian Laws and Constitution’ or the development of Greek ‘colonies’. Categories of time and periodization involve attempts to control visibility, presence, and agency within traditions which shape both past and present times. Grote’s restriction of Greek history to a time-frame defined by the Persian Wars excluded from ‘history’ a range of traditions coming from outside Greece and to which Herodotus ascribed a historical voice. Throughout his volumes Grote focuses almost exclusively on the Greek sources as the medium for understanding antiquity, while simultaneously stressing the opposition between these sources and the Oriental tradition.15 This was a political choice, which took the form of critique of the sources. The term ‘political’, however, needs to be understood here not as a personal attachment or bias (though there is enough of this too), but as Grote’s involvement in these wider cultural and intellectual politics which, from antiquity to the nineteenth century, had mediated the very preservation and discovery of ancient ‘sources’. One cannot ignore these politics on the grounds of Momigliano’s claim that Grote’s 14

The category derives from Virginia Hunter’s insightful book on the topic (1982). See e.g. his account of Deiokes in (1862), ii. 415. In this respect it is useful to observe that Mitford in his History deplored the loss of Oriental sources for understanding antiquity. On this issue see Brosius (1990). 15


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category of legendary times was not disputed, at least as a methodological statement, by subsequent archaeological findings, in so far these findings simply provided the evidence that he himself lacked (1994 [1952], 21–2) For the lack of ‘discoveries’ was not merely the cause of the historian’s choice, but also the symptom of a broader politics of historiography and archaeology,16 which itself determined the investigation for and discrimination of ‘sources’, and in relation to which Grote defined his history. The structure of Grote’s History both allowed the Greek writings to offer a self-validating frame for the Persian Wars and simultaneously construed the event of the wars as a narrative frame for the Greek tradition. The latter claim was further sustained by Grote’s argument that the Greek—and specifically Athenian—resistance to Persia designated the role of Greece within a wider temporal frame, that of European and world history. ‘It is out of the invasion of Xerxes’, he argued, that those new powers of combination, political as well as military, which lighten up Grecian history during the next two centuries, take their rise. They are brought into agency through the altered position and character of the Athenians . . . and the earliest of all Greeks who showed themselves capable of organising and directing the joint action of numerous allies and dependents: thus uniting the two distinctive qualities of the Homeric Agamemnon—ability in command, with vigour in execution. (1862, iv. 3)

Those ‘new powers of combination’ and command, the qualities that distinguished Greece at war, were not confined to military excellence, but characterized the distinct and distinctly progressive culture of Greece against the stagnant mentality of Asia. Hence in the event of the Persian Wars, Grote wrote, we contrast the progressive spirit of Greece, serving as herald and stimulus to the like spirit of Europe, with the stationary mind of Asia, occasionally roused by some splendid individual, but never appropriating to itself new social ideas or powers, either for war or for peace (1862, iv. 3).

The first of these passages, by its reference to Agamemnon, seems to tie in Xerxes’ invasion to the broader historical picture which opens the first chapters of Herodotus. Yet it does so with a twist. In Grote this picture becomes meaningful through the frame of the Greek conflict with Persia. It is not only that this war presents each conflicting part as the photographic negative of the other. It is also that this conflict furnishes the historian with what may be 16 It is indicative, in this respect, that James Mill’s History of British India, first published in 1818, mocked India’s claims to historical consciousness and dismissed the admiration with which scholars such as William Jones approached the Hindu legends. Mill sustained his claim in terms that were to be repeated by Grote. He argued that such ‘fictions’ are ‘marks of a rude age’ and have to be rewritten in the proper language of ‘critical’ or ‘judging history’ (1858, i. 107–8, and p. xviii).

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called historiography’s point zero: the narrative centre through which Grote approaches the entire Greek history, from Agamemnon to the institutions of Athens, as a unity, and defines its significance for the history of mankind. Mill recognizes precisely this centre when he describes Grote’s account of Greek antiquity as revolving around the battle of Marathon: From the legislation of Solon to the field of Marathon, a hundred years of preparation; from Marathon to Chaeroneia, barely a hundred and fifty years of maturity:— that century and a half is all that separates the earliest recorded prose writing from Demosthenes and Aristotle, all that lies between the first indication to the outer world of what Greece was destined to be, and her absorption by a foreign conqueror. (1858, 313)

If the years from Solon to Marathon were a time for preparing Greece, then it is the battle itself, the war between Europe and the Orient, that inaugurates and simultaneously authorizes the Greek tradition and all that Greece was destined to be (for Europe). Grote himself offers an explicit justification of this structure, when he argues that ‘[t]he invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and the final repulse of his forces, constitute . . . the principal object of his whole history, towards which the previous matter is intended to conduct.’ While he recognizes that ‘[a]midst those prior circumstances, there are doubtless many which have a substantive importance and interest of their own’, he confirms that their recounting at so much length makes them appear ‘coordinate and principal, so that the thread of the history is for a time put out of sight’. If however, in recounting Herodotus, we omit ‘the occasional prolixities of detail’ and ‘bring together the larger divisions’ of his history, then this thread can be traced again throughout the work: from the ‘preface and the statement immediately following—of Croesus as the first barbaric conqueror of the Ionian Greeks—down to the full expansion of [its] theme, “Graecia Barbariae lento collisa duello,” in the expedition of Xerxes’ (1862, ii. 362–3). As the originating conflict of Greek history and the thread that organized this history’s coherence, war was thus conceptually prior to the parties it separated. In the narrative of European engendering the Persian Wars signified a beginning that came before the ‘beginning’ (i.e. Greece), they split up Greece and Persia (i.e. Europe and Asia) before the articulation of their respective identities. In other words they marked a pre-temporal and pre-historical event, an event that resisted narrativization and thereby foreclosed the possibility of being reinscribed within alternative historical perspectives. Such a concept provided Grote with what Michel de Certeau has defined as historical arche-, in the sense of beginning, but also that of principle and power, a narrative moment which engenders historical speech, but is itself positioned beyond the realm of articulation, before the possibility of historical consciousness. For the category of arche-, as de Certeau puts it, is ‘nothing of what can be said.’ It


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is only insinuated into the historical text ‘through the labour of division’ on which the text is itself rooted (1999, 35). This arche- delineated a historical origin that was capable of sustaining European unity without simultaneously disqualifying the distinct folk and national–historical traditions that were crucial to nineteenth-century nationalist movements. Grote’s History, as an appeal to England’s classical heritage, was therefore the necessary counterpart of the contemporaneous The Saxons in England (1849), by John Mitchell Kemble, which deployed the tradition of German folk studies to suggest a continuity between Saxon and Norman England. While Kemble forged a history of the English people that began with the Teutonic migrants from northern Germany and was confirmed in the events of the Norman invasion (see Bentley (1997), 440), Grote built England’s links to a western or European past by constructing the thread that linked Greek to modern European history. It is not a coincidence that the two seemingly antithetical historical lines, the Graeco-European and the modern English one, were soon to be combined in the work of the most eminent proponent of the ‘continuity thesis’ in English historiography, Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92). While Freeman’s monumental account of the Norman conquest (1867–79), together with his appraisal of the relationship between Saxon and Norman England in his Select Charters of 1860, marked a high point in English constitutionalism (see Bentley (1997), 440–1), his History of Federal Government (1893 [1863]), which ranged from ‘the Foundation of the Achaian League’ to ‘the Disruption of the United States’, pointed to England’s links to the Western or European heritage. As the editor of the second edition of the history, J. B. Bury, observed, Freeman strengthened the relation—already established by Grote—between the politics of (Federal) Greece and ‘the politics of modern England and America’ (Freeman (1893), p. xiv), and by doing so he put forward a concept of European history and politics. The role of the latter as a historical narrative that merged with national histories was exemplified in Freeman’s Historical Geography of Europe (1881) (one of the first works claiming to portray a historical exploration of the European territory),17 which stretched European history back to antiquity by taking as its starting point an atlas of Greece and the Persian empire. This time-frame acted in turn to dissociate Greece from the ancient context and bestow on it the qualities of a future vision. Grote’s inaugural division allowed Greek antiquity to become not merely the past of Europe, but also the legitimization of its present trajectory, and thus the confirmation of Europe’s exemplary potential.18 We have already examined how this move was articulated 17

On this issue see Baker (2003), 175–6. One must locate this move within the wider frame of Victorian historical consciousness, whose obsession with the past, as Levine has argued, was predicated on their preoccupation with posterity and involved a strongly teleological conception of history: ‘a history governed by Providence and reaching towards the triumph of imperial England’ (1986, 176). 18

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in the idea of ‘modern’ critical historiography and the temporalization of history writing that linked modern historians to the Greek tradition. It is now possible to conclude this discussion by observing how modern historiography, as a metahistorical category, grounded its claim to universality in an original separation from world history. Its modern status did not therefore convey a relation to the past as a social reality or experience (or the past ‘in itself’), but a relation to historiography per se, that is, to what historical consciousness has left behind or excluded. Its validation did not directly rest on its relation to its object, but on the rupture this relation created between the ‘historical’ and its absence. This means, however, that critical historiography, as the attribute of the modern tradition, was not a way of discovering the ‘truth’ about the past, but a means of defining the frontier of history writing and thus the divide between the historical place of European modernity, as the culmination of the Greek tradition, and the place where the other lacks a historical voice. It is difficult, while working within the European tradition, to perceive the historical limits of this place, to ‘provincialize’ Europe and ‘deparochialize’ its origin, as both Chakrabarty (2000) and Geoffrey Lloyd (1996) suggest in different contexts. How can one conceptualize modern ‘critical’ historiography not as history proper, but as merely one way doing of doing history among others? This chapter has sought to proceed in this direction by investigating whether the question of historiography’s ‘modernity’ did not merely lie in the so-called ‘critical’ methods, but in the construction of the ‘modern’ through the reframing of the Greek tradition. Such an argument does not involve a mere rejection of modern historiography, on the grounds of its cultural specificity; nor does it entail a simple negation of the special link between Greek and European traditions. What provincializing Europe calls for rather is the recognition that Europe’s claim to modernity, as Chakrabarty argues (2000, 21), ‘is a piece of global history of which an integral part is the story of European imperialism’; the understanding that Europe’s use of the term ‘modern’ to describe, among other things, its historical consciousness was an act of intervention at a global level; and the investigation of the ways this act evoked antiquity to disguise its imperialist character and present itself as universal. This move points towards two further historiographic directions. The first, which falls beyond my expertise, is the investigation of non-European historiographic perspectives.19 What concepts do the Persian records provide for the understanding of the historical experience of the conflict with Greece? How do these records configure historiographic practice? Does the Persian language codify the intellectual and political experience which the Persian culture has been supposed to lack? Is there, for example, a Persian equivalent for the western freedom?20 The second 19

With regard to Achaemenid history this direction is followed in the volumes of Achaemenid History edited by Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Amélie Kuhrt et al. (Leiden 1988–98). 20 I am grateful to Matt Edge for positing this question about Persian freedom.


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direction, to which I will briefly turn in the final section, is the reading of western historiography against its authors’ apparent intentions and the identification of routes through which the historiographic text contradicts itself and points towards the historical and cultural continuity between Europe and its other.

THE PARADOX OF (ORIENTAL) DESPOTISM Grote’s History did not merely proclaim the coherence of the European heritage. It also explicitly sought to disrupt this heritage by indicating its internal historical and political conflicts. The historian delineated this direction at the outset of his book, when he presented his history as a critique of antidemocratic accounts of antiquity (1862, i. p. iii) and thus aligned his historiographic writing with his political convictions and activity: his affiliation with utilitarianism and philosophical radicalism along the lines of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, and his parliamentary role (1833–41) in support of political reform aiming at a representative form of government, a secret ballot, and frequently held elections.21 Indeed, Grote’s interest in the Greek past, as most of his critics have pointed out, was inseparable from his political pursuits. His call for a ‘new history of Greece’, a history that, in Frank Turner’s words, would use the Greek paradigm to ‘demonstrate the . . . benefits of democracy’ evolved ‘directly out of his activity in radical politics during the 1820s’ and aimed to further his ideological and political agenda (1981, 213–14). In this perspective Grote’s conception of the Persian Wars evoked the ‘other’ to signify a division conceived as also pertaining to European history: that between despotism (or autocracy) and the liberal politics, which the circle of philosophical radicals associated with modern parliamentary democracy. The claim, while not unknown to European political thought, indicated a critical stance towards established conceptual conventions. The category of despotism, which had been introduced into western political vocabularies by Montesquieu,22 had been predominantly deployed to designate Oriental regimes, rather than a European political tradition. Montesquieu put the issue succinctly in 1721, when one of the fictional characters of the Persian Letters observed that ‘[l]iberty would seem to have been intended for the genius of the European races, and slavery for that of the Asiatics’ 21

On this issue see Vaio (1996), 65. Montesquieu did not, however, coin the word despotism, which was already used in France by aristocratic and Protestant opponents of Louis XIV in the 1690s. For a history of the term and concept of despotism see Richter (1973–4). 22

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(1899, 67). The contention was somewhat qualified in The Spirit of the Laws, where Montesquieu, while maintaining the division, envisioned restrictions on Oriental despotic power by what he called the spirit of the nation and acknowledged despotism as a real possibility—and danger—for the other two, presumably European, forms of government, namely monarchy and the republic (which included for him both aristocratic and democratic regimes) (1989 [1748], 29–30, 116–17).23 Yet until the end of the eighteenth century Montesquieu’s theory of despotism was largely construed as exclusively pertaining to Oriental politics and opposed to the liberal political traditions of Europe.24 Grote’s critique of this division was largely implicit and derived from the ambiguity of ancient models: Herodotus’ negative presentation of tyrants along the lines of the despotic template25 and the critique of the Athenian imperial tyranny emerging from Thucydides’ speeches.26 At the most immediate level, Grote’s concept of despotism was applied to Persia in order to denote absolute obedience to the king along the lines of a master and slave relationship. When for example he described the rise of Cyrus to power, he wrote that, [t]o a people of this character, whose conceptions of political society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm of which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them masters. (1862, iii. 186)

Furthermore, his account of Persian ‘dynasties’ as based on force and irrationality endorsed the idea of Oriental lawlessness and abuse of power: The rise and fall of Oriental dynasties has been in all times distinguished by the same general features. A brave and adventurous prince, at the head of a population at once poor, warlike, and greedy, acquires dominion—while his successors, abandoning themselves to sensuality and sloth, probably also to oppressive and irascible dispositions, become in process of time victims to those same qualities in a stranger which had enabled their own father to seize the throne. (1862, iii. 157)

Yet, on a different narrative level, Grote conspicuously refrained from applying the word ‘despotism’ to designate Persian politics or ‘despot’ to refer to the Persian kings, while he consistently deployed the terms to refer to Greek tyranny. This use of the terms, while to a large extent Herodotean, led Grote

23

For a further discussion of this point see Grosrichard (1998), 3–52. On this issue see Richter (1973–4). A notable attempt at criticizing Montesquieu’s theory of Oriental despotism was made by Anquetil-Duperron’s Legislation Orientale (1778), who deployed both literary sources and his own observations to refute the claim that Asian governments are necessarily arbitrary and lawless. See Whelan (2001). 25 On this issue see Dewald (2003), 26–32. 26 On this issue see Tuplin (1985). 24


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even to translate Herodotus’ ‘tyrant’ by ‘despot’ (see for example Grote’s translation of Herodotus 5.78 in 1862, iii. 151). What is more, Grote deployed the word ‘despot’ to describe the relationship between Athens and her allies after the end of the Persian Wars. In accounting for the development of the Delian League, he followed Thucydides in arguing that ‘[t]he allies slid unconsciously into subjects, while Athens, without any predetermined plan, passed from a chief into a despot’ (1862, iv. 54). Grote admittedly sought to justify this transition by claiming that the transference of the military force of the subject-states to Athens was ‘their own act’, just as ‘that of so many of the native princes in India’ who had offered their forces to the English (1862, iv. 54). Yet he was also certain that this act of consent transformed the Athenian city into a despotic force. When several of the confederate states grew tired of paying the tribute and became averse to continuing as members, he wrote, they made successive attempts to secede. But Athens, acting seemingly in conjunction with the synod, repressed their attempts by conquering, fining, and disarming the revolters. So by ‘strictly enforcing the obligation of the pact upon unwilling members, and by employing coercion against revolters’ Athens became a despot: every successive change of an armed ally into a tributary, every subjugation of a seceder enfeebled the Delian synod and ‘altered the reciprocal relation and feelings both of Athens and her allies—exalting the former into something like a despot, and degrading the latter into mere passive subjects’ (1862, iv. 54, 90). Grote did not offer a straightforward appraisal of this slippage. While seeking to legitimize the Athenian position as based on consensus rather than coercion, he did not fail to detect the links between imperial and despotic rule. He indeed went to great pains to convince his reader that the transfer of the common fund of the League from Delos to Athens was proposed by the Samians and accepted as reasonable by the allies, and was thus ‘no high-handed and arbitrary exercise of power, as it is often called, on the part of Athens’ (1862, iv. 91). At the same time, however, he invited this reader to ‘comprehend the powerful feelings of dislike and apprehension . . . diffused so widely over Greece against the upstart despot-city; whose ascendancy, newly acquired, maintained by superior force, and not recognised as legitimate— threatened nevertheless still farther increase’ (1862, iv. 92). The Greek tradition of despotism, emerging from Grote’s pages, creates an anomaly within the Orientalist discourse, a lacuna—the absence of the term in Grote’s description of the Persians—and a surplus—the use of despotism to refer to Greek politics, and democratic Athens in particular. The voice of the other, by declaring its own silence, also acts to disrupt it. Despotism is not external to the Greek tradition. It appears both as its past, in the form of despotic tyranny, and as its consequence, in the form of the despot-polis. While the former of these categories sustains Grote’s political agenda, by linking the Athenian glory to the city’s opposition to despotic tyranny, the latter acts to qualify his idea of democracy by pointing out the

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limits of a regime grounded in the arbitrariness of imperial oppression. Such a contention, derived as it was from antinomies inherent in the interlinking of modern democracy and British imperial politics,27 had important ideological implications for both the modern democratic principle, which Grote apparently espoused, and the foundational conflict with the Orient on which this principle was positioned. It not only indicated the boundaries which both ancient and modern democracies set for themselves by asserting the legitimacy of political subjects; it also suggested that the emergence of these subjects had to affirm both their sovereignty and at one and the same time their integration into a context of domination framed by the absolute opposition between political and non-political subjectivity. As the negative face of European liberty and democracy, despotism would thus seem to remain the very quintessence of these principles, emerging through their roots in division and denial. As an empty space in the European discourse which constructed this division, Grote’s category of Greek despotism would destabilize the frontier of European politics and challenge the inaugurating rupture though which this politics authorized itself. To bring Grote to encounter this rupture entails a return to the moment that his own history designated as its beginning: the Persian Wars. Yet we can now conclude that this moment did not signify an event of the past, but a narrative point of origin, a frame though which historiography set the limits of the historical, and by doing so, registered its links to the political limits which it sought to conceptualize. In such an encounter the historian becomes visible not as the critical investigator, but, in de Certeau’s terms (1999, 34), as an unassailable absence within the text, a lack which is the other that ceaselessly moves and misleads him. This lack, a mark of Grote’s denial of the other, is, however, also the point of questioning the inaugural division, the frame through which historiography pronounces its arche- as both principle and power. If, as Heraclitus said (fr. 80),28 war is what is common, what brings together the conflicting parties, then the Persian Wars, the wars that served as the origin of the historical, are also the conflict which reveals the inextricable links of this arche- to history writing.

27 The tension between the image of Greece as the opposite of despotism and the intrusion of the despotic principle into the European tradition echoes James Mill’s description of English imperial rule in India as both liberating and despotic (1992, 15) Yet in The History of British India Mill seems more certain than Grote about the force of the model of Asiatic despotism among the Hindus as well as the moral legitimacy of imperial despotism imposed on them (see Stokes 1959, 92). 28 I am indebted to Stephen Hodkinson for his suggestion to link this argument to Heraclitus’ conception of war.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY Asad, T. (1980). Review of Said’s Orientalism. In English Historical Review 95.376: 648–9. Baker, A. (2003). Geography and History. London and New York. Bentley, M. (1997). ‘Introduction: Approaches to Modernity. Western Historiography since the Enlightenment’, in id. (ed.), Companion to Historiography. London and New York, 395–508. Bowden, H. (1998). ‘Great and Wonderful Deeds: the Changing Historiography of the Persian Wars.’ Dialogos. Hellenic Studies Review 5: 101–10. Brosius, M. (1990). ‘Two Views on Persian History in Eighteenth-Century England’, in H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and J. W. Drijvers (eds.), The Roots of the European Tradition: Proceedings of the 1987 Groningen Achaemenid History Workshop. Leiden, 79–89. Ceserani, G. (2005). ‘Historicity and Practices of Historiography: Eighteenth-Century Histories of Ancient Greece.’ Paper presented at the conference Ancient Histories and Modern Historicities, May 2005, Cambridge. Chakrabarty, D. (1992). ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for Indian Pasts?’ Representations 37: 1–26. —— (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton and Oxford. Chambers, M. (1996). ‘George Grote’s History of Greece’, in W. M. Calder III and S. Trzaskoma (eds.), George Grote Reconsidered. Hildesheim, 1–22. De Certeau, M. (1999). ‘Writings and Histories’, in G. Ward (ed.), The Certeau Reader. London, 23–35. Dewald, C. (2003). ‘Form and Content: The Question of Tyranny in Herodotus’, in K. A. Morgan (ed.), Popular Tyranny: Sovereignty and its Discontents in Ancient Greece. Austin, 25–58. Freeman, E. A. (1867–79). The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and its Results. Oxford. —— (1881). Historical Geography of Europe. 2 vols. London. —— (1893 [1863]). History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, ed. J. B. Bury. London and New York. Gillies, J. (1786). The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies, and Conquests; From the Earliest Accounts till the Division of the Macedonian Empire in the East. 2 vols. London. Grosrichard, A. (1998). The Sultan’s Court: European fantasies of the East, trans. L. Heron. London. Grote, G. (2004 [1843]). ‘Grecian Legends and Early History’, in K. N. Demetriou (ed.), Classics in the Nineteenth Century: Responses to George Grote, v. 1, Bristol, 285–328. —— (1862 [1846–56]). A History of Greece: From the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great. 8 vols. London. Gutas, D. (1998). Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). London and New York.

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Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian. Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy. Oxford. —— (1993). ‘Asia Unmanned: Images of Victory in Classical Athens’, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Greek World. London, 108–33. Harrington, J. (1992). The Commonwealth of Oceana; and A System of Politics, ed. J. G. A. Pocock. Cambridge. Harrison, T. (2000). The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century. London. —— (2002). ‘The Persian Invasions’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. De Jong, and H. van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus. Leiden, Boston, and Cologue, 551–78. Hartog F. (1988 [1980]). The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History, trans. J. Lloyd. Berkeley and London. Hunter, V. J. (1982). Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides. Princeton. Huxley, G. (1996). ‘George Grote on Early Greece’, in W. M. Calder III and S. Trzaskoma (eds.), George Grote Reconsidered. Hildesheim, 23–42. Kemble, J. M. (1849). The Saxons in England: A History of the English Commonwealth till the Period of the Norman conquest. 2 vols. London. Koselleck, R. (1985 [1979]). Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe. Cambridge, Mass. Kuhrt, A. (1995). The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 BC. 2 vols. London. —— and Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. (1987). ‘Introduction’, Achaemenid History II. The Greek Sources. Proceedings of the Groningen 1984 Achaemenid History Workshop. Leiden, pp. ix–xiii. —— —— (1988). ‘Introduction’, Achaemenid History III. Method and Theory. Proceedings of the Groningen 1985 Achaemenid History Workshop. Leiden, pp. xi–xv. Levine, P. (1986). The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886. Cambridge. Lewes, G. H. (2004) [1847]. ‘Grote’s History of Greece: The Homeric Poems’, in K. N. Demetriou (ed.) Classics in the Nineteenth Century: Responses to George Grote, v. 1 (Bristol), 381–415. Lianeri, A. (forthcoming). ‘The Homeric Moment? Translation, Historicity and the Meaning of the Classics’, in C. Martindale and R. Thomas (eds.), Classics and the Uses of Reception. London. Lloyd, G. E. R. (1996). Adversaries and Authorities. Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. Cambridge. Lytton, E. B. (2004 [1837]). Athens: Its Rise and Fall: With Views of the Literature, Philosophy, and Social Life of the Athenian People, ed. O. Murray. London and New York. Mill, J. (1858 [1818]). The History of British India. 10 vols. London. Mill, J. S. (1978 [1846]). ‘Grote’s History of Greece I ’, in Essays on Philosophy and the Classics. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson. Toronto and London, xi. 271–306. Mitford, W. (1835 [1784–1810]). History of Greece. 3 vols. London. Momigliano, A. (1994 [1952]). ‘George Grote and the Study of Greek History’, Studies in Historiography. New York, 15–31. —— (1990). The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography. Berkeley.


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Montesquieu, C. de Secondat, baron de (1899 [1721]). Persian Letters. 3 vols. London. —— (1989 [1748]). The Spirit of the Laws, ed. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller, and H. S. Stone. Cambridge. Osborne, R. (1996). Greece in the Making 1200–479 BC. London and New York. —— (1998). ‘Early Greek Colonisation?’, in N. Fisher and H. van Wees (eds.), Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence. London, 251–69. Raaflaub, K. A. (2004). The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, trans. R. Franciscono. 1st Eng. edn., rev. and updated from the German. Chicago and London. Richter, M. (1973–4). ‘Despotism’, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas. New York, 2–17. Said, E. (1995 [1978]). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Harmondsworth. Stokes, E. (1959). James Mill on India: The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford. Thirlwall, C. (1835–44). The History of Greece. 8 vols. London. Tuplin, C. (1985). ‘Imperial Tyranny: Some Reflections on a Classical Greek Political Metaphor’, in P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey (eds.), Crux: Essays in Greek History presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday. London, 348–75. Turner, F. M. (1981). The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain. New Haven and London. Vaio, J. (1996). ‘George Grote and James Mill: How to Write History’, in W. M. Calder III and S. Trzaskoma (eds.), George Grote Reconsidered. Hildesheim, 59–74. Van Wees, Hans (2002). ‘Herodotus and the Past’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. De Jong, and H. van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus. Leiden, Boston, and Cologue, 321–50. Vasunia, P. (2001). The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley. —— (2003). ‘Hellenism and Empire: Reading Edward Said’, Parallax 9.4: 88–97. Vlassopoulos, K. (2005). ‘Acquiring (a) Historicity: Greek History, Temporalities and Eurocentrism in the Sattelzeit (1750–1850).’ Paper presented at the conference Ancient Histories and Modern Historicities, May 2005, Cambridge. Whelan, F. (2001). ‘Oriental Despotism: Anquetil-Duperron’s Response to Montesquieu’, History of Political Thought 22.4: 619–47.


15 ‘People Like Us’ in the Face of History Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine Clemence Schultze

INTRODUCTION Among those who visited the Paris Salon of 1887 on the jour de vernissage which preceded the show’s official opening (1 May) were two aspiring artists: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and François Gauzi. Both were in their early twenties and came from the Midi; they were pupils in the teaching studio of Fernand Cormon. In his memoir of Lautrec, Gauzi records how they strolled through the rooms, encountering the fashionable, the famous, and the soonto-be-famous, and scanning some of the thousands of paintings on view. One of these, Les Vainqueurs de Salamine (Fig. 15.1), was the work of their master Cormon. It hung in the place of honour in the main hall of the Salon, facing the entrance; position and size1 ensured that every viewer received its full impact. In the main hall of the Salon, facing the entrance, was Cormon’s picture, ‘The Victors of Salamis,’ occupying the place of honour. Stark-naked women—Greek, naturally— [grecques naturellement, toutes nues] were waving palms and dancing before the victorious soldiers.

Thanks are due to Fiona Wilkes, the Librarian of Wolfson College, Oxford, and to the staffs of Durham University Library, the Bodleian, the Sackler Library and the Taylor Institution Library (Oxford); to Dr Chris Lloyd and Dr Karine Varley (Durham) for information about Boulanger; and to Marie-Françoise Wilson and Dimitri El Murr for help with French. I am most grateful to the Editors for their support and encouragement, and, above all, their patience. 1 Height 4.64 m.; length 7.67 m. Full data on medium, size, date, provenance, commission /purchase status, and past and current place of exhibition for paintings are available in the searchable database ‘Joconde: Catalogue des collections des musées de France’, maintained by the Direction des Musées de France under the Ministère de Culture: http://www.culture.gouv. fr/documentation/joconde/fr/pres.htm (This will hereafter be cited simply as Joconde).

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Figure 15.1 F. Cormon, Les Vainqueurs de Salamine (1887)

‘Those are the victors of Sala-Missy!’ [Voilà les vainqueurs de Salaminette!] said Lautrec. ‘The boss is in a good position. If he wins the big medal [la grosse médaille], we’ll present him with a silver-gilt palm too.’ A prediction which came to pass!2

When Cormon won, his success and future official commissions were thereby assured—and Lautrec gave him the promised palm.3 The anecdote is revealing, despite Gauzi’s imperfect—or deliberately exaggerated—recollection of the picture. Cormon’s life-sized Greek women are far from totally naked as they greet the victorious Athenians: bare arms wave branches and tambourines, some bare breasts spill from disordered drapery—that is all. Lautrec would have seen more nudity in the clubs he frequented in Montmartre. But perhaps Gauzi did indeed reliably recall Lautrec’s actual words: their mocking tone is hard to convey in translation.4 Gauzi proceeds to describe a few of the paintings by their friends and contemporaries which the two then saw, and which, his memoir suggests, were more to their taste than this oversized homage to an outdated grand tradition of history painting.

2

Gauzi (1954), 40 and (1957), 19 (but I have considerably modified Dinnage’s translation). Murray (1991), 76. 4 Minette is an endearment for a cat: ‘pussy’; specifically, a tabby cat; also a pet name for a girl or young woman; the gang in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is called ‘Patron-Minette’, for at the time when dawn streaks the night sky in a tabby pattern, phantoms and ruffians vanish from the scene. Thus there is undoubtedly a derogatory tone to Lautrec’s quip. 3

Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine

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Contemporaries would have recognized not only that Cormon’s painting asserted a claim to represent this highest of the genres, but also that the authority of the State—the now solidly established Third Republic—endorsed that claim. The picture was an official commission under the purchase system, and that fact was made manifest to all in the catalogue; its placing was prominent in the Salon; its vast scale rendered it suitable only for the largest of public buildings or museums;5 and, of course, its subject-matter was counted as historical, being loosely based upon Herodotus.6 As a celebration of Salamis and democratic Athens it formed a fitting counterpart to Jacques-Louis David’s tribute to Spartan virtue in Léonidas aux Thermopyles7 (1814), already in the Louvre. But contemporaries would equally have appreciated how distant in style it was from David’s classical nudes, for it has been influenced both by Romanticism and by Realism.8 Furthermore, in that the subject-matter is rendered through its impact on anonymous Athenian citizens rather than by stressing the person or personality of their leader Themistocles, it has something in common with historical genre paintings. These are well characterized as ‘embodiments of historical presence, rather than enactments of historical meaning’.9 Cormon’s work, it will be argued, represents a deliberate attempt to modernize and, to a degree, to democratize the tradition of large-scale history painting, by raising embodiment to the level of enactment. For insofar as the state was the only prospective buyer for works on such a scale, those chosen for purchase required credibility in the eyes of the public. An earlier work by Cormon, his Caïn of 1880, had achieved a stunning success by presenting its biblical subject matter in a mode which engaged with a whole range of current intellectual issues. In Les Vainqueurs de Salamine Cormon was attempting to repeat such a feat in relation to the classical world.

THE SALON SYSTEM AND STATE COMMISSIONS By 1887, the Salon system itself was a long-contested area, where organization, access, frequency, and the jury’s constitution and operation were all disputed. The Académie des Beaux-Arts played a role, as did several ministries, a number 5 After a spell in the Musée du Luxembourg, it was sent to the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Rouen in 1893. 6 Herodotus does not actually narrate the return of the Athenian army; he describes the prebattle evacuation of women and children to Troezen, Aegina, and Salamis (8.40–1) and the protracted return of Themistocles (8. 121–5). 7 Height 3.95m; length 5.31m (Joconde). 8 Murray (1991), 40–1. Boime (1971), 15–18 identifies a ‘Third Republic juste milieu’ as the preferred style of official art: Cormon fits this description. 9 Wright (1997), 47 (with reference to the French Restoration history painters); Mainardi (1987), 154–62.

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of other councils and advisory committees, and various artists’ associations. After the terrible biennium of 1870–1, which saw the French defeat at Sédan, the fall of Napoleon III and the Paris Commune, the Third Republic struggled to revive public art as one means of restoring national morale. The Ministre d’Instruction Publique took overall control, and devolved it to a Directeur des Beaux-Arts, working though administrative committees and artists who were actually within or at least were broadly aligned with the Académie. Greater support for history painting was provided in the conviction that great works informed the nation’s cultural life and maintained republican values.10 The level and apportionment of the financial support was as controversial as the organization of the system. Since 1804 a system of honoraria paid public tribute but only minimal rewards to those deemed the best; the real money came from sales. In Patricia Mainardi’s words,11 ‘the Salon became a store, and artists became free-market small producers’. The State both commissioned paintings itself—though it did not pay particularly well—and purchased some of those produced on an artist’s own initiative. The works were consigned to museums and public buildings throughout France.12 The number of paintings on view at the Salon steadily rose through the 1870s, peaking at 7,259 in 1880; the Palais des Champs-Elysées13 was hung sky-high with the works, and packed with members of all classes flocking to see them.14 Young painters vied for a start on the track of sales and commissions, so the pictures shown were an advertisement for their wares: the catalogues carefully provide contact addresses. The pictures which most appealed to the public were from lesser genres—landscape, portraits, genre scenes, still life—and one of the chief criticisms made of the Salon through the 1870s was that these categories were over-represented.15 The strain of reconciling, within the official Salon, the realities of production of art for the market with a rhetoric of high art whose function was to educate and uplift proved insupportable by the end of the 1870s. By 1885, the state-sponsored salon had come to an end. This was widely regarded as a victory for the producers—the artists—over the various bodies which had hitherto sought to control them by sanctions and stipulations.16 For the next five years the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français was the sole institution to fulfil a role comparable to that of the former official Salons, for it was not until 1890 that the annual (and more exclusive) Salon of the Société Nationale 10

Mainardi (1993), 37–55; Nord (1995), 179–88. Mainardi (1993), 14. 12 Sherman (1989), 40–54. 13 i.e. the Palais d’Industrie, renamed for the duration of the art exhibitions. 14 Mainardi (1993), 139–40. 15 Ibid. 135–44. 16 Henri Gervex exhibited at the Salon of 1885 Une séance du jury de peinture, memorializing the thirty-plus jury members voting on a large scale nude portrait; Cormon and Gervex himself appear. (Joconde). 11


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des Beaux-Arts was established. Each of the Salons of the Société des Artistes Français in the 1880s put well over 4,600 works on view; in 1887 there were 5,318.17 Among the various categories, paintings received by far the most attention from the media, for these Salons were still widely reviewed, summarized, and encapsulated into a range of souvenir-type publications.18 And the state still patronized the Salons, buying and commissioning art, which increasingly included large mural schemes for public buildings such as ministries, museums, and town-halls. Thus, despite the operation of a free market in art and the devolvement of administrative control into the hands of the artists, a residual but significant element of state presence remained. This would have been manifest in the large-scale commissions such as Les Vainqueurs de Salamine.

FERNAND CORMON (1845–1924) AND CAÏN (1880) Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormon, son of a popular playwright, was a Parisian by birth. He began his studies under Jean-François Portaels in Brussels before returning home to work under Alexandre Cabanel and Eugène Fromentin. The former specialized in strict academic history painting and portraiture; the latter’s Orientalism must have been a factor in Cormon’s early choice of subjects. His salon debut (La Mort de Mahomet) was in 1868; two years later he achieved a medal for Les Noces de Nibelungen; in 1875 La Mort de Ravana (its subject drawn from the Indian epic Ramayana) gained him the Prix de Salon. This work was acquired by the state and went to Toulouse. An extended stay in Tunisia provided the basis for a number of paintings on oriental themes, and after his return in 1877 he exhibited one or two paintings at the Salon approximately every other year. The one which established his reputation was his vast Caïn, exhibited at the Salon of 1880.19 A train of grimed and shaggy male figures, with muscular bodies and brutish features, troop across an endless desert; they carry a woman and some children on a litter; a young woman is borne in a man’s arms. The epigraph in the catalogue comes from Victor Hugo’s Légende des Siècles:20 Lorsqu’avec ses enfants couverts de peaux de bêtes Échevelé, livide au milieu des tempêtes Caïn se fut enfui de devant Jehovah . . . 17

Mainardi (1993), 47. Lemaire (1986) 70–3; 249–73 samples published criticisms from the 1880s, by Huysmans, Laforgue, De Maupassant, and Mirbeau. 19 Height 4.00 m, length 7.00m; now Museé d’Orsay (Joconde). 20 ‘La conscience’, the second poem of the first series (1859). ‘When with his children covered in animal skins, | dishevelled, livid in the midst of storms, | Cain betook himself to flight before Jehovah . . . ’ The original text reads ‘vêtus’, ‘clothed’, rather than ‘couverts’. 18

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Biblical subjects were of course central to the category of history painting but Cormon’s treatment was striking in its novelty. Not only did animal skins replace the flowing robes, and dirty dishevelment the usual cleansed appearance enjoyed by personages in history paintings, but the actual bodily forms themselves signalled a historical realism based on recent scientific research, far from the conventions of the academy.21 The past was getting longer and further away from the present, and was much less ‘historical’: Geology was pushing time back to unthought-of aeons, and since 1847 archaeologists in France and elsewhere had been discovering the remains of man-like tool-using beings 20,000–40,000 years old.22 Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) had been translated into French by Clémence Royer in 1862.23 Geology, archaeology, biology, as well as medicine and the infant science of psychology, all conspired to render problematic the established notions of art, nature, gender, and time which had been challenged by the Enlightenment but not yet toppled. In the sphere of art, photography, the handmaid of science and the rival of painting, added a further challenge of her own; and to cap it all, supposedly ‘primitive’ man was revealed as himself an artist with the discovery of cave paintings at Altamira, published in 1880. What was culture, what was mankind in this long sweep of time? What categories could remain fixed in the flux of evolution? Martha Lucy summarizes the impact of Cormon’s ‘evolutionary’ Caïn: figures from the biblical story were recast as a tribe of prehistoric cavemen, complete with animal pelts, prehistoric tools, and distinctly atavistic anatomies . . . The painting would be the sensation of the 1880 Salon, as much for its thrilling presentation of prehistoric life as for its controversial, scientifically-informed treatment of the human body. With the exhibition of this work, Darwinism and its sign entered the official arena of art as well as the critical discourse; reviewers were outraged by [these] bodies . . . 24

The men’s physique is so heavily muscled as to seem almost caricatured; heavy jaws and brow ridges mark their facial features. Successive drawings show that Cormon actually emphasized Cain’s apelike stance;25 Lucy stresses how he problematized the male body as unheroic, vulnerable, and in evolution. But Cormon employs a noticeable double standard when treating the female figures. The woman in the litter has rough hair, and upper arms as heavily muscled as a man’s; but she is clearly female, with long pendant breasts; two very young children clamber and cling to her; haunches of raw meat are borne on the litter in close proximity to her. The other, younger, woman is carried 21 22 23 24 25

Lucy( 2002), 113–18; Lucy (2003), section v. Lucy (2002), 107–13; Schnapp (1996); Groenen (1994). Nochlin (2003), section iii; Laurent (1987). Lucy (2003), section v. Lucy (2002), 114.


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by a young man; she holds on to him with a slender unmuscular arm; her hair is only notionally dishevelled; her skin is flawless, pale—like that of the small children—and clean. The older woman, while not entirely defeminized, is at any rate depicted as passing from the mother stage to that of the crone; while the younger woman is maiden or bride.26 Her near-nakedness and her infantilized, passive pose mean that she could be read either as lover or as victim of the man who carries her: contemporary viewers saw her as a bride.27 A work like this changed the terms of the discourse of the body in art. It influenced, for example, Degas’ conception of ‘Spartan boys exercising’ (a scene of challenge or courtship), where a line of boys and of girls face each other. It has been convincingly demonstrated that Degas reworked his original fairly conventional academic poses and also the features of both sexes ‘under the sign of the animal’.28 Contemporary cartoons and parodic imitation prove the painting’s notoriety: some years later, the pupils of the (rival) Jullian school of art presented Caïn as a fancy dress tableau. And it was the Caïn which gained Cormon the order of the Légion d’Honneur.

LES VAINQUEURS DE SALAMINE (1887) From 1883 onwards, Cormon ran a teaching studio, in effect taking over that of Léon Bonnat; Toulouse-Lautrec and other Bonnat pupils joined Cormon. The stress in the studio—voluntarily accepted by the pupils—was on academically correct drawing, especially from the nude figure: perpendiculars, proportions, foreshortening, and colour values were considered very important. Cormon was also willing to comment upon work the students did in their own time, and this was often of a more experimental nature.29 Cormon’s attitude was liberal, and students recalled that he encouraged personal innovation. As to subject-matter, Gauzi recalled that [Lautrec] scorned the subjects for sketching advised by the patron, drawn from the Bible, mythology and history. In his opinion, one ought to leave the Greeks in the Pantheon and the firemen’s helmets to David (laisser les Grecs au Panthéon et les casques de pompiers à David).30 26 See also Cormon’s Bear Hunt (Carcassonne) for similarly gendered difference in colour and attire. Exhibited at ‘Venus and Cain. Figures of prehistory 1830–1930’, Musée nationale des beaux-arts, Quebec http://www.mnba.qc.ca/venus/en/QuelquesOeuvres/ChasseOurs.html. Viewed 1 November 2005. 27 Lucy (2002), 113: contemporaries comment on her as ‘tout moderne dans sa beauté’ (E. About, cited in Lucy’s n. 17). 28 Lucy (2003), sections ii–iii. 29 Murray (1991), 39–81, esp. 39–42, 75–81. 30 Gauzi (1954), 25–26. Lécharny (1998), 12–15 on the origin of the term ‘pompier’ for a certain mode of academic art: it was current at latest by 1880.

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From a distance of five decades and after a total revolution in style,31 perhaps Gauzi truly saw little to choose between the classicism of David and what he is pleased to imply is the pompier academicism of Cormon; but in the context of 1887 the contrast would have been striking. Les Vainqueurs de Salamine is now rolled up in store in the Musée des BeauxArts at Rouen, and no access is possible. A small reproduction cannot convey what its impact must have been. Fortunately a detailed description by contemporary art critic Georges Lafenestre provides some notion of its colouring and general effect.32 In the foreground, on the left, two brown-haired girls, with dishevelled hair, arms and legs bare, holding each other by the hand, run forward, seen in profile, towards the right. The first, clad in tunic of bright yellow, red flowers in her hair, waves in her right hand an olive branch; the second is dressed in a red bodice and an embroidered tunic, saffron coloured. Behind them there turn in a circle several girls, shaking tambourines and sistra; other rounds of dancing women follow them in the distance. In the middle of the picture/marching obliquely towards the left, all the faces seen in profile, advances the troop of Athenians. The first rank is composed of five solders, of whom the furthest away, wearing a flat helmet, a cuirass and greaves of bronze, holds a mass of weapons on his shoulder. Next to him marches in the rank a blonde young woman, dressed in blue, who grasps in her arms a golden vase. The four other soldiers, legs and heads bare, one crowned with foliage, another with his forehead bound with a bloodstained cloth, sing at the top of their voices, holding each other by the shoulder. In the first plane, on the right, a cuirassed soldier, with a gilded visored casque, a Persian carpet over his arm, a pike in one hand and a buckler in the other, accompanies them at a run; he is followed by an ephebe, naked under his short flowing chlamys, and by a girl in a long red tunic, carrying under her left arm a painted idol in Egyptian style. Behind, in the second plane, in the middle of the crowd of men and women who brandish pell-mell, as they cry out, swords, lances, branches of foliage, Themistocles, head bare, mounted on a rearing horse, raises his head and his right arm towards the sky. In the rear, the blue sea with the line of the mountains of Attica, extending towards the left. On the right, ships’ sails stirred by the wind. Sky bright and clear.

It would seem that the picture is fairly bright in tone; this is true too of the sky and the sunlit ground in Caïn. A striking feature of that work, however, is the general monotony of hue: apart from the darkish reds of the carcasses, cream, sand, fawn, and brown prevail everywhere but the sky.33 Lafenestre’s description makes it

31 Gauzi composed the memoir shortly before his death in 1933: Gauzi (1954), 8: publisher’s introduction. 32 Lafenestre (1887), 1–2. ‘Vainqueurs’ forms the frontispiece, engraved by L. Massard, approx. 13 × 25 cm. The heading on p. 1 reads: ‘Recompenses données par la société des artistes français. | Médailles d’Honneur. | Peinture. | cormon (fernand), né à Paris, élève de Fromentin et de M. Cabanel. | Rue Rochechouart, 38. (Voir les Livres d’or de 1880, p. 57; 1884, p. 33; 1885, p. 36). | No. 594, Les Vainqueurs de Salamine. | H. 4m. 65—L. 7m. 65. Fig. grandeur naturelle.’ 33 Lacambre (1985), 627 compares the colouration to Daubigny and Courbet.


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clear that Les Vainqueurs has areas of intense and varied hues, some darker, some lighter in tone: the whole effect will be much more vivid and lively than is Caïn. Although the two pictures are almost identical in size, Les Vainqueurs includes many more figures. Their arrangement is also quite different. In Caïn, the troop is led by the hunched figure of Cain himself on the right, all but separated from his next followers, the two younger men who bear the poles of the litter: this stresses his tribal leadership yet his isolation even from his own kin, as the mass moves from left to right across the canvas. The composition of Les Vainqueurs de Salamine is much more complex. The men advancing from the ships on the right are almost in military formation, close and united; some hold and support each other, especially the central group; only a few towards the right have raised arms. Their ranks now also include women and children who have already joined them and have turned to march in step with the men: this solid mass presses from the right. The women on the left are much less unified: the two foremost women are advancing at a run: the right hand one has recognized someone, probably among the soldiers in the central group; the left hand one heads onwards as if possessed, and seems to be looking at heaven rather than at anyone in the ranks. The dancing women behind these two all have heads and gaze directed towards the right, where the army is, but their arms and bodies wave and face in different directions; some hands are linked, others free. Two studies for Les Vainqueurs are now in the Louvre.34 The first shows that the line-up of central soldier, woman, the four men with the arms around each other, and the elderly soldier above whom looms Themistocles, goes back to a stage before the grouping of the various women on the left was fully worked out. It must have been the core notion of the composition. What appears to be a group of three women is slightly indicated on the left, and they are perhaps dancing rather than running. The second sketch concentrates on the left side: in this the two running women almost face the viewer, and are headed as if to emerge from the picture just left of centre and join the spectator in the gallery: the finished composition keeps them much more within the area where the rank will advance. There is no figure in Les Vainqueurs as isolated as is Cain. Themistocles is admittedly differentiated from the rest of the troops by several compositional devices: the fact that he is mounted raises him above the foot soldiers; he is also in clear silhouette against the plain background of the sky. The diagonal spar and sails above him frame him in an open trapezoidal shape, the lower side of which is bounded by the elderly warrior’s tough hoplite spear. But he is not alone, for he is fronted and surrounded by his men, expressing unity, whereas Cain’s position conveys dissociation even from his own tribe. Where the eyes of the figures advancing from the right can be seen, they almost all look upwards, as does Themistocles. 34

Joconde; both are of the same size and on paper of the same colour.

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The figure at the middle of the picture is the soldier with the flat, bowlshaped helmet; he is at the apex of an inverted asymmetrical V, formed by the long line of the rank to the right, and the steeper angle of the running and dancing women. He too is in profile, silhouetted against the water of the bay. The woman next to him on the right is linked by her gaze to the young bareheaded warrior next right, and so the central soldier—who seems to march with a particularly determined step—stands temporarily alone. He demarcates the foremost point of advance of the rank, for ahead of him to the left are only children and women. The fighting men vary in age from elderly whitebeards to quite youthful: the fair man beneath Themistocles’ horse is the youngest that can be properly seen, and even he seems to be in his early twenties. All seem equally fit and active; one only is shown by his white bandage to be wounded. There are children who have joined the ranks or the dancing: a lad on the right follows the aged soldier, and two much younger children precede the central warrior. There are no babies; and old or even middle-aged women are conspicuously absent. The attire of many of the women on the left is somewhat in disarray, but only the foremost woman has one breast fully exposed, the other almost so. The blonde young man is bare-chested; only the lad is virtually naked, for his chlamys flies out behind him and covers nothing. The picture is full of authentic props—helmets, greaves, body armour, and so on—no doubt studied either from museum pieces, as was Cormon’s practice for some pictures, or from publications. Other markers are exotic, but recognizably so to viewers familiar with the spoils of ancient Egypt and the contemporary Near East. An Egyptian statue is held by the woman on the right, and a patterned carpet is hung over the elderly soldier’s arm: surely many a Parisian bourgeois household could have shown the like. Les Vainqueurs de Salamine aimed to address a well-known classical story in a mode which had a degree of novelty—partially perhaps derived from the treatment of Caïn. Like the latter, it depended upon scholarly research by using authentic archaeological finds as the ‘props’. It also presented the male body as capable of heroic achievement but in determinedly realistic terms: these are men, not statues; flesh, not marble come to life; they age, and—within limits—are vulnerable. A disciplined and entirely positive image is created by their coherence and comradeship. The female figures, on the other hand, are shown as active and assertive but within a context which nevertheless expresses a strongly gendered division of roles. Their running and dancing suggest lack of restraint, possibly even a degree of Bacchic wildness; only when they march within the ranks of the men is this controlled. The hints in the direction of nudity obviously suggest potential sexual activity, even, maybe, the availability of these women. But context and story restrict that availability to their husbands—as if Cormon again applies a double standard as to how and when women’s sexuality can be displayed, and even, perhaps, implies


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its function: the production of future soldiers. The picture also stresses civic unity in the celebration of victory: men, women, children, of (almost) all ages and all classes, come together, with Themistocles, the architect of victory, as a prominent (yet not foregrounded) figure.

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT: ARMY AND SOCIETY The Third Republic—declared two days after Napoleon III’s shattering defeat at Sédan—had a troubled start. National confidence was destroyed; Paris was besieged and then occupied by the Germans. The Commune (March–May 1871) aroused memories of revolution and fears of a new Terror; its suppression was grim. Fear and resentment resurfaced through the 1870s and 1880s. The new republic lacked general support, and the notion ‘republican’ covered a diversity of views, from advanced radical to conservative. The latter at first predominated, and it was actually not until 1875 that a series of laws establishing the republican constitution was passed. Among the government’s opponents were monarchists, variously supporting the Legitimist, the Orleanist, and the Bonapartist claims to rule. The moderate centrist republican governments from 1881 to 1885 were dubbed the ‘Opportunists’, not without reason. The secular republic—some of whose proponents were very strongly anticlerical—confronted the Church establishment: education was an important issue here, and the principle of secularism was established in the early 1880s.35 A policy of colonial expansion was broadly successful in the early 1880s, although it remained controversial, especially when reverses occurred. Economic, constitutional, electoral, military, and social reforms were variously demanded and canvassed. Literature, journalism, and the visual arts were to a degree politicized, as citizens of the new republic came to terms with the country’s past century of revolutionary history; and especially with military defeat and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.36 At this juncture appears the figure of General Georges Boulanger.37 The election of 1885 had given Conservatives a strong voice in the Chamber of Deputies, so that Opportunists had to ally themselves with Radicals in order to survive. In January 1886 Charles de Freycinet formed a ministry, and appointed Boulanger as Minister for War.38 He was a serving soldier, as was usual in that post, which was not regarded as political. An undistinguished military career was balanced by a talent for self-publicity. In due course,

35 37

36 Lehning (2001), ch, 3. Irvine (1989), ch. 1; Lehning (2001), chs. 1 and 2. 38 The standard work is Dansette (1946). Seager (1969), ch. 2.

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ample funds were provided by various supporters, enabling a range of publicity materials to be targeted, with great effect, at various classes, especially voters in the provinces. Material was both verbal (newspapers, pamphlets, songs) and visual (portraits, stickers, and narrative images which utilized the medium of popular prints known as ‘Images d’Epinal’).39 Boulanger came into the war ministry as a new broom, with the strong support of the Radicals, and set about presenting himself as a staunch and progressive republican.40 He implemented a number of reforms, aimed at imposing more equal participation in the army by removing exemptions; improving soldiers’ living conditions; and in general reducing the divide between soldiers and civilians. Reforms mooted but not carried through included abolition of promotion by seniority, and a less élitist system of entry to and training in the military academies.41 The overall thrust clearly reflects the notion of the citizen militia of a classical city-state, where women and families also had their role to play: It is this continual exchange between our societies, that is to say families and the army, which will make the nation strong.42 Give us a vigorous generation, solidly tempered morally and physically, and you will have worthily accomplished your task.43

The army reform package made Boulanger widely popular especially with the lower ranks and with Radicals, and also convinced many moderate republicans that an improvement in army morale and efficiency would result. His stance that the civilian community and the military were one and the same was challenged when the army was called in during a miners’ strike: he got away with a rhetorical flourish when called to address the Chamber: ‘Could our workers, soldiers of yesterday, have anything to fear from our soldiers of today, workers of tomorrow?’ further endearing himself to the Left.44 He instituted a full review of troops at Longchamps for the celebrations on 14 July 1886, at which he displayed himself prominently on Tunis, his curvetting black charger: the crowds were wildly enthusiastic.45 39

Burns (1984), 57–80. Seager (1969), 25–7. 41 Ibid. 29–32. Girardet (2000) shows that the army ethos had been changing gradually from the start of the Third Republic; Miller (2002), 15–21, on novels as evidence. 42 Speech of 14 November 1886, at a gymnastic festival, cited by Néré (1964), 32. Harding (1971), 57, 78–82 quotes (without giving sources) several other speeches by Boulanger from 1882 onwards which similarly link gymnastics, upbringing, and the army. 43 Bidelman (1982), 169–70, citing Boulanger’s L’invasion allemande (1881) as quoted by the pro-feminist activist Léon Richer later in the 1880s. 44 Seager (1969), 33. 45 Ibid. 34; Burns (1984) 67–74 for exploitation of this equestrian imagery; Bournand (1887), i. 19 on Armand-Dumaresq’s portrait of the General; Ritzenthaler (1987), 114–15 on that by Debat-Ponsan, also mentioned below: Wolff (1887), fasc. 2, 35. 40


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Above all, he appeared as a patriotic, nationalist proponent of retribution upon the Germans: ‘Général Revanche’ became his nickname. Throughout 1886 he stressed the need for military preparedness; and this conduced to his popularity, despite some mutterings at home that he was a warmonger. Abroad, both Germans and others perceived him as a focus of reviving French militarism. Early in 1887 there was almost a confrontation, when Germany summoned reservists and Boulanger, presenting himself as the national saviour, responded with measures designed to escalate the dispute. The government, knowing that France could not take on Germany, nevertheless could not be seen to lose face by abandoning the Minister for War. French diplomats made it clear to Bismarck that the government did not want war, and Boulanger remained in office. In April 1887, Schnaebele, a French customs officer, was arrested by the Germans as a spy; the French public in general saw this as characteristically German harassment, though Schnaebele was released after about a week. Boulanger’s reaction tended rather to increase the incident’s importance than to reduce it. Backed by the premier, René Goblet, he decided to mobilize French troops on the German border, and, even when other ministers plus President Grévy put a stop to this, Boulanger persisted: on 10 May he brought to the Chamber of Deputies a bill to fund mobilization exercises. A week later, Goblet’s ministry fell; after protracted negotiations, a new ministry (Conservative–Opportunist) was formed under Rouvier, and Boulanger, still the darling of the Radicals, was out of the Ministry of War. He was still, of course, an army officer: his appointment to command the army division at Clermont-Ferrand was regarded by his supporters as tantamount to internal exile, and huge demonstrations accompanied his departure on 8 July 1887. ‘The principles he personifies [are] national defence and dignity of the Republic’46 commented one of the pro-Boulanger papers.47

46

H. Michelin, L’Action (11 July 1887), cited in Seager (1969), 67. Boulanger’s later career may be briefly summarized: capitalizing on his popularity, he exploited a variety of propaganda methods to form a personal following which can scarcely be called a party: its political principles and policies were unclear. He both kept in with the Radical Left by supporting constitutional reform and universal suffrage, and (in secret) negotiated with the extreme monarchist Right. He and his supporters presented themselves as clean-handed patriots, untouched by the corruption scandal which had forced President Grévy to resign in December 1887, and enjoyed astonishing success at various elections during 1888 and in January 1889. Boulanger was later rumoured to have drawn back from a military coup at the last moment on 31 January 1889. Finally, a republican government put forward public measures to limit Boulangist popular demonstrations, and undermined Boulanger’s Rightist support. When charges amounting to treasonable activity were threatened, Boulanger lost his nerve and exiled himself in Brussels. His supporters carried on for a time, but, in effect, the elections of September 1889 strengthened the republicans, and Boulanger never had the opportunity to return. He committed suicide in Brussels on 30 September 1891. Hutton (1976); Burns (1984), ch. 4; Lehning (2001), ch. 8. 47

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When the Salon opened on 1 May 1887, Schnaebele had only just been released, and Boulanger’s popularity was enormous. The show included several portraits of the General, as well as a number of pictures commissioned by him to hang in the Salles d’Honneur of various regiments. There were also numerous genre scenes of military life. This mood of enthusiastic support for the army (by no means a constant phenomenon in French society) is an important factor in the contemporary reception and reading of Les Vainqueurs de Salamine.

THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT: FUSTEL DE COULANGES AND LA CITÉ ANTIQUE In 1864, Numa-Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Professor of History at Strasbourg, published, at his own expense, La cité antique. The work lucidly expressed a theory of the origins of the state and the nature of human society in the Graeco-Roman world. Fustel asserted that the cult of the family dead took place at their common tomb, sited on the household’s land. To share in this cult—whether by birth or marriage—was to be defined as a family member; and family was the core institution of the ancient world. Participation in any larger community was grounded solely in membership of the family. Gradually, the worship of the great forces of nature grew up alongside the family cults; and the community of the state came into being as outsiders of various kinds were permitted to share in these religious practices, while remaining for ever excluded from the family cults. One of Fustel’s major concerns was to defamiliarize the Greeks and Romans: they must be studied as if they were an alien tribe. The familiarity with their history and great lives, bred by the prevailing educational system, led moderns to compare themselves with and even to judge themselves by, the ancients—as if those were people of the same kind. We shall attempt to set in a clear light the radical and essential differences which at all times distinguished these ancient peoples from modern societies. In our system of education, we live from infancy in the midst of the Greeks and Romans, and become accustomed continually to compare them with ourselves, to judge of their history by our own, and to explain our revolutions by theirs. What we have received from them leads us to believe that we resemble them. We have some difficulty in considering them as foreign nations; it is almost always ourselves that we see in them. Hence spring many errors. We rarely fail to deceive ourselves regarding these ancient nations when we see them through the opinions and facts of our own time.48

48

Fustel (1980), 11.


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This (he maintained) was more than misleading or self-deceiving—it was dangerous, and the danger was political. It led modern men to ground their ideas of community and of liberty upon a society whose entire basis of human association was totally different, and irrecoverable in the modern world. Necessarily their ideas of liberty inhered within their own conception of human society: those ideas too, therefore, were equally impossible of application to modern societies. Their revolutions are not our revolutions; to perceive our society through their eyes and to attempt to model our present and future institutions upon their past—a past not merely distant but actually alien—was not just pointless but even perilous. Now, errors of this kind are not without danger. The ideas which the moderns have had of Greece and Rome have often been in their way. Having imperfectly observed the institutions of the ancient city, men have dreamed of reviving them among us. They have deceived themselves about the liberty of the ancients, and on this very account liberty among the moderns has been put in peril. The last eighty years have clearly shown that one of the great difficulties which impede the march of modern society is the habit which it has of always keeping Greek and Roman antiquity before its eyes.49

Fustel went on to argue that all rights and powers enjoyed by the citizens of ancient states—including their so-called freedom—depended ultimately on the religious foundation which underpinned this familial and non-individual notion of society. Cult constituted family; family then determined the laws of property, of marriage, the rights of political participation, and the duties of military service; and the state drew upon this societal basis to assert authority over all its members—whether from families with cult, or originally ‘non-family’ outsiders (clients, thetes, plebeians). The demands which the state could impose upon individuals were limitless: from soldiers, to obey until death; from kin, to rejoice at a soldier’s death.50 Freedom was communitarian, not individual: no one, as it were, owned themselves. It was only with the advent of Christianity that a genuine concept of the individual as an agent capable of choice, of change, of conscience could come into existence. La cité antique, Fustel’s first major contribution to the historical study of societies and institutions, went into numerous editions.51 Of moderate length, it is not difficult to read; its popular impact may have been all the greater for its absence of scholarly apparatus.52 It was admired by historians such as Renan

49

Ibid. As at Leuctra, in Fustel (1980), 219–23. 51 Revised slightly in 1879 (Guiraud (1896), 37–8); a later revision was not carried out: Guiraud (1896), 242; Hartog (1988), 109. 52 Keylor (1975), 30–1 for Charles Morel’s 1866 criticisms (as facile and undocumented), and Fustel’s reply. Much later Fustel commented on the different mode of writing which had come to prevail: Hartog (1988), 68, 379–80. 50

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and Taine,53 became well known in its own time, and exerted considerable influence on the development of sociology and anthropology.54 The ideas, expressed with a limpid clarity of style, drop into the consciousness of the reader, and remain there. Fustel moved on to other posts within the French educational system. He attracted the attention of Napoleon III and lectured to the Empress Eugénie on the origins of French civilization.55 After the Franco-Prussian war he turned his attention to the development of French society from the fall of the Roman empire through the Merovingian age to that of Charlemagne. His knowledge of ancient societies and constitutions underlay his analysis of political forms, which linked democracy with populist monarchy (Greek tyrants and Bonapartes as examples of the latter), while associating aristocracy with (true) republicanism (many Greek poleis, and Rome down to the second century bc).56 He applied this theory to the formulation of an (unpublished) constitution for the new Third Republic.57 This combined the republicanism implicit in a form of universal suffrage with timocratic elements in order to create an élite accessible to talent and achievement: thus, an aristocracy supposedly in tune with a modern age.58 By the 1880s, how would Fustel’s theory of the ancient city have been perceived? Aspects of his work had certainly led to misinterpretations or false assumptions: for example, the stress on religion’s defining role in ancient society caused many to think, quite incorrectly,59 that he was personally devout and clericalist in his outlook.60 His political views—while not extreme, in the terms of the age—defined what was meant by ‘republic’ in a way that would appeal to conservatives rather than to radicals.61 Above all, his repudiation of the classical world’s political and social forms as a valid basis for the grounding of modern society must have been hard to accept in a society where, at all levels, education included the classics, and culture still assumed an understanding of the ancient world.62

53

Renan: Hartog (1988), 125; Taine and Sainte-Beuve: Guiraud (1896), 31. Humphreys in Fustel (1980), pp. xix–xx. 55 Guiraud (1896), 48–50; Hartog (1988), 54–5. 56 Tourneur-Aumont (1931), chs. 6 and 7; Hartog (1988), 64. 57 Guiraud (1896), 73–84; Hartog (1988), 71. 58 The unpublished ‘Essai sur l’aristocratie’ is printed in Hartog (1988), 287–306. 59 ‘Ni pratiquant, ni croyant’, he wrote: Guiraud (1896), 266. 60 Both by practising Catholics (Guiraud (1896), 32), and by sceptics and anti-clericalists (Hartog (1988), 46). Secularist republicans may thus have perceived him as reactionary. 61 Action française later adopted him as one of their key historians, contrary both to his known views and his family’s wishes: Hartog (1988), 161–95; Keylor (1975), 204–7. 62 Mainardi (1993), 131; half the syllabus still consisted of classics, grammar, and rhetoric. 54


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THE CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION OF LES VAINQUEURS DE SALAMINE Cormon’s picture seems to have been favourably received, on the whole, although it did not attract anything like the scandalized attention that Caïn had enjoyed. Albert Wolff, a noted art critic, wrote of the Salon of 1887: Among the large-scale canvases, two are devoted to war. M. Cormon returns to antiquity in order to show us the intoxication of the Greeks on the day after the battle of Salamis, where Themistocles’ 80 vessels conquered the 2000 vessels of Xerxes. What can be praised without reserve in this vast composition is that it renders very realistically the inebriation of a people who have just overwhelmed the most redoubtable of their enemies. The victorious fleet has dropped anchor in the blue bay; the ships have disembarked the heroes of yesterday who advance pell-mell, singing, united by one fraternity of arms and one enthusiasm for the delivered homeland. They are indeed no longer the Greeks of an art at present out of fashion, those completely naked Greeks, well-groomed, upon whom the fury of battles has left no trace: these have lost a little of their academic rigidity in the gymnastics of combat. What one can praise above all is the general aspect of the composition; the radiance of victory is everywhere, in the combatants as well as in the women exalted by their valour, and who, dancing, form the escort of the conquerors; it is, again, in the sunlit landscape which helps to diffuse through the entire work an aspect of deep joy. Others could bring against M. Cormon the eternal charge of a return to antiquity; to me, the period from which an artist chooses his subject matters little, provided that the work bears the trace of an emotion and that the painter interests us in his work. It matters little to us whether these heroes be Greeks or contemporaries, provided that their creator has attained the goal which he has sought and that he communicates his impressions to the spectator. Thus I will not quibble with M. Cormon about the period. That would be, at bottom, nothing but a tiff about costume. Put French soldiers of our time in the place of these Greeks—one would dub the work La Marseillaise, and it would make everyone’s heart beat faster. Perhaps indeed, in composing his picture M. Cormon has thought more of his own time than of ancient Greece, and it is for that reason that a breath of patriotism emanates from it and constitutes its finest quality.63

It is remarkable that Wolff ’s opening sentence runs ‘. . . deux [toiles] sont consacrées à la guerre’, emphasizing his notably ahistorical view of war as a subject. The other very large-scale picture to which he alludes is by Alfred Roll: ‘La guerre: marche en avant’, a contemporary genre picture which depicts a small detachment of soldiers engaged on their respective duties as they advance through the countryside. After some discussion of the merits of an

63 Albert Wolff, Figaro-Salon (1887), fasc. 1, p. 6 and p. 14 (illustrations occupy the intervening pages). This painting is illustrated by a double page engraving in the centre spread of fasc. 3.

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equestrian portrait of Boulanger by Debat-Ponsan, (‘the greatest interest of this vast canvas is the public curiosity in contemplating the fiery general’), Wolff turns to the works commissioned by the General for the salles d’honneur of the regiments: each was to depict an engagement in which that regiment had distinguished itself.64 The critic applauds this practice, which (at private expense) prevailed in Germany: In a democratic country (un pays démocratique) like France, it seems more rational that the State intervenes and distributes its favours according to principles of equality and without favouritism for such-and-such a regiment.

But too much haste in ordering too many pictures meant that the results were not equally successful: ‘save for a few exceptions, the State would have done better simply to buy at the Salon pictures relating to the glory of the French army’. He then passes from specific battle scenes to military genre pictures: There was a time when it was in good taste to decry military painting, now, behold, back again in favour. The public will always take much pleasure in it, because all that concerns the army pleases or moves it. It is not the love of battles which gathers the spectators in front of these military pictures, but its deep regard for the army. Just as in the street people follow the passing trooper with sympathy, so, wherever a uniform shows itself in the Salon, the public stops before it. . . . everywhere the French trooper appears, in time of war or of peace, he is sure to awaken the sympathetic attention of the Salon visitor.65

Wolff ’s discussion is of considerable interest for the reception of Les Vainqueurs de Salamine. The picture is explicitly regarded as a joyful affirmation of victory and unity. Moreover, the critic notes that the artist’s handling is no hackneyed idiom: unlike Lautrec as recollected by Gauzi, Wolff draws a very sharp distinction between the Greeks ‘d’un art à present démodé’ and Cormon’s Greeks. The former he describes in terms which well befit the statue-like figures of David and certainly those of his lesser followers, while Cormon’s are clearly received as far more realistic—bandaged and bearing signs of battle, their bodies are neither perfect nor invulnerable. Explicit again is the stress on the universal emotions which the picture expresses and evokes in the spectator: the participants could be clad in modern dress, and it would be the ‘Marseillaise’; ‘elle ferait battre tous les coeurs’. Implicit but clear, given the juxtaposition of this picture with judgements upon those dealing with recent actions and modern army life, is that Cormon’s 64 Wolff (1887), fasc. 2, 35–40. This did not necessarily mean a victory, for one which comes in for praise (p. 36) is Aimé Morot’s picture of a charge at the battle of Reischoffen (a French defeat of 1870). 65 Wolff (1887), fasc. 2, 40 ff. These are true genre scenes: marches, exercises and the like; but depictions such as a soldier with popotte (mess-tin), by Grolleron; and of men being hosed down in a military bath-house (Chaperon) bear out the public’s taste for intimate detail.


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depiction of a citizen army was perceived by contemporaries to address current concerns by presenting this (ostensibly unidealized) ideal from the past. Its celebration of communitarian achievement readily permitted it to be read as an endorsement of republican values and national patriotism. Partly fortuitously (since Cormon must have been planning the picture a year or more in advance), it chimed in with the mood of military assertiveness and popularity of the army and army life that prevailed in 1887. Even the image of Themistocles on his rearing horse66 offered a visual reminiscence of ‘Général Revanche’. The assumption that the role of art within a republic is at least in part to evoke and express patriotic emotion is analysed according to category. The depictions of engagements for the salles d’honneur (whether specially commissioned or bought ‘off the easel’) promote zeal for the glory of France in the military forces. The genre scenes of military life touch the general public by making real to them the experiences of soldiers who have recently become more truly representative of the population as a whole. Equally, a history painting’s evocation of the victory celebrations after Salamis, paradigm of a battle in defence of liberty, calls to the viewers as French patriots. Thus, in its reception at least—though whether by Cormon’s intention cannot, in the absence of documentary evidence, be established—this work validated modern republicanism by reference to ancient democracy: a system which succeeds in defending its territory and protecting its women and children because it is based on social unity and military cohesion. The painting’s engagement with Fustel’s view of the classical world is complex. Cormon’s intention to depict the Athenians as his own contemporaries cannot be inferred solely from the fact that Wolff perceived the work’s validity as inhering in its capacity to make viewers share in its celebration of victory. Cormon could be toning things down, deliberately making Les Vainqueurs de Salamine more approachable than was Caïn. Or perhaps he was attempting to render Fustelian otherness but failing to do so (and failing not just for us, but even in his own time). But other considerations strengthen the view that to present the Athenians as ‘just like ourselves’ and hence in some degree to challenge Fustel’s approach was indeed Cormon’s aim. Fustel’s unpublished constitutional programme, with its nuanced employment of both ancient and later models, was unknown to the public. The perception of him deriving from La cité antique—doubtless one shared by Cormon—would have two main aspects. First, the work endorses ancient republicanism, and has much (though not total) admiration for Athenian democracy. But on the other hand Fustel repudiated the moral and practical influence of the classics as guides for modern politics and society; and stressed the otherness of Greeks and Romans, statesmen and writers alike. Even Paul 66 ‘caracole(r)’ is the word used by both Lafenestre of Themistocles’ horse and Wolff in recalling Boulanger’s 14 July 1886 appearance on the significantly named ‘Tunis’.

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Guiraud, authorized by the family in 1896 to write an account of Fustel’s life and achievement, considered that his judgement on this latter count was completely mistaken: It ends in thinking, as M. Fustel would have it, that these two societies are absolutely incapable of imitation, that ‘nothing in modern times resembles them’ and that ‘nothing in the future can resemble them’ [= Fustel (1980), 12]. Now, it is here precisely that the error is. Great, indeed, as may be the differences which separate us from the Greeks and the Romans, there are striking analogies between them and ourselves. A fourth- or fifth-century Athenian is perhaps a closer neighbour to us than a Frenchman of the middle ages, and I imagine that Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Demosthenes, Pericles and even Solon would not feel too much like displaced persons in contemporary Europe. We do not have the same religious ideas as did the ancients; but we have the same physical needs and the same material preoccupations as they, and our public and private actions are determined, at least in part, by the same interests as theirs.

Further confirmation may be sought in a consideration of Caïn: Cormon is there implying affinity as well as alterity. While the desolate landscape and animalistic bodies indeed convey the vast difference from modern humankind, Victor Hugo’s poem ‘La conscience’, of which the first three lines form the painting’s epigraph, proceeds to paint Cain’s primitive awareness of his crime, figured as an eye watching him even as he seeks protection within a bronze wall or a dark vault. Cain’s conscience is beginning to be internalized. Victor Hugo died in mid-1885,67 and Cormon was commissioned to supervise a series of illustrations for a luxury edition of Hugo’s poetry—some to be done by himself, some apportioned to other artists.68 Thus he will have known a sequence of four poems from La légende des siècles (the second series of 1877) which deal specifically with the Salamis campaign.69 These are ‘Les trois cents’, ‘Le détroit de l’Euripe’, ‘La chanson de Sophocle à Salamine’ and ‘Les bannis’. In all of these, Greece can be read as standing for France; and the patriotism of the Greeks as an example for the contemporary situation. The first and longest depicts Xerxes flogging the Hellespont (Herodotus 7.35): the three hundred lashes he orders become, by divine agency, the three hundred Spartans of Thermopylae (Herodotus 7.219 ff.), with whom the poem ends: Gardiens des monts, gardiens des lois, gardiens des villes, Et Xercès les trouva debout aux Thermopyles.70

The second is based on Herodotus 8.58–62: Themistocles persuades the other Greek commanders to fight off Salamis by a committed resolve for freedom which discounts the overwhelming odds yet is able to envisage failure: 67

Lehning (2001), ch. 4. Murray (1991), 48–59. 69 I am grateful to Emma Bridges for this reference. 70 ‘Guardians of mountains, guardians of laws, guardians of towns | And Xerxes found them standing at Thermopylae.’ 68


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Consentir à mourir c’est consentir à vaincre;71 . . . . . . . Vaincu, moi, je crache au visage Du destin; et, vainqueur, et mon pays sauvé, J’entre au temple et je baise à genoux le pavé. Combattons.72

The ‘Song of Sophocles at Salamis’ is the closest to the subject of Cormon’s picture, but the setting is before the battle. It is a short erotic lyric in which the singer (‘un éphèbe’) expresses readiness for death, provided that he has once experienced sexual love: ‘Une belle fille aux doux yeux . . . ayant la rose | Aux deux pointes de son sein nu . . . ’73 Donne-la-moi, que je la presse Vite sur mon cœur enflammé, Je veux bien mourir, ô déesse, Mais pas avant d’avoir aimé.74

Cormon’s painting is closer to the Greek biographical sources which recount how Sophocles sang in the celebratory chorus after the battle: Sophocles, besides being handsome (kalos) in his youth, became proficient in dancing and music, while still a lad, (eti pais) under the instruction of Lampros. After the battle of Salamis, at any rate, he danced to the accompaniment of his lyre round the trophy, naked and anointed with oil. Others say he danced with his cloak (himation) on.75

Although characterized by Lafenestre (above, p. 362) as an ephebe, as in the poem, the boy in the right foreground is in fact closer to a pais, with his almost naked, still immature body—too youthful for the young women opposite, with their rose-tipped breasts. He cannot be read as having fought in the battle, as Hugo’s Sophocles is destined to do; he has fallen into step with the returning rank, and his expression is exalted, even inspired. And Cormon has largely avoided the homosexual implications of the Athenaeus passage by making the boy follow a grandfather figure, and surrounding him with women—except for the helmeted man brandishing a sword, above and behind the boy. The last of the four (‘Les bannis’) is loosely based on Herodotus 8.65, as two Greek exiles hear a roaring sound as of the Eleusinian crowd—a divine sign of the Persian defeat. 71

‘To consent to die is to consent to conquer.’ ‘I, if conquered, spit in the face | of destiny; and, if conqueror, with my country saved, | I enter the temple and on my knees I kiss the pavement. | Let us fight.’ 73 ‘A beautiful girl with soft eyes . . . who has the rose | on the twin points of her bare breasts . . . ’ 74 ‘Give her to me, that I may press her | swiftly to my enflamed heart. | I am fully willing to die, O goddess | but not without having loved.’ 75 Athenaeus 1.20 e–f (tr. C. B. Gulick, Loeb) = TGF 4, Test. H(a) 28, cf. Test. A 1.3 (Vita Sophoclis); Lefkowitz (1981) 77, cf. 160. 72

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Clemence Schultze Et c’est la voix d’un peuple ou c’est la voix d’un dieu. . . . . . . . . Elle nous donne avis que la revanche est prête . . . . . . . . . . . Si c’est le cri d’un peuple, il est pour nous, te dis-je; Si c’est un cri des dieux, il est contre ceux-là . . . . . . . . . . Et nous étions ainsi pensifs pour la patrie.76

The two men (standing for Hugo and the Socialist Pierre Leroux, both exiles in the Channel Islands)77 reflect on Greece/France: the presence of Xerxes/ Napoleon III ‘sullies’ (‘souille’) the land, but its people will recover. These adumbrations of ‘peuple’ and ‘patrie’, in the work of France’s greatest republican poet, so recently dead, would seem to have informed both Cormon’s picture and the public’s reception of it.

CONCLUSION . . . that certitude—which overtakes, after all, of some of the greatest artists—that none of Mr Deacon’s pictures could possibly have been painted at any other epoch than its own . . . Anthony Powell, A Buyer’s Market, ch. 1

If this is true even of great paintings, it is all the more so of lesser ones. The middle-of-the-road idiom comes to resemble illustration, and the depiction of authentic artefacts becomes dated, so that the items manifest themselves as trappings employed in an attempt to render convincing a constructed past. And the passage of time—as is its way—has betrayed the faces (especially those of the women) as being totally of their period: dozens of other Salon pictures, whether of historic, genre, or contemporary subjects, as well as such ephemera as posters and advertisements, reveal this. Lautrec evidently recognized it already, with his ‘Salaminette’ quip. But Cormon was fortunate in that a public in general accustomed to self-identify with the ancient world encountered his picture just when specific contingent events could be read into the work. As a painting which attempts to reduce the distinction between historical genre painting and history painting proper by treating as hero the citizen body in the grip of collective emotion, it met its moment: viewers who perceived themselves as sharing institutions and 76 ‘And it is the voice of the people or the voice of a god . . . It tells us that revenge is ready . . . If it is the cry of a people, it is for us, I tell you; | if it is a cry of the gods, it against them . . . And so we were in thought for our homeland.’ 77 Ireson (1997), 402–3.


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ideals could empathize situationally with Cormon’s Athenians as they celebrated the archetypal victory in defence of their homeland.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bidelman, P. K. (1982). Pariahs Stand Up! The Founding of the Liberal Feminist Movement in France, 1858–1889. Westport, Conn. Boime, A. (1971). The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century London. Bournand, F. (1887). Paris-Salon 1887 par les procédés phototypiques, 2 vols. Paris. Burns, M. (1984). Rural Society and French Politics: Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair, 1886–1900. Princeton. Celebonovic, A. (1974). The Heyday of Salon Painting: Masterpieces of Bourgeois Realism, trans. P. Willis. London. Clough, E. (2004). ‘Loyalty and Liberty: Thermopylae in the Western Imagination’, in T. J. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea, 363–84. Dansette, A. (1946). Le boulangisme. Paris. Flemming, H. T. (1973). ‘Painting’, in H. J. Hansen (ed.), Late Nineteenth Century Art, trans. M. Bullock. Newton Abbot, 113–46. Fustel de Coulanges, N. D. (1922). La cité antique. (Reprint of rev. edn.; originally published 1864). Paris. —— (1923). Questions historiques2, ed. C. Jullian. Paris. —— (1980). The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome, [trans. W. Small], with foreword by A. Momigliano and S. C. Humphreys. Baltimore. Gauzi, F. (1954). Lautrec et son temps. Paris. —— (1957). My Friend Toulouse-Lautrec, trans. P. Dinnage. London. Girardet, R. (2000). ‘L’armée et la république’, in La France des années 1870: naissance de la IIIe République. Actes du Colloque, org. G. de Broglie. Paris, 21–8. Groenen, M. (1994). Pour une histoire de la préhistoire: le Paléolithique. Grenoble. Guiraud, P. (1896). Fustel de Coulanges. Paris. Harding, J. (1971). The Astonishing Adventure of General Boulanger. London. Hartog, F. (1988). Le XIXe siècle et l’histoire: le cas Fustel de Coulanges. Paris. Hugo, V. (1974). La légende des siècles, ed. A. Dumas. Paris. Hutton, P. (1976). ‘Popular Boulangism and the Advent of Mass Politics in France, 1886–1890’, Journal of Contemporary History 11: 85–106. Ireson, J. C. (1997). Victor Hugo: A Companion to his Poetry. Oxford. Irvine, W. D. (1989). The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism, and the Origins of the Radical Right in France. New York and Oxford. Keylor, W. R. (1975). Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French Historical Profession. Cambridge, Mass. Lacambre, G. (1985). ‘Le Caïn de Cormon’, in Gloire de Victor Hugo (exhibition catalogue). Paris, 625–7.

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Lafenestre, G. (1887 ). Le livre d’or du Salon de peinture et de sculpture: catalogue descriptif des oeuvres récompensées et de principales oeuvres hors concours . . . orné de quatorze planches à l’eau-forte. Paris. Laurent, G. (1987). Paléontologie et évolution en France de 1800 à 1860: une histoire des idées de Cuvier et Lamarck à Darwin. Paris. Lécharny, L.-M. (1998). L’art pompier. Paris. Lefkowitz, M. (1981). The Lives of the Greek Poets. London. Lehning, J. R. (2001). To Be a Citizen: The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic. Ithaca, NY. Lemaire, G.-G. (1986). Esquisse en vue d’une histoire du salon. Paris. Lombardo, P. (1993). ‘The Modern Metropolis and the Ancient City’, in S. Nash (ed.), Home and its Dislocations in Nineteenth-Century France. Albany, NY, 147–67. Lucy, M. (2002). ‘Cormon’s ‘Cain’ and the Problem of the Prehistoric Body’ Oxford Art Journal 25: 107–26. —— (2003). ‘Reading the Animal in Degas’s Young Spartans’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 2/2. http://19thc-artworldwide.org/spring_03/articles/lucy.html. Viewed 1 November 2005. Mainardi, P. (1987). Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867. New Haven. —— (1993). The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic. Cambridge. Miller, P. B. (2002). From Revolutionaries to Citizens: Antimilitarism in France, 1870–1914. Durham, NC. Millot, M. (1891). La comédie boulangiste: chansons et satires. Paris. Murray, G. B. (1991). Toulouse-Lautrec: The Formative Years, 1878–1891. Oxford. Néré, J. (1964). Le Boulangisme et la presse. Paris. Nochlin, L. (2003). ‘Introduction: The Darwin Effect’. Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 2/2. http://19thc-artworldwide.org/spring_03/articles/noch.html. Viewed 1 November 2005. Nord, P. G. (1995). The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in NineteenthCentury France. Cambridge, Mass. Nye, R. A. (1993). Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. New York. Rawson, E. (1969). The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford. Ritzenthaler, C. (1987). L’école des beaux-arts du XIXe siècle: les pompiers. Paris. Schnapp, A. (1996). The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology. London. Seager, F. H. (1969). The Boulanger Affair: Political Crossroad of France 1886–1889. Ithaca, NY. Sherman, D. J. (1989). Worthy Monuments: Art Museums and the Politics of Culture in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge, Mass. Tourneur-Aumont, J.-M. (1931). Fustel de Coulanges 1830–1889. Paris. Le Triomphe des mairies, grands décors républicains à Paris, 1870–1914. (1986). (Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, exhibition catalogue). Paris. ‘Venus and Cain. Figures of prehistory 1830–1930’, Musée nationale des beaux-arts, Quebec, 9 Oct. 2003—4 Jan. 2004. http://ww.w.mnba.qc.ca/venus/en/Accueil/ Accueil.asp. Viewed 1 November 2005.


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Vénus et Caïn. Figures de la préhistoire, 1830–1930. (2003). (Musée d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux, exhibition catalogue). Paris. Non vidi. Wolff, A. [1887]. Le Figaro-Salon, undated supplements to Le Figaro, [May?] 1887. Paris. Wright, B. S. (1997). Painting and History during the French Restoration: Abandoned by the Past. Cambridge. Zola, E. (1983). L’oeuvre, ed. H. Mitterand (originally published 1886). Paris.


Section V Leonidas in the Twentieth Century


16 Xerxes Goes to Hollywood D. S. Levene

Greek history (unlike Greek mythology or Roman history) has received very little coverage in American (and indeed world) cinema. Alexander the Great (Robert Rossen, 1955) is the best-known of the occasional films set in the fourth century bc, though it has recently been matched by a further film on the same subject, Alexander (Oliver Stone, 2004). From the fifth century bc, and in particular the Persian Wars period, just one American film has been made: The 300 Spartans, directed by Rudolph Maté in 1962,1 which centres on a single episode, the battle of Thermopylae in 480 bc. It should come as no surprise that it is Thermopylae (rather than Marathon, Salamis or Plataea) that has received this privilege. At least since the eighteenth century memories and representations of Thermopylae have played a key role in western culture as an example of heroic self-sacrifice in defence of freedom. That tradition existed (as has been documented by various scholars) in many different countries and periods;2 and the United States has been no exception. In the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union between the late 1940s and the 1960s cultural icons of all sorts were pressed into service for more or less overt propaganda ends; the familiarity of Thermopylae as an heroic stand for freedom made it straightforwardly exploitable.3 It is thus Thanks to Roger Brock, Emma Stafford and the participants in the Durham conference for comments; also to David F. Miller of Twentieth Century-Fox and UCLA Special Collections for their help with archival material. 1 In addition, there has been one Italian film about the Persian Wars, The Giant of Marathon/ La Battaglia di Maratona (Jacques Tourneur, 1960). There have been persistent reports in the last few years, since Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000) restored the box-office viability of the ancient epic, that projects either to remake Maté’s film or to film Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire (1998) are in the offing, but neither to date appears to have gone beyond the planning stage. 2 So esp. Macgregor Morris (2000); Rebenich (2002); Clough (2004); also Rawson (1969), e.g. 294–305 (Napoleonic and restoration France), 342 (Nazi Germany). 3 So e.g. on 3 April 1951 a ceremony to commemorate the third anniversary of the Marshall Plan and to launch the United States Information Service’s ‘campaign of truth’ was held on the site of Thermopylae. The report of the ceremony in the New York Times pointedly described the site as the place ‘where some 2,500 years ago 300 Spartans died in defense of the then Western World civilization against Asian invaders’ (‘Greeks Mark E.R.P. Day: Marshall Plan Anniversary Is Observed at Thermopylae’, New York Times, 4 April 1951, p. 12).

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not difficult to see the 1962 film as part of a pattern of anti-Communist filmmaking, with its story of Europeans standing up for their liberty against an expansionist and tyrannical Asian empire.4 At the same time, however, the decision to focus on Thermopylae left the film-makers with an obvious problem. The idea of Greece as the ‘home of democracy’ was widespread and well-recognized in the United States, and was accentuated by the Greek civil war of the late 1940s, which culminated in victory for the anti-Communist side and the alignment of the country with the West.5 But it could also not always be overlooked that ancient Greece was not a single country, that the ‘home of democracy’ was in fact Athens, and that the heroes of Thermopylae were not Athenians, but Spartans.6 Needless to say, the

4 One might note, for example, the pointed final words of the film, referring to it as ‘a stirring example to free people throughout the world of what a few brave men can accomplish once they refuse to submit to tyranny’, or the opening pre-credit narrative which describes the Greeks as fighting for ‘their freedom—and ours’. 5 Thus during the civil war New York governor (and Presidential candidate) Thomas Dewey issued a proclamation linking the fight against Communism in Greece to the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis (full text in ‘Dewey Endorses Greek Aid Project’, New York Times, 23 March 1948, p. 3). After the end of the war, President Truman sent a congratulatory message to King Paul of Greece observing that ‘the heroic struggle of the Greek people has retained for all Greeks the workings of their ancient heritage of democracy’ (‘Truman Sends Message’, New York Times, 26 March 1950, p. 13). When President Eisenhower addressed the Greek Parliament on 15 Dec. 1959, his speech centred on Greece as the birthplace of democracy and modern Greece and America as its common heirs (full text in ‘Eisenhower Speech and Communique’, New York Times, 16 Dec. 1959, p. 18). When the Ford Foundation in 1966 gave $1 million to fund the excavation of the Athenian agora (the first time it had ever funded archaeology), part of the justification given by its director of international affairs was ‘the Agora’s symbolism as a center from which concepts and practices of democracy emerged to shape the course of Western civilization’ (‘$1-Million Ford Grant Aids Agora Excavations’, New York Times, 18 Feb. 1966, p. 4). 6 So e.g. Joseph Alsop’s article in the Washington Post after the assassination of President Kennedy quoted Simonides’ epitaph on the Spartans at Thermopylae, only to qualify it by observing that ‘the President who is now lost to us . . . was no drilled, unthinking Spartiate. He was the worthy citizen of a Nation great and free’ (‘Matter of Fact . . . ’, Washington Post, Times Herald, 25 Nov. 1963, p. A15). Likewise that tension came to the fore when the Greek democracy was overthrown by the ‘Colonels’ coup’ in April 1967: various American observers noted how parts of the ‘Greek tradition’ were being overtaken by others. This from Joe Alex Morris jr.: Greece, the birthplace of democracy, has again fallen into the hands of the Spartans. In the 20th century version of this ancient drama, the warriors come not from a rival citystate but from the middle ranks of the Greek army. The historical parallel remains valid in many respects. The colonels who seized power here, surprising King Constantine and their own superiors, are indeed a spartan band. They look with contempt upon the venal politicians, the corrupt businessmen, and the weak populace. They look with fanatical dedication to the glorious ideals of Greece as the leaders of civilization.(‘Specter of Ancient Drama Haunts Cradle of Democracy’, Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1967, section G p. 2). See also Alfred Friendly, ‘Greek Colonels Can’t Let Go Of Bear’s Tail’, Washington Post, Times Herald, 23 June 1968, p. B2: ‘These are the legacies of Greece, inspiring future generations. But that bright historical image is of Athens. There was another city at the same moment, no less Greek: Sparta. Greece today harks back to the dark precedent, the Lacedemonian one’.

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Spartans are not a natural surrogate for the American democratic self-image:7 yet they necessarily were to be the heroes of this film. The object of this chapter will therefore be to document the strategies that the film uses in order to accommodate the story of Thermopylae to a 1960s American audience. I will not be discussing systematically the anti-Communist interpretation of the film (though I touch on it a number of times below); to a certain extent I take that as a given.8 But the strategies to deal with the ‘Spartan problem’ are no less prominent, and, as will be seen, throw up a variety of resonances and complexities which take the film well beyond a simple celebration of American heroism against Russian despotism.

PANHELLENISM The simplest way to handle Thermopylae for a democratic audience is to treat it as a Greek action rather than a specifically Spartan one.9 This strategy is naturally easier to employ if one is only introducing the story briefly as an exemplum rather than recounting it in full, but the film goes some way down that route even so. It is especially clear at the start. There is a pre-credit voiceover narrative which identifies the site of Thermopylae as being ‘200 miles north of modern Athens’, and the grave as being that of ‘three hundred Greek warriors’. The opening credits run over a sequence of images of Athens, and are then succeeded by an on-screen text which refers to Xerxes’ opponents as the ‘Greek states’; Xerxes himself sets up his aim as the conquest of ‘Greece’. Not until nearly five minutes into the film is there a mention of Sparta, when the Spartan Agathon is captured and interrogated.10 From then on, of course, the differences between the Greek states are acknowledged, and it is no longer possible to conceal the fact that the heroes of Thermopylae were Spartan. But even so, a good deal of emphasis is placed on Leonidas’ panhellenic motivations, especially in his argument with the 7 Indeed, the Athens–Sparta contrast could itself be used for Cold War purposes, with the Athenians representing the US and the Spartans the USSR. The former presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, following a trip to the Soviet Union, wrote as follows: ‘In our complacent, happy fashion, we assume that we can’t lose—that if we stand firm, persevere and damn the Communists enough, Right will surely prevail in the end. Well, it didn’t once before, when Athenian democracy was involved in a similar long, tiresome struggle with Spartan tyranny. On that occasion, an infinitely superior civilization went under, because it lacked the self-discipline to survive’ (Stevenson (1959), p. xxi). 8 For an analysis of the film in these terms, see Clough (2004), 374–8. 9 This has a long tradition behind it: see Macgregor Morris (2000), e.g. 12–13, 68, 142, 277–8. 10 This appears to have been a relatively late decision: the film as written and shot had its opening scene in Sparta, introducing some of the distinctive features of Spartan life early on (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 010, Produced Scripts Box FX-PRS-1267, final production draft dated 14.1.1961). The scene was cut before the film was released.

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Spartan gerousia and subsequently in his scene with his wife.11 He is pointedly fighting for Greece in general rather than for Sparta in particular (he tells the gerousia that ‘mere cities don’t matter now: it is Greece that counts’, and says at the end that the message he sends with Phylon ‘will buy centuries of freedom for Greece’), and is contrasted with his less far-sighted countrymen who see the defence of Thermopylae as unnecessarily serving Athenian interests. But it is not suggested that he is here doing anything Quixotic or surprising: the Spartan warrior code is said to be to ‘seek the enemies of Greece wherever they may be and fight them fearlessly’. Thus Leonidas, in his fight for Greece, is merely acting as a proper Spartan should. The result of this is to associate the Spartan action as much with the free Athenian democracy as with their own specific constitution, and hence to reinforce the Cold War theme of the free West versus the tyrannical East, by instilling a general sense that the primary issue at stake is the fight between the free Greeks and the despotic Persians.

SPARTAN DEMOCRACY Merely emphasizing the panhellenic side to the story is only of limited use; a more far-reaching strategy is to reconfigure Sparta itself to make it fit more closely with modern democratic ideals.12 This strategy itself falls into two parts: a negative one and a positive one. The negative strategy is to remove as many as possible of the aspects of Spartan political and social culture that might appear incompatible with a democratic state. This was not done out of ignorance, but was a deliberate attempt to present a version of Sparta acceptable in American terms. The point was made clearly to the film-makers by their historical consultant, Roger Beck:13 There exists a general popular belief in our society that Sparta was the home of many virtues. I believe it would be profitable for the purpose of your picture to uphold this belief. It cannot be upheld by honestly and accurately portraying the conditions existing there at the time of your story—many facts would shock the modern audiences. I suggest, therefore, that in portraying Spartan life, great care should be taken to omit certain facets of that life which would almost certainly invite unfortunate comparisons with the recent attempts to introduce regimented society into the world. I think you should strive to avoid this. 11

Cf. Macgregor Morris (2000), 13. The general outlines of this strategy go back to antiquity: Isocrates directly argues for Sparta being a democracy (Areopagiticus 61), and Aristotle in a rather more hostile account suggests that it has become one because of failures of the system to provide the intended balance (Politics 1270a6–17). On later developments of the theme see Macgregor Morris (2004). 13 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 010, Produced Scripts Box FX-PRS1267, memorandum of 24.8.1960 from Roger Beck to Rudolph Maté and George St. George. 12


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The film accordingly omits entire areas of Spartan life. An obvious example is the helots, who are not mentioned in the entire film.14 As far as this story is concerned, to be a Spartan is to be a Spartiate. Likewise, while the film is full of anecdotes and aphorisms that distinguish the Spartans from other Greeks in their toughness and heroic devotion to the military life (see further below, pp. 398–400), there is nothing about the distinctive social organization that made this possible. The syssitia (communal messes) might look uncomfortably communistic, so they disappear, as does the ago-ge-, the system of communal military training. (Needless to say, in a film of 1962 there is likewise no hint of pederasty.) There is no krypteia (a form of secret intelligence service) in this version of Sparta, nor xenelasiai (the periodic expulsions of foreigners): there is no indication that this is anything other than a free and open society.15 The positive side to the same strategy is to give particular emphasis to those aspects of the Spartan constitution which gave the people authority over officials, and above all to play up the possibility of internal conflict within Sparta, which is equated with the debates and dissents of a free democratic culture. Xerxes in his interrogation of the spy, and then again afterwards in his conversation with Demaratus, refers to the dual Spartan kingship. He sees this as dividing and weakening the country, but it is clear that—at least in part (see further below)—this stems from his tyrannical inability to comprehend the strengths of a democratic community (the American constitution in particular centres on the ‘checks and balances’ which prevent any single branch of government from attaining absolute control). When Leonidas promises the panhellenic assembly that he will lead a Spartan army against the Persians, he emphasizes that he can only do so with ‘the authority of his people’ behind him; and when in the event the gerousia declines to endorse the campaign, Leonidas is obliged to go accompanied by only the 300 men of his personal bodyguard. This last, however, represents a change to the historical record, which is not only revealing in itself, but which suggests a more complex picture than the simple praise of democracy over tyranny. In Herodotus 7.206 the Spartans fully intend to send reinforcements to the troops at Thermopylae, and the

14 Indeed, Greek slavery in general is astonishingly absent: there is just one passing mention of it, in a reference to the possible origins of the treacherous outsider Ephialtes. Xerxes, on the other hand, is represented as ruling a ‘slave empire’, an antithesis reinforcing the Cold War undercurrents of the film. Similarly, 1950s Old Testament-themed films suppress slavery from their accounts of ancient Israel and associate it solely with Israel’s enemies: see Babington and Evans (1993), 54–7. One may contrast films about Rome, in which slavery almost invariably receives a prominent role. 15 By way of contrast, we might compare a more recent American treatment of Thermopylae, Steven Pressfield’s 1998 novel, Gates of Fire, which does not suppress the more uncomfortable aspects of the Spartan social and educational system. See Bridges, this vol., Ch. 17.

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reason they do not do so is because Xerxes captures the pass and kills its defenders too quickly. But in The 300 Spartans Leonidas is abandoned by the Spartan leaders at home, and no troops are ever sent:16 they are sent to reinforce the Isthmus of Corinth instead (see further below, pp. 33–4).17 The theme of the soldiers sent to the front line and then abandoned by their political leaders is one that goes back to antiquity.18 However, it became increasingly prevalent in the twentieth century, perhaps because it reflects particular anxieties about the role of the military in modern societies, with their vast industrialized armies with extended chains of command, and their strict divisions between the political decision-makers and the military leaders whose role is to carry out those decisions. While such a narrative pattern is not, of course, necessarily linked to democratic politics (a despot too can be shown as abandoning his troops to their fate),19 in this particular film the abandonment of the Spartans is the result of the same divisions in Spartan society that had earlier appeared to represent its democratic strength. The divisions in Greece had been indicated as a potential problem by Themistocles earlier in the film, where he stressed that unity was the one thing that stood in favour of the Persians. Modern democratic societies can, it seems, have dangers as well as advantages.

SPARTA VERSUS ATHENS The next way in which the story of Thermopylae is accommodated to its audience involves mapping the divisions between the Greeks onto a pattern that is familiar from American culture. However, in order to explain this, I first need to lay the ground with a digression on accents.

16 Diodorus 11.4.2–4 also implies that there was no intention of sending other troops, but the political dynamic in his narrative is exactly the opposite: the ephors try to persuade Leonidas to take a larger force, and he refuses, anticipating that the army will be annihilated whatever its size. 17 In Herodotus 7.207, by contrast, the main debate about whether to reinforce the Isthmus instead of Thermopylae takes place among the defenders of Thermopylae themselves, and they decide to remain. It is only on receiving the news of the destruction of the army at Thermopylae that the Spartans and other Greeks fortify the Isthmus as a secondary line of defence (Herodotus 8.71–2). 18 The earliest example of which I am aware is Thucydides 2.65.11. 19 For an especially powerful example, see Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah, 1977), centring on a German platoon being massacred on the Eastern Front in the Second World War.


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A Digression on Accents It has become a commonplace among both popular and academic accounts of Hollywood films—and especially historical films—to observe that there is a regular pattern to the use of actors with ‘Received Pronunciation’ British accents. They are, it is pointed out, typically associated with villains, and especially with imperialist villains. So in a film like Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) one finds the heroic slaves played by Americans (Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, John Ireland, Woody Strode) and their oppressive Roman masters by Britons (Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov). The same pattern appears with sufficient regularity as to have become a cliché, with British actors like Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons appearing in prominent roles as villains to counter American heroes like Bruce Willis or Kevin Costner. Maria Wyke refers to this as ‘the “linguistic paradigm” of Hollywood cinema’,20 and argues that it is connected with the anti-imperialist messages of those films, which replay the American foundation myth of the creation of the country as a revolt against European imperialism. There is certainly some truth to this analysis; yet at the same time it involves a misleading over-simplification. For while it is certainly true that British accents are sometimes used as a marker of villainy in this way, there are at least two other aspects to the semiotics of accent that are found side by side with this one, but which appear to have been largely overlooked. The first is age. It is common in films with historical settings for older characters to be played by people with British accents, while those of a younger generation have American accents. Indeed, this is visible in Spartacus itself: while it is certainly true that the senior Romans are played by Britons, it is rarely pointed out that their junior counterparts, Caesar and Glabrus, are played by Americans (respectively John Gavin and John Dall). And this pattern is found repeatedly; in Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, 1950), for example, not only is the central young Roman character played by the American Robert Taylor (which might be explained proleptically by his eventual switch of sides with his conversion to Christianity),21 but there is a remarkable division among the Christian leaders. One prominent theme in Quo Vadis, as in other Roman–Christian films, is the gradual loss of memory, as the generation that knew Jesus personally passes away.22 In this film, the surviving link with Jesus, Peter, is played by the Briton Finlay Currie; the leader of the new generation of Christians, Paul, is played by the American Abraham Sofaer. And it is worth noting that this pattern replicates something that is real and familiar within American culture: one effect of building a country on immigration is that it is 20 Wyke (1997), 133, quoted in Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke (2001), 8–9, 13; also cf. Wyke (1997), 23, 71, 139; Wood (1975), 183–5; Fitzgerald (2001), 25. 21 22 So Fitzgerald (2001), 34–5. Babington and Evans (1993), 180–1.

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a common and normal experience for children to speak with different accents from their parents. The second overlooked use of British accent is more complicated, since it bundles together three themes which are conceptually independent of one another, though in practice may often be associated: class, region, and education. Putting it simply, British accents are often used to mark out certain American characters as being educated upper-class Easterners—the variety of American, perhaps, who seems to replicate most closely those aspects of education and class which are otherwise associated with the English.23 A clear example of this appeared in the same year as The 300 Spartans: The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962), where the blue-blooded Washington insiders are played by the Britons Lawrence Harvey24 and Angela Lansbury. Another example is The Talk of the Town (George Stevens, 1942), where the academic lawyer who is in line for promotion to the Supreme Court is played by the British Ronald Colman, his middle-class love-interest by the American Jean Arthur. Or one might note Mr Smith Goes To Washington (Frank Capra, 1939), where the newly-appointed senator from the mid-West is played by the American James Stewart, his more senior colleague of many years’ experience in Washington by the British Claude Rains. Of course, once we recognize that there is not one paradigm for British accents, but multiple separate paradigms working together, the potential for complication is considerable: the different paradigms may work against one another, or it may be hard to work out which is operating at any particular time. It may also be that one paradigm is influenced by another: it seems plausible to suggest, for example, that there is a connection between the use of British accents as a marker of villainy and their association with education, region, and class, with the suspicions these carry in substantial parts of 23 This conclusion is principally subjective, since there appear to be few relevant empirical studies of attitudes to accent at the time; nevertheless it is supported by such sociolinguistic data as are available. A study in Detroit in 1969 showed that the American test-subjects rated ‘British speech’ as ‘smart’ and ‘complex’ and ‘careful’ when compared to varieties of American speech, and its scores for these are most closely related to ‘standard American’ speech, rather than the local American accents (black and white) under consideration (Shuy, Baratz, and Wolfram (1969), 41–7). One problem with this study is that no examples of the types of speech were played to the respondents, and so it is not clear that responses to the concept of ‘British speech’ would necessarily match responses to the actual accent. But, as the authors observe, test-subjects who were themselves from higher socio-economic categories, and who were thus perhaps more likely to be familiar with actual British accents, rated the speech higher on these qualities than did their counterparts from lower social categories. And the general conclusion is strongly supported by a later study (Stewart, Ryan, and Giles, 1985), which showed that RP British accents were rated as high-status by American listeners, though lower in qualities of solidarity. It is especially interesting for the argument of this chapter that these effects were seen despite the fact that in nearly 20 per cent of cases the British accents were misidentified as American. 24 Lawrence Harvey was in fact Lithuanian by birth, but is marked as British by his accent: see further pp. 397–8 below.


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American culture.25 One also must point out that accents may be to a greater or lesser degree assumed: it may not always be unproblematic to identify a speaker as ‘British’ or ‘American’.26 Nevertheless, the accents are frequently recognizable, and their associations are clear and strong enough to influence tacitly the viewer’s interpretation of a film where different accents are on display. And it is especially worthwhile, for that reason, to consider the choice of accents in films with historical settings, where the use of British or American accents is not usually constrained by questions of realism, and therefore may be presumed to be governed substantially by their semiotic significance. We may now return to the main argument with the question: what accents are on display in The 300 Spartans? The immediately obvious point, to those remembering Wyke’s ‘linguistic paradigm’, is that Xerxes and the other leaders on the Persian side are played by British actors (David Farrar as Xerxes, Donald Houston as Hydarnes, Anne Wakefield as Artemisia), and it seems reasonable to suggest that the primary associations that this carries are those of imperial villainy. Were all the Greeks played by Americans, there might be little more to say: but in fact they are not. The Spartans of the younger generation are, it is true, largely played by Americans: Richard Egan as Leonidas, Barry Coe as Phylon, Diane Baker as Ellas, John Crawford as Agathon. But the older Spartans are played mainly by Europeans (notably Ivan Triesault as Demaratus, Yorgos Moutsios as Grellas, Sandro Giglio as Xenathon, as well as the members of the gerousia). As for the non-Spartan Greeks, some of these too are continental European (notably Anna Raftopolou as Toris and Dimos Starenios as Samos), but others are played by people from the British Isles: the Irish John Kieron as Ephialtes, the Briton Laurence Naismith as the First Delegate, and of course above all Ralph Richardson as Themistocles. So while it is certainly true that the central characters, with whom the audience might most naturally identify, are played by Americans, there are other accent-groups in the film associated with clear sets of characters who are not in any obvious way villains. What associations, then, do these carry? Playing older Spartans as Europeans is easier to explain: it fits into the familiar pattern mentioned above, under which older characters are marked with different accents from younger ones. But what 25 Those suspicions are not merely the consequence of anti-intellectualism: they have much wider associations in American ideology. Americans have frequently defined themselves and their country in terms of the frontier, which is set in opposition not only to the ‘savages’ they are conquering but the politics and culture of the East coast which they are escaping (see further below, pp. 397–8). The classic study of American frontier ideology in the 20th cent. is Slotkin (1992): on this issue see esp. 11. 26 e.g. in recent years the American Gwyneth Paltrow has had a distinguished career playing British roles with faultless authenticity. And some actors’ accents have been so idiosyncratic as to defy identification as American or British altogether—the obvious example being Cary Grant, whose accent allowed him to play British, American, upper- and lower-class characters with equal plausibility (or implausibility) in every case.

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is the significance of Britons playing non-Spartans, and especially Themistocles?27 He is clearly older than Leonidas, which may be part of the point, but his age is not in fact an especially significant feature of his characterization in the film. One point not to be overlooked is that it may actually mark Themistocles as British, recalling the alliance of Britain and America against first Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union (some of the developing versions of the script revealingly described him as ‘Churchillian’).28 But, as noted above, the cultural associations of Britishness had a tendency to shade into those of East-coast America, and much of Themistocles’ portrayal aligns him even more closely with the latter than the former. Themistocles was of course Athenian, and the dichotomy Athens– Sparta in 1950s and 1960s America had other connotations which mirrored some of the connotations of accent discussed above. Athens, recognized as the centre for philosophy, literature, and the arts in classical Greece, naturally was associated with education and culture, and hence became linked with the parts of the United States which were associated (or which associated themselves) with education and culture: above all the north-east and New England.29 Nor was this association merely a one-sided way to praise New Englanders. The suspicion of educated Eastcoasters within the American central heartlands, as discussed above (n. 25), meant that the antithetical values of a tough, down-to-earth rejection of the culture and politics of the East could themselves be celebrated. This has led to the repeated self-characterization of the southern and western United States30—not least in 27 The film-makers were determined to have a Briton playing Themistocles. Originally the Irish-born (but British-accented) actor Niall MacGinnis was cast in the role, but he withdrew a few weeks into shooting, which began on 7 Nov. 1960 (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 051: Production Files Box FX-PF-115, production progress report). Richardson was flown out as a last-minute replacement. See Production Files Box FX-PF-36, letters of 19.11.1960 and 20.1.1961 from W.G. Eckhardt to Sid Rogell; also budget of 28.11.1960. 28 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 010: Produced Scripts Box FX-PF1267, script dated 5.9.1960, Box FX-PRS-1268, script dated 30.9.1960. 29 So e.g. on 9 Feb. 1966 the Postmaster General of Massachusetts, Lawrence F. O’Brien, gave a speech before the Massachusetts state legislature in which he directly referred to Massachusetts as the Athens of the United States, prompting some cynical commentary in a leader in the Boston Sunday Globe (‘A Special Delivery’, Boston Sunday Globe, 13 Feb. 1966, p. 4-A), which accepted the characterization, only to deny that the current legislature lived up to it. A few years earlier, the columnist ‘Uncle Dudley’ had explained the derision of New England by other Americans as being largely the result of resentment of her cultural superiority: ‘Old Athens was not popular after the Peloponnesian War, and never regained the splendor of its prime, yet its spirit has gone on inseminating Western civilization twenty-four centuries, and will go [sic]. Boston and New England have fertilized the intellect and fortified the character of North Americans all over this continent’ (‘City of the Bean and Cod’, Boston Sunday Globe, 20 Dec. 1959, p. 2-A). 30 It may seem odd to align the South and the West, but that alignment is itself commonplace within the American cultural tradition: the nameless cowboy hero of the archetypal Western novel, Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902), is eponymously identified as a Southerner. One may note how commonly the heroes of Westerns are represented as having fought for the South in the Civil War (famous examples include Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954), The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), Run of the Arrow (Sam Fuller, 1957), The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976) ). The prominent role of Texas in the cinema is also relevant, as a state whose cultural image is quintessentially Western (more Westerns have been set in Texas than in any other state), yet which is historically part of the South: on this see Graham (1983).


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the cinematic genre of the Western (see further below, pp. 398–9)—as the home of a simple, tough but at the same time patriotic American character, upholding religion over cynicism and plain speaking and honourable dealing over slippery Washington politics. And hence this complex of ideological values maps far more closely on to Sparta31 than Athens,32 since the historical Athens could readily seem the home not only of high artistic culture, but also of political factions and of sophistic challenges to traditional values. This mirrors the associations of accent that one finds in The 300 Spartans. The Spartans, with American accents, can readily be identified with the selfdefined values of the American heartland, Themistocles, with a British accent, as an educated East-coast politician. Those associations are demonstrated not least by the behaviour of the respective characters in the film. Spartan piety is a point of contention between the Spartans and Themistocles. The latter is manifestly cynical about religion, as shown not least by his tone (‘if I remember correctly’) when he refers to the religious festival that had prevented the Spartans from fighting at Marathon, and his irritation when he learns that another such festival has led to Leonidas appearing without his full army;33 Leonidas defends the Spartans as ‘a religious people’. Likewise in the gerousia Xenathon refers to ‘Athens and her sinful ways’ as a reason not to support her, proposing instead to defend ‘southern Greece’ alone. But while Themistocles is not religious, he identifies himself as a ‘politician’ (again contrasted with Leonidas, who denies the appellation both before the gerousia and subsequently to Themistocles): and he does so in the context of a scene in which he uses his political instincts to deceive the allies into assisting the fight against the Persians, by indicating to them that the Spartan contingent is far larger than it in fact was. This has no historical basis,34 and indeed 31 Note the archetypal laconism of the heroes of Westerns: ‘the sine qua non of the twentiethcentury Western hero’ (Cawelti (1999), 41); see Tompkins (1992), 49–67. ‘Honourable dealing’ was not in fact part of the ancient conception of Sparta: in ancient sources—though admittedly not in Herodotus—the stereotype is if anything of Spartan duplicity (see Bradford, 1994). But the American tradition of associating laconic speech with honest speech, and of seeing simple honesty as the automatic antithesis of party politics, means that part of the Spartan stereotype was not brought into play (Agathon describes himself as ‘not a good liar’). See further p. 398 below. 32 When Clint Eastwood (then regarded entirely as an actor in Westerns) was interviewed in 1969, the interviewer contrasted his ‘sensitive’ and ‘sinuous’ exterior with his tough lifestyle and personality, describing the latter as ‘more Spartan than Athenian, more the soldier at Thermopylae than the naked runner’ (Aljean Karmetz, ‘The Man With No Name Is a Big Name Now’, New York Times, 10 Aug. 1969, p. D9). That Americans were willing to celebrate Spartan as well as Athenian roots is interestingly illustrated by the fact that, when the chamber of the US House of Representatives was redecorated in 1950, Lycurgus as well as Solon was among the figures portrayed as ‘play[ing] important parts in the evolution of American law’ (‘House Honors Spartan Hero With Plaque’, Washington Post, 31 Jan. 1951, p. B1). 33 Scholars, too, have sometimes doubted the genuineness of these Spartan religious excuses, but probably unfairly: see Holladay and Goodman (1986), 154–60. 34 The implication of Herodotus 7.203.1 is exactly the opposite: that the Greek allies were well aware that the Spartan troops sent to Thermopylae consisted of an advance guard rather than the entire army, although they expected the others to follow shortly.

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makes little sense in the narrative of the film, since the allies do not appear to be discouraged once they reach Thermopylae and find only three hundred Spartans there. Its purpose seems to be less narrative plausibility than to mark Themistocles as a particular sort of figure: one who employs strategic devices that the more straightforward characters like Leonidas would eschew. And of course the entire film is premised on the Spartans as the tough hardened fighters who are prepared to engage the enemy directly; the Athenians, while their naval power is shown as vital (and their future victory at Salamis is prophesied), are never shown as coming into direct hand-to-hand conflict with the Persian enemy.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO So the Spartans are made familiar to an American audience by being tacitly associated not just with Americans, but specifically with a particular type of American with a set of heroic values that is familiar from American ideology, especially as set out in numerous generic Westerns.35 But it is possible to identify the source for their portrayal more closely than that. In San Antonio, Texas, on 6 March 1836, the fort of the Alamo fell to the Mexican general Santa Anna with the death of virtually all of its defenders, who included the famous figures Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie as well as the fort’s commander William Travis: fewer than 200 defenders had held off for several days an army of some thousands. The story of the heroic defence of the Alamo was told and retold in popular accounts, and rapidly became one of the key founding myths not just of Texas, but of America. The comparison of the Alamo with Thermopylae was made immediately and repeatedly. On 18 March 1836, the acting President of the Republic of Texas, David Burnett, referred in a proclamation to the defenders of the Alamo as ‘the Spartan band’; an editorial in the Telegraph and Texas Register on 24 March spoke of it as ‘the Thermopylae of Texas’.36 On 26 March a resolution was passed by the citizens of Nacogdoches, Texas, which included the words: ‘Thermopylae is no longer without a parallel, and when time shall consecrate the dead of the Alamo, Travis and his companions will be named in rivalry with Leonidas and his Spartan band.’37 The comparison was then canonized by

35 Cf. Slotkin (1992), 25: ‘the influence of the Myth [of the Frontier] is such that its characteristic conventions have strongly influenced nearly every genre of adventure story in the lexicon of mass-culture production’. 36 See Jenkins (1990), 300–1. 37 Quoted by Hutton (1985), 5.


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General Thomas Jefferson Green,38 whose words ‘Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none’39 were enshrined in popular culture by being engraved on the east front of the Alamo memorial erected in 1843 at the Texan state capitol in Austin (the south side of the same monument likewise read ‘Be they enrolled with Leonidas in the host of the mighty dead’).40 From then on the image became ubiquitous in American culture: the Alamo referred to as ‘the American Thermopylae’ or ‘the Texan Thermopylae’, or else the Alamo and Thermopylae used side by side to illustrate other ‘last stands’. That an American film about Thermopylae would be coloured by memories of the Alamo would thus not be surprising in itself; but those memories were sharpened by the fact that in the period before The 300 Spartans was made there had been a sudden spate of Alamo films: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (Norman Foster, 1954), The Last Command (Frank Lloyd, 1955) and The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960).41 The makers of The 300 Spartans in a variety of ways demonstrably patterned their story according to that of these films. This can be seen in various scenes and episodes. An obvious example is the night raid on Xerxes’ camp. This has no historical basis, at least in the form in which it appears here;42 but it is closely based an episode that appears in both 38 The quote is also sometimes attributed to General Edward Burleson. The explanation for the dual attribution is that Burleson was the first to use it, in a speech at the site of the Alamo in 1842, but the speech appears to have been largely written for him by Green, who supplied this phrase, which Burleson is said to have included only after some hesitation: Green, unlike Burleson, was classically educated. See Jenkins (1990). 39 Green was exaggerating here. Even if one leaves aside those who were sent out as messengers or who otherwise left the fort before the final day, there were at least fourteen survivors (see the full list in Lord (1987), 207–8): they, however, did not count for Green, as they were all female and/or Hispanic and/or black and/or minors. The most one can say is that, as Susan Schoelwer puts it, ‘no adult white males, present at the onset of the battle in the pre-dawn hours of March 6, 1836, remained alive at day’s end’ (Schoelwer (1985), 109). 40 Quoted in Ford (1895), 27. The monument burned down in 1881, but a new one, still incorporating the quote from Green, was erected in 1891. 41 The Alamo premiered on 24 October 1960, only a couple of weeks before filming began on The 300 Spartans. However, its details were well known long before its release. Versions of Wayne’s script had existed since 1951, and he had circulated it widely to studios and film-makers in Hollywood in an attempt to get backing. And the film had received massive advance publicity for several months prior to its release, thanks not least to his (notorious) decision to link the forthcoming film to Richard Nixon’s presidential election campaign. Moreover, The Last Command derived from an early version of the script (which accounts for some of the similarities between the two films): Wayne had left Republic Pictures, to whom he had previously been contracted, largely because of a dispute over the Alamo film, but they had claimed ownership of the script written under their aegis. See Roberts and Olson (1995), 458, 470–4; McGivern (2000), 264–7; Munn (2003), 204, 218–19. 42 There is a vaguely similar story in Diodorus Siculus 11.10, Justin 2.11.11–18, and Plutarch, Moralia 866 a–b, who have the Spartans making their last stand by invading the Persian camp. But in the film it occurs earlier, with Leonidas taking the initiative to try to attack Xerxes himself; there is also no indication in ancient sources that the attack took place by water. It appears in any case that the film-makers were unaware of these sources when preparing the script: in their notes they said that they had no evidence for the episode, but defended it by reference

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The Last Command and The Alamo, where the defenders break out of the fort and invade Santa Anna’s encampment. In The 300 Spartans, exactly as in the Alamo films, the raid takes place at night, the raiders escape notice by wading through water into their enemies’ camp, and the enemy are engaged in musical entertainment, watching women singing or dancing while they are under assault. Another example is the climax of the Phylon–Ellas subplot: the young hero’s girl being with him at Thermopylae, and the deliberate decision of Leonidas to preserve his life and promote their eventual marriage by sending him off with the final heroic message to the other Spartans instead of allowing him to die with the other troops (on this episode see further below, pp. 400–1). This appears to be modelled directly on a similar subplot in The Last Command. There too the girl is present at the fort, and Bowie deliberately sends the young hero off before the final assault to bring Sam Houston the last report of the Alamo’s heroic defence, and so preserves the couple for the future. The Spartan tactics in the film would have surprised a real Spartan, not least because they involve a heavy use of archery: the Spartans form a protective line in their armour, and archers then fire from behind them. Needless to say, no such tactics were used at Thermopylae:43 archery was seen by classical Greeks as primarily an eastern weapon, and the Spartans at Thermopylae fought as infantry.44 However, it replicates the tactics used by the defenders of the Alamo, whose long-range rifles used from the protection of the fort were a significant factor in keeping the Mexican army off.45 Here too, then, the Spartans at Thermopylae are being recreated according to the pattern of the Alamo.46 And a central and defining moment in all the Alamo films comes when a messenger appears with news that the expected reinforcements will never arrive, and the troops agree heroically to remain in spite of that. Accordingly, the same moment appears in The 300 Spartans, despite the fact that, as we have seen, it has no historical basis, and should not in any event be as important militarily because, at least as presented in the film, the key to to its general historical probability (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 010 Produced Scripts Box FX-PRS-1267, ‘Historical Notes’ by Rudolph Maté and George St. George). Roger Beck, in his role as historical consultant, pointed out to them the Diodoran story, but also noted the differences as well as the historical implausibility; however the episode remained in the film despite his objections (Produced Scripts Box FX-PRS-1267, memorandum of 20.7.1960 from Roger Beck to Maté and St. George). 43 What the Spartans are portrayed as doing here is, ironically, very similar to the tactics which Herodotus 9.61.3 depicts the Persians deploying at Plataea. 44 The Spartans’ enlistment of archers after their defeat at Sphacteria in 425 is directly stated by Thucydides 4.55.2 to be contrary to their usual practice. On the stereotype of the non-Hellenic archer see Hall (1989), 85–6. 45 The Mexican weapons had a shorter range than those of the defenders, though none of these films make that explicit: see Lord (1987), 115–16, Gläser (1985), 85–6. 46 That the Spartan fighting in The 300 Spartans looked more appropriate to a Western than to ancient Greece was noted by a hostile reviewer at the time: see Bosley Crowther, ‘Comicbook History’, New York Times, 30 Sept. 1962, p. xi.


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the eventual defeat at Thermopylae, unlike the Alamo, was less the defenders’ lack of numbers than Xerxes’ discovery of the hill route. But the result is that the dynamic of the Thermopylae story is brought all the closer to the Alamo: it makes the inevitability of the defeat apparent much earlier in the battle, and so accentuates the heroic self-sacrifice of the defenders who remain to hold off the Persians that little longer. There is a further parallel between The Alamo in particular and The 300 Spartans, a parallel that exhibits, if not necessarily direct influence, at any rate a revealingly similar cultural pattern. Surprisingly, John Wayne cast in the role of William Travis an actor with an English accent—namely Lawrence Harvey. This was widely known and criticized at the time, and Harvey defended himself by referring to the fact that there were a significant number of Britons among the defenders of the Alamo47—which was true,48 but Travis was not among them (he was from South Carolina). But, remembering the role of British accents in Hollywood films, this is less anomalous than might initially appear. The historical Travis was an educated and rather dandyish figure,49 and this side of him is prominent in the film: his clothes and ornaments are stylish and expensive,50 and he speaks more grammatical and indeed literary English than the other characters (a fact frequently commented on in the script). He is also portrayed as arrogant and as something of a politician. This is precisely the sort of part regularly played by British actors in other Hollywood films (to the point that one suspects that the objections to Harvey’s casting were more because of Travis’s cultural status as an American hero than because of the specific historical implausibility). And, of course, it is the part that Themistocles takes on in The 300 Spartans: indeed, Travis exaggerates the likely support for the Alamo in a scene strikingly similar to Themistocles before Thermopylae, which we discussed earlier. But the way this is handled indicates something that is distinctive about these films: their inclusivity. Although both Travis and Themistocles are portrayed as deceptive politicians, and are marked as outside the standard code of the Western hero, there is little sense that this is something that disqualifies them from heroism: Travis is of course killed leading the final defence of the fort, and while Themistocles is not killed, he supports Leonidas up to the last possible moment, and only eventually leaves him in order to defend the higher cause of the ultimate Greek victory. Wayne’s film is in fact notable for its determination to enlist all of the people who would eventually make 47 See ‘Harvey Takes “Alamo” Stand’, Washington Post, Times Herald, 24 Jan. 1960, p. H8; cf. also the review of the film in Variety, 26 Oct. 1960, p. 6. 48 Lord’s list of the Alamo’s defenders includes nine from England, three Scots and a Welshman, as well as ten from Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom (Lord (1987), 213–19). 49 Schoelwer (1985), 135; cf. Lord (1987), 33–4. 50 On the negative associations of such dandyism in Westerns, see Pumphrey (1989), esp. 85–9. In The Last Command, too, Travis is a dandyish figure, though is not in this case played by an Englishman.

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up America into the ranks of the heroes (even the Mexicans are portrayed as noble and honourable),51 and hence the man who is marked by accent and behaviour as the apparent antithesis of the self-defined Westerner is a central and vital part of the heroic stand and thus of the American future.52 The same inclusivity is visible in The 300 Spartans: while the Western-sounding Spartans are the heroes at the centre of the film, Themistocles, whose behaviour and accent links him to the East coast and the world of Washington politics, will be the key to the final victory.

THE WESTERN (ANTI-)HERO Accepting that the Spartans primarily represent one side of the American character—the Westerner—carries further consequences. The Western hero, and the code of honour and behaviour that he embodies, is not accepted uncontentiously within the genre. A remarkably common pattern in Westerns is that of the ‘end of the West’, where the values and/or powers of the hero, while perhaps needed in order to destroy the enemy and save the community, also make him unfit to live within that community, whose future will be that of settled towns and families rather than that of the solitary warrior.53 Sometimes the Westerner leaves the community or dies; at other times he is integrated into it by changing his mode of existence and settling down to marriage and peace. But either way the values of the West are not the only ones on offer, and indeed are shown as being superseded. This could, of course, be presented simply negatively—the supersession of proper values by a lesser morality—but that is not in fact the way it usually comes across. More commonly, the obsolescence of the Western hero is demonstrated by the fact that he embodies a violence that verges on—or sometimes reaches—the 51 In his positive treatment of Mexicans John Wayne stood strikingly outside the tradition of Alamo narratives, which, in line with the stereotypes in American popular fiction more generally, have usually offered an image of Mexican treachery and savagery to set against the heroism of the Texans (see Pettit, (1980), esp. 45–9, 202): something worth remembering given Wayne’s (in many respects not unjustified) reputation as a hard-line conservative. 52 This is contrary to the more usual Western narrative pattern, in which those marked as Easterners (even if without British accents . . . ) are presented as negative or blocking characters, if not as actual villains, and those marked as politicians are automatically assumed to be corrupt. Cf. Homans (1974), 89–90; French (1973), 43–4; Wright (1975), 57–8; Coyne (1997), 20–1; and cf. also n. 25 above. 53 This basic narrative pattern is characteristic of some of the most famous and powerful films in the genre: a very short list might include Shane (George Stevens, 1953), The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962), Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962), Once Upon A Time In The West (Sergio Leone, 1968), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), The Shootist (Don Siegel, 1976); accordingly, it has been much discussed in the secondary literature. See e.g. Wood (1975), 43–50; Slotkin (1992), 34, 401–2; Tompkins (1992), 25–7; Coyne (1997), passim; Cawelti (1999), 29–45, 93–6; Lusted (2003), 205–30.


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dangerous and unacceptable, or that he maintains a code of conduct of impractical rigidity.54 The alternative is often represented by female characters in the films: they are associated with marriage and the promise of settling to a peaceful life, and as such either explicitly or implicitly stand for the future that the hero will have to embrace if he wishes to remain in the community.55 The same ambiguity of values is present in The 300 Spartans. It is true that, as set out above (p. 387), the Spartans are sanitized in a variety of ways for an American audience, but that sanitization involves more the abandonment of problematic elements of their social and political structure than of the warrior ethos. What remains still gives the strong sense of a militaristic culture, with dictums repeatedly introduced about the life and expectations of a Spartan soldier.56 None of these aspects of Spartan life is criticized directly, but at various points in the film it is clear that the ideal of warrior honour is not an unproblematic one. One example is at the climax of the battle, where Leonidas refuses to allow Themistocles to evacuate the wounded—a pointless decision, since there is no suggestion that their presence could enhance the defence: it appears simply as an heroic gesture for its own sake. More striking examples of the same extremism in Spartan behaviour come with the other Spartans’—and especially Agathon’s— treatment of Grellas and Phylon. At the start of the film, as Agathon leaves the Persian camp, he encounters Grellas, whom he refuses to listen to, but brutally whips down and scars as a traitor. Grellas’ reasons for being with Xerxes are never explained in the film,57 but he attempts to offer an explanation to Agathon in a way that suggests that he has a motive, and his final actions, bringing Leonidas a warning of the Persian arrival and then choosing to stay with him to die, indicate that his values are intact. Nothing in the portrayal of Grellas would support Agathon’s interpretation of him, which in turn raises discomfort in the audience with Agathon’s unprovoked violence on meeting him. And if the Persians in some sense represent Communist Russia, as discussed above, then Agathon’s 54 Cf. the classic article by Robert Warshow (1954); also French (1973), 114–22; Pye (1996a), 15–20 and (1996b); Cawelti (1999), 36–7. 55 This is not without its ambivalence, and some critics (e.g. French (1973), 64–6; Homans (1974); Wood (1975), 42–4, and esp. Tompkins (1992), passim) have suggested that these female values are not endorsed by the films in which they appear: that women simply threaten the ideal and glamorous male life represented by the solitary hero. But this seems to take far too little account of both the negative sides shown to that life and the overwhelming narrative movement in most of these films: marriage and domesticity is presented as the keenly desired end (whether or not achieved) that the hero is seeking. For more nuanced analyses see Slotkin (1992), 402, 423–4; Wexman (1993), 67–129; Pye (1996a), 11–15; Lucas (1998); Cawelti (1999), 30–1, 53–6; Studlar (2001). 56 Some examples: ‘You must treasure freedom above life, shun pleasure for the sake of virtue, endure pain and hardship in silence, obey orders implicitly’; the red cloak so that ‘no enemy will ever see Spartan blood’; ‘victory or death’; ‘[come home] with this [shield] or on it’; the anecdote of the Spartan mother who killed her son because he was wounded in the back. 57 This was deliberate: Maté’s and St. George’s script had Grellas explaining his treachery, but they removed the lines on the suggestion of Paul Nord, in order to keep it unclear whether Grellas was a traitor at all (Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation Collection 010, Produced Scripts Box FX-PRS-1268, script dated 30.9.1960 with Nord’s notes).

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later reference to Grellas as ‘a real Persia-lover’ has uncomfortably contentious overtones in 1960s America: it recalls phrases like ‘Commie-lover’ that had been especially characteristic of the McCarthyite persecution of alleged Communist sympathizers in the previous decade. That discomfort is accentuated by the aftermath. Once Agathon informs Leonidas of Grellas’ presence in Xerxes’ camp, the consequence is that Grellas’ son, Phylon, is held to be dishonoured: he is stripped of his cloak and sent away, denied any opportunity to redeem himself (though he creates the opportunity later in the film by secretly following the 300 and fighting on their side). Here too Spartan honour manifests itself in a highly problematic way which once again recalls McCarthyism: a man who is personally innocent of any wrongdoing is summarily cashiered because of his associations with other alleged wrongdoers, and the sympathy that the film has created prior to that scene for Phylon and for his fiancée Ellas means that the injustice of his treatment is to the fore. But it is above all the role of Ellas, especially in a key exchange in the centre of the film, that brings out the negative aspects of the Spartan code: ellas: I’ve never been ashamed of you. I knew you were always a good soldier. But … phylon: Yes? ellas: I’ve been watching Samos and Toris. They’re such good and simple people. They know nothing about honour and glory. But Toris knows that every night her man will be sleeping at her side. They live for themselves; they do no harm. Is it a crime to want to live in peace? phylon: No, Ellas. But you shouldn’t speak like that. Why, you yourself gave me the shield. ellas: I know. I know it all. I know that for a Spartan, life is a kind of preparation for death. But why should a love like ours go down and be trampled in dirt and blood? phylon: We must be ready to die for our country, Ellas. But we don’t have to die. I want to live and come to you with victory. ellas: Victory? Did you see the enemy in the plain out there? And there are only three hundred of you.

This ‘love story’ in The 300 Spartans is perhaps the most widely criticized part of the film, and has been ever since its release;58 and it is true that neither the writing nor the performances of Diane Baker and Barry Coe allow those scenes to carry a great deal of conviction. Yet thematically they are vital, because they provide the main focus for the alternative to Spartan military values, and

58 e.g. the review in Variety (22 Aug. 1962, p. 6), referring to the ‘attempts at romantic byplay’ that ‘only serve to clutter the film unnecessarily’; and saying that ‘intimate scenes are stilted and characters two-dimensional’; the Boston Globe review talked about the ‘romance, unimportant to the story’ as an example of the ‘portrayals . . . offer[ing] no dimensional qualities’ (‘Spartan Heroism Relived In Film at Memorial’, Boston Globe, morning edn., 13 Sept. 1962, p. 12). Similarly Elley (1984), 69 (‘an entirely dispensible love-story’); Smith (1991), 233–4; Solomon (2001), 40.


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so allow the audience the possibility of seeing a future beyond those. As in comparable Westerns, the woman becomes the locus for the espousal of an alternative way of life, a way of life that embodies the domestic values of love and the family—the values, indeed, that most of the audience would in practice choose for themselves and for others, and would regard as fundamental to the structure and stability of their own society. And those values are ultimately sanctioned at the climax of the film: for while Leonidas and his 300 followers, as required by the plot, choose to die heroically rather than retreat before the Persians, Leonidas himself sends Phylon and Ellas away, to (we presume) survive, get married, and grow old together exactly as she desired in her central speech. The 300, for all their heroism, and for all the fact that they are portrayed as the defenders of liberty against tyranny, represent a way of life that will die away: the free future for which they are fighting is one in which their militaristic values will ultimately have no place.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Babington, B., and Evans, P. W. (1993). Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema. Manchester. Bradford, A. S. (1994). ‘The Duplicitous Spartan’, in Powell and Hodkinson (1994), 59–85. Cameron, I., and Pye, D. (eds.) (1996). The Movie Book of the Western. London. Cawelti, J. G. (1999). The Six-Gun Mystique Sequel. Bowling Green. Clough, E. (2004). ‘Loyalty and Liberty: Thermopylae in the Western Imagination’, in Figueira (2004), 363–84. Coyne, M. (1997). The Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western. London. Elley, D. (1984). The Epic Film. London. Figueira, T. J. (ed.) (2004). Spartan Society. Swansea. Fitzgerald, W. (2001). ‘Oppositions, Anxieties, and Ambiguities in the Toga Movie’, in Joshel, Malamud, and McGuire (2001), 23–49. Ford, J. S. (1895). Origin and Fall of the Alamo: March 6 1836. San Antonio. French, P. (1973). Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre. London. Gläser, T. W. (1985). ‘Victory or Death’, in Schoelwer with Gläser (1985), 61–103. Graham, D. (1983). Cowboys and Cadillacs. Austin. Hall, E. (1989). Inventing the Barbarian. Oxford. Holladay, A. J., and Goodman, M. D. (1986). ‘Religious Scruples in Ancient Warfare’, CQ 36: 151–71. Homans, P. (1974). ‘Puritanism Revisited: An Analysis of the Contemporary ScreenImage Western’, in Nachbar (1974), 84–92. Hutton, P. A. (1985). ‘Introduction’, in Schoelwer with Gläser (1985), 3–17. Jenkins, J. H. (1990). ‘The Thermopylae Quotation’, Southwestern Historical Quarterly 94: 299–304.

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Joshel, S. R., Malamud, M., and McGuire, D. T., jr. (eds.) (2001). Imperial Projections. Baltimore. —— —— and Wyke, M. (2001). ‘Introduction’, in Joshel, Malamud, and McGuire (2001), 1–22. Kitses, J., and Rickman, G. (eds.) (1998). The Western Reader. New York. Lord, W. (1987). A Time to Stand, repr. edn. New York. Lucas, B. (1998). ‘Saloon Girls and Ranchers’ Daughters’, in Kitses and Rickman (1998), 301–20. Lusted, D. (2003). The Western. Harlow. McGivern, C. (2000). John Wayne: A Giant Shadow. Bracknell. Macgregor Morris, I. (2000). ‘The Age of Leonidas: The Legend of Thermopylae in British Political Culture 1737–1821.’ Unpublished PhD dissertation, Manchester. —— (2004). ‘The Paradigm of Democracy: Sparta in Enlightenment Thought’, in Figueira (2004), 339–62. Munn, M. (2003). John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth. London. Nachbar, J. (ed.) (1974). Focus on the Western. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Pettit, A. G. (1980). Images of the Mexican American in Fiction and Film. College Station. Powell, A., and Hodkinson, S. (eds.) (1994). The Shadow of Sparta. London. —— (2002). Sparta: Beyond the Mirage. Swansea. Pumphrey, M. (1989). ‘Why do Cowboys Wear Hats in the Bath? Style Politics for the Older Man’, Critical Quarterly 31.3: 78–100. Pye, D. (1996a). ‘Introduction: Criticism and the Western’, in Cameron and Pye (1996), 9–21. —— (1996b). ‘The Collapse of Fantasy: Masculinity in the Westerns of Anthony Mann’, in Cameron and Pye (1996), 167–73. Rawson, E. (1969). The Spartan Tradition in European Thought. Oxford. Rebenich, S. (2002). ‘From Thermopylae to Stalingrad: The Myth of Leonidas in German Historiography’, in Powell and Hodkinson (2002), 323–49. Roberts, R., and Olson, J. S. (1995). John Wayne: American. New York. Schoelwer, S. P. (1985). ‘Heroes Forgotten and Familiar’, in Schoelwer with Gläser (1985), 104–62. —— with Gläser, T. W. (1985). Alamo Images: Changing Perceptions of a Texan Experience. Dallas. Shuy, R. W., Baratz, J. C., and Wolfram, W. A. (1969). ‘Sociolinguistic Factors in Speech Identification.’ Unpublished research project no. MH 15048-01, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. Slotkin, R. (1992). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York. Smith, G. A. (1991). Epic Films. Jefferson, NC. Solomon, J. (2001). The Ancient World in the Cinema. 2nd edn., New Haven. Stevenson, A. E. (1959). Friends and Enemies. New York. Stewart, M. A., Ryan, E. B., and Giles, H. (1985). ‘Accent and Social Class Effects on Status and Solidarity Evaluations’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 11.1: 98–105. Studlar, G. (2001). ‘Sacred Duties, Poetic Passions’, in Studlar and Bernstein (2001), 43–74.


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—— and Bernstein, M. (eds.) (2001). John Ford Made Westerns. Bloomington, Ind. Tompkins, J. (1992). West of Everything. Oxford. Warshow, R. (1954). ‘Movie Chronicle: The Westerner’, Partisan Review (March–April, 1954), repr. in Kitses and Rickman (1998), 35–47. Wexman, V. W. (1993). Creating the Couple. Princeton. Wood, M. (1975). America in the Movies. New York. Wright, W. (1975). Six Guns and Society. Berkeley. Wyke, M. (1997). Projecting the Past. London.


17 The Guts and the Glory Pressfield’s Spartans at the Gates of Fire Emma Bridges

Existence had become a tunnel whose walls were death and within which prevailed no hope of rescue or deliverance. The sky had ceased to be, and the sun and stars. All that remained was the earth, the churned riven dirt which seemed to wait at each man’s feet to receive his spilling guts, his shattered bones, his blood, his life. The earth coated every part of him. It was in his ears and nostrils, in his throat, under his nails and in the crease of his backside. It coated the sweat and salt of his hair; he spat it from his lungs and blew it slick with snot from his nose. Xeones describes the struggle of the Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae: Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire, 423

A former captain of the US Marine Corps who had seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan recently contributed an article to the Washington Post (17 July 2005) highlighting the books which he felt had inspired him in his duty. At the top of his list was Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, a vivid imagining of the events surrounding the battle of Thermopylae, which was first published in 1998. In his newspaper article Nathaniel Fick wrote, ‘If there’s a better description of combat leadership, I’ve not seen it. I recognized Pressfield’s characters in the men I was serving with; weapons and tactics evolve, but the people stay the same.’ So too, I suspect, does the horror, discomfort, and camaraderie of face-to-face combat. Fick insisted that every member of his own platoon read the novel. Why should a fictionalized retelling of the events surrounding a battle which took place almost two and a half millennia ago be relevant to the front line troops of the twenty-first century? This chapter will look at the genre of the historical novel as a cultural response to the Persian Wars and will consider in particular the treatment afforded by Gates of Fire to this period of Greek history.

Warmest thanks to Edith Hall and Peter Rhodes for providing continuing encouragement, advice and constructive comments on my contribution to the volume.

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Emma Bridges NOVEL APPROACHES TO AN ANCIENT THEME

The English-language historical novel, a genre which is particularly popular (although often underrated and viewed even with a degree of snobbery in literary circles) in the modern world,1 has found rich pickings in the stories of Darius’ and Xerxes’ invasions. In manipulating and fictionalizing the archetypal narratives of the Persian Wars the genre sits alongside the range of artistic modes of expression—opera, theatre, film, and painting—which feature elsewhere in this volume. War, it seems, makes a particularly good backdrop for historical fiction; World War I (Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and the Regeneration trilogy of Pat Barker), World War II (Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Louis de Bernières’ Captain Correlli’s Mandolin) and the US Civil War (Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier) as historical settings for action have all found their places in the bestseller lists of recent years.2 The ancient world has also long held an appeal for novelists, with writers such as Mary Renault, Robert Graves, Lindsey Davis, Steven W. Saylor, Tom Holt, and Valerio Massimo Manfredi revisiting time and again the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome as a setting for their fiction. Although, on the whole, Alexander the Great and imperial Rome have received more attention than classical Greece from the genre, it is perhaps not surprising that the stories of the Persian Wars should be deemed suitable subjects for novels. The scope which these ancient narratives provide for exploration of the recurring (and timeless) themes of heroism, honour and shame, loyalty and betrayal, and the struggle for freedom has meant that, in spite of their unfamiliar geographical and historical setting, they have retained their appeal in the modern western world. These themes were, of course, those which had been delved into by authors since the very earliest literary responses to the Persian invasions: Simonides, Aeschylus, and Herodotus all had their own take on the heroic Hellenes who fought to ward off the Persian invader. Since the nineteenth century, authors of modern historical fiction on both sides of the Atlantic have, with varying degrees of success, selected and adapted material from these ancient sources to mould them into narratives aimed primarily at a non-academic, in many cases non-classically educated, readership, and indeed a readership which may have no prior knowledge of the historical timeframe within which the events of their novels take place.3 1 Lukács (1962), 19–25, in his theoretical work on the historical novel, identified the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon as the catalyst in Europe for the rise of the historical novel. Walter Scott’s Waverley, published in 1814, is generally credited as the first novel in this genre. 2 On war as a setting for literature in the 20th cent., see Rutherford (1978), 1–10. 3 Whilst the following discussion focuses primarily on fiction aimed at adults, it is also worth noting that the wars have been seen as a suitable subject for several children’s stories. Perhaps

Pressfield’s Spartans at the Gates of Fire

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One of the earliest of the Persian Wars novels written in the English language is the unfinished work of the prolific writer Edward Bulwer Lytton, his Pausanias, the Spartan, which was edited by his son and published incomplete after his death in 1873. Perhaps best-known for his first historical novel, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), which was also set in the ancient world, Bulwer Lytton enjoyed far greater literary popularity and influence in his own time than he has done since. His son, in his preface to the work, explained that what fascinated his father about Pausanias was the man’s character and motivation; his behaviour at Byzantium after Plataea offered this author, a politician himself,4 an intriguing study in human nature. Pausanias, in its concentration on events after the retreat of Xerxes’ army, is somewhat atypical of novels on the theme, yet it explores many of the same topics which arise in the works dealing with events which took place in Greece during the actual Persian invasion. Issues relating to loyalty and treachery are under the spotlight here, and the question of an individual’s political motivation—whether for his country or for personal ends—is at the forefront. Pausanias—although his motives are repeatedly questioned by the Spartans—claims in the novel that his emulation of Persian style (for which he was so vilified by the ancient sources) is a political expedient. The character created by Bulwer Lytton believes that a treaty with Persia is inevitable, and his aim is therefore to negotiate terms as favourable as possible for Greece, whilst ensuring at the same time that his own Sparta remains in control over Athens. Those works which do concentrate on the period from Marathon to Plataea (with their primary focus usually on the build-up to, on events during, and on the aftermath of the battles themselves) reveal a range of different ways of dealing with the fictionalization of the Persian invasions, yet display striking similarities as to the key motifs which they highlight. The degree to which these narratives adhere to or adapt the ancient sources may vary, and the emphasis placed upon different parts of the Persian Wars story (whether narrated from an Athenian or Spartan point of view, for example, or whether concentrating

the earliest of these was A. J. Church’s Three Greek Children (1890), which seems to have been designed to educate schoolchildren of the Victorian era not only about the events of the Persian invasion but also about life in ancient Athens; the story tells of three children living at the time of the Peloponnesian War, giving details of their daily life, customs and education as well as relating stories told to them of the battles of Marathon and Salamis. Mary Renault, better known for her historical novels written for an adult audience, ventured into this realm with The Lion in the Gateway, an imaginative retelling of events from Marathon to Plataea which was first published in 1964. Kenneth Lillington’s 1979 Young Man of Morning, although ostensibly a children’s story, is written in such a way as to appeal to adults too; here we hear of the adventures of a boy, Philip, in the period leading up to Thermopylae and Salamis. More recently, Geoffrey Trease’s Mission to Marathon (1997) tells the story of a boy living at the time of the first Persian invasion. 4 Bulwer Lytton first entered Parliament as an independent radical MP for St Ives (Huntingdonshire) in 1831. He later rose to be Colonial Secretary in 1858. In 1837 he was made a baronet and he was raised to the peerage in 1866.

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on Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae, or Plataea) differs from one novel to the next, yet all are preoccupied to some degree with the themes of Greek honour, glory and courage in war, and the ‘David and Goliath’ struggle of the few who championed freedom against the massed slave army of the barbarian invader. John Burke’s 1961 novel, based on the screenplay of The 300 Spartans, and entitled The Lion of Sparta, typically glorifies the Greeks’ outstanding achievement against their would-be oppressors. The book’s jacket announces in bold type, ‘barbaric splendour; elemental savagery; superb heroism’ and the blurb—in a style of which Hollywood would doubtless be proud but at which a grammarian would cringe—comments of Leonidas and his three hundred that ‘These were no ordinary men. For Spartans there was no retreat, no surrender. Their highest hope a glorious death.’ The Greek fighters in novels such as this are invariably presented as fighting for a greater good; their courage, excellence and patriotism in fighting to protect the world from the threat of eastern barbarism is repeatedly stressed.5 Meanwhile, the honourable Hellenes are contrasted not only with their barbarian attackers6 but also with those contemptible Greeks who betray and Medize. The Thebans and Ephialtes commonly appear as the antithesis of the virtuous patriots.7 William Stearns Davis’s fascinating 1907 novel A Victor of Salamis: 5 Caroline Dale Snedeker, for example, writes in The Spartan (1912) of her hero Aristodemos that, on learning of the plan to defend Thermopylae, ‘Henceforward life for Aristodemos could set but one way and have but one activity—to fight for the freedom of Greece against the dark barbaric world. None but a Greek could give to a conception so idealistic a devotion so passionate’ (166). 6 A handful of fictionalizations of the Persian Wars narratives have attempted to see the story of the wars from the perspective of the enemy. Gene Wolfe’s fantasy novels, Soldier of the Mist and its sequel Soldier of Arete, written in the 1980s, are told from the point of view of a mercenary soldier who has lost his memory but appears to have fought on the Persian side in the past. Gore Vidal’s Creation tells not only of the Persian Wars but of the entire history of the reigns of Darius and Xerxes from the point of view of an insider—the novel is narrated by Cyrus Spitama, a Persian ambassador and supposed grandson of the prophet Zoroaster. For him, the wars are known as the ‘Greek wars’ and treated incidentally in the course of his tales of his adventures as a member of the Persian court. Finally, In Kithairon’s Shadow (Martin), focuses on the experience of characters from five different backgrounds; one of these is the Persian general Asfandiar. On the sympathetic portrayal of Persians by Steven Pressfield, see below, pp. 418–19. 7 For example, Theban treachery is stressed by Davis (238, where Leonidas tells all others to go home from Thermopylae, except the Thebans, whose loyalty he distrusts; 427 and 435, where the Thebans fighting on the Persian side are defeated by the Athenians at Plataea), Snedeker (251–2, and 460, ‘For Thebes in the great hour of Greece had sided with the Persian and fought against her own flesh and blood.’), Lillington (164: ‘The men of Thebes, as had been expected, ran to the Persians as soon as they could, crying, “We are friends of the Great King!” But though they saved their lives in this way, they earned themselves nothing but misery, for the Persians despised them and used them vilely, giving them the work of their meanest slave.’) and Martin, who tells part of his story from the point of view of a Theban, Eurydamos, who himself despises the Persians although he hates the Athenians more (22, 131, 184). Ephialtes is named as the traitor of Thermopylae in the novels of Davis (225–7), Snedeker (229 ff., where the hero Aristodemos attempts unsuccessfully to thwart Ephialtes’ mission to betray the Spartans), Burke (142), Milton (41–7), and Lillington (161).


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A Tale of the Days of Xerxes, Leonidas and Themistocles explores what it means to be a patriot still further by taking as its key theme the virtues of loyalty as opposed to the evil of treachery.8 The novel’s central character is Glaucon, an Athenian athlete from the Alcmaeonid family, and a friend of the orator and statesman Democrates who, for financial and personal gain, betrays Athens by conspiring with Persia. Democrates then fakes the evidence against Glaucon, who is wrongly exiled as a traitor. Glaucon ultimately finds himself in Persia under the protection of Mardonius, whose life he saves after a shipwreck. Accompanying the subsequent Persian campaign to Greece, Glaucon is unable to deny his Greek roots and fights in disguise on the Greek side at Thermopylae; he later manages to secure his return from exile and joins Themistocles’ ship at Salamis. Ultimately Democrates’ treachery is revealed and Glaucon is hailed as a hero. As well as highlighting the character and courage of those who fought at Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, the novelists who have chosen to focus on the Persian Wars are customarily keen to stress the legacy left to the modern world by those who gave their lives in combat. All emphasize the sacrifices made by the Greek fighters in order to secure the liberty of Greece (and in some cases the future of the entire western world), the honour and glory attendant upon their achievements, and the need for lasting commemoration of their deeds.9 In this Davis’s A Victor of Salamis is typical. The author’s note preceding the main narrative (v) reminds us of the debt owed to the Greeks by western civilization: Had Athens and Sparta succumbed to this attack of Oriental superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes—Leonidas and Themistocles—cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I have attempted this piece of historical fiction.

Similarly, US author Caroline Dale Snedeker seems keen that we do not forget what we owe to these ancients who fought on our behalf. In her 1912 The Spartan (269) she writes: The Greeks of the Salamis day did not know that the Western world down all the centuries would be thankful for their deeds. Yet the power of the fact was in them, exalting them with a fine, high passion—a passion which outran ‘Hellas’ and was touched with a kind of world prophecy beyond their ken. 8 One of the earliest British fictional treatments of the Thermopylae story to look at the theme of patriotism was Richard Glover’s 1737 poetic epic Leonidas, which presented the Spartan leader as the ideal patriotic king. See Clough (2004), 365–71. 9 Mary Renault’s The Praise Singer, a fictional biography of Simonides, highlights this commemorative aspect of narratives constructed around the Persian Wars theme. Although her book deals only incidentally with the wars themselves, it stresses that Simonides himself was defined by the legacy he left when he composed his epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. The book’s opening paragraph has Simonides recalling his verses and musing as to the lasting impact these will have (3): ‘Tell them in Lakedaimon, passer-by, that here, obedient to their word, we lie. They’ll remember that.’

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The foreword to Roderick Milton’s 1962 novel of the Persian Wars, Tell Them in Sparta, announces (7) that ‘The war between the Greeks and the Persians in the fifth century B. C. was one of the most important of all wars, since it determined the development of Europe right up to our own day.’ He suggests that, had the Persian empire been allowed to expand, infant Rome would have been unable to grow into the empire which ‘set the whole pattern of subsequent European history’ and concludes too that ‘In this story of a small but free people waging a desperate war for liberty against the huge forces of a totalitarian state there is, too, a lesson for our own times.’10 Most recently, Jon Edward Martin’s novel on the events leading up to Plataea, In Kithairon’s Shadow (2003), reminds us in a prefatory note like that of Davis that after the Persian defeat at Salamis, ‘Although reeling from this setback Xerxes’ army still possessed the larger portion of Greece, and it would require one final confrontation to settle the fate of this tiny country, and the future of western civilization.’ Such emphasis on the weight of one’s subject-matter and the need for its commemoration appears to have become in itself a topos of novels on this theme. One of the most recent Persian Wars novels to become available in the English language, Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s Spartan,11 was reviewed by Paul Cartledge (2002) shortly after its publication. Cartledge wrote (117): This is the only work of any kind that I know, explicitly fictional or otherwise, that is written throughout from a mainly Helot point of view. That of course does not make it a good novel, alas. As in the Alexander books [by Manfredi], the depth of characterization is minimal, suspense or surprise is rarely used, and clumsily handled when it is, the language and imagery are largely banal, and several of the key developments as well as the mainspring of the plot are historically implausible.

Were we to judge many of the Persian Wars novels by these same criteria we might find them, too, wanting. Whilst it may seem inappropriate to assess the quality of these works here—any reader response in terms of which of the books make a ‘good read’ is, by definition, subjective—it is worth noting that the more engaging of the novels are those which exercise some degree of creative imagination, extending the story beyond what little appears in ancient sources, yet without stretching the limits of what is believable, or ‘realistic’. The poorest of the books often strike the reader as a simple rehash of the topoi from Aeschylus, Herodotus, et al., sometimes appearing as little more than an exercise in cramming into three hundred or so pages as many 10

It seems that he is referring here to the Cold War, and perhaps more specifically to the unsuccessful US-assisted Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, which attempted to overthrow the communist regime of Fidel Castro. For the Persian Wars and the Cold War, see further Clough (2004), 375–6. 11 This was originally written in Italian and published in 1988 as Lo Scudo di Talos (The Shield of Talos); the English translation, by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi, appeared in 2002.


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anecdotes or images from the ancient sources as possible—favourite motifs include Xerxes’ Hellespont bridge and his throne, the comparison of Persian wealth and luxury with Greek poverty, Dieneces’ comment that if the Persians’ arrows blot out the sun then the Spartans will fight in the shade, and the Spartans’ singing in battle or hair-combing before Thermopylae. Without human interest, however—insights into the personalities of the key players, or snapshots of what it might really have felt like to live through these momentous events—the stories are reduced to mere inadequate shadows of Herodotus’ narrative. It is precisely because of his emphasis on individuals and thaumata (wonders/marvels) that Herodotus’ text has been so much more inspiring to writers of fiction than, for example, the history of Thucydides. As well as this, Herodotus’ work is not purely a narrative account, but describes, dramatizes and employs diverse individual voices—a technique which was identified by Mikhail Bakhtin as a key feature of the modern novel. Those Persian Wars novels which stand out from the others in their genre do precisely the same thing. Bulwer Lytton’s Pausanias, or Davis’s A Victor of Salamis, for example, allow us to see inside the minds of the key characters and to gain an understanding of what motivates them to take the action they do. Bulwer Lytton’s Pausanias and Davis’s Glaucon and Democrates are human beings rather than the one-dimensional characters seen so often elsewhere. In what follows, I will suggest that this is one of the features of Steven Pressfield’s treatment of Thermopylae which makes it stand out from other novels in the genre.

SPARTANS AT THE GATES OF FIRE If one treatment of the Persian Wars were to be identified as that which has done more than any other to bring the history of the period to the attention of the general public in recent years, it would surely be Steven Pressfield’s novel Gates of Fire.12 A bestseller in both the USA and the UK, the novel is one which caught the attention of both the public and the critics.13 Rumours—which, to the disappointment of the editors of this volume, have yet to be realized— still circulate on the internet that Hollywood intends to make a movie of the

12 The impact of Tom Holland’s recently-published Persian Fire (2005) has yet to be seen, although as a ‘popular history’ book it naturally demonstrates a different approach to the history of the Persian Wars from that of the fictionalizations discussed here. Nonetheless it has already been very well received, featuring regularly in the non-fiction bestseller lists up to the end of 2005; see also e.g. Bedell (2005), Cartledge (2005), Napier (2005), and Stothard (2005). 13 See e.g. Lefkowitz (1998), Lind (1998), and Fick (2005). At the time of writing this paper the Amazon website offered fifty-nine reviews of the novel contributed by the general public.

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book.14 In what follows I shall ask why this particular novel has generated such interest where others on similar themes have failed to do so—and indeed why a captain of the US Marines deemed it compulsory reading for the men of his platoon.15 Pressfield’s take on Thermopylae is narrated by Xeones, an invented character who has survived the battle of Thermopylae and has been taken to the Persian court for questioning by Xerxes’ advisers, in order to satisfy the Persian king’s curiosity as to the Spartan character and way of life. Xeones, a refugee who came to Sparta when his own homeland of Astakos was sacked by the Argives, has spent his life there as a squire to Dienekes, of the famous ‘we shall fight in the shade’ comment. His perspective on the Spartan social system and response to the Persian invasion is therefore that of an outsider, yet one who at the same time owes much to the men of this state. As Lind (1998) points out, the narrative device works particularly well in the context: ‘Xeones is a type familiar in historical fiction—the minor character who witnesses the deeds of the great. The need for the captured Greek to explain Hellenic customs to the Persian king provides Pressfield with an excuse for the necessary exposition.’ What results is an ‘inside view’ not merely on a single episode in Spartan history but on the whole of Spartan society. This view is distinct from that seen in other treatments of the Persian Wars particularly because of Pressfield’s refusal to shrink from dealing with some of the less appealing aspects of Sparta, her military training, the reality of war, and the characters of individuals. Where other fictional treatments sanitize the events of the wars, Pressfield refuses to present a straightforward picture of the glory of war, creating instead images of the pity and horror of the situation in which the Spartans find themselves. We are never spared the gruesome details, and the language in which his characters converse is often explicit. It is with Xeones’ descriptions of the Spartan system of military training, the ago-ge-, that we are first made truly aware of the often cruel and brutal aspects of a society whose men are trained from the earliest age to be professional soldiers. In the 14 In the Frequently Asked Questions section of his own website Pressfield comments that, ‘Gates has been under option to Universal Studios since it was first published in 1998. The acquiring production company was George Clooney and Robert Lawrence’s Maysville Pictures. A number of scripts and revisions have been written for them and Universal since then, all by the top-notch young writer David Self (Thirteen Days, Road to Perdition, the upcoming Submariner). Michael Mann (Heat, Ali, Collateral) was the director attached, but last summer he and the studio parted company over—that fateful phrase—creative differences.’ (http://www.stevenpressfield. com/content/faq.asp, viewed Dec. 2005) He notes that, although in 2004 the film came its closest ever to a green light, the project has yet to go ahead, and suggests that one of the problems is that it would require a huge budget. A review of the screenplay may be viewed online at http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/036/036023p1.html (last accessed Dec. 2005). See also http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,897476,00.html for an interview (dated 17 Feb. 2003), in which George Clooney comments on the problems of making this into a film (although his comment here that in the story, ‘Rome burns’ may suggest that he has not yet read the script in detail). 15 See above, 405.


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camaraderie of the sussitia and the black humour of the trainees we perhaps see the influence of Pressfield’s own time as a recruit in the US Marine Corps; although he never actually participated in active service he nonetheless underwent full training and acknowledges that he drew on his own experiences there in portraying the mentality of an all-male group in preparation for war.16 Dienekes’ young charge Alexandros, companion of Xeones, is seen undergoing the rigours of the ago-ge-, from his first whipping for a transgression within his ‘platoon’ (105–6),17 to the drill of military exercises at the age of 14. Here we witness the punishment received by Alexandros for his neglect of his shield (110 ff.); this incident is typical of the picture painted by Pressfield of the boys’ training. The warrior and athlete Polynikes expresses in no uncertain terms his disgust at Alexandros’ carelessness and orders him to urinate in his shield, since he has left it lying bowl-upwards like a chamberpot.18 The hardened cruelty of Polynikes resurfaces later, when Alexandros is punished for secretly following the Spartans to the battle of Antirhion. Here Polynikes, on questioning the young and horrified Alexandros as to his reactions to what he has seen, appears to glory with sadistic pleasure in describing the bloodshed and brutality of battle. The following extract from his speech is typical (197): Killing a man is like fucking, boy, only instead of giving life you take it. You experience the ecstasy of penetration as your warhead enters the enemy’s belly and the shaft follows. You see the whites of his eyes roll inside the sockets of his helmet. You feel his knees give way beneath him and the weight of his faltering flesh draw down the point of your spear. Are you picturing this?

Polynikes is far from the image of the illustrious Spartan warrior whom we have come to expect from the Persian Wars tradition. Neither the ancient nor the modern responses to Thermopylae present another character such as this, for whom it is possible to feel contempt on the grounds of his savage behaviour. Although later in the novel Polynikes goes some way towards redeeming himself when he shows respect towards Alexandros for his actions 16 I am grateful to Steven Pressfield for taking the time to enter into correspondence on this topic and other matters discussed below. 17 Snedeker also hints at the brutality of the Spartan training; in The Spartan Aristodemos— who hates the Spartan way of life, which he has been forced to endure since the death of his Athenian father—undergoes the initiation ritual of being whipped, and barely survives (112, 118). Her descriptions are, however, tame by comparison to those of Pressfield. 18 The emphasis on the importance of never leaving one’s shield unattended is stressed throughout the novel. At 66 Dienekes explains that the individual’s shield is more crucial than any other part of a hoplite’s armour because the safety of the whole battle line depends upon it. Later (117) we see Alexandros’ being made to chant the mantra, ‘This is my shield. I bear it before me into battle, but it is not mine alone. It protects my brother on my left. It protects my city. I will never let my brother out of its shadow nor my city out of its shelter. I will die with my shield before me facing the enemy.’ Pressfield asserts that this was based on his own experience in the US Marine Corps, where recruits were made to recite similar lines concerning their rifles. (http:// www.historicalnovelsociety.org/solander%20files/spinterview.htm, last viewed in Dec. 2005).

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at Thermopylae,19 here is a man to whom it is difficult to warm, far removed as he is from the noble warriors seen elsewhere. For Pressfield, it seems, military training and the realities of war can bring out the worst as well as the best in people. When it comes to describing battle itself, once again the author spares us no details. From the outset, the force dispatched to Thermopylae is explicitly portrayed as a ‘suicide unit’ (240), with emphasis placed on the fact that only fathers of living sons may participate. The public story, to inspire confidence among the allies, is that greater numbers will be sent, but in reality no more than Leonidas’ 300 will go ‘with orders to stand and die’ (241). An enlightening comparison may be made here with Manfredi’s description of the mission in Spartan. There he writes (107) that ‘young warriors accepted the call with enthusiasm, eager to be pitted directly against the enemy. No thought of their likelihood of survival against an army as vast as that of the Great King even crossed their minds.’ The reality of impending death never enters the heads of Manfredi’s 300 eager glory-seekers; by contrast, Pressfield’s are only too keenly aware of the fate which awaits them. The horrors of face-to-face combat are described with gruesome realism in Gates of Fire too. The extract cited at the opening of this chapter is typical of Pressfield’s vivid imagining of the grim reality of the battlefield. No other author of Persian Wars fiction describes with such convincing authenticity the true agony felt by a soldier spilling his guts on the battlefield. The author does not shy away from envisaging the bloody details, writing in graphic and brutal language to provide a gritty take on the experience of the warriors. Xeones tells us at one point, for example (356): Bodies were underfoot everywhere. I mounted atop what I thought was a stone, only to feel it writhe and wriggle beneath me. It was a Mede, alive. He plunged the stub end of a shattered machaera scimitar three inches into my calf; I bellowed in terror and toppled into the tangle of other gore-splattered limbs. The foe came at me with his teeth. He seized my arm as if to tear it from its socket; I punched him in the face with my bow still in my grip. Suddenly a foot planted itself massively upon my back. A battle-axe fell with a grisly swoosh; the enemy’s skull split like a melon.

The slaughter continues for pages of equally graphic description, as time and again we witness, through the eyes of Xeones, individual horrors: the Spartans climbing over a wall of bodies (356); the wounded Mede sitting on the ground cradling his own intestines in his hands (363); Dienekes’ loss of an eye, with only a ‘ghoulish socket of tissue and blood’ left behind (373).20 The carnage 19

At 392 he shows some compassion for Alexandros, but only after he has proven himself by being wounded in battle. Cf. 476, where he shows his humanity after Alexandros’ death. 20 One of Frank Miller’s characters in his 300 also loses an eye at Thermopylae. Leonidas comments, ‘Dilios, I trust that scratch hasn’t made you useless,’ to which the injured warrior replies, ‘Hardly, my lord. It’s just an eye. The gods saw fit to grace me with a spare.’ On Miller’s presentation of these Spartan ‘tough guys’ see below, p. 416.


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is frequently described as ‘murder’; this is no unadulterated tale of pure glory which paints a glossy picture of the honour of self-sacrifice. Xeones also acknowledges the adverse effect which exposure to such scenes has on the minds of the men. At one point (364) he comments that, ‘The slaughter surpassed the mind’s capacity to assimilate it.’ Later we are told (380): A temper towards the enemy now arose which had not been present before. This was not hatred but rather a refusal to reckon quarter. A reign of savagery began. Acts of barbarity which had been hitherto unthinkable now presented themselves to the mind and were embraced without a quibble. The theatre of war, the stink and spectacle of carnage on such a scale, had so overwhelmed the senses with horror that the mind had grown numb and insensate. With perverse wit, it actually sought these and sought to intensify them.

In this way the base human instincts take over and the men become hardened to the ghastly sights before them. The psychological effects of warfare are therefore seen to be just as horrific as the physical wounds; men become incapable of feeling revulsion at the things to which no human being ought to be exposed. How has Pressfield been able to create such a vivid picture, and why is it that this makes his novel so engaging in a way which is distinct from the many other Persian Wars narratives? Pressfield himself believes in the Muse as a source of inspiration for his writing; this, he asserts passionately, is what enables him to envisage a world far removed from our own. Yet surely the world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, although distant from that of the hoplite phalanx, has more than its fair share of images of warfare from which to build a picture of the battlefield. Arguably, our perception of warfare in the modern western world has been shaped largely by the vast swathes of literature—poetry, diaries, novels, and letters—which issued from the pens of those who took part in the First World War. Indeed, Pressfield’s graphic descriptions of the terrible deaths suffered by the Spartans is reminiscent to some extent of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et decorum est, in which the poet visualizes the grim reality of dying on the front as contrasted with what he refers to as the ‘old Lie’ which promises how sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country. Paul Fussell’s groundbreaking 1975 work The Great War and Modern Memory was devoted to analysing the ways in which this literature shaped our views not only of warfare, but of the world in general. There he suggests that one of the great problems of expression encountered by the writers of the Great War was that no language, however horrific, could convey the true agony and suffering of those who participated in trench warfare. He writes (169–70) that, Logically, there is no reason why the English language could not perfectly well render the actuality of trench warfare: it is rich in terms like blood, terror, agony, madness, shit, cruelty, murder, sell-out, pain and hoax, as well as phrases like legs blown off, intestines gushing out over his hands, screaming all night, bleeding to death from the rectum, and the like.

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Yet, Fussell comments, World War I was still somehow indescribable: a manmade horror which was, for many, too terrible to put into words. The language used by Pressfield to describe the battle of Thermopylae is strikingly similar to the list of words and phrases highlighted by Fussell here; at a distance of two-and-a-half millennia from the original events, it seems, the ‘unspeakable’ words can be used with full impact. It is not only in literary descriptions of warfare but also in the images publicized by the media that the presentation of war has become more graphic in recent times. Our generation, it could well be said, has become inured to violence by photojournalism, television and the big screen, with daily images of real-life atrocities transmitted across the world almost immediately after they have taken place. Since the Vietnam War, helped along by the rise of the mass media, we have been able to access with greater freedom images of truelife warfare as experienced by real people. The recent conflict in Iraq, where ‘embedded’ journalists lived through the war with ground troops whose actions they recorded daily, is a case in point. Meanwhile, the large-scale special effects of big-budget movies appeal to our very human, yet still perverse, fascination with that which is gruesome or violent. In a way we, like the fighters described by Xeones, become hardened to descriptions and images of bloodshed the more we are exposed to them. Small wonder then that, by comparison with the gory details of Thermopylae presented by Pressfield, the sanitized accounts of the Persian Wars seen in other historical novels seem tame and colourless. One other recent fictionalization of Thermopylae acts in a similar way to Pressfield’s account, although this time using mostly pictures rather than words. Frank Miller’s 1999 ‘graphic novel’ 300, illustrated by Lynn Varley and originally issued in 1998 as five separate comic-books (entitled Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat, and Victory) is an illustrated story of the battle which, like Gates of Fire, spares us none of the blood and gore.21 Nothing is suppressed here; Miller’s Spartans appear to relish the fight, and though, like Pressfield’s Polynikes, they are hard to find attractive, we cannot fail to admire their steadfast determination. The work portrays starkly the gruesome battle-scenes; red and black are the dominant colours of the story, with the colour of the Spartans’ cloaks mirroring that of the blood which they shed. Miller’s Leonidas himself displays a wry brand of humour, and cannot disguise his anger at the ephors, whom he sees as old-fashioned cowards for their decision to send no troops at the time of the sacred Carneia. We are also given explicit images of the physical endurance tests which the Spartans must undergo, and we learn of the Spartan military training system; a flashback is given which takes us to Leonidas’ own initiation when he killed a wolf. These Spartans are truly 21 Miller’s comics display a fascination for violence; he is perhaps better-known for his crime series, the brutal Sin City, and his gritty takes on the Batman stories, The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again.


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machines, not men, and they are starkly contrasted with the effeminate and bejewelled Persians.22 Where Miller’s Spartans are hardened through and through (rather like the inhuman Hollywood ‘tough-guy’ characters often played by Schwarzenegger or Vin Diesel), Pressfield’s are more rounded. Xeones admits that cowardice features alongside heroism as a regular part of warfare (423): There is a secret all warriors share, so private that none dare give it voice, save only to those mates drawn dearer than brothers by the shared ordeal of arms. This is the knowledge of the hundred acts of his own cowardice. The little things that no one sees. The comrade who fell and cried for aid. Did I pass him by? Choose my skin over his? That was my crime, of which I accuse myself in the tribunal of my heart and there condemn myself as guilty. All a man wants is to live. This before all: to cling to breath. To survive.

Alongside cowardice comes fear; and here we find that Pressfield’s interest in the psychology of warfare, and of the ancient Spartans, leads him to invent freely a theory that the Spartans had a ‘science of fear’, which they called phobologia (120). Dienekes schools Alexandros in the physical signs of fear and fearlessness, in an attempt to use psychology as a means of outdoing the enemy. Whilst fear of death is a very real force for the Spartans, the fear of dishonour is said to be greater (322); yet Dienekes is still able to acknowledge (323) that the terror never goes away and that gaining the upper hand means simply convincing oneself that the enemy’s terror is greater than one’s own. Mental control is therefore crucial, although a man can be only a step away from losing that control; this is why the Spartans must exercise such discipline in battle.23 Amid this portrayal of the work of war, Pressfield is also able to present to us a series of striking images of the alternative to life on the battlefield, and, in a sense, images of the world which the Spartans are striving to protect. His style in this respect is closer to Homer’s representation of the Trojan War than to that of many writers on the Persian Wars.24 The narrative is punctuated 22 Miller gives a different take on the story of Ephialtes here. He is presented as an ugly, oneeyed hunchback whose parents took him away from Sparta as a child, knowing that otherwise he would be killed. In Miller’s comic Ephialtes approaches Leonidas and asks to fight alongside the Spartans but his deformity means that he is unfit to participate in the formation of the Spartan phalanx as he cannot hold his shield high enough to protect the man at his side. This rejection is what motivates him to reveal his knowledge of the secret path to the Persians. 23 See e.g. 359: ‘Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s own discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions.’ 24 At 394, Dienekes’ speculation as to the gods’ view of humans (compared here with humans’ attitude towards ants, seen here as a mere temporary distraction) is also strikingly reminiscent of Homer.

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by reminders of life beyond the ‘front line’; Thermopylae, Xeones recalls, gets its name from the hot springs which have drawn bathers at their leisure over the centuries, yet the present episode is not the first in a bloody history (319): ‘The tides of war and peace had alternated in this site for centuries, bathers and warriors, one come for the waters, the other for blood.’ Elsewhere in the novel scenes from activities traditionally associated with peacetime are used to refer to or contrast with warfare. Xeones refers to the plain as a ‘farmer’s field of death’ sown with a ‘crop of corpses and shields’ (379), and later speaks of the ‘threshing mill of murder’ (381). He remembers that many of the men at Thermopylae have an alternative life in the fields (421): Farmers whose hands had taken up with pleasure the dark clods of their native fields, crumbling between their fingers the rich earth which brings forth the harvest, now crawled on their bellies in this sterner soil, clawed at it with the nubs of their busted fingers and writhed without shame, seeking to immure themselves within earth’s mantle and preserve their backs from the pitiless steel.

Similarly, when a small force is dispatched to reconnoitre Xerxes’ camp, Dienekes and Alexandros discuss arranging a hunt the next autumn on this fine wooded territory inhabited by deer and wild boar (441 f.); the poignancy of Alexandros’ subsequent death is highlighted further when Dienekes remembers this plan (471–2).25 One other key aspect of Pressfield’s narrative which is reminiscent of Homer is the sensitivity seen here towards the enemy. His view of the Persians and their allies is more nuanced, and indeed complimentary, than that seen in many depictions of them as evil eastern invaders. Even Xerxes is shown here as displaying remorse for his mutilation of Leonidas’ corpse (268), and Xeones’ Persian captors remind him that they, too, are flesh and blood and have become attached to their Spartan prisoner (505). Whilst the Medes, with their trousers and light spears (339–40), may look ridiculous to the Greeks, Xeones is nonetheless able to compliment them on their discipline and courage (361, 378, 384). Yes, they are capable of brutality, yet we have already seen enough evidence that Greeks too can be shockingly brutal. Furthermore, amid the chaos and horror it is a Persian nobleman who appears as the voice of reason when Leonidas has received the report that Xerxes is sending his immortals via the hill route in order to surround the Spartans and their allies. He advises Leonidas (431): 25 One other respect in which Pressfield also draws attention to the alternative to a life preoccupied with warfare is in the emphasis which he places on the role of the Spartans’ wives and families. The character of Dienekes’ wife Arete is clearly drawn, and the final story told by Xeones is of a conversation between Leonidas’ queen Gorgo and Alexandros’ mother Paraleia, in which Gorgo praises the virtues of the women whose sons and husbands have been sacrificed (505–10). For a similar insight into the use of female characters as highlighting the benefits of a life free from war, see Levene on The 300 Spartans (Ch. 16 in this vol., pp. 400–1).


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Consider what you and your men have accomplished at the Hot Gates already. The fame you have won in these six days will live forever. Do not seek death for death’s sake, nor to fulfil a vain prophecy. Live, sir, and fight another day. Another day with your whole army at your back. Another day when victory, decisive victory, may be yours.

Of course retreat or surrender is not an option for the Spartans for whom, as we saw earlier, honour is more important than life itself. In the moments before the final stand, Leonidas asks Dienekes whether he hates the Persians. Dienekes replies (493), ‘I see faces of gentle and noble bearing. More than a few, I think, whom one would welcome with a clap and a laugh to any table of friends.’ This recognition that the enemy are human too—that all peoples are capable of thinking and feel the same emotions—is a striking reflection of the humanity of the Spartans themselves.26 The insight which is given into the very real emotions felt by Pressfield’s characters is what marks them out from so many other portrayals of the fighters at Thermopylae. Nonetheless, these men—who are in many ways so ordinary—are still distinguished from others by their extraordinary self-sacrifice, as summed up by Leonidas in his final speech (484): If we had withdrawn from these Gates today, brothers, no matter what prodigies of valour we had performed up till now, this battle would have been perceived as a defeat. A defeat which would have confirmed for all Greece that which the enemy most wishes her to believe: the futility of resistance to the Persian and his millions. If we had saved our skins today, one by one the separate cities would have caved in behind us, until the whole of Hellas had fallen. . . . But by our deaths here with honour, in the face of these insuperable odds, we transform vanquishment into victory. With our lives we sow courage into the hearts of our allies and the brothers of our armies left behind. They are the ones who will ultimately produce victory, not us. It was never in the stars for us. Our role today is what we all knew it was when we embraced our wives and children and turned our feet upon the march-out: to stand and die. That we have sworn and that we will perform.

Whilst this image of everlasting glory is what has, for most authors, made the stories of the Persian Wars retain their appeal over the centuries, Pressfield has also shown us something that is equally universal and timeless: the fundamental nature of human beings. It is this nature which makes his Spartans at times cruel or cowardly, which enables them to laugh even when the world around them seems to have gone mad, which makes them love their homeland and their wives, and which drives them to fight even when fear is omnipresent. Nathaniel Fick’s platoon of marines could do a lot worse than to model themselves on Pressfield’s Spartans at the Gates of Fire. 26 By giving the Persians a voice and allowing us on occasion to see the war from their perspective, Pressfield does what countless postcolonial novelists have been doing for other peoples under later empires. See e.g., Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (1989).

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Historical novels: Buchan, J. (1912). The Moon Endureth. London. Bulwer Lytton, E. (1873). Pausanias, The Spartan: An Unfinished Historical Romance. Birmingham. Burke, J. (1961). The Lion of Sparta. London. Church, A. J. (1890). Three Greek Children: A Story of Home in Old Time. London. Davis, W. S. (1907). A Victor of Salamis: A Tale of the Days of Xerxes, Leonidas and Themistocles. New York and London. Lillington, K. (1979). Young Man of Morning. London. Manfredi, V. M. (2002). Spartan. London (trans. C. Feddersen-Manfredi from the original Italian, Lo Scudo di Talos, Milan 1988). Martin, J. E. (2003). In Kithairon’s Shadow: A Novel of Ancient Greece and the Persian War. New York. Miller, F., and Varley, L. (1999). 300. Oregon. Milton, R. (1962). Tell Them in Sparta. London. Pressfield, S. (1998). Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae. London and New York. Renault, M. (1964). The Lion in the Gateway. London. —— (1978). The Praise Singer. London. Snedeker, C. D. (1912). The Spartan. New York. Trease, G. (1997). Mission to Marathon. London. Vidal, G. (1981). Creation. London. Walsh, J. P. (1972). Farewell Great King. London. Wolfe, G. (1986). Soldier of the Mist. London and Sydney. —— (1989). Soldier of Arete. London and Sydney. Other works: Ashcroft, W., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, H. (eds.) (1989). The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York. Bakhtin, M. (1981). ‘Discourse in the novel’, in J. Rivkin and M. Ryan (eds.), Literary Theory: An Anthology (Oxford and Malden, Mass. 1998), 32–44. Bedell, G. (2005). ‘The first empire builders’, The Observer, 25 Sept. Bowen, J. (2002). ‘The historical novel’, in Brantlinger and Thesing, eds., 244–59. Brantlinger, P., and Thesing, W. B. (eds.), (2002). A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Oxford. Cartledge, P. (2002). ‘The Spartan tradition’, The London Magazine (Oct./Nov. edition), 115–17. —— (2005). ‘A clash of civilisations?’, The Independent (Books), 2 Sept. Clough, E. (2004). ‘Loyalty and liberty: Thermopylae in the European imagination’, in T. J. Figueira (ed.), Spartan Society. Swansea, 363–84. Fick, N. (2005). ‘Books and Battles’, Washington Post, 17 July. Fussell, P. (1975). The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford.


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Holland, T. (2005). Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. London. Lefkowitz, M. (1998). ‘You are there’, New York Times, 1 November. Lind, M. (1998). ‘Gates of Fire’, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 November. Lukács, G. (1962). The Historical Novel trans. H. and S. Mitchell. London. Matthews, H. C. G., and Harrison, B. (eds.) (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford. Middleton, P., and Woods, T. (2000). Literatures of Memory: History, Time and Space in Postwar Writing. Manchester and New York. Napier, W. (2005). ‘Tonight we dine in the underworld’, The Independent on Sunday (Books), 4 Sept. Roberts, L. C. (2002). ‘Children’s Fiction’, in Brantlinger and Thesing (2002)., 353–69. Rutherford, A. (1978): The Literature of War: Five Studies in Heroic Virtue. London. Sanders, A. (1978). The Victorian Historical Novel 1840–1880. London. Stothard, P. (2005). ‘Persian Fire by Tom Holland’, The Times, 3 Sept.


Index Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the Salon system 357–8 accents use in The 300 Spartans 391–4 use in films 389–91, 397 Achaemenids see Persians Acharnians, represented as veterans of Marathon 36 Achilles 77, 117 Acilius 250 n. 64 Acropolis (Athens) building 35 Pan’s cult 65 portrayal in Haydon’s Death of Eucles 269, 271 Actium, battle 130 association with Salamis 139 Gigantomachic allusions in Virgil’s Aeneid 137 Adeimantus (Corinthian commander, Salamis) 69 n. 10, 118, 160, 160 n. 50 Adelanta in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 222 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 209–10, 212 in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 216 Admetus (king of the Molossians) 268 Adramyttium 35 n. 22 Aeginetans awards after Salamis demanded by Delphic Apollo 66 in Diodorus’ account of Salamis 119 in Ephorus’ account of Salamis 118, 119 in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 receives prize for valour at Salamis 106 Aeschylus Persians 3, 140 n. 45, 148–9, 182 in antiquity 170–3 Supplices 170 n. 8

Athenians’ importance 111 historiography 335 influence: Byzantium to the Renaissance 174–8; on Greek War of Independence 299–327; in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries 191–6; on Romanticism and Hellenism 179–84; in the twentieth century 185–91 Orientalism 317 revivals, against the background of the Iraq war 167–70 on Salamis 117, 119 staged reading (1820) 17, 300–13, 316–26 uses of 13 portrayal in Aristophanes’ Frogs 171 in The Letters of Themistocles 173 Prometheus Bound 175, 188 Seven against Thebes 175 Agamemnon 57, 135 Agathon, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 385, 391, 393 n. 31, 399–400 ‘Age of Leonidas’ 235, 235 n. 12 Agesilaus (Spartan) 41 agnosticism, Shelley’s views 184 ago¯g¯e (Spartan system of military training) 387, 412–13 Agoluz (in Orghast) 190, 191 Agora (Athens), excavation funded by Ford Foundation 384 n. 5 aido¯s (fear) 86 n. 2, 87, 87 nn. 6 and 8, 88, 89, 89 n. 18, 90 Aithiopis 138 Alamo, San Antonio (Texas), fall (1836) 23, 394–8 Alcaeus 139 Alcibiades 6 n. 17, 37, 38

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Index

Aldine Press 175 Aldrich, Robert (director, Vera Cruz) 392 n. 30 Alexander the Great 4, 8, 32, 42, 127, 303 Caligula imitates 132 Gigantomachic allusions to 137 imitates Xerxes I in visiting Troy 56 n. 40 military vanity demonized by Seneca the Elder 135 Plutarch’s treatment of 162 Alexandros (in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire) 413–14, 417, 418 Algren, Nathan (The Last Samurai) 3 Alison, Archibald, on Edinburgh as the ‘Athens of the North’ 280–2 Allan, D., on Edinburgh 279 nn. 44 and 46 Alpenos (Thermopylae) 244 n. 47 Alsop, Joseph, on the Spartans 384 n. 6 Altamira, cave paintings 360 Alvarez, Robert 6 n. 16 Amastre in Bononcini’s Xerse 219 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 209 Amastris, in Handel’s Serse 146 Amazonomachy 137–9 Amazons, depicted as Persians 37 Ameinias (Aeschylus’ brother) in Diodorus’ account of Salamis 119 in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 in The Letters of Themistocles 173 Americans see United States Amestris (in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes) 216 Amompharetus (Lacedaemonian commander) 68 Amorges 38 The Amulet (Christian journal) 271 Anaktoron (Eleusis), Demeter’s anger at its destruction 70–2 ancient world, family cults 368–9 Andocides, defence with reference to the anger of Demeter of Eleusis 77 Angelomatis, Helen 242 n. 37

Anna Comnena 5, 174 Anne of Austria (mother of Louis XIV) 211 Anopaea path 244, 251 n. 67 Anquetil-Duperron, on Montesquieu’s theory of Oriental despotism 348 n. 24 Antalcidas, Peace of (King’s Peace) (387/6) 35 n. 24, 39–40 Antiochos III 250 n. 64 Aphrodite 37 Apollo 175 Appian, likens Pompey the Great to Agamemnon 135 Arcadian Academy 219 archery 396, 396 n. 44 Archidamus III 107 n. 7 Architeles, bribed by Themistocles 159 Arete, portrayal in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 418 n. 25 Argive Hermione, people, dedication to Apollo after Salamis 66 Argos, involvement in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 arias, da capo arias 225 n. 32 Arimnestos (Plataean commander) 68 Ariodate in Bononcini’s Xerse 219 in Handel’s Serse 225 Aristagoras of Miletus 32 Aristides in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 121, 122 in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 Aristides, Aelius On the Four 147 Panathenacius 173 Aristodemos, portrayal in Snedeker’s The Spartan 408 n. 5, 413 n. 17 Aristogeiton 311 n. 25 Aristone in Bononcini’s Xerse 219 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 209 omission from Handel’s Serse 224 Aristophanes on the Acharnians 36

Index Acharnians 171 on Athenian approaches to Persia in the Peloponnesian War 37–8 on bad eulogies 94 Frogs 171–2 jibes at the Marathonomachoi 105 Lysistrata 40 Aristotle on Himera and Salamis 36 on Spartan democracy 386 n. 12 Arkadia, Eleusinian Demeter’s cult 77 army reforms, French Third Republic 366 Arsacids 127 n. 3 Arsamene in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 221 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 207, 209–10, 212 n. 14 in Handel’s Serse 202–3, 226 art, patronage, nineteenth-century Britain 273 Artabanes 215 Artabazus 41 in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 121, 122 in Herodotus’ account of Plataea 120 Artaphernes 33, 73 Artaxerxes II 39 tomb, staging of Brook’s Orghast 188 Artayctes 41 Artemis 65, 74 Artemisia (queen of Halicarnassus) 153 in The 300 Spartans 391 in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 Artemisium, battle 66, 99 cultural responses to 24 gods’ involvment 65, 66 ranking 111 Arthur, Jean 390 Asad, Talal, on Said’s Orientalism 340–1 Asheri, D. 50 n. 14 Asiatic continent 57 n. 48 Assurbanipal 57 n. 48 Assyrians, as patrons of Troy 58–9 Atalanta (Handel’s Serse) 225 Athena 60, 73, 74

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championed by Persians in visiting Troy 56 unpopularity in the Greek world 76 Athena Areia 65 Athena Parthenos, shield of 137 Athena Promachos 130 Athena Skiras, temple on Salamis 69 n. 10 Athenaeus on Herodotus 146 on Sophocles 375 Athenians in Diodorus’ account of Salamis 119 in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 121, 122 in Ephorus’ account of Salamis 118, 119, 120 Herodotus’ concentration on 106 in Theopompus 109–10 used to represent the US in the Cold War 385 n. 7 The Athenians Taking Refuge in their Ships (after Pinelli) 21fig 1.9 Athens 35 asks for Persian support against Sparta (508/7) 32 constitution, Plato’s views: in the Laws 85–91, 93, 98–9; in the Menexenus 93–5, 96–8, 99–103; Morrow’s views 91–3, 97, 100–1, 101 n. 58 contribution to the Persian Wars 111–12, 114 creation of the concept of barbarians 127–8 defeat in the Peloponnesian War 8 and the Delian Leaque 34–6 democracy 17, 292, 293, 384: Plato’s concerns with 148 despotism 349 destruction by Mardonius 70 external wars 160 n. 52 in Herodotus’ account of Plataea 120 in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 historiography, fourth century 123

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Index

Athens (cont.) involvement in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 involvement in the Ionian Revolt (498) 33 lack of concern with Mycale 24 political goals, and encouragement of the cult of Demeter of Eleusis 74–80 portrayal of the Persian Wars 107 n. 7 role in the Peloponnesian War 37–8 and Sparta, portrayal in The 300 Spartans, use of accents 392–4 Stuart and Revett’s explorations of 240 n. 31 success at Marathon 33 Thucydides on 150 victory narratives, criticized by Plato 12 see also Greeks Atlantis 12, 91, 92, 100–1, 102 Atossa 32 n. 6 Attalids of Pergamum, ‘Little Barbarians’ 127 Atthidographers, on the Persian Wars 107 Augustus Caesar commemoration of victories over the Parthians 130 forum (Rome), temple of Mars Ultor 129 naumachiae 4, 129–30, 173 Roman exploitation of the Persian Wars during his principate 137–41 use of Persian Wars for propaganda 12–13 Auletta, R., adaptation of Aeschylus’ Persians 192, 193, 194 Aurora Theater (Berkeley, California) 194 Austin (Texas), Alamo monument 395 Avestan language, used for Brook’s Orghast 188 Baal of Ugarit 77 Babylon, ‘freed’ by Cyrus 51

Bacon, Roger, perceptions about Islam 176 Badoaro, Giacomo (librettist) 204 Baiae, Gulf, Caligula bridges 132 Baker, Diane 391, 400 Bakhtin, Mikhail 232 Bal-Sagoth, Starfire Burning Upon The Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule 168 n. 3 Balbec, discovery 239 n. 29 barbarians concept 127 Persians seen as 37 Roman classification of eastern peoples as 129–31, 131 fig 7.2 theatrical impersonation 170 Barker, Pat, Regeneration trilogy 406 Barthélemy, Abbé Jean-Jacques 240 n. 32, 243 n. 42, 245 Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce (Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece) 304 n. 9 La Battaglia di Maratona/The Giant of Marathon (Jacques Tourneur) 383 n. 1 The Battle of the Nile: A Dramatic Poem on the Model of the Greek Tragedy 185 n. 70 battle painting, role in British culture 271 battlefields Enlightenment perceptions 15 see also individual battles battles portrayal 114–22 sea battles 98–9 see also individual battles Bavaria, gains independence 18–19 Beck, Roger 386, 396 n. 42 bel canto 208 n. 9 La Belle Alliance 276 n. 31 Bencke, A. H. 6 n. 16 Bennett, William, The Triumph for Salamis 184 Berkeley, George 183 Berliner Ensemble 186

Index Bernières, Louis de, Captain Correlli’s Mandolin 406 Best, T., on Handel’s bridge-scene in Serse 225 n. 31 Bidelman, P. K., on Boulanger 366 n. 43 Blathwayt, John 223 Blount, Henry, visits Thermopylae 237–8 Blücher, Gebbard Leberecht von (Prince of Wahlstadt) 276 n. 31, 288 Boagrios river 239 n. 28 Boardman, J., on the Eleusinian cult 74 n. 31 Bocage, Jean Barbie du 245–8, 247 fig. 11.4, 250 bodies, artistic representation 360–1, 364 Boeotius, possible treaty 38 Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, translation of Longinus 232 n. 2 Boime, A., on French historical painting under the Third Republic 357 n. 8 Bonnat, Léon 361 Bononcini, Giovanni setting of ‘Si, la voglio’ compared with that of Handel 226–7 Xerse 15, 216–23: bridge-scene 221–2; influence on Handel’s Serse 228 Boreas 65 Boulanger, General Georges 20, 365–8, 372, 373 Bourbons, restoration at Waterloo referred to by Byron 288, 290 Bowden, Hugh 332 Bowie, Jim 394, 396 Braun, Mattias, production of Aeschylus’ Persians (1960s) 186 Brennus (leader of the Senonian Gauls, 390 BC) 154–5 Briant, P. 56 n. 43 bribery, Themistocles’ use 159–60 Britain plans to celebrate Waterloo and Trafalgar 273–9

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role during the Napoleonic Wars 268, 271 British government, attitude to the arts criticized by Wilkins 291 Broadie, Sarah 100 n. 56, 101 n. 59 Brook, Peter, Orghast 187–91, 195 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, The Battle of Marathon 26 Buckingham Palace 278 Budini 32 n. 5 Bulwer Lytton, Edward 333 n. 2, 338, 411 historical novels 407 Burke, John, The Lion of Sparta 408 Burleson, General Edward 395 n. 38 Burn, A. R. 262 n. 106 Burnet, J. 88 n. 11 Burnett, David (acting President of the Republic of Texas) 394–6 Burney, Charles, on Handel’s Serse 201 Bury, J. B., on Freeman’s ‘continuity thesis’ 345 Buti, Abbé Francesco 211 Butler, Gerard 3 n. 1 Butler, Marylin, on Romanticism 253 Büyuk Dere 304 n. 12 Byron, George Gordon, Lord 300, 304 admires Clarke’s views 255 equates Marathon with Waterloo 16 on Gell 251 n. 68 The Giaour 231 influenced by Haygarth 261 on Marathon 285–93 ‘Translation of the Famous Greek War Song’ 319–20, 321–2 on Waterloo 267, 268, 285–91 Byzantium 32 attitudes to Persian barbarianism 5 influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 174–5 Cabanel, Alexandre 359 Calchedon 32 Caligula 132–3, 134 Callias, Peace of 35, 40 Callicratidas (Spartan) 38 Callimachus, opposition to the ‘Persian chain’ 141

428

Index

Callirhoe spring (Eleusis) 141 n. 48 Calton Hill monument (Edinburgh) 17, 279–83, 291 Camilla (ally of Turnus against Aeneas in the Aeneid) 13, 138–9 Campus Martius 128–9 Cannae 290 Capra, Frank (director, Mr Smith Goes To Washington) 390 Caracalla 131 n. 16 Carroll, Kevin 131 Carthaginians 107, 172 Cartledge, Paul, on Manfredi’s Spartans 410 Cartoon Network 6 n. 16 Carystus 33 castrati, disliked in seventeenth-century France 212 Catiline 136 Cato 152, 250 n. 64 Cavafy 6 n. 16 Cavalli, Pier Francesco 15, 210–12, 221 Egisto 211 Ercole amante 211–12 il Xerse 203, 204–6: bridge of boats 209–10, 215; French revival 212–13; plane-tree incident 207–9 Certeau, Michel de 344–5 Cervantes (Saavedra), Miguel de, La Numancia 185 Chabrias (Athenian) 40, 41 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 334, 346 Chambers, M., on Grote’s History of Greece 333 Chapel Royal (England) 214 n. 18 Chaperon (French artist) 372 n. 65 Chares (Athenian) 41 Charidemus 42 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 177 Charles the Bold 288 Chateaubriand, François René, Vicomte de 17, 304 Cherk, W. 235, 236, 236 n. 15 Chesterton, G. K., Lepanto 178 n. 41 Chians, suffer from Eleusinian Demeter’s territoriality 79 n. 52

children’s stories, historical novels 406–7 n. 3 The Chinaid 185 n. 70 Chionides 171 Chios, battle (July 1822) 31, 302 n. 7 Chloreus (Aeneid) 139 Choerilus, Persica 4 Christianity 9 Shelley’s views 183–4 Western Christianity’s adversarial relationship with Islam 13 Christopoulos, Athanasios, Achilles 311 Church, A. J., Three Greek Children 407 n. 3 Cicero demonization of Pompey 136 on the Parthians 140 n. 45 on Plato’s Menexenus 93 n. 28 on Xerxes 135 Cimon, see under Kimon (son of Miltiades) cinema portrayal of the Persian Wars 383 representation of slavery 387 n. 14 use of accents 389–91, 397 see also films; The 300 Spartans citizens Critias’ views 101–2 Socrates’s views (Gorgias) 103 n. 65 civilization, and war 17 Clarke, Edward Daniel 234–5, 245, 252, 255–7, 258, 259, 261 Clement of Alexandria 158 n. 45 Cleomenes (king of Sparta) 78–9 Cleon (Aristides, Knights) 38 Cleopatra (Queen of Egypt) 127, 139, 140 Clinton, Henry Fynes, Fasti Hellenici 17 n. 27 Clito in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 222 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 207 n. 7, 210, 212 in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 215 omission from Handel’s Serse 224, 225 Clogg, Richard, on the Kydonia School 314 n. 30, 315 n. 32

Index Clooney, George, on filming of Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412 n. 14 Cnidus, battle (394) 39, 39 n. 41 Cockerell, C. R. (architect of the Calton Hill monument) 280 Codex Laurentianus (M) 175 Coe, Barry 391, 400 Cohon, R., on the Shield of Aeneas 137 Cold War 383–5, 386 Cole, Susan 78, 79 n. 52 Colman, Ronald 390 colonization 337 n. 9 Colonna, Filippo 216–17 Conon (Athenian) 39, 42 Constantine (Crown Prince of Greece), wedding to Sophie of Prussia (1889) 185 n. 74 Constantinople 180 contrapuntalism 214, 216 ‘Il core spera e teme’ (Handel’s Serse) 225–6 Corinth 78, 113–14 Corinth, League of (338/337) 8, 42 Corinthian Isthmus 134, 388 Corinthians, in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 122 Cormon, Fernand-Anne Piestre 358 n. 16 Caïn 357, 359–61, 362–3, 364, 371, 373, 374 commemorative illustrations of Hugo’s poetry 374–6 Les Vainqueurs de Salamine 20, 355–7, 361–5: contemporary reception 371–7 Costner, Kevin 389 Couldry, O., Leonides in Hades 6 n. 16 Crawford, John 391 Creasy, E. S., Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World from Marathon to Waterloo 292–3 Critias 100 n. 56, 101–2 Crockett, Davy 23, 394 Croesus 31 Croker, John Wilson 272, 289–90 Cruise, Tom 3

429

crusades 169, 175, 176, 184 Ctesias of Cnidus historiography 108–9 on the Persian Wars 107 Persica 5 n. 9, 57–8 Cumae, battle 36, 172 Currie, Finlay 389 Curtis, Tony 389 Cyme 116 n. 47 Cyprus 9, 34 n. 20, 35 Cyrus Cylinder 32 n. 4, 51–2, 56, 57 Cyrus the Great (559–530) 31, 51, 52 anabasis 37 despotism 348 portrayal in Griffith’s Intolerance 20 seen as successor to the Assyrian kings 56–7 Cyrus Spitama, portrayal in Vidal’s Creation 408 n. 6 Cyrus (younger son of Darius II) 38, 39 Dall, John 389 Dallapiccola, Luigi 208 n. 8 Damasta monastery 244 n. 43 Daood (in Shelley’s Hellas) 184 Darius I 31–2, 32 n. 4, 42 in Aeschylus’ Persians 117, 149 in Aristophanes’ Frogs 171–2 in Brook’s Orghast 190, 191 Greek-language stele 50 n. 17 tomb 188, 188 n. 79 Darius II 38 in Aristophanes’ Frogs 172 Darius III 42 ‘Darius III struggling in battle against Alexander’ (mosaic, House of the Faun [Pompeii]) 168 Darius (Parthian hostage) 132, 133 ‘Darius vase’ 171 Darwin, Charles, Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection 360 Datis 33 n. 14, 73 in Ctesias 109 defeat of the Eretrians, Plato’s account 86, 98 n. 50 expedition (490) 33

430

Index

Dauge, Y. A., on the creation of the concept of barbarians 127 n. 3 David, Jacques-Louis, Leonidas at Thermopolyae 18, 18fig 1.6, 357 Davis, William Stearns, A Victor of Salamis 408–9, 411 Dawkins, James, visit to Thermopylae 239–44, 248 de Marcellus see Marcellus, Comte de Dean, Winton, on Handel’s Serse 201–2 Debat-Ponsan (French artist) 372 ‘deformation’ 105–6 Degas, (Hilaire German) Edgar, ‘Spartan boys exercising’ 361 Deinomenids, relationship with Demeter of Eleusis 79–80 Delian League 8, 24, 34–6, 349 Delos 33 Delphi, archives used by Herodotus 66 Delphic Apollo 66 Demaratus (king of Sparta) 32, 69, 78 in The 300 Spartans 387, 391 on importance of Sparta for the defence of Greece, in Herodotus 111 takes refuge in Persia 37 Demeter of Eleusis, involvement in the Persian Wars 11, 66–80 Demeter Thesmophoros 77–8, 79 Demetrius Triclinius 175 Democedes 32 n. 6 democracy, representation in The 300 Spartans 386–8 Democrates, portrayal in Davis’s, A Victor of Salamis 409 Demos (son of Pyrilampes) 37 n. 31 Demosthenes 42, 271 Derveni (Fontana) Pass 239 n. 28 ‘despot’, Grote’s use of 348–9 despotism 347–50 Deutero-Isaiah, mention of Cyrus the Great 52 Dewey, Thomas 384 n. 5 Dido (Queen of Carthage) 139 Dienekes in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412, 417, 418, 419

in Snedeker’s The Spartan 413 n. 18 Dikaios (exiled Athenian), Herodotus’ source for Salamis 69 dike¯ (justice) 50 Dilios (character in The 300 Spartans) 414 n. 20 Dilthey, C., on Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo 141 n. 48 Dio, on the murder of Pompey the Great 135 Diodorus Siculus account of the Persian Wars dependent on Ephorus 110–11 dating queried 34 n. 19 on Gelon’s relationship with Eleusinian Demeter 80 on lack of Spartan support for Leonidas 388 on the Persian Wars 107 on Plataea 122 on Salamis 119 on Thermopylae 113, 115–16, 123, 395–6 n. 42 Dionysius I (tyrant of Syracuse) 40 Dionysius, Letter to Pompeius 162 Dionysus (Aristophanes’ Frogs) 171 Dionysus, theatre of (Athens) 170–1 Disraeli, Benjamin 299 Dodwell, Edward 234, 236, 251, 257–61, 260 fig. 11.9 Dodwell Vase 257 n. 90 Dolonci 33 n. 11 Dörpfeld, Wilhelm, excavations at the Parthenon 271 n. 12 Dorus (Phoenicia) 35 n. 23 Douglas, Kirk 389 Dresden Staatsschauspiel 192 Du Tyrac, Marie-Louis-Jean-AndréCharles Demartin see Marcellus, Comte de Dugas, M. C., on Triptolemus 75 n. 40 Durham University, Department of Classics and Ancient History 3–4 East-coasters (United States), culture 392 Easterners, portrayal in films 398 n. 52

Index Eastwood, Clint 392 n. 30, 393 n. 32 Eaton, Charlotte, on visiting Waterloo 284–5, 286 Echetlos 73 Edinburgh, Calton Hill monument 279–83, 291 Egan, Richard 391 einalion 148 n. 10 Eisenhower, Dwight D. (US President) 384 n. 5 Eleftherochori 244 n. 43 Eleusinia 76 n. 41 Eleusinian Mysteries 75 ‘Eleusinion’ (Athens) 75 Eleusis Anaktoron, Demeter’s anger at its destruction 70–2 and Athens 74–80 Elgin, Lord 275, 280 Elgin Marbles 272, 275, 282 Elis, late for Plataea 34 Elizabeth I (Queen of England) 177 Ellas, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391, 396, 400, 401 Elmes, James 275, 281 n. 51 Elviro in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 222 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 207, 209–10 in Handel’s Serse 203, 225 Elvirus, in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 215 English historiography, ‘continuity thesis’ 345 Enlightenment attitudes to Greece 231–4, 254 perceptions of the battlefields of the Persian Wars 15 Enūma eliš 51 envy (phthonos) 161, 161 n. 55 Ephialtes of Malis 35 in The 300 Spartans 387 n. 14, 391 betrayal of the Spartans 115 in historical novels 408, 408 n. 7 mentioned by James Dawkins 244 in Miller’s 300 417 n. 22 Ephorus on Gelon 112–13

431

on Himera 36 historiography 110–11, 123 on the Persian Wars 107 on Plataea 121–2 on Salamis 36, 118–19, 119–20 on Thermopylae 115–17 Epicharmus 171 Epicydes, bribed by Themistocles 160 Epidauros 187 fig. 9.5, 192, 193 fig. 9.7 Epilycus, Peace of 38 Epipolae 117 Eretria Datis and Artaphernes’ expedition against (490) 33 involvement in the Ionian Revolt 33 n. 10 Eros, holding umbrellas 37 Erythrae 39 Etruscans 36, 172 Euboea (Negropont) 240 Eucles 16 as portrayed by Haydon 269–70, 272 Eugénie (Empress of France) 370 eulogies, Aristophanes on bad eulogies 94 Eumene in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 221 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 209 Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/ Xerxes 215, 216 omission from Handel’s Serse 224 Eumenes, in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 Euphorion (father of Aeschylus), portrayal in The Letters of Themistocles 173 Euphorion (father of Kynegeiros and brother of Aeschylus) 72 Eupolis 171 Euripides Electra 310 Hecuba 314, 315–16 Iphigenia in Aulis 170 n. 7 Medea 168 popularity under Byzantium 175 on the Trojans 60 Europe, effects on historiography 334

432

Index

European history, Hellenism’s influence upon 339–46 Eurybiades 118, 119, 157, 158, 160, 160 n. 50 Evagoras of Salamis (in Cyprus) 39, 39 n. 41, 40, 42 Everett, Percival, Erasure 168 Ezekiel, Exago¯ge¯ 172 Ezra the Scribe 35 n. 23 family cults, in the ancient world 368–9 Farrar, David 391 Faulks, Sebastian, Birdsong 406 Fauriel, Claude Charles 321 n. 43 Faustini, Giovanni (librettist) 204 n. 2 Fauvel, excavations at Marathon 287 fear, in war 417 Fick, Nathaniel, on combat leadership in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 405 films The Alamo (director, John Wayne) 23, 395, 395 n. 41, 397–8 Alexander (director, Oliver Stone) 383 Alexander the Great (director, Robert Rossen) 20, 383 Cross of Iron (director, Sam Peckinpah) 388 n. 19 Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (director, Normas Foster) 395 Intolerance (director, D. W. Griffith) 20 The Last Command 395, 395 n. 41, 396, 397 n. 50 The Last Samurai 3 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (director, John Ford) 398 n. 53 The Manchurian Candidate (director, John Frankenheimer) 390 Mr Smith Goes To Washington (director, Frank Capra) 390 The Outlaw Josey Wales (director, Clint Eastwood) 392 n. 30 Quo Vadis (director, Mervyn LeRoy), accents within 389 Ride the High Country (director, Sam Peckinpah) 398 n. 53

Run of the Arrow (director, Sam Fuller) 392 n. 30 The Searchers (director, John Ford) 392nn. 30 and 53 Shane (director, George Stevens) 398 n. 53 The Shootist (director, Don Siegel) 398 n. 53 Spartacus (director, Stanley Kubrick) 389 The Talk of the Town (George Stevens) 390 300 (director, Zack Snyder) 3 n. 1 Vera Cruz (director, Robert Aldrich) 392 n. 30 The Wild Bunch (director, Sam Peckinpah) 398 n. 53 see also cinema; The 300 Spartans Firmin-Didot, Ambroise 314–16, 321 n. 43 First World War 185, 415–16 Flaubert, Gustave 304 n. 9 Flaxman, John, design of Marble Arch 278 Flower, Michael, on Ephorus’ account of Thermopylae 117 Fontana (Derveni) Pass 239 n. 28 Ford Foundation, funds excavation of the Athenian agora 384 n. 5 Ford, John (film director) 392 n. 30, 398 n. 53 Forrest, W. G. 33 Förtsch, Johann Philipp 15, 213, 214–16 Foster, Norman (director, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier) 395 Foucherot, M. 245–6, 246 fig. 11.3, 248 France French Revolution and the rise of the historical novel 406 n. 1 historical painting tradition 356–8, 359–60, 361–2 nineteenth-century concerns with the Persian Wars 19–20 seventeenth-century opera 210–13 Francis I (King of France) 177 Frankenheimer, John (director, The Manchurian Candidate) 390

Index Frazier, Charles, Cold Mountain 406 freedom, political freedom, as affected by the Persian Wars 335 n. 6 Freeman, Edward Augustus, ‘continuity thesis’ in English historiography 345 Freycinet, Charles de 365 Friendly, Alfred, on Greek democracy and the Spartans 384 n. 6 Fromentin, Eugène 359 Frost, F. J., on Mnesiphilus of Phrearrhii 158 n. 45 Fuller, Sam (director, Run of the Arrow) 392 n. 30 Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory 415–16 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa-Denis, concerns with Greek and Roman influence on society 368–70, 373–4 Gaius (Augustus Caesar’s grandson) 129 Galerie de Peintures (Louvre) 212 Galinsky, Karl, on the Augustan forum 129 Gandy, J. M. (joint winner of the Waterloo monument competition) 278 Gänsemarkt theatre (Hamburg) 214 Gauzi, François 355–6, 361–2 Gavin, John 389 Gay, Peter 232, 253 Gela, relationship with Demeter of Eleusis 79–80 Gell, Sir William 245, 248, 251–3, 253fig 11.7, 255, 257, 258 Gelon (Syracusan tyrant) 112–13 geography, Grote’s use of 341–2 George IV (King of Great Britain) 268, 278, 280, 281 n. 51 Georges, Pericles, on cultural perceptions of the Persian Wars 47–8 German Idealism, on war 17 Germany identified with the Persians 185, 186 nineteenth-century concerns with Salamis and Greek War of Independence 18–19

433

gerousia, representation in The 300 Spartans 387 Gervex, Henri, Une séance du jury de peinture 358 n. 16 The Giant of Marathon/La Battaglia di Maratona (Jacques Tourneur) 383 n. 1 Gibson, C. A., on the Stoa Poikile 73 n. 27 Gifford, William 290 Gigantomachy 137 Giglio, Sandro 391 Gilbert, W. S. 293 Gildon, Charles, on Henry Bount 238 Gillies, John 338 Girardet, R., on army reforms under the Third Republic 366 n. 41 Gisborne, Mr John 181 n. 50 Gladiator (Ridley Scott) 383 n. 1 Glaucon, portrayal in Davis’s, A Victor of Salamis 409 Glover, Jane 204 Glover, Richard 249 Leonidas 21, 22fig 1.10, 232, 304 n. 9, 409 n. 8 Goblet, René (Premier, French Third Republic) 367 Goddart, L., on the Eleusinian cult 74 n. 31 gods, involvement in the Persian Wars 11–12, 65–6 Golding, William 262 Goldsmith, Oliver 333 n. 2 Gordian III 130 Gordon, Pryse Lockhart, recalls Byron’s visit to Waterloo 267, 285–6, 288–9, 289 n. 68 Gordon, Major General Thomas 251 n. 67 Gorgias 38, 40 Gorgo (in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire) 418 n. 25 Gosport Naval Academy 6 n. 16 Graf, Fritz, on Demeter of Eleusis 76 Gransden, K. W., on Amazonmachy in Virgil’s Aeneid 138 Grant, Cary 391 n. 26

434

Index

Great Altar of Zeus (Pergamum) 137 Great Dionysia (472 BC), staging of Aeschylus’ Persians 299 ‘Great Patriotic War’ 33–4 Greece 9 cultural icons exploited during the Cold War 383–4 during the Enlightenment 231–4 role in Orientalism 337–8 tourism 252 Greek historical sources effects on Achaemenid historiography 331–2, 334 Orientalism 334–9 Greek language, ancient Greek 312, 315 Greek Marseillaise 319–20, 320 n. 42, 321–2 Greek states, influenced by the Persian Wars 10 Greek tragedy 60 Greek War of Independence 17, 180, 181–4 German concerns with 18–19 influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 299–327 Greeks cultural perceptions of the Persian Wars 47–9 Fustel de Coulange’s concerns with 368–70, 373–4 portrayal in historical novels 408–9 views about the Persians 10, 36–41 see also Athens; Sparta Green, P., on Persian Wars traditions 106 n. 4 Green, General Thomas Jefferson, likens the fall of the Alamo to Thermopylae 395 Grellas, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391, 399–400 Grévy, President (Third Republic) 367, 367 n. 47 Griffith, D. W. (film director) 20 Grolleron (French artist) 372 n. 65 Grote, George historiography 333–4, 338–9, 341–5, 347, 349–50

History of Greece 17, 292: on despotism 348–50; importance, Mill’s assessment 339 Orientalism 337 Guiraud, Paul, on Fustel de Coulanges’ views on Greek and Roman society 373–4 Gulf War 191 Hades 77 Hadrian 130 Haillet, J., on Diodorus 110 n. 26 Hall, John, translation of Longinus 232 n. 2 Hall, Robert 268 n. 3 Hamburg and German opera 213–16 Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek 216 Hamilton, Gavin, Wood and Dawkins discovering Palmyra 239 n. 29 Hammond, N. G. L., on Marathon 33 n. 13 Handel, G. F. Alessandro 201 operatic apprenticeship in Hamburg 214 Poro 201 Serse 15, 145–6, 201–3, 223–8: antecedents, Cavalli’s il Xerse 203, 204–10; bridge-scene 224–6 setting of ‘Ombra mai fu’ 145, 221 Siroe 201 ‘Handel’s Largo’ see ‘Ombra mai fu’ Hannibal, military vanity demonized by Seneca the Elder 135 Hanson, V. D. 3 n. 3 Hardie, Alex, on Pindar’s second Dithyramb 141 Hardie, P. R., on the Shield of Aeneas 137 n. 32 Harding, J., on Boulanger 366 n. 42 Harmodius 288, 311 n. 25 Harrington, James 334 Harris, James 201 Harrison, Evelyn, on the Stoa Poikile 73 Harrison, Thomas on Aeschylus’ Persians 149 n. 16 on Persian expansionism 342

Index Hartog, François, on Herodotus 335 Harvey, Lawrence 390, 397 Haydon, Benjamin Robert on the British government’s lack of support for history painting 283 The Death of Eucles 16, 268–73 enthusiasm over British plans to celebrate Waterloo and Trafalgar 273–4 Mayday or Punch and Judy 270 visits Edinburgh 279 Haygarth, William Greece 268 on Thermopylae 236, 261, 262fig 11.10 Heavy Metal Music, and Aeschylus’ Persians 168 Heidegger, Colonel 19 Hellenism effects on European historiography 339–46 Greece seen as the origin of liberty 231–2 influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 179–84 and Orientalism 340–1 and Romanticism 254 helots, not represented in The 300 Spartans 387 Hemans, Felicia Dorothea 6 n. 16, 24, 25 fig. 1.11, 26–7 Hera, temple (Athens/Phaleron) 70 n. 12 Heracles/Herakles/Hercules 69, 73, 75, 134 n. 23 Heraclitus, on war 350 Hermogenes, On Types of Style 156 Herodotus 5, 149–50 account of Salamis 357 on Athens’ involvement in the Ionian Revolt (498) 33 n. 10 as basis for the Persian War traditions 8, 12, 41, 107, 108, 304, 411 confusion over Persian expansion 32 n. 5 on Corinth’s contribution to the Persian Wars 114 cultural use of 146

435 on the Deinomenids’ relationship with Demeter of Eleusis 80 on Demeter of Eleusis 77: involvement in the Persian Wars 11–12; involvement in the Persians’ defeat 69–72; involvement in Plataea 67, 68–9; territoriality 78–9 on Demeter Thesmophoros 77–8 deviations from his traditions 105–6 geographical error in describing Thermopylae 235, 247–8 on the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 Hartog’s views about 335 on Himera and Salamis 36 Histories: basis for Cavalli’s il Xerse 205, 207 n. 7; basis for Handel’s Serse 201; on Salamis 117–18 historiography 341 on lack of Spartan support for Leonidas 387–8 on the landscape of Thermopylae 15 Orientalism 337 and the Peace of Antalcidas 35 n. 24 peoples opposed to the Greeks classified as barbarians 32 n. 4 Persian propaganda’s use of Musaeus by Onomacritus 53–4 on Persian reading of the Trojan War 52–3, 55 on Persian tactics at Plataea 396 n. 43 on the Persian Wars in 490 and 480–479 36 on Plataea 120, 121, 122 portrayal of battles 114–15 on reasons for the defeat of the Persians 65 reflection in Plutarch 116 n. 48, 153–8, 159, 160 n. 50, 161 reporting of Achaemenid opinion 49–50 on Salamis 69, 119 sources 66 on Spartan presence at Thermopylae 392 n. 32

436

Index

Herodotus (cont.) on Sparta’s importance in the Persian Wars 111 on the the gods’ involvement in Salamis 69 on Themistocles’ attempts to subvert the Ionians 59 on the Trojan and Persian wars 307 n. 19 use in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 215 Hieron (tyrant of Syracuse) 172 praised by Pindar 112 commissions a revival of Aeschylus’ Persians 13 Hignett, C., on Persian Wars traditions 106 n. 4 Himera, battle 36, 113 Hindu legends, James Mill’s criticisms of William Jones’s treatment of 343 n. 16 Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus) 311 n. 25 exiles Onomacritus 53 Hippias 32, 37, 288, 290, 311 n. 25 Hippocratics 149 Histiaeus 32 historical arche¯ 344–5 historical dialectic 17 historical novels 23 as cultural response to the Persian Wars 405–11 narrative voices 412 historiography as affected by the Persian Wars 331–4, 342–6: despotism within 347– 50; Orientalism 334–9, 340–1 fourth century 106–7 revisionism 108–11, 122–3 Hitler, Adolf, identification with Xerxes 186 Hobhouse Broughton, Baron John Cam 288, 320 n. 42 Holdfast (Orghast) 190 Holland, Tom, Persian Fire 411 n. 12 Hollywood concerns with the Persian Wars 20–1, 23

see also cinema; films Hölscher, Tonio, on commemoration of Salamis 130 Holstein-Gottorf, Duke of 214 Homer accounts of Troy 248 Iliad, use by the Persians 10–11 influence on Pressfield 417–18 Persian and Greek uses 61 reception affected by cultural perceptions of the Persian Wars 47–9 Robert Wood’s interest in 239 n. 29 Xerxes I’s use of 54–6, 58–60 Homeyer, H., on Plutarch’s Herodotus’ Malice 162 n. 60 Horace 13, 139–41, 140 n. 45 House of the Faun (Pompeii) 168 Housman, A. E., The Oracles 6 n. 16 Houston, Donald 391 Hughes, Ted 188 Hugo, Victor commemoration of French patriotism through scenes from the Persian Wars 374–6 Légende des Siècles 359 Les Misérables 356 n. 4 human body, artistic representation 372 human sacrifice, Themistocles involvement as presented by Plutarch 161 Hunt, Leigh, on the Waterloo monument 276–7 Hunter, Virginia 342 Hussain, Sadam, identified with Xerxes I 192 Hydarnes, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391 Hytner, Nicholas 202 fig. 10.1 Iacchus, phantom procession before Salamis 69, 70 ‘ideogram’ 208 n. 8 Ilissos river, Boreas’ cult 65 ‘Images d’Epinal’ 366 Imbros 32, 40 n. 43 Institute of Classical Studies (London), Library 240 n. 32

Index International Centre for Theatre Research 188 Ionian Revolt 32–3, 109 n. 18 Ionians 59 Iphicrates (Athenian) 40 Ipsilanti, Prince, announce outbreak of Greek War of Independence 181 Iran 187–8, 195–6 Iraq War (2003), and revivals of Aeschylus’ Persians 167–70, 191, 192–3 Ireland, John 389 Irish Republicans 185 Irons, Jeremy 389 Isagoras 78 Ishtar 77 Islam 9 Koran, first translation into Latin 176 perceptions about as influenced by Aeschylus’ Persians 175–7 viewed as the enemy of Western liberty (Romantic period) 182–3 as viewed in Western Christianity 13 war against 169 Ismenias (Theban) 40 n. 43 Isocrates Archidamus 107 n. 7 attitude to Philip of Macedon 42 opposition to the Persians 40 Panegyricus 107, 307 n. 19 on Spartan democracy 386 n. 12 on the Trojan War 41, 307 n. 19 Israel 9–10 Issus, battle (333) 42 Istituto Nazionale Dramma Antico (Syracuse, Sicily) 192 Izmir (Smyrna) 9 ‘Jack and the Spartans’ 6 n. 16 Jacob, René, recording of Cavalli’s il Xerse 212 n. 14 Jacoby, F., on Ctesias’ historiography 109 Jassy, treaty of (1792) 180 Jesus Christ 9 Jesus College (Cambridge) 256

437

Jewish Scriptures, as affected by Persian propaganda 52 Jews, attitudes towards Xerxes I 172–3 ‘Joconde: Catalogue des collections des musées de France’ 355 n. 1 Johansen, T., on Atlantis 100 n. 56 John of Austria 178 Johnson, Dr Samuel 233–4, 284, 291, 293 Jones, William, criticized for account of Hindu legends 343 n. 16 Jowett, Reverend William, on the Kydonia School 308, 313–14 Judah, Persian involvement in 35 n. 23 Juethner, Julius, Hellenen und Barbaren 335 n. 7 Julius Caesar, described by Lucan 134, 286 justice 100 n. 55 dike¯ 50 Justin, on the Spartans at Thermopylae 395 n. 42 Juvenal, tenth Satire, vanity of military ambition 135 Kalliarches, Dionysios (director of the Kydonia School and metropolitan [archbishop] of Ephesus) 305, 307, 312 Kallimachos (war archon, Marathon) 72, 73 Kanares of Psara, Admiral Konstantinos 302 n. 7 Karer, Pavlov, Marathon-Salamis 14 Katharevousa 306 Katsumoto (The Last Samurai) 3 Kaulbach, Wihelm von, Die Seeschlatcht von Salamis 18, 20 fig. 1.8 Kemble, John Mitchell, The Saxons in England 345 Kennedy, John F. (US President) 384 n. 6 Kieron, John 391 Kimon (son of Miltiades) 35, 79 King’s Peace (Peace of Antalcidas)(387/386) 8, 39–40 Klymenos 66

438

Index

Koraes, Adamantios 17, 306 Koran, first translation into Latin 176 Kore 66, 72–3, 76, 77, 80 Koselleck, Reinhart, on Orientalism 336 Koun, Karolos, staging of Aeschylus’ Persians (1966) 185–6, 194 Kraft, J. 235, 236, 236 n. 15 Kranz, Walther, Stasimon 335 n. 7 krypho scholeio 316–17 krypteia (Spartan secret services) 387 Kubrick, Stanley (director, Spartacus) 389 Kudadas (donor of Demeter’s Plataean sanctuary) 68 Kuhrt, Amélie 331–2, 334 n. 5, 336 Kydonia School 305, 306–7, 308, 310, 313–15, 322 Kynegeiros 72, 73 Kynos se¯ma 150–1 Kynosarges, Heraclean sanctuary 69 Lafenestre, Georges, description of Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine 362–3, 375 ‘Lancastrian system’ 313 n. 29 landscape, and place, importance during the Enlightenment 232–7 Lansbury, Angela 390 Lapie 245 Larina (Amazonian companion of Camilla) 138 Lassanes, Georgios 311 Lasus of Hermione 53 Latro (Persian soldier, in Wolfe’s novels) 24 Laughton, Charles 389 Lazenby, J. F., on Herodotus’ portrayal of Themistocles 157 n. 43 Leake, William Martin 237 n. 21, 244, 245 n. 53, 248, 249–51, 251 fig. 11.6, 252 Lemnos 32, 40 n. 43 Lenfant, Dominique, on Ctesias’ historiography 109 Leone, Sergio (film director) 398 n. 53

Leonidas 15, 115–16, 117 in The 300 Spartans 385–6, 387–8, 391, 392, 393, 396, 399, 401, 414 n. 20 in Miller’s 300 416 in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 419 Leotychidas 34 Lepanto, battle 178, 185 Leroux, Pierre 376 LeRoy, Mervyn (director, Quo Vadis) 389 Lesbos 31 The Letters of Themistocles 5, 173, 174 Levine, P., on Victorian historical consciousness 345 n. 18 Lewis, D. M., on a Treaty of Boeotius 38 Lichas (Spartan) 38 Licurio, Palemone (Silvio Stampiglia) (librettist, Bononcini’s Xerse) 217–19 Lillington, Kenneth, Young Man of Morning 407 n. 3, 408 n. 7 Lind, M., on the narrative voice in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412 Lindgren, Lowell, on Handel’s Serse 228 Lindus 33 ‘Little Barbarians’ 128–9 Lloyd, Frank (director, The Last Command) 395 Lloyd, Geoffrey 346 Locrians, at Thermopylae 116 n. 45 Logan, John 3 n. 2 London 17, 201, 223, 240 n. 32, 270, 273, 275, 278, 280–1, 282, 283 London Parthenon 17, 282 Longinus 232 Loraux, Nicole, on Plato’s Menexenus 93–5, 96 Louis XIV 211, 212–13 Lowrey, J., on Edinburgh 279 n. 46 Lucan, description of Julius Caesar 134, 286 Lucian Herodotus 156 names the messenger of Marathon as Philippides (Pheidippides) 16

Index Lucius Verus, levying of Spartan auxiliaries (ad 161) 131 n. 16 Lucretius, on Xerxes’ vanity 135 Lucullus, Pompey the Great likens to Xerxes 133, 133 n. 21 Lucy, Martha, on Cormon’s Caïn 360 Ludwig I (King of Bavaria) 19 Lulli, Giovan-Battista (Jean-Baptiste Lully) 212–13, 214 Lycurgus (Spartan law-maker) 393 n. 32 Lycurgus (Athenian) 34 n. 17 Lydia 32 n. 4 Lysander (Spartan) 38 Lysias 40, 94 n. 34, 95 Lysimachus (tutor of Alexander the Great) 42 Macedon 32, 33 McGann, J., accepts Gordon’s account of Byron’s visit to Waterloo 289 n. 68 MacGinnis, Niall 392 n. 27 Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes (Förtsch and Postel) 213–16, 217 fig. 10.2b, 218 fig. 10.2c Mackay, Pierre 237 n. 21, 245, 247 McLaughlin, Ellen, production of Aeschylus’ Persians 192–4 McNamara, Robert 194 Madden, Samuel, Thermistocles, the Lover of his Country 15 Mahaffy, John Pentland, on Byron’s invocation of Marathon 291–2, 293 Mahmud II (Sultan, 1808–39)(in Shelley’s Hellas) 182, 183, 184, 301 Mahomet 9, 175, 176 Mainardi, Patricia, on the Salon system 358 Maitland, Captain 268 Malian Gulf 240–1, 241 n. 36, 242 Malians, at Thermopylae 116 n. 45 Mamucius (slave, Vita Mahumeti) 176 Manfredi, Valerio Massimo, Spartans 410, 414 Mann, Michael (film director) 3 n. 1, 412 n. 14

439

Manos, Demetrios 305 n. 14 Manos family 304 Mantinea, late for Plataea 34 Mantinea, battle 40 Marathon, battle 11, 14 fig. 1.4, 33, 73, 98 and Atlantis 91, 92 Byron’s invocation 285–93 gods’ involvement 65, 72 Greek commemoration, in the Stoa Poikile 277 Heraclean sanctuary 69 importance for Grote 344 legend’s development in the nineteenth century 267–8 Persian numbers involved, Niebuhr’s assessment 338 Plato’s account 86 ranking 111 in Theopompus 109 and Waterloo 16–17, 293: Byron’s views 285–91 Marathon, battlefield 15, 231, 234–5, 235 n. 11, 303 Marathon race 269, 293 Marathonian Tetrapolis 73 Marathonomachoi, Aristophanes’ jibes at 105 Marble Arch (London) 278, 283 Marcellus, Comte de 322 Les Grecs anciens et les Grecs modernes (The Ancient Greeks and the Modern Greeks) 323 on the reading of Aeschylus, Persians (1820) 17, 181, 300–13, 316–26 Souvenirs de l’Orient 322 Marchand, L. A., accepts Gordon’s account of Byron’s visit to Waterloo 289 n. 68 Mardonius 24, 54 n. 35, 116 n. 46 at Plataea 115, 120, 121 in Ctesias 109 destruction of Athens 70 portrayal in Davis’s, A Victor of Salamis 409 reconquers Thrace and Macedon (492) 33

440

Index

Marduk 51 Maria Theresa of Austria 232 n. 3 Maria-Teresa (Infanta of Spain), marriage to Louis XIV 211 Marincola, John 12, 24 Mark Antony 136 Marlowe, Christopher, Tamburlaine the Great 178 Marr, J. L. on Plutarch’s use of Herodotus 159 n. 46 on Themistocles’ involvement in human sacrifice 161 n. 53 Mars Ultor, temple of (Forum of Augustus) 129 Martin, Jon Edward, In Kithairon’s Shadow 408nn. 6 and 7, 410 Marylebone Church (London) 270 Masaracchia, A., on Herodotus’ portrayal of Themistocles 157 n. 43 Masistius (Persian commander), in Herodotus’ account of Plataea 120 Massachusetts, culture 392 n. 29 Maté, Rudolph (director The 300 Spartans) 21, 383, 399 n. 57: see also The 300 Spartans Maurice, Thomas, The Fall of the Mogul 182 Mausolus of Caria 41 Mavrokordatos, Alexandros 181 Maximilianeum (Munich) 19 Maximillian II (King of Bavaria) 19 Maysville Pictures, proposed filming of Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412 n. 14 Mazarin, Cardinal Giulio 211–12 Medici, Prince Matteo de’ 210 Megabazus 32 Megarians at Plataea 120, 121 at Salamis 118 suffer from the anger of Demeter of Eleusis 78 Megillus (Plato, Laws) 89, 90, 90 n. 20 Melani, Atto, on Cavalli’s il Xerse 210–11

Memnon (son of Tithonus) 57, 58 Merci, Count 287 Metastasio, Pietro 201, 311 n. 24 metics, holding umbrellas 37 Mexicans, portrayal in The Alamo 398 Michael Psellus 175 Michael Sophianos of Chios 178 Middle Ages, influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 175–6 Mikalson, J. D., on Demeter’s involvement in the Persians’ defeat 72 n. 22 Miles, Margaret, on the Eleusinion 70–1 Miletus 33, 38, 39, 58 military genre pictures 372–3 Mill, James 337 English imperial rule in India and despotism 350 n. 27 on Grote’s historiography and Marathon 344 History of British India, account of legendary times 343 n. 16 Mill, John Stuart Hellenism and European history 339–40 on Marathon 292 Miller, Frank 3 n. 1, 414 n. 20, 416–17 Miltiades 31, 33, 73, 79, 147 Milton, John, attitudes to Xerxes 178 Milton, Roderick, Tell Them in Sparta 410 Minato, Nicolò (librettist) 203, 219, 220, 221–2, 225 Argomento of Cavalli’s il Xerse 204–7, 210, 215, 224 libretto for Cavalli’s il Xerse, adaptations 15, 213 minette 356 n. 4 Ministre d’Instruction Publique, and the Salon system 358 Missolonghi 18 Mitford, William 17, 248, 249 fig. 11.5, 338, 342 n. 15 Mithradates (VI?) 133 Mnesiphilus of Phrearrhii 118, 157, 158–9, 158 n. 45 Moasha (Orghast) 190

Index Mola 243, 244 Momigliano, Arnaldo 335 n. 7, 342–3 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de 334, 347–8 Monteverdi, Claudio, L’incoronazione di Poppea 204 Morat (Swiss battlefield, 1476) 288, 289 Morel, Charles, criticisms of Fustel’s La cité antique 369 n. 52 Morgan, Kathryn, on Atlantis 100 n. 56 Morot, Aimé 372 n. 64 Morouzis, Alexandros 180 Morris, Joe Alex jr, on Greek democracy and the Spartans 384 n. 6 Morrow, Glen, on Plato’s views about Athens and its constitution 91–3, 97, 100–1, 101 n. 58 La Mort de Xerxes 6 n. 14 Moschion, Themistocles 171 Moses, equated with Xerxes 172–3 Mount Callidromos 236 Mount Oeta (Thermopylae) 261 Mourouzes, Alexander 305 n. 14 Mourouzes, Konstantinos 305 n. 14 Mourouzes, Nikolaos 305 n. 14 Moutsios, Yorgos 391 Mozart, W. A., Die Entführung aus dem Serail 180 Mudie, Robert, satirizes the Calton Hill monument 280, 282 Murad II (Sultan) 177 Murray, Gilbert, translation of Aeschylus’ Persians 185 Murray, John (publisher) 289, 290, 292 Murray, Oswyn 333 n. 2 Musaeus, oracles 53–4, 55 Musé des Beaux-Arts (Rouen) 357 n. 5, 362 Musé du Luxembourg 357 n. 5 Mycale 58, 68–9 battle of 11, 24 Myers, Randy 6 n. 16 Myrcinus 32 Myus, refers territorial dispute to Persia 39

441

Nabonidus Chronicle 51 Nacogdoches (Texas), citizens liken the fall of the Alamo to Thermopylae 394 Nadir Shah (Maurice, The Fall of the Mogul) 182 Naismith, Laurence 391 Namantians, defeat by the Romans 185 Napoleon III 365, 370 Napoleon Bonaparte 288 defeat in the battle of the Nile 185 likens himself to Themistocles 268 painted by Haydon 270 and the rise of the historical novel 406 n. 1 Naqsh-e-Rustam, staging of Brook’s Orghast 188 narrative voices, in historical novels 412 Nash, John, design of Marble Arch 278 National Actors’ Theater (New York), production of Aeschylus’ Persians 192–4 nationalism, nineteenth century 345 naumachiae 4, 5 fig. 1.1 Salamis (2 BC) 129–30, 173 Naxos Datis’ and Artaphernes’ expedition against (490) 33 Persians attack (499) 32 Nazi Germany, identified with the Persians 185, 186 Negropont (Euboea) 240, 244 Nehemiah (governor of Judah) 35 n. 23 Nemesis 65 Nepos, Cornelius, Life of Miltiades 277 Nero 4, 9 n. 19, 130–1, 134, 173 New Englanders, culture 392 Nicetes 172 Niebuhr, Barthold, History of Rome 338 Ninos 57 Ninyas (son of Semiramis) 57 Nixon, Richard (US President) 395 n. 41 Nointel, Marquis de 238 non-Americans, presence at the Alamo 397 n. 48 Nord, Paul 399 n. 57

442

Index

Northumberland (ship) 270 Numanus Remulus 138 Nussbaum, G. B., on Orientalism 140 n. 43 ‘oath of Plataea’ 34 n. 17, 121 O’Brien, Lawrence F. 392 n. 29 Odessa free Greek community 310–11 Phanariot community 180 Oikonomos, Konstantinos 17, 322 stages reading of Aeschylus’ Persians (1820) 305, 306–7, 309–10, 311, 312, 314, 318–19 Olivier, Laurence 389 Olympia 65 Olympian Zeus, temple (Athens) 130 ‘Ombra mai fu’ Bononcini’s setting as the model for Handel’s setting 221 Cavalli’s il Xerse 208, 209 fig. 10.2a Handel’s Serse 145, 208 n. 9, 221 Once Upon A Time In the West (directed, Sergio Leone) 398 n. 53 Ondaatje, Michael, The English Patient 406 Onomacritus 53–4, 55 opera French opera (seventeenth century) 210–13 German opera (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) 213–16 ‘peak period’ 204, 208 Rome (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) 216–23 use of Persian themes 15 Opis, battle 51 Opium Wars 185 ‘Opportunists’ 365 oratory, fourth century 106–7 Orient, despotism 347–8 Orientalism 310, 333, 334–9 and Hellenism 340–1 Horace’s views 140 Marcellus’s presentation 317, 318 Nussbaum’s views 140 n. 43 Said’s views of Aeschylus’ Persians 317

‘Orientalizing Revolution’ 48 Osborne, R. 334 n. 5, 337 n. 9 Osmin (in Die Entführung aus dem Serail) 180 Otanes 32 Otho (son of Ludwig I of Bavaria), chosen as first king of Greece 19 Ottoman Sublime Porte, reprisals against supporters of Greek independence 305 n. 14 Ottoman Turks 13, 175, 177–8, 180 see also Turkey Ovid, on the restaging of Salamis as a naumachia 129 Owen, Wilfred, Dulce et decorum est 415 Padgug, R. A., on the Attic synoikismos 75 n. 32 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza (Shah of Persia) 187–8, 191, 195 painting, historical tradition in France 356–8, 359–60, 361–2 Palais d’Industrie (Palais des Champs-Elysées) 358 Palatinus Graecus (MS) 398 173 Palestinians 10 Palmyra, discovery 239 n. 29 Paltrow, Gwyneth 391 n. 26 Pammenes (Theban) 41 Pan 65 panhellenism, in The 300 Spartans 385–6 Pantanassa ridge, Hysiai (above Plataea) 67–8 Paraleia, portrayal in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 418 n. 25 parasols 37 Paris Commune (March–May 1871) 365 parody 95 n. 41 Paros, Eleusinian Demeter’s territoriality 79 Parthenon (Athens) 9 n. 19 Calton Hill monument (Edinburgh) 279–83 as model for British plans to celebrate Waterloo 274

Index portrayal by Haydon 271–2 Parthenon frieze 37 Parthians 8–9 demonization 127, 129, 130, 132–3 referred to as Medes or Persians 140–1 The Pass of Thermopylae 16fig 1.5 Pasyooni, Attila 196 n. 102 patriotism 409 n. 8 Patroclus 117 Paul I (King of Greece) 384 n. 5 Pausanias (Greek writer) 15, 279 on Eleusinian Demeter 76, 78 on erection of monuments to the gods after Greek victories 65 on Roman commemorations of battles over the Parthians 130 on the Stoa Poikile 73, 277 Pausanias (king of Sparta) 34 at Plataea 68, 115, 120, 121 portrayal in Bulwer Lytton’s Pausanias, the Spartan 407 views about Persia 37 peacocks, gift of 37 Pearl Theater Company (New York) 192 Peckinpah, Sam (film director) 388 n. 19, 398 n. 53 pederasty 387 Peleus, rape of Thetis 56 Peloponnesian War 8 Athen’s defeat 95 Persia’s role 37–8 Penthesilea (in Aithiopis) 138 Pergamum, Great Altar of Zeus 137 Periarco (in Cavalli’s il Xerse) 212 Pericles 37, 136, 284 periodization 338 Persephone see Kore Persepolis 187 fig. 9.5 Les Perses 180 Persia Greek views about 36–41 Imperial expansion 31–3 likened to Atlantis 102–3 role in the Peloponnesian War 8 Persian ‘dynasties’, despotism 348

443

Persian empire continuing attempts at expansion 33–6 multiculturalism 49–50 propaganda 61: effects on local literature 51–4; use of Ctesias 57–8; use of Homer 54–6, 58–60 Persian Journal 196 Persian Wars Athenian constitution in the face of, Plato’s views in the Laws 85–91, 93, 98–9 battlefields, appreciation during the Enlightenment 231, 232, 234–7 battles’ relative importance in the course of the nineteenth century 268 cultural influence 3–10, 24, 47–9 effects on historiography 331–4, 342–6 despotism within 347–50 Orientalism 334–9, 340–1 fourth-century views of 12 Plutarch’s treatment 150–62 reflected in Victor Hugo’s poetry 374–5 representation in historical novels 405–11 Roman exploitation 129–36 Augustan principate 137–41 see also Plutarch Romantic artistic representations 17–19 states’ contributions to 111–14 traditions, fourth century 105–8 treatments of 145–50 and the Trojan War 307 n. 19 Persians in Aeschylus’ Persians 148–9 defeat and its causes 65 Demeter of Eleusis’ involvement in their defeat 74–80 in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 121 in Ephorus’ account of Salamis 119 historiography, as affected by Greek sources 331–2, 334–9

444

Index

Persians (cont.) identified with the Ottoman Turks, eighteenth century 180 justification of imperial expansion 10–11 in Miller’s 300 417 in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 418–19 records of the Persian Wars possibly contradicted by Ctesias 109 Roman views about 12–13 shape the cultural reception of the Persian Wars 47–9 tactics at Plataea 396 n. 43 in The 300 Spartans 399–400 views about the Greeks and as viewed by the Greeks 10 The Persians … a comedy about war with five songs 167, 194 Persians (satyr-play) 171 n. 15 Peter the Venerable (Abbot of Cluny) 176 n. 34 Phanariots 305 n. 14 Phanias reflection in Plutarch 153 on Themistocles 159, 161 n. 53 Pharnabuzus (satrap of Dascylium) 39, 42 Pheidippides (Philippides) 16, 269 n. 6 Pheraios (or Velestinles), Regas 319–20, 321–2 Pherecrates 171 Phidias, commissioned to make a statue of Nemesis 65 Philicus, Themistocles (attrib.) 171 Philike Hetaireia (Society of Friends) 310–11 Philip of Macedon 8, 41, 42 Philippides (Pheidippides) 16, 269 n. 6 Philocleon (Aristophanes, Wasps) 94 philosophes, attitudes to classical Greece 254 Philostratus, on Themistocles 5 philyra 141 Phliasians, in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 122 phobos 88

Phokians, at Thermopylae 116 n. 45 Phoenicia 35 Phokis, Eleusinian Demeter’s cult 77 Photius, on Ctesias’ historiography 5 n. 9, 108–9 Phrynichus The Capture of Miletus 170 n. 10 Phoenician Women 170 phthonos (envy) 161, 161 n. 55 Phylon, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391, 396, 399, 400, 401 Pichat, M., Léonidas 18 Pindar 151 Pythian 1, in honour of Hieron 112 second Dithyramb 140 n. 41, 141 Pinelli 7 fig. 1.2, 21 fig. 1.9, 25 fig. 12 Pirotta, N. 206 n. 4, 208 Pisistratids 53 Pistrucci, Benedetto, design of medals to commemorate Waterloo and the purchase of the Elgin Marbles 272 place, and landscape, importance during the Enlightenment 232–7 Plataea dedicatory inscription to Demeter of Eleusis 66 success at Marathon 33 as topos for Greek independence 303 Plataea, battle 11, 12, 24, 34, 99, 114–15, 120–2, 130, 307 n. 19 commemoration in Simonides fragment 105, 107 n. 7 in Ctesias 109 Demeter of Eleusis’ involvement 67–8 gods’ involvement 65, 66 Persian tactics 396 n. 43 ranking 111 Spartan involvement 76, 111 Plataea, battlefield 235 n. 11 Plato Critias 12, 101 criticism of Athenian victory narratives 12 Crito 94 n. 34 Gorgias 100 n. 55, 147

Index on Herodotus 146 Laws 100 n. 55, 101: on the Athenian constitution in face of the Persian threat 85–91, 93, 98–9 Menexenus 12, 92–4: ranking of battles in the Persian Wars 111 Phaedo 88–9, 89 n. 18 Phaedrus 94 n. 34 Republic 100 n. 55, 101 Statesman 100 n. 57 on Themistocles and Athenian democracy 148 Timaeus 12, 101 Playfair, W. H. (architect of the Calton Hill monument) 280 Pliny the Elder, on philyra 141 n. 47 Plutarch Against Colotes 157 n. 41 Aristides 152 Banquet of the Seven Wise Men 158 n. 45 Camillus 150, 151, 154 Epicurus Makes Even a Pleasant Life Impossible 155–6, 157 Herodotus’ Malice 116 n. 48, 155, 156–7, 157 n. 41, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162 n. 60 on the Ionian Revolt 33 n. 10 Life of Aristides 68 Lives 13, 150–5, 162 names the messenger of Marathon as Eucles 16 On the Glory of the Athenians 269, 272 On Meddlesomeness 155 Pelopidas 161 Progress in Virtue 157 n. 40 on Salamis 147–8 n. 10 on the Spartans at Thermopylae 395 n. 42 Themistocles 150–1, 152, 154, 157–61, 157–62 use of Herodotus 146 Pococke, Richard 238–9, 241, 243 polarity deconstruction 139 Polemon the Elder, on Demeter and Kore’s involvement in Marathon 72–3

445

Polidori, John, on Byron’s visit to Waterloo 289, 289 n. 68 Polignac, François de, on Eleusinian Demeter’s territoriality 78 Polycrates of Samos 31 Polycritus of Aegina, in Herodotus’ account of Salamis 118 Polygnotus 17 Polynikes, portrayal in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 413–14 Pomardi (artist) 258 n. 91 Pompey the Great 8 besieged in Brundisium by Julius Caesar 134 demonization 136 likened to Agamemnon 135 likens Lucullus to Xerxes 133, 133 n. 21 pompier 361–2 Pompignan, Marquis J. J. Franc de, translation of Aeschylus’ dramas 179 Portaels, Jean-François 359 Porter, Andrew, review of Brook’s Orghast 190 Poseidon 70 n. 11, 74, 77 Poseidon Soter 66 Postel, Christian Heinrich 213–14, 214–16 Potarzeek (near Pharsalus) 237 Potter, Robert, translation of Aeschylus’ dramas 179–80 Pouqueville, François 236, 254 Powell, Anthony, on paintings as reflective of their periods 376 Pressfield, Steven Gates of Fire 3, 23, 383 n. 1: representation of Thermopylae 405, 411–19, 414–19; Spartan society 387 n. 15, 412–14, 418 n. 25, 419 Priam 57, 59 Prichett, W. K. 262 n. 106 Primrose Hill (London) 17, 275, 278 Pritchett, W. K. 67–8, 236, 236 n. 15, 262 n. 106 ‘propaganda’ 51 n. 18 Propertius, on Cleopatra 139 Protesilaus 41, 56 Psellus, Michael 175 pseudo-Lucianic, Nero 134

446

Index

Psyttaleia, in battle of Salamis 117 Pyrilampes (Athenian given a gift of peacocks by the Persian king) 37, 37 n. 31 Pythian Apollo 66 Quadrio, Francesco Saverio 219 Raaflaub, K. A., on the Persian Wars and political freedom 335 n. 6 racism, in Aeschylus’ Persians 148–9 Raftopolou, Anna 391 Rains, Claude 390 Ratschor (‘Chapel Royal’ choir, Hamburg) 214 Raubitschek, A. E., on Triptolemus 75 Raubitschek, I. K., on Triptolemus 75 Rawson, Elizabeth 235 n. 12 Reader, William W. 72, 73 ‘Received Pronunctiation’ British accents, use in films 389–91 Reischoffen, battle (1870)(Morot’s painting of) 372 n. 64 religion, Shelley’s views 183–4 Renaissance, influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 175, 177–8 Renan, Ernest 325, 369 Renault, Mary 407 n. 3, 409 n. 8 republican, concept within the French Third Republic 365 ‘retopicalizations’ 169 Revett, Nicholas 240 Rhamnous, Attic deme 65 Rheitos Lake 71 Rhoesaces, takes refuge in Athens 37 Richardson, Ralph 391, 392 n. 27 Richer, Léon 366 n. 43 Rickman, Alan 389 Ridgely, Tom, The Persians … a comedy about war with five songs 167 Roberdeau, John Peter, Thermopylae 6 n. 16 Robert of Ketton 176 Roberts, J., sources for ‘Si, la voglio’ 226 n. 33 Robertson, Andrew, on the building of a Parthenon in celebration of Waterloo 275–6, 282

Robortello, Francisco 178 Rochette, L. S. de la 248 Rodinson, M. 177 Roll, Alfred, La guerre: marche en avant 371 Rollin, Charles 277, 333 n. 2 Roman Empire eastern imperialism 8–9 influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 173 Romans Fustel de Coulanges’ concerns with 368–70, 373–4 treatment of the Persian Wars under Augustus 12–13 Romanticism 253–4 artistic representations of the Persian Wars 17–19 influence of Aeschylus’ Persians 179–84 views of Thermopylae 254–63 ‘romantics’ 237 Rome defeat of the Namantians 185 demonization of eastern enemies as barbarians 127 exploitation of the Persian Wars 129–36 Augustan principate 137–41 external wars 160 n. 52 opera (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) 216–23 Romilda in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 220–1 in Cavalli’s il Xerse 207, 209, 212 n. 14 in Handel’s Serse 202, 203 in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 216 Romney, George, illustrations to Aeschylus’ dramas 179–80 Rossen, Robert (director, Alexander the Great) 20, 383 Rouhani, Fuad, translation of Aeschylus’ Persians 195–6 Rouvier (Premier, French Third Republic) 367 Royal Academy of Music (London) 223 Royer, Clémence 360

Index Rudge, Reverend James 284, 286, 291 Russian–Turkish war (1768–74) 180 Rymer, Thomas 185 Sacconi, A., on the Eleusinian cult 74 n. 31 Sadam Hussain, likened to Xerxes 168, 169 fig. 9.1 Saepta Iulia (Campus Martius) 128–9 Said, Edward on Aeschylus’ Persians 148–9, 317 Orientalism 168, 168 n. 5, 191, 310, 335 n. 7, 340–1 on Orientalism 317, 333, 337 St Pancras Church (London) 270 St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 273, 275, 278 n. 41 Saint-Ravy, Jean, Aeschyli poetae Vetvstissimi Tragoidiae 175, 178 Salamis, battle 11, 36, 98, 115, 117–20, 147–8 association with the battle of Actium 139 in Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine 000 in Ctesias 109 gods’ involvement 65, 66, 69, 70 Herodotus sees as Athenian victory 106 in Hugo’s poetry 374–5 location 235 n. 11 painted by Kaulbach 18, 20 fig. 1.8 placed on par with the Trojan War 309 Plato’s account 89 in Plutarch 153, 157–9 ranking 111, 112 n. 30 reasons for the defeat of the Persians 65 restaged as naumachiae 4, 129–30, 173 Roman commemoration 130 as topos for Greek independence 303 Salamis texts 184 Salon system, and state commissions 355–9, 371–2 Samos 31, 36, 391 Samurai Jack 6 n. 16

447

Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Heleen, on historiography as affected by the Persian Wars 331–2, 336 Santa Anna (Mexican general, Alamo) 394, 396 Saracens, seen as uniformly idolaters 175 Sassanian kingdom 9 Satraps’ Revolt (360s) 40, 41 Saturninus, L. Herennius 157 n. 41 Saunders, Trevor 85, 86 n. 2, 88 n. 13, 90 n. 21 Scarlatti, Alessandro, Marco Attilio Regolo 226 n. 33 Scena Theater company 194 Schachter, Albert, on Demeter’s Plataean sanctuary 68 Schaudig, Hanspeter, on the Cyrus Cylinder 51 Schnaebele (French customs officer arrested by the Germans [April 1887]) 367, 368 Schneider, Rolf, on Augustus’ commemoration of victories over the Parthians 130 Schoelwer, Susan, on the fall of the Alamo 395 n. 39 schoinoteneia 141 Schöpsdau, Klaus, on Plato’s views of the Athenian constitution 85 n. 1 Scipio Aemilianus, defeat of the Namantians 185 Scitalce (in Cavalli’s il Xerse) 207, 212, 219 Scopelianus of Clazomenae 172 Scott, Ridley (director, Gladiator) 383 n. 1 Scott, Sir Walter 279, 285, 289, 290–1, 406 n. 1 Scyros 40 n. 43 Scythia Darius I invades (c.514) 32 distances within 32 n. 5 Second Athenian League (378/7) 40 Second World War 185 Seleucids 8 Self, David 3 n. 1, 412 n. 14

448

Index

Sellars, Peter, adaptation of Aeschylus’ Persians 168, 191–2, 193, 194 Semmel, S., on Scott’s use of Croker’s views of the third canto of Childe Harold 290 n. 72 Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae, demonization of Xerxes 134 Seneca the Younger, Agamemnon, references to Xerxes 135 Sesostre (Cavalli’s il Xerse) 207, 212, 219 Shaftesbury, Lord 201, 228, 232 n. 2 Shear, T. Leslie, on Telesteria at Eleusis 71–2 Shelley, Lady Jane, on Greek War of Independence 181 Shelley, Mary 181 Shelley, P. B. 300 Hellas 169, 181–4, 301, 302 not employed by Murray to check the proofs of the third canto of Childe Harold 290 Ozymandias 239 Prometheus Unbound 183 Shepherd, T. H. 281 n. 51 Shield of Achilles, Gigantomachic allusions to 137 Shield of Aeneas, Gigantomachic allusions to 137 Shiraz–Persepolis festival 187–8 ‘Si, la voglio’ (Handel’s Serse) 226–8 Sicinnus (Themistocles’ tutor) 118, 146 Sicyonians, in Ephorus’ account of Plataea 122 Siegel, Don (film director) 398 n. 53 Simms, R. M., on Athenian influence on the Eleusinia 76 n. 41 Simonides 151 on Demeter of Eleusis’ involvement in Plataea 67 on Plataea 105, 107 n. 7, 307 n. 19 portrayal in Renault’s The Praise Singer 409 n. 8 quoted by Diodorus 113 reflection in Plutarch 152 on Salamis 147–8 on Trojan and Persian Wars 60

slavery, representation in films 387 n. 14 Smirke, Robert (designer of the Trafalgar monument) 278 Smith, Orrin, Exile of Themistocles 174 fig. 9.2 Smith, Ruth, on Handel’s Preface to Serse 224 Smith, William, on the Waterloo monument 276 Smyrna (Izmir) 9 Gymnasium 306 Snedeker, Caroline Dale 408 n. 7 The Spartan 408 n. 5, 409, 413 n. 17 Snyder, Zack (film director) 3 n. 1 Société des Artistes Français, salon 358–9 Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, salon 358–9 Society of Dilettanti 239 n. 30, 240 n. 31 Society of Friends (Philike Hetaireia) 310–11 Socrates 6 n. 17 on the Athenian constitution: in the Gorgias and Republic 100 n. 55; in Plato’s Menexenus 92, 94, 95, 96–7 on citizens (Gorgias) 103 n. 65 in Plato’s Laws 90 n. 20 Sofaer, Abraham 389 Solon 78, 100 n. 56, 393 n. 32 Sophie (Princess of Prussia), wedding to Crown Prince Constantine of Greece (1889) 185 n. 74 Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 168, 182 Philoctetes 180, 310 popularity under Byzantium 175 representation by Cormon and Hugo 375 Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane 74–5, 78 Southerners (United States), culture 392 Southey, Robert 292 Soviet Union, portrayal in the Cold War cinema 383–5, 399–400 Spanish Armada 185

Index Sparta and Athens, portrayal in The 300 Spartans, use of accents 392–4 contribution to the Persian Wars 111, 112, 113, 114 and the Delian League 34–6 duplicity 393 n. 31 hostilities lead Athens to seek Persian support (508/507) 32 involvement in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 portrayal of the Persian Wars 107 representation in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 387 n. 15 role in the Peloponnesian War 8, 37–8 see also Greeks Spartans at Plataea 68, 76, 115, 120, 121, 122 at Salamis 118, 119 at Sphacteria 396 n. 44 at Thermopylae 115–17, 384–5 Herodotus’ concentration on 106 in Miller’s 300 416–17 in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 24, 412–14, 418 n. 25, 419 Spartan auxiliaries, Roman levies 131 n. 16 in The 300 Spartans 385–6, 399–401: as Americans 394–8; democracy 386–8 Spawforth, A. 4, 131 n. 16 Spencer, Terence 239 n. 29, 252 Spercheios river 239 n. 28, 241 n. 36, 242, 244, 250 Sphacteria, battle, Spartan tactics 396 n. 44 Spon, Jacob 238 SS. Giovanni e Paolo theatre (Venice) 203 Stampiglia, Silvio (Palemone Licurio) (librettist, Bononcini’s Xerse) 217–19, 221–2, 225, 227–8 Stanford, W. B. 241 n. 34 Stanyan, Temple 333 n. 2 Starenios, Dimos 391 Steen, Gonda Van 180–1

449

Stephanus, Henricus 175 Stevens, George (film director) 390, 398 n. 53 Stevenson, Adlai 385 n. 7 Stevenson, R. B. 57 n. 49 Stewart, Andrew, on the ‘Little Barbarians’ 128–9 Stewart, James 390 Stoa Poikile (Athens) 17, 41, 73, 148, 277 Stone, Oliver (director, Alexander) 383 Strabo, accounts of Troy 15, 79, 248 Strode, Woody 389 Stuart, James 246, 248, 250 ‘Map of Thermopylae’ 243 fig. 11.2 visit to Thermopylae 240–4, 245, 249 Stuhlbarg, Michael, as Xerxes I (2003) 193, 194 fig. 9.8 Suetonius, Life of Caligula 132, 134 Suleiman the Magnificent 177 Susa, Acropolis 58, 188 n. 79 Swain, Charles, ‘The Death of Eucles’ 270–1 Syme, R., on the Augustan naumachia 129 Syracuse 36, 40, 79–80, 172 syssitia (Spartan communal messes) 387 Szemler, G. 235, 236, 236 n. 15, 262 Taine 370 Talma, François-Joseph (French actor) 18, 19 fig. 1.7 Tarpeia (Amazonian companion of Camilla) 138 Tarrant, Richard, on Pompey in Seneca the Younger’s Agamemnon 135 Taylor, Robert 389 Teatro Tordinona (Rome) 217 Tegeans, in Herodotus’ account of Plataea 120 Teisamenos of Elis (Spartan seer) 68, 76 Telegraph and Texas Register, likens the fall of the Alamo to Thermopylae 394 Telepinu 77 Telfut 77

450

Index

Telines (ancestor of the Deinomenids) 80 Tellos the Athenian 78 Temple of Sibyls (Tivoli) 278 Tervagan (Termagant) 175 Teutamus (ruler of Asia) 57 Texas role in the cinema 392 n. 30 see also Alamo texts appreciation within geographical context 233 history 48 Theatre Bazi 196 n. 102 Théâtre des Tuileries 211–12 Theatre Royal (Haymarket Theatre, London) 201 theatres, France (seventeenth century) 211–12 Thebans at Plataea 120, 121, 122 at Thermopylae 116 n. 45 involvement in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 as Medizers 115 portrayal in historical novels 408 Thebes 34 n. 17, 40 n. 43, 41, 42 Thelonius Ellison (Percival’s Erasure) 168 Themistocles 5, 6 n. 17 at Salamis 115, 118, 119 attempts to subvert the Ionians 59 on the defeat of the Persians 65 on Greek democracy, in The 300 Spartans 388 Napoleon likens himself to 268 Pompey’s views of 136 portrayals 146–7, 148: in The 300 Spartans 391, 392, 393–4, 397–8, 399; in Cormon’s Les Vainqueurs de Salamine 20, 363, 365, 373; in Heredotus 157–8; in Hugo’s poetry 374; in The Letters of Themistocles 173; in Plutarch 150–1, 152–3, 157–62; in Thucydides 150

statue (theatre of Dionysus [Athens]) 170–1 takes refuge in Persia 37 Themistocles Receiving the Trophy (after Pinelli) 7 fig. 1.2 Theopompus 123 on Corinth’s contribution to the Persian Wars 113–14 on the Peace of Antalcidas 35 n. 24 Philippica 107, 109–10 Therai (Taygetus in Lakonia), shrine of Eleusinian Demeter 76 Thermopylae, Cato’s victory (191 BC) 152 Thermopylae, battle 34, 115–17, 123 American interests reflected in film 23 Athenians’ respect for 112 comparison with the fall of the Alamo 394–8 in Ctesias 109 cultural responses to 24 Diodorus’ eulogy 113 importance in relation to other battles of the Persian Wars 268 portrayals: in The 300 Spartans 383–6; in historical novels 24; in Hugo’s poetry 374; in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 405, 414–19 reference in The Last Samurai 3 Spartan presence 392 n. 32 as topos for Greek independence 303–4 Thermopylae, battlefield 15, 232, 235–7 ‘early’ travellers to 237–9 Gell’s explorations 251–3 late eighteenth century 245–9 Leake’s explorations 249–51 and Romanticism 254–63 Wood–Dawkins–Stuart expedition (1751) 15, 239–44, 248 Theseus 73, 275 Thespiaeans, at Plataea 122 Thessalians, involvement in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ 34 Thetis, Persians sacrifice to on reaching Thessaly 56

Index Third Republic Boulangist period 365–8 historical painting tradition 356–8, 359–60, 361–2 Third Sacred War 41 Thirlwall, Connop 338 Thomas Magister 175 Thorndike, Sybil 185 Thrace Darius I invades 32 reconquered by Mardonius (492) 33 Thrasyllus (astrologer) 132 The 300 Spartans 21, 23, 383–5 accents used in 391–4 basis of Burke’s The Lion of Sparta 408 Panhellenism 385–6 portrayal of the Spartans 386–8, 394–8, 399–401 portrayal of Themistocles 397–8 Thucydides on Athens 95, 111 n. 27, 150, 349 claims that Homer does not use the term ‘barbarian’ 60 on the greatness of the Peloponnesian War 107 n. 11 and the Peace of Antalcidas 35 n. 24 on the Persian Wars 41 in Plutarch 153, 153 n. 30 on Spartan tactics at Sphacteria 396 n. 44 on Themistocles 150 Tiamat 51 Tiberius Caesar 132 Tiberius Claudius Novius 130–1 Tigranes II 133 The Times, on the Waterloo monument 276 Timo (Parian priestess) 79 Timotheus of Miletus, Persians 172 Tissaphernes (satrap of Sardis) 39 Tithonus 57, 58 Tivoli Theatre (Washington, DC) 194 ‘Tomb of the Spartans’ 245, 255, 256 fig. 11.8 topographers 237, 237 n. 21 Torelli, Giacomo 211

451

Toris, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri 355–6, 361, 376 tourist guides, Gell’s works 252 Tourkokratia 316–17 Tourneur, Jacques (director, The Giant of Marathon/La Battaglia di Maratona) 383 n. 1 Trafalgar, British plans to celebrate 273, 278 Trajan’s Column 275 Travis, William (commander, Alamo) 394, 397 Trease, Geoffrey, Mission to Marathon 407 n. 3 Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) 211 Triesault, Ivan 391 Triptolemus 75 red-figure cup 11 fig. 1.3 Trojan War compared with the Persian Wars 8, 307 n. 19 cultural perceptions about 48–9 Persian reading of 52–3, 54–8, 61: use of Homer 58–60 Trojans, depicted as Persians 37 troops, abandonment 388 Troy Alexander the Great visits 42 Julius Caesar’s visit described by Lucan 286 Robert Wood’s appreciation of 233 n. 7, 239 n. 29 use in Persian propaganda 55–7 Wood’s attempts to find 248 Xerxes I visits 11, 41, 56 n. 40 Truman, Harry S. (US President) 384 n. 5 truth, Plutarch’s concerns with 156 n. 39 Tulla (Amazonian companion of Camilla) 138 turbans 237–8 Turkey 9, 19 opposition to Greek independence 305, 307, 310, 314, 317 see also Ottoman Turks Turnebus, Adrianus 175

452

Index

Turner, Frank, on Grote’s historiography and political views 347 Tyrrhastiadas of Cyme 116 ‘Uncle Dudley’ 392 n. 29 United Provinces, government 232 n. 3 United Service Magazine 270 United States American frontier ideology 391 n. 25 Americans portrayed as Spartans in The 300 Spartans 394–8 constitution 387 culture and accents 392–4 exploitation of Greek cultural icons in the Cold War 383–5 House of Representatives 392 n. 32 imperialism, identified with the Persians 186 portrayal in Auletta’s and Sellars’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ Persians 192, 193 United States Information Service, ‘campaign of truth’ 383 n. 3 Universal, proposed filming of Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412 n. 14 Ustinov, Peter 389 Van Haren, Willem 232, 249 Varley, Lynn (illustrator) 416 Vasunia, P., on Orientalism 335 n. 7, 336 ‘The Vatican Persian’ 128 fig. 7.1 Veii 154 Velestinles (or Pheraios), Regas 319–20, 321–2 Velleius Paterculus, on Pompey the Great’s likening Lucullus to Xerxes 133 Vendôme Column (Paris) 278 n. 41 Victorian historical consciousness 345 n. 18 Victorius, Petrus 175 Vidal, Gore, Creation 408 n. 6 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, interpretation of Atlantis 102 n. 64 Vienna 19, 177, 180 Vigarani, Caspare 211, 212

Virgil 13, 137–9 Vita Mahumeti 176 Voltaire, praises van Haren’s Leonidas 232 n. 3 Wakefield, Anne 391 Walhalla (Doric temple on the banks of the Rhine) 274 Wallace, P. W. 262 n. 106 Walsh, Raoul, Esther and the King 20–1 Walther, J. G., on Förtsch 214 war 344, 371–2 and civilization 17 fear in 417 Heraclitus’ views 350 portrayal in literature 415 ‘war against terror’ 10 war dead, legacy 409–10 Waterloo, battle 17 British plans to celebrate 273–9 Byron likens to Marathon 267, 268, 285–91 commemoration by the Calton Hill monument (Edinburgh) 279–83 and Marathon 16–17, 285–91, 293 visited by Reverend James Rudge and also Charlotte Eaton 284–5 Waterloo Vase 279 Waterwell Productions, staging of Aeschylus’ Persians 167 Wayne, John 23, 395, 395 n. 41, 397–8, 398 n. 51 portrayal of Mexicans in The Alamo 398 n. 51 Wees, Hans van, on Herodotus 341 Wellington, Duke of 276 n. 31, 278 n. 41, 283, 288 western Christians, classified as barbaroi 174 Westerns accents and culture in the cinema 392–3 character portrayals 398–401 Westmacott, Richard 278, 279 Wheler, George 238 Widmark, Richard 23

Index

453

Wilkins, William on British government’s attitudes to the arts 283–4, 291 joint winner of the Waterloo monument competition 278 Williams, F., on Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo 141 n. 48 Williams, H. W. (‘Grecian’) 279 n. 44, 280 Williams, T., The Reception of the Ambassadors of Mardonius (after Pinelli) 25fig 12 Willis, Bruce 389 Wister, Owen, The Virginians 392 n. 30 Wolfe, Gene 24, 408 n. 6 Wolff, Albert, on the Salon of 1887 371–2 women not permitted to appear on stage in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Rome 219 n. 22 portrayal in Western films 399–401 women’s rights, Iran 196 Wood Diaries 240 n. 32 Wood, Richard 254, 257 Wood, Robert on the appreciation of texts in their geographical context 233 attempts to find Troy 248 ‘Map of Thermopylae’ 242 fig. 11.1 visit to Thermopylae 236, 239–44, 248, 250 Wordsworth, William 267–8, 277 Wycliffe, John 176 Wyke, Maria, on the ‘ “linguistic paradigm” of Hollywood cinema’ 389 Wynn, Charles, on the Waterloo monument 276

Xeones, in Pressfield’s Gates of Fire 412: description of Thermopylae 414–15, 417–18 Xerse see Xerxes I Xerxes I 8, 24, 397 appropriation of Greek epic 47–8 Caligula imitates 132 defeat at Salamis 65, 118 equated with Moses 172–3 identification with Hitler 186 identified with Saddam Hussain 168, 169 fig. 9.1, 192 Milton’s attitudes to 178 offers terms to Leonidas 116 portrayals: in The 300 Spartans 385, 387, 387 n. 14, 388, 391; in Aeschylus’ Persians 111, 149; in Aristides’ Panathenacius 173; in Aristophanes’ Frogs 171–2; in Bononcini’s Xerse 219, 221, 222; in Brook’s Orghast 191; in Cavalli’s il Xerse 207, 209–10, 212; in Ctesias 109; in Ephorus’ account of Salamis 118; on Greek stage 171–2; in Handel’s Serse 145–6, 201, 202, 224, 225, 226; in Hugo’s poetry 374; in late twentieth-century productions 186; in Der Mächtige Monarch/der Perser/Xerxes 215; in opera 15; in Plutarch 154; in Sellars’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ Persians 192 Roman demonization 13, 133–5 Said’s views about 310 tomb 188, 189 fig. 9.6 use of Homer 54–6, 58–60 use of Onomacritus 53 visits Troy 11, 41, 56 n. 40

Xanthias (Aristophanes’ Frogs) 171 Xanthippus (Pericles’ father) 119, 150–1 Xenathon, portrayal in The 300 Spartans 391, 393 xenelasiai (expulsion of foreigners from Sparta) 387 Xenophon 37, 107, 114 n. 41

Yiannakis, Andrew 262 Young, William, History of Athens 277 Zeitoun 242, 243 n. 40 Zeus 65, 77 Zopyrus, takes refuge in Athens 37 Zwick, Edward 3 n. 2

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