Histories (Hackett Classics) 9781624661143, 9781624661136, 9781624661150, 1624661149

Citation preview

HERODOTUS

HISTORIES Translated by PAMELA MENSCH Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by JAMES ROMM

H e ro d ot u s

Histories

H e ro d ot u s

Histories

Translated by  Pamela Mensch Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by  James Romm

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2014 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 14

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by Abigail Coyle Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson Composition by Aptara, Inc. Maps by Beehive Cartography Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Herodotus. [History. English] Histories/Herodotus; translated by Pamela Mensch; edited, with introduction and notes by James Romm. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62466-114-3 (cloth) — ISBN 978-1-62466-113-6 (paperback) 1. History, Ancient. 2. Greece—History—To 146 B.C. I. Mensch, Pamela, 1956– translator. II. Romm, James S., editor. III. Title. D58.H4713 2014 930—dc23 2013036579 Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-62466-115-0

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Maps Introduction Chronology of the Archaic Age

vi vii xii xxv

Herodotus’ Histories Book 1 Book 2 Book 3 Book 4 Book 5 Book 6 Book 7 Book 8 Book 9

3 81 147 204 267 310 355 428 473

Main Characters, Places, and Terms Suggestions for Further Reading Index of Proper Nouns

514 522 523

v

A c k n ow l e d g m e n t s

The editor and translator would like to gratefully acknowledge all those who helped put this volume together, including: cartographer Kelly Sandefer; director of production at Hackett, Liz Wilson; copyeditor Harbour Fraser Hodder; art researcher Peter Rohowsky; and the brave indexing crew of the Bard College Classics program, Leila Boice-Schick, Sarah Bechtel, Alex D’Alisera, Ryan Warwick, and Adam Zuckerman. Our thanks also go to friends and consultants Paul Cartledge, Prudence Crowther, Carolyn Dewald, Rachel Friedman, John Marincola, and Jeremy McInerney. As always, we extend our fondest thanks to our editor at Hackett, Deborah Wilkes.

vi

List of Maps

  1. The Persian Empire and the Ancient World viii   2. The Greek World and the Route of Xerxes’ Invasion x   3. The Regions of the Ancient World Described by Herodotus xvii   4. Ancient Egypt 82   5. Scythia as described by Herodotus 209   6. The world known to Herodotus 219   7. Libya as described by Herodotus 263   8. The Persian Royal Road 283   9. The Battle of Marathon as described by Herodotus 343 10. Greek cities of Sicily in the 5th century B.C. 401 11. The battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium 416 12. The battle of Salamis 453 13. The battle of Plataea as described by Herodotus 494

vii

thia Scy Danu be

Corsica Tartessus

Italy

Sardinia Sicily

Pillars of Heracles

Carthage

Thrace

onia ced Ma

Greece eece Peloponnesee

Mediterranean Sea

Sardis Lyd ia Ionia Caria

Crete

Egypt

The Persian Empire in 500 B.C.

The Persian Empire and the Ancient World.

Nile

Libya

Ba c

tr

ia

a Se

Black Sea

Ca

ian sp

Ca ucasus

us Ind

ys

l Ha

India

Tig ris

Assyria Euphra tes

Susa

Cyprus Babylon

Phoenici Phoenicia

Persepolis

Arabia

Ethio Ethiopia

Red Sea

M

don ace

ia Thasos Thasos Athos Athos Canal Canal

Chalcidice

Mt. Mt. Athos Athos

Vale of Tempe

Aegean an Sea

Thessaly

Artemisium Thermopylae

Ph

oc is

Delphi

Boeotia

Isthmus of Plataea Corinth Corinth

Thebes

Sparta

100 kilometers 100 miles

The Greek World and the Route of Xerxes’ Invasion.

Attica Athens

Aegina

Peloponnese

Route of Xerxes' army Route of Xerxes' fleet

Marathon

Salamis

Argos

Euboea Eretriaa

Cythera

Black Sea

Thrace Bosporus

Chersonese Sestus Abydus Hellespon Hellespont

Lesbos

Phocaea Sardis

Samos

Ephesus Mt. Mycale

Miletus Delos Delos Naxos Naxos

Halicarnassus

Ly d

ia

Introduction

The world is full of stories, and more of them stream at us every day. Some are mere novelties or curiosities, like the odd animal behaviors or freakish coincidences tossed in at the end of news broadcasts. Others attest to the ingenuity of humankind, or give glimpses into the inner lives of the famous and powerful. The headline stories of journalism tell of war and peace, perils and rescues, and the rise and fall of nations. The greatest stories, the ones still being retold even after a century, seem to reveal a deliberate design in the fabric of the world. A century before these words were written, the Titanic sank after striking an iceberg, and its story has not gone out of date. The strange circumstance that a vessel touted as unsinkable, laden with trappings of wealth and luxury, perished on its first voyage suggests, almost irresistibly, a pattern in which arrogant overconfidence—what the Greeks would call hubris—invites disaster. To many observers at the time, it revealed the hand of God. Herodotus, the first writer in the Western world who can be called a historian, was a great collector of stories, and he knew some extraordinary ones. To him, the greatest story of them all, the one that revealed the pattern by which hubris meets with ruin, was the defeat of the Persian invasions of Greece in the early 5th century B.C. It was a story he felt had to be told from the beginning, even though that starting point—the first subjugation of Greeks living in Asia by their barbarian neighbors—went back about a century before his time. That led him to begin with Croesus, king of Lydia in the mid-6th century B.C., and to follow a story line that ended in 479 B.C. Had Herodotus told only this tale, his Histories would still have been compelling. But as his work progressed, he came to see that his account of Persia’s defeat could be a master narrative and house other stories within it. It could contain every wondrous or remarkable thing he had learned, for the Persian empire had touched, in the course of its phenomenal growth, nearly every part of the oikoumene¯, the portion of the earth known to him, stretching from the Indus River in the East to the Straits of Gibraltar in the West. His story could encompass the world itself. Herodotus had no model for such a complex aggregate, certainly not among previous works of prose. The only long narratives he knew were poems, the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey above all. He had to devise his structure xii

Introduction

xiii

as he went along, and so his work evolved over a long period of time, perhaps his entire adult life. Pieces he had composed separately had to be spliced together. Odd bits of extraneous matter had to be worked in at opportune moments. Editorial tasks were immensely hard for him, working as he did with sheets of papyrus pasted together into long, cumbersome scrolls. At times his storytelling seams are easily visible to modern readers, accustomed as we are to smoother narrative technique. Herodotus had no label, like “history” or “memoir,” that he could give to his creation, since those categories did not yet exist. Nor did he give it a title, since the modern custom of titling books had not yet evolved. Instead he described it, in his opening sentence, as succinctly as he could: “This is the showing-forth of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” The Greek word he used, historie¯ (“inquiry”), has subsequently become the work’s category and often its title, as well as the name for an entire genre of prose. But to think of Herodotus as sitting down to write a “history” is to put the cart before the horse. Herodotus could not have said what it was he was writing, beyond “a showing-forth of an inquiry.” The content of the Histories goes even further, beyond its main narrative and its collection of secondary stories. Herodotus also included scientific theories and speculations, ideas about the gods, and views on the endless diversity of human societies. He added odd animal behaviors, freakish coincidences, marvels of human ingenuity, and glimpses into the lives of the famous and powerful. He made his work a kind of journal in which to record his insights. To read it today is to think with his mind, to see the world as he saw it. We cannot get any closer than he brings us to the imaginative world of the mid-5th century B.C., the bright morning of Greece’s classical age.

The Divine (to theion) A crucial thing to notice about this world is that it is full of gods—not the Olympians themselves striding about among mortals, as they do in Homer’s poems, but the notion of “deity” in a more amorphous, indistinct form, what Herodotus often calls to theion (the divine) or ho theos (the god). This force speaks through oracles, sends monitory dreams, avenges the wrongs done to temples and shrines, and generally troubles human life just when it seems most prosperous or secure. It causes “unsinkable” ships to strike icebergs in such a way that they will go straight to the bottom. The first discussion of “the divine” in the Histories is in the speech made by Solon at the court of Croesus, and this placement is deliberate. Herodotus uses the encounter of Solon, a famed Athenian wise man, and Croesus, a grasping barbarian king, to set out important themes and ideas, right at the start of the Histories. Croesus represents wealth, power, and the quest for empire; he seeks,

xiv

Introduction

in his campaign against his neighbor Cyrus, to obtain a guarantee of victory from the oracles of Greece. Solon, by contrast, understands that “the god is jealous” and that human life can only be called happy if it ends before disaster strikes. Guarantees cannot be had. The divine is not wholly responsible for what happens to mortals, or the Histories would be a dull book. Indeed, Croesus makes mistakes in his war with Cyrus that, if considered by themselves, might explain his defeat. But Herodotus refuses to regard such purely human explanations as adequate to understanding the past. In this way his work differs markedly from what a modern reader expects from a historical narrative and borders more closely on myth (“mythic history” is a term sometimes used to describe it). Complicating the story of Croesus is the fact that his ancestor, Gyges, usurped the throne he occupied and incurred the curse pronounced by the oracle at Delphi: that his family would incur payback, tisis, four generations later. The word raises another aspect of Herodotus’ thought-world. Not only does “the god” jealously strike down the great and mighty, but a less personal force, almost a natural law, maintains balance in the world, restoring it when it gets disrupted. If one family, or nation, or species becomes too dominant, then tisis will at some point correct the imbalance. Thus do small cities become great and great ones small, as Herodotus believes they do (1.5). The greatest threat to balance in the Histories is the growing power of an Asian empire and its incursions into Europe. The division of the earth into continents mattered intensely to Herodotus (more on this shortly), and he implies at several points—or states openly through the words of Themistocles (8.109)—that “the gods and heroes . . . refused to grant one man sovereign power over both Asia and Europe.” The divine is offended by such an assault on continental structure, and retribution must surely follow. The entire Histories is, at one level, the restoration of tisis on the global scale.

Science and Rationalism Herodotus piously affirms his faith in oracles at 8.77, but his need to make this affirmation indicates that such faith could not be assumed. Progressive thinkers in his time had begun to question age-old beliefs about religious matters. The tales of Croesus’ test of the Greek oracles (1.47–49) and of Xerxes’ test of the divine origin of dreams (7.15–17) reflect a spirit of empirical science newly emerged in 5th-century Greece and making rapid progress. Herodotus himself aids that progress in some cases, but also seems to want to slow it down in others. Matters of geology and meteorology reveal his thinking at its most scientific. To support the thesis that the land of Egypt was laid down by sedimentation from

Introduction

xv

the Nile, Herodotus produces five first-hand observations; to explain the Nile’s mysterious summer rising, he refutes the theories of his “Ionian” forebears and advances his own speculation. Mythic constructs like the river Ocean, invoked by some in connection with the Nile, get dismissed by Herodotus simply because they lack eyewitness confirmation (2.23, 4.8). The presence of Ocean and other entities in Homer’s poems does not impress him, for he recognizes that poets invent such things merely by conjuring names out of the air. There is another, more cautious side to Herodotus’ thinking. He avoids questioning Poseidon’s role in causing earthquakes (7.129) or the idea that sacrifice could cause the wind to blow (7.189). He accepts Homer’s testimony on certain points even while challenging it elsewhere. He retells without question a tale about a mysterious dust cloud that arose from Eleusis, a sacred shrine, to foretell the Persian defeat at the battle of Salamis (8.65). For this miraculous vision Herodotus solemnly cites the authority of an eyewitness, Dicaeus, son of Theocydes, who himself had called on other witnesses to confirm his story. Herodotus seems clearly to have been pulled in contrary directions by the cross-currents of thought in his day. He rejected certain ideas of those he calls “the Ionians,” his intellectual predecessors, even while adopting others not very different in kind. Thus he scorns the symmetrical world-map produced by Hecataeus of Miletus and others (4.36), yet relies on symmetry himself when making the course of the Nile mirror that of the Danube (2.34). Perhaps he changed his mind over the time he worked on his text, or perhaps he was merely, like most people, inconsistent. Herodotus’ inquiry became most risky where it took the gods themselves as its object. In Book 2 he finds chronological discrepancies between Egyptian and Greek accounts of Heracles; rather than question the veracity of either, he assumes they refer to two different gods with the same name (2.43–44). When he comes to an implausibility in the myth of Greek Heracles—the slaughter of thousands by a single individual—he appears skeptical for a moment, then quickly asks the gods to forgive him for raising impertinent questions (2.45).

Lands, Peoples, Continents Accurate world-maps have existed for centuries, and most of us have internalized the image of the globe. The Greeks of Herodotus’ day, by contrast, were so little familiar with such objects that they had no word for them. When Aristagoras of Miletus arrives in Sparta with a world-map, Herodotus says he carried a “bronze plate on which the circuit of the whole world had been engraved, with all its seas and rivers” (5.49). Herodotus made it his goal in the first half of the Histories to draw a world-map with words, to fill in spaces that for most Greeks were blank— and to render blank other spaces that most Greeks thought they could fill in.

xvi

Introduction

The term “circuit” (periodos) illustrates the early Greeks’ conception of the oikoumene¯—the “inhabited world,” a term coined by Herodotus—as a flat circle, surrounded on all sides by the river Ocean, divided neatly into Asian and European halves (the scheme is described at 4.36). But the neat symmetry of this map struck Herodotus as wrongheaded. He argued for an irregularly shaped world with tracts to the north and east that had no known endpoint. Ocean, as we have seen, he threw out entirely, believing that “the poets” (meaning Homer, principally) had merely made up this revered name. Every Greek knew Europe was separate from Asia, and Herodotus speaks of these two landmasses throughout his work (sometimes also naming “Libya,” our North Africa, as a third continent, but more often attaching it to Asia). The problem of where the two were divided and how they were defined, however, was controversial, and more critical to understanding the Histories than may at first appear. For theories of continental determinism—the idea that Europeans were fundamentally different from Asians, either because of climate, or political heritage, or both—were widely discussed by the Greeks, especially in the aftermath of a war in which European Greeks had defeated an empire that spanned all of Asia. Herodotus was troubled by continental division. At one point (4.45) he speaks of all such boundaries as artificial and meaningless, and gives two different schemes for dividing Europe from Asia.Yet he recognized that the narrow waterways at the western end of Anatolia—the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) and the Bosporus— played crucial roles in both of them. These synapses between Europe and Asia serve as focal points for much of his narrative, beginning in Book 5 when the Persians bridge the Bosporus, and ending in his penultimate chapter when the Greeks seize Xerxes’ equipment for bridging the Hellespont. The last event he records in his work, by design, is the severing of the two continents that Xerxes had sought to connect. Herodotus explored not only the points at which the continents touched but the vast expanses at their outer extremes. The first half of the Histories contains a remarkable gallery of lands and peoples, including legendary or semi-bestial races known to Herodotus at second- or thirdhand. Each race comes into view as the Persians, in their rapid expansion in all directions, enter its territory—a brilliant plan by which Herodotus subordinates a grand tour of the oikoumene¯ to his main storyline, the rise of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Herodotus collected much of his information firsthand, if we can trust his own reports of his travels (not all scholars agree that we can). He claims to have visited both Scythia—roughly, modern Ukraine—and Egypt, the lands to which he devoted his two longest excurses, and seems to give an eyewitness account of the city of Babylon. An inquiry into different myths of the god Heracles took him to Tyre in Phoenicia, what is now the coast of Lebanon. Such places were accessible

xvii

Introduction

Sauromatae 4.110–117

Scythia 4.1–109

Thrace 5.3–10

Black Sea 4.85–6

Lydia Ionia 1.93–4

Libya

4.168–99

Egypt 2.1–99

Massagetae 1.215–216

1.142–9

Babylon 1.178–87

Arabia

Persia 1.131–9

India

3.98–105

3.107–113

Long-Lived Ethiopians 3.18–25

The regions of the ancient world described by Herodotus, labeled with the book and chapter numbers of his descriptions.

to few 5th-century Greeks. How Herodotus reached them, and what financial resources allowed him to travel so widely, are unknown. As he surveys the peoples of the world, Herodotus finds nomoi, laws or customs, radically different from one another and from those of the Hellenic world. His thoughts on nomos are expressed most directly at 3.38, a justly famous chapter that proclaims, with a quote from Pindar, the principle of cultural relativism: “Custom is king of all.” Yet Herodotus still held certain biases and hierarchical beliefs. For certain Indian tribesmen to cannibalize their dead parents may not, in his eyes, be wrong. But for Persian kings to insist that subjects bow low before them violates Greek moral norms. The dialogues of Demaratus and Xerxes in Books 7 and 8, contrasting a Spartan king and a Persian one, reveal unmistakably the shortcomings in the “barbarian” point of view. “Barbarian” is an insult in English, implying stupidity and aggressiveness, but the Greek word barbaros was less pejorative in Herodotus’ time. In the Histories the word usually denotes “non-Greek” or “Persian,” without implying an innate inferiority to the Greeks. But just as Herodotus gave historie¯, “inquiry,” new meaning by his very use of it, so his text helped add to the nuances of barbaros. His narrative centers on an effort by barbaroi to make the Greeks their “slaves”—the standard Persian way (according to Herodotus) of referring to subjects. Since the

xviii

Introduction

ideas of political autonomy and servitude are ethically weighted, it is inevitable that the term barbaros, the dividing line between Greek and non-Greek worlds, takes on similar weight.

Politics and Ideologies A 5th-century Greek thinker named Hippocrates held that all Asians were naturally servile, while all Europeans were spirited and freedom-loving. This kind of continental determinism informed, but did not dictate, Herodotus’ political views in the Histories. Rejection of Persian domination defines what Herodotus once terms “the better way of thinking” among the Greeks, but there were also many Greeks, in Europe and in Asia, who accepted or supported Persian imperial designs. Similarly among the Persians, as the Histories represents, some tried to institute a radically new system called isonomia (“equality under the law”) or, what we today call democracy. In Herodotus’ day democracy was still an experimental system in use in only one major city, Athens. We should not assume that Herodotus favored it because he favored freedom generally, for he did not relate the two concepts as closely as we do today. The Spartans, with their rigid militarism and code of total subservience to the state, were far from democratic, yet they were the most “free” of the Greeks because they feared no foreign power. It is the Spartans, through the voice of Demaratus, whom Herodotus allows to defend their political system in ideological terms, not the Athenians. The separate evolutions of Athens and Sparta, both achieving military power but in radically different ways, is a key pattern of the Histories. Herodotus introduces the two cities in Book 1 and revisits them in Book 5, both times employing parallel structure. Then in the showdown with the Persians, in Books 8 and 9, he gives each city credit for stunning victories, the Athenians at Salamis and the Spartans at Plataea. If, as he famously declares, the Athenians tilted the scales toward Greek victory (7.138), this does not mean that we are meant to admire them more or regard their system, democracy, as superior to Sparta’s mixed constitution. For the original audience of the Histories, these contrasts between Athens and Sparta loomed large, since, as Herodotus witnessed near the end of his life, the two cities began an all-out struggle for supremacy in 432 B.C. Athens had become an expansive power during the preceding decades, using its naval supremacy—first established at Salamis—to squeeze tribute from the island and coastal states of the Aegean. Sparta had continued to dominate the Peloponnese but rarely projected power beyond the Isthmus of Corinth. To Greek observers of their struggle, many of whom (according to Thucydides) looked on Sparta as a “liberator” and Athens as a “tyrant city,” the story of the fall of imperial Persia held special relevance.

Introduction

xix

“Tyrants” and “tyrannies”—the Greek words were far more neutral in tone than their English derivatives—abound in the Histories, but the narrative does not present them in a uniform light. Indeed it is hard to demonstrate that Herodotus found one-man rule, whether defined as tyranny or monarchy, to be problematic in and of itself. The flaws of bad rulers, like Periander or Cambyses, are magnified by their absolutism, but good rulers like Cyrus and Amasis shine more brightly for the same reason. Kings of mixed parts, like Croesus and Xerxes, interest Herodotus especially and are portrayed most fully, but the focus is more on individual character than on autocracy as an institution. Herodotus’ only theoretical discussion of politics comes in a debate among three Persian noblemen; each defends a different type of constitution (3.80–83). The comparison of democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy focuses on the problems inherent in each, and these seem to be of fairly equal gravity. Though he presents this as a record of an actual conversation, there can be little doubt that the ideas are Herodotus’ own. No system, in his eyes, had a claim on moral virtue.

Character and Destiny People, like nations and constitutions, have their strengths and weaknesses, and Herodotus examined these in the Histories in a gallery of human types. Tricksters, sages, clever manipulators, noble warriors—all manner of memorable men, and a few compelling women, populate his pages. Herodotus’ interest in character can be compared to that of Homer and Shakespeare; like them, he seems to care about every individual on his broad canvas, and to give each one a distinctive profile. Even when Herodotus’ portraits are only a few sentences long, many are unforgettable: Hippocleides, who didn’t care that he had danced away the chance to marry Greece’s wealthiest heiress; Amompharetus, the crusty Spartan general who refused to budge from his post even when ordered; Hermotimus, the eunuch who carried out a cruel and cold-blooded revenge on his castrator. At the other extreme from these thumbnail sketches are the two long, complex character studies that begin and end the Histories, those of Croesus the Lydian and Xerxes the Persian, two kings whose natures were not equal to the great tasks they set themselves. Again like Homer and Shakespeare, Herodotus had great compassion for the people he portrayed. There are no irredeemable villains in the Histories; even Cambyses, a homicidal madman, has a moment of saving grace before death, and Herodotus seems inclined to excuse his crimes as the result of illness. He gives generous treatment to tricksters and wheeler-dealers like Themistocles and Histiaeus of Miletus, seeming to admire their cleverness more than he condemns their slipperiness or treachery. On one occasion, he refuses to name an individual

xx

Introduction

who had committed a grave wrong, not wishing to destroy the man’s posthumous reputation. The crimes or impieties of his characters are often singled out, and sometimes Herodotus implies they will receive, or have received, their just deserts. But some wrongdoers escape unscathed; more frequently, good men meet with disaster. The Histories makes no easy correlation between behavior and destiny; in fact it assumes that most people will get worse than they deserve. The phrase “it was destined to go badly for him” recurs numerous times, implying that inexorable forces often drive human life toward ruin. Herodotus shares the tragic view expressed by Solon in his great dialogue with Croesus, a passage that, as we have seen, functions like an overture to the Histories as a whole. To Solon, the happiest man was Tellus the Athenian, who lived long without seeing harm come to himself or his offspring; but such lives are rarities in the Herodotean universe. The case of the second-happiest men, Cleobis and Biton, is more widely applicable. Young men in their prime, acclaimed as heroes after a feat of strength and piety, they went to sleep and never woke up—the answer to their mother’s prayer that they get the best possible reward.To die painlessly at a moment of glory, before our health and happiness can be destroyed, is the best that most of us can hope for.

War, Battle, and Empire Solon, a Greek, tries to instruct Croesus, a Lydian, in the ways of destiny, setting up another pattern seen throughout the Histories. Wise advisers step forward at many of its crucial junctures, urging kings and commanders to reduce the scale of their ambitions. These counselors typically belong to peaceful, poor, or nonimperialist peoples, and their advice often represents a national perspective. Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, the nameless king of the long-lived Ethiopians, Amasis the Egyptian, and Demaratus the Spartan belong to this category, and their messages are in all cases addressed to aggressive, expansionist rulers. (Artabanus the Persian is a slightly different case, a wise adviser who comes from the same race, even the same family, as the monarch he counsels.) The Achaemenid Persian state, for Herodotus, had been characterized since its founding by imperial overreach. Its rulers had followed a code of expansion and conquest, leading to disasters on its frontiers in every generation. The ruin of Xerxes’ forces in Greece is prefigured by the death of Cyrus among the Massagetae, the loss of Cambyses’ army in the attack on the Ethiopians, and the failure of Darius’ Scythian campaign—a sequence that Artabanus strings together for Xerxes, and for us, to underscore the point. At the end of the series comes Mardonius, not a king but a general, who embodies the spirit of relentless expansion in its most extreme form.

Introduction

xxi

Herodotus cannot be called a pacifist or an anti-imperialist; no Greek of his day could be. War, and the ambition for aggrandizement that often launched it, were part of the air he breathed, just as the drive for personal success is part of ours in the modern West. Nonetheless he is able to put in the mouth of Croesus the sentiment that war is evil because it causes fathers to bury sons instead of the reverse— perhaps the most pacifistic sentiment ever uttered in Classical Greece. This sentiment resounds all the louder when one considers that, at the time the Histories was published, Greece was embroiled in a major conflict, the Peloponnesian War (as we now term it), that had all the signs of becoming catastrophic. The Histories casts sideways glances at countless small-scale wars within its framework of the Greco-Persian showdown. Many had pitted Greeks against other Greeks, resulting in a host of antagonisms and hatreds across the Hellenic world. The advent of a common enemy, the Persians, caused some rifts to be healed; others were so deeply entrenched that those involved courted enslavement rather than making up their quarrel. The coalescence of thirty-one states, led by Athens and Sparta, into a Hellenic alliance under the leadership of Sparta, was something of a miracle, as Herodotus understood. Not until 150 years later would such a thing happen again (when a similar alliance was forced on the Greeks by Philip of Macedon), though many earnestly desired it. Herodotus appears inexpert in military matters and his battle descriptions are maddeningly vague. He does manage to make clear that Greeks fought in a manner entirely different from the Persians (as Mardonius scornfully points out at 7.9). Greek phalanx warfare required men to stand in formation, shoulder to shoulder, and stab with their spears at an enemy standing only a few feet away. Mounted horsemen and missile weapons fired from a distance were barely employed by 5th-century Greek armies, in contrast to the Persians, for whom such strategic assets were vital. Herodotus typifies Greek attitudes of his day by posing an ethical contrast between the two sides. Greek hand-to-hand combat represented the acme of male virtue, and the Spartans, who were masters of it, were considered the noblest of the Greeks. Persians were disdained for avoiding this kind of warfare, though Herodotus admires the martial spirit of elite units like the Immortals, the corps of 10,000 infantry warriors attending the Persian king. At several points, including a critical exchange between Xerxes and Demaratus, Herodotus refers to the Persian commanders’ whipping their troops into battle. This form of compulsion seems natural and necessary to Xerxes, an attitude that marks him as a despot. Demaratus, by contrast, describes to Xerxes the martial code of the Spartans, which relies on self-discipline, social cohesion, and the quest for honor to motivate men to fight.This tribute to the highest aspirations of Greek soldiery forms the prelude to the tragedy of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans, including a Spartan king, fought to the last and died.

xxii

Introduction

Greek and Persian capabilities were more evenly matched on sea than on land. The Persians relied on Phoenician and Egyptian triremes as the mainstay of their navy, oar-powered ramming vessels similar in style and effectiveness to the triremes of the Greeks. (The Persians also used ships conscripted from subject Greek states to fight against their fellow Greeks, and most, according to Herodotus, did so with vigor.) The first naval clash, at Artemisium, showed the Greeks that they could hold their own against the Persians, thanks to their huge contingent of Athenian ships and crews. Athens’ fabled naval power, later the foundation of its empire, was first established in this war, under the leadership of Herodotus’ most ambiguous hero, the cunning and indefatigable Themistocles. The unity of the Greek league relied on the partnership of Athens and Sparta, the primary powers on sea and land respectively, but geography put the two cities at odds as the Persians advanced. Sparta’s location within the Peloponnese made walling off the Isthmus an attractive defense, although this strategy left Athens (and other cities) out in the cold. The Hellenic league came close to fragmenting at this geographic fault line. Herodotus dramatizes decisive moments, in Books 8 and 9, when the Athenians had to wrangle Sparta into fighting north of the Isthmus, first at sea (Salamis) and then on land the following year (Plataea); ultimately the alliance held firm. The Persians need not have engaged the Greeks directly at Salamis or Plataea, and their leaders were counseled at both places to avoid a head-on clash.With a bit more time pressure, or bribery, the Greek league would have split at the seams. But hanging back and waiting was not “the Persian way,” as Mardonius defines it at 9.41. At Salamis and again at Plataea, the Persians overcommitted themselves when conditions did not give them a tactical advantage. More than anything else, their defeat resulted from overconfidence—the same trait that made their rulers unwilling to hear the wise advisers who urged restraint.

Greeks and Persians Before the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., Herodotus implies, the Athenians had never before seen Persians in the flesh or even the style of clothing they wore (6.112). The Spartans who arrived after the battle inspected the Persian dead as though examining aliens from another world (6.120). The Greco-Persian wars involved a remarkable clash of cultures, an irruption into central Greece of peoples who dwelt a thousand miles away or more. The Histories helps us understand the impact of that encounter. Never before had the Balkan peninsula experienced invasion from outside, except in mythic times when Amazons supposedly attacked Attica. Never, before the fall of Miletus in 494 B.C., had entire Greek cities been razed or populations removed by a foreign foe. The terror of the invasions of 490 and 480 B.C. is partly

Introduction

xxiii

obscured by the sedate tone of Herodotus’ narrative style, but it can be sensed at moments of high tension. When a messenger announced, to the fleet gathered at Salamis in 480, that Persian troops were burning the lands around Athens, some commanders fled headlong for their ships, even though the news must surely have been anticipated. The mere thought that Attica, so long inviolate, was now occupied induced panic. Herodotus was perhaps old enough at the time of Xerxes’ invasion to remember it later in life, though he would only have witnessed it from a distance. He was born in Halicarnassus, a Persian-occupied city on the west coast of Anatolia, perhaps around 485 B.C. (That date is arrived at merely by guesswork, since nothing is known of Herodotus’ life outside what he mentions in his text.) More likely, he learned the events of the great war by talking to his elders, and he talked to a great many. Different interlocutors gave him different versions of events, forcing him either to weigh the credibility of his informants or, as he often does, report two or more variations of the same story. He had few objective sources, and practically no written ones, to help him in this task. Those who had fought the Persians and lived bore scars and psychic wounds, as well as grudges against other Greeks who had stayed out of the fight. Many felt intense pride in the role they had played in changing history. In their memories, the threat from Persia assumed gigantic proportions, leading to the gross exaggerations Herodotus records of Persian troop and ship strength. The heroism of these veterans’ cities had likewise grown more lustrous over time, while that of others grew less bright. In much of the Histories we can see Herodotus playing referee and awarding or denying credit for victory to various Greek states. Where individual soldiers had distinguished themselves, he is careful to hand out commendations, regarding his text in part as what we would now term a war memorial. Yet the hatred that many of his Greek informants must have felt for the Persian invader does not come through in his writing. Herodotus, like Aeschylus before him, likes to look at the war from a Persian, not a Greek, point of view, and casts many Persians—even those who had done most to harm the Greek world—in a heroic light. His work is less a celebration of Greek victory than a solemn record of Persian defeat. The war’s outcome is represented as a triumph of autonomy over servitude but not, surprisingly, of good over evil. In this, as in many aspects of the Histories, Herodotus followed the framework of tragic drama, the art form that flourished in his lifetime and with which he was thoroughly familiar (he seems to have been a close friend of the Athenian playwright Sophocles). It would have been easy for Herodotus to demonize Xerxes as an imperialist monster (as the 2007 Hollywood film 300, based on the battle of Thermopylae, has done). When he depicts Xerxes lashing the Hellespont and insulting it with “barbaric” words, he seems to be heading in that direction. But a few chapters

xxiv

Introduction

later he gives Xerxes one of the most poignant moments in the Histories. Standing atop a hill overlooking the Hellespont, the king weeps as he considers that no one, in all his millions of soldiers, will be alive in a hundred years. Here, at the nexus of Europe and Asia, at the height of his military power, Xerxes is suddenly, inexplicably, overcome by pity. He seems capable, if just for a moment, of intense, all-embracing humanity—the kind of humanity the Histories honors above all else. Such moments furnish the surprises, the bursts of insight, and the moments of radiant feeling that make the Histories a timeless masterpiece. Its central story, the Greek defeats of the Persian invasions of 490 and 480 B.C., has been retold by modern historians, in most cases with greater clarity and precision. But to read it for that story alone would be like hearing only the principal theme of a concerto. The Histories is huge; it contains multitudes. In it dwells not only history but anthropology, geography, theology, philosophy, political science, and tragic drama. The present edition, if it succeeds, will help readers find their way into its marvelous vastness. —James Romm

Chronology of the Archaic Age (All dates are B.C.)

GREECE

EGYPT

NEAR EAST

c. 3400 Union of upper and lower Egypt 2700–2200 Building of pyramids

9th–7th c. Assyrian domination of Near East 8th c. Invasions of Asia by Scythians and Cimmerians from North and East; rise of Median Kingdom

c. 711–664 Egypt ruled by Ethiopians (25th dynasty) 664 Conquest of Egypt by Assyrians 663 Founding of Saite or 26th dynasty by Psammetichus

701 Invasions of Egypt and Judea by Assyrians under Sennacherib c. 660 Rise of Lydian Kingdom 668–627 Reign of Ashurbanipal in Assyria 664 Assyrians conquer Egypt

Early history c. 1400–1200 Mycenaean Age c. 1150 Trojan War 1200–750 Dark Ages c. 750 Homeric poems composed 8th c. Age of Colonization

700 Beginnings of Greek literacy 7th c. Establishment of Spartan constitution (perhaps by Lycurgus)

xxv

xxvi

Chronology of the Archaic Age

650 625–585 Periander tyrant in Corinth Late 6th c. Thales of Miletus; beginnings of Ionian philosophy and natural science

604 Egyptians under Necho defeated in Asia by Babylonians (Battle of Carchemish)

612 Fall of Nineveh (Assyrian capital) to Medes, Scythians, and Babylonians c. 605–562 Reign of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians

Early 6th c. Egypt begins using Greek mercenaries 593–588 Reign of Psammis (Psammetichus II) 588–569 Reign of Apries 570–525 Reign of Amasis

598 Babylonian conquest of Judea 585 Battle of Medes and Lydians (inconclusive) c. 560 Croesus becomes king in Lydia

Mid-6th c. Alliance of Amasis with Croesus of Lydia against Persians 525 Persia, led by Cambyses, conquers Egypt

549 Cyrus defeats Astyages c. 546 Cyrus defeats Croesus 539 Cyrus conquers Babylon 530 Death of Cyrus 525 Cambyses conquers Egypt 522 Death of Cambyses; conspiracy of Magi and overthrow of the false Smerdis; accession of Darius

600 594(?) Archonship of Solon at Athens 560–556 First tyranny of Pisistratus at Athens

550 c. 550 Ionia subject to Croesus 540–522 Polycrates tyrant in Samos 510 Fall of Pisistratid tyranny at Athens 508 Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms

Chronology of the Archaic Age

xxvii

The Greco-Persian wars (499–479) 499 Beginning of Ionian Revolt; burning of Sardis 494 Battle of Lade; defeat of Ionian revolt; destruction of Miletus 492 First Persian land invasion of Greece, led by Mardonius 490 Persian naval invasion of Greece, led by Datis and Arte­ phernes; Destruction of Eritrea; Battle of Marathon 484 Death of Darius; Accession of Xerxes 483–481 Cutting of Athos canal and other Persian preparations for invasion 483–482 Building of Athenian fleet at urging of Themistocles 481 Gathering of Greek defensive league at the Isthmus Spring 480 Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont Summer 480 Battle of Thermopylae Autumn 480 Battle of Salamis; retreat of Xerxes and Persian fleet Winter 480–479 Persian diplomatic approaches to Athens Summer 479 Battle of Plataea; Battle of Mycale

Herodotus’ Histor ies

Book 1

Here is the showing-forth of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus,1 so that neither what human beings have done might disappear in time, nor the deeds great and admirable, partly shown forth by Greeks, and partly by the barbarians,2 might be without fame—an inquiry that shows forth both other things and through what cause they fought against one another. 1. The Persian chroniclers maintain that the Phoenicians were responsible for the quarrel. It is said that these people, once they had arrived from the so-called Red Sea3 and occupied the country they inhabit to this day, immediately applied themselves to distant voyages. Transporting Egyptian and Assyrian wares, they visited many foreign ports, Argos among them. In those days4 Argos was the foremost place in the land we now call Greece. On reaching Argos, the Phoenicians were disposing of their goods. On the fifth or sixth day after their arrival, when nearly all their cargo had been sold, several women came down to the harbor, including the king’s daughter. Her name (on this point the Persian and Greek accounts agree) was Io, daughter of Inachus. The women stood near the stern of the ship and began to bargain for the wares they especially desired, when the Phoenicians, encouraging one another, rushed at them. Most of the women escaped, but Io was seized among others. Throwing the women on board their ship, the Phoenicians sailed away to Egypt. 1. Halicarnassus was a Greek city on the west coast of what is now Turkey, in the region known to the Greeks as Caria. The word here translated, “inquiry,” is historie¯ in Greek; its later meaning, “history,” evolved largely as a result of Herodotus’ prominent use of it here. 2. “Barbarian” (Greek barbaros) is largely a value-neutral term in Herodotus, meaning only “non-Greek” rather than a primitive, stupid, or warlike person (but see 7.35.2 for a valueladen use of the corresponding adjective). 3. Geographical terms used by Herodotus are here translated faithfully even when they conflict with those on modern maps. The “Red Sea” here does not correspond to our Red Sea, but encompasses all the waters south of Asia, including the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. 4. Herodotus leaves vague the chronology of this early material, but we know from other sources that Io, the mythic princess who is the subject of this first story, lived thirteen generations before Heracles, and Heracles, according to 1.7 below, lived twenty-two generations (over 500 years) before the men of the mid-6th century, or about twenty-five generations before Herodotus’ own times. 3

4

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

2. Thus did Io reach Egypt, say the Persians, though the Greek account differs;5 and this was the first in a series of offenses. Thereafter, certain Greeks (the Persians are unable to give their names), touching at Tyre in Phoenicia, abducted Europa, the daughter of the king. (These would have been Cretans.)6 The Persians say that this abduction squared their accounts. Later, however, the Greeks were responsible for a second transgression. Sailing down on a warship to Colchian Aea and the river Phasis, they proceeded, on gaining all the other objects of their expedition, to seize the king’s daughter, Medea.7 The king of Colchis, sending a herald to Greece, demanded satisfaction and the return of his daughter. The Greeks replied that the Phoenicians had not given satisfaction for the seizure of Io. Accordingly, neither would the Greeks give satisfaction to them. 3. The chroniclers say that in the next generation, Paris, the son of Priam, having heard these stories, wished to obtain a wife from Greece by abduction, fully imagining that he was not going to pay a penalty (since the Greeks had not paid one). When Paris had abducted Helen,8 the Greeks decided to begin by sending messengers to demand Helen’s return and to insist on satisfaction for the seizure. But the Persians, when the Greeks issued these demands, cast in their teeth the abduction of Medea, and pointed out that the Greeks, though they had paid no penalty nor restored the girl when the Persians demanded her back, wished to exact a penalty from others. 4. Up to this point, hostility between the Greeks and Persians had been occasioned solely by abductions, but for what happened next the Greeks were greatly to blame.9 For they were the first to send an expedition to Asia, before the 5. The “Greek account” refers to the myth (recounted by Io herself in Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound) in which Io was seduced by Zeus and became partly transformed into a cow at the hands of Hera. Io wandered across the entire known world and finally landed in Egypt, where she regained human form. 6. Herodotus makes this inference based on his own knowledge of Greek myth. Europa, according to the Greeks, ended up in Crete, where she became the matriarch of a royal line. 7. These events derive from the myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece in the ship Argo. Colchis, with its capital Aea, corresponds roughly to modern Armenia. Medea, the princess of that kingdom, fell in love with Jason and accompanied him on his homeward voyage to Corinth. 8. Another famous Greek legend is here referenced: the Trojan War. Nothing in either the Iliad or the Odyssey connects the Trojans to the Persians, as Herodotus does here, but the Greeks of Herodotus’ time tended to make the Persians paradigmatic of Asian peoples generally (see 1.4 for a prominent instance). 9. The wording makes clear here that Herodotus continues to report the account of the Persians, as he has done since 1.1. Part of his purpose in these early chapters is to show how different peoples remember history in different ways, often so as to justify or exalt their own part in it. Throughout his work he will balance and weigh such self-interested accounts of the past, sometimes judging between them, other times not.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

5

Persians launched their own expedition to Europe. Now the Persians consider the carrying off of women to be the work of unjust men; but the rush to punish, once these abductions have taken place, they consider foolish; once they have occurred, it is the part of sensible men to disregard them. For it is clear that the women would not have been carried off unless they so desired. The Persians say that they (that is, the Asians) do not make a fuss when women are carried off, but that the Greeks, for the sake of a Spartan woman, mustered a great force, and thereafter, on reaching Asia, subdued the power of Priam. Ever since that time, the Persians have regarded the Greeks as their adversaries. For the Persians claim Asia and the barbarian races residing there as their own, and regard Europe and the Greeks as separate. 5. The Persians maintain that events unfolded in this way and regard the capture of Troy as the beginning of their enmity for the Greeks. The Phoenicians disagree with the Persians about the seizure of Io. They deny that they brought her to Egypt by force. Instead, they say that in Argos she had entered into an intimacy with the shipmaster. When she learned she was pregnant, she feared her parents and voluntarily took ship with the Phoenicians so that she would not be found out. This is what the Persians and Phoenicians report.10 I am not going to say, with regard to these events, that they took place in this way or otherwise. I will, however, point out the person who I know first began to injure the Greeks,11 after which I will proceed with my account, going alike through cities small and great. For cities that were great in early times have become small, and those that were great in my time were small formerly. Knowing, therefore, that human happiness never abides in the same place, I will make equal mention of both. 6. Croesus, son of Alyattes, was a Lydian by birth and ruled over the peoples west of the river Halys. (The Halys runs northward between Syria and Paphlagonia, and empties into the sea known as the Euxine.)12 Croesus is the first barbarian we know of to reduce some Greeks to the payment of tribute and to acquire others as allies. He subdued the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians in Asia,13 and acquired 10. There is a certain comic element in Herodotus’ suggestion, in these opening chapters, that rapes, pregnancies, and runaway women stood at the origin of a vast intercontinental conflict. Aristophanes extended the humor here into a parodic passage of his play Acharnians (lines 523–29), produced in 425 B.C. and generally taken as evidence that Herodotus’ work was already well known in Athens at that time. 11. The person referred to here is Croesus, king of Lydia in the mid-6th century B.C., about a century before Herodotus wrote. Herodotus does not explain how he himself knows about Croesus, but insists nonetheless on a line of demarcation between hearsay evidence and firsthand knowledge. 12. That is, the Halys runs into the Black (Euxine) Sea at a point about halfway along its southern coast. 13. Greeks of the Turkish coastal regions neighboring Lydian territory.

6

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

the Spartans as allies. Before the reign of Croesus, all the Greeks had been free. (The Cimmerian attack on Ionia,14 before Croesus’ time, was not a conquest of cities but merely a plundering raid.) 7. The hegemony that had belonged to the Heraclids15 passed, under circumstances I will now describe, to the family of Croesus (known as the Mermnads). Candaules (whom the Greeks call Myrsilus), a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Heracles, held sovereign sway in Sardis. Agron, son of Ninus, grandson of Belus, and great-grandson of Alcaeus, had been the first Heraclid to become king of Sardis; Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. Before Agron, the rulers of this country were descendants of Lydus, son of Atys. In Lydus’ honor, the entire people, known previously as Maeonians, came to be called Lydians. The Heraclids, who succeeded the Maeonians, obtained the kingdom by an oracle (their family having descended from Heracles and a female slave of Iardanus) and reigned for twenty-two generations, a period of 505 years, son succeeding father down to Candaules, son of Myrsus. 8. Candaules, then, fell in love with his wife, and having fallen in love with her thought her by far the most beautiful of women. One of his spearmen, Gyges, son of Dascylus,16 was a particular favorite with him, and as Candaules was in the habit of communicating his most important affairs to him, he made a special point of praising his wife’s beauty. Before very long—for it had to turn out badly for Candaules17—he spoke to Gyges as follows: “Gyges, since I don’t think you believe me when I speak of my wife’s beauty (for men’s ears, as it happens, are more mistrustful than their eyes), contrive to see her naked.” With a loud cry, Gyges said, “What an unhealthy proposal, master! Do you order me to see my mistress when she is naked? When a woman removes her clothes she also removes her shame. Right and wrong were discovered by our fathers long ago, and we must be taught by them. There is an ancient saying: Let each man look at his own. I am persuaded that your wife is the most beautiful of women, and I beg you not to demand what is unlawful.” 14. The invasion of western Asia by the Cimmerians is further discussed by Herodotus at 1.15 and 4.11–12.This mysterious people, of unknown origin, evidently rampaged through Anatolia in the 8th century B.C. 15. The term “Heraclid” means “descendant of Heracles.” The reason why the ruling dynasty of Lydia was so named is made clear below. 16. Gyges is known to readers of Plato’s Republic as the finder of a magic ring (2.539). He is a historical ruler of Lydia, known from documentary sources, whose reign can be dated to the early 7th century B.C. 17. A phrase used often by Herodotus, implying that a given person’s downfall was predetermined or inevitable.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

7

9. So saying, Gyges tried to decline, fearing that some harm might come to him from Candaules’ suggestions. Candaules replied with these words: “Take courage, Gyges, and be not afraid of me or my wife. I am not making this proposal to test you, and no harm will come to you from her. To begin with, I will contrive matters so she will not even know she has been seen by you. For I will hide you behind the open door of the room where we sleep. After I have come in, my wife will come to bed. Near the door stands a chair. On it she will place her garments, one by one, as she takes them off, so you will have time to observe her. When she moves from the chair to the bed and her back is turned to you, take care lest she see you as you pass through the doorway.” 10. As Gyges was plainly unable to escape, he made ready. When it was time for bed, Candaules led Gyges to his room. Almost at once, his wife appeared. Gyges watched as she entered and placed her garments on the chair. As she moved toward the bed, Gyges slipped out from behind the door and withdrew. And the woman saw him going out. Aware of what her husband had done, she neither cried out in shame nor appeared to have noticed anything, intending to take revenge on Candaules. (For among the Lydians, as among almost all barbarians, to be seen naked, even for a man, leads to great shame.) 11. At the time, revealing nothing, she kept quiet. But at dawn the next morning, after preparing her trustiest servants for what was to come, she sent for Gyges. Not thinking she was aware of what had been done, Gyges came when he was summoned. For he had been accustomed to wait upon her previously, whenever the queen called for him. When Gyges arrived, the woman said this: “Two courses are now open to you, Gyges, and you may choose between them. Kill Candaules and take me and the Lydian throne, or die at once, so that you will not again, obeying Candaules in everything, see what you have no right to see. But either he who planned this must die, or you, who saw me naked and violated our customs.” At first Gyges was stunned by her words; he then entreated her not to force him to make such a choice. He could not, however, persuade her, and realized the necessity that stood before him, of either killing his master or dying at the hands of others. He chose to survive. “Since you force me against my will to slay my master,” said he, “let me also hear how we will lay hands on him.” She replied, “The attack will be made when he is asleep, and on the very spot where he showed me to you naked.” 12. When they had laid their plot (for Gyges was not going to be let off, nor was there any escape for him, but either he had to die or Candaules), he followed the woman to her bedroom. Giving him a dagger, she concealed him behind the same door. Thereupon, when Candaules was asleep, Gyges, slipping out from his hiding place and killing him, obtained both the woman and the kingdom—an

8

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

incident that has been commemorated in the iambic trimeters of Archilochus the Parian, Gyges’ contemporary.18 13.Thus Gyges obtained the kingdom and had his power confirmed by an oracle from Delphi.19 For as the Lydians took Candaules’ misfortune to heart and were up in arms, Gyges’ partisans and the rest of the Lydians agreed to these terms: If the oracle declared him to be king of the Lydians, he would be king; if not, he would restore the sovereignty to the Heraclids. The oracle gave its response and thus he became king. But the Pythian priestess added that in the fifth generation from Gyges the Heraclids would get their revenge. The Lydians and their kings took no account of this prophecy until it was fulfilled.20 14. Thus the Mermnads obtained the tyranny, having wrested it from the Heraclids, and Gyges, when he became tyrant, sent not a few dedicatory offerings to Delphi. In fact, most of the silver offerings in Delphi came from Gyges, and in addition to the silver, he made countless offerings of gold, the most remarkable of which was his gift of six golden bowls. These stand in the treasury of the Corinthians21 and weigh 1,740 pounds. (Strictly speaking, the treasury was not the public property of the Corinthians but belonged to Cypselus,22 son of Aetion.) Gyges is the first barbarian we know of, after King Midas of Phrygia, to have dedicated votive offerings at Delphi. Midas dedicated the royal throne he had occupied when handing down judgments, an object well worth seeing. The throne stands just by the bowls of Gyges. The Delphians call all the silver and gold that Gyges dedicated “Gygian,” after the name of the donor. Gyges, then, when he came to power, sent a military expedition against Miletus and Smyrna, and captured the city of Colophon.23 But as he accomplished nothing else of importance in a reign of thirty-eight years, I will move on, having recorded this much, and mention his son Ardys, who succeeded him. 18. Archilochus was a Greek lyric poet of the mid-7th century B.C., many of whose poems survive in fragmentary form. One such fragment (West 19) refers to “the wealth of Gyges rich in gold.” Iambic trimeter is a metrical scheme often used by Archilochus; later it became the standard meter of Greek drama. 19. The oracular shrine of Apollo at Delphi was famous not only throughout the Greek world but also in barbarian lands, as several of Herodotus’ tales make clear. 20. By the fall of Croesus; see 1.91 below. 21. Major Greek cities like Corinth maintained buildings at Delphi to house their dedicatory offerings to Apollo. The remains of these “treasuries” can still be seen today, though the wealth they contained has long been plundered. 22. A tyrant, or sole ruler, of Corinth, whose story is told at 5.92. Cypselus too, like Gyges, was confirmed in rule by the oracle at Delphi. 23. These attacks on three Greek or partly-Greek cities of the Turkish coast belie Herodotus’ earlier statement (1.5), that Croesus, great-great-grandson of Gyges, was “the person who I know first began to injure the Greeks.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

9

15. Ardys captured Priene and invaded Miletus, and during his reign the Cimmerians, driven from their settlements by the Scythian nomads, came to Asia and captured Sardis, except for its citadel.24 16.When Ardys had reigned for forty-nine years, his son Sadyattes succeeded him; and when Sadyattes had reigned for twelve years, he was succeeded by Alyattes. This king made war on Cyaxares and the Medes (Cyaxares was Deioces’ grandson)25 and drove the Cimmerians out of Asia. He captured Smyrna, which had been settled by colonists from Colophon, and attacked Clazomenae, where he did not succeed as he wished but met with a great defeat. But in the course of his reign he performed other deeds that were noteworthy. 17. Inheriting from his father a war with the Milesians, he invaded and laid siege to their city in the following way. Whenever the harvest was ripe in the fields, he would march his army into Milesia to the sound of pipes and harps and flutes, treble and bass. On his arrival he never tore down or burned the houses, or pulled their doors off, but left them undamaged. He would merely destroy the trees and the standing harvest, and then retire. For the Milesians held sway at sea, so that a siege by the Lydian army would have been useless. The Lydians refrained from tearing down houses so that the Milesians would thereafter be able to sow their seed and work their land, and he, when he invaded, would have something to plunder that the Milesians had produced. 18. Adopting these tactics, he fought for eleven years, during which time the Milesians suffered two serious defeats: one at the Limenaeum, and another on the plain of the Maeander.26 For six of the eleven years, Sadyattes, son of Ardys, ruled the Lydians and invaded Milesian territory at the same time each year. For it was he who had kindled the war. During the next five years, Sadyattes’ son Alyattes (who, as I said, had inherited the conflict) vigorously prosecuted his father’s war. None of the Ionians helped the Milesians in this war except the Chians, who did so in return for a similar favor, the Milesians having previously helped the Chians in their war against the Erythraeans. 19. In the twelfth year, when the harvest was burned by the invading army, the following incident occurred. As soon as the standing corn caught on fire, the 24. See note 14 on 1.6 above. 25. The tale of how Deioces came to rule the Medes, a nomadic people of central Asia, will be told by Herodotus at 1.96–101. Because the two centuries of Asian history he deals with in Book 1 saw rivalry and competition among several nations, Herodotus is often forced to reset his historical clock, jumping backward in time to show how a given dynasty came about and achieved military power. 26. The Limenaeum was the harbor district of Miletus. The Maeander (whose curving course has given us our word “meander”) was the river that flowed into the Aegean just north of Miletus.

10

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

wind drove the flames to the temple of Athena Assesia,27 which was set ablaze and burned to the ground. In the immediate aftermath, no one gave the matter much thought, but later, when the army reached Sardis, Alyattes fell ill. As his illness persisted, he decided—either on somebody’s advice, or because he thought it the right thing to do—to send to Delphi to inquire of the god about his illness. When the messengers arrived, the Pythian priestess refused to give them an answer until the Lydians had rebuilt the temple of Athena that they had burned down at Assesus in Milesian territory. 20. I know it happened thus, having heard so from the Delphians. The Milesians add that when Periander, son of Cypselus,28 a close friend of the Milesian tyrant Thrasybulus,29 learned of the oracle’s response to Alyattes’ delegation, he dispatched a messenger to report what he had heard, in order that Thrasybulus, armed with this knowledge, might lay his plans accordingly. 21. When Alyattes received word of what had taken place at Delphi, he immediately sent a herald to Miletus, wishing to conclude a truce with Thrasybulus and the Milesians for as long a time as it should take to have the temple rebuilt. The envoy made the journey to Miletus, butThrasybulus, forewarned and fully aware of Alyattes’ intentions, made the following preparations. Conveying all the grain in the city to the marketplace (his own stores and those in private hands), he issued an order: when he gave them the signal, the Milesians were all to carouse and make merry. 22. Thrasybulus made these preparations and issued this order so that the herald from Sardis, when he had observed the great heap of grain poured out and the people enjoying themselves, would report these things to Alyattes. And that is just what happened. When the herald had taken note of these things and conveyed to Thrasybulus the commands of the Lydian king, he returned to Sardis. Nothing else was needed, as far as I know, to bring about the peace. For Alyattes, expecting that famine was severe in Miletus, and that the people had been reduced to the direst misery, heard from the herald on his return just the opposite of what he had expected. Thereafter, the truce was concluded that made them friends and allies; and instead of one, Alyattes built two temples to Athena in Assesus and recovered from his illness. This, then, is the story of Alyattes’ war against Thrasybulus and the Milesians. 27. That is, the Athena worshiped in Assesus, a shrine near Miletus. 28. On Cypselus, see note 22 on 1.14 above and 5.92. His son Periander was notorious for perverse abuses of power; see 1.24, 3.48–52, 5.92. 29. Thrasybulus was the “tyrant” of Miletus only in the sense that he had achieved rule by non-constitutional means; the Greek word tyrannos does not imply cruel or despotic behavior, though tyrannoi were certainly capable of that, as the case of Periander makes clear. The word “tyrant” is used in this translation for lack of any better English equivalent for tyrannos, but readers should bear in mind that Herodotus knew of both good and evil tyrannoi, just as he knew of good and evil kings.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

11

23. Cypselus’ son Periander, the man who revealed the oracle’s response to Thrasybulus, was tyrant30 in Corinth. The Corinthians say (and the people of Lesbos agree with them) that during his lifetime a great marvel occurred. Arion of Methymna, the greatest lyre player of his day and the first man we know who created and named the dithyramb,31 and performed it in Corinth, rode on a dolphin to Taenarum.32 24. They say that Arion, having spent considerable time at the court of Periander,33 felt a longing to sail to Italy and Sicily. After he had made a great deal of money there, he decided to return to Corinth. He was starting from Tarentum, and as he trusted no one more than the Corinthians, he hired a ship manned by Corinthian sailors. These men, once at sea, conspired to throw Arion overboard and keep his money. When he understood this, he entreated them; offering them his money, he begged for his life. Paying him no heed, they ordered him either to kill himself, so that he might obtain burial on land, or to jump overboard at once. Forced into such straits, Arion begged them, seeing that they had made up their minds, to allow him to sing from the quarterdeck in full costume. He promised that as soon as his song was over he would kill himself. As it occurred to the sailors that it would be a pleasure to hear the finest of musicians, they withdrew from the stern amidships. Donning all his finery and taking up his lyre, Arion stood amid the rowing benches and chanted the Orthian melody;34 and as the song ended, he hurled himself into the sea, just as he was, with his entire costume. The crew sailed off to Corinth, and it is said that a dolphin, taking him up, carried Arion to Taenarum. Once ashore he proceeded with his costume to Corinth, and on his arrival reported everything that had happened. Incredulous, Periander would not allow him to leave, but put him under guard and kept watch for the boatmen. When they had arrived, they were summoned and asked whether they had anything to report about Arion. When they said that he was safe in Italy, and that they had left him at Tarentum, where he was prospering, Arion suddenly appeared, looking just as he had when he leapt overboard. The boatmen were no longer able, under questioning, to deny what had happened. The Corinthians tell this story as do the people of Lesbos, and there is a small bronze statue of Arion at Taenarum— a man riding on a dolphin. 30. See previous note. 31. A kind of ecstatic poem sung and danced in honor of the god Dionysus. 32. The southernmost tip of the Peloponnese. 33. Greek tyrants often enhanced their prestige by bringing celebrated poets and musicians to their courts. 34. A kind of solemn hymn sung to Apollo. Arion makes his “swan song” an act of religious devotion.

12

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

25. After bringing the war with Miletus to an end, Alyattes the Lydian died, having ruled for fifty-seven years. He was the second of his family to send an offering to Delphi; for on recovering his health he dedicated a large silver mixing bowl with an iron stand welded to it.35 An object worth seeing among all the treasures at Delphi, it is the work of Glaucus the Chian, who alone of all men discovered the welding of iron. 26. On the death of Alyattes, his son Croesus, then thirty-five years of age, succeeded to the kingdom.36 The first Greeks Croesus attacked were the Ephesians. Besieged by him, the Ephesians entrusted their city to Artemis, having fastened a cord from her temple to their city-wall.37 (A distance of seven stades38 separated the ancient city, then being besieged, from the temple.) Croesus attacked the Ephesians first and proceeded, in turn, to attack each of the Ionian and Aeolian cities, bringing an array of charges against them: serious charges, when he was able to find a pretext, or trivial ones, when such pretexts were lacking. 27. Once all the Greeks in Asia had been subdued and made to pay tribute, Croesus turned his attention to ship-building in order to attack the islanders. When all was in readiness for the shipbuilding, Bias of Priene (or, as some say, Pittacus of Mytilene) came to Sardis.39 And when Croesus inquired if there was any news from Greece, the man’s reply brought an end to the shipbuilding. “Sire, the islanders are gathering ten thousand horses to attack you in Sardis.” Supposing the man to be speaking the truth, Croesus said, “May the gods inspire the islanders to come after sons of Lydia with their cavalry!” 40 In reply, the visitor said, “You evidently long to capture the islanders’ cavalry on the continent, foreseeing your probable success. But ever since they heard you were going to build a fleet, what do you suppose the islanders have been longing and praying for, but to catch the Lydians at sea and pay you back on behalf of the Greeks living on the continent, whom you have enslaved?” Charmed with the man’s turn of phrase, and seeing his point, Croesus gave up the idea of building a fleet. Thus it came to pass that Croesus established friendly relations with the Ionians who inhabited the islands. 35. This bowl was still on display when Pausanias visited Delphi, some eight centuries past the time of Alyattes. 36. The start of Croesus’ reign is traditionally dated to around 560 B.C. 37. The point of this curious tactic was that any structure connected to a temple, even by a long cord, would be protected by religious sanction. 38. A little less than a mile. 39. The two figures mentioned were both among the “seven wise men” of the archaic Greek world. Sardis was the capital city of Lydia. 40. Croesus means, in essence, “I should be so lucky,” because he is confident his own cavalry could defeat that of the Ionians. The reply of Croesus’ interlocutor is that the island-dwelling Ionians feel exactly the same confidence in their navy.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

13

28. As time went on, Croesus subjugated nearly all the peoples west of the river Halys. For with the exception of the Cilicians and Lycians, Croesus held all the rest in servitude: the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandynians, Chalybes, Paphlagones, Thracians (both the Thynians and Bithynians), Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Pamphylians. 29. When these peoples had been subdued and Croesus had added them, as his subjects, to the Lydians, there came to Sardis, then at the height of its prosperity, all the sages from Greece who lived at that time (for each of them paid a visit), including Solon the Athenian, who, when he had created laws for the Athenians at their bidding, went abroad for ten years (having sailed off ostensibly to see the world), lest he be forced to change any of the laws he had established.41 For the Athenians themselves were not able to change them, as they were bound by solemn oaths to be governed for ten years by whatever laws Solon should establish for them. 30. Accordingly, going abroad for this reason and for the sake of seeing the world, Solon visited the courts of Amasis in Egypt42 and Croesus in Sardis. On his arrival he was entertained by Croesus at the palace. Thereafter, on the third or fourth day, Croesus ordered his attendants to lead Solon through the treasuries and point out everything that was important and costly. At an opportune moment, after Solon had seen and inspected everything, Croesus asked him this question: “Athenian stranger, many reports have reached us of your wisdom and your wandering, and how a desire for knowledge has moved you to travel widely for the sake of seeing the world. So it occurs to me to ask you whether you have seen anyone who surpasses all other men in happiness.” Croesus was posing this question in the hope that he was the happiest of all, but Solon, not at all intimidated, answered truthfully. “Sire, the most fortunate man I have seen is Tellus the Athenian.” Astonished at Solon’s reply, Croesus inquired earnestly, “On what grounds do you judge Tellus to be the most fortunate?” Solon replied, “First, his city prospering, Tellus had children who were fine and upright, and to all of them he saw children born, all of whom survived. Then, well off in worldly goods by our standards, he met with a glorious end. When the Athenians took up arms against their neighbors in Eleusis, Tellus, having come to the assistance of his 41. Solon, an Athenian poet and politician, was enlisted by Athens in the early 6th century B.C. to reform its constitution and prevent a developing state of strife between rich and poor. After instituting a set of reforms that pleased neither side, Solon went abroad for ten years so that he could not be pressured into making further changes. Probably his sojourn took place well before Croesus came to power, so that the encounter Herodotus relates here could not have occured, but there is some uncertainty on this score. Solon, like Bias and Pittacus from the preceding story, was canonized by later Greeks as one of their early “seven wise men.” 42. For more on Amasis, the last pharaoh of Egypt’s 26th Dynasty, see 2.169–82.

14

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

countrymen, routed the enemy and died like a brave man; and the Athenians gave him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honors.” 31. Now that Solon had prompted Croesus to inquire about Tellus, and had spoken of the man’s great good fortune, Croesus went on to ask who, in Solon’s view, was the second most fortunate man, thinking that he himself, at any rate, would hold second place. Solon replied, “Cleobis and Biton. Argives43 by birth, they had enough to live on and were also remarkably strong. Both men were champion athletes, and the following story is told of them. During an Argive festival in honor of Hera, their mother had to be conveyed to the temple in their chariot, but the oxen were late in returning from the field. So the young men, as there was no time to lose, put the yoke on their own necks and drew the wagon that carried their mother. Dragging the cart, with their mother riding in it, for a distance of forty-five stades, they arrived at the temple. When they had been seen by the whole festal gathering performing this deed, they met with the finest end, and the god showed clearly in their case that it is better for a man to die than to live. For the Argive men who were gathered around them congratulated them on their strength, while the Argive women commended the mother who was blessed with such sons. And the mother herself, overjoyed by their feat and by the renown they had won, stood opposite the statue and offered up a prayer on behalf of her children, Cleobis and Biton, who had honored her greatly, praying that the goddess would grant them the best fate a man can attain. After this prayer, when they had sacrificed and feasted and retired to sleep in the temple itself, the young men never woke again, but this was their end. The Argives, regarding them as the best of men, had statues made of them, which they dedicated at Delphi.” 44 32. Solon awarded the second prize for happiness to these men, and Croesus, vexed, said, “My Athenian friend, has my happiness been cast aside as counting for so little that you won’t even compare me with private citizens?” Solon replied, “Croesus, aware as I am that divinity is jealous and inconstant, you ask me about human affairs. Over a long period of time, many things come to pass which no one would wish to see or suffer. I propose seventy years as the average life span for a man. These seventy years represent, excluding intercalated months, 25,200 days. But if one wishes to lengthen every other year by a month, so that the seasons might come out as they should,45 the intercalated 43. Citizens of Argos, a powerful Greek city in the Peloponnese. 44. Remarkably, two statues of young men that seem to be Cleobis and Biton, to judge by the inscription on a nearby statue base, have been found at Delphi. 45. Since the Greeks used a lunar calendar with months of twenty-eight days, “extra” months had to be intercalated frequently to keep the lunar and solar years in line. Solon here assumes too many such insertions, however, so that the total number of days he comes up with for seventy years is somewhat too large.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

15

These two statues, dating from around the time of Solon, bear inscriptions identifying them as Cleobis and Biton, indicating that the legend of the two Argive youths was widespread in archaic Greece. Photo credit: Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

months over seventy years number thirty-five, representing 1,050 days. All told, then, the days in seventy years number 26,250, and none of these days is wholly like any other. “Therefore, Croesus, chance, for man, is everything.You appear to me to possess great wealth and to be a ruler of many men. Yet that which you ask of me

16

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

I am not yet going to say of you until I hear that you have ended your life well. For the man of great wealth is not at all more fortunate than the man who has enough for his daily wants, unless good fortune attends him and he ends his life in possession of all that is good. For many very wealthy men are unfortunate, while many men of moderate means are lucky. The man who possesses great wealth but is unfortunate surpasses the lucky man in only two respects, while the lucky man surpasses the wealthy but unfortunate man in many. The latter is more able to satisfy his desires, and to bear calamity when it befalls him, but the former surpasses him in this: he may not be equally able to satisfy desire or bear calamity, but his good fortune keeps these things from him. He is free of injury, of illness, and of misfortune; and he is blessed with fine children and good looks. If, in addition to these things, he ends well, he is the man you are seeking—the man who deserves to be called fortunate. But until he dies, withhold judgment. Call him lucky, not fortunate. For no man can encompass every advantage, just as no country is wholly self-sufficient, but each, while it possesses some things, lacks others; and the best country is the one that contains the most. Nor is any man self-sufficient. Each has certain advantages, but lacks others. In my view, sire, the man who lives and dies happily, secure in the possession of most of life’s blessings, may rightly be called fortunate. One must look to the end of every matter. For the god,46 after giving many men a glimpse of happiness, overthrows them root and branch.” 33. Far from pleased with these words, Croesus dismissed Solon as a mediocrity, thinking him utterly uncouth for disregarding the king’s present prosperity and advising him to look to the “end” of every matter. 34. After Solon had departed, a great vengeance from god caught up with Croesus, because, as one might guess, he believed himself to be the happiest of men. First he had a dream that foreshadowed (accurately, as it turned out) the troubles about to befall his son. Croesus had two sons. One of them, afflicted with a disability, was mute. The other, whose name was Atys, excelled his age-mates in every way. The dream revealed that Croesus would lose Atys: the boy would be struck down by an iron spear. When Croesus awoke, he gave the matter careful thought. Fearing the dream, he chose a wife for his son, and though Atys had been accustomed to lead the Lydian army, Croesus never again sent him forth for this purpose. He also conveyed all javelins, spears, and other weapons of war from the men’s apartments, and heaped them together in the storerooms, lest any of them, suspended, fall on his son. 46. Herodotus, like other Greek writers, often speaks of “the god” in the singular, when no particular god is meant. Translators sometimes render this usage as “God” (conceived as a totality of all deities) or “the Divine.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

17

35. While Croesus had in hand his son’s marriage, there came to Sardis a man stricken by misfortune—a man whose hands were unclean. A Phrygian by birth, he was a son of the royal family. This man, presenting himself at the palace, asked Croesus to purify him47 according to the native customs, and Croesus obliged him. (The Lydians use a form of purification similar to that of the Greeks.) When Croesus had performed the customary rites, he asked his guest who he was and whence he came, saying, “Who are you, sir, and from where in Phrygia have you come, a suppliant at my hearth? What man or woman have you slain?” The man replied, “Sire, I am the son of Gordias, and Midas was my grandfather. My name is Adrastus.48 Banished by my father and deprived of everything, I come to you after killing my brother by accident.” Croesus answered him thus: “You are the offspring of friends of mine, and you have come among friends, where you will lack for nothing while you remain with us. You will profit most if you bear this calamity as lightly as possible.” 36. Adrastus took up residence in Croesus’ household, and at the same time a monstrous boar appeared on Mysian Olympus.49 Rushing from the mountain, it regularly ravaged the Mysians’ cornfields, and though the Mysians often went after it, they did it no harm; the harm suffered was all on their side. Finally, Mysian ambassadors, arriving at Croesus’ court, reported the matter to the king, saying, “Sire, an enormous boar, having come to light in our country, is ravaging our fields. Eager though we are, we have been unable to catch him. We therefore beseech you to send your son to us with picked men and hounds, that we may rid our land of the beast.” The Mysians made these requests, but Croesus, mindful of the dream, answered them thus: “Do not mention my son again. I would not send him to you. He is newly married, and that is what concerns him now. Nevertheless, I will send you picked Lydians, with all my huntsmen and hounds, and will command the men who join you to put forth their best effort to help you rid your country of the beast.” Such was his reply. 37. Though the Mysians were content with this, Croesus’ son, who had heard their entreaties, came to his father. As Croesus had refused to send his son along to them, the boy spoke to his father. “The most beautiful and noblest things, father, had previously been mine—to win renown in wars and hunts; but now you have shut me out from these, observing neither any sign of cowardice nor reluctance in me. How can I show my face as I go to and from the marketplace? What will 47. That is, to cleanse him of the stain of homicide, which otherwise would pose a danger to anyone who came in contact with him. In Greek custom (paralleled by that of the Lydians, as Herodotus mentions just below) this involved pouring the blood of a slaughtered pig over the murderer’s hands. 48. A significant name, which in Greek can mean “he who cannot be escaped.” 49. A mountain in western Asia, not the more famous Olympus in northern Greece.

18

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

people take me for? What will my bride think? What kind of husband will she think she is living with? So either let me join the hunt, or give me a reason why it is better for me to do as you wish.” 38. Croesus answered with these words: “Son, I have adopted this course not because I have seen any cowardice in you or anything at all displeasing, but because a vision came to me as I slept, telling me that you would be short-lived— that you would die from a blow struck by an iron spear. It was this that led me to hasten your marriage, and now keeps me from sending you on this expedition. I am eager to keep watch over you, in the hope that I may somehow keep you safe during my lifetime. For as it happens, you are my only son; the other, owing to his affliction, I do not consider mine.” 39. The young man answered, “You may be pardoned, father, after such a dream, for keeping watch over me. But there is something you have failed to notice, and it is right for me to point it out to you. The dream, you said, foretold that I would be killed by an iron spear. But what sort of hands does a boar have, and what sort of iron spear do you fear? If you had been told I would be killed by a tooth or by some other means one could associate with a boar, you would be right to act as you have. But by a spear? Since our battle is not against men, let me go.” 40. Croesus answered, “You have me there, my son. You interpret the dream better than I did. I can only relent and give you leave to join the hunt.” 41. So saying, Croesus summoned Adrastus the Phrygian. When the latter arrived, Croesus spoke to him thus: “Adrastus, when you were stricken by sad misfortune—with which I have not reproached you—I purified you. Welcoming you into my household, I support you and supply all your needs. Now, therefore, as I expect a return for my generosity, I ask you to go with my son on this hunt, and to protect him from highwaymen on the road. In any case, it is right for you to go where you may win renown by your deeds. For that is your hereditary duty, and you are, besides, a stalwart fellow.” 42. Adrastus answered, “Sire, under other circumstances I would not take part in such a contest. For it is not becoming for one who has met with such misfortune to associate with his prospering age-mates; nor have I the desire to do so, and there are many reasons to prevent my going. But as it is, since you press me and I am obliged to gratify you in return for your kindness, I am ready to do as you ask, and your son, whom you order me to guard—expect him to return home to you uninjured, as far as it depends on his guardian.” 43. When Adrastus had answered Croesus in this way, the party set out with a band of picked youths and the hounds. On reaching Mount Olympus, they stalked the boar. As soon as they found him, the hunters, forming a circle around him, hurled their javelins at him. It was then that the stranger—Adrastus, the man who had been purified of homicide—hurled his javelin at the boar, missed him, and hit Croesus’ son. The youth, struck by the spear, fulfilled the omen of the

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

19

dream, and someone ran with the news to the king. When the messenger reached Sardis, Croesus was told of the encounter with the boar and the fate of his son. 44. Distraught though he was at death of his son, Croesus was still more horrified that the man he had himself cleansed of blood-guilt had slain him. In agony over his misfortune he called on Zeus the Purifier to be a witness of what he had suffered at the hands of his guest. He also invoked Zeus as guardian of the hearth and protector of friendship: as guardian of the hearth, because after welcoming the stranger to his household he had unwittingly been supporting his son’s murderer; as the god of friendship, because the man he had sent to guard his son had turned out to be his deadliest enemy. 45.The Lydians arrived thereafter, bearing the body; the slayer followed behind it. Standing before the corpse, Adrastus offered himself up to Croesus, stretched forth his hands, and urged Croesus to slaughter him over the body of his son. He spoke of his earlier misfortune and said that he had gone on to ruin the man who had purified him, and that he could not bear to live. On hearing these words, Croesus took pity on Adrastus. Though his own misfortune overwhelmed him, he said, “Stranger, I have received full recompense from you, since you condemn yourself to death. But you are not guilty of this misfortune of mine, except in so far as you unwillingly struck the blow. Some god is perhaps responsible, who long ago warned me of what the future held.” Thereupon, Croesus buried his son with all proper ceremony, and when the area around the tomb was deserted and quiet, Adrastus, son of Midas, and grandson of Gordias—the man who became the slayer of his brother and the destroyer of the man who purified him—regarding himself as the most unfortunate man he had ever known, killed himself upon the tomb. 46. For two years, bereft of his son, Croesus gave himself up to mourning. Thereafter, Cyrus’ usurpation of Astyages’ throne and the rise of Persian power brought Croesus’ mourning to an end,50 and led him to wonder whether he might check the power of the Persians before it had grown too strong.With this in mind, he immediately made trial of the oracles in Greece and of one oracle in Libya, dispatching messengers in all directions: some to Delphi, others to Phocian Abae, still others to Dodona. Some were sent to Amphiaraus and Trophonius, others to Branchidae in Miletus.These were the Greek oracles Croesus intended to consult. He sent other messengers to consult Ammon in Libya.51 His intention was to test 50. Herodotus transitions rather abruptly from the private sorrows of Croesus to his military conflict with Persia, the rising power to his east, led at this time by Cyrus. The rise of Cyrus, and his overthrow of Astyages, will be examined in more detail by Herodotus in the second half of Book 1. 51. The Egyptian god Ammon, associated by the Greeks with Zeus, had a famous oracle at the oasis town of Siwah in the deserts west of Egypt.

20

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

the oracles, so that if he found any to be in possession of the truth, he would send a second time to ask if he should attempt an expedition against the Persians. 47. To his Lydian representatives he gave the following instructions. From the day of their departure from Sardis they were to keep count of the days as they passed. On the hundredth day, they were to consult the oracles and ask what the Lydian king, Croesus, son of Alyattes, was doing at that moment. The messengers were instructed to commit the oracles’ responses to writing and bring them back to him. What the other oracles prophesied has not been reported by anyone; but as soon as the Lydian messengers entered the sanctuary at Delphi and asked what they had been ordered to ask, the Pythian priestess52 answered in hexameter verses: I number the grains of sand and the droplets of the deep, I hear the mute and give ear to the silent. The odor has reached me of a hard-shelled tortoise Aboil in bronze with the flesh of a lamb. The vessel’s of bronze, with brazen lid. 48. The Lydians wrote down the Priestess’ response and returned with it to Sardis. When all the others who had been sent abroad had arrived with the oracles’ responses, Croesus, unfolding each of them, examined what had been written. None of the others pleased him, but as soon as he heard the answer from Delphi, he accepted it with reverence, recognizing that the Delphic oracle alone had discovered what he had been doing. For after he had sent seers to the oracles, he waited for the appointed day and contrived as follows. Imagining it would be impossible to find out or guess what he was doing, he killed a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them together in a bronze cauldron, having covered the cauldron with a bronze lid. 49. Such was the response he received from Delphi. With regard to the reply of Amphiaraus’ oracle53 I cannot say what it told the Lydians after they performed the customary rites at the shrine, for there is no record of it; all that is known is that Croesus believed that Amphiaraus also possessed a true oracle. 50. Thereafter Croesus propitiated the god at Delphi with great sacrifices. He sacrificed 3,000 head of every kind of beast that may be used in sacrifices, and on heaping up gold- and silver-plated couches, golden bowls, and crimson garments and cloaks, he kindled a great pyre, hoping by these offerings to win more favor from the god. He commanded all the Lydians to offer a sacrifice according to their means. After the sacrifice, Croesus had a vast quantity of gold melted 52. At the oracle of Delphi a young priestess called the Pythia was thought to speak the god’s prophecies. 53. Located at Oropus, near Thebes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

21

down. He cast 117 half-bricks from it, each of them eighteen inches long, nine inches wide, and three inches thick. Four of them were made of refined gold, each weighing approximately 144 pounds. The rest were of white gold, weighing about 115 pounds each. He also had a lion carved out of pure gold—a statue weighing some 577 pounds. When the temple at Delphi was burned,54 the lion fell from its base of gold bricks. It now stands in the Corinthian treasury and weighs about 375 pounds. (Some 200 pounds of it had been melted away.) 51. On preparing these offerings, Croesus sent them to Delphi along with two enormous mixing bowls, one of them gold, the other silver. The golden bowl used to stand on the right as one enters the temple, the silver bowl on the left. They too were moved when the temple burned down. The golden bowl, which weighs 502 pounds, now stands in the Clazomenaean treasury; the silver bowl, which has a capacity of 600 amphoras,55 stands in the corner of the vestibule. Its capacity is known because the Delphians use it for mixing wine at the festival of the Theophany.56 The Delphians say it is the work of Theodorus of Samos, and I am inclined to believe them; for it appears to me to be a work of uncommon quality. Croesus also sent four silver wine jars (these stand in the Corinthan treasury) and dedicated two lustral water basins, one of them gold, the other silver. There is an inscription on the golden basin to the effect that it was offered by the Spartans, who claim, incorrectly, that it was their offering. The basin is Croesus’ gift, whereas a certain Delphian (whose name I know but refrain from mentioning), wishing to curry favor with the Spartans, was responsible for the inscription. But though neither of the lustral basins is a Spartan offering, the boy through whose hand the water flows is their gift. Along with these, Croesus sent many other less remarkable offerings, including round silver bowls and a golden statue of a woman, over four feet tall, which the Delphians say is a portrait of Croesus’ baker. In addition, Croesus dedicated his wife’s necklaces and girdles. 52. Such were the gifts he sent to Delphi. And Croesus also dedicated offerings in the shrine of Amphiaraus when he learned of that seer’s courage and misfortune:57 a shield made entirely of gold and a spear likewise made of solid gold, both shaft and head. These were still in place in Thebes in my day, in the Theban temple of Ismenian Apollo. 53. Croesus instructed the Lydians who were going to convey these gifts to the temples to inquire of the oracles whether he should lead an army against the 54. In 548 B.C., not long after the dedications by Croesus. 55. Perhaps as much as 6,000 gallons—a huge but perhaps not impossible capacity for an ancient vessel. 56. A springtime festival at Delphi. 57. Amphiaraus, a mythic hero to whom the shrine called Amphiareion was dedicated, was said to have been swallowed by a cleft in the earth caused by Zeus.

22

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

Persians, and whether he should enlist any particular army as an ally. When the Lydians reached their appointed destinations and dedicated their offerings, they consulted the oracles and said: “Croesus, king of the Lydians and many other peoples, in the belief that these are the only true oracles among men, offers you gifts worthy of your discoveries and asks you whether he should lead an army against the Persians, and whether he should enlist any particular army as an ally.” To this question both oracles made the same reply, foretelling that if Croesus led an army against the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. They advised him to take as an ally the Greek state he found to be most powerful. 54. When Croesus heard these responses, he was overjoyed, and in his perfect confidence that he would destroy the kingdom of Cyrus, he sent again to Delphi to ascertain the size of its population. He then saw to it that each citizen was presented with two staters58 of gold. The Delphians, in return for his largesse, granted Croesus and the Lydians priority when consulting the oracle,59 exemption from taxes, front seats at their festivals, and permanent Delphian citizenship to any Lydian who desired it. 55. Having lavished his generosity on the Delphians, Croesus consulted the oracle a third time (once he had ascertained the oracle’s truthfulness, he made frequent use of it.) At his next consultation, he asked whether his monarchy would endure for many years. The Pythian priestess replied with these words: When a mule becomes king of the Medes, Then, tenderfooted Lydian, flee to the sandy banks of the Hermus,60 And tarry not, nor disdain to play the coward. 56. Of all the responses that had reached him, this one especially pleased Croesus, who thought that a mule would never rule over the Medes in place of a man, nor, accordingly, would his family’s sovereignty ever cease. Croesus now gave thought to which Greek state he should enlist as an ally. On looking into the matter, he found that the Spartans and Athenians were pre-eminent. The former were of Doric stock, the latter of Ionian.61 For these were the foremost races, the 58. A unit of currency, which in this case might have contained about 10 grams of gold. 59. That is, the right to “cut in line” ahead of other inquirers. 60. A river in Anatolia. 61. According to mythic genealogies that in part reflect actual ethnic distinctions, the Spartans and Athenians had two very different origins; their different ethnicities were expressed in dress styles, forms of religious worship, and dialects of the Greek language, among other things. Herodotus traces Athenian origins just below, in a very confused account. He never explicitly discusses Spartan origins, but, like other Greeks, he traced these to the Heraclids or children of Heracles who, in mythic lore, had invaded the Peloponnese long after other Greek cities were already established.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

23

former descended from the ancient Hellenic race, the latter from the Pelasgian.62 The latter had never moved from its original homeland, while the former was given to wandering. For during the reign of Deucalion, the Hellenic people had lived in Phthiotis, but in the time of Dorus, son of Hellen, they moved to the land known as Histiaeotis, at the base of Ossa and Olympus. When they were expelled by the Cadmeians, they settled in the territory near Mount Pindus and were known as Macedonians. From there they moved to Dryopis, and from Dryopis they migrated to the Peloponnese, where they were known as Dorians. 57. I cannot say for certain what language the Pelasgians spoke. But judging, first of all, by the Pelasgians now living in the city of Creston (inland from the Tyrrhenians), who at that time shared a border with the people now called Dorians (the country they inhabited at that time is now called Thessaliotis); secondly, by the Pelasgians who lived at the Hellespont at Placia and Scylace (who shared territory with the Athenians); and thirdly, by all the other Pelasgian towns whose names have changed;—if, as I say, one must judge by this evidence, the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language. Accordingly, if the entire Pelasgian race spoke a different language, the Attic people, being Pelasgian, changed their language when they became Greeks. For neither the Crestonians nor the Placianians speak the same language as their neighbors. They have a common language, which indicates that they continue to use the dialect they brought with them when they migrated to these countries. 58. The Hellenic race, on the other hand, has always used the same language, as far as I know. It was a branch originally separate from the main body of the Pelasgians; and though weak at first, it has grown from modest beginnings, having assimilated a number of peoples, including Pelasgians and many other nonGreek peoples. (It also seems to me that the Pelasgians, a barbarian people, never became very numerous or powerful.) 59. Croesus learned that Athens, split by faction, was now under the tyranny of Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates.63 A great portent had been received by Hippocrates, a private citizen, when he was attending the Olympic games. After he had performed sacrifices, the cauldrons, standing full of meat and water, but 62. Herodotus here subscribes to a theory that mainland Greece had been inhabited in prehistoric times by a non-Greek-speaking race called the Pelasgians, until the “Hellenic race,” speakers of Greek, invaded the region and imposed their language on the Pelasgians. In some areas on the outskirts of the Greek world, Herodotus believed that pockets of non-Hellenized Pelasgians could still be found. The theory is explained in more detail in what follows. 63. Pisistratus came to power around 560 B.C., after Solon’s reforms some three decades earlier failed to resolve the class strife in Athens. Herodotus call his regime a “tyranny” but without implying despotic or cruel methods (see note 29 to 1.20 above); indeed at the end of 1.59 he asserts that Pisistratus governed Athens lawfully and well.

24

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

with no fire yet kindled underneath, boiled and overflowed. Chilon the Spartan chanced to be present, and seeing the portent advised Hippocrates first of all not to take a wife who would bear children, but if he had one already, to divorce her; and if he had a son, to disown him. Such was Chilon’s advice, but Hippocrates declined to heed it. Thereafter Pisistratus was born, and when the people of the coast quarreled with the Athenian plainsmen (the former were led by Megacles, son of Alcmeon,64 the latter by Lycurgus, son of Aristoleides), Pisistratus, aiming at a tyranny, assembled a third faction (selecting the hill-dwellers as partisans, and pretending to represent their interests) and devised the following ruse. Wounding himself and his mules, he drove the pair to the marketplace and pretended that he had escaped from his enemies, who had tried to kill him as he was driving into the country. He asked the people to give him a guard, reminding them of the renown he had won during his command of the expedition against Megara, in the course of which, among many other exploits, he had captured Nisaea. The people of Athens, taken in, granted his request, and selected a number of citizens who became, not Pisistratus’ spear-bearers, but his club-bearers. For they wielded wooden clubs as they followed in his train. These men, joining Pisistratus in the revolt, seized the acropolis. Thereafter Pisistratus held sway in Athens, having neither disrupted existing offices nor changed any laws. On the contrary, he managed the city in accordance with its established usages and governed well. 60. Not long afterward, however, the partisans of Megacles and those of Lycurgus agreed to unite, and drove him out. Thus Pisistratus, having in this way first made himself master of Athens, lost his power before it had time to take root. His rivals, however, fell to quarreling with one another once again, and Megacles found himself so harassed that he sent Pisistratus a message, offering to restore him to power if he would marry his daughter. When Pisistratus had accepted the proposal and agreed to Megacles’ conditions, they perpetrated, with a view to Pisistratus’ return, by far the silliest trick that I find on record, especially when one considers that the Greeks have long been distinguished from the barbarians by superior intellect and freedom from foolish simplicity, and remembers that of all the Greeks the Athenians were reputed to be the most intelligent. In the village of Paeonia there was a beautiful woman named Phya, nearly six feet tall, whom they dressed in full armor and stood in a chariot; then, getting her to strike a distinguished pose, they 64. Alcmeon was a wealthy Athenian (see 6.125 below for an account of how he got his wealth) whose descendants, the Alcmeonids, used their family’s wealth and status as leverage for political power. Megacles was the first in this line of prominent politicians, some of whom became fiercely opposed to the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons and advocates of a more democratic regime.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

25

drove to the city, having sent heralds on ahead to make the following proclamation: “Athenians, give a warm welcome to Pisistratus, whom Athena herself is restoring to her acropolis, honoring him above all men.” The heralds, ranging in all directions, were spreading the word, and the rumor soon reached the villages that Athena was bringing Pisistratus back. And the townspeople, fully convinced that the woman was indeed the goddess, offered her their prayers and welcomed Pisistratus back. 61. On regaining his tyranny in the manner I have described, Pisistratus honored the agreement he had made with Megacles and married the man’s daughter. But as he already had grown sons, and as the family of Alcmeon was said to be accursed,65 Pisistratus wanted no children to be born of the marriage, and lay with his wife in an unnatural manner. At first his wife kept this matter to herself, but later, whether in reply to a question or not, she told her mother, and her mother told Megacles, who was so enraged at the insult that he reconciled with his former enemies. When Pisistratus learned how matters stood, he left the country. On his arrival in Eretria,66 he took counsel with his sons. Hippias’ view, namely that Pisistratus should try to regain the tyranny, won the day, and they proceeded to collect contributions from the cities that were in any way under an obligation to them. Many furnished large sums, though the Thebans surpassed all the others in gifts of money. But not to make too long a story of it, all preparations for their return were at last complete. They were joined by Argive mercenaries from the Peloponnese; and a certain Lygdamis from Naxos offered his enthusiastic support, contributing both money and men. 62. In the eleventh year of their exile Pisistratus and his followers set sail from Eretria and returned home. The first place they took in Attica was Marathon. There they encamped and were joined by their supporters in the city, and by villagers who preferred tyranny to freedom. While Pisistratus was gathering supplies, and even afterward when he took Marathon, the Athenians in the city ignored him. But when they learned that he had left Marathon and was marching against Athens, they went out against him in full force. The two armies met at the temple of Athena Pallenis and arrayed themselves opposite one another. At that very moment, an Acarnanian seer, Amphilytus, moved by divine inspiration, approached Pisistratus. Standing beside him, he uttered this prophecy in hexameter verse: The net is cast, and its meshes are spread wide; The tunas will dart through the moonlit night. 65. The origins of this curse, dating back almost a century before Megacles’ time, are explained by Herodotus at 5.71. 66. A city in Euboea, the long island off Attica’s eastern coast.

26

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

63. Amphilytus made this pronouncement in an inspired state, and Pisistratus, understanding the response and declaring that he welcomed the oracle, led his army onward. The Athenians from the city had just taken their midday meal and were at leisure, some amusing themselves at dice, others napping, when Pisistratus and his followers attacked and routed them. As the Athenians were fleeing, Pisistratus thought of a clever stratagem that prevented them from rallying and insured that they would remain dispersed. He sent his sons after them on horseback. As they overtook the fleeing Athenians, they spoke to them as they had been instructed to do by Pisistratus, urging each man not to be afraid but to return to his own home.67 64. The Athenians obeyed and thus Pisistratus took Athens for the third time. He proceeded to ground his tyranny securely by means of many mercenaries and by revenues, some raised locally, others from holdings along the river Strymon.68 Taking as hostages the sons of the Athenians who had not fled at once but had stood their ground, he settled them on Naxos (for Pisistratus had subdued Naxos in battle and entrusted it to Lygdamis).69 He also purified the island of Delos70 in accordance with the injunctions of an oracle. He dug up the corpses whose graves were within view of the temple and re-interred them in another part of the island. Pisistratus now held sovereign sway in Athens, though some of its citizens had fallen in battle, while others had fled the country together with the Alcmeonids.71 65. Such was the condition of the Athenians when Croesus inquired about them. As for the Spartans,72 Croesus learned that they had recently emerged from great troubles and had now gained the upper hand in their war with the Tegeans. During the dual reign in Sparta of Leon and Hegesicles,73 the Spartans, though successful in all their other wars, had met with continual defeat at the hands of 67. In other words, Pisistratus promised his opponents amnesty in exchange for compliance with his rule. 68. The mineral-rich Strymon valley in Thrace supplied Athens with precious metals. 69. On Lygdamis see the end of 1.61 above. 70. The central island of the Cycladic group, a sacred island said to have been the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The “purification” referred to here involved the removal of buried corpses from the sacred precinct, since physical contact with mortality was thought to bring a kind of pollution. 71. On the Alcmeonids see note to 1.59 above. At 6.123, Herodotus specifies that the Alcmeonids left Athens at this time because Pisistratus exiled them. 72. Herodotus here turns his attention from Athens in the 6th century B.C. to Sparta in the same time frame, following the pretext that Croesus had been told by the Delphic oracle to ally with the most powerful of the Greek states and made inquiries as to which state this was. 73. The era referred to is around 575–560 B.C. Sparta had two kings ruling at any one time, for reasons Herodotus explains at 6.52–53.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

27

the Tegeans. At an even earlier period they had been the worst-governed people in Greece, both in their internal affairs and in their relations with foreigners, from whom they held entirely aloof. Sparta was transformed into a well-ordered state in the following way. When Lycurgus,74 a distinguished Spartan, visited the oracle at Delphi, the Pythian priestess75 spoke these words as soon as he entered the sanctuary: You have come to my rich temple, Lycurgus, As one beloved by Zeus and by all the gods who dwell on Olympus. I know not whether to declare you a god or a man. Yet I am inclined to believe you are a god, Lycurgus. Some say that the Pythian priestess, in addition to speaking these words, revealed to Lycurgus the system of government that prevails at Sparta today. According to the Spartans themselves, however, Lycurgus imported Sparta’s present practices from Crete after he became guardian of his nephew Leobotes, king of Sparta, and was serving as his regent. For as soon as he received this appointment he altered all the statutes and took precautions against their being transgressed. Later he reorganized the army, establishing its companies, divisions, and public messes. He also created the offices of ephor and elder.76 66. By these changes, the Spartans became a well-governed people, and when Lycurgus died they erected a temple in his honor and revered him highly. As their land was fertile and the population numerous, they soon shot up and flourished. No longer content to stay quiet, and thinking that they were superior to the Arcadians,77 they consulted Delphi about their prospects against Arcadia as a whole. The Pythian priestess gave them this reply: You ask me for Arcady? You ask for much. I’ll not give you it. Many are the men in Arcady, acorn-eaters all,78 Who will bar your way. Yet all I do not grudge you. I will give you Tegea as a stomping-ground, a lovely plain To dance in and to measure out with the line. 74. Lycurgus was famed as the semi-divine lawgiver who created the unique Spartan system of government, perhaps in the 9th century B.C. It is not clear whether he should be considered a historical or a mythic figure. 75. See note to 1.47. 76. At Sparta a board of five ephors, elected by a popular assembly and serving for one year, supervised many governmental matters and even had power over the two kings. A council of thirty elders, called the Gerousia, elected for life terms and made up of citizens over sixty years old, provided both legislative oversight and a jury for important trials. 77. Inhabitants of the famously ancient region at the center of the Peloponnese. 78. That is, primitive men who do not yet understand agriculture.

28

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

When the Spartans received this reply, they left the rest of Arcadia alone and marched against Tegea. Placing their trust in an ambiguous oracle, they took shackles with them, so confident were they that they would enslave the Tegeans. But they lost the battle, and all who were taken prisoner were forced to wear the shackles they had brought, and to “measure out with the line” the plain of Tegea as laborers. The shackles in which they were bound were still, in my day, preserved in Tegea, hanging up round the temple of Athena Alea. 67. In that early war, the Spartans were never a match for the Tegeans, but by the time of Croesus, when Anaxandrides and Ariston reigned in Sparta,79 they had gained the upper hand in the following way. Discouraged by their poor showing against the Tegeans, they sent seers to Delphi to learn which god they should propitiate in order to prevail in the war. The Pythian priestess told them to bring the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, back to Sparta.80 Unable to find his tomb, they again sent to the god to inquire where the body lay, and the messengers received this answer: In Arcadian Tegea, on level ground, Where two winds blow by strong necessity, Strike answers counter-strike, and woe lies upon woe. There the life-giving earth holds Agamemnon’s son; Bring him home, and you will be Tegea’s master. When the Spartans heard this, they were no nearer to discovering the grave than before, though they searched everywhere, until Lichas, one of the Spartans called Agathoergoi (or Benefactors)81 found it. The Agathoergoi are the five eldest men who retire from the cavalry every year; they are required, during the year after their discharge, to go wherever the state sends them, and actively employ themselves in its service. 68. It was one of these men, Lichas, who by a combination of luck and ingenuity discovered the body in Tegea. As the Spartans, at that period, had better relations with the Tegeans, Lichas went to Tegea and entered a forge, where he watched in amazement as the smith hammered out iron. The smith, observing Lichas’ astonishment, stopped his work and said, “You would certainly have marveled, Spartan stranger, had you seen what I saw, since you are amazed at the working of iron. For I wanted to dig a well in this courtyard, and in the course of digging it I came upon 79. The period from about 560 to 520 B.C. 80. The city in which a mythic hero was buried was thought to receive protection from the divine spirit of that hero (as seen, most prominently, in Sophocles’ play Oedipus at Colonus). Orestes, the principal figure in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, had killed his mother Clytemnestra at Apollo’s behest. 81. Herodotus alone mentions this office.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

29

a coffin ten feet long. Unable to believe that men had ever been taller than they are now, I opened it and saw that the corpse was as big as the coffin. After measuring it, I filled up the hole again.” As the man was describing what he had seen, Lichas was turning the matter over in his mind, and came to the conclusion that this was the body of Orestes, of which the oracle had spoken. He guessed that the smith’s two bellows were the oracle’s two winds, the anvil and hammer the strike and counterstrike, and the beaten iron the “woe upon woe,” since iron was discovered for man’s grief.82 Having drawn these conclusions, he returned to Sparta and laid the whole matter before his fellow citizens. Then the Spartans, having brought a trumped up charge against him, drove Lichas out of the country. Returning to Tegea and confiding his troubles to the smith, Lichas tried to rent the courtyard. The smith refused for a time; but at last Lichas persuaded him, and took up residence there. Then he dug up the grave, collected the bones, and took them back to Sparta. From that time on, whenever the Spartans and Tegeans made trial of each other in battle, the Spartans had the advantage. They had now subjugated the greater part of the Peloponnese. 69. Croesus, informed of all these developments, sent messengers to Sparta with presents, to ask for an alliance. They were told exactly what they should say, and on their arrival at Sparta spoke as follows: “Spartans, the god has advised me by the oracle to make the Greek my ally; and since I have learned that you stand first among the Greeks, I call upon you, in deference to the oracle, and wish to become your friend and ally, without guile or deceit.” Such was the message that Croesus sent by his heralds, and the Spartans, who had heard about the oracle, were pleased with his approach and bound themselves by oaths of fellowship and alliance. For they had been under obligation to Croesus on a former occasion. They had sent to Sardis to buy some gold, which they wanted for the statue of Apollo that now stands on Thornax in Laconia, and Croesus has given it to them as a gift.83 70.The Spartans welcomed the alliance for this reason and also because Croesus had chosen them in preference to all the other Greeks. And not only were they ready to come at his summons, but wishing to make a return for his presents they had a bronze bowl made, large enough to hold 300 amphoras,84 and covered with figures of animals all around the outside of the rim. The bowl never reached Sardis. Its failure to arrive is accounted for in two ways. The Spartans say that when the bowl was being conveyed to Sardis by way of Samos, the Samians, when they got wind of it, launched an attack in their 82. Seeing that it was the principal component of military weapons. 83. Lydia’s abundance of natural gold, carried in flakes by the region’s rivers, was famous in antiquity; see 6.125 below. 84. Over 3,000 gallons.

30

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

warships and stole it.85 The Samians, however, say that the Spartans who were taking the bowl to Sardis arrived too late, and when they learned that Sardis had fallen and that Croesus was a prisoner,86 they sold it in Samos to some men who set it up as a votive offering in the temple of Hera. Perhaps those who sold it would say on their return to Sparta that they had been robbed of it by the Samians.87 Such was the fate of the bowl. 71. Croesus, meanwhile, having misinterpreted the oracle, was launching a military expedition into Cappadocia,88 fully expecting to defeat Cyrus89 and destroy the empire of the Persians. But while his preparations were going on, a Lydian named Sandanis, who had always been regarded as a wise man, but who after this enjoyed a great name among the Lydians, gave the king the following counsel: “Sire, you are preparing to lead an army against the sort of men whose clothes, even their trousers, are all made of leather;90 who eat as much as they have, never as much as they want, so rugged is their country; who drink no wine, but only water; who have nothing that is good to eat, not even figs. If, then, you conquer them, these men who have nothing, what will you rob them of? If, on the other hand, you are conquered, think how many good things you will lose! Once they have had a taste of our luxuries, they will cling to them so tightly that they will never give them up. For my part, I am thankful to the gods that they do not inspire the Persians to attack the Lydians.” Though he did not persuade Croesus, Sandanis was right: before their conquest of Lydia, the Persians had no luxuries of any kind.91 72. The Cappadocians are known by the Greeks as Syrians. Before the rise of Persian power they were subject to the Medes, but at the present time92 to Cyrus. The boundary between the Median and Lydian kingdoms was the river Halys, which rises in the mountains of Armenia, runs first through Cilicia, and then, flowing for a time with the Matieni on the right and the Phrygians on the left, turns north and forms a boundary between the Syrian Cappadocians to the east, and the 85. An alleged theft that would have repercussions more than a decade later; see 3.47. 86. Herodotus here looks ahead to the fall of Sardis, told in full below at 1.83–90. 87. With this speculation Herodotus accounts for the existence of two differing stories. It is characteristic of his technique to record differing accounts and, when possible, to judge which is the more likely to be true. 88. Western Anatolia. 89. The full story of Cyrus and how he came to control a vast empire is told below starting at 1.95. 90. The wearing of pants, rather than chitons or cloaks, was to the Greeks a distinctive feature of Central Asian nomadic peoples, including the Persians and Scythians. Leather garments (rather than wool) were also associated with these peoples. 91. A recurring motif of Herodotus’ text is the transition of the Persians from rugged poverty to imperial splendor; see especially 1.126 and 9.122. 92. Meaning the time of Croesus’ attack, about 550 B.C.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

31

Paphlagonians to the west. The Halys thus forms the boundary of almost the whole of Asia Minor from the Mediterranean opposite Cyprus to the Black Sea. This is where the neck of the peninsula lies; it takes an active man five days to cross it.93 73. Croesus was marching against Cappadocia for several reasons. Of course he coveted the land, which he wished to add to his own domain; and since he trusted the oracle, he wished to punish Cyrus on behalf of Astyages. For Astyages, son of Cyaxares and king of the Medes, was Croesus’ brother-in-law, and had been dethroned by Cyrus. The relationship arose under the following circumstances. A band of Scythian nomads, leaving their own land because of a quarrel, had emigrated to Media.94 The Medes were then being ruled by Cyaxares, son of Phraortes and grandson of Deioces.95 At first Cyaxares treated the Scythians well, since they were suppliants. And coming to esteem them highly, he made them guardians of some boys, whom they were to teach their language and the art of archery. Time passed, and the Scythians, who were continually out hunting, would always bring home some game. But one day it chanced that they caught nothing. When they returned empty-handed, Cyaxares (who was, as he showed, a hot-tempered man), received them with rudeness and insults. In consequence of this treatment, which they felt they had not deserved, the Scythians plotted to slay one of their young students, chop him up, dress the flesh as they were accustomed to dress wild animals, serve it up to Cyaxares as game, and then flee with all speed to Sardis, to the court of Alyattes,96 son of Sadyattes. And that is just what happened. Cyaxares and his fellow dinner guests partook of the meat, and the Scythians fled to Alyattes as suppliants. 74. Thereafter, because Alyattes refused to give up the Scythians when Cyaxares demanded them, a war broke out between the Lydians and the Medes and continued for five years, during which both sides won a number of victories. One battle was fought at night. But then, after five years of indecisive warfare, a battle took place in the course of which day was suddenly turned into night. This was the eclipse that had been foretold to the Ionians by Thales of Miletus, who had fixed for it the year in which it actually took place.97 The Lydians and Medes, when they observed the 93. A vast underestimate. At its narrowest (i.e., at “the neck”), the Anatolian peninsula is over 300 miles wide. 94. Herodotus here sets the narrative “clock” about fifty years back, to the beginning of the 6th century B.C. 95. This Median royal dynasty will be profiled at 1.97–106 (with the Scythian invasion of Media discussed at 1.104). 96. Father of Croesus; see 1.18. 97. Probably 585 B.C., the date of a near-total eclipse over Cappadocia (May 28, according to modern astronomical calculations). It is doubtful that Thales of Miletus, another of the “seven sages” of archaic Greece, could have predicted an eclipse in the early 6th century, but his intelligence later became legendary (see 1.75 below).

32

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

change, ceased fighting, and both sides were eager to make peace. The reconciliation was effected by Syennesis of Cilicia and Labynetus of Babylon.98 It was they who hastened the taking of the oaths, and brought about the exchange of marriages. They decided that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis to Astyages, son of Cyaxares, knowing as they did that treaties do not remain intact without strong obligations. (These peoples take oaths just as the Greeks do, except that they make a shallow cut in their arms and lick each other’s blood.) 75. This Astyages was Cyrus’ maternal grandfather, and had been attacked and defeated by Cyrus for a reason I will explain later on.99 Holding this against Cyrus,100 Croesus had sent to the oracle to ask whether he should march against Persia. When he had received the ambiguous response101 and supposed it to be in his favor, he led his army into Persian territory. When Croesus reached the river Halys he transported the army across it, as I maintain, by the existing bridges, though the common Greek story has it that Thales of Miletus managed the crossing. The story goes that when Croesus was wondering how his men would cross the river (for at that time the present bridges were not yet built), Thales, who was in camp with them,102 made the river, which flowed to the left of the camp, flow also to its right, a feat he accomplished in this way: Starting upstream of the camp, he dug a deep trench and extended it in the shape of a crescent so that it would pass behind the encamped army. He then diverted the river out of its original channel, shunting it around the camp and back into the ancient bed. As soon as the river’s volume was divided in half, both parts became fordable.103 Some say that the original riverbed was completely dried up. But I am of a different opinion. For how, in that case, could they have crossed it on their return journey?104 76. When Croesus transported the army across, he reached the district of Cappadocia known as Pteria. (Pteria is the best-fortified part of that country and 98. The Babylonian king at this time was in fact Nebuchadnezzar, of biblical fame; Herodotus seems to confuse his name with that of his son, Nabu-na’id (or Nabonidus to the Greeks). 99. The story comes at 1.107–129. 100. I.e., the defeat of his brother-in-law; Herodotus has come back to the point he began with at the start of 1.73. 101. See 1.53 above. 102. Herodotus gives no explanation for a Greek wise man’s presence in a Lydian king’s military encampment. 103. With his account of the re-engineering of the Halys, Herodotus calls attention to the first of what will be a series of important river crossings made by aggressive Asian leaders. The violation of a natural boundary stands in his text as an emblem of imperialist expansion. 104. Herodotus seems strangely oblivious of the fact that Thales’ trick could simply be reversed as the army re-crossed the Halys moving from east to west.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

33

lies roughly in a line105 with Sinope on the Black Sea.) He pitched his camp and began to ravage the fields of the Syrians. He captured the Pterians’ city, enslaved its inhabitants, and seized all the towns in its immediate vicinity, driving the Syrians from their homes, though they had done him no harm.106 Cyrus meanwhile had mustered his own army and advanced against Croesus, increasing his own numbers by the forces of the nations that lay along his route. Before his army marched forth, Cyrus had sent heralds to the Ionians to urge them to revolt from Croesus. The Ionians, however, had not been persuaded, and when Cyrus reached the territory of Pteria and encamped opposite Croesus’ forces, the Persians and Lydians put one another’s strength to the test. A fierce battle was fought and many fell on both sides.107 Finally, when night came on and neither side had gained the victory, the two armies separated. 77. Croesus held his numerical inferiority to blame (for his combined forces were far outnumbered by Cyrus’ army); and as on the next day Cyrus did not take the field to challenge him, Croesus marched his army back to Sardis, having in mind to summon the Egyptians according to the terms of the alliance he had formed with King Amasis108 before he had approached the Spartans; he also meant to send for the Babylonians, under their king Labynetus,109 with whom he had also formed an alliance; and, lastly, to order the Spartans to join him at an appointed time. He proposed to winter in Sardis and march against the Persians in the spring, when he had added all these reinforcements to his own army. Accordingly, on reaching Sardis he sent heralds to his allies, ordering them to assemble in Sardis in four months. He then disbanded the mercenary army that had been engaged with the Persians and had since returned with him, never imagining that Cyrus, who had just met his match in battle, would push on to Sardis. 78. While Croesus was maturing his plans, the city’s outskirts became infested with snakes; and on their appearance the horses in the meadows stopped grazing and came and ate them. When Croesus saw this, he regarded it, quite rightly, as a portent. Losing no time, he sent messengers to the Telmessian interpreters;110 but the messengers who consulted them and learned what the portent signified did not succeed in reporting the interpretation to Croesus. For before they sailed

105. Meaning a line of longitude. Pteria was indeed directly south of Sinope. 106. David Asheri (A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, Oxford 2007, p. 136) suggests that Croesus meant to make Pteria into a military base. 107. 547 B.C. 108. See note on 1.30. 109. See note 98 on 1.74. This time it is Nabonidus, not his father Nebuchadnezzar, whom Herodotus calls Labynetus. 110. Inhabitants of Telmessus, in southern Anatolia, were famous as prophets and seers.

34

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

back to Sardis, Croesus had been taken prisoner.111 The interpretation was that Croesus should expect the arrival of a foreign army, which would subdue the native inhabitants. For the snake, they said, is a child of earth, and the horse a warlike foreigner. Croesus had already been captured when the Telmessians gave this answer, but they had no knowledge of what was taking place at Sardis, or of the fate of the king. 79. When Croesus headed for home after the battle in Pteria, Cyrus understood that when the Lydian king had led his army back, he was likely to disband it. After deliberating, he found that it would be to his advantage to press on to Sardis as quickly as he could, before the forces under Lydian command were assembled a second time. As this seemed to him the best plan, he acted on it at once, and led his army into Lydia so swiftly that he announced his own arrival to Croesus.112 Croesus now found himself in a difficult position, events having unfolded in a manner contrary to his expectations; he nevertheless led the Lydians out to battle. At that time no nation in Asia was more courageous or stalwart than the Lydians.113 They fought on horseback, expert riders wielding long spears. 80. The armies met on the plain before Sardis. It is a broad expanse, bare of trees, watered by the Hyllus and other streams that flow together into the largest one, called the Hermus, which has its source in the mountain sacred to the mother goddess Dindymene, and empties into the sea near the town of Phocaea. When Cyrus saw the Lydian forces drawn up in array, his fear of their cavalry led him to follow the advice of Harpagus, a Mede; this was to assemble all the camels that accompanied his army carrying provisions and equipment, unload them, and mount men upon them dressed as horsemen. When he had readied these men, he ordered them to advance in front of his other troops against the cavalry of Croesus, with the infantry to follow, and his own cavalry bringing up the rear. When his arrangements were complete, he urged them to spare no Lydian who crossed their path, but not to kill Croesus himself, even if he defended himself when arrested. Cyrus stationed the camels opposite the enemy cavalry for this reason. A horse is afraid of a camel and tolerates neither the sight nor the smell of that animal. By this stratagem Cyrus hoped to make Croesus’ cavalry useless to him, the cavalry being what he chiefly depended on for victory. Battle was joined, and as soon as they smelled and saw the camels, the horses reared back and galloped off—and Croesus’ hopes were dashed. Yet the Lydians showed no lack 111. This looks ahead to the events of 1.84–86. 112. That is, Cyrus got to Lydia before any scouts or messengers could report that he was coming. 113. This statement would have surprised Herodotus’ contemporaries, who thought of Lydians as a gentle and luxury-loving race; but their transformation is explained by Herodotus at 1.155–56.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

35

of courage. When they learned what was happening, they leapt from their horses and engaged with the Persians on foot. Casualties were heavy on both sides, but finally the Lydians were put to flight. They were driven within their walls, where they were besieged by the Persians. 81. Thus the siege began, and Croesus, in the belief that it would be prolonged, again appealed to his allies for help. The former messengers had been sent to ask the allies to assemble in Sardis in four months; but these were sent to beg for immediate help, as Croesus was besieged. 82. Though he applied to all his allies, Croesus sent his most urgent appeal to Sparta. The Spartans were occupied at the time in a quarrel with the Argives114 over Thyrea, a place in the Argolid that the Spartans had cut off and occupied. (The whole country to the west as far as Malea had once belonged to the Argives, including Cythera and the other islands nearby.) The Argives marched to recover their stolen territory, and agreed in talks with the Spartans that 300 men from each side would fight it out, and the land should belong to the victors. The rest of the two armies were to return home and not stay to witness the combat, lest either side, seeing their countrymen getting the worst of it, might be tempted to come to their defense. After agreeing to these terms, the two armies marched off, leaving 300 picked men on each side, and the battle began. They were so equally matched that at the end of the day, when night fell, of the 600 men only three remained alive, two Argives, Alcanor and Chromius, and a single Spartan, Othryades. The two Argives, in the belief that they were the victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades the Spartan, after stripping the Argive corpses,115 carried their weapons away to his own army, where he remained at his post. On the next day, both armies returned to learn the result. For a time both sides claimed the victory, the Argives because they had the greater number of survivors, the Spartans because the two Argives had run away, whereas their man had remained on the field and stripped the corpses of the Argive dead. The quarrel grew heated, and finally, coming to blows, the armies resumed fighting. Though many fell on both sides, the Spartans were victorious. From then on the Argives always wore their hair short, though before this their custom had been to wear it long; and they enacted a law, to which they attached a curse, stipulating that no Argive man would grow his hair, and no Argive woman would wear golden ornaments, until they had recovered Thyrea. The Spartans also enacted a law the reverse of this; though they had not previously worn their hair long, from that time on they did so. They say

114. The citizens of Argos, a powerful city in the eastern Peloponnese that had resisted the Spartan dominion over the peninsula. 115. In the conventions of Greek land warfare, the right to despoil the enemy dead was reserved for the victor of a battle.

36

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

that the sole survivor of the 300, Othryades, was ashamed to return home to Sparta after all his comrades-in-arms had died, and killed himself in Thyrea. 83. The Spartans were occupied with these matters when the herald arrived from Sardis to ask them to come to the assistance of the besieged king Croesus. Despite their difficulties, when they heard what he had to say, they were eager to lend aid. But by the time they had completed their preparations, and their ships were ready to sail, a second message informed them that the Lydians’ fortress had been captured and that Croesus was a prisoner. Thereupon, though they acknowledged the gravity of Croesus’ misfortune, they suspended their efforts. 84. Sardis was captured in the following way.When Croesus had been besieged there for fourteen days, Cyrus dispatched riders throughout his own army promising gifts to the first man to scale the wall. The army made a great effort, but when no progress was made and everyone else left off trying, a Mardian named Hyroeades made an attempt at a part of the citadel where no guard had been stationed. There had been no concern that the wall would ever be vulnerable to capture at that point, for the citadel is precipitous there and impregnable. It was the only place where Meles, the earlier king of Sardis, had not carried around the lion his concubine had borne him. The Telmessian interpreters had decreed that if the lion were carried around the walls of Sardis, the city would be invincible. Having carried it around the rest of the fortress, where they were open to attack, Meles had neglected this place, thinking it so steep as to be unassailable. It is on the side of the city that faces Mount Tmolus.116 On the previous day, Hyroeades the Mardian had noticed one of the Lydians descending at that spot to retrieve a helmet that had rolled down from above, and the sight had set him thinking. The next day he scaled the wall himself, and other Persians followed, until a great many had climbed up. Thus was Sardis taken and plundered. 85. Croesus himself met with this fate. He had a son, as I mentioned earlier,117 who, though sound in every other respect, was mute. In the days of his prosperity Croesus had done everything he could for the boy, and had even sent to Delphi to consult the oracle about him. The Pythian priestess had answered him thus: Scion of Lydia, king of many, foolish Croesus, Wish not to hear in your halls the long-prayed-for sound Of your son’s voice. Far better for you that it were otherwise. For you will hear it first on the day of your undoing. When the town was stormed, a Persian soldier approached the king and was about to kill him, not knowing who he was. Croesus saw him coming; but in his 116. On the south side. 117. See 1.34. Croesus’ favored son, Atys, having been killed, this nameless mute son was probably his only living heir.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

37

misery, not caring whether he lived or died, he did nothing. But when his son, the boy who was mute, saw the Persian coming after his father, in the agony of his fear and grief he broke into speech, and cried, “Hey you there! Don’t kill Croesus!” Those were the first words he ever spoke, and he retained the power of speech for the rest of his life. 86. The Persians took possession of Sardis and captured Croesus, who had ruled for fourteen years, and had been under siege for fourteen days. And the oracle was fulfilled:118 Croesus had destroyed a great empire—his own. Seizing Croesus, the Persians brought him to Cyrus, who heaped up a great pyre and placed Croesus upon it, bound in shackles, along with fourteen Lydian boys.119 Cyrus may have intended to offer them as first-fruits to some god, or he may have been fulfilling a vow, or perhaps, having learned that Croesus was pious, he wished to learn whether any of the deities would save him from being burned alive. Though Croesus found himself in the direst of circumstances, he recalled, as he stood on the pyre, with what divine truth Solon had declared that no man, while he lives, could be called happy.120 When this occurred to him, he roused himself after a long silence, and with a sigh and a groan repeated the name “Solon” three times. Hearing this, Cyrus ordered his interpreters to ask Croesus who it was he called upon, and they, approaching Croesus, put the question to him. For a time Croesus kept silent, but soon, forced to say something, he replied, “The man who, in preference to vast wealth, I would have wished had conversed with all tyrants.” As his words were unintelligible to them, they asked him again what he meant, and continued to pester him until he could no longer refuse. He then related how Solon the Athenian, when he had visited Sardis early on and beheld his vast wealth, had made light of it, and that the events, in Croesus’ own case, had confirmed the views of Solon, whose remarks had applied no more to Croesus than to mankind in general and especially to men who imagine themselves fortunate. While Croesus was speaking, the pyre had been lit, and the edges were beginning to blaze. When Cyrus had heard what Croesus said, he changed his mind, reflecting that he himself, a mere mortal, was offering to the flames a living man, 118. See 1.53 above. 119. The tale told by Herodotus overlaps with, but differs from, other archaic Greek versions of the fate of Croesus. An ode by Bacchylides (Ode 3, 468 B.C.) describes how Croesus attempted to kill himself on a pyre (rather than being put there by Cyrus), and how Apollo rescued him from the flames and brought him to the utopian land of the Hyperboreans. A vase painting by Myron of the early 5th century B.C. shows Croesus on a pyre that is being lit by a servant; the king’s calm demeanor again suggests he is committing suicide. A historical record found in the Babylonian chronicles raises the possibility that Croesus was in fact killed after the capture of Sardis, but its sense is uncertain. 120. See 1.31–33 above.

38

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

one who had once been as prosperous as he. Fearing retribution, and reflecting that nothing is certain in human affairs, Cyrus ordered them to put out the fire at once and bring Croesus and the boys down from the pyre. But the men who were trying to carry out his orders were no longer able to control the fire. 87. The Lydians say that when Croesus understood that Cyrus had changed his mind and saw everyone vainly trying to put out the fire, he called upon Apollo and besought him, if any of his gifts had pleased the god, to deliver him from his present danger. He called upon Apollo with tears, and suddenly, out of a clear and windless sky, clouds gathered, a storm burst forth with a violent downpour of rain, and the pyre was extinguished. This was how Cyrus came to learn that Croesus was a good man and beloved by the gods. He had him brought down from the pyre and said, “Croesus, who persuaded you to lead an army against my country and to become my enemy instead of my friend?” Croesus replied, “What I did, sire, was to your advantage and to my own loss. The god of the Greeks121 is to blame, who encouraged me to go to war. No one is so foolish as to choose war instead of peace. For in peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons. But the gods must have willed it so.” 88. So spoke Croesus, and Cyrus, freeing him from his shackles, seated him at his side and showed him great consideration. He marveled as he beheld the man, as did all who were present. Croesus sat quietly, deep in thought. Then, recovering himself and observing the Persians plundering the city of the Lydians, he said, “Sire, should I tell you what I have in my mind, or had I better keep quiet?” Cyrus urged him to take courage and say whatever he wished. Croesus questioned him, saying, “This great throng of men—what are they all so busy about?” Cyrus replied, “They are plundering your city and carrying off your treasures.” Croesus answered, “It is neither my city nor my treasures they are plundering, for none of this is mine any longer. Rather, it is your property they are carrying off.” 89. Struck by what Croesus had said, Cyrus dismissed the others and asked him what he thought he should do. Croesus said, “Since the gods have made me your servant, I think it my duty, if I notice something to your advantage, to point it out to you. The Persians, high-handed by nature, have no money. So if you allow them to plunder and get possession of great wealth, you can be sure that the man who gets the most will rebel against you. Accordingly, if you are pleased with my words, do as I advise: post some of your spearmen as sentinels at each of the gates, and have them confiscate the plunder and say to those who are carrying it off that a tenth of the spoils must be given to Zeus. If you do so, you will escape the hatred they would feel if the plunder were taken away by force, and they, admitting that you are doing what is just, will give it up willingly.” 121. Meaning Apollo, whose oracle was at Delphi.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

39

90. Cyrus was very pleased with this advice, thinking it was excellent. Praising Croesus highly, he ordered his spearmen to do as he had suggested. Then, turning to Croesus, he said, “Though you are a king, you are ready to offer useful service and sound advice. Ask, therefore, for whatever you wish, and it will be given to you at once.” Croesus said, “Master, you will please me most if you allow me to put a question to the god of the Greeks, whom I particularly honored. Sending him these shackles, I would ask if it is his custom to deceive those who treat him well.” Cyrus asked what charge he brought against the god that he asked this favor. Then Croesus gave him a full account of his ambitions and of the responses of the oracles, dwelling especially on the offerings he had made, and how the oracle had encouraged him to make war on the Persians. He ended by repeating his request for permission to reproach the god for his deceit. With a laugh, Cyrus said, “I grant you this, Croesus, and anything else you might ever ask of me.” Croesus therefore sent some Lydians to Delphi, ordering them to place the shackles on the temple’s threshold and ask the god whether he was not ashamed to have encouraged him by his oracles to make war on the Persians in the hope that he would destroy the power of Cyrus, if objects such as these were to be the first-fruits of the enterprise. As they said this they were to point to the shackles; they were also to ask whether it was the habit of Greek gods to be ungrateful. 91. To the Lydians who reached Delphi and said what they had been instructed to say the Pythian priestess is said to have spoken thus: “No one, not even a god, can escape his appointed lot. Croesus has paid the full penalty for the crime of his ancestor, the king’s spearman,122 who lent himself to a womanish stratagem: slaughtering his master, he usurped an authority not his by right. Though Apollo had earnestly desired that the downfall of Sardis take place during the reign of Croesus’ children rather than that of Croesus himself, he was unable to divert the Fates. What these goddesses did concede was turned by Apollo to Croesus’ advantage, for he postponed the capture of Sardis for three years. Let Croesus understand that its capture took place three years later than the appointed time. Secondly, Apollo prevented Croesus himself from being burned alive. As for the response of the oracle, Croesus is wrong to find fault with it, for Apollo told Croesus beforehand that if he marched against Persia he would destroy a great empire. If Croesus had been destined to lay his plans well, he would have sent to ask whether the oracle meant he would destroy his own empire or that of Cyrus. As he neither comprehended what was said nor made any further inquiry, let him hold himself responsible. Lastly, Croesus failed to understand Apollo’s reference to a mule. For Cyrus was the mule, as he had sprung from parents of different races, and of different stations. His mother was a Mede, and the daughter of Astyages, 122. Gyges; see 1.7–13 above.

40

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

the king of the Medes, while his father was a Persian, a subject of the Medes, and was in every respect inferior to the mistress of his household.” When the Lydians returned to Sardis and reported the priestess’ answer to Croesus, he acknowledged that the fault had been his own and not the god’s. 92. So much for Croesus’ reign and the first subjugation of Ionia.123 Croesus sent many offerings to Greece besides those I have already mentioned: a golden tripod, dedicated by him to Ismenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia; the golden cows and most of the columns at Ephesus; and a large golden shield in the Pronaea at Delphi. All these offerings were still in existence in my day; many others have been lost, among them those at Branchidae in Milesia, which as I understand were equal in weight and similar to those at Delphi. The offerings made at Delphi and the shrine of Amphiaraus came from his own private property, being the first-fruits of the fortune he inherited from his father; his other offerings came from the property of an enemy, a political opponent who, before Croesus became king, had supported the claim of Pantaleon to the throne. Pantaleon was Croesus’ brother, the son of Alyattes by a different woman. For Croesus’ mother was a Carian, Panteleon’s an Ionian. When, by his father’s gift, Croesus obtained the Lydian throne, he seized the man who had opposed him, and put him to death by dragging him on a carding-comb.124 His property, which he had previously vowed to devote to the service of the gods, Croesus sent as offerings to the shrines I have mentioned. Such were Croesus’ offerings. 93. Unlike other lands, Lydia contains few wonders worth describing, except the gold dust that is washed down by the river Tmolus. It has, however, an immense work, inferior only to the monuments of Egypt and Babylon. This is the tomb of Alyattes,125 Croesus’ father, the base of which is made of enormous blocks of stone surmounted by a mound of earth. The tomb was erected by the joint labor of the tradesmen, the artisans, and the prostitutes. It had at the top five stone pillars, which survived to my day, with inscriptions that showed how much of the work was done by each class. The portion built by the prostitutes appeared to be the largest. Among the common people of Lydia, the daughters all become prostitutes, amassing dowries for themselves and engaging in this practice until they marry. They chose their own husbands. The tomb is 1,280 yards in circumference; its width is 437 yards. Close to the tomb is a large lake, which the Lydians say is never dry. They call it the lake of Gyges.

123. Herodotus here recalls the original reason for telling the story of Croesus: He was the first non-Greek whom Herodotus knows to have harmed the Greeks. 124. Some torture implement designed in the shape of a comb used to card wool. 125. Probably to be identified with a great burial mound still seen today in the region north of ancient Sardis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

41

94. The Lydians use almost the same customs as the Greeks, except that they prostitute their daughters. They were the first people we know of to use gold and silver coinage, and the first to become retail-dealers. They claim to have invented the games that are now played both by themselves and by the Greeks.These games are said to have been invented at the time when they colonized Tyrrhenia,126 an event of which they give the following account. During the reign of Atys, son of Manes, there was a severe famine throughout Lydia. For a time the Lydians bore their affliction as patiently as they could, but after a while, when it persisted, they looked for ways to alleviate their misery, an array of which were devised. It was then that they invented dice, knucklebones, ball games, and all such games, except checkers, which they do not claim to have invented. They adopted the following plan to endure their hunger. On one day they played games all day long, so that they would not think of eating; on the next, they stopped playing and took food. They lived like this for eighteen years. When their suffering continued and even grew worse, the king divided the population in half, and determined by drawing lots which half should emigrate and which should remain at home. He appointed himself as king of those whose lot was to remain in Lydia, and his son Tyrrhenus to command the emigrants. The lots were drawn, and those who had to emigrate went down to Smyrna, where they built ships, put aboard all their household goods, and sailed away in search of a new land in which to make a living. Journeying past many peoples, they reached Umbria, where they settled and live to this day. And there they changed their name from Lydians to Tyrrhenians, after Tyrrhenus, the prince who led them there. 95. My account now compels me to inquire who this Cyrus was by whom the empire of Croesus was destroyed, and by what means the Persians obtained supremacy in Asia.127 Though I know how to speak about Cyrus in three other ways, I will write in the manner of certain Persians who do not want to exalt or magnify what concerns Cyrus, but wish to tell the truth about him. The Assyrians had been ruling upper Asia for 520 years when the Medes set the example and revolted from them. They took up arms to recover their freedom, and fought with such gallantry that they shook off the yoke of slavery and became a free people. In due course, the other tribes followed the Medes’ example. 96. But though all the tribes of the upper continent had won their independence, they again became subject to autocratic rule. This change was brought 126. A region of Italy known since Roman times as Etruria. Herodotus here endorses a theory that the Etruscans, a race whose origins remain a mystery today, had emigrated to Italy from Anatolia. 127. Having concluded the tale of Croesus, a kind of overture to the grand theme of imperial expansion, Herodotus turns to the Persian kings who will be his main subject in the rest of the Histories.

42

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

about by a Mede named Deioces, son of Phraortes, a clever man who had conceived a desire for sovereign power.128 The Medes were then living in villages, and lawlessness prevailed throughout the land. Deioces, who was already esteemed in his own village, now applied himself with greater zeal to the practice of righteousness, knowing that the unjust is inimical to the just. The result was that the men of his own village, observing his fairness, chose him to be the arbiter of all their disputes. Because he longed for sovereign power, he was straight and just in the performance of his duties, and thus won no small praise from the men of his village. And when those in the other villages, where unjust judgments were causing distress, learned that Deioces alone judged in accordance with the right, everyone gladly submitted their disputes to his judgment, until at last they turned to no one else. 97. His visitors growing ever more numerous, as people heard that the suits he adjudicated always turned out in accordance with the truth, Deioces, perceiving that everything depended on him, announced that he would no longer sit in the chair of judgment; he would hear no more cases. For it was not to his advantage to spend all his time regulating his neighbors’ affairs to the neglect of his own. Thereupon robbery and lawlessness again prevailed through the country even more than before.The Medes discussed their situation at a general assembly, where the friends of Deioces, I presume, were the principal speakers. “We cannot,” they said, “continue to live in this country under the present conditions. Let us therefore appoint a king to rule us, so that the land will be well governed, and we ourselves can return to our work, and not be forced to leave our homes on account of anarchy.” The argument prevailed and the assembly was persuaded to appoint a king. 98. They now proposed candidates for the royal office, and Deioces was both proposed and praised by so many that they soon agreed that he should be king. He then commanded the Medes to build him a palace worthy of a king, and to give him the protection of a bodyguard. The Medes complied, and built him a large and well-fortified palace on a site of his own choosing, and allowed him to select a bodyguard from the entire nation. Thus established on the throne, Deioces compelled the Medes to build a single great city, and to disregard all other towns as of secondary importance. The Medes again obeyed him, and Deioces built the city now known as Ecbatana, surrounding it with a series of massive concentric walls. The walls were laid out in such a way that each was higher than the one below it by the height of the ramparts. The nature of the ground, which is a hill, favored this arrangement to some extent, but even more was effected by art. There are seven circles in all. Within the innermost wall stand the palace and the treasuries.

128. The Greek word translated as “sovereign power” is turannis, the type of government controlled by a turannos (see note 29 on 1.20 above).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

43

The outermost wall is about the length of the wall that surrounds Athens.129 The ramparts of the first circle are white, those of the second black, the third crimson, the fourth blue, and the fifth orange. Thus all these circles are colored with paint. The ramparts of the innermost walls are plated with silver and gold, respectively. 99. These fortifications were to protect the king and his palace; Deioces ordered the common people to build their houses outside the circuit of the walls. When the work of building was complete, he introduced for the first time the ceremonial of royalty. Admission to the king’s presence was forbidden (all business had to be transacted through messengers), and no one was allowed to see the king. He also made it an offense for anyone to laugh or spit in his presence. This ceremonial he designed for his own security, fearing that his contemporaries, who were brought up with him, and were not at all inferior to him in birth or valor, would, if they saw him frequently, be pained at the sight, and would therefore be likely to plot against him; whereas if they did not see him, they would think him a different sort of being from themselves. 100. Once he had regulated these matters and firmly established himself on the throne, Deioces continued to be a strict guardian of justice. Suits were submitted in writing, and sent into the king; his decisions were then transmitted to the interested parties. In addition to this he introduced other practices. If he heard of anyone misbehaving, he would send for the offender and punish him as the offense deserved. He had spies and informants throughout his domain. 101. Thus Deioces united under his rule the tribes of Media—the Busae, Parataceni, Struchates, Arizanti, Budii, and Magi. 102. Having reigned for fifty-three years, he was succeeded at his death by his son Phraortes.130 This prince, however, was not content to rule only the Medes. The first country he attacked and subjugated was Persia. With both mighty nations under his rule, he proceeded to conquer Asia, attacking one province after another. At last he made war on the Assyrians—the Assyrians of Nineveh, that is, who were formerly masters of Asia but at that time stood alone, after the revolt and desertion of their allies. They were still powerful, however, and in the campaign against them Phraortes and most of his army were killed. 103. Phraortes had reigned for twenty-two years and was succeeded by his son Cyaxares.131 This prince is said to have been much more warlike than any of his ancestors. It was he who first organized the Asian armies by dividing them 129. About 6.5 miles, a vast area for a royal enclosure. The description of Ecbatana given here does not correlate with other ancient evidence. 130. It is difficult to assign absolute dates to Herodotus’ two earliest Median kings or to correlate them with historical rulers known through documentary sources. Deioces’ reign fell roughly in the early 7th century B.C. 131. The historical king called Uaksatar in Assyrian. His reign began in 625 B.C.

44

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

into separate companies—spearmen, archers, and cavalry. Before this the different classes of fighting men were massed together indiscriminately. It was Cyaxares who fought the battle with the Lydians on the occasion when day turned to night,132 and it was he who united all of Asia beyond the Halys under his rule. Mustering all his subjects, Cyaxares marched against Nineveh, hoping to demolish the city and avenge his father. He prevailed in battle against the Assyrians, but while he was besieging Nineveh he was attacked by a large Scythian army under the command of the Scythian king, Madyas, son of Protothyes. The Scythians had entered Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians, whom they had driven out of Europe; it was in the course of this pursuit that they entered Median territory. 104. It takes an active man thirty days to travel from Lake Maeotis133 to the river Phasis and the Colchians. And it is not far from Colchis to Media; to reach it one passes through the country of only one intervening tribe, the Saspires. The Scythians, however, did not enter Media by this route, but turned off onto the much longer inland route, keeping the Caucasus on their right. Engaging the Scythians, the Medes were defeated in battle and lost their empire. The Scythians became masters of Asia. 105. From there they advanced to Egypt. When they had reached Palestinian Syria, however, they were met by Psammetichus the Egyptian king,134 who prevailed on them, with gifts and entreaties, to advance no further. On their return journey, they came to Ascalon in Syria. The greater part of the army passed the town without doing any damage; but a small number of men got left behind and despoiled the temple of Celestial Aphrodite. The temple of Ascalon, as I have learned, is the most ancient of all the temples dedicated to this goddess. For the one in Cyprus, as the Cyprians themselves admit, was derived from it, and the one in Cythera was erected by the Phoenicians, who belong to this part of Syria. The goddess afflicted the Scythians who had despoiled her temple in Ascalon, and their descendants in perpetuity, with a feminizing disease. The Scythians maintain that this is why they have the disease, and visitors to Scythia can see how these men, whom they call “Enarees,” are affected.135

132. See 1.74 above. This battle took place in 585 B.C., which according to Herodotus’ chronology was the last year of Cyaxares’ reign. 133. The Sea of Azov, representing in this case the original homeland of the Scythians. 134. The pharaoh Psamtik (Psammetichus) ruled from c. 663 to 609 B.C.; this makes it possible to date the Scythian incursion to the last quarter of the 7th century B.C. 135. In Airs Waters Places (22), a text probably contemporaneous with Herodotus, the medical writer Hippocrates describes a caste of androgynous Scythians he calls Anaries, but ascribes their gender confusion to natural causes (including the wearing of pants).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

45

106. The Scythians held sway in Asia for twenty-eight years, during which time the entire continent, owing to their violence and brutality, was laid waste. Apart from exacting from each people the tribute they imposed, they scoured the country and robbed everyone of whatever they wanted. At last Cyaxares and the Medes invited the greater part of them to a banquet, got them drunk, and murdered them. The Medes then recovered their former power and dominion. They captured Nineveh (how they did so I will relate hereafter)136 and subjugated all of Assyria, except the district of Babylonia. Then Cyaxares died, having reigned over the Medes, if one includes the period of Scythian domination, for forty years. 107. Astyages, son of Cyaxares, succeeded to the throne. Astyages had a daughter named Mandane, and he dreamt that she urinated in such quantities as to fill his city and submerge all of Asia. He told the dream to the Magis’137 dream interpreters, and took fright when he learned in detail what it meant. Consequently, when Mandane reached marriageable age, Astyages did not give her to any of the Medes who were of suitable rank, but was induced by his fear of the dream’s meaning to marry her to a Persian named Cambyses, a man he knew to be of good family and quiet ways, but whom he regarded as much inferior to a Mede of middle rank. 108. In the first year of Mandane’s marriage, Astyages had another dream. He saw a vine growing from his daughter’s genitals and covering all of Asia. As before, he consulted the interpreters about this dream, and sent for his daughter, who was pregnant. When she arrived he set a watch over her, intending to destroy her child. For the Magi had interpreted his dream to mean that his daughter’s child would reign in his place. To guard against this, Astyages, as soon as Cyrus was born, sent for his kinsman Harpagus, the manager of his property, whom he trusted more than anyone, and said to him, “Harpagus, do not by any means neglect the business I am about to entrust to you. If you treat it lightly, preferring to please others, you may bring about your own downfall. Take the son Mandane has borne, carry him home with you, and kill him there. Then bury him however you like.” Harpagus replied, “Never before have I disobliged you in anything, sire, and I will take care not to offend you in the future. If this is what you wish, it is for me to do my duty and obey you.” 109. The child was arrayed for burial and entrusted to Harpagus, who wept as he took it home. On his arrival he told his wife everything that Astyages had said. “And what do you intend to do?” she asked. “Not what Astyages has ordered,” he 136. A promise not fulfilled in the surviving text of Herodotus’ work. The capture of Nineveh by a combined Median and Scythian army, which effectively ended the Assyrian domination of central Asia, can be dated to 612 B.C. 137. At 1.101 the Magi are listed as a Median tribe, but the name was also used of a caste of priests who attended the Median kings and performed all sacred state rituals.

46

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

replied. “No, not even if he rants and raves even worse than he does now. I will not consent to do what he wants, or serve as his agent for such a murder. There are many reasons why I will not do it. The child is my kinsman, and Astyages is an old man and has no son. If, when he dies, the throne should go to his daughter (whose child he wishes me to slay), will I not be in the gravest danger? For my own safety, however, the child must die; but the murderer must come from Astyages’ household, not from mine.” 110. So saying, he promptly sent a messenger to one of Astyages’ herdsmen, whose pastures he knew to be the most suitable for his purpose, lying as they did among mountains infested with wild beasts.The man’s name was Mitradates, and he lived with a fellow slave, a woman whose name in Greek would have been Cyno, or Bitch. In the Median language it was Spaco, that being the Median word for bitch. The foothills where Mitradates grazed his cattle lie to the north of Ecbatana towards the Black Sea. In that part of Media, which borders the Saspires’ land, the terrain is high, mountainous, and thickly wooded, while the rest of Median territory is uniformly flat.The herdsman, on being summoned, arrived in haste, and Harpagus said to him, “Astyages orders you to take this child and expose it in the wildest part of the mountains, that it may die as quickly as possible. I am also to tell you that if you do not kill the child, but keep it safe somehow, you will suffer the cruelest death. I have been appointed to see for myself that the child has been exposed.” 111.The herdsman, upon hearing these orders, picked up the child and returned to his hut by the way he had come. It so happened that his wife, who had daily been expecting to give birth, had just, while the herdsman was away in town, been delivered of a child. Husband and wife had both been thinking of one another, Mitradates worrying about his wife’s labor, his wife wondering why, contrary to custom, Harpagus had sent for her husband. When he entered the house on his return, his wife, seeing him arrive so unexpectedly, was the first to speak, and asked why Harpagus had sent for him so urgently. He replied, “Wife, when I got to the town I saw and heard such things as I wish I had never seen—such things as I wish had never happened to our masters. The whole house of Harpagus was filled with weeping. Though I was frightened, I went in. Inside I saw a child gasping and crying, and arrayed in gold and brightly colored garments.When Harpagus saw me, he ordered me to take up the child at once, carry it off, and leave it at the wildest spot in the mountains. He said that Astyages himself had imposed this task on me, and he threatened me with dreadful things if I failed. So I took up the child and carried it along, supposing it was the child of one of the household servants, for I never would have suspected whose it was, though I marveled at the gold and fine clothes and at the wailing in the house of Harpagus. On the way home I learned the whole story from the servant who escorted me from the city and placed the child in my hands. He told me that this is the child of Mandane, the king’s daughter, and Cambyses, son of Cyrus, and that the king orders him to be put to death. And look, here he is.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

47

112. As the herdsman was speaking, he uncovered the baby and showed it to his wife. When she saw that the child was large and well formed, she burst into tears, took her husband by the knees, and begged him on no account to expose it. He replied that he could not do otherwise, since Harpagus would be sending agents to inspect the child, and he would suffer a cruel death if he disobeyed. Having failed to sway her husband, the woman spoke a second time. “Well, as I cannot persuade you, and a child must be exposed, at least do this. I have given birth, and the child I bore is dead. Take its corpse and expose it, and let us raise Mandane’s child as our own. If we do so, you will not be found to have disobeyed our masters, and we will not have managed badly for ourselves. Our dead baby will have a royal burial, and this living child will not lose his life.” 113. His wife’s advice seemed to Mitradates the best under the circumstances, and he acted on it at once. He gave Mandane’s child, whom he had intended to kill, to his wife, and placed his own dead child in the casket in which he had carried the other. Dressing it in the other child’s garments, he took it to a lonely spot in the mountains and left it there. When the child had been exposed for three days, the herdsman went to town, leaving one of his assistants on guard. Going to Harpagus’ house, he said he was ready to show him the child’s corpse. Harpagus sent along his trustiest guards to view the body for him, and, satisfied with their seeing it, had the herdsman’s child buried.Thus the one child lay buried, while the other, who was afterward known by the name of Cyrus, was raised by the herdsman’s wife, who of course gave him some other name. 114. When the child was ten years old, an incident occurred that revealed his identity. He was playing with some boys in the street of the village where the oxstalls were, and the boys chose the herdsman’s son (as he was called) to be their king. He then appointed some of them to build houses, others to be his bodyguard, one to be the “king’s eye,”138 and another his messenger; for he assigned a duty to each of them. When one of the boys—the son of Artembares, a Mede of distinction—refused to do what he commanded, Cyrus ordered his arrest. The other boys seized him, and Cyrus beat him savagely with a whip. The boy was enraged at treatment so ill-suited to his rank, and as soon as he was released he ran home and complained to his father of the abuse he had met with from Cyrus, though he did not call him that (for that was not yet his name), but rather “the son of Astyages’ herdsman.” Infuriated, Artembares went straight to Astyages, taking his son along, and described the outrageous treatment his son had suffered, pointing to his son’s shoulders and saying, “Thus, sire, have we been grossly insulted by your slave, the son of a herdsman.” 115. At this sight and these words, Astyages was willing to avenge the son of Artembares for his father’s sake, and sent for the herdsman and his son.When they 138. The title of a high official at the Persian court in Herodotus’ time.

48

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

arrived, Astyages turned to Cyrus and said, “Did you dare, though you are the son of such a man as that, to treat in this unseemly manner the son of this man, who is my most distinguished subject?” “Master,” Cyrus replied, “I only treated him as he deserved. The boys of my village were playing—he was among them—and they made me king, because they thought I was the best for it. The other boys obeyed my orders; but he refused, and took no notice of them, until he was punished. If for this I deserve to suffer punishment, I am ready.” 116. As the boy was speaking, Astyages recognized him. His features seemed to resemble his own, and his answer was not that of a slave, and his age seemed to tally with the time of his grandchild’s exposure. Stunned by these revelations, Astyages was speechless for a while. At last, recovering himself with difficulty, and wanting to question the herdsman privately, he dismissed Artembares, saying, “Artembares, I will settle this matter so that you and your son will have no cause to complain.” Then his attendants, at Astyages’ command, led Cyrus into another room. Left alone with the herdsman, Astyages asked him where he had got the boy, and who had given him to him. The herdsman replied that the boy was his son, and his wife the boy’s mother. Saying that the herdsman was a fool to court torture, Astyages signed to his bodyguard to seize him. Then the herdsman, as he was being dragged off to the torture, revealed what had actually happened. Beginning at the beginning, he recounted everything truthfully and ended by begging the king for mercy and forgiveness. 117. Having got the truth from the herdsman, he was no longer concerned with him but was furious with Harpagus. His guards were ordered to summon him, and when he arrived Astyages said, “Harpagus, when I gave you my daughter’s child, how did you destroy it?” As Harpagus saw the herdsman in the room, he made no attempt to lie, lest he be caught out under questioning. “Sire,” he said, “when I took the child, I gave thought to how I could act in accordance with your wishes and at the same time, without offending you, avoid being regarded by your daughter or yourself as a murderer. I acted as follows. Summoning this herdsman, I gave him the child and said that it was you who ordered it to be killed. And I was not speaking falsely, as that was your command. Moreover, when I gave him the child I instructed him to lay it on a desolate mountain and remain nearby, keeping watch until it was dead. I threatened him with all manner of dire consequences if he failed to do as he was told. When he had carried out my orders and the child died, I sent along my trustiest eunuchs, who viewed the body for me and had it buried. That, sire, is the simple truth, and that the manner of the child’s death.” 118. Harpagus thus related the story in a straightforward way, and Astyages, concealing his anger, began by telling him all that he had just heard from the herdsman, and then, when he had recounted the whole story, concluded by saying that the child was alive and all was well. “I have been grieving terribly over the boy’s fate and the estrangement from my daughter. But now, since my luck

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

49

has changed for the better, send your son to be with the newcomer, and come to dinner with me tonight, as I intend to make thank-offerings to whichever gods this honor is due.” 119. On hearing these words, Harpagus prostrated himself before the king, and went home rejoicing that his blunder had turned out so fortunately, and that in honor of the happy occasion he had been invited to a banquet. As soon as he reached home, he sent his son—his only son, a boy about thirteen years old—to Astyages’ palace, with instructions to do whatever the king commanded. Then, in his gladness, he told his wife everything that had happened. When Harpagus’ son arrived at the palace, Astyages had him slaughtered and dismembered, roasting some parts of the flesh, boiling the rest, and having it all prepared for the table. When it came time for dinner, and Harpagus and the other guests had assembled, tables full of lamb’s meat were placed beside Astyages and the other guests; but on the table of Harpagus, nothing was placed except the flesh of his own son. This was all put before him, except the head and the hands and feet, which had been laid aside in a covered basket. When it appeared that Harpagus had had enough to eat, Astyages asked him if he had enjoyed the feast. When Harpagus said that he had enjoyed it very much, the attendants who had been charged to do so brought him the head of his son, which lay concealed along with the hands and feet. Standing by him, they invited Harpagus to uncover the basket and take what he wished of its contents. Obeying them and removing the cover, Harpagus saw the remains of his son. He kept calm at the sight, and contained himself. Astyages asked him if he knew what animal’s flesh he had eaten. Harpagus replied that he knew very well, and that whatever the king did was pleasing. After replying thus, he took up what remained of the flesh and went home, intending, presumably, to collect the remains and bury them. 120. That was the punishment Astyages inflicted on Harpagus. In considering what he should do about Cyrus, he summoned the same Magi who had formerly interpreted his dream, and asked them how they interpreted it. They answered as before, saying that the boy, had he survived and not died too soon, would have been king. “The boy has survived and lives,” Astyages replied. “And when he was living in the country the boys of his village made him their king. He did everything that real kings do: he appointed guards and porters and messengers and all the rest.Tell me, then—what do you think this means?” The Magi replied, “If the boy survives and has already ruled as a king without any contrivance on his own part, take courage and be of good cheer, since he will not reign a second time. Even our oracles are sometimes fulfilled in unimportant ways; and dreams often result in something trivial.” “I, too, am very much of this opinion,” Astyages replied. “My dream was fulfilled when the boy was named king, and I have nothing more to fear from him. But all the same, consider the question carefully, and recommend the safest course for my family and yourselves.” “Sire,” replied the Magi, “it is also of great

50

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

importance to us that your reign should prosper. For if sovereign power went to this boy, it would pass into foreign hands, since he is a Persian; and then we Medes would be despised as foreigners and enslaved by the Persians. But while you, our fellow countryman, occupy the throne, we have our share of power and the positions of honor you grant us.We must, therefore, by all means look to you and your sovereignty. If in the present instance we saw any cause for fear, we would be sure to give you fair warning. But now that your dream has been fulfilled in this harmless way, we are reassured, and advise you to take heart. As for the boy, we suggest that you send him out of sight to Persia, to his father and mother.” 121. Pleased with their assurances, Astyages sent for Cyrus and said to him, “I did you a wrong, my child, because of a dream that was not fulfilled.Your own good fortune saved you. Go then to Persia, with my blessing. I will provide your escort. There you will find your father and your mother, people quite different from the herdsman Mitradates and his wife.” 122. With these words Astyages dismissed Cyrus. On his arrival at the house of Cambyses, he was received by his parents, who, when they learned who he was, embraced him warmly—they had always been sure that he had died almost as soon as he was born—and asked him how he had escaped death. He told them that until lately he had known nothing about it, but had been utterly mistaken. He had always thought he was the son of Astyages’ herdsman, but in the course of his journey he had learned the truth from his guides. He described how he had been brought up by Cyno the herdsman’s wife, and he filled his talk with her praises. In all he had to tell them about himself, Cyno was constantly on his tongue. It turned out that his parents, fastening on the name, spread a rumor that Cyrus, when he was exposed, was suckled by a bitch. His survival would thereby appear more miraculous to the Persians. From there the rumor spread far and wide. 123. Afterward, when Cyrus grew to manhood, and became the bravest and most popular of his peers, Harpagus began to pay court to him and send him gifts, as he was eager to take revenge on Astyages. His own rank, he thought, was too lowly for him to hope to punish Astyages without assistance; so when he saw Cyrus coming to maturity, he exerted himself to win his support, saying that he had suffered wrongs similar to his own. He had already paved the way for his designs by persuading each of the great Median nobles, whom their king’s harsh rule had offended, that it would be to their advantage to dethrone Astyages in favor of Cyrus. These preparations made, Harpagus wished to reveal his plan to Cyrus. But as the young man was living in Persia and the roads were guarded, Harpagus had to devise a means of getting word to him secretly, which he did in the following way. He took a hare, and cutting open its belly without harming the fur, he slipped in a letter containing what he wanted to say. Then he sewed up the belly, gave the hare to his most trusted servant, together with a net to make him look like a hunter, and sent him off to

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

51

Persia with orders to offer the hare as a present to Cyrus, and tell him by word of mouth to cut it open with his own hands, and to let no one be present while he did so. 124. These instructions were carried out, and when Cyrus received the hare, he cut it open. Finding the letter inside, he read it carefully. The letter ran as follows: “Son of Cambyses, since the gods watch over you—for you would never otherwise have met with such luck—take revenge on Astyages, your murderer. For he willed your death; thanks to the gods and myself, you are still alive. I presume you have long since learned everything—what was done to you, and what I suffered at his hands for giving you to the herdsman instead of killing you. Do as I advise, and the whole empire of Astyages will be yours. Persuade the Persians to revolt, and march against the Medes. It will make no difference whether I or any other distinguished Mede is appointed by Astyages to serve as general against you: all will go as you wish. For the Medes will be the first to revolt and join you in the attempt to bring him down. On our side all is ready. Do as I advise, and act at once.” 125. On receiving this letter, Cyrus considered how he could best persuade the Persians to revolt. After much thought, he adopted the following course of action. Having written what he wished on a scroll, he summoned an assembly of the Persians. Unfolding the scroll, he read out that Astyages had appointed him general of the Persians. “Now then, Persians,” said he, “I command each of you to report for duty, scythe in hand.” The Persian nation is made up of many tribes. Those that Cyrus assembled and persuaded to revolt were the most distinguished ones, on which all the others are dependent. These are the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii. Of these the Pasargadae are the most distinguished. They include the clan of the Achaemenids, from which spring all the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derousiaei, and Germanii, all of whom are farmers; the remainder—the Dai, Mardi, Dropici, and Sagartii—are nomads. 126. When, in obedience to his orders, the Persians arrived with their scythes, Cyrus commanded them, before the day was out, to clear a tract of ground, about eighteen or twenty stades square, covered with thorn bushes.When this was done, he ordered them to come to him on the following day, after taking a bath. Then he collected and slaughtered all his father’s goats, sheep, and cattle, and prepared to entertain the entire Persian army. Wine, too, and the best bread he could find were supplied on that occasion. When the Persians assembled the next day, he invited them to recline on the grass and enjoy themselves. After the feast, Cyrus asked them which they found more to their liking, today’s work or yesterday’s. They replied that the difference was great: yesterday brought them every misery, today every pleasure. Seizing on their reply, Cyrus laid bare his plan, saying, “Fellow Persians, your case stands thus. If you obey me you may enjoy these and

52

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

countless other pleasures without ever engaging in slavish toil; but if you disobey, you will toil endlessly at tasks similar to those of yesterday. Take my advice and recover your freedom. For I believe that I am the man destined to liberate you; and I have no doubt that you are a match for the Medes in war as in everything else. Revolt from Astyages, and do so at once.” 127. The Persians, now that they had found a leader, were glad to shake off the yoke, having long resented their subjection to the Medes. When Astyages learned what Cyrus had done, he dispatched a messenger to summon him. Cyrus sent the messenger back to say that he would be there much sooner than Astyages liked. When he received this message, Astyages armed all his subjects. And godstricken as he was, he appointed Harpagus to be their general, having forgotten how he had injured him.139 When the Medes marched forth and engaged the Persian army, some of them, who had no share in the plot, fought in earnest; others deserted to the Persians; but most played the coward and fled. 128. As soon as he learned that his army had been shamefully dispersed, Astyages issued a threat: “Even so, Cyrus will not rejoice.” Then, having first impaled the Magi who had advised him to let Cyrus go, he armed the Medes, both young and old, who had been left behind in the city, led them out to do battle, and was defeated. He lost his men and was himself taken prisoner. 129. Standing before the captive Astyages, Harpagus exulted and railed over him. Taunting him in particular with the dinner at which Astyages had feasted him on his own son’s flesh, he asked him how he enjoyed being a slave instead of a king. Astyages looked him in the eye and asked whether he was responsible for what Cyrus had done. Harpagus replied that, inasmuch as he had written to Cyrus, the credit for the enterprise was rightfully his own. Then Astyages declared that in that case he was both the most stupid and the most unjust of men: the most stupid, because when he might have been king himself (if the revolt was indeed his doing), he had given the power to somebody else; and the most unjust, if on account of that dinner he had reduced the Medes to slavery. If he had been obliged to give the throne to somebody else, and not keep it himself, it would have been more just to give it to a Mede than to a Persian. Now, however, the Medes, through no fault of their own, had become slaves instead of masters, and the Persians masters of the Medes though they were once their slaves. 130. Thus after reigning for 35 years, Astyages lost his throne; and because of his cruelty, the Medes were brought under the rule of the Persians.They had ruled over Asia beyond the Halys for a 128 years (except for the interval of Scythian domination). At a later period, the Medes regretted their submission and revolted 139. An oddly weak link in a series of tales that are otherwise expertly crafted and retold.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

53

from Darius, but were defeated in battle and again subdued.140 Now, however, in Astyages’ day, the Persians under Cyrus revolted from the Medes and from then on were masters of Asia. Doing Astyages no other harm, Cyrus kept him at court until he died. This, then, is how Cyrus was born and raised, and how he seized the throne and later subjugated Croesus, when the Lydian king (as I have already related) sought to injure him. Once he had subdued Croesus, Cyrus held sway over all of Asia. 131. The Persians, as I have learned, have the following customs. It is not their practice to erect statues and temples and altars. They think foolish those who do so, I gather, because they do not believe as the Greeks do that the gods have the same nature as men. It is their custom to perform sacrifices to Zeus from the tops of mountains; they give the name “Zeus” to the whole circle of the heavens.141 They also sacrifice to the sun, moon, and earth, fire, water, and winds. These are the only gods to whom they have sacrificed from ancient times. At a later period they began to make offerings to Urania,142 whose worship they learned from the Assyrians and Arabians. The Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians Alilat, and the Persians Mitra.143 132. When the Persians sacrifice to the gods I have mentioned, they build no altar and kindle no fire; nor do they use libations, flute-music, garlands, or barleycake. Donning a myrtle tiara, the sacrificer leads his victim to a place that is free of pollution, and there calls upon the god to whom he intends to make an offering. He is not permitted to pray for himself alone. He prays for the welfare of the king, and of the whole Persian community, of which he is necessarily a part.When he has cut the victim into pieces, he boils its flesh. Strewing a bed of the softest vegetation he can find, preferably clover, he lays all the meat upon it. When the offering is in place, a Magus stands beside it and chants a hymn, which they say recounts the origin of the gods. It is not their custom to perform sacrifices without a Magus144 present. After waiting a short time, the sacrificer carries the flesh away with him and does what he pleases with it. 140. An episode not mentioned by Herodotus in his long account of Darius’ reign (3.88–7.1). 141. The Persians at this time worshiped Ahura Mazda as their principal deity (hence their religion is known as Mazdaism), but Greek writers had no difficulty assuming that foreign gods were the same as their own, under different names. 142. “The Celestial One,” an epithet of Aphrodite (see 1.105 above) in her capacity to aid fertility and generation. 143. Herodotus’ knowledge of foreign religions is a mixed bag. Al-Ilat means “the goddess” in Arabic, and Mylitta seems to come from an epithet of Ishtar, the Near Eastern equivalent of Aphrodite. But the inclusion of Mithras in the series (if Mitra refers to that god), a male deity, shows remarkable ignorance on Herodotus’ part. 144. That is, a member of the priestly caste called the Magi.

54

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

133. No day is accorded greater honor by a Persian than his birthday. On that day, it is the custom to take a larger meal than usual. Wealthy Persians will have an ox, a horse, a camel, or a donkey baked whole in the oven, and the poor some smaller animal. They take few main dishes, but many sorts of dessert, which are served at intervals throughout the meal. The Persians say that the Greeks are still hungry after dinner because they never have anything worth mentioning after the main course; whereas if more were put before them, they would go on eating. They are very fond of wine, and no one is allowed to vomit or urinate in another person’s presence. It is also their custom to deliberate on their most important affairs when they are drunk; on the next day, when they are sober, the decision they made the night before is brought forward by their host. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, they set it aside. Conversely, whatever they consider first when sober, they consider anew when drunk. 134. When Persians meet in the streets one can always tell whether or not they are of the same rank. If they are, instead of speaking, they kiss each other on the mouth; if one is a little inferior to the other, the kiss is given on the cheek. A man of greatly inferior rank prostrates himself before the other.145 After themselves, they hold their nearest neighbors in most esteem, and in second place, those next to these, and so on; the farther removed their neighbors are, the less they esteem them. Believing that they are greatly superior in all respects to the rest of mankind, they regard others as approaching excellence in proportion as they live nearer to them; hence they have the lowest opinion of those who live farthest away. The Medes, when they held sway, governed by a similar principle, exercising authority over all their tribes but exerting direct control over those who were closest to them, who in turn governed the tribes on their borders. The Persians adhere to the same principle in distributing honor, governing their subject nations, and delegating authority. 135. The Persians are especially given to adopting foreign customs. They wear Median dress, which they consider more attractive than their own; and in war they wear Egyptian breastplates. As soon as they learn of any pleasure, they are quick to indulge in it, an example being pederasty, which they learned from the Greeks. Each Persian has several wives, and an even greater number of concubines. 136. Second only to bravery in battle, the begetting of many children is viewed as a mark of manly virtue. In the belief that there is strength in numbers, the king bestows gifts each year on the man who begets the most offspring. Their sons are 145. Herodotus here refers to the Persian practice the Greeks called proskunesis, a reverential greeting that might in some cases (especially in a king’s presence) involve self-prostration. His tone here is remarkably neutral given that later Greeks regarded this practice as a form of idolatry and took offense at it.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

55

instructed between the ages of five and twenty in three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth. Until a child is five years old he does not come within sight of his father, but passes his time among the women. This is done so that the child, if it dies in the nursery, occasions its father no distress. 137. I commend this custom and I admire as well the custom which dictates that not even the king himself may put a man to death on one charge only, nor may any other Persian do any of his servants an irreparable injury on a single charge. Instead, a man gives vent to his anger only after he has calculated that the offender’s acts of wrongdoing have been both more numerous and more weighty than the services he has rendered. The Persians maintain that no one has ever yet killed his own father or mother. In the cases where this has apparently happened, they claim that a thorough investigation would show that the child had either been substituted by stealth or born out of wedlock; for it is not likely, they say, that the actual parent could be slain by his son. 138. Whatever they are not permitted to do they are not permitted even to mention. They consider lying to be the most shameful wrong. For many reasons they regard being in debt as the second most shameful wrong, but principally because they claim that the debtor is almost compelled to lie. Any citizen who has leprosy may neither enter the city nor associate with the other Persians; they claim that he must have sinned against the sun. Foreigners who have contracted the disease are forced to leave the country; even white doves are driven away, as guilty of the same offense. They neither urinate, nor spit, nor wash their hands in a river, nor permit anyone else to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers. 139.The following custom has come into use, one that has escaped the Persians’ notice though it has not escaped my own. Their names, which express physical qualities or magnificence, all end with the same letter (to which the Dorians give the name san, the Ionians sigma). Anyone who looks into it will find that Persian names, without exception, end with this letter.146 140. I am able to speak about the above customs precisely, having observed them in person. But the following custom, which concerns the burial of the dead, is not spoken of openly. It is said that the corpse of a Persian man is not buried until it has been torn by a bird or a dog.147 I have accurate knowledge that priests engage in this practice, for they do so openly. The Persians in general, however, cover a body with wax and then bury it in the ground. 146. Herodotus is largely correct on this point if one considers only the Hellenized versions of Persian names. In the Persian language the final letter sounded like “sh” rather than “s.” 147. Exposure of the dead is still practiced by modern-day Zoroastrians in what may be a survival from ancient Persian custom.

56

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

The Magi differ considerably from all other men, and particularly from the Egyptian priests. The latter make it a point of religion to kill no animal except those they sacrifice. The Magi, on the other hand, slaughter all sacrificial victims, except dogs and men, with their own hands, and even invest this practice with competitive zeal. They kill ants and snakes and the other creeping and winged creatures as readily as they do other animals. But since this has been their custom from the beginning, let them keep to it. I will now resume my earlier narrative. 141. The Ionians and Aeolians, as soon as the Lydians had been subjugated by the Persians, sent messengers to Cyrus in Sardis, asking to become his subjects on the same terms as they had had under Croesus. After hearing their proposals, he replied by telling them the story of the flute player who saw some fish in the sea and played his flute to them, hoping they would come out onto the land. When his hope was disappointed, he took a net, cast it around a multitude of fish, and hauled them ashore. Seeing them dancing and leaping about, he said to them, “Quit your dancing now, since you refused to come and dance when I played to you.” Cyrus told the Ionians and Aeolians this story because previously, when he had asked them through ambassadors to revolt from Croesus, they had refused;148 but now that he had managed the business on his own, they were ready to obey him. Cyrus had spoken in anger, and when the news of the incident reached the Ionians, they fortified their cities and held meetings at the Panionium.149 Only with the Milesians did Cyrus conclude a treaty on the terms they had formerly obtained from Croesus.The other Ionians, however, resolved to send ambassadors to Sparta to request assistance.150 142. Of all the peoples we know of, the Ionians whose meeting-place is Panionium had the good fortune to found their cities in a region that enjoys the best climate in the world. For no other region, either to the north or south, or to the east or west, can compare with it; for some are too cold and wet, others too hot and dry. The Ionians do not all speak the same language, but use four distinct dialects. Toward the south their first city is Miletus, next to which lie Myus and Priene. Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedus, Teos, Clazomenae, and Phocaea are in Lydia, and share a dialect distinct from what is spoken in the three cities previously mentioned. Of the three remaining Ionian cities, two are on islands, namely Samos and Chios, and one, Erythrae, is on the mainland. Chios and Erythrae have the same dialect, while Samos has one peculiar to itself. These are the four varieties of the Ionian dialect. 143. Of the Ionians at that period, only the Milesians were in no danger, since they had made an alliance with Cyrus. The islanders, too, had no cause for 148. See 1.76 above. 149. Described at 1.143 below. 150. Sparta being the most powerful of the European Greek states at this time.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

57

concern, since the Phoenicians were not yet subject to Persia, and the Persians themselves were not seafarers.151 The Milesians had separated from the other Ionian cities solely because of the general weakness of the Hellenic people at that time, and particularly that of the Ionians, who were by far the weakest and least noteworthy of the Greek tribes, since they possessed no notable city except Athens. The Ionians of Greece, including the Athenians, were reluctant to be called Ionians, and shunned the name. Even now, most of them seem to me to be ashamed of it. The twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor, on the other hand, gloried in the name;152 they gave the temple they built for themselves the name Panionium,153 and decreed that none of the other Ionians should share it with them (though no city but Smyrna ever asked to be admitted). 144. The Dorians of Pentapolis154 (formerly Hexapolis) do something similar. They refuse to admit their neighbors to their temple, the Triopium;155 what is more, they even ban those of their own people who failed to honor its traditions. At the games of Triopian Apollo, they used to give bronze tripods as prizes, and the victors were not allowed to take them away but were required to dedicate them there to the god. Agasicles of Halicarnassus, however, after winning a victory, openly violated the custom. Taking the tripod home, he fastened it on the wall of his house. Because of this offense, the five cities of Lindus, Ialyssus, Camirus, Cos, and Cnidus excluded Halicarnassus, the sixth Dorian city, from their temple.156 145. It seems to me that the Ionians built twelve cities and were unwilling to admit any more because they had earlier been divided into twelve states when they lived in the Peloponnese, just as the Achaeans, who drove them out, are today.157 The first city of the Achaeans after Sicyon is Pallene; next comes Aegira, 151. Later, after the Phoenicians were absorbed into the Persian empire, they supplied it with the ships and crewmen it needed to mount naval assaults. 152. Herodotus here uses “Ionians” in both an ethnic and geographic sense, while explaining how the two meanings parted ways. Athens was “Ionian” in dialect and lineage (tracing its mythic origins to Ion) but did not wish to be identified with its weak and disorganized kinsmen in Asia, and thus rejected the appellation “Ionian,” which was retained by the Asian Greek cities. 153. Its site was on the Turkish coast opposite Samos, about midway between Miletus and Ephesus. 154. The “five-city” league formed by Dorian settlements on the islands off southwest Turkey (Cos, Cnidus and Rhodes). 155. A shrine once located at the western tip of Cnidus. 156. Herodotus gives no indication here of allegiance to Halicarnassus, his home city. 157. The term “Achaeans” is used here to denote the inhabitants of Achaea, the northern region of the Peloponnese. Herodotus subscribes to the theory that this region had been settled by Ionians but was later invaded by the peoples who lived there in his own day. The Ionians had fled and, after passing some time in Athens, relocated to Asia, founding twelve cities to match the twelve they had left.

58

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

then Agae on the Crathis, a river that never runs dry, and from which the river in Italy received its name; then Bura and Helice (where the Ionians took refuge after their defeat by the Achaeans); then Aegium, Rhypes, Patres, Phares, and Olenus (where the large Pirus flows); and finally Dyme and Tritaees, the latter being the only inland city. 146. These are the twelve divisions of what is now Achaea, but was formerly Ionia; and it was because they came from a country so divided that the Ionians, on reaching Asia, built twelve cities. It is a great folly to maintain that these Ionians are more Ionian than the others, or better born,158 since no small portion of them were Abantians from Euboea, who are not even Ionians in name; furthermore, the emigration included Minyae of Orchomenus, Cadmeians, Dryopes, Phocaeans from various cities in Phocis, Molossians, Pelasgian Arcadians, Dorians from Epidaurus, and many others. Even those who started from the Prytaneum in Athens,159 and consider themselves the purest Ionians of all, brought no wives with them to their colony but married Carian girls, whose fathers they had killed. Hence these women established a law, which they swore an oath to obey, and which they handed down to their daughters after them, that they would never sit at the table with their husbands, or address them by name, because these men had murdered their fathers, husbands, and sons, and then forced them to become their wives. This took place in Miletus. 147. Some of the Ionians offered their allegiance to Lycian kings, who were descended from Glaucus, son of Hippolochus; others became subjects of Caucones from Pylos, who were descended from Codrus, son of Melanthus; still others were ruled by men from both those families. But since these Ionians are more inclined to embrace the name than any of the others, let them pass for the purebred Ionians; though all who originate from Athens and celebrate the festival of Apaturia160 are Ionians. All the Ionians celebrate the festival except the Ephesians and Colophonians, who are excluded because of a murder. 148. The Panionium is a sacred place in Mycale, facing north, which was chosen by common consent of the Ionians and dedicated to Heliconian Poseidon.161 Mycale itself is a promontory of the mainland jutting out westward towards Samos. It was here that the Ionians assembled from their various cities to celebrate 158. Herodotus’ own mixed Doric and Carian origins may play a part in this harsh critique of Ionian claims of ethnic purity. 159. The building which housed the state hearth of Athens, from which fire was taken to kindle the hearths of colonial settlements. 160. A three-day fall festival by which Ionian cities sought to stress their common ethnic identity. 161.The epithet “Heliconian” seems to connect this version of Poseidon with the city of Helice in Achaea, supporting the idea that the Ionians had come from Achaea (see note 157 to 1.146).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

59

the festival called the Panionia. The names of festivals, not only among the Ionians but among all the Greeks, end, like the Persian proper names, in the same letter. 149. These, then, are the Ionian cities. The Aeolian cities162 are Cyme (also known as Phriconis), Larissa, Neonteichus, Temnus, Cilla, Notion, Aegiroessa, Pitane, Aegaeae, Myrina, and Grynea. These are the eleven ancient cities of the Aeolians. Originally, in fact, they had twelve on the mainland, like the Ionians, but one of them, Smyrna, was taken from them by the Ionians.The Aeolians settled on land that is more fertile than that of Ionia, though the climate is not as agreeable. 150. The Aeolians lost Smyrna in the following way. The Smyrnians had received into the city some men from Colophon, who had been defeated in a civil clash and banished. The fugitives, biding their time until the Smyrnians were celebrating a festival of Dionysus outside the walls, shut the gates and got possession of the city. The Aeolians of the other states came to the Smyrnians’ aid, and terms were agreed on whereby the Ionians would return all the movable property, and the Aeolians would surrender the town. The expelled Smyrnians were distributed among the other Aeolian states, where they were admitted to citizenship. 151. These, then, were the eleven Aeolian cities on the mainland, with the exception of those around Mount Ida, which were not part of the confederacy. As for the islands, Lesbos has five cities (the sixth, Arisba, was taken by the Methymnaeans, their kinsmen, and its inhabitants enslaved), Tenedos one, and the so-called Hundred Islands one more. The Aeolians of Lesbos and Tenedos, like the Ionian islanders, had at that time nothing to fear. The other Aeolians, by common consent, agreed to follow the Ionians wherever they should lead. 152. When the Ionian and Aeolian ambassadors reached Sparta163 (they had sailed without delay), they chose Pythermus, a Phocaean, as their spokesman. In order to draw as large an audience a possible, Pythermus dressed himself in purple clothes, came forward, and made a long speech asking for Spartan aid. But the Spartans were not to be persuaded and refused to help the Ionians. The ambassadors departed, but the Spartans, though they had rejected the Ionians’ request, sent a delegation to Asia Minor in a penteconter.164 Its members had been instructed (or so I suppose) to gather intelligence about Cyrus and the Ionians. These men, on their arrival at Phocaea, sent Lacrines, the most distinguished of their number, to forbid Cyrus, on behalf of the Spartans, to harm any Greek city, since they would not tolerate it. 162. The Aeolian cities (those on Lesbos and the Turkish coast opposite) shared a common dialect and ethnicity but apparently not, as the Dorian and Ionian cities did, a shrine at which members of all affiliated states could gather. 163. Herodotus here resumes the story of Greek relations with Cyrus from the point he had reached at 1.141. 164. A kind of warship propelled by fifty rowers.

60

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

153. When the herald had delivered this message, Cyrus is said to have asked some Greeks who happened to be with him who these Spartan Greeks were and how great their numbers that they dared to send him such a command. On being informed, he said to the Spartan herald, “I have never yet feared the sort of men who have a set place in the middle of their city where they come together and cheat each another under oath. If I live, such people will not have the Ionians’ troubles to chatter about, but their own.” Cyrus uttered these words as a criticism of all the Greeks because they have marketplaces for buying and selling. For the Persians themselves do not use marketplaces, nor do they have in their whole country a single marketplace. After this, Cyrus left Tabalus, a Persian, as governor of Sardis, and appointed Pactyes, a Lydian, to collect the treasure that had belonged to Croesus and the Lydians. He himself departed for Ecbatana, taking Croesus with him, considering the Ionians not important enough to be his first object. For Babylon was in his way, as were the Bactrians, the Sacae, and the Egyptians, against whom he intended to lead an expedition in person. He would send some other commander to march against the Ionians. 154. As soon as Cyrus had left Sardis, Pactyes incited the Lydians to rise up against Cyrus and Tabalus. In possession of all the gold in Sardis, he went down to the sea, where he hired mercenaries and persuaded the people of the coast to join his army. He then marched against Sardis and laid siege to Tabalus, who was shut up in the citadel. 155. When Cyrus, en route to Babylon, learned of the revolt, he spoke to Croesus. “Where will all this end, Croesus? Clearly, the Lydians will not stop causing trouble both for me and for themselves. I wonder whether it may not be best to reduce them to slavery. In the present instance, at any rate, my actions have resembled those of someone who, on killing a father, spares the man’s children. So I, on laying hold of you (who are rather more than a father to the Lydians), entrust them with the city and then am surprised they have revolted from me!” Cyrus was speaking his mind, and Croesus, fearing that Sardis might lie in ruins, replied as follows: “Sire, what you say is reasonable; nevertheless I beg you not to give full vent to your anger, or destroy an ancient city that is innocent of past and present mischief. Of earlier mischief I am myself the cause, and the responsibility is on my own head. In the present instance, the offender is Pactyes, to whom you entrusted Sardis. Let him pay the penalty. As for the Lydians, forgive them—but at the same time, to make sure of their never rebelling or posing any danger to you, do as I suggest. Forbid them to keep any weapons of war, command them to wear tunics under their clothes and to don high boots, and make them teach their sons to play the lyre and harp, and to be shopkeepers. Soon, sire, you will see that they have become women instead of men, and there will be no more danger of their revolting from you.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

61

156. Croesus gave this advice because he thought the Lydians would be better off under such conditions than if they were sold into slavery. He understood that unless he presented some meaningful suggestion he would not persuade Cyrus to change his mind. He was also afraid that the Lydians, if they escaped on the present occasion, might perish in a future revolt from the Persians. The advice pleased Cyrus, who agreed to forego his anger and do as Croesus had advised. Summoning Mazares, a Mede, he instructed him to issue orders to the Lydians along the lines Croesus had suggested, and to sell into slavery everyone who had joined the Lydians in their attack on Sardis, and above all to bring Pactyes to him alive. Having given these orders, Cyrus continued his journey toward Persian territory. 157. Pactyes, when he learned that the army sent against him was nearby, fled in terror to Cyme. Mazares the Mede, who led a detachment of Cyrus’ army to Sardis, found on his arrival that Pactyes and his confederates had fled. The first thing he did was to force the Lydians to obey Cyrus’ orders—as a result of which the Lydians changed their entire way of life. He then sent messengers to Cyme, and demanded the surrender of Pactyes. The Cymaeans decided to send to Branchidae and ask the advice of the god. Branchidae is in Milesian territory, above the harbor of Panormus. There was an oracle there, established in ancient times, which the Ionians and Aeolians often consulted. 158. The messengers from Cyme were instructed to ask what course of action concerning Pactyes would be pleasing to the gods. The oracle told them, in reply, that they should surrender Pactyes to the Persians. The messengers returned with this answer, and the citizens of Cyme were ready to surrender him; but a distinguished citizen, Aristodicus, son of Heraclides, hindered them. He said that he distrusted the response, and believed that the messengers had reported it falsely. The result of this was that a second embassy, of which Aristodicus was a member, was sent to repeat the question about Pactyes. 159. When they arrived at Branchidae, Aristodicus, acting as their spokesman, asked the oracle this question: “Lord Apollo, Pactyes the Lydian has come to us as a suppliant, fleeing violent death at the hands of the Persians, who are now demanding that we surrender him. Though we fear the Persian power, we have not thus far dared to surrender the suppliant until you give us clear instructions as to how we should act.” The oracle gave the same answer as before, namely that Pactyes should be surrendered to the Persians. Aristodicus, however, who had expected this answer, proceeded to go all around the outside of the temple, chasing away all the sparrows and other birds that were nesting there. The story goes that while he was doing so, a voice issued from the innermost sanctuary, saying, “Most impious of men, how dare you attack my suppliants and drive them from my temple?” Undaunted, Aristodicus replied, “Lord, do you protect your suppliants, yet tell the Cymaeans to abandon theirs?” “Yes,” replied the god.

62

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

“Indeed I do, so that you may perish the sooner for your impiety, and not come here again to consult my oracle about the surrender of suppliants.” 160. When they received this answer the Cymaeans, who had no wish either to be destroyed for surrendering Pactyes or to be besieged for keeping him, sent him to Mytilene; and the Mytilenaeans, receiving a demand from Mazares, were about to surrender Pactyes for a sum of money (how much I cannot say, as the transaction was not completed), when the Cymaeans, hearing what the Mytilenaeans intended to do, sent a boat to Lesbos and took Pactyes off to Chios. There he was dragged by the Chians from the temple of Athena the Protectress and surrendered to the Persians. In exchange the Chians received the district of Atarneus, a tract of land in Mysia opposite Lesbos. Once the Persians had Pactyes in custody, they kept him under guard, intending to present him to Cyrus. For a long time afterward no Chian would use the barley-meal of Atarneus to sprinkle on the heads of victims, or make sacrificial cakes from the grain grown there; in fact the entire produce of the land was excluded from all their temples. 161. After Pactyes had been surrendered by the Chians, Mazares made war on those who had taken part in besieging Tabalus. He sold the inhabitants of Priene into slavery, after which he overran the whole plain of the Maeander and the district of Magnesia, both of which he turned over to his soldiers to plunder. Then he suddenly fell ill and died. 162. Another Mede came out as his successor in the command, namely Harpagus, the man to whom the Median king Astyages had served an unlawful meal, and who had helped put Cyrus on the throne. Appointed general by Cyrus, Harpagus arrived in Ionia and set about capturing the cities by means of earthworks. He would force the defenders to shut themselves up inside their fortifications, heap a mound of earth against the wall, and thus capture the city.165 The first Ionian city he attacked was Phocaea. 163. The Phocaeans166 were the first Greeks to undertake distant sea voyages, and it was they who acquainted the Greeks with the Adriatic, Tyrrhenia, Iberia, and Tartessus. They made their voyages not in round-shaped vessels but in penteconters. On their arrival at Tartessus,167 they grew friendly with the king of the Tartessians, Arganthonius, who ruled Tartessus for 80 years, and lived to be a 120 years old. Arganthonius grew so fond of the Phocaeans that he urged them to 165. Greek walled cities had up to this point been more or less impregnable. The Persians brought new technologies and a vast supply of manpower to bear against them and thus changed the equation in siege warfare. 166. The digressive pattern of Herodotus’ storytelling is by now becoming familiar: Each time a new city or nation enters the narrative, we turn back the clock to learn about its origins or early history. 167. A Phoenician city on the Iberian coast just west of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

63

abandon Ionia and settle wherever they wished in his country. When he could not persuade them to adopt this course, he gave them money to build a wall around their city, having learned from them that the Mede’s power was growing; and he must have given unsparingly, for the wall is many stades long and built entirely of huge stones compactly fitted together. 164. When Harpagus led his army against the Phocaeans, whose fortifications were built in the way I have described, and laid siege to their city, he sent them word that he would be satisfied if they tore down only one rampart of their wall and sacrificed one dwelling. Chafing at the prospect of slavery, the Phocaeans said they wished to deliberate for one day before answering, and asked him to lead his army away on that day. Harpagus granted their request, though he said he knew perfectly well what they intended to do. Accordingly the troops were withdrawn, and the Phocaeans hauled their penteconters down to the sea, put aboard their children, wives, and movable property, including the statues from their temples and other votive offerings (except painted images or offerings made of bronze or stone), and sailed for Chios. The Persians thus took possession of an empty town. 165.When the Phocaeans made an offer for the islands known as the Oenussae, the Chians refused to sell them, afraid that they would become a trading place, and their own merchants would be excluded from the market. Then the Phocaeans, since Arganthonius was now dead, prepared to sail for Corsica, where years earlier, on the advice of an oracle, they had founded a city called Alalia. But before sailing for Corsica they returned to Phocaea and murdered the Persian garrison left in charge by Harpagus. They then laid heavy curses on any man who declined to join their expedition. They also threw a mass of red-hot iron into the sea and swore that they would never return to Phocaea until that mass reappeared.168 Yet when they were preparing to depart for Corsica, more than half of them were so overcome with regret and longing for their city and their ancient homes that they violated their oath and sailed back to Phocaea. The others kept their oath and set sail from the Oenussae. 166. When they reached Corsica, they lived for five years with the earlier settlers and built temples in the town. During that time they so harassed their neighbors by raiding and plundering their settlements that the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians united to attack them, each with sixty ships. The Phocaeans manned sixty ships of their own, and went out to engage their enemies on the Sardinian sea. In the battle that ensued the Phocaeans prevailed, but their success was a Cadmeian victory,169 since forty of their ships were destroyed and the twenty that remained came out of the engagement with their beaks so badly bent as to render them unfit for service. Sailing down to Alalia, the Phocaeans picked 168. In ancient Greece, a common way of demonstrating the irrevocability of an oath. 169. Proverbial for a victory won at too great a cost, like our “Pyrrhic victory.”

64

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

up their children and wives and as many of their other possessions as their ships could carry, and sailed from Corsica to Rhegium.170 167. The Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians drew lots for the possession of the prisoners from the ships that were sunk. Of the Tyrrhenians, the Agyllaeans obtained by far the largest share. Taking them ashore they stoned them to death. Thereafter, any living creature belonging to the Agyllaeans that passed the place where the murdered Phocaeans lay—sheep, ox, or man—became deformed, crippled, or palsied. Wishing to expiate their crime, the Agyllaeans sent to Delphi. The Pythian priestess ordered them to begin the custom, which they observe to this day, of honoring the dead Phocaeans with a magnificent funeral ceremony, and competitions, both gymnastic and equestrian. Such was the fate of the Phocaeans captured in the sea battle. Those who fled to Rhegium made that city the base from which they later got possession of the Oenotrian city known today as Elea. They founded the city after learning from a Posidonian man that the Pythian priestess had not meant them to found a city on the island of Corsica, but rather to institute the worship of the hero of that name.171 So much for the Ionian city of Phocaea. 168. The people of Teos did almost the same. For they too, when Harpagus took their wall by means of his earthworks, boarded their vessels and sailed for Thrace, where they colonized the city of Abdera. Timesius the Clazomenaean had tried to settle there earlier, though without success, as he was driven out by the Thracians. He is honored to this day as a hero by the Teians of Abdera. 169. The Phocaeans and Teians were the only Ionians who left their homelands rather than submit to slavery. All of them, except the Milesians, resisted Harpagus as the Phocaeans and Teians had done, fought bravely in defense of their respective cities, but were defeated. Their cities were taken, and they were forced to submit to the Persians. The Milesians, as I mentioned earlier, having made terms with Cyrus, continued to live in peace. In this way Ionia was once again reduced to servitude. And when Harpagus had defeated the Ionians on the mainland, the islanders took fright and gave themselves up to Cyrus. 170. Despite their defeat the Ionians continued to assemble at the Panionium, and I am told that Bias of Priene172 made a highly practical suggestion which, had it been taken, would have made them the most prosperous of the Greeks. He urged the Ionians to unite, sail to Sardinia, and settle in a single pan-Ionian city. There, freed from servitude, inhabiting the largest of all the islands, and holding sway 170. Rhegium is on the southern tip of Italy, a region settled by Greek colonists at this time. 171. Cyrnus was both the name of a mythic hero (a son of Heracles) and the Greek name for the island of Corsica.The point of the anecdote is to exonerate the oracle mentioned at 1.165, by which the Phocaeans had originally sought a new home on Corsica. 172. See note 39 on 1.27 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

65

over the others, they would prosper; whereas if they remained in Ionia, he saw no prospect of their ever recovering their freedom. This proposal was made by Bias after the Ionian defeat. But at an earlier period, another good proposal had been made by Thales of Miletus, a Phoenician by descent. He recommended that they establish a common center of government at Teos (since Teos lies at the center of Ionia), and that the other cities be governed as if they were townships. Such were the two proposals. 171. After subduing Ionia, Harpagus proceeded to attack the Carians, Caunians, and Lycians, forcing the Ionians and Aeolians to serve in his army. The Carians came to the mainland from the islands. In ancient times, when they inhabited the islands, they were known as Leleges and were subjects of Minos.173 They paid no tribute, as far as I have been able to gather, but manned Minos’ ships whenever he needed them. And since Minos had conquered extensive territory and succeeded in his wars, the Carians were the most famous nation by far in his day. The Greeks borrowed three of their inventions. The Carians taught them how to fasten crests on helmets, put devices on shields, and equip shields with handles. Previously, everyone who used a shield managed it not by a handle, but by means of a leather thong slung around the neck and left shoulder.174 Many years later the Carians were driven from the islands by the Dorians and Ionians, and settled on the mainland. That is the account the Cretans give of the Carians. The Carians themselves deny it, and claim to have been mainlanders originally and never to have been called by any other name than their present one. They point to an ancient temple of Carian Zeus at Mylasa, which the Mysians and Lydians share with them, as brother races to the Carians. For Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car.175 These nations share the temple; but others, even those who use the same language as the Carians, are excluded from it. 172. The Caunians, it seems to me, are indigenous, though they claim to be from Crete. In their language they have come to resemble the Carians, or the Carians them—for I cannot decide the question with any certainty. In their customs, however, they differ greatly from the Carians and from all other men. For they think it highly honorable for friends or age-mates—whether men, women, or children—to assemble for drinking parties.What is more, they decided on one occasion to reject the foreign cults they had established, and to worship only their own ancestral gods. Then all the Caunians, from the youth upward, took up arms

173. Mythic king of Crete who ruled over an extensive naval empire. 174. This is indeed the method by which the Homeric “tower” shield, rectangular rather than circular, was wielded. 175. Mythic ancestors of the Lydians, Mysians and Carians.

66

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

and marched as far as the border of Calynda,176 striking the air with their spears and saying that they were expelling the foreign gods. 173. The Lycians came originally from Crete, which in ancient times was occupied entirely by barbarians. When the two sons of Europa, Sarpedon and Minos, quarreled over the throne, Minos, who prevailed, expelled Sarpedon along with his partisans.177 The exiles reached the land of Milyas in Asia. For the land the Lycians now inhabit was known as Milyas at that time, and its inhabitants were called Solymi. During Sarpedon’s reign, the Lycians were known as the Termilae, the name they had brought with them from Crete—and which is still in use among their neighbors. But after Lycus, son of Pandion, was driven out of Athens by his brother Aegeus, and had taken refuge with Sarpedon and the Termilae, the Lycians, in the course of time, adopted his name and came to be called Lycians. Their customs are partly Cretan, partly Carian. But they have one custom that they share with no other nation. They take the mother’s and not the father’s name. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he will tell you his own name and his mother’s, then his grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s and so on. And if a free woman has a child by a slave, their children are considered legitimate; but if a free man, however distinguished he may be, has a foreign wife or concubine, their children have no rights of citizenship. 174. The Carians, then, were subdued by Harpagus; and neither they nor any of the Greeks who lived in that region performed any brilliant exploits. Among them were the Cnidians, colonists from Lacedaemon,178 who inhabit a coastal district called Triopium. This region adjoins the Bybassian peninsula, and except for a narrow neck is surrounded by the sea. For it is bounded on the north by the Cerameian Gulf, and on the south by the sea off Syme and Rhodes. While Harpagus was subduing Ionia, the Cnidians, hoping to turn their country into an island, were trying to dig through this narrow neck of land, which is over half a mile across.179 Their whole territory is contained within the peninsula; the isthmus they were trying to dig through lies just where it ends on the mainland side. A large number of Cnidians were working at it, but as there appeared to be an unusually high incidence of injury—injury to the eye in particular, from the splintering of the rock—and as the injuries appeared strangely providential, they sent to Delphi to ask what it was that was

176. A city in southwest Turkey that borders on the territory of Caunus. 177. Herodotus (or his source) has allowed a confusion of names to dictate ethnic origins. Mythic heroes named Sarpedon were linked to both Crete and Lycia, but Herodotus has conflated the two and made the Lycians derive from Crete. 178. The region around Sparta. 179. Herodotus gives a figure about a third less than the actual length.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

67

hindering their work. They claim that the priestess gave them the following answer in trimeter verse: Gird not the isthmus with towers nor dig it through; Zeus would have made an island, had that been his wish. Having received this answer, the Cnidians stopped digging, and surrendered without a battle at the approach of Harpagus and his army. 175. The Pedasees lived inland, above Halicarnassus. Whenever any harm was about to befall them and their neighbors, their priestess of Athena would grow a long beard. This occurred three times. The Pedasees were the only Carians who resisted Harpagus for any length of time. They gave him a good deal of trouble by holding out behind the defenses they erected on a mountain called Lida. But in time they also were conquered. 176. When Harpagus led his army into the Xanthian plain, the Lycians of Xanthus went out against him, though outnumbered, and fought valiantly. Overpowered at last, and forced within their walls, they gathered their wives, children, treasure, and slaves into the citadel, set fire to it, and burned it to the ground. Then, having bound themselves by strong oaths, they came out against the enemy. They all died fighting. The Lycians who now claim to be Xanthians are foreign immigrants, except for eighty families who happened to be away from home at the time and consequently survived. In this way Xanthus was taken by Harpagus. Caunus fell in the same way, since the Caunians for the most part followed the example of the Lycians. 177. While Harpagus was devastating the lower parts of Asia, Cyrus himself attended to the upper regions,180 subjugating every nation and letting no one escape. I will pass over most of these conquests and describe only those campaigns that gave him the most trouble and are most worthy of mention. 178. When Cyrus had subdued the rest of the continent, he advanced against the Assyrians. There are doubtless many great cities in Assyria, but the most famous and strongest at that time was Babylon, in which the royal palace was established after the fall of Nineveh.181 The city lies in a broad plain, and is an exact square, a 120 stades on each side, so that the entire perimeter measures 480 stades. Besides its enormous size, it surpasses in magnificence any city known to 180. Like most Greek writers, Herodotus uses the terms “upper” and “lower” to denote “inland” and “coastal” regions, since the coastline of almost every landmass is at its lowest elevation. 181. Herodotus mistakenly considers the period of Babylonian ascendancy called the NeoBabylonian Empire to be continuous with the Assyrian period that preceded it (and that ended with the destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C.). He even suggests that the “royal palace” was simply relocated from one capital to the other. Modern historians place a sharp dividing line between the two.

68

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

us. It is surrounded by a broad deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall 50 royal cubits in width, 200 in height.182 (The royal cubit is longer than a common cubit by three fingerbreadths.) 179. I must also describe how the Babylonians used the soil dug from the moat, and the method of building the wall. As they were digging, the soil they excavated was made into bricks; and when a sufficient number were produced, they baked them in kilns. Using hot bitumen for mortar, they built up the sides of the moat, and then went on to build the actual wall, interposing a layer of reed mats at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, near its extremities, they erected one-roomed buildings facing one another, leaving enough space between them for a four-horse chariot to pass. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of them bronze, with bronze side-posts and lintels. An eight days’ journey from Babylon there is a city called Is. It has a small river of the same name that empties into the Euphrates, and in this river lumps of bitumen are found in abundance. This was the source of supply for the bitumen used in building the wall of Babylon. 180. The city is divided into two districts by the river that runs through it. Broad, deep, and swift, the Euphrates flows from Armenia and empties into the Persian Gulf.The city wall is brought down to the water on both sides.Then, from its corners, a dry wall of baked bricks is carried along each bank. The city is filled with houses three and four stories high. The streets all run in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets that lead down to the water. At the river end of these cross-streets, a little gate has been set into the dry wall. These gates are made of bronze and open onto the water. 181. The outer wall is the city’s fortification. But there is a second inner wall, not weaker than the other, though narrower. There is a fortress in the middle of each district. In one stood the royal palace, surrounded by a wall of great strength; in the other was the sanctuary of Zeus Belus,183 a square building, two stades on each side, with bronze gates. It was still in existence in my day. At its center there is a solid tower, one stade square, upon which was erected a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path that winds around all the towers. At about the halfway point there is a halting place supplied with seats, where those who are ascending may pause to rest. On the topmost tower there is a large temple, and inside stands a couch of unusual size, richly covered, with a golden table beside it. There is no statue set up in 182. These measurements are hugely exaggerated, but in some other respects, Herodotus’ descriptions of Babylon accord with archaeological remains. Scholars are divided on the question of whether Herodotus had seen Babylon with his own eyes. 183. Bel or Ba’al, also called Marduk, was the chief god of Babylon. The building Herodotus here describes is a Babylonian ziggurat temple devoted to Bel, called Etemenanki.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

69

this temple, nor does anyone pass the night there except, as the Chaldaeans (the priests of Bel) affirm, a native woman, whom the god chooses from among all the women of the land. 182. These priests also say (though I do not find it credible) that the god himself comes to the temple and sleeps on the couch. A similar story is told by the Egyptians at Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of Theban Zeus, and is forbidden, like the woman in the temple at Babylon, to have any intercourse with men. There is another instance of this in the Lycian town of Patara, where the priestess who delivers the oracles when required (for there is no permanent oracle there) is shut up in the temple during the night. 183. In the temple of Babylon there is a lower shrine that houses an enormous golden statue of Zeus.184 The table placed beside it is made of gold, as are the statue’s base and Zeus’ throne. According to the Chaldeans, 800 talents of gold were used in the manufacture of these objects. Outside the temple there is a golden altar. There is another altar, of great size, on which full-grown animals are sacrificed. Only sucklings may be sacrificed on the golden altar, but on the larger one the Chaldeans offer the god 1,000 talents of frankincense at his annual festival. In Cyrus’ day, there was also in this building the statue of a man, twelve cubits tall and made of solid gold. I did not see it myself; I merely relate what the Chaldeans report about it. Darius, son of Hystaspes, though he had designs on it, did not dare remove it; but Xerxes, son of Darius, did take it and killed the priest who tried to stop him. In addition to the ornaments I have mentioned, the temple contains many private votive offerings. 184. Many rulers of Babylon have helped to fortify the city and adorn its temples. (I will tell their stories in my history of Assyria.)185 Among them were two queens. The earlier, whose name was Semiramis,186 preceded the later by five generations. She raised certain remarkable embankments in the plain near Babylon; these were built to control the river, which until then used to flood the entire plain. 185. The later queen, Nitocris,187 was cleverer than Semiramis, and not only left as a memorial of her reign the works I will soon describe, but also, observing the vast and expanding power of the Medes, and the many cities they had captured, including Nineveh, took every possible measure to bolster her defenses. 184. Having already identified Bel as Zeus with the title “Zeus Belus,” Herodotus now refers to him simply as Zeus. The “lower shrine” described here is probably the temple known to the Babylonians as Esagila. 185. Whether Herodotus here refers to a separate treatise or a section of the Histories, there is no evidence that he ever wrote this “Assyrian history.” 186. The Assyrian Sammu-ramat, who held power (probably as a regent) around 800 B.C. 187. Efforts to link this impressive woman with a historical figure have thus far been unsuccessful.

70

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

For instance, she changed the course of the Euphrates, which flows through Babylon. Formerly its course was straight; but by certain excavations that she made upstream, she transformed it into a river so winding that it arrives three times at an Assyrian village known as Ardericca. And to this day, anyone who travels from the Mediterranean to Babylon and sails down the Euphrates touches three times at Ardericca in the course of a three days’ voyage. She also built an embankment along each side of the river, remarkable both for strength and height, and excavated a basin for a lake far above Babylon, close to the river. The depth of the basin was determined by the point where the excavators reached water as they dug down. The queen used the soil from the excavation to build up the river embankments. When the basin was finished, she had stones brought in and used them to border the entire margin of the lake. These two things were done, the river diverted, and the lake excavated, so that the stream might flow more slowly (its course interrupted by many bends), and the voyage be rendered circuitous; and at the end of it, travelers would still have to make their way around the lake. She built these works near the approaches to Assyria and the direct route to Media, so that the Medes would be prevented from fraternizing with her people and becoming too knowledgeable about her country’s affairs. 186. While fortifying her city by means of excavations, she engaged in another undertaking, a sort of byproduct of those I have described. The city, as I said, was divided by the river into two districts. Under the former rulers, anyone who wanted to pass from one to the other had to cross in a boat, and this must have been a nuisance. Accordingly, while Nitocris was excavating the lake, she had the foresight to make that work a means of removing the inconvenience as well as of leaving another monument of her reign. She gave orders for the cutting of huge stone blocks; and when these were ready and the excavation complete, she diverted the river into the basin. And while the basin was filling and the old riverbed was drying up, she built with baked bricks an embankment on each side of the river where it flowed through the city, and also along the descents to the water from the little gates at the end of the side streets. (She used the same pattern of brickwork that had been used for the wall.) Then, at a site somewhere near the city’s center, she built a bridge over the river with the blocks she had prepared, using iron and lead to bind them together. During the day, she had wooden planks laid between the bridge’s piers, so that the Babylonians could cross the river. But at night they were removed to prevent people from going back and forth and stealing from one another. When the basin had been filled and the bridge finished, the river was turned back into its original bed. Thus the basin had been made to serve a useful purpose, and the townspeople were provided with a bridge. 187. This same queen also devised the following ruse. She had a tomb made for herself over one of the main gateways of the city, and had these words engraved upon it: “If any future king of Babylon finds himself short of money, let him open

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

71

this tomb and take as much as he likes—not, however, until he is truly in want, for it will not be for his good.” The tomb remained undisturbed until the throne passed to Darius. The Persian king was indignant that he could not use one of the gates (for he had no wish to drive directly under the corpse); he also thought it absurd not to take the money when it was lying there asking to be taken. So he opened the tomb; but instead of money, he found only the corpse and a message that said, “Unless you were insatiable for money and indecently greedy, you would not have opened the tomb of the dead.” Such was the character of the queen, according to report. 188. Cyrus was marching against this woman’s son,188 who, like his father, was named Labynetus189 and was king of Assyria. When the great king goes to war, he is always supplied not only with food and cattle from home, but also with water from the Choaspes, a river that flows past Susa. The king drinks the water of no other river. Great numbers of mule-drawn four-wheeled wagons, conveying silver jars that contain boiled water from the Choaspes, accompany him wherever he goes. 189. On his march to Babylon, Cyrus came to the river Gyndes, which rises in the Matienian mountains, runs through the country of the Dardanes, and empties into the river Tigris. Flowing past the city of Opis, it empties into the Red Sea.190 When Cyrus reached this river, which could only be crossed in boats, one of his sacred white horses, a mettlesome creature, stepped into the water to start across, and the river’s swift current swept the animal under water and carried it away. Cyrus was so furious with the river for its effrontery that he threatened it, declaring that he would make it so weak that in future even women could cross it easily without wetting their knees. He postponed his march to Babylon and divided his army into two parts. Then he marked out on each side of the river 180 channels running in all directions and ordered his army to dig. As he had a large force of men at his disposal, Cyrus managed to finish the job, but not until they spent the entire summer working on it. 190. Having punished the Gyndes by dividing it into 360 channels, Cyrus waited for the first signs of spring and resumed his march to Babylon. The Babylonians had encamped outside their wall and were awaiting his approach. A battle was fought near the city, in which the Babylonians were defeated and forced to retire inside their defenses. Long familiar with Cyrus’ restlessness, having observed him attacking one nation after another, they had stocked their city with a food supply sufficient to support them for many years. So they were taking the 188. After his excursus on the city of Babylon, Herodotus resumes the narrative from the point he had reached at 1.178 above. 189. See note on 1.74. 190. See note 3 on 1.1.

72

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

siege in stride, whereas Cyrus found himself in difficulties. For time was passing with no progress to show for it. 191. Finally, whether someone else advised him in his perplexity, or he himself perceived what had to be done, he proceeded as follows. Posting part of his force at the point where the river flows into the city, and other troops at the opposite end where it flows out, he ordered the soldiers to enter the town by the riverbed as soon as the water was shallow enough. Then, taking with him all his men who were unfit for combat, he withdrew to the place where Nitocris had excavated the basin, and did exactly as she had done formerly. He turned the river by a channel into the lake, which was then a marsh, whereupon the river sank to such an extent that the stream became formidable. When the level of the Euphrates had subsided to about the middle of a man’s thigh, the Persians who had been posted before and behind the city entered Babylon. Had the Babylonians been informed of what Cyrus was doing, or had they noticed their danger, they could have let the Persians enter and then, by locking all the little gates that gave access to the river, and mounting the walls along both sides of the stream, they could have caught the Persians like fish in a barrel. But as it turned out, they were taken by surprise. The Babylonians themselves say that owing to the great size of the city the outskirts were captured without the people in the center knowing anything about it. There was a festival going on, and they continued to dance and enjoy themselves until they learned, with a vengeance, what had happened. This, then, is how Babylon was captured the first time.191 192. Among the many illustrations I shall offer of the wealth and resources of the Babylonians, the following is especially noteworthy. The whole Persian empire, besides paying the regular tribute, is divided into regions for the purpose of supplying food to the great king and his army.192 Now of the twelve months of the year, the Babylonian territory furnishes supplies during four, the whole rest of Asia during eight. Thus Assyria, with respect to resources, represents one third of the whole of Asia. That the governorship (or satrapy, as the Persians call it) of Assyria is by far the most powerful of the satrapies can be shown by the fact that Tritantaechmes, son of King Artabazus, who held this province from the king, received an artaba of silver every day. (The artaba is a Persian dry measure, and holds three choinices more than the Attic medimnus.)193 He also had, as his personal property, in addition to warhorses, 800 stallions and 16,000 mares, 20 for each stallion, and so many Indian dogs that four large villages in the plain were

191. It was later reconquered by Darius after a rebellion (see 3.159). 192. Herodotus gives a list of these provinces, or satrapies as the Persians called them, together with their tribute payments, at 3.89–97. 193. That is, about 53 gallons.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

73

exempted from other taxes on condition of supplying them with food. Such was the wealth of the governor of Babylon. 193. Only a little rain falls in Assyria; enough, however, to nurture the root of the grain, after which the plant is nourished and brought to maturity by means of artificial irrigation: not, as in Egypt, by the natural flooding of the river, but by means of hand-watering and swing-beams. For the whole country, like Egypt, is crisscrossed by canals; the largest of them, which runs toward the winter sun and has to be crossed in boats, is carried from the Euphrates into another river, the Tigris, on which Nineveh was built. Of all the lands we know of, Babylonia is by far the best producer of grain. No attempt is made to grow figs, grapes, olives, or any other fruit trees. But in grain it is so fertile as to produce crops of two-hundredfold, and in an exceptional year as much as three-hundredfold. The blades of wheat and barley are often four fingerbreadths wide. As for millet and sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though I know well enough, for I am aware that what I have already written about the fertility of Babylonia must seem incredible to those who have never visited the country. The only oil they use is made from sesame. Palm trees grow in great numbers throughout the plain, mostly of the fruit-bearing kind, and this fruit supplies them with food, wine, and honey. These trees are cultivated like the fig tree in all respects, among others in this: The natives tie the fruit of the male-palms, as they are called by the Greeks, to the date-bearing palm, to allow the gall-fly to enter the fruit and ripen it, and to prevent it from falling off.194 For the male-palms, like wild fig trees, have the gall-fly in their fruit. 194. I will now describe the thing that surprises me most in this country, after the city itself: I mean the boats that come down the Euphrates to Babylon. These boats are circular in shape and made of hide. They build them in Armenia, north of Assyria, where they cut ribs of willow to construct the frames, around which they stretch watertight skins. And thus the boats are made, without either prow or stern, quite round like a shield. The men fill them with straw, put the cargo on board (mainly wine in palm-wood casks), and let the current take them downstream. They are managed by two men who stand upright in them, each plying an oar, one pulling and the other thrusting. The boats are of various sizes, some larger, some smaller; the largest of them can hold freight weighing up to 5,000 talents.195 Each boat carries a live donkey—the larger ones several—and when they reach Babylon and dispose of their cargo, they break up the boats, sell the straw and frames, and load the hides on the donkeys’ backs for the return journey 194. A method of cross-pollination called caprification, used on fig trees but not, in fact, on date palms. 195. Except for the grossly exaggerated carrying capacity, Herodotus’ description accords well with boats seen on Assyrian stone reliefs.

74

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

to Armenia. The strength of the current makes it impossible to paddle the boats upstream, which is why they are built of hide instead of wood. On their return to Armenia, they build new boats of the same design. 195. The Babylonian wears a linen tunic reaching to the feet, with a woolen one over it, and a short white cloak on top, and shoes of a peculiar fashion, which resemble Boeotian sandals. They grow their hair long, wear turbans, and anoint their whole body with unguents. Every man has a seal-ring and a walking stick. Each stick is carved at the top into the form of an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or something of the sort. For it is not their custom to have a stick without an ornament. 196. We turn now to their customs. The following, in our opinion, was their wisest custom, one which I hear is also in use among the Eneti of Illyria. Once a year, in every village, all the girls of marriageable age were collected together in one place, while the men stood around them in a circle. Then a herald would call up the girls one by one and offer them for sale, starting with the most beautiful. When she, having fetched a good price, was sold, he would put the second most beautiful up for auction. The girls were being sold for the purpose of marriage. The richest of the Babylonians who wanted wives would bid against each other for the most beautiful girls, while the humbler bachelors, who had no need for beauty in a wife, were actually paid to take the homely ones. For after the herald had auctioned off the most beautiful virgins, he would call upon the homeliest, or even a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask who would take the least money to marry her—and she was offered to whoever accepted the smallest sum. The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for the homely or the handicapped. To give one’s own daughter to whomever one wished was not permitted, nor could anyone take home the girl he had purchased until he had appointed a backer to guarantee that he would marry her. If the couple should prove incompatible, it was the custom to return the pledge money. Anyone who wished could come even from a different village to purchase a wife.196 This, then, was their noblest custom. Now, however, it has fallen into disuse. They have lately found a different means of preventing others from wronging their daughters and taking them to other cities.197 For ever since the conquest of their city, when they were ruined and impoverished, every commoner who lacks a means of livelihood prostitutes his daughters. 197. Their second wisest custom concerns the treatment of disease. They have no doctors, but bring their sick out into the street. If anyone has himself had an illness of the kind the invalid is suffering from, or knows someone else who has 196. There is no evidence that such a practice as Herodotus describes existed in Babylon. 197. Perhaps to serve as harem girls at one of the Persian royal courts.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

75

suffered from it, he approaches him and offers advice. Those who have recovered from the same illness recommend either the remedies they used, or those used by someone else known to have recovered from it. No one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking what his ailment is. 198. They bury their dead in honey,198 and have funeral dirges like the Egyptians.When a Babylonian man has had intercourse with his wife, he kindles incense and sits before it as it burns; his wife does the same, sitting opposite him. At dawn they both bathe, for until they bathe they will not touch any household vessel. The Arabians have the same practice. 199. The most shameful custom in use among the Babylonians is this: every woman of that country must once in her life go and sit in the precinct of Aphrodite, and there have intercourse with a stranger.199 Many of the rich women, disdaining to mix with the rest, drive to the precinct in covered carriages, followed by a large retinue, and stand there waiting. But most sit in the precinct of the temple, wearing wreaths of string round their heads. And there is always a great throng—what with some coming and others going; gangways are roped off and run in all directions among the women, and the men pass along them to make their choice. Once a woman has taken her seat, she is not allowed to go home until one of the men has tossed a silver coin into her lap and had intercourse with her outside the temple. As he tosses the coin, the man must say, “I call upon the goddess Mylitta”—that being the Assyrian name for Aphrodite. The value of the coin is of no importance; the woman cannot refuse it. It would not be lawful to do so, since once thrown it is sacred. She goes with the first man who throws her money and may not reject him. Once she has had intercourse with him and thus discharged her duty to the goddess, she returns home. And from that time on, no matter what you offer, she will refuse you. All the women who are possessed of a certain degree of beauty and stature are soon released, but the homely ones may have to wait a long time before they can fulfill their obligation, some of them, indeed, for three or four years. A similar custom is found in certain parts of Cyprus. 200. These, then, are the customs established among the Babylonians. There are three Babylonian tribes who live entirely on fish. These fish are caught and dried in the sun, after which they are ground in a mortar and strained through a linen sieve. Some knead the fishmeal into cakes, while others bake it into a kind of bread. 201. Now that he had subjugated the Babylonians, Cyrus conceived the desire to conquer the Massagetae. The Massagetae are said to be a numerous and warlike 198. As a natural antibacterial agent, honey was used by many ancient peoples for preservation of corpses. 199. The custom of sacred prostitution was widespread in the ancient Near East.

76

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

people, dwelling eastward toward the rising of the sun, beyond the river Araxes and opposite the Issedones.200 Some say they are a Scythian tribe. 202. The Araxes is said by some to be larger than the Danube, by others to be not so large. There are said to be many islands in it equal in size to Lesbos. The men who inhabit them feed during the summer on all manner of roots, and in winter live on edible fruit laid up in season. They have also discovered trees whose fruit has the following property. When they have parties and sit around the fire, they throw some of this fruit into the flames, and as it burns it smokes like incense, and the people grow drunk on the smell, just as Greeks do on wine; and the more fruit they throw on, the drunker they get, until they jump up and begin to dance and sing. Such is their way of life, according to report. The river Araxes, like the Gyndes, which Cyrus diverted into 360 channels, rises in the country of the Matieni. It has forty mouths, of which all but one issue into swamps and marshes, where men are said to live who feed on raw fish and clothe themselves in sealskins; by the remaining mouth it flows clear into the Caspian Sea. 203.The Caspian is a self-contained sea, having no connection with any other.201 The sea the Greeks use,202 together with the sea outside the Pillars of Heracles, which is called the Atlantic, and the Red Sea, are all parts of a single sea. The Caspian, however, is quite separate; in length it is a fifteen days’ voyage, using oars; in breadth, at its broadest part, an eight days’ voyage. Along its western shore runs the Caucasus, the longest and loftiest of all mountain ranges. Many different tribes inhabit it, most of whom live entirely on the wild fruits of the forest. It is also said to have trees of which the leaves, when crushed and mixed with water, produce a dye with which the inhabitants paint figures on their clothes. The figures are not washed out but last as long as the garment itself, as if they had been woven into it from the first. It is also said that these people copulate in the open, like animals. 204. On the west, then, the Caspian is bounded by the Caucasus. Eastward, as far as the eye can see, lies an immense plain, the greater part of which is occupied by the Massagetae, whom Cyrus now wished to attack. Many strong motives roused him up and urged him on—his birth especially, which seemed something more than human,203 and the success of all his previous campaigns. For until then it had been impossible for any nation to escape, once he had marched against it. 200. These coordinates situate the Massagetae in central Asia near the Aral Sea, a body of water never mentioned by Herodotus.The Araxes River is said below to flow into the Caspian, but Herodotus may have thought the Caspian and the Aral Seas were the same body of water. 201. A point on which Herodotus disagrees with other Greek geographers, who supposed that the Caspian was connected to the outer Ocean. 202. What we would call the Mediterranean (a name not coined until late Roman times). 203. As related in the story of Cyrus’ early life, at 1.108–123 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

77

205. A widow was queen of the Massagetae. Tomyris was her name.204 Cyrus wooed her through heralds, who conveyed his wish to have her as his wife. Tomyris, however, understanding that he was wooing not herself but the kingdom of the Massagetae, rejected his suit. Thereupon, as he could not succeed by guile, Cyrus marched to the Araxes and began his assault upon the Massagetae by bridging the river so that his army could cross it, and building towers on the boats that were to be used for the crossing. 206. While engaged in this work, he received, through a herald, the following message from Tomyris: “King of the Medes, give up this enterprise, for you cannot know whether it will do you any good. Rule your own people, and try to bear the sight of me ruling mine. But of course you will refuse to follow my advice, as you prefer anything to living in peace. Well, if you are so eager to put the Massagetae to the test, abandon your bridge-building. Give us three days to retreat from the river, and then cross into our country. Or, if you prefer it, retire the same distance yourselves, and let us meet on your side of the river.” When he heard the queen’s message, Cyrus summoned the foremost Persians. Placing the matter before them, he asked them which course he should adopt. They were unanimous in their opinion that he should let Tomyris and her army cross into his own territory. 207. But Croesus the Lydian, who was present at this meeting and disapproved of this advice, expressed an opposing view: “Sire, I said when Zeus gave me to you that I would do all I could to avert any danger that I saw threatening your house; and I have learned much from my grievous misfortunes. If you think you and the army you lead are immortal, there is little point in my giving you my opinion. But if you recognize that both you and your troops are merely human, then know this: there is a wheel on which the affairs of men revolve, which does not allow the same man to be always fortunate. Now my view about the matter in hand is the opposite of what your other advisers have expressed. For if you agree to let the enemy enter your country, the danger will be that in the event of a defeat you may lose not only the battle but your entire empire as well. For it is clear that if the Massagetae are victorious, they will not return to their homes but will advance into your domain. Or if you are victorious, you would not conquer as much as you would if, on crossing to their country and defeating them, you pursued them as they fled. For against your loss, if they defeat you on your own ground, must be set theirs in the same case. Rout their army on their side of the river, and you may drive straight for the empire of Tomyris. And, apart from what I have already said, it would be disgraceful and intolerable for Cyrus, son

204. Otherwise unknown. There is no confirmation from other evidence for any of Herodotus’ account of Cyrus’ war with the Massagetae.

78

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

of Cambyses,205 to give ground before a woman. My advice, therefore, is this: cross the river, advance as far as they retire, and then try to get the better of them by a stratagem. The Massagetae, I hear, are unused to Persian luxuries,206 and are unacquainted with the pleasures of life. Let us therefore prepare a feast for them in our camp, with a great many sheep slaughtered and dressed, all sorts of dainty dishes, and wine bowls brimming with undiluted wine. Then let us fall back toward the river, leaving our inferior troops behind. Unless I am mistaken, when the Massagetae catch sight of all those good things, they will fall upon them—and that will be our chance to display our prowess.” 208. When Cyrus had heard these two conflicting views, he chose to follow the advice of Croesus. He sent word to Tomyris that she should withdraw, as he intended to cross the river himself. She therefore retreated, as she had promised; and Cyrus, putting Croesus into the hands of his son Cambyses (whom he had appointed as his successor), with orders to treat him with kindness and respect in the event the expedition did not succeed, sent them both back to Persia and crossed the river with his army. 209. On the night after they had crossed the Araxes, when Cyrus was asleep in the country of the Massagetae, he dreamt that he saw the eldest son of Hystaspes207 with wings on his shoulders, with one of which he cast a shadow over Asia and with the other over Europe. The eldest son of Hystaspes and grandson of Arsames— Hystaspes belonged to the Achaemenid family—was Darius. He was then about twenty years old, and had been left behind in Persia as he was not of age to go to war. When Cyrus awoke, and gave careful thought to the dream, he decided that it was a serious matter. He therefore sent for Hystaspes, and taking him aside said, “Hystaspes, your son has been discovered plotting against me and my throne. I will tell you how I know it so certainly.The gods watch over me and warn me beforehand of every danger. Now last night, as I lay asleep, I saw your eldest son with wings on his shoulders, shadowing Asia with one of them and Europe with the other. One cannot possibly escape the fact that the dream means that he is plotting against me. So return at once to Persia and see to it that you can produce your son for examination when I come home after conquering the Massagetae.” 210. Cyrus spoke in the belief that Darius was plotting against him; but in fact the god was forewarning him that he would die then and there, and that his throne 205. This is the first time Herodotus has named Cyrus’ father, the formerly nameless Persian who was selected by Astyages as a husband for his daughter. A few sentences further on, we learn that Cyrus has also named his son Cambyses. 206. It is noteworthy that the Persians, earlier described as a rugged and impoverished people, have by this time acquired luxuries. 207. A Persian nobleman and member of the royal (or Achaemenid) family in a collateral line, as Herodotus notes below.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

79

would come at last to Darius. Hystaspes answered with these words: “Heaven forbid, sire, that any Persian living should plot against you! But if there be such a one, may he die on the spot! It was you who made the Persians free men instead of slaves; you found them subjects and have made them rulers of all. If a dream has told you that my son is plotting against you, I give you leave to deal with him as you please.” And having made this reply, Hystaspes crossed the Araxes and returned to Persia, to keep an eye on his son Darius in obedience to Cyrus’ orders. 211. Advancing a day’s march from the Araxes, Cyrus did as Croesus had advised. Leaving the worthless portion of his army behind, he withdrew with his able troops toward the Araxes. The men who had been left behind were attacked by one-third of the Massagetan army; and though they tried to defend themselves, they were massacred. Then the Massagetae, catching sight of the banquet set before them, sat down and began to feast. Sated with food and drink, they fell asleep. The Persians fell upon them, killed many, but took an even greater number alive, including their general Spargapises, the son of queen Tomyris. 212. When the queen learned what had happened to the army and to her son, she sent a herald to Cyrus with this message: “Bloodthirsty Cyrus, gloat not at what has happened here.You prevailed with the fruit of the vine, with which you fill yourselves until you are so mad that, as the wine goes down, shameful words float up. It was by this poison that you tricked my son and got him into your clutches. Now listen to me and I will advise you for your own good. Give me back my son and get out of my country with your forces unharmed, having triumphed over a third part of the Massagetan army. If you refuse to do so, I swear by the Sun, the sovereign lord of the Massagetae, that, bloodthirsty as you are, I will give you your fill of blood.” 213. To this message Cyrus paid no attention. As for Spargapises, the son of the queen, when the wine wore off and he realized his position, he begged Cyrus to free him from his shackles. The request was granted; and as soon as Spargapises had the use of his hands, he killed himself. 214. The queen, when Cyrus ignored her advice, collected her entire army and joined battle with him. Of all the battles in which barbarian nations have engaged, I gather that this was the fiercest. According to what I have learned, it was fought as follows. First, the two armies stood apart and shot their arrows at each other; then, when their quivers were empty, there was a long period of fighting handto-hand with spears and daggers, neither side being willing to retreat. In the end, however, the Massagetae got the upper hand. The greater part of the Persian army was destroyed, and Cyrus himself was killed. He had reigned for twenty-nine years. Tomyris then filled a wineskin with human blood and searched among the Persian dead for the corpse of Cyrus. When she found it, she plunged his head into the gore, saying, as she thus insulted the corpse, “Though I live and have

80

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 1

conquered you in battle, you have ruined me, since you took my son by treachery. But I now fulfill my threat, and give you your fill of blood.” Though there are many accounts of Cyrus’ death,208 I have given the one I consider most plausible. 215. In their dress and way of living the Massagetae resemble the Scythians.209 Though some ride, others do not—for they use both cavalry and infantry. They use bows and spears, though their traditional weapon is the single-edged axe. All their equipment is made either of gold or bronze. They use bronze for spearheads, arrow points, and single-edged axes, and gold for headgear, belts, and girdles. Likewise they give their horses bronze breastplates, and gold bridles, bits, and cheek-pieces. They use neither iron nor silver, having none in their country, though they have an abundance of gold and bronze. 216. The Massagetae have the following customs. Each man has a wife, but all the wives are held in common. The Greeks say that this is a Scythian practice. But it is the Massagetae who have this custom, not the Scythians. When a Massagetan man desires a woman, he hangs up his quiver in front of her wagon, and lies with her without misgivings. Life does not come to its natural end among the Massagetae: when a man grows very old, all his relatives assemble and offer him up in sacrifice, together with some cattle; then they boil the flesh and feast on it. Those who have ended their lives in this way are accounted the happiest. If a man dies of disease, they do not feed on him but bury him in the ground, and deem it a misfortune that he did not live long enough to be sacrificed. They plant no crops, but live on their flocks and herds, and on fish, which the Araxes supplies in abundance. They are milk-drinkers. The only god they worship is the Sun, to which they sacrifice horses; the notion behind this is to offer to the swiftest of the gods the swiftest of all mortal creatures.

208. Other Greek historians held variously that Cyrus had died in India, or at home in his bed; only Diodorus Siculus partly supports Herodotus, reporting that Cyrus was killed by a Scythian queen (2.44.2). The tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae, in the Persian homeland, was well known in antiquity as it is today, so Herodotus must have assumed that Cyrus’ troops recovered his body and brought it home for burial. 209. Scythian customs will be described at length in the first portion of Book 4.

Book 2

1. When Cyrus died, the throne passed to his son Cambyses,1 whose mother was Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes. Cassandane had died in the lifetime of Cyrus, who had mourned her deeply and commanded all his subjects to do likewise. Cambyses, the son of this woman and of Cyrus, regarded the Ionians and Aeolians as slaves inherited from his father, and took them with him on his expedition against Egypt,2 along with the other nations over which he held sway. 2. The Egyptians, before the reign of king Psammetichus,3 believed that they were the most ancient of all peoples. Psammetichus, however, when he became king, made an effort to discover which race was the most ancient, and ever since his reign the Egyptians have believed that the Phrygians surpass them in antiquity, while they themselves surpass all other nations. When Psammetichus was unable, by inquiry, to find out what race of men was the most ancient, he devised the following experiment. He took from an ordinary family two newborn children, and gave them to a shepherd to bring up among his flocks, ordering him to let no one utter a word in their presence. The shepherd was told to keep them by themselves in a lonely hut, and to bring in goats from time to time, to see that the children got their fill of milk, and to attend to all their other needs. Psammetichus gave these orders because he wanted to know what word the children would utter first, once they had outgrown their unintelligible baby talk. The experiment succeeded. One day, when the shepherd had been following his orders for two years, he opened the door of the room and went in, and both children ran up to him with outstretched hands and said, “becos.” The first time this happened the shepherd kept quiet; but afterward when he observed that every time he visited to look after the children the same word was constantly repeated by them, he informed his master. Psammetichus ordered the children to be brought to him. When he himself heard the word, he proceeded to inquire what people used the word “becos,” and discovered that “becos” was the Phrygian word for bread. As a result, the Egyptians yielded their claims and admitted the greater antiquity of the Phyrgians. That this is what occurred I myself learned from the priests of 1. In 530 B.C. 2. The expedition itself (525 B.C.) will be recounted at the beginning of Book 3. Herodotus here merely notes that it took place and then begins a long excursus on the land of Egypt, occupying the rest of Book 2. 3. The pharaoh Psamtik, whose extraordinarily long reign fell in the middle and late 7th century B.C. 81

82

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

Mediterranean Sea Canopus

Buto

Nile Delta

Sais Naucratis

Lake Mareotis

Pelusium

Lake Serbonis

Bubastis Great Pyramids Memphis Nile

Lake Moeris

Heliopolis

Egypt

Abydus

Thebes

100 kilometers 100 miles

Ancient Egypt.

Elephantine

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

83

Hephaestus at Memphis,4 though the Greeks have various silly versions of this story, such as that Psammetichus had the children brought up by women whose tongues he had cut out. 3. Many such stories are told about the children’s rearing. There are other things, too, that I learned in Memphis, in conversation with the priests of Hephaestus.5 I also went to Thebes and Heliopolis for the express purpose of finding out whether the stories told there would agree with those told in Memphis. For the Heliopolitans are said to be the most learned among the Egyptians. I have no wish to repeat what they told me about their religion, apart from the names of their gods, for I believe that all people understand such things equally. Whatever I mention on the subject will be due solely to the requirements of my narrative. 4. With regard to human affairs, all the priests agreed that the Egyptians were the first people to discover the year and to divide it into twelve parts.6 They obtained this knowledge by studying the stars. The Egyptian calendar seems to me to be much more sensible than that of the Greeks; for the Greeks, to make the seasons work out properly, intercalate a whole month every other year,7 whereas the Egyptians, basing their calendar on twelve thirty-day months, intercalate five additional days every year, whereby the cycle of the seasons returns with uniformity. They also told me that the Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks adopted from them,8 and were the first to build altars, images, and temples to the gods, and to carve living things in stone. In most of these cases the priests were able to prove the truth of their assertions. They said that the first man who ruled over Egypt was Min,9 and that in his time all Egypt, except the Theban district, was a marsh, none of the land south of Lake Moeris10 (a seven days’ sail upriver from the sea) then showing above the water. 5. The priests seemed to me to speak knowledgeably about the nature of their land. For it is clear to any intelligent observer, even if he has not heard about it in 4. This is one of several passages in which Herodotus claims first-hand knowledge of Egypt, though it is not clear at what point in his life he went there or under what circumstances. Questions have been raised as to whether he in fact went there at all, though most scholars are willing to take his word on this. 5. Herodotus identified the Egyptian god Ptah, the principal deity worshiped at Memphis, with the Greek god Hephaestus. 6. The Egyptians used a solar calendar divided into twelve thirty-day months, with five days added at year’s end, though they were probably not the first to institute such divisions. Herodotus also errs below in making the Egyptians the first to carve statues of the gods. 7. See note on 1.32. 8. See 2.43 and 2.50 below for more discussion on how these divine “names” migrated from Egypt to Greece. 9. Discussed further at 2.99 below. The approximate date is 3200 B.C. 10. See 2.149–50 below.

84

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

advance, that the Egypt to which the Greeks sail is a newly-acquired country, the gift of the river.11 The same is true of the region above the lake, to the distance of a three days’ voyage, though the priests did not mention it in this regard. We turn now to a description of Egypt’s geography. When you approach Egypt by sea and are still a day’s sail from the country, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud even to the depth of eleven fathoms. This shows how far out the river’s silt extends. 6. The length of the Egyptian coastline, if we define the country as extending from the Plinthine Gulf to Lake Serbonis, which lies along the base of Mount Casius, is sixty schoeni. Men who are poor in land measure their country in fathoms; those who are less land-poor, in stades; those who possess considerable territory, in parasangs; and those whose holdings are vast, in schoeni. The parasang is equivalent to thirty stades, the schoenus (the Egyptian land measure) to sixty. Thus the length of Egypt along the Mediterranean coast would be 3,600 stades.12 7. From the coast inland as far as Heliopolis, Egypt is broad, flat, muddy, and full of swamps. The traveler heading from the sea to Heliopolis takes a road nearly equal in length to the road that leads from the altar of the twelve gods in Athens to Pisa and the temple of Olympian Zeus. Anyone who performs the calculation would find very little difference in the lengths of these roads; if they are not equal in length, the difference does not exceed 15 stades. (The road to Pisa from Athens falls short of 1,500 stades by 15, while the other is exactly 1,500 stades long.) 8. As one journeys farther inland from Heliopolis, Egypt becomes narrow. On one side stretch the Arabian mountains, a range which, from the north, extends south and southwest and continues without a break to the Red Sea.13 In this range lie the quarries where the stone was cut for the pyramids in Memphis. That is where the range changes direction and bends away toward the Red Sea. The range is widest there; I am told it takes two months to journey across it from east to west. (Its eastern boundary lies in the region where frankincense is produced.) On the Libyan side of Egypt there is another range of mountains, where the pyramids stand. These mountains, rocky and covered with sand, lie parallel to the Arabian range until the latter bends eastward. Above Heliopolis, then, for the distance of a four days’ voyage, Egypt is narrow. The plain that lies between 11. Herodotus returns to this point at 2.10, but he has it in mind in what follows when discussing the siltiness of the sea off Egypt, and again at 2.7 when he mentions the swampiness of the land. Both points seem to him to confirm that Egypt was formed by the deposition of silt. 12. This figure, amounting to over 400 miles, is far larger than the actual distance between the points Herodotus mentions. 13. Here Herodotus may have the modern Red Sea in mind, though elsewhere (see note on 1.1) he uses “Red Sea” to mean the whole stretch of waters to the south of Asia and Africa. Herodotus believed our Red Sea to be a gulf connected to this vast southern ocean (see 2.11 below).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

85

the Arabian and the Libyan ranges seems to me to be, at its narrowest point, no broader than roughly 200 stades.14 Above this point, Egypt widens again. 9. It takes nine days to sail upriver from Heliopolis to Thebes, a distance of 4,860 stades (81 schoeni). If we put together the various measurements I have given, we find that the length of the Egyptian coastline is, as I have said, 3,600 stades, and the distance from the sea inland to Thebes is 6,120 stades. It is another 1,800 stades from Thebes to the city called Elephantine. 10.The greater portion of this country, just as the priests reported, seemed also to me to be a new acquisition for the Egyptians.15 For the region above Memphis that lies between the two mountain ranges appeared to me to have once been a gulf of the sea, and resembles (if one may compare small things with great) the areas near Troy,Teuthrania, Ephesus, and the Maeandrian plain16—though none of the rivers that deposited silt in those territories deserves to be compared in size with any one of the five mouths of the Nile.There are other rivers I could mention as well, much smaller than the Nile, that have effected remarkable changes: the Achelous, for example, which flows through Acarnania, empties into the sea, and has already joined half the Echinades Islands to the mainland. 11. In Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a gulf that runs inland from the socalled Red Sea.17 It is long and rather narrow, as I am going to show. The voyage in a vessel under oars from its farthest limit to the open sea takes forty days; the passage across the gulf at its widest point takes half a day. In this sea there is an ebb and flow of the tide every day. I am of the opinion that Egypt was once a gulf such as this; that is, that there were two gulfs: one running from the northern sea southward toward Ethiopia, and the other—the Arabian—running northward from the southern sea toward Syria, the two gulfs boring towards one another so as to have their extremities almost meet, leaving between them only a narrow strip of land.18 Now if the Nile should ever change course and flow into this Arabian gulf, what would prevent the gulf from silting up in 20,000 years?19 I expect it might even 14. About 25 miles. The distances given here and in the next chapter are far too large. 15. That is, a “gift of the river” (see 2.5 above) formed from alluvial silt. 16. Four places where rivers could be seen extending coastlines with alluvial deposits, with a fifth (the Achelous) added as an afterthought. 17. See note on 2.8. The term “Red Sea” here applies (as usual in Herodotus) to the entire southern ocean, while the “gulf ” running north from it is our modern-day Red Sea. 18. This speculative reconstruction of Egyptian geology is complemented by Herodotus’ later speculation about the course of the upper Nile (2.34). He believed that the Nile flowed from west to east before turning north, which would make possible a large accumulation of silt before the river entered the narrow isthmus described here. 19. That is, the Nile would create as much new land to the south, were it to change direction, as it has to the north. Perhaps Herodotus chooses 20,000 years as the duration of this thought experiment because Egyptian mythic history goes back about that far (see 2.43, 2.145).

86

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

be silted up within 10,000 years. Where, in all the time that elapsed before I was born, would a gulf not have been silted up, even a gulf much larger than this one, by a river so large and so active in depositing silt? 12. Accordingly, I believe the people who gave me this account of Egypt, and have myself concluded that it is accurate. For I have seen for myself that the coast of Egypt projects father into the sea than the neighboring shores; and I have seen shells on the hills, and noticed that salt exudes from the soil to such an extent as to damage the pyramids; I have also noticed that the only Egyptian hill where sand is found is the hill above Memphis. In addition, the soil of Egypt is unlike that of her neighbor Arabia, or of Libya, or even of Syria. (The Syrians dwell along the seacoast of Arabia.) It is black and crumbly, being composed of mud and silt brought down by the river from Ethiopia. The Libyan soil, as we know, is reddish and sandy, while the soil of Arabia and Syria is stonier and contains more clay.20 13. The priests gave me another very telling piece of evidence about the origin of the country, namely that in the reign of King Moeris21 the region below Memphis used to be flooded when the river rose only twelve feet. Now Moeris had been dead for not quite 900 years when I was given this information.22 Today, however, the river never inundates the land unless it rises at least twenty-three or twenty-four feet. So if the country continues to increase in height and extent at the same rate, it seems to me that the Egyptians who live below Lake Moeris in the Delta and thereabouts will, if the Nile fails to flood, suffer permanently the same fate they said would someday befall the Greeks. For when the Egyptians heard that the whole land of Greece is watered by rain, and not, like their own, by the flooding of rivers, they said that someday the Greeks would be sadly disappointed and suffer a terrible famine. What they meant was that if the god refused to send rain, but afflicted them with a long drought, the Greeks would starve, since Zeus is their only source of water. 14. And this is perfectly true. But let me point out how the case stands with the Egyptians themselves. If, as I said before, the country below Memphis, which is the territory that is always rising, continues to increase in height at the same rate as in the past, how could the inhabitants of the region not suffer 20. A modern commentator, A. B. Lloyd (Herodotus Book 2: Commentary 1–98, Leiden, 1976, p. 60) gives Herodotus 60 percent credit for the five arguments adduced in this chapter, finding the first two and the last (the extension of Egypt into the sea, the presence of fossils, and the quality of the soil) to be valid demonstrations of the thesis that Egypt was created by the Nile, but denying the relevance of two others (extrusions of salt and the hill of sand). In any case the acuity of observation and inference here are noteworthy. 21. See 2.101 below. 22. Since Moeris has been identified with the pharaoh Amenemhet III, who reigned around 1800 B.C., Herodotus has grossly underestimated this time span.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

87

famine, if they have no rain and the river is unable to inundate their fields? For at present the ease with which the Egyptians below Memphis get their harvests surpasses that of all other men, including all their fellow countrymen. They have no need to break up the ground with the plow, or use the hoe, or do any of the work that all other men find necessary if they are to get a crop. They merely wait for the river to rise up of its own accord to flood their fields; then, when the water has receded, each farmer sows his field, puts pigs into it to tread the seed, and then waits for the harvest. Pigs are also used for threshing,23 after which the grain is stored away. 15. If, then, we are willing to adopt the views of the Ionians24 concerning Egypt, we must conclude that there was a time when the Egyptians had no country at all. For the Ionians say that nothing is really Egypt but the Delta, a stretch of country that extends along the shore from what is known as the Watchtower of Persus to the Pelusian saltworks (a distance of forty schoeni), and stretches inland as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile divides into the two branches that enter the sea at Pelusium and Canopus. The rest of what is usually considered Egypt belongs, they say, either to Libya or Arabia. But the Delta, as the Ionians admit and as I believe, is alluvial and has only lately, so to speak, come to light. If, then, the Egyptians had no country, why did they take the trouble to imagine themselves the most ancient race in the world? Surely there was no need to perform the experiment with the children to find out what language they would speak first. But the fact is, I do not believe that the Egyptians came into being at the same time as the Delta, as the Ionians call it. Instead, I think they have always existed ever since the human race began; and as the land went on increasing, many of them remained where they were originally, and many moved down into the new country. The name of Egypt was given in ancient times to Thebes, a district of which the whole circumference is only 6,120 stades. 16. If our grasp of these matters is correct, the Ionians are mistaken in what they say about Egypt. If, on the other hand, the Ionians are right, then I propose to demonstrate that neither the Ionians nor the rest of the Greeks know how to count. For they say that the world is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and 23. That is, the breaking apart of ears of grain from the stalks. Cows are seen doing this in some Egyptian artwork, and the use of pigs to trample seeds into the soil is also independently attested. 24. When arguing points of geography, Herodotus sometimes uses the term “Ionians” to refer to the speculative scientists and philosophers who preceded him, men who were closely linked to the intellectually progressive city of Miletus. Hecataeus of Miletus, author of treatises on geography and genealogy in the late 6th century B.C., was prominent among these and was often (as here) Herodotus’ principal target in such discussions.

88

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

Libya,25 whereas they ought to add a fourth part, the Egyptian Delta, since they do not include it in either Asia or Libya. According to their argument the Nile is the boundary between Asia and Libya. But since the Nile splits at the apex of the Delta, the Delta itself must be a separate country lying between the two. 17. So much for the Ionians’ views; here now are my own. I consider Egypt to be the whole country inhabited by the Egyptians, just as Cilicia is the land inhabited by the Cilicians, and Assyria the land inhabited by the Assyrians. The true boundary between Asia and Libya is formed by the frontiers of Egypt. If we adopted the Greeks’ view, we would have to regard Egypt, all the way from the Cataracts and Elephantine, as divided in two, one half belonging to Asia, the other to Libya. For the Nile divides Egypt in two from the Cataracts to the sea, running as far as Cercasorus in a single stream, but at that point separating into three branches, of which one heads eastward and is called the Pelusian Mouth, and another westward, the Canopic Mouth. The straight course of the stream, which comes down from the upper country, arrives at the tip of the Delta and continues on, dividing the Delta down the middle as it runs to the sea. This branch, the so-called Sebennytic Mouth, is neither the smallest in volume nor the least famous of the three. Besides these there are two other mouths, the Saitic and the Mendesian, which split off from the Sebennytic and run to the sea. The Bolbitine and Bucolic Mouths are not natural branches but channels made by excavation. 18. My own view about the extent of Egypt is supported by an oracle from Ammon,26 of which I had no knowledge until after I had drawn my own conclusions. The inhabitants of the cities of Marea and Apis, who lived on the border between Egypt and Libya, and regarded themselves as Libyans, not Egyptians, took a dislike to the customs of the country concerning sacrificial animals, especially the prohibition against eating the flesh of cows. So they sent to Ammon, claiming that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians; since they lived outside the Delta, and shared none of the Egyptians’ views, they wished to be allowed to eat whatever they pleased. The god, however, refused their request, and declared that the entire country watered by the Nile was Egypt, and all the people who lived below Elephantine and drank the water of that river were Egyptians. So said the oracle. 25. See 4.45 below, where Herodotus questions whether continental divisions have any validity at all, even while agreeing to use the conventional names Europe, Asia, and Libya (roughly equivalent to Africa).The division between Asia and Libya at the Nile was new and still controversial in his time. Herodotus’ critique of it here, and his own proposal in 2.17, does not solve the question of which landmass Egypt belonged to, and indeed seems to create a separate and fourth continent just as he accused “the Ionians” of doing. 26. See note to 1.46.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

89

19. Now when the Nile overflows, it floods not only the Delta but parts of the territory on either side supposed to be Libya and Asia, inundating the land as far as a two days’ journey—in some places more, in others less. About the river’s nature I was unable to obtain any information from the priests or anyone else. I was especially eager to learn from them why the river begins to rise at the summer solstice, continues to do so for a hundred days, and then subsides, remaining low all winter until the next summer solstice.27 No one I questioned could give me any explanation for this, though I made many attempts to find out what special property the Nile has that makes it behave in a way contrary to that of other rivers, or why it is the only river to cause no breezes. 20.Yet certain Greeks, wishing to get a reputation for cleverness, have offered three explanations of the Nile’s flooding, two of which I do not even consider worth discussing, beyond mentioning what they are. One of them claims that the Etesian winds28 cause the Nile to rise by preventing its water from flowing toward the sea. But it has often happened, when these winds did not blow, that the Nile has risen as usual. Besides, if the Etesians were responsible for the rise, the other rivers that flow in a direction opposite to these winds ought to be effected both in the same way as the Nile and to an even greater degree, since they are smaller streams and have a weaker current. But there are many such rivers in Syria and Libya, and none of them are affected in the same way as the Nile. 21. The second account is even less rational than the first, and also, if I may put it so, more fantastic. It is that the Nile acts so oddly because it flows from Ocean, the stream that flows around the entire world.29 22. The third account, though by far the most plausible, is actually the furthest from the truth. It claims that the flooding of the Nile is caused by melting snow.30 But as the Nile flows from Libya through Ethiopia into Egypt, how could its waters be fed by snow, since it flows from the hottest regions to those that are much cooler? To anyone capable of reasoning about such matters it must appear 27. The opposite of the pattern followed by Greek rivers, which are swollen by rains in the winter and depleted in the summer. In fact the Nile is fed by heavy rains in the mountains where it originates, but Herodotus thought of Egypt as a dry land and could not imagine such rains. 28. A predominant wind blowing from the North in summertime. The theory Herodotus refers to (promulgated by Thales of Miletus; see 1.71 and 1.74) held that these winds pushed back and impeded the north-flowing waters of the Nile. 29. The theory espoused by Hecataeus, who believed the Nile’s course went due south from Egypt until it reached the stream of Ocean, the mythic body of water surrounding the world known to the Greeks. Herodotus does not say exactly how Ocean was thought to influence the Nile floods. 30. The theory of Anaxagoras, a scientific thinker who lived just slightly before Herodotus’ own time.

90

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

highly improbable that the Nile’s stream is swelled by snow. The winds, first and foremost, furnish the most conclusive proof against the idea, since they blow hot from those regions. Secondly, rain and frosts are unknown there; but after snow rain is bound to fall within five days. So if there were snow in these parts there would certainly be rain. Thirdly, the people of these lands are black because of the burning heat.31 And hawks and swallows remain throughout the year, while cranes migrate there in winter to escape the cold weather of Scythia. Now none of these things could happen if it snowed even scantily in the region from which and through which the Nile flows; the bare facts rule out such a supposition. 23. As for the writer who mentions Ocean, his account is so obscure that it cannot be disproved by argument. I, for one, know of no river called Ocean, and I imagine that Homer or one of the earlier poets invented the name and introduced it into poetry.32 24. If, after criticizing all these views, I should express my own opinion about so obscure a matter as why the Nile floods in summer, I would say that the sun, during the winter, is driven out of its usual course by storms, and travels to the upper parts of Libya.33 There, in brief, you have the entire explanation. It stands to reason that the country nearest to, and most directly under, the sun should be most short of water, and that the streams that feed the rivers there should most readily dry up. 25. I now offer a more detailed explanation. The sun, as it passes over the northern parts of Libya, affects them in the following way. Since the atmosphere there is always clear, the land is open to the sun, and there are no cool winds, the sun, as it passes over them, has the same effect it normally has elsewhere in summer as it passes through the mid-heaven—that is, it attracts water. After attracting it, it then thrusts it into the upper regions, where the winds seize it, scatter it, and disperse it in vapor. Thus it naturally happens that the winds that blow from that quarter (the south and southwest) are the wettest of all winds. And it seems to me that the sun does not disperse all the water that it draws every year from the Nile, but retains some about itself. As the winter grows milder, the sun returns to the mid-heaven, and thereafter attracts water from all 31. The Greek word Aithiopes, origin of our word “Ethiopians,” means “Burnt-faces,” as though the dark skin of Africans resulted from a deep suntan. 32. A remarkable assertion of the need for empirical evidence, later expanded at 4.8 and 4.45. Because Herodotus has no eyewitness confirmation that a body of water bounds all parts of the world—since the far North and East remain unknown—he is unwilling to admit a circular “river” surrounding the three continents, the construct espoused by both Homer and Hesiod. 33. Herodotus may seem naïve for believing that windstorms could move the sun, but such an idea would not have struck his contemporaries as implausible. By contrast the mechanics of evaporation and rainfall that he goes on to describe in 2.25 are fairly well in line with modern meteorology.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

91

the rivers equally. In winter then, the other rivers run in flood, because a large quantity of rainwater is added to their volume (the rain cutting gullies all over the country); but in summer, when the rains fail, and the sun attracts their water, their streams are depleted.34 The Nile, on the other hand, not deriving any of its volume from rain, and being subject to evaporation by the sun, naturally runs at that season, unlike all other streams, at a much lower level than in summer. For in summer it is exposed to the same attraction as other rivers, but in winter it is the only one to feel it. Thus I am accustomed to regard the sun as the sole cause of this phenomenon. 26. It is also responsible, in my opinion, for the dryness of the atmosphere in Egypt, since it parches whatever lies in its path. Thus in the upper part of Libya it is always summer. If the relative positions of north and south were reversed—if, that is, the north wind and the south wind exchanged those quarters of the heavens that now belong to each—then the sun, when driven from its normal course by the north wind and winter, would pass over the north of Europe instead of, as now, over the south of Libya. And I expect that as it passed over Europe it would have the same effect on the Danube as it now has on the Nile.35 27. As for why no breeze blows from the Nile, I am of the opinion that no wind is likely to arise in very hot countries; for breezes usually blow from a cold region. 28. Well, let us leave these things as they are and as they have been since the beginning of time. With regard to the sources of the Nile,36 no one I spoke to, whether Egyptian, Libyan, or Greek, professed to have any knowledge except the scribe who kept the registers of the treasures of Athena37 in the Egyptian city of Sais. He, however, seemed to me to be joking when he claimed to know exactly where they were. He told me that between Syene, near Thebes, and Elephantine there are two mountains of conical shape called Crophi and Mophi; and that the springs of the Nile, which cannot be fathomed, flow out between them. Half the water runs north toward Egypt and half south toward Ethiopia. That the springs are unfathomable, he said, had been proved by the Egyptian king Psammetichus,38 who let down 34. Note that Herodotus’ theory is holistic, explaining not only why the Nile rises (or rather, returns to its normal volume when not depleted by evaporation) in summer but why other rivers do so in winter. In effect, water is transferred from the Nile to other rivers by the action of the winter sun. 35. In 2.33–34 Herodotus will further expand on the idea that the Danube (called Ister in Greek) is the mirror image of the Nile. He has been influenced by the thinking of Ionian scientists who often used paired antinomies, such as north-south or hot-cold, to analyze empirical data. 36. A perennial problem for ancient geographers, not resolved by modern exploration until the 19th century. 37. The Egyptian goddess Neith. 38. See 2.2 above.

92

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

a woven sounding-line many thousands of fathoms long but could find no bottom. By this the scribe gave me to understand, if there is any truth in his story, that in these springs there are certain powerful whirlpools, and a reflux of water, caused by the water dashing against the mountains, which would prevent a sounding-line from reaching the bottom. 29. On this subject I could obtain no further information from anybody. Whatever else I learned about Egypt, up to Elephantine, I learned as an eyewitness; what I learned of the country beyond that city, I learned only from hearsay. Upriver from Elephantine, the country rises steeply. One must tie ropes to each side of one’s vessel, as one does with an ox, in order to advance. If the rope breaks, the vessel is gone in a moment, carried downstream by the force of the current. These conditions last over a four days’ journey, the river winding greatly, like the Maeander,39 the distance covered amounting to twelve schoeni. Then you reach a level plain, where the river is divided by an island called Tachompso. Half the island is inhabited by Ethiopians from Elephantine, the other half by Egyptians. Above the island is a large lake, the shores of which are inhabited by Ethiopian nomads. After passing it, you come again to the channel of the Nile that empties into the lake. Then you disembark and make a forty days’ journey along the banks of the river. (Sharp jutting promontories and a great many sunken rocks make sailing impossible.) After voyaging for forty days you board another vessel, and a twelve days’ sail brings you to Meroe, a large city said to be the capital of Ethiopia. The inhabitants there worship only Zeus and Dionysus,40 whom they honor highly; they have also established an oracle of Zeus. They make war according to its pronouncements; they go whenever and wherever the god commands them to march. 30. Continuing upriver from that city for the same period of time it took to sail from Elephantine to Meroe, you reach the Deserters, who are known as Asmach, a name that means “those who stand on the left hand of the king.”41 These Deserters were Egyptians of the warrior class, numbering 240,000 who revolted and migrated to Ethiopia during the reign of king Psammetichus. The Egyptians had garrisons at various parts of the country: one at Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another in Pelusian Daphnae against the Arabians and Syrians, and a third at Marea against the Libyans. (The Persians have similar garrisons today, both at Elephantine and Daphnae.) It happened that on one occasion those garrisons were not relieved for a period of three years. At the end of that time the soldiers discussed their grievances, revolted by common consent, and marched off to Ethiopia. On learning of this, Psammetichus pursued them, 39. See 1.18 and note. 40. In Egyptian terms these would be Ammon and Osiris. 41. The king’s left side was presumably a place of dishonor, as compared with the right.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

93

and when he caught up with them he implored them at length not to abandon their ancestral gods and their wives and children. It is said that one of them, pointing to his genitals, said, “Wherever these are, there will also be children and wives.” When the Egyptians reached Ethiopia they offered their allegiance to the king of the Ethiopians. In return he offered them a tract of land belonging to certain Ethiopians with whom he was on bad terms. He ordered the Egyptians to drive these Ethiopians out and occupy their territory. The result of their living there was that the Ethiopians learned Egyptian manners and became more civilized.42 31. Beyond the Egyptian portion of the Nile, the river is known for a distance equivalent to a four months’ journey by boat and on foot. (If one does the calculation, one finds that this is the time it takes to travel from Elephantine to the Deserters.) At that point the river runs from west to east.43 Beyond, no one has any certain knowledge, for the country is uninhabitable because of the heat. 32. I did, however, hear a story from some men of Cyrene,44 who told me that during a visit to the oracle of Ammon they happened, in the course of conversation with Etearchus, the king of the Ammonians,45 to get on to the subject of the Nile and the fact that no one knows its source. Etearchus told them that some Nasamonians had once visited his court. (The Nasamonians are a Libyan tribe who inhabit Syrtis and the country a little to the east.) When the Nasamonians were asked if they could report anything about the uninhabited parts of Libya, they said that there had grown up among them some wild young men, sons of their chieftains, who on reaching manhood planned all manner of extravagant adventures, one of which was to draw lots for five of their number to explore the Libyan desert and try to penetrate farther than any had done previously. The entire coast of Libya from Egypt as far as Cape Soloeis,46 where it ends, is inhabited by many different tribes of Libyans,47 except the areas inhabited by Greeks and Phoenicians. Farther inland, to the south of the inhabited coast, Libya is full of wild beasts. Beyond that area there is a sandy and waterless desert, barren of all life. Now when the Libyan youths, well 42. The Ethiopians discussed here, known to the Romans as Nubians, should be distinguished from the “long-lived Ethiopians” at 3.17–25. The Ethiopians who dwell around Meroe are a historical and “mappable” race, while their long-lived cousins come from the realm of fantasy and folklore. 43. This right-angle turn in the Nile’s upper course seems to have been supplied by Herodotus, for reasons that become clear at 2.33–34. 44. A Greek city on the North African coast west of Egypt. 45. The people surrounding the oracle of Ammon, at the oasis of Siwah; apparently a mixture of Egyptians and Ethiopians (see 2.42 below). 46. The southern side of the Straits of Gibraltar. 47. These Libyan (or North African) tribes are discussed more fully at 4.168–199.

94

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

supplied with water and provisions, were sent off by their comrades, they passed first through the inhabited part of the country to the region of wild beasts, and then came to the desert, which they proceeded to cross in a westerly direction. After traveling for many days over the sand, they noticed trees growing on a plain. They approached and began to pick the fruit hanging from them, and while they were doing so were attacked by some little men, of less than middle height, who seized them and carried them off. Neither the Nasamonians nor the little men could understand a word of each another’s language. They were led across enormous marshes, and finally came to a town in which all the inhabitants were the same height as their captors and had black skin. Beside the city a great river, in which crocodiles were visible, flowed from west to east. 33. I here conclude what I have to say about Etearchus the Ammonian and his story, only adding that (according to the Cyrenaeans) he declared that the Nasamonians got safely home, and that the people whose city they visited were a nation of sorcerers. Etearchus supposed that the river that ran by their city was the Nile, and this stands to reason. For the Nile certainly flows from Libya and divides it in two. And if I may conjecture about the unknown from the known, I conclude that the Nile rises at the same distance from its mouth as the Danube. For the Danube has its source among the Celts near the city of Pyrene48 and flows through the middle of Europe, dividing it in two. (The Celts live beyond the Pillars of Heracles, next to the Cynesians, the westernmost inhabitants of Europe.) Thus the Danube flows through the middle of Europe and empties into the Black Sea at the Milesian colony of Istria. 34. Because the Danube flows through inhabited regions, its course is well known; but no one can give any account of the sources of the Nile, since it runs through a part of Libya that is an uninhabited desert. With regard to the river’s course, I have set down as much as it was possible to learn by inquiry. It enters Egypt from the territory beyond. Egypt lies almost exactly opposite the mountainous part of Cilicia. It takes an active man five days to journey directly from Cilicia to Sinope on the Black Sea, and Sinope lies opposite the place where the Danube empties into the sea.49 I am therefore of the opinion that the Nile, as it traverses the whole of Libya, is equal in length to the Danube. So much for this subject. 35. I intend to speak at length about Egypt, as it abounds in marvels and furnishes monuments more remarkable than those produced by any other country. Not only is Egypt’s climate exceptional and its river unique, but the Egyptians have also established customs and laws that in almost all cases are the reverse of those established 48. A city on the Iberian peninsula, very far indeed from the true sources of the Danube. 49. Herodotus is here attempting to show that a line of longitude connects the mouths of the Nile and Danube (though in fact the Danube mouth lies further west). See note on 2.26 above for Herodotus’ tendency to find north-south symmetries in world structure.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

95

by other peoples.50 For example, Egyptian women frequent the marketplace and work as retail-dealers, while the men, remaining at home, attend to the weaving. All other peoples, when they weave, push the weft up; the Egyptians push it down. The men carry loads on their heads, the women on their shoulders. The women urinate standing up, the men sitting. The Egyptians defecate indoors but eat outside in the roads, maintaining that whatever is shameful though necessary must be done in secret, but whatever is not shameful openly. No woman is a priestess of either a male or female god; men act as priests of all the gods and goddesses. Sons are under no obligation to take care of their parents if they are not so inclined, whereas daughters are obliged to care for them regardless of their inclination. 36. Elsewhere priests grow their hair long; in Egypt, they shave their heads. Among other peoples it is the custom, when there is a death in the family, for the bereaved to cut their hair, whereas the Egyptians, normally clean-shaven, let their hair grow long in honor of the dead (both the hair of the head and the beard). Among other peoples, man’s daily life has been set apart from beasts, but among the Egyptians, men and animals live closely together. Other peoples live on wheat and barley, whereas it is a disgrace to do so in Egypt; their bread is made from spelt, which some call zea. They knead spelt flour with their feet, clay with their hands; they even handle manure. Other men leave their genitals as they are (except those who have adopted the Egyptian custom), while the Egyptians practice circumcision.51 Each man possesses two garments, each woman one. Other peoples attach the eyelet-holes and sheets of their sails from the outside, the Egyptians from the inside. The Greeks write and calculate from left to right, the Egyptians from right to left. (They even claim that theirs is the dexterous way to write, while the Greek method is awkward.)52 They use two kinds of letters, sacred and common.53 37. As a people, the Egyptians are surpassingly religious. All Egyptians, without exception, drink from bronze wine-cups and rinse them clean day by day. The linen garments they wear are always newly washed; the Egyptians are especially fastidious in this respect. They practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, honoring cleanliness above comeliness. The priests shave all their body hair every 50. Herodotus here seems to follow contemporaneous theories, like those espoused by Hippocrates in Airs Waters Places, which linked a race’s customs and character to the qualities of their environment. Just as the Nile floods at the opposite season of other rivers, so Egyptian practices are often the opposite of those of other people. 51. See 2.104. 52. The Greek word translated “awkward” here means literally “on the left side,” so there is a pun here made either by Herodotus or his source. 53. The sacred form of writing is familiar to us as hieroglyphics, a term that means “sacred symbols.”

96

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

third day, lest any louse or other foul insect breed on those who serve the gods. The priests wear linen garments and sandals made of papyrus; it is unlawful for them to wear dress or shoes of any other material. They bathe twice each day and twice each night in cold water. Their other rites are, in a word, numberless. They enjoy, however, a great many advantages. They do not consume or spend anything of their own. Their bread is baked from sacred grain, and each priest receives a generous daily allowance of beef and goose-meat. The priests are also given wine but are forbidden to eat fish. The Egyptians do not grow beans, nor do they eat the beans that grow wild or eat them boiled. As a matter of fact, the priests do not even tolerate the sight of beans, believing that the legume is unclean. Instead of a single priest, each god is served by a number, of whom one is a chief priest. When a chief priest dies, his son succeeds him in that office. 38. Bulls are believed to belong to Epaphus,54 and are therefore subjected to various tests. A priest appointed for the purpose examines the animal with great care, and if he finds even a single black hair on the body, he pronounces it unclean. He examines it all over, making it stand up, then lie on its back, after which he pulls out its tongue to see if it is “clean” with respect to the prescribed signs. (What these are I will mention elsewhere.) He also inspects the hairs of the tail to make sure they have grown naturally. If the bull passes all these tests, the priest marks it by twisting around its horns a piece of papyrus, which he plasters with sealing-clay and stamps with his signet ring. Marked in this manner, the bull is led away.The penalty for anybody who sacrifices a bull that has not been marked in this way is death.55 39. The Egyptians use the following procedure when sacrificing. They lead the marked bull to the altar and light a fire; then, after pouring a libation and invoking the god, they slaughter it, cut off its head, and flay the carcass. Calling down many curses on the head, they take it away. If they have a marketplace and a body of Greek merchants, they offer them the head. Otherwise they throw it into the river. The curses they call down are to this effect: they pray that any evil that threatens either themselves or their country may fall on the bull’s head. Both the libation and the rites performed with regard to the heads of sacrificial victims are common throughout Egypt; and hence the Egyptians will not partake of the head of any animal. 40. The methods of disemboweling and burning are various; I will describe the one used in the worship of the goddess whom they regard as the greatest,56 and 54. A semi-divine mythic figure, begotten by Zeus on the cow-shaped maiden Io. The Greeks assimilated this figure to the Egyptian god Apis, a deity worshiped in the form of a sacred bull housed at Memphis. 55. Since a bull in which the Apis was incarnated could be born anywhere at any time, the ritual inspection had to determine that bulls about to be sacrificed were not the Apis (Lloyd, Commentary ad loc.). 56. Isis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

97

honor with their most important festival. When they flay the bull, they offer up prayers and remove the entrails from the abdomen. They leave the other viscera and fat in the body and cut off the legs, the rump, the shoulders, and the neck. They fill what remains of the bull’s carcass with clean wheat-bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and all the other spices; when the carcass is full, they drench it with olive oil and burn it as an offering to the god. They fast before sacrificing, and all who are present beat their breasts as the victims are being burned. When they have left off mourning, they feast on the portions that remain. 41. All Egyptians sacrifice “clean” bulls and male calves; they are forbidden to sacrifice the females, as these are sacred to Isis. The statue of Isis has the form of a woman with cow’s horns, like the Greek depictions of Io. The Egyptians revere cows much more highly than any other animal, which is why no Egyptian man or woman would kiss a Greek man on the mouth or use a Greek man’s carving knife, spits, or basin, or eat the flesh of a “clean” bull if it has been cut with a Greek carving knife. The Egyptians bury dead bulls and cows in the following way. The cows are thrown into the river, but the bulls are buried at the outskirts of towns, with one or both horns sticking out from the ground to mark the place. At an appointed time, when the carcasses have rotted, a barge arrives from the island of Prosopitis to collect the bones. This island lies in the Delta and is nine schoeni in circumference. Prosopitis contains several cities; the one from which the barges come, called Atarbechis, has a sanctuary dedicated to Aphrodite.57 Many men from Atarbechis go about to the various Egyptian cities to dig up the bones, which they take away with them and bury together in one place. Other cattle are buried in the same way as bulls; for that is the law. None of them is slaughtered. 42. Those Egyptians who have a temple dedicated to Theban Zeus,58 or live in the Theban district, sacrifice no sheep, but only goats. For the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, except for Isis and Osiris, the latter of whom they say is Dionysus. Those, on the other hand, who have a temple dedicated to Mendes, or live in the Mendesian district, sacrifice no goats, but only sheep. The Thebans, and those who follow their example, offer this account of the origin of their custom. It had been Heracles’ dearest wish to set eyes on Zeus without being seen by him. At last, as Heracles persisted, Zeus contrived as follows: he skinned a ram and cut off its head, then held the head before him and clothed himself in its fleece. Thus arrayed, he showed himself to Heracles. This is why the Egyptians give their statues of Zeus the face of a ram; and from them the practice has passed to the Ammonians, who are a joint colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians and speak a language that combines elements of both. It also seems to me that the Ammonians took their name from this circumstance; for Ammon is the Egyptian name 57. Egyptian Hathor. 58. That is, Ammon. “Theban” here refers to the Egyptian city of Thebes, not the Greek.

98

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

for Zeus. This, then, is why the Thebans do not sacrifice rams but regard them as sacred. Once a year, however, at the festival of Zeus, they do, in fact, slay a single ram; stripping off the fleece, they put it upon the statue of Zeus, as he once put it upon himself, and then bring up to his statue a statue of Heracles. When this has been done, all who take part in the ceremony beat their breasts in mourning for the ram, and afterward bury the carcass in a sacred tomb. 43. I was told that this Heracles was one of the twelve gods. As for the other Heracles, with whom the Greeks are familiar,59 I was unable to obtain any information about him in Egypt. But it was not the Egyptians who took the name Heracles from the Greeks; on the contrary, it was the Greeks who took it from the Egyptians (those Greeks, that is, who gave the name Heracles to the son of Amphitryon). There is ample evidence to prove the truth of this, in particular the fact that the parents of Heracles, Amphitryon and Alcmene, were of Egyptian origin. Furthermore, the Egyptians say they do not know the names of Poseidon or the Dioscuri, and do not include them among their gods. But if they had taken the name of any god from the Greeks, they would surely retain some memory of having done so. And if in fact the Egyptians and the Greeks were making sea voyages at the time, as I assume and strongly believe to have been the case, the Egyptians would have been more likely to know the names of Poseidon or the Dioscuri than that of Heracles. Nevertheless the Egyptians have had, from ancient times, a god named Heracles. They say that 17,000 years before the reign of Amasis the twelve gods were produced from the original eight; and of these twelve, Heracles is one. 44. As I wished to obtain as much definite information about these matters as I could, I sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia, having heard there was a temple sacred to Heracles60 in that city. I visited the temple, which was richly appointed and contained many votive offerings, including two columns, one of refined gold, the other of emerald, a stone that glows brightly at night. In the course of conversation with the priests, I asked them how long ago the temple had been erected, and found by their answer that they disagreed with the Greeks. They claimed that the temple was built at the time the city was founded, and that the founda59. Herodotus here distinguishes Heracles the hero, son of Amphitryon and Alcmene, from a more fully divine Heracles, son of Zeus. Most Greeks believed the two were the same, Zeus having impregnated Alcmene at the same time that Amphitryon did; however at the end of 2.44 Herodotus indicates that some Greeks worshiped them as two distinct figures. Using chronology, Herodotus proves, on the basis of his own investigations, that the Egyptian Heracles was immensely older than the Greek; he therefore assumes that the two are different figures. Later (2.146), he will argue instead that the Greeks mistakenly dated the lives of their youngest gods to the time when the worship of those gods entered the Greek world from Egypt. 60. Phoenician Melqart, the principal deity at Tyre.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

99

tion took place 2,300 years ago. I also saw another temple in Tyre, dedicated to “Thasian Heracles.” So I went on to Thasos, where I found a temple of Heracles that had been built by the Phoenicians who settled there when they sailed in search of Europa. Even this was five generations before the birth in Greece of Heracles, son of Amphitryon. This research shows plainly that Heracles is an ancient god. And I think that the wisest course is taken by those Greeks who build and maintain two temples of Heracles, in one of which they worship him as Olympian and immortal, and in the other pay him such honors as are due to a hero. 45. The Greeks tell a number of nonsensical stories. One of the most absurd is the story of how Heracles came to Egypt and was seized by the Egyptians to be sacrificed to Zeus, with a wreath put on his head; and how he submitted quietly for a while, but when they brought him up to the altar and began the ceremony, he put forth his strength and killed them all. Such a story proves that the Greeks are utterly ignorant of the character and customs of the Egyptians. For their religion does not allow them even to sacrifice cattle, except sheep, bulls, calves that are “clean,” and geese. How, then, could they sacrifice human beings? ­Furthermore, how would it have been possible for Heracles alone, and, as they admit, a mere mortal, to kill many thousands of people? May the gods and heroes forgive me for speaking as I have about these matters!61 46. I mentioned earlier that some of the Egyptians abstain from sacrificing goats, either male or female; they do so for this reason. They regard Pan62 as one of the eight gods that existed before the twelve, and he is represented in Egypt by the painters and the sculptors, just as he is in Greece, with the face and legs of a goat.They do not, however, believe this to be his shape, or consider him unlike the other gods in any respect; but they represent him in this way for a reason I would prefer not to discuss. The Mendesians hold all goats to be sacred, especially the males, whose herdsmen are accorded special honors. One of the goats is revered more highly than the others, and when he dies the whole Mendesian province goes into mourning. In the Egyptian language, the goat and Pan are both called Mendes. Something prodigious occurred in my day in this district: a goat copulated with a woman in public. The incident became notorious. 47. The Egyptians regard pigs as unclean. If anyone accidentally touches a pig in passing, he steps into the river fully clothed and immerses himself.Their swineherds, though native Egyptians, are the only men in Egypt who never enter a temple, nor does any man wish to give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd or take a swineherd’s daughter to wife. Instead, the swineherds give and take one another’s daughters in marriage. The Egyptians do not think it right to sacrifice 61. A prayer that gives insight into Herodotus’ peculiar mixture of skepticism and piety in matters of religion. 62. Egyptian Mendes.

100

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

pigs to any of their gods, with the exception of Selene and Dionysus,63 to whom they sacrifice at the same time, at the same full moon, and afterward partake of the flesh. There is a story told by the Egyptians that explains why they sacrifice swine at this festival but are reluctant to do so at all the others. But though I am familiar with the story, it would not be proper to relate it. The following ritual is employed when sacrificing swine to Selene. The tip of the tail, the spleen, and the membrane enclosing the entrails are placed together, covered with all the fat that surrounds the animal’s stomach, and burned as an offering to the goddess. The celebrants consume the remaining meat on the day of the sacrifice; on no other day would they consent to taste it. The poor, who cannot afford to sacrifice an animal, make pigs out of dough, which they bake and offer in sacrifice. 48. Every Egyptian, on the eve of the festival of Dionysus, slaughters a hog before the door of his house; then he gives it back to the swineherd who provided it, who takes it away. In other respects the festival is celebrated almost exactly as the festivals of Dionysus are in Greece, though without the choral dances. But instead of phalluses,64 the Egyptians have fashioned puppets almost eighteen inches tall, pulled by strings, which the women carry about through the villages. The puppets’ phalluses nod up and down and are almost as large as the rest of their bodies. A flute player leads the way, and the women follow, singing hymns in honor of Dionysus. There is a religious story that explains why the phallus is so large and why it is the only part of the puppet’s body that moves.65 49. Melampus, son of Amythaon, it seems to me, was not ignorant of this ceremony; indeed, he must have been acquainted with it. For it was he who introduced into Greece the name of Dionysus, the sacrifice in his honor, and the procession of the phallus. Melampus himself did not understand the doctrine well enough to communicate it in its entirety; its more perfect elaboration was the work of later sages. Still, it was Melampus who introduced the phallic procession; it was from him that the Greeks learned the ceremonies they now perform. I maintain, then, that Melampus, who was a clever man and had acquired the art of divination, brought into Greece, with few changes, a number of things he had learned in Egypt, and among them the worship of Dionysus. I do not accept that it is by coincidence that the Greek ceremonies in honor of this god are so similar to the Egyptian. Had that been the case, the Greek rituals would have been more Greek in character and less recent in origin. Nor do I admit that the Egyptians 63. Isis and Osiris. 64. Objects resembling erect phalluses were often carried in Greek processions honoring Dionysus. 65. As in 2.47, Herodotus declines to recount a myth he considers salacious or improper. In this case the omitted story is likely that of how Isis put Osiris’ dismembered body back together but had to fashion a prosthetic phallus when she could not find the real one.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

101

borrowed this or any other custom from the Greeks. I presume that Melampus got his knowledge of the worship of Dionysus from Cadmus of Tyre and the men who accompanied Cadmus from Phoenicia to the country now called Boeotia.66 50. The names of almost all the gods have come to Greece from Egypt. That they were all derived from a foreign source I have ascertained by inquiry, and the greater number, in my opinion, were furnished by Egypt. For with the exception of Poseidon and the Dioscuri (as I mentioned earlier), as well as Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Graces, and the Nereids, the names of the other gods have been known in Egypt from time immemorial. Here I am reporting what the Egyptians themselves say. I believe that the gods whose names they profess not to know were named by the Pelasgians67—with the exception of Poseidon. The Greeks learned of Poseidon from the Libyans; for the Libyans are the only people who have always had a god of that name, and always honored him. The Egyptians pay no divine honors to heroes.68 51.These practices (as well as others I will describe) were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt. But the making of statues of Hermes with an erect phallus they learned not from the Egyptians but from the Pelasgians; it was the Athenians who first learned the practice from the Pelasgians, and from the Athenians it passed to the other Greeks. For just at the time the Athenians were assuming Hellenic nationality, the Pelasgians came to settle in their country; it was then that the Pelasgians, too, came to be regarded as Greeks.69 Anyone who has been initiated in the mysteries of the Cabiri70 will know what I mean. The Samothracians learned these rites from the Pelasgians, who lived in Samothrace before they moved to Attica and imparted their mysteries to the Athenians. The Athenians, then, who were the first of all the Greeks to make statues of Hermes with an erect phallus, learned the practice from the Pelasgians. The latter explained it by a religious doctrine, the details of which are revealed in the Samothracian mysteries. 66. Cadmus, the founder of Greek Thebes, was father of Semele and grandfather of the god whom the Greeks knew as Dionysus. Herodotus here seems to assume two different figures called Dionysus (as he did for Heracles at 2.44), an original Egyptian deity (see 2.145) and a far more recent Greek figure to whom the “name” and rites derived from Egypt were applied. 67. On the Pelasgians, a pre-Greek population of the European Greek lands, see 1.56–57. 68. “Heroes” is used here in the Greek sense of semi-divine but mortal figures worshiped after their deaths. 69. This passage is muddled in itself and also at variance with 1.56–57. There, the Athenians were described by Herodotus as Hellenized Pelasgians. Here, the Athenians are also described as a pre-Greek people who became Greeks, but the Pelasgians are said to have moved into Attica beside them (as also at 6.137), and then to have become Greek along with them. 70. The Cabiri were a pair or small group of male gods, whose rites were of Asian origin. Eastern Aegean islands were often their principal places of worship, though probably not Samothrace, despite Herodotus’ testimony.

102

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

52. In early times the Pelasgians, as I learned at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds and prayed to the gods, but had no names or titles for them, since they had never heard of any. They called them theoi, meaning “disposers,”71 because they had disposed and allotted all things in due order. Many years later the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt, and the Pelasgians learned them—with the exception of Dionysus, of whom they first heard at a much later date. After the arrival of the names, they consulted the oracle at Dodona about them.This oracle, the most ancient in Greece, was the only one that existed at that time. When they asked the oracle whether they should adopt the names that had come from abroad, the oracle replied that they would be right to use them. From then on the Pelasgians used the names of the gods in their sacrifices, and from the Pelasgians the names passed to the Greeks. 53. It was only yesterday or the day before, so to speak,72 that the Greeks learned the origin of each god, the forms each assumes, and whether or not all of them had always existed. For Homer and Hesiod were the poets who composed a theogony for the Greeks, and gave the gods their epithets, allotted them their offices and powers, and described their forms; and they lived no more than 400 years before my time, as I believe.73 The poets who are thought to have lived earlier than these actually lived later, in my judgment. For the former part of my statement on these matters I have the authority of the priestesses of Dodona; what I have said about Homer and Hesiod is my own opinion. 54. The Egyptians tell the following story about the oracles in Greece and Libya. According to the priests of Theban Zeus,74 two priestesses were abducted from Thebes by the Phoenicians and sold, one in Libya and the other in Greece, and it was these women who founded the oracles in the two countries. When I asked how they came to be so sure about this, they replied that a diligent search had been made for the women at the time, but that it had been impossible to discover their whereabouts; afterward, however, they received the information they had given me. 55. The prophetesses at Dodona, on the other hand, tell the following story. Two black doves flew away from Egyptian Thebes, one of them to Libya, the other to Dodona. The former, perching on an oak tree, spoke with a human voice and 71. Herodotus here traces the Greek word theoi to the verb tithemi, meaning “place” or “set in order.” 72. The exaggeration calls attention to the vastly greater span of time in Egyptian divine history than in that of the Greeks; see 2.145. 73. Modern estimates put Homer in the mid-8th century B.C., Hesiod a bit later. Herodotus thus lived about 300 years after Homer. 74. As before at 2.42, the Thebes referred to here is that in Egypt, and “Zeus” is therefore Ammon.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

103

declared that an oracle of Zeus should be established on that spot. The Dodona­ eans who heard her assumed this was a divine commandment, and at once obeyed. The priestesses say that the dove that flew to Libya told the Libyans to establish there an oracle of Ammon (which is also an oracle of Zeus). That is the story I was told by the priestesses of Dodona, of whom the eldest is Promeneia, the second eldest Timarete, and the youngest Nicandra. Their story is confirmed by other Dodonaeans who live near the temple. 56. I myself am of the following opinion. If the Phoenicians actually abducted the holy women and sold one of them in Libya, the other in Greece, or Pelasgia (as it was then called), the latter must have been sold to the Thesprotians.75 Afterward, in servitude there, she built a shrine to Zeus under an oak tree; for she would naturally remember in her exile the god whose temple she had cared for in Thebes. Later, once she had learned the Greek language, she set up an oracle and mentioned that the same Phoenicians who had sold her, also sold her sister in Libya. 57. It seems to me that the women were called doves by the Dodonaeans because they were foreigners, and their speech resembled the twittering of birds. The priestesses report that after a time the dove spoke with a human voice (once the woman’s utterances were intelligible to them). Until she spoke in Greek, her talk sounded to them like twittering. For how could a dove speak with a human voice? In reporting that the dove was black, they indicate that the woman was an Egyptian. And it is certainly true that the oracles at Thebes and Dodona are similar in character. The Dodonaean form of divination by means of sacrificial victims also came from Egypt. 58. The Egyptians were also the first to introduce festal assemblies, processions, and solemn approaches, and it was from the Egyptians that the Greeks learned of them. A sure sign of this, in my opinion, is that in Egypt these rituals are of great antiquity, whereas in Greece they are a recent development. 59. The Egyptians hold a solemn assembly not once a year only but on several occasions. Of these the most important and well attended is the festival in honor of Artemis at Bubastis. The next in importance is the assembly in honor of Isis at Busiris, a city in the middle of the Delta. (Busiris contains an enormous temple dedicated to Isis, the goddess know to the Greeks as Demeter.) There is a third great festival in Sais to Athena, a fourth in Heliopolis to Helios, a fifth in Buto to Leto, and a sixth in Papremis to Ares. 60. The procedure at Bubastis is this: men and women sail there together, a great many in each barge. Throughout the journey, some of the women rattle castanets, some of the men play on the flute, while all the other passengers sing and clap their hands. Whenever they reach a city, they approach the shore, and while 75. A northern Greek people living near the shrine of Dodona.

104

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

some of the women continue to sing, clap, and rattle their castanets, others jeer at the women ashore, a certain number dance, and some stand and pull up their skirts. They keep this up until they have sailed past each city’s banks. When they reach Bubastis they celebrate the festival with abundant sacrifices. More wine is consumed at this festival than throughout the rest of the year. According to the residents of Bubastis, as many as 17,000 men and women, not counting children, attend this assembly. 61. I have already mentioned the festival of Isis in Busiris. It is there that all the men and women, many thousands in number, beat their breasts after the sacrifice: in whose honor, however, it would not be proper for me to say.76 The Carians who live in Egypt go even further and cut their faces with knives, whereby they reveal that they are foreigners and not Egyptians. 62. At Sais, on the night of the sacrifices, all the inhabitants burn a great many lights in the open air around their houses. The lamps they use are flat dishes filled with oil and salt, with a floating wick that burns throughout the night. The festival is called the Feast of Lamps, and even the Egyptians who cannot attend it observe the night of the sacrifice by lighting lamps, so that the practice is not confined to Sais only, but extends throughout Egypt.There is a sacred story that accounts both for the date and the character of the observances. 63. At Heliopolis and Buto the assemblies are merely for the purpose of sacrifice; but at Papremis, near sunset, when they have completed the same sacrifices and sacred rites that are performed elsewhere, a few of the priests remain occupied around Ares’77 statue, while the majority take their stand, armed with wooden clubs, at the temple entrance. Meanwhile, another crowd of men, more than a thousand, also armed with clubs, stand opposite them, ready to fulfill their vows. On the previous day, the statue of Ares that stands in the small gilded wooden shrine is conveyed away to a different sanctuary.The few priests who have been left in charge of this statue draw a four-wheeled wagon on which the little shrine (and the statue within it) is conveyed to the temple. The others, waiting at the temple gates, try to prevent it from coming in, whereupon those who have been bound by vows to assist the god attack them with their clubs. The assault is resisted, and a fierce battle ensues, in which heads are broken on both sides. Many, I imagine, actually die of wounds they receive, though the Egyptians insist that no one is ever killed. The natives explain the origin of this festival as follows. They say that the mother of Ares once lived in the temple; Ares himself was reared elsewhere, but when he had grown to manhood he wished to get to know his mother and came to the temple. But as her attendants had never seen him before, they 76. Osiris is meant. Herodotus is very circumspect when it comes to this deity; see also 2.86, 2.132, and 2.170. 77. Egyptian Horus is probably meant.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

105

barred his way. Fetching men from another city, Ares assaulted the attendants and forced his way in to his mother. This they say, is why the battle with clubs is part of the ceremony at the festival of Ares. 64. The Egyptians were the first to impose a religious prohibition against copulating with women in temples, and against even entering a temple unwashed after intercourse with a woman. Nearly all other peoples, except the Egyptians and the Greeks, copulate in temples and enter them unwashed after intercourse, thinking that human beings are no different from animals. For they see animals and all kinds of birds mating in the temples and sacred precincts, and assume that if copulating in temples were unacceptable to the god, animals would not be mating there. These peoples engage in behavior that I, at any rate, cannot approve. 65. Meticulous in the performance of all their other religious duties, the Egyptians are especially so in this case. Egypt, though it shares a border with Libya, does not abound in wild animals. All the animals in the country, whether domesticated or not, are regarded as sacred. If I were to explain the reason for this, I would have to speak of religious matters, discussion of which I go out of my way to avoid. Thus far I have touched on these matters only when the needs of my story demand it. Their custom with regard to animals is as follows. The various sorts of animals have guardians appointed for them, sometimes men, sometimes women, who are responsible for feeding them. This office is handed down from father to child. The inhabitants fulfill their vows as follows. Praying to the god to whom the particular animal is sacred, they shave their children’s heads (cutting off all the hair, or else half, or sometimes a third part). Weighing the hair, they give its weight in silver to the guardian, who then cuts up some fish to an equivalent value and gives it to the animals to eat. Anyone who deliberately kills one of these animals is punished with death; if the animal is killed by accident, the penalty is whatever fine the priests impose. But for killing an ibis78 or a hawk, whether intentionally or not, the penalty is death. 66. Though there are many domestic animals in Egypt, there would be far more were it not for what happens to the cats.79 When the female cats give birth, they no longer consort with the males, who, however, still seek to mate with them, though without success. In response, the males trick the females by seizing the kittens, carrying them off, and killing them (though they do not eat them). Then the females, bereft of their kittens and wanting more, go back to the males, since they are especially fond of their offspring. Whenever a fire breaks out, the strangest thing happens to the cats. The inhabitants make no effort to extinguish the fire; instead they all stand around at intervals and try to protect the 78. A kind of bird; see 2.76 for a full discussion. 79. Domestic cats were exotic creatures to the Greeks, most of whom would never have seen one.

106

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

cats, who nevertheless slip by the men or leap over them and rush headlong into the flames.When this occurs, the Egyptians are overcome with grief. If a cat dies a natural death in a private house, all the inmates of the house shave their eyebrows; on the death of a dog they shave the head and the entire body. 67. When cats die, they are taken to Bubastis, where they are embalmed and buried in sacred repositories. Dogs are buried, also in sacred tombs, in their own cities. Mongooses are buried in the same way as dogs. Field mice and hawks are taken to Buto, ibises to Hermopolis. Bears, which are rare in Egypt, and wolves, which are not much bigger than foxes, they bury wherever they find them lying. 68. The following are the characteristics of the crocodile. During the four winter months it takes no food. It is an amphibious quadruped. It lays and hatches its eggs on land, where it spends the greater part of the day, but stays all night in the river, where the water is warmer than the night air and the dew. Of all the mortal creatures we know of, the crocodile increases the most in size from hatchling to adult. For it lays eggs that are no larger than those of a goose, and the newly hatched crocodile is in proportion to the egg; yet it grows to a length of twenty-three feet or more. It has the eyes of a pig and large tusk-like teeth, of a size proportioned to its body. It is the only animal to have no tongue and a stationary lower jaw; for it brings its upper jaw down to the lower. It has powerful claws and a scaly hide, which on its back is impenetrable. It is blind in the water, but on land remarkably keen-sighted. Because it lives in the water, the inside of its mouth is full of leeches; hence it happens that, while all the other species of birds and animals keep clear of the crocodile, the sandpiper lives at peace with it, for the crocodile is benefited by the bird. Whenever the crocodile emerges from the water onto land and opens its jaws (which it generally does facing the west), the sandpiper, slipping into its mouth, swallows the leeches. Thus benefited, the crocodile is content and does not devour the sandpiper. 69. Some of the Egyptians regard the crocodile as a sacred animal, while others treat it as an enemy. Those who live in Thebes and around Lake Moeris venerate it highly. In both places the inhabitants keep one particular crocodile, which they tame, adorning its ears with pendants of molten stone or gold, placing anklets around its front feet, and giving it special food and sacrificial offerings. While these creatures are alive they treat them with great kindness, and when they die, embalm them and bury them in sacred tombs.80 The people of Elephantine, on the other hand, who do not regard them as sacred, eat their flesh. In the Egyptian language these creatures are called champsae.The name “crocodile” was given them by the Ionians, who noted their resemblance to the lizards found on stone walls in their own country.81 80. Many such crocodile mummies have been recovered. 81. There is indeed a Greek word krokodeilos, which meant “lizard” prior to a widespread Greek awareness of Egyptian crocodiles.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

107

70. Of the many different methods of catching crocodiles I will describe the one that seems to me most worthy of mention. The hunter baits his hook with a chine of pork and lets it float into the middle of the river. Standing on the riverbank, he holds a young pig and beats it. The crocodile, when he hears its squeals, rushes toward it, encounters the bait, gulps it down, and is hauled out of the water. When the hunter has got it to land, his first concern is to plaster over its eyes with mud. This done, the beast is easily dispatched; without this precaution it gives great trouble. 71. The hippopotamus is regarded as sacred in the district of Papremis, but not in any other part of Egypt. The animal is a quadruped, its hooves cloven and solid like those of an ox. It has a snub nose, the mane and tail of a horse, enormous tusks, and a voice like a horse’s neigh.82 It is about the size of the largest oxen, and its hide is so tough that when dried it is used to make spear shafts. 72. Otters, too, are found in the Nile and are regarded as sacred. Only two sorts of fish are honored, the lepidotus and the eel. These are regarded as sacred to the Nile, as is also the bird known as the foxgoose. 73. They have another sacred bird called the phoenix. I have never seen a phoenix myself, except in paintings, for it is rare in Egypt and visits the country (according to the people of Heliopolis) once in 500 years, when the father bird dies. If the phoenix resembles its painted representation, its plumage is partly gold, partly red, and in contour and size it resembles an eagle. They tell a story about the phoenix that I do not find credible. They claim it carries the father bird, plastered up in myrrh, all the way from Arabia, and buries the body in the temple of the Sun. To manage this feat, the bird first shapes some myrrh into a ball as big as it finds it can carry; then it hollows out the ball, puts its father inside, and smears more myrrh over the hole. The ball is then exactly of the same weight as at first, and the phoenix carries it to the temple of the Sun in Egypt. Such, at any rate, is the story.83 74. In the neighborhood of Thebes there are some sacred serpents. They are harmless and small, and have two horns growing out of the top of their heads. When these snakes die, they are buried in the temple of Zeus, the god to whom they are said to be sacred. 75. I visited a place in Arabia almost exactly opposite the city of Buto, to get information about the winged serpents. On my arrival I saw bones and spines of serpents in numbers impossible to calculate. They were piled in numerous heaps, 82. Most of these descriptions are inaccurate and seem to reflect the Greek meaning of the name hippopotamus, “river-horse,” rather than the actual creature. 83. Other Greek versions of the phoenix legend included the idea that a new phoenix was born out of the ashes of the old—an idea that later made the legend appealing to early Christians. There is no actual bird that corresponds to Herodotus’ phoenix.

108

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

some large, some small, some middle-sized. The bones lie in a narrow mountain pass leading to a spacious plain that communicates with the plain of Egypt.84 The story goes that when the winged snakes fly toward Egypt from Arabia in spring, they are met at this pass by the ibises, who prevent their entrance and kill them. The Arabians say that it is on account of this service that the ibis is highly revered by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians themselves admit the truth of what they say. 76. The ibis is jet-black all over, with the legs of a crane and a strongly hooked beak, and is about the size of a corn crake. Here I am describing the black ibis— the kind that attacks the serpents. The commoner sort (for there are two species) has no feathers on its head and neck; its plumage is white, but the head and neck are jet-black, as are the tips of the wings and the tip of the rump; its beak and legs resemble those of the other species. The winged serpent is shaped like the water snake; its wings, having no feathers, resemble those of a bat. So much for the subject of sacred animals. 77. As for the Egyptians, those who live in the cultivated regions of the country, by devoting themselves far more than any other people to keeping records of the past, are the most learned of any men I have ever met. I turn now to their habitual way of life. For three successive days every month they purge the body by means of emetics and enemas; this is done for the sake of their health, since they believe that all diseases are caused by the food a man eats. And even apart from such precautions, they are, it seems to me, next to the Libyans, the healthiest people in the world. I attribute this to their climate, which has no seasonal changes. For diseases chiefly afflict men who are exposed to changes, and especially changes of weather. They live on bread made of spelt, which they form into loaves called cyllestis.85 Since they have no grape-vines in their country, they drink wine made from barley.86 They eat certain fish raw, either salted or dried in the sun. Quail, too, they eat raw, and ducks and small birds, after pickling them in brine. All other birds and fish, except those regarded as sacred, are eaten either roasted or boiled. 78. At the social gatherings of the well-to-do, when the meal has ended, a man carries among the guests a coffin, in which there is a wooden image of a corpse, carved and painted with great accuracy, about a cubit or two in length. As he shows it to each guest in turn, he says, “Look at him as you drink and make merry, for you will be just like him when you die.” 84. There has been much speculation as to what Herodotus saw (or whether he is lying about seeing something), but no clear answers emerge. The flying snakes are again mentioned at 3.107, this time as a feature of Arabia. 85. The Egyptian word was krist, so Herodotus (here and elsewhere) is not far off in his transcription of Egyptian words. Spelt is a kind of wheat. 86. Beer, a very popular Egyptian drink but almost unknown to the Greeks.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

109

79. The Egyptians adhere to their ancestral customs and adopt none from abroad. Most of these customs are noteworthy, among others their “Linus” song. Linus, under different names, is celebrated in song in Phoenicia, Cyprus, and elsewhere, and appears to be the person the Greeks call Linus.87 Among the many things in Egypt that surprised me, this was one. Where did the Egyptians get the Linus song? For it seems that they have sung it from the earliest times. The Egyptian name for Linus is Maneros, and they say that he was the only of son of their first king, and that on his untimely death he was honored by the Egyptians with this dirge, which was their first and at that time their only melody. 80. There is another Egyptian custom that among the Greeks is practiced only by the Spartans. Their young men, when they meet their elders in the streets, give way to them and step aside; they also rise from their seats when their elders come in. None of the Greeks, however, share the following Egyptian custom. Instead of speaking to one another when they meet in the streets, they make a low bow and drop one hand to the knee. 81. The Egyptians wear fringed linen chitons (called calasiris) that cover their legs. Over these they wear white woolen cloaks. But an Egyptian does not wear woolen garments in temples, nor is he buried in them, as their religion forbids it. Their practice resembles the rites called Orphic and Bacchic, but which are in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean;88 for no one initiated in these mysteries can be buried in woolen garments.There is a religious story that explains this prohibition. 82. The Egyptians also discovered to which god each day and month is sacred, and were the first to foretell by the date of a man’s birth what he will encounter in the course of his life, the date of his death, and what sort of man he will be— discoveries the Greek poets have turned to account. They have made more use of omens than any other people in the world. Whenever an unusual phenomenon is noted, they keep watch and record the result; then, if at a later time the phenomenon recurs, they expect the same result. 83. They consider divination to be a gift no man possesses, but only certain gods. Thus Heracles, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Ares, and Zeus all have an oracle in the country; but the oracle of Leto in Buto is held in higher regard than any of the others.The method of issuing oracular responses differs from shrine to shrine. 87. The Greek name Linus seems to have been created out of a word of tragic lament, ailinos, interpreted to mean “woe for Linus.” Ailinos may have come into Greek from a Near Eastern cry such as ai lanu, “alas for us.” 88. Orphic rites were associated with the mythic singer and seer Orpheus, Bacchic rites with Dionysus. Herodotus has already claimed that the latter were derived from Egypt (see 2.49). The idea that Orphism and Pythagoreanism were connected seems to have been suggested to Herodotus by their common belief in transmigration of souls, a doctrine that led to vegetarianism and (as here) avoidance of animal skin and fur in clothing.

110

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

84. The practice of medicine is split up into different disciplines, with each practitioner treating only one disease.Thus the country teems with doctors, some specializing in diseases of the eye, others of the head, others of the teeth, others of the internal organs, and so on; still others treat ailments that are doubtful or uncertain.89 85. With regard to mourning and funerals, whenever a distinguished man dies, all the women of his household plaster their heads and faces with mud. Leaving the body at home, they wander through the city, together with all their female relatives, beating themselves, binding up their dresses, and exposing their breasts. The men too, binding up their garments, beat their chests. When this ceremony is over, they take the body away to be embalmed. 86. There is a set of men in Egypt who practice the art of embalming. When a corpse is brought to them, they show the bearers various models of corpses, made of wood and painted to resemble nature. The most lifelike is said to represent a being whose name it would be improper for me to mention in this context.90 The second sort is inferior to the first, and less expensive. The third is the cheapest of all. After explaining the difference in quality, they ask which of the three is required. The family then departs, having agreed upon a price, and the embalmers, left to themselves, get to work. The most perfect process of embalming is the following. First, a portion of the brain is extracted through the nostrils with a curved iron implement, the remainder by an infusion of drugs. Next, making an incision along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, they remove the entire contents of the abdomen, clean the cavity, and purge it first with palm wine and again with an infusion of pounded spices. After this they fill it with the purest bruised myrrh, cassia, and every other sort of aromatic substance, except frankincense, and sew up the opening. Then the body is placed in natrum91 for seventy days and covered entirely over. (It is not lawful to embalm a body for a longer period.) When the seventy days have elapsed, they wash the body and swathe it, from head to foot, with strips of fine linen, smeared over with gum, which is generally used by the Egyptians instead of glue. In this state it is given back to the relatives, who enclose it in a wooden case they have had made, shaped like a human figure. Fastening the case, they place it in a sepulchral chamber, upright against a wall. 87. This is the most costly method of preparing corpses. For those who wish to avoid expense and choose the second process, the embalmers use the following procedure. No incision is made, and the intestines are not removed, but

89. The high reputation of Egyptian doctors is attested by 3.1 below, where a Persian king demands that a doctor be sent to him from Egypt. 90. See 2.61 and note. 91. A naturally occurring substance used as a drying agent.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

111

cedar oil92 is injected with a syringe into the body through the anus, which is then stopped up to prevent the fluid from escaping. They embalm the corpse for the prescribed number of days, and on the last day the oil is drained off. The effect of this oil is so powerful that as it leaves the body it brings with it the stomach and intestines, which have melted away. The natrum has also dissolved the flesh, so that nothing remains of the body but the bones and skin. It is returned in that state to the family without further ado. 88. The third method, used for embalming the poor, is to clear out the intestines with a purge and let the body lie in natrum for seventy days, after which it is given to those who come to take it away. 89. The wives of distinguished men are not sent to the embalmers immediately, nor are women who are beautiful or well-known. Such women are not sent to them until they have been dead three or four days, so that the embalmers may not copulate with the corpse, a thing that is said to have happened in the case of a woman who had just died. The culprit was given away by one of his fellow workmen. 90. Whenever anyone, Egyptian or foreigner, has been killed by a crocodile, or died by drowning in the river, the inhabitants of the city at which the body has washed up are obliged to have it embalmed in the most expensive manner and buried in a sacred tomb. No one but the priests of the Nile is allowed to touch it—not even the dead persons’ friends or relatives; the priests prepare it for burial with their own hands and place it in the tomb, regarding it as something more than a human corpse. 91. The Egyptians shun Greek customs; to tell the whole truth, they shun the customs of all other peoples.93 All the Egyptians keep to their own ways except the citizens of Chemmis, a large city near Neapolis in the Theban district. In Chemmis there is a square enclosure sacred to Perseus, the son of Danae. Palm trees grow around the place, which has an enormous stone gateway surmounted by two colossal stone figures. Within the enclosure is a shrine containing a statue of Perseus. The people of Chemmis say that Perseus is often seen in their neighborhood and often inside the temple, where one of his sandals, two cubits in length, is frequently found. Whenever it appears, all of Egypt prospers. In honor of Perseus, the Chemmites hold Greek athletic games that include every kind of contest, with prizes of cattle, cloaks, and skins.94 When I asked why Perseus appears only to the Chemmites, and why they, unlike all other Egyptians, celebrated with athletic games, they replied that Perseus belonged by descent to 92. Evidently used as a preservative. 93. A tendency opposite to that of the Persians (see 1.135). 94. Lloyd’s assumption in his Commentary (ad loc.) is that the Greeks who had settled near Chemmis saw a local statue that reminded them of Perseus (though in fact it may have been the Egyptian Horus) and subsequently instituted the games.

112

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

their city. Danaus and Lynceus, they said, were Chemmites before they sailed to Greece, and from them they traced Perseus’ descent. They said that when Perseus came to Egypt for the purpose (which the Greeks also assign) of fetching the Gorgon’s head from Libya,95 he visited the Chemmites and acknowledged them as his kinsmen. For he had learned the name of the place from his mother before he left Greece. It was at his order that they instituted athletic games in his honor. 92. The customs so far described are those of the Egyptians who live south of the marsh country. The inhabitants of the marshes96 have the same customs as the rest; and each Egyptian takes a single wife, like the Greeks. They have, however, discovered a number of ways to live more cheaply. Whenever the river rises and the plains are flooded, many lilies grow in the water. Gathering the blossoms of a certain lily (the Egyptians call it the lotus), they dry them in the sun; then they extract the central portion (which resembles a poppy-head), which they grind and make into bread. The lotus root is also edible; it is round, about as big as an apple, and has a fairly sweet taste. Another species of lily is found in the river; it resembles a rose, and its fruit grows on a separate stalk and looks like a wasps’ comb. It contains a number of seeds, about the size of olive pits, which are eaten both fresh and dried. The papyrus, an annual that grows in the river, they pull up; cutting the stalk in two, they keep the upper part for some other purpose;97 the lower part, which is about a cubit in length, they either eat or sell. Those who wish to get the full enjoyment of the edible part bake it in a closed pan, heated red-hot. Some of these people, however, live entirely on fish, which they gut immediately, and eat after drying them in the sun. 93. Fish that swim in schools are not found in great numbers in the rivers; they frequent the lakes, which they leave at the breeding season to swim out to sea in schools. The males lead the way, shedding their seed as they go; the females, following behind, gulp it down. From this they conceive, and when, after spending some time in the sea, they are about to spawn, the whole school returns to its former home. Now it is the females, not the males, who lead the way. At the head of the school, the females do as the males did earlier, shedding their grains of spawn as they go, a few at a time, while the males, following behind, gulp down the grains.98 (Each grain is a fish in embryo. The grains that survive and are not 95. The Gorgon is also sometimes referred to as Medusa. Perseus was charged by Polydectes, the king of Argos, with the task of bringing back her head. 96. The marshes of the Nile delta. 97. As an author who probably wrote on scrolls made from papyrus, Herodotus might have been expected to comment on this “other purpose” for the plant, but he does not. 98. Lloyd (Commentary ad loc.) reports that a Nile-dwelling species of tilapia takes its own eggs into its mouth for incubation, a process Herodotus misunderstands as ingestion.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

113

gulped down develop into mature fish.) Any of this sort of fish caught on their seaward passage are found to have noticeable abrasions on the left side of their heads. Caught on their return, their abrasions are found on the right. The fish come by these abrasions in the following way. On their seaward swim they keep close to the bank of the river on their left, and keep to the same side on their way back, hugging the shore and brushing against it constantly, so as not to be carried out of their course by the strength of the current. Whenever the Nile begins to rise, the hollows in the land and the water-meads near the river are the first to fill, as the water percolates through the riverbanks. As soon as these become pools, they are found to be full of little fish. I think I understand how this comes about. The fish, when the river is subsiding the year before, lay their eggs in the mud just before departing with the receding waters, so that when the water returns at the usual season, the eggs immediately hatch and produce the fish. So much concerning the fish. 94. The Egyptians who live in the marshes99 use an oil made from the fruit of the castor-oil plant. This plant, which grows wild in Greece, the Egyptians call kiki. They plant its seeds along the banks of rivers and lakes, and these bear fruit in great abundance, though with a disagreeable smell. When the fruit is harvested, it is either cut up and pressed, or boiled down after roasting. The liquid produced is oily, and as suitable as olive oil for burning in lamps, though it gives off an unpleasant smell. 95. Against the mosquitoes, which abound, they have devised defensive measures. South of the marshes the inhabitants pass the night on high towers, which are of great utility, since the mosquitoes are prevented by the wind from flying to any height. In the marsh country, where there are no towers, each man acquires a net, which he uses during the day for catching fish. At night he spreads it around his bed, and creeps in under it before he goes to sleep. If he rolls himself up in a cloak or in linen, the mosquitoes bite through them; but they do not even attempt to get through the net. 96. Egyptian cargo vessels are made from acacia wood. (The acacia resembles the Cyrenaean lotus and exudes a gum.) They cut planks, roughly three feet long, from this tree, arrange them in courses, like bricks, and construct their vessels as follows. They fasten the planks together with long dowels set at close intervals. When the hull is built, they stretch cross-planks over it.The boats have no ribs and are caulked from the inside with papyrus. Each boat has a single rudder, which is driven through the keel. The masts are made of acacia wood, the sails of papyrus. 99. The marshes referred to are those of the Nile delta. These marshes were later famous as the home of bandits and pirates; the marsh-dwellers Herodotus here describes seem a more ordinary sort, though perhaps somewhat poorer and therefore more resourceful than other Egyptians.

114

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

These vessels cannot sail upstream without a strong wind, but have to be towed from the shore. On their downstream voyages they are managed as follows. Each boat is equipped with a raft made of tamarisk wood, with a rush mat fastened on top of it, and a stone, weighing nearly two talents, through which a hole has been bored.The raft is fastened to the vessel by a rope, and is allowed to float down the stream in front, while the stone is fastened by another rope astern. The raft, borne forward by the current, drags the baris100 (that is the Egyptian name for these vessels) in its wake, while the stone, dragging along on the river bottom astern, keeps the vessel straight. The Egyptians have a great many of these vessels, some of which can carry loads weighing many thousands of talents. 97. When the Nile overflows, only the cities remain above water. The rest of Egypt becomes a sea in which the cities resemble Aegean islands. At this season boats no longer keep to the river’s channel but sail directly across the plain. When you travel from Naucratis to Memphis, you sail right by the pyramids, whereas the usual course is by the apex of the Delta and the city of Cercasorus. And at this season you can also sail from Canobis on the coast across the plain to Naucratis, passing by the cities of Anthylla and Archandropolis.101 98.The former of these, a city of some renown, has been assigned, ever since Egypt became subject to Persia, 102 to the wife of the reigning king, to keep her supplied with shoes.The other city, I imagine, took the name of Archandropolis from Archander, son of Pthius, the grandson of Achaeaus and son-in-law of Danaus. There may of course have been another Archander, but the name, at any rate, is not Egyptian. 99. Up to this point, my account has been based on my own observation, judgment, and research; from this point on, what I relate about Egypt will be based on the accounts given to me by the Egyptians, though I shall add certain details that came to my own attention. The priests said that it was Min, the first king of Egypt,103 who fenced Memphis with dikes. Before his time, the river used to flow alongside the sandy mountains on the Libyan border. But Min, by damming up the river at the bend about a hundred stades south of Memphis, drained the ancient channel and diverted the river to a new one halfway between the two lines of hills. To this day, the Persians104 100. An Egyptian word that had by this time been imported into Greek as an exotic way to refer to a ship. 101. None of these examples of the volume of Nile floods is exaggerated, according to Lloyd (Commentary ad loc.). In modern times the Nile’s floods have been contained by the Aswan dam. 102. Egypt became a Persian satrapy after 525 B.C., as Herodotus will relate in Book 3. 103. Mentioned earlier at 2.4.The approximate date for Egypt’s first king, based on the extensive king-lists and other records maintained by royal scribes (see 2.100), is 3200 B.C. 104. See note 102. As the new overlords of Egypt, the Persians had assumed responsibility for such public-works projects.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

115

keep a close watch over this bend and reinforce the dam every year. For if the river were to burst out there, Memphis might be completely inundated. On the tract of dry land created by the diversion of the river, Min built the city that is now called Memphis, which lies in the narrow part of Egypt. Afterward, to the north and west of the city, he excavated a lake that communicates with the river, which itself forms the city’s eastern boundary. Besides these works the priests told me that he built the large and very remarkable temple of Hephaestus. 100. Next, the priests read to me from a papyrus roll the names of the 300 monarchs who succeeded Min. Over the course of the same number of generations there were eighteen Ethiopian kings105 and one Egyptian queen; all the other rulers were Egyptian kings. The woman who reigned had the same name as the Babylonian queen: Nitocris.106 The priests reported that she avenged the death of her brother. He had been the king of Egypt, and was put to death by his subjects, who then placed her upon the throne. She sought her revenge, and slaughtered a great many Egyptians, by means of a ruse. She constructed a spacious underground chamber, and, on the pretense of inaugurating it, invited to a banquet all the Egyptians whom she knew had been chiefly responsible for her brother’s murder; then, as they were feasting, she let the river in through a large secret conduit. This was all the priests told me of her, except that after she had done so, she flung herself into a room full of ashes to escape her punishment. 101. The other kings, they said, were persons of no distinction and left no significant monuments, with the exception of the last, whose name was Moeris. He left as memorials of his reign the northern gateway of the temple of Hephaestus, the lake (whose dimensions I will mention later on),107 and the pyramids built on the lake (the size of which I will mention when I describe the lake itself ). Such were the achievements of Moeris; the other kings left nothing at all. 102. I will therefore pass over them and speak of Sesostris,108 who succeeded them. The priests reported that Sesostris sailed with a fleet of warships from the Arabian gulf along the shores of the Red Sea, subjugating the coastal tribes as he went, until he found that shoals made the sea unnavigable. On his return to Egypt, according to the priests, he assembled a large army and swept across the continent, subjugating every nation in his path. Wherever he encountered a people 105. One such is described at 2.137 below. There were indeed numerous periods in Egyptian history at which Ethiopians (or Nubians) controlled the country. 106. See 1.185–86 above for the Babylonian Nitocris. Lloyd (Commentary ad loc.) identifies the Egyptian Nitocris as a certain Nt-ikr-ti listed in an Egyptian king-list at the end of Dynasty VI. 107. At 2.149. Lake Moeris was not in fact manmade. 108. The corresponding Egyptian name belonged to three different kings of Dynasty XII; it is not clear which one (if any) matches the account of Herodotus.

116

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

who fought bravely for their freedom, he erected pillars on which his own name and that of his country were inscribed, together with a formula to the effect that, by his own might, he had subjugated the inhabitants. But wherever his opponents submitted without a struggle, he added to the inscription on the pillar a depiction of a woman’s genitals, wishing to show that the people were cowards. 103. Proceeding in this manner Sesostris traversed the continent, crossed from Asia into Europe, and subjugated the Scythians and Thracians. It seems to me that this was the farthest point the Egyptian army reached, for the pillars he erected are still visible in these regions but not beyond them. Sesostris then turned back and came, on his return journey, to the river Phasis.109 I cannot say with any certainty what took place at that point. Either he himself left a detachment of his army to colonize the country, or some of his soldiers, oppressed by their wanderings, deserted and settled near the banks of the Phasis. 104. But there can be no doubt that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent. I noticed this myself before others mentioned it, and when the notion occurred to me I made inquiries both in Colchis and in Egypt, and found that the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more distinctly than the Egyptians remembered them. The Egyptians said they believed that the Colchians were descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were based first on the fact that the Colchians have dark skin and woolly hair (which proves nothing, since other peoples also have these traits), and secondly, and more especially, on the fact that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians are the only peoples who have practiced circumcision from ancient times. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine110 admit that they learned the practice from the Egyptians; and the Syrians who live near Parthenium and the river Thermodon,111 as well as their neighbors the Macrones, say that they have recently learned it from the Colchians. These are the only peoples who practice circumcision, and they are clearly imitating the Egyptians. I cannot say, with respect to the Egyptians and Ethiopians, which people learned it from the other, as the practice is evidently quite ancient.There is another strong indication, it seems to me, that other nations have learned the practice from Egypt: all the Phoenicians who have contact with Greece discontinue the Egyptian practice and allow their children to remain uncircumcised. 109. At the eastern end of the Black Sea, in present-day Armenia. The region surrounding the Phasis was known as Colchis, hence the connection Herodotus makes shortly between Egyptians and Colchians. 110. Only here and at 3.91 does Herodotus refer to the Palestinian Syrians. The fact that he thought they practiced circumcision has suggested to some that they are the Jews, but there is no conclusive evidence. The Jews were not known by name to European Greeks until a century after Herodotus. 111. The Cappadocians.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

117

105. Let me mention yet another point of resemblance between the Colchians and the Egyptians. Only the Colchians and Egyptians weave their linen in exactly the same way; and they resemble one another in their way of living and in their language. The linen made in Colchis is known by the Greeks as Sardonian linen;112 that which comes from Egypt is called Egyptian. 106. Most of the pillars Sesostris erected in the countries he conquered have disappeared, but I saw some myself in Syrian Palestine, with the inscription I mentioned and the depiction of a woman’s genitals. In Ionia also, there are two images of Sesostris engraved on rock, one on the road from Ephesus to Phocaea, the other on the road between Sardis and Smyrna. In each case the figure is that of a man, four cubits and a span high, with a spear in his right hand, a bow in his left, the rest of his equipment being half Egyptian, half Ethiopian. An inscription runs across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, in the Egyptian sacred characters: “By my shoulders’ might I conquered this land.” The name and country of the conqueror are not indicated, though Sesostris has made this plain elsewhere. Some who have seen these figures imagine, quite mistakenly, that they represent Memnon.113 107. The priests told me that Sesostris, on his return home with multitudes of the people whose countries he had subjugated, was met at Daphnae, near Pelusium, by his brother, whom he had left to govern Egypt in his absence, and was invited by him, with his sons, to a banquet. Then his brother piled up wood all around the banquet hall and set it on fire. Discovering what had happened, Sesostris immediately consulted his wife, who had accompanied him to the feast; she advised him to lay two of their six sons over the fire to make a bridge by which the others might escape. Sesostris followed her advice, and two of his sons were burned to death; the rest, together with their father, were saved. 108. At home again in Egypt, Sesostris punished his brother, after which he made use of his throng of prisoners, partly to haul the enormous stones that were brought in the course of his reign to the temple of Hephaestus, and partly to excavate the many canals with which all of Egypt is now intersected. Formerly Egypt had been suited both for horses and carriages; but since that time, though all of Egypt is flat, it has become unfit for either. The king’s purpose was to supply water to the towns that lay at a distance from the river. For previously, whenever the river receded, the inhabitants of these towns had been reduced to drinking brackish water that they obtained from wells. 109. The priests said that Sesostris made a division of land of Egypt, giving a square lot of equal size to everyone, and levying an annual tax based on the lot’s yield. If the river carried away any portion of a man’s lot, he would declare his loss 112. It is not clear what “Sardonian” refers to or why Herodotus thinks the name important. 113. A legendary Ethiopian king.

118

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

before the king, who would send inspectors to measure the exact extent of the loss, in order that the landowner might thereafter pay a rent proportionate to the reduced size of his lot. This, I imagine, is how geometry was invented, and later passed into Greece.114 For the Greeks learned of the sundial, the gnomon,115 and the twelve parts of the day from the Babylonians. 110. Sesostris was the only Egyptian king to rule Ethiopia. As a memorial of his reign he left the stone statues that stand in front of the temple of Hephaestus, two of them, thirty cubits in height, representing himself and his wife; the other four, twenty cubits in height, representing their children. Many years later the priest of Hephaestus would not allow Darius the Persian to put a statue of himself in front of these; for he declared that Darius had not performed deeds comparable to those of Sesostris the Egyptian. For while Sesostris’ conquests had been as extensive as those of Darius, he had also subdued the Scythians, whom Darius had been unable to overpower.116 It was therefore not fair for Darius to put his statue in front of the offerings of a king whose deeds he had not surpassed. Darius, they say, conceded the point. 111. When Sesostris died, he was succeeded by his son Pheros,117 who undertook no warlike expedition but went blind, owing to the following circumstance. One year the Nile rose to a height of nearly eighteen cubits. When all the fields were inundated a stiff breeze arose, and the water became turbulent. They say that the king, in a reckless rage, seized a spear and hurled it into the river’s eddies. Immediately afterward he was afflicted by a disease of the eye and became blind. He was blind for ten years, and in the eleventh he received an oracle from the city of Buto to the effect that the time of his punishment was now ended, and he would recover his sight if he bathed his eyes in the urine of a woman who had never lain with any man but her husband. First he tried his wife; when he did not recover his sight, he made trial of all the women, one after another, until at last his sight was restored. Thereupon he assembled all the women, except the last, and brought them to the city now known as Red Clod, where he burned them all, together with the city itself, and married the woman to whom he owed his cure. After his recovery, he dedicated offerings in all the well-known temples, though the most remarkable of them were the two stone obelisks that he set up in the precinct of the temple of Helios. These are well worth seeing; they are eight cubits broad and a hundred in height,118 each hewn from a single block of stone. 114. In his admiration for the cleverness of the Egyptians, Herodotus awards credit to them for a branch of mathematics that was in fact Greek in origin. 115. A vertical rod whose shadow can be used to measure the angle of the sun’s rays. 116. The story of Darius’ failed Scythian invasion will be told in Book 4. 117. Herodotus has evidently misunderstood the title “pharaoh” as a proper name. 118. The ancient cubit was equal to about one and a half feet.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

119

112. Pheros, they said, was succeeded by a man from Memphis, whose name in Greek was Proteus.119 His sacred precinct, beautiful and richly adorned, still exists in Memphis, south of the temple of Hephaestus. Phoenicians from Tyre live all around this precinct, and the whole neighborhood is known as the Camp of the ­Tyrians. Within the precinct there is a temple dedicated to Foreign Aphrodite. I assume that it was built in honor of Helen, daughter of Tyndareus, not only because I have heard it reported that she spent some time at the court of Proteus, but also because of the epithet; in no other temple has the goddess been styled “foreign.” 113. When I inquired about the story of Helen, the priests offered the following details. When Paris had abducted Helen from Sparta,120 he set sail for his own country. On his way across the Aegean, violent winds blew him off course into Egyptian waters. Since the winds did not let up, he found himself on the coast, and landed at the Salt-pans, in what is now known as the Canopic Mouth of the Nile. On the shore there was a temple dedicated to Heracles, which still exists, and to which any slave may flee for refuge. If he has himself branded with sacred marks, and devotes himself to the god’s service, no one is allowed to lay hands on him. This ancient custom has remained unchanged to my day. Servants of Paris, hearing of the custom, deserted him and fled to the temple, where they sat as suppliants. Hoping to injure their master, they denounced him to the Egyptians, telling the whole story of the abduction of Helen and the wrong done to Menelaus. They brought these charges not only in the presence of the priests, but also before the warden of that mouth of the Nile, a man named Thonis. 114. As soon as he heard their story, Thonis sent a message to Proteus at Memphis: “A stranger has arrived here from Greece. He is a son of the house of Teucer,121 and has committed an abominable crime. Having seduced the wife of his host, he has carried her away with him, along with much treasure. Rough weather has forced him ashore here. Are we to let him sail away, or shall we confiscate what he has brought?” Proteus replied, “Arrest this man, whoever he may be, if he has wronged his friend, and bring him to me, that I may hear what he has to say for himself.” 115. On receiving these orders, Thonis arrested Paris and seized his ships; then he conducted Paris to Memphis, along with Helen, the treasure, and the fugitive servants. When everyone had arrived, Proteus asked Paris who he was and where 119. In Homer’s Odyssey (Book 4), Proteus is the name of a shape-shifting god encountered in Egypt by Menelaus. Both Herodotus and Euripides (in the play Helen) follow a different tradition, in which Proteus was an Egyptian king who kept Helen at his court. Various Greek authors, even before Herodotus, entertained the idea that Helen had not actually gone to Troy with Paris but spent the ten years of the Trojan War in Egypt instead (as related in 2.118 below). 120. See 1.3. 121. That is, a Trojan (also called Teucrians by the Greeks).

120

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

he had come from. Paris gave him his descent, the name of his country, and a true account of his recent voyage. But when Proteus asked him how he had got possession of Helen, Paris hedged and strayed from the truth, until the suppliants refuted his statements and told the whole story of his crime. Finally, Proteus delivered his judgment: “If I did not hold it of the utmost importance that no stranger driven to my country by stress of weather should ever be put to death, I would have punished you, basest of men, on behalf of the Greeks, since you made an infamous return for hospitality. First, you seduced the wife of your friend. Then, not content with that, you had to stir her up and steal her away from her husband. And even that was not enough for you, but on departing you had to plunder the house of your host. Now, therefore, as I hold it of great importance to put no stranger to death, I will let you depart; but I will not permit the woman and treasure to be carried off. Instead, I will guard them on behalf of your Greek host, until such time as he appears and wishes to take them back. Meanwhile, I warn you and your shipmates to sail within three days from my country to another. Otherwise you will be treated as enemies.” 116. This was how Helen reached the court of Proteus, according to the priests. It seems to me that Homer was acquainted with the story; for though he discarded it as less suitable for epic poetry than the version he used, he showed that it was not unknown to him. For example, when he describes the wanderings of Paris in the Iliad (and nowhere contradicts himself ), he says that he was driven off course on his voyage with Helen, and in his various wanderings came to Sidon in Phoenicia. The passage occurs in the aristeia of Diomedes and runs as follows: There were the fine robes, stitched with patterns rich and various, The work of Sidonian women whom god-like Paris Brought from Sidon, sailing over the broad sea, Homeward from Argos with Helen, daughter of a noble sire. In the Odyssey, too, the same fact is alluded to: These subtle and healing drugs the daughter of Zeus was given By an Egyptian woman, Polydama, consort of Thon; For the rich soil of Egypt bears great stores of drugs, Potent, when compounded, either to cure, or to harm. And Menelaus, in another passage, thus addresses Telemachus: Though I longed to return, the gods detained me in Egypt—For I had not offered them their promised hecatombs.122 In these passages Homer shows himself familiar with the excursion of Paris to Egypt. For Syria borders on Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, live in Syria. 122. The quotes are from Iliad 6.289–92, Odyssey 4.227–30, and Odyssey 4.351–52.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

121

117. These passages, and especially the one about Sidon, make it clear that Homer did not write the Cypria.123 For there it is stated that Paris arrived at Troy with Helen on the third day after he left Sparta, having met with a favorable wind and a smooth sea; but in the Iliad the poet says that he wandered before bringing her home. So much for Homer and the Cypria. 118. When I asked the priests whether the Greek account of what happened at Troy is a fable, they related the following details, which they declared they had obtained from Menelaus himself. After the abduction of Helen, a vast army of Greeks came to Troy in support of Menelaus. When they disembarked and began to set up camp, they sent ambassadors to Troy, of whom Menelaus was one. When the embassy was received within the walls, and demanded the restoration of Helen with the treasure that Paris had stolen, and likewise required satisfaction for the wrong done, the Trojans at once gave the answer that they always stuck to afterward, both under oath and without swearing, that neither Helen nor the treasure was in their possession. These were in Egypt, and the Trojans should not have to give satisfaction for property that Proteus the Egyptian had confiscated. The Greeks, supposing that the Trojans were making fun of them, laid siege to the city until they captured it. Then, when no Helen was found, and they were still told the same story, they finally believed it, and sent Menelaus to the court of Proteus. 119. On reaching Egypt and sailing up to Memphis, Menelaus related all that had happened. He met with great hospitality and received Helen back unharmed, together with all his property. But despite this handsome treatment, Menelaus proved himself no friend to the Egyptians. Though he was impatient to sail forth, unfavorable weather detained him in port, and when the delay was prolonged, he committed an iniquitous act. Seizing two Egyptian children, he offered them up in sacrifice.124 When this became known, the hatred of the Egyptians was aroused; he was pursued, but managed to escape with his ships to Libya. Where he went from there the Egyptians could not say. They told me that some of their information was obtained by inquiry, though they claimed to have accurate knowledge of the events that took place in their own country. 120. This, then, is the account given by the priests, and I am inclined to accept it for the following reason. If Helen had been in Troy, the Trojans would have 123. The Cypria was one of the so-called Cyclic epics that described events both before and after Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Greek tradition often assigned them to Homer even though their quality and length were much different than the two Homeric poems. Herodotus here ignores such literary arguments and instead bases his judgment on an inconsistency that, one would think, might have been explained as mere carelessness. 124. The story splices together elements of the Odyssey Book 4 (where Menelaus claims that contrary winds detained him in Egypt) with the myth of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia (done to change the contrary winds detaining the Greeks at Aulis).

122

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

given her back to the Greeks with or without Paris’ consent. For neither Priam nor any of his other kinsmen was so unsound of mind as to have been willing to endanger their persons, their children, and their city, merely that Paris might live with Helen. And if that had been their attitude at the outset, surely later on, when many Trojans fell in every encounter with the Greeks, and when Priam also in each battle lost a son, or sometimes two, or three, or even more—surely, as I say, under such circumstances, I expect that even if Priam himself had had Helen as his wife, he would have given her back, if he could thereby get free of his troubles.125 Furthermore, it was not as if Paris was heir to the throne, in which case he might have been acting as regent for his elderly father. For it was Hector, his elder brother and a better man than he, who was to receive the kingdom on Priam’s death; and it was not likely that Hector would countenance his brother’s iniquity, especially since it was a cause of great distress both to himself and the other Trojans. But the fact was that the Trojans had no Helen to give back, and so they told the Greeks, though the Greeks would not believe them, this disbelief figuring, in my opinion, as an element in a divine plan whereby the gods might make clear to men, by means of Troy’s utter devastation, that great iniquities give rise to great punishments from the gods. That, at any rate, is my own view of the matter. 121. The priests said that when Proteus died, the throne passed to Rhampsinitus,126 who left as memorials of his reign the western gateway of the temple of Hephaestus, and the two statues that stand in front of it, each of them twenty-five cubits in height. The Egyptians call the more northerly of the two Summer, the more southerly Winter. They honor the statue of Summer, and make obeisance to it; that of Winter they treat in the opposite manner. A. Rhampsinitus amassed a great fortune in silver—so great that none of his successors ever surpassed or even equaled it. Wishing to store his wealth securely, he had a stone building erected, one wall of which extended to the exterior of his house. The builder, who had designs upon the treasure, contrived to construct the wall in such a way that one of its stones might easily be removed by two men, or even by one. When the treasury was finished, the king’s money was stored away in it; and in the course of time, when the builder found his end approaching, he summoned his two sons and told them that he had built the king’s treasury with an eye to their future prosperity. Explaining clearly and in detail how to remove the stone, he gave them the measurements that would enable them to locate it, and 125. Priam was king of Troy. It is curious that Herodotus here rejects the idea that a single individual’s personal motives could have led to a major war, while elsewhere (3.1–2) he traces major wars to precisely such personal motives. 126. The Greek name probably derives from Egyptian Rameses, the name borne by several pharaohs of the time close to the Trojan War (13th to 10th centuries B.C.). The chapter that follows is so long that in manuscripts of the Histories it is subdivided, as shown by the letters A, B, etc.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

123

told them that if they kept the secret they would be the Royal Stewards as long as they lived. The builder died, and his sons, losing no time, came to the palace by night. Finding the stone in the treasury wall, they removed it easily and carried away a great deal of treasure. B. When the king next visited the treasury, he was surprised to see his coffers depleted, though he did not know whom to accuse, as the seals were secure and the building locked. When, on a second and third visit, his stores appeared to be constantly diminishing (for the thieves did not discontinue their depredations), he ordered traps to be made and set near the coffers that contained his money. When the thieves arrived as before and one of them entered the treasury, he came up against a coffer and was immediately caught in one of the traps. When he realized his predicament, he quickly called to his brother, explained how matters stood, and begged him to come inside at once and cut off his head, so that when his body was discovered it would not be recognized, which would involve them both in ruin.The other, thinking the advice good, was persuaded to follow it; then, having fitted the stone into its place, he went home, taking with him his brother’s head. C. When day came, the king visited the treasury and was astonished when he saw in the trap the headless body of the thief, though the building was undamaged and had neither entrance nor exit. In his perplexity, he hung the thief’s corpse from the wall and set men to guard it, charging them to arrest and conduct to his presence anyone seen weeping or grieving. When the corpse was hung up, the thieves’ mother was distraught. She had words with her surviving son and insisted that he somehow manage to take his brother’s body down and bring it home. If he disregarded her wishes, she threatened to go to the king and denounce him as the robber. D. The young man did all he could to persuade her, but without success; she continued to pester him until at last he contrived as follows. Filling skins with wine, he loaded them onto his donkeys and drove into the town. When he came near the men who were guarding the corpse, he gave a pull on the necks of the wineskins, which undid the fastenings.When the wine poured out, he smote himself on the head, shouting loudly as though he did not know which donkey to turn to first. When the guards saw wine flowing in streams, they ran into the road with pails and collected all they could, thinking it a windfall. Feigning anger, the brother railed furiously at all of them. The guards did their best to soothe him, and in time he pretended to calm down and recover his good humor; driving his donkeys from the road, he set about rearranging their burdens. When further words were exchanged, and one of the guards cracked a joke and made him laugh, he gave them one of his wineskins. They now decided to sit down and have a carousal, and invited him to stay and drink with them. He of course let himself be persuaded and stayed. As the drinking went on, the soldiers grew ever more friendly, and he soon gave them another skin. Overwhelmed by the

124

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

wine and growing drowsy, they reclined at full length and fell asleep on the spot. Late at night the thief took down his brother’s body and as an insult shaved the right cheeks of each of the guards. Then he laid the corpse upon the donkeys and returned home, having thus carried out his mother’s orders. E. When it was reported to the king that the corpse of the thief had been stolen, Rhampsinitus was highly indignant; determined at any cost to catch the man who had managed to elude him, he resorted (according to the priests) to the following expedient, which I, for one, can scarcely credit. He placed his own daughter in a brothel and ordered her to admit all comers, but to compel each one, before having intercourse with him, to tell her what was the cleverest and wickedest thing he had ever done. She was told to detain anyone who told her the story of the thief and not allow him to escape. When the girl did as her father ordered, the thief, learning of the king’s intention and wishing to outwit him, contrived as follows. He cut off at the shoulder the arm of a man who had just died, put it under his cloak, and proceeded to the brothel. When she asked him the question that she had asked all the others, he said that the wickedest thing he had done was to cut off the head of his brother when the latter was caught in a trap in the king’s treasury, and his cleverest was to make the guards drunk, so that he could take down his brother’s corpse. At this, the girl clutched at him, but the thief, under cover of darkness, held out to her the hand of the corpse. Seizing it, she held it tight, thinking it was his own, whereupon the thief, leaving it in her grasp, escaped through the door. F. When this, too, was reported to the king, he was thunderstruck at the sagacity and boldness of the man; he then sent messengers to all the towns in Egypt to proclaim a free pardon for the thief, and to promise him a handsome reward if he gave himself up. Trusting the king, the thief presented himself, and Rhampsinitus, admiring him greatly, gave him his daughter in marriage, on the grounds that he was the shrewdest of men. For the Egyptians surpass all the rest of the world in wisdom, and this man surpassed all the Egyptians. 122. The priests said that Rhampsinitus afterward descended alive to what the Greeks call Hades, and there played at dice with Demeter,127 sometimes winning, sometimes losing, and returned to earth with a golden cloth, a gift from the goddess. In honor of Rhampsinitus’ descent into the underworld and return, I was told that the Egyptians instituted a festival (which is still celebrated in my day), though I cannot say with any certainty what prompted them to do so. On the very day of the festival, the priests weave a cloak. Blindfolding one of their number with a headband, they put the cloak into his hands and escort him to the road that leads to the temple of Demeter. There they leave him, and it is said that he is led 127. Herodotus identifies Egyptian Isis as Greek Demeter.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

125

by two wolves to the temple, twenty stades from the city, after which the wolves lead him back from the temple to the same spot. 123. Let anyone who finds them credible believe the stories told by the Egyptians. For my part, I have made it a rule throughout this account to record, just as I hear them, the traditions of the various nations.128 The Egyptians say that Demeter and Dionysus129 preside over the underworld. They were also the first to maintain that the human soul is immortal, and that after death it enters another living creature at the moment of that creature’s birth. Once it has passed through all the land animals and sea creatures and winged creatures, it again enters a human body.130 They say it takes the soul 3,000 years to complete the entire cycle. From time to time certain Greeks have advanced this theory as though it originated with themselves. Though their names are known to me, I do not set them down. 124. Until the death of Rhampsinitus, Egypt was well governed and exceedingly prosperous. But his successor Cheops,131 according to the priests, plunged Egypt into utter misery. Shutting up all the temples, he prevented the Egyptians from sacrificing, and pressed them all into royal service. Some were assigned to haul stone to the Nile from the quarries in the Arabian mountains.When the stone was ferried across the river, Cheops stationed others to receive and haul it to the Libyan hills. The Egyptians labored in gangs of 100,000 men, each gang assigned for a three-month shift. It took them ten years to build the road used for hauling the stone. This road, it seems to me, required hardly less effort to build than the pyramid. (The latter is five stades long, ten fathoms wide, and eight fathoms tall at its highest point; it is built of polished stone and decorated with carvings of animals.) Ten years, as I say, were spent building this road and the burial vaults on the hill where the pyramids stand. These were built on an island, which Cheops created by introducing water from the Nile by a canal. To build the pyramid itself took twenty years. Its base is square, 800 feet each way, and its height equal to the length of each side; it is built entirely of polished stone blocks, fitted together meticulously, none of the blocks being less than 30 feet long.132 128. A similar methodological statement is found at 7.152. 129. Isis and Osiris. 130. The doctrine of transmigration of souls was associated with the Pythagorean sect in Greece and with Hinduism in India, but Herodotus seems to be mistaken about its Egyptian origins. 131. Cheops (Egyptian Khufu) and the other pyramid-building pharaohs in fact lived much earlier than the time at which Herodotus lists them, in the 3rd millennium B.C. 132. Herodotus’ measurements can, in the case of the Great Pyramid, be checked against the object they describe. The figure he gives for the length of each base side is very close to accurate; that of the height, about a third too high; that of the stone blocks, “much too high” (Lloyd, Commentary ad loc.).

126

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

125. The pyramid was built in steps, or, as some call them, courses. Once the base was built, they hoisted the remaining stones by means of a machine made of short wooden planks. Each stone was hoisted from the ground to the first step, where it was placed on another such machine. From there it was hoisted to the next machine on the second step. (Either each step had its own hoisting machine, or, if the machine was easy to move, it was transferred from step to step after each stone was unloaded. Let both methods be recorded, as both have been reported.) The upper portion of the pyramid was finished first, then the middle, and finally the part closest to the ground. An inscription in Egyptian characters records how many radishes, onions, and cloves of garlic were consumed by the laborers; and I remember perfectly that the interpreter who translated the inscriptions for me said that the money expended in this way was 1,600 talents of silver.133 If that is true, how many additional talents are likely to have been spent on the iron tools the laborers used, in addition to their food and clothing—not to mention the time it took (not inconsiderable, I would think) to cut and haul the stone, and to build the underground chambers? 126. The wickedness of Cheops reached such a pitch that, finding himself short of money, he placed his daughter in a brothel and ordered her to charge a certain sum. (The priests did not tell me how much.) The girl did as her father ordered; and intending to leave something to perpetuate her own memory, she asked each man who sought her favors to give her a block of stone. With these stones she built the middle pyramid of the three that are in front of the great pyramid. Each of its sides measures 150 feet. 127. The Egyptians said that Cheops reigned for fifty years. When he died, his brother Chephren134 succeeded to the throne. Chephren emulated his brother in many respects. He, too, built a pyramid, though his was smaller than his brother’s. (I measured them both myself.) Chephren’s has no underground chambers, nor a canal, as the other has, to supply it with water. But water from the Nile, channeled through an aqueduct, surrounds the pyramid where the body of Cheops is said to lie, and makes the site an island. Chephren built his pyramid close to the great pyramid of Cheops; it is forty feet lower,135 but otherwise of the same dimensions. For its lowest course he used mottled Ethiopian granite. The hill both pyramids 133. Herodotus did not read Egyptian writing and was at the mercy of a guide who evidently liked to fabricate stories; any inscription found on the pyramid’s walls was likely to have been simple graffiti. A talent of silver was 6,000 Greek drachmae or enough money to pay the daily wages of 6,000 laborers. 134. In fact Chephren (Khafra) was the son of Cheops (Khufu) and not his immediate successor, since another pharaoh intervened. 135. In fact it is only about twelve feet lower than the Great Pyramid. The measurement Herodotus claims in this chapter to have made himself must be of the base, not the height.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

127

occupy is nearly a hundred feet in height. The priests said that Chephren reigned for 56 years. 128. They calculate that Egypt’s misery lasted for 106 years, during all of which time the temples were shut up and never opened. So hated were these kings that the Egyptians actually refuse to mention their names. Instead, they call the pyramids after Philitis, a shepherd who at that time pastured his flocks in the neighborhood. 129. The priests said that Mycerinus, son of Cheops,136 became king of Egypt after Chephren. Disliking his father’s policies, Mycerinus reopened the temples and allowed the people, by then far gone in misery, to return to their occupations and resume the practice of their religion. His fairness as a judge surpassed that of all the former kings, and for this the Egyptians reserve their highest praise for Mycerinus. For not only were his decisions sound, but also, when any man was dissatisfied with the outcome of his suit, Mycerinus would appease his anger by supplementing the award out of his own pocket. He had thus established himself as a mild and generous ruler when misfortune overtook him. His troubles began with the death of his daughter, the only child of his household. Grieving inconsolably and wishing to entomb her in some unusual way, he had a wooden cow made, hollow inside and plated on the outside with gold; in it he laid the body of his daughter. 130. The cow itself was not buried but was still on view in my day at Sais, in a well-appointed chamber of the palace.137 All manner of incense is burned before it every day, and a lamp is kept burning in it all night long. Nearby in another chamber are enormous wooden statues of naked women, about twenty of them—likenesses of Mycerinus’ concubines, according to the priests at Sais. But as to whom they really represent, I can only relate the account that was given to me. 131. Another story is told about the cow and the statues to the effect that Mycerinus fell in love with his daughter and lay with her against her will. It is said that afterward his daughter hanged herself from grief; she was entombed in the cow, and her mother cut off the hands of the female servants who had given the king access to her. Accordingly, the statues, like the women they are meant to represent, have no hands. Personally I find the story absurd, especially what is said about the statues’ missing hands. For I could plainly see that the hands had simply dropped off through age: they were still lying on the ground near the statues’ feet.138 136. The pharaoh Menkaure was actually the son of Khafra, not Khufu. 137. “The basis of this description was clearly a cult image . . . of the goddess Isis in the form of a cow, which contained the headless mummy of her husband Osiris.” Lloyd, Commentary ad loc. 138. Though he has been duped by other Egyptian informants (see 2.125 above), Herodotus here is able to bring firsthand evidence, and his own critical reasoning, to bear.

128

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

132. The cow is covered with a scarlet robe; the head and neck, however, which are visible, are heavily coated with gold. Between the horns is a golden image of the orb of the sun.139 The figure is not erect but reclining. It is lifesize. Each year, at the festival when the Egyptians beat themselves in honor of the god whose name it is not proper for me to mention in such a context,140 the cow is taken from the chamber into the light of day. For they say that Mycerinus’ daughter, as she was dying, begged him to allow her once a year to see the sun. 133. After the death of his daughter a second misfortune befell Mycerinus. An oracle from Buto declared that he had only six years to live and would die in the seventh. Indignant, Mycerinus sent an angry message to the oracle, reproaching the god with injustice. For his father and uncle, though they had shut up the temples, neglected the gods, and destroyed human beings, had been long-lived, whereas he, though he had acted reverently, was going to die so soon. In reply there was a second message from the oracle, which declared that his life was being shortened precisely because he had not done what he ought to have done; for Egypt was destined to be afflicted for 150 years. His two predecessors had understood this, though he had not. Supposing by this reply that his fate was sealed, he had many lamps made. Kindling them at nightfall, he would feast and enjoy himself, both day and night, roaming about in the marshes and groves, and visiting all the places that he heard were agreeable. He intended, by this course of action, to prove the oracle false; by turning night into day he hoped to extend his six remaining years to twelve. 134. He too left a pyramid, but one much smaller than his father’s. It has a square base, 280 feet long on each side, and its lower half is built of Ethiopian stone. Some of the Greeks maintain, incorrectly, that this pyramid was built by Rhodopis the courtesan. These persons, it seems to me, do not even know who Rhodopis was; otherwise they would not have attributed to her the building of such a pyramid, on which, so to speak, countless thousands of talents must have been spent. Furthermore, Rhodopis lived during the reign of Amasis,141 not of Mycerinus—many years later than the time of the kings who left these pyramids. She was a Thracian by birth, a slave of Iadmon, son of Hephaestopolis, a Samian, and a fellow slave of Aesop, the writer of fables. That Aesop was Iadmon’s slave is indicated by that fact that when the Delphians, in obedience to the command of the oracle, repeatedly announced that if anyone claimed compensation for the murder of Aesop he would receive it, 139. An iconographic feature familiar from surviving Egyptian portraits of Isis. 140. Osiris. 141. That is, in the mid-6th century B.C. On Amasis, a contemporary of Croesus, see 2.162– 82 below. See 2.135 below for the career of Rhodopis, evidently a historical personage.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

129

the only person to come forward was Iadmon, grandson of the earlier Iadmon. I therefore assume that Aesop had been the older Iadmon’s slave.142 135. Rhodopis was brought to Egypt by Xantheus the Samian to ply her trade, but was redeemed from slavery for an enormous sum by Charaxus of Mytilene, the son of Scamandronumus and brother of Sappho the poetess.143 Having obtained her liberty, Rhodopis remained in Egypt. And as she possessed great beauty and charm, she amassed great wealth—great for Rhodopis, that is, but not enough to build such a pyramid. Anyone who wishes may see to what the tenth part of her fortune amounted, and he will thereby learn that she could not have been exceedingly rich. For Rhodopis, eager to leave a memorial of herself in Greece, decided to have something made the like of which was not to be found in any temple, and to offer it at Delphi. Setting aside a tenth of her fortune, she purchased a set of iron spits, such as are used for roasting oxen whole, and sent them to Delphi. They are still lying in a heap behind the altar that the Chians dedicated, opposite the sanctuary. The courtesans of Naucratis144 have somehow been highly favored by Aphrodite. Rhodopis was certainly a case in point, for her fame was such that all the Greeks were familiar with her name; and later there was Archidice, who was celebrated in poetry throughout Greece, though she was less talked of than the other. When Charaxus, after ransoming Rhodopis, returned to Mytilene, he was mercilessly mocked by Sappho in her poetry.145 So much, then, for Rhodopis. 136. According to the priests, Mycerinus was succeeded by Asychis,146 who built the eastern gateway of the temple of Hephaestus—by far the largest and finest of the four. For they all have figures carved in relief and countless other architectural ornaments, but the gateway of Asychis is by far the most elaborate. 142. An original deduction on Herodotus’ part, establishing that Rhodopis and Aesop were coevals. The story referred to is that the residents of Delphi had incurred divine retribution after unjustly putting Aesop to death, and that an oracle had promised them release if they could find a kinsman of Aesop to whom restitution could be made. 143. Sappho’s life did indeed overlap with the reign of Amasis, so Herodotus is on firm ground with respect to chronology. 144. Naucratis (as will be explained at 2.178–79) was a Greek settlement in the Nile delta. “Courtesans” here translates Greek hetairai, a word that has no good modern equivalent. Hetairai were unmarried women who became attached to wealthy men not only as sex objects but also as beautiful, gracious, and (often) sophisticated companions. 145. There are references in Sappho’s surviving poetry to her brother’s connection to a woman named Doricha but not to Rhodopis (unless Doricha is a pseudonym). However most of Sappho’s poetry has been lost. 146. The name corresponds to Egyptian Sheshonk and indicates that Herodotus’ Pharaonic chronology is back on track after the huge displacement of Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. Several pharaohs of Dynasty XXII, that ruled Egypt in the 10th to 8th centuries B.C., bore that name.

130

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

The priests said that at the time of Asychis’ reign, money being scarce and business slow, a law was passed allowing a man to borrow by pledging his father’s body as security. A later provision gave the lender authority over the borrower’s burial vault, so that if a borrower died before repaying the loan, he could not be buried in his family tomb, or in any other, nor could he bury in his own tomb any member of his family. Wishing to outdo the kings of Egypt who had preceded him, this king left as a memorial a brick pyramid. It bears an inscription, cut in stone, which runs thus: “Do not scorn me in comparison with the stone pyramids, for I surpass them by as much as Zeus surpasses the other gods: they dipped a pole into a lake, and whatever mud clung to it they collected, from which they formed bricks, and thus they made me.” Such were the achievements of Asychis. 137. He was succeeded by Anysis, a blind man who came from a city of the same name. During Anysis’ reign, Sabacos, the king of the Ethiopians, invaded Egypt with a large army. The blind king fled to the marshes, and the Ethiopian ruled Egypt for fifty years, during which he ruled as follows. Whenever an Egyptian committed a crime, Sabacos would not punish him with death. Instead, he sentenced the transgressor, according to the seriousness of his crime, to raise the level of the ground in the neighborhood of his native city. As a result, the cities became even more elevated than they were before. For they had been raised earlier by those who had excavated the canals during the reign of Sesostris; and this second elevation under the Ethiopian king raised them higher still. Among the many Egyptians cities that were raised, Bubastis, it seems to me, attained the highest elevation. The city boasts a temple of Bubastis that is well worth describing. (Bubastis is the Egyptian name for Artemis.) Other temples may be larger and more luxurious, but none is more pleasing to the eye. 138. Except at its entrance, the temple forms an island. Two canals leading from the Nile encompass the building on either side as far as the entrance, where they stop short without meeting, thus leaving a narrow passage by which it is approached. Each canal is 100 feet wide and shaded with trees. The gateway is 60 feet in height, and is decorated with remarkable carved figures, six cubits in height. The temple stands in the middle of the city and is visible from all sides. For the level of all the other buildings has been raised, while the temple has not been moved since it was first built; one can therefore look down upon it from all around. A low wall with carved figures runs around the enclosure; within the wall, a grove of beautiful tall trees surrounds the actual shrine, which contains the statue of the goddess. The enclosure is square, each side a stade in length. The entrance to it is a paved road, roughly three stades long and 400 feet wide, which runs eastward through the marketplace and joins the temple of Bubastis to the temple of Hermes. On either side of the road, lofty trees shoot up to the sky.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

131

139. The priests said that the Ethiopian king finally left Egypt, fleeing the country after seeing a vision in his sleep. He dreamt that a man stood over him and advised him to assemble all the Egyptian priests and cut them in half. At this, according to his own account, Sabacos said he believed the gods were tempting him to commit an act of sacrilege, for which he might suffer some punishment either at the hands of gods or men. He therefore refused to do what was suggested; and as the term had now ended during which he was destined to rule Egypt, he would withdraw. For before he left Ethiopia, the Ethiopian oracles had told him that he would reign over Egypt for fifty years. As the fifty years had now elapsed, and the vision seen in his sleep unnerved him, Sabacos left Egypt of his own accord. 140. After he departed, the blind Anysis ruled again, having returned from the marshes, where for fifty years he had lived on an island he had created by a mixture of ashes and soil. For when the natives who had been ordered to bring him food went back and forth (unbeknownst to the Ethiopian), Anysis asked them, as a favor, to bring him ashes as well. Before Amyrtaeus,147 no one was able to discover the site of this island, which remained unknown for more than 700 years. It is called Elbo and is about ten stades across in each direction. 141. The next king, I was told, was a priest of Hephaestus, whose name was Sethos.148 Thinking he would have no need for them, Sethos took no heed of the Egyptian warriors and treated them with careless disregard. Among his various affronts to their honor, he confiscated their lands. (Under previous kings each warrior had been granted twelve choice tracts of farmland.) Later, when King Sennacherib invaded Egypt with his vast army of Arabians and Assyrians,149 the Egyptian warriors refused to come to Sethos’ aid. In his distress he entered the sanctuary, stood before the statue of the god, and bitterly lamented the danger that threatened him. As he wept he fell asleep and dreamt that the god stood beside him and urged him to take heart; for if he marched out boldly to meet the Arabian army, no harm would come to him, since the god himself would send him helpers. Reassured by the dream, Sethos mustered such men as were willing to follow him and encamped at Pelusium, which guards the entrance into Egypt. His was an army of shopkeepers, artisans, and market people; none of the warriors accompanied him. But after the enemy had arrived and night had fallen, field mice streamed through the Assyrians’ camp and chewed up their quivers, bowstrings, 147. An Egyptian official who led a rebellion against Persian rule in the mid-5th century B.C., during Herodotus’ own lifetime (see 3.15). 148. This figure has been correlated with the Ethiopian pharaoh Shabataka (reigned 702–690 B.C.), in spite of the differences in name and nationality. 149. Sennacherib ruled the Assyrians in the late 8th and early 7th centuries B.C., but there are no records other than Herodotus’ account to indicate that he invaded Egypt.

132

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

and the leather handles of their shields. The next day, as they had no weapons with which to defend themselves, the Assyrians decamped and suffered heavy losses as they fled.150 There is still a stone statue of Sethos in the temple of Hephaestus; the figure holds a mouse in its hand, and the inscription reads, “Look on me and be pious.” 142. Thus far I have relied on the accounts given me by the Egyptians and their priests. They declare that 341 generations separate the first king from the last I have mentioned—the priest of Hephaestus—and that in each generation there was a king and a high priest. Now if a century contains three generations, 300 generations are the equivalent of 10,000 years; and the remaining 41 generations make 1,340 years.151 Thus the whole number of years is 11,340, during all of which time, they said, no god ever assumed human form; nothing of the kind happened either under the former or under the later kings.152 They did say, however, that on four occasions during that period the sun departed from its usual orbit, twice rising where it now sets, and twice setting where it now rises. They assured me that Egypt was not affected in any way by this: the harvests and the produce of the river remained the same; nor was there any change in the incidence of disease or death. 143. When Hecataeus the historian153 was at Thebes, and traced his own genealogy back to a god sixteen generations earlier, the priests of Zeus did for him what they later did for me, though I made no mention of my own genealogy. They led me into the spacious sanctuary and showed me the wooden statues there, counting them up to the number I just stated. For each high priest, during his lifetime, erects a statue of himself. As the priests counted and displayed them, beginning with the statue of the high priest who had last died, and continuing until they had presented them all, they assured me that each was the son of the one who preceded him. When Hecataeus traced his own genealogy back to a god sixteen generations earlier, the priests refused to accept that any man was born of a god. They then traced their own genealogy, pointing out that each of the statues represented a “piromis” (the word may be translated “gentleman”) who was the son of a “piromis”; and the priests connected none of them with either a god or a hero. 150. A similar story of Sennacherib’s miraculous defeat is recounted in the Hebrew Bible, Kings 19:2 and Chronicles 32. 151. Here, as in 1.32, Herodotus’ math is rough and approximate. 152. That is, the period of purely human history extends back in Egypt far longer than it does in Greece. Egyptians had been ruled by gods around 12,000 B.C. (see 2.144 below), whereas in Greece the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus, thought to be a kind of semi-divine figure, had lived as late as the 9th century B.C. 153. On Hecataeus of Miletus see 2.15 and note. Herodotus here calls him a logopoios, a word that indicated authorship of prose treatises dealing with scientific or historical topics.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

133

144. Of such a nature, they said, were the beings represented by the statues— they were far from being gods. Before these men, however, they said that the gods had lived in Egypt and had reigned there, one of them being supreme above the rest. The last god to be king of Egypt was Horus, son of Osiris, whom the Greeks call Apollo. It was he who overpowered Typhon,154 and was the last god to rule Egypt. His father Osiris is called Dionysus by the Greeks. 145. The Greeks regard Heracles, Dionysus, and Pan as the youngest of the gods, whereas among the Egyptians Pan is said to be one of the original gods, “the eight”; Heracles is said to belong to the second generation, “the twelve,” and Dionysus to the third, who were descended from the twelve. I have already mentioned how many years, according to the Egyptians, intervened between the birth of Heracles and the reign of Amasis. Pan is said to be more ancient than Heracles; and even Dionysus, the youngest of the three, is said to have appeared 15,000 years before Amasis. The Egyptians claim to be certain of these dates, since they have always counted and kept a written record of the years. The Greeks, however, believe that Dionysus, whose mother was Semele, daughter of Cadmus, was born about 1,000 years ago; Heracles, son of Alcmene, about 900 years ago; and Pan, son of Penelope (for the Greeks say that Pan was the son of Penelope and Hermes) about 800 years ago, some time after the Trojan War.155 146. One may accept whichever of the two traditions he finds more credible. I have already made known my own opinion about these matters. If these gods had been known in Greece and had grown old there like Heracles, son of Amphitryon, and Dionysus, son of Semele, and Pan, son of Penelope, it might have been said that the latter two were men who bore the names of previously existing gods. But the Greeks maintain that Dionysus, as soon as he was born, was sewn up in Zeus’ thigh, and taken to Nysa in Ethiopia, above Egypt. As for Pan, they cannot say where he went after his birth. It is therefore clear to me that the names of these gods became known in Greece after those of their other gods, and that the Greeks trace their genealogies from the time when they first acquired knowledge of them.156 147. Thus far I have reported what the Egyptians themselves say. In what follows I will relate what other people, with whom the Egyptians agree, report 154. Egyptian Seth. 155. See 2.43, 2.46, and 2.49 above, where Herodotus discusses the immense antiquity of Egyptian Heracles, Pan, and Dionysus as compared with the more recent Greek figures with the same names.The solution he offers here differs somewhat from that in the earlier passages. Instead of positing two different figures with the same name, as he did earlier, Herodotus here supposes that the Greeks mistakenly dated the births and lives of their gods to the comparatively recent period when their rites had entered the Greek world from Egypt. 156. See 2.44 above and note.

134

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

about the history of this country. Certain observations of my own will also be included.157 Though they had regained their freedom after the reign of the priest of Hephaestus,158 the Egyptians found they could not manage for long without a king. They appointed twelve kings, having divided the entire country into twelve districts.159 These kings, united by intermarriages, governed on the understanding that they would not try to depose any of the others or seek to gain power at the others’ expense, but would instead remain the best of friends. They adopted these policies and took pains to uphold them, because an oracle had declared, when their kingdoms were first established, that the king who poured a libation with a bronze cup in the temple of Hephaestus would become monarch of the whole land of Egypt. The twelve held their meetings at all the temples. 148. The kings resolved to leave behind a common memorial of their reigns. With this in mind, they built the labyrinth that lies near the place called the City of Crocodiles,160 just above Lake Moeris. I visited this building and found it to surpass description. For if one could calculate the cost, in labor and money, of all the Greeks’ walls and public works, the total would fall short of the amount spent on the labyrinth. Certainly the temples in Ephesus and Samos are both remarkable.161 The pyramids, too, surpass description, each of them equal to many of the greatest Greek works; but the labyrinth surpasses them. It has twelve roofed courtyards, with gates exactly opposite one another, six facing north, six south. A wall surrounds the entire structure. Inside, the building is of two stories and contains 3,000 rooms, half of which are built below ground, the other half directly above them. I went through the upper rooms, so my account of them is based on my own observation, but I can speak of the underground rooms only from report; for the Egyptian superintendents refused to show them, claiming that they contain the tombs of the kings who built the labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. Thus I speak from hearsay 157. As Herodotus had done at 1.4 when introducing the tale of Croesus, he here marks the point in time when he comes to material he himself can investigate. The remainder of Book 2 will deal with the kings of Dynasty XXVI, who ruled Egypt from about 664 to 529 B.C. As Herodotus explains at 2.154, Greek witnesses were present in Egypt during this period and had transmitted reliable information. 158. The language here poses an interesting antithesis between monarchy and “freedom.” Herodotus sometimes uses the word “democracy” in the Histories but prefers to speak of a system of government based on “equality under the law,” a system found in his day only in the city of Athens (see 3.80). 159.This seems to refer to a period of instability and lack of central rule, about which we have very little independent evidence. 160. The town later known as Arsinoe, today Medinet el-Fayum. 161. For the Heraeum at Samos see 3.60; for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, 1.26.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

135

about the lower rooms. But I saw the upper rooms myself, and they surpass all other manmade works. For the passages through the rooms and the elaborate windings of the paths through the courts excited my unending astonishment, as I passed from a courtyard into rooms, from rooms into colonnades, from colonnades into different rooms, and from these into different courtyards. The labyrinth’s roof and walls are made of stone, the walls are covered with figures carved in relief, and each court is surrounded by a colonnade. The white stone of the columns has been fitted together meticulously. Near the far corner of the labyrinth stands a pyramid of 240 feet, with large figures engraved on it. It is entered by an underground passage.162 149. The body of water known as Lake Moeris, beside which this labyrinth has been built, is an even greater marvel. The circumference of it is 3,600 stades, or 60 schoeni,163 a distance equal to the length of the entire Egyptian coastline. It runs from north to south, and its greatest depth is 50 fathoms. It is clearly an artificial excavation, for just near its center stand two pyramids. Each rises 50 fathoms above the water and extends the same distance below the surface. Each is surmounted by a stone statue of a man sitting on a throne. Thus the pyramids are 100 fathoms high, which is exactly equivalent to one stade or six plethra. (For the fathom is equivalent both to six feet and to four cubits, the foot being equivalent to four spans, the cubit to six spans). The lake has no natural spring, for the region is exceedingly dry.Water from the Nile has been brought to it by an artificial duct. For six months water flows into the lake, and for the next six months it flows back to the Nile. While the water is flowing outward, the lake pays the royal treasury a talent of silver a day from the fish that are caught; for the other six months only twenty minas. 150. The local residents told me that there is a subterranean passage, running westward into the interior near the hills above Memphis, by which the water is carried to the Libyan Syrtis.When I was unable to find the soil that had been taken out when the lake was excavated, and was interested to know what had become of it, I asked the people who live closest to the lake and readily accepted their answer, for I had heard that another similar thing had happened at the Assyrian city of Nineveh. When Sardanapalus,164 the king of Nineveh, had stored his vast fortune in underground treasuries, thieves conspired to make off with it. Calculating the distance and direction, they tunneled a passage from their own house into the palace. Every night they dumped the excavated soil into the Tigris, which flows past Nineveh, until they had accomplished their purpose. I was told that the 162. Except for the measurement and site of the pyramid, Herodotus’ description accords well with the excavated ruins. 163. About 450 miles, a gross exaggeration. 164. Possibly Assurbanipal, grandson of Sennacherib (on whom see 2.141).

136

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

same method was used when Lake Moeris was excavated, except that the soil was disposed of by day and not by night. The Egyptians carried it to the Nile, knowing that the river would carry it away and disperse it. 151. In the course of time, the twelve kings,165 who had continued to deal justly with one another, met in the temple of Hephaestus to sacrifice on the last day of the festival. When they were about to pour the libations, the high priest brought out the golden cups the kings had always used for that purpose. By mistake he brought them eleven cups, though all twelve kings were present. When Psammetichus, who was standing last, found himself without a cup, he took off his bronze helmet, held it out to receive the wine, and so made his libation. (All the kings were accustomed to wear bronze helmets, and they were all wearing them on that occasion.) Psammetichus, for his part, had acted without any crafty intent, but the others connected his action with the oracle, which had declared that the king who poured his libation from a bronze cup would be sole monarch of Egypt. They wondered whether they should put Psammetichus to death; but when they learned, on questioning him, that he had acted without any ulterior motive, they decided it would not be just to do so. Instead, they resolved to strip him of most of his power and to banish him to the marshes, forbidding him to venture forth or to hold any communication with the rest of Egypt. 152. This was the second time Psammetichus had been banished. On a former occasion he had fled from Sabacos the Ethiopian166 (who had killed his father Necos) and taken refuge in Syria; and after the Ethiopian had departed in consequence of his dream, he was brought back by the Egyptians of the district of Sais. Now, on account of the incident of the helmet, Psammetichus was again sent into exile, this time to the marshes, at the behest of the eleven kings. Thinking he had been mistreated, Psammetichus planned his revenge. He sent for advice to the oracle at Buto (the most truthful in Egypt), and was told that vengeance would come from across the sea, whence bronze men would appear. Psammetichus was incredulous, and thought it highly unlikely that bronze men would come to his aid; but shortly thereafter, certain Ionians and Carians, who were on a voyage of plunder, were forced by bad weather to land on the Egyptian coast. When they disembarked in their bronze armor, an Egyptian, who had never seen such a thing before, went to the marshes and told Psammetichus that bronze men had arrived by sea and were plundering the country. Understanding that the oracle had been fulfilled, Psammetichus made friends with the strangers, and persuaded them, by the promise of handsome rewards, to enter 165. The narrative resumes from the point it had reached at 2.147, after excursuses on the Labyrinth and Lake Moeris. 166. See 2.137 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

137

his service. And with their aid and that of his Egyptian supporters, Psammetichus deposed the kings.167 153. When Psammetichus had thus become sole ruler of Egypt, he built the southern gateway of the temple of Hephaestus in Memphis, and opposite it a court for Apis, where he is kept whenever he appears.168 The court is adorned with a multitude of figures and surrounded by a colonnade, with statues twelve cubits in height instead of pillars. The Greek name for Apis is Epaphus. 154. To the Ionians and Carians who had helped him Psammetichus granted two pieces of land opposite one another, one on either side of the Nile, which became known as “the Camps.” He honored all the promises he had made them, and even entrusted them with some Egyptian children, whom they were to teach the Greek language. The present-day interpreters in Egypt are these children’s descendants. The tracts of land where the Ionians and Carians settled, and where they lived for many years, lie just north of Bubastis on the Pelusian Mouth of the Nile. Years later, King Amasis removed them from there and brought them to Memphis to guard him against the native Egyptians.169 It was in our dealings with them that we Greeks first acquired an accurate knowledge of Egyptian affairs from Psammetichus’ reign onward, for they were the first foreigners to settle in Egypt. The docks and ruins of the houses they occupied before Amasis brought them to Memphis were still to be seen in my day. This is how Psammetichus became monarch of Egypt. 155. I have already referred more than once to the Egyptian oracle,170 and since it deserves notice, I will now give a more detailed account of it. It is housed in a temple dedicated to Leto, situated in a large city that one reaches by sailing upriver from the sea by the Sebennytic Mouth of the Nile. The name of the city (I mentioned it earlier) is Buto. The city contains two other temples as well, one of Artemis, and one of Apollo.171 The temple of Leto, which contains the oracle, is a spacious building with a gateway sixty feet in height. But the most astonishing thing to be seen there is a shrine in the enclosure made of a single block of stone, 167. The fable of the “bronze men” probably refers to the arrival of Greek and Carian mercenaries in Egypt. These hired soldiers typically wore bronze breastplates, greaves, and helmets, a kind of body armor not widely known outside the Greek world.The presence of Greek mercenaries in Egypt, as early as the 7th century B.C., is attested by the graffiti they left behind on a stone monument at Abu Simbel. 168. On the Apis bull, see 2.38 above. The Egyptians believed in the transmigration of the Apis from one bull to another, such that a single divine animal was alive at any one time. 169. On Amasis’ bonds with the Greeks, see 2.178 and 2.181–82 below. This reliance on foreign mercenaries seems (to judge by the reference to the hostility of “native Egyptians”) to have provoked a counter-reaction. 170. That is, the one at Buto. 171. Bastet and Horus, respectively. “Leto” probably corresponds to Egyptian Wadjet.

138

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

each wall of which is forty feet square. Another block of stone forms the roof and projects beyond the walls to a distance of six feet. 156. This, as I say, was what astonished me the most. After it, the greatest marvel is the island called Chemmis. It lies in a deep, broad lake beside the temple, and the Egyptians say that it floats. I never saw it float, or even move; and despite what I heard I wondered whether there could really be such a thing as a floating island.172 It has a large temple of Apollo, with three altars, and numerous palm trees and other trees, some fruit-bearing and others not. The Egyptians tell the following story about this island, to explain how it came to float. In former times, they say, when the island was stationary, Leto, one of the eight gods of the first generation, who lived in Buto where she now has her oracle, received Apollo, as a sacred trust from Isis, and kept him safe by concealing him in what is now called the floating island. Typhon, meanwhile, was searching everywhere for the son of Osiris. The Egyptians maintain that Apollo and Artemis are the children of Dionysus and Isis, and that Leto became their nurse and savior. In their language, Apollo is Horus, Demeter is Isis, Artemis is Bubastis. It was from the Egyptian tradition that Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, got the idea (which is not found in earlier poets) of making Artemis the daughter of Demeter.173 This is why the island was made to float. Such at least is their story. 157. Psammetichus ruled Egypt for fifty-four years, during twenty-nine of which he laid siege to Azotus,174 a large Syrian city, until he finally captured it. Of all the cities we know, no other ever held out against so long a siege. 158. When Psammetichus died, the throne passed to his son Necos,175 who began the construction of the canal to the Red Sea176—a work completed later by Darius the Persian—the length of which is a four days’ journey, and the width such as to accommodate two triremes being rowed side by side. The water is supplied from the Nile, and the canal leaves the river at a point a little south of Bubastis, runs past the Arabian city of Patumus, and then on to the Red Sea. It begins on the Arabian side of the Egyptian plain, continues a little north of the mountains above Memphis (where the quarries are), extends for many stades due east along the foothills of those mountains, and flows southward through rocky 172. An interesting assertion of skepticism, given that Greek myths spoke of Delos as a floating island before the time that Leto gave birth there. The legend of Delos probably influenced the tales Herodotus here tells about Chemmis, since both are associated with “Leto.” 173. The reference is to the famous Aeschylus, author of seven surviving tragedies, but the play in which Demeter was described as the mother of Artemis is unknown. 174. Ashdod in Near Eastern and biblical texts. It was taken by siege in the mid-7th century B.C., to judge by archaeological evidence. 175. Necho II, pharaoh from 610 to 595 B.C. 176. “Red Sea” here clearly refers to the modern Red Sea.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

139

gorges until it reaches the Arabian gulf. As the crow flies, the distance from Mount Casius to the Arabian gulf is exactly 1,000 stades. (Mount Casius stands on the Mediterranean coast, at the border between Egypt and Syria.) The canal, as it follows a more winding course, is much longer. The construction of the canal, during Necos’ reign, cost the lives of a 120,000 Egyptians. Necos suspended work on the canal when an oracle warned him that he was “working for the barbarian’s benefit.”177 (The Egyptians call everyone a barbarian who does not speak the same language as themselves.) 159. Leaving the canal unfinished, he turned his attention to military campaigns. He had triremes178 built, some on the coast of the northern sea,179 others on the Red Sea, where the dry docks can still be seen. Necos put the triremes to use as he needed them; by land, he joined battle with the Syrians and won a victory at Magdolus, after which he captured Cadytis, a large city in Syria. He sent the clothing he wore on these occasions to Branchidae near Miletus, as an offering to Apollo. After reigning for sixteen years, Necos died, and was succeeded by his son Psammis.180 160. During Psammis’ reign, ambassadors from Elis181 arrived in Egypt, boasting that in Olympia they held the fairest and finest of all athletic games; in their opinion, not even the Egyptians, the wisest of men, had invented anything better. When the Eleans reached Egypt and explained the purpose of their visit, Psammis summoned an assembly of the wisest Egyptians. When they met, the Egyptians listened attentively as the Eleans gave a full account of their method of organizing the games. When all was explained, the Eleans declared that they had come for the express purpose of learning if the Egyptians could suggest any improvements that would make the games fairer. After due deliberation, the Egyptians asked whether the citizens of Elis were allowed to take part in the games. The Eleans replied that anyone who wished to compete was equally eligible, regardless of his city of origin. The Egyptians said that here the Eleans had missed the mark if they aimed to be perfectly fair. For it would be impossible for them not to favor their own citizens at the expense of foreigners. If they really wished to arrange matters fairly, and if that was their purpose in coming to Egypt, the 177. Because an invader would be able to sail directly from the seas off Asia into the heart of Egypt. 178. Warships rowed by three banks of oars; in fact, the kind of vessel properly termed “trireme” did not exist at this time. 179. The Mediterranean. 180. Psamtik II, pharaoh from 595 to 589 B.C. 181. A Greek city in the Peloponnese. During the early 6th century B.C., Elis obtained the administration of the quadrennial athletic festival in nearby Olympia, the games on which the modern Olympics are based.

140

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

Egyptians advised them to open the games to visitors only, and not allow their own citizens to compete. Such was their advice to the Eleans. 161. Just after leading an army into Ethiopia, Psammis died, having ruled Egypt for only six years. He was succeeded by his son Apries.182 Except for his great-grandfather Psammetichus, Apries was more prosperous than all the kings who had preceded him. He ruled for twenty-five years, during which he led an army against Sidon and fought a sea battle with the Tyrians. When the time came that was fated to bring him misfortune, an occasion arose that I will only touch on briefly now, as I intend to describe it more fully in my account of Libya.183 On sending a vast army against Cyrene,184 Apries suffered a serious defeat, for which he was held personally responsible. The Egyptians revolted from him, thinking he had knowingly sent them to their doom in the expectation that their slaughter would strengthen his hold over the Egyptians who survived. In their indignation, these Egyptians revolted openly, as did the friends of those who had died in battle. 162. Informed of the revolt, Apries sent Amasis185 to remonstrate with the rebels. When he had arrived among them, Amasis tried to dissuade the Egyptians from rebelling, but while he was speaking, an Egyptian who was standing behind him placed a helmet on his head and said as he did so that he was crowning him king. Amasis was not altogether displeased with this, as he soon showed. For when the rebels appointed him king of the Egyptians, he made preparations to march against Apries. On learning of this, Apries dispatched Patarbemis, a distinguished member of his court, with orders to bring Amasis alive into his presence. When on reaching Amasis Patarbemis summoned him, Amasis rose up (for he chanced to be on horseback), broke wind, and told Patarbemis to bring that back to Apries. Patarbemis nonetheless insisted that Amasis go to the king as ordered. Amasis replied that he had long been preparing to do just that; Apries would have no occasion to reproach him, since he would soon arrive, bringing others with him. From their conversation and from what he was able to observe of Amasis’ preparations, Patarbemis understood what Amasis had in mind; he hurried back to the court, wishing to alert the king immediately. When Patarbemis returned without Amasis, Apries gave him no chance to speak but in a fury ordered that Patarbemis’ ears and nose be cut off. When the Egyptians who had remained loyal to Amasis saw their most distinguished citizen treated so outrageously, they immediately went over to the rebels and put themselves at the disposal of Amasis. 182. Pharaoh from 589 to 570 B.C., slightly longer than the reign Herodotus assigns him. 183. This fuller account comes at 4.159. 184. A Greek city on the coast of North Africa, west of Egypt. 185. At this time a court official, later pharaoh (570–526 B.C.). Most of the remainder of Book 2 concerns Amasis, a bon vivant and good-time Charlie whose character interested Herodotus immensely.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

141

163. Informed of this latest revolt, Apries armed his mercenaries (a body of 30,000 Carians and Ionians who were with him at Sais, where his palace was—a large and remarkable building) and marched out to attack the Egyptians,186 while the Egyptians under Amasis marched out to meet them. Both armies arrived at Momemphis intending to test one another’s prowess. 164. The Egyptians are divided into seven classes: the priests, the warriors, the cowherds, the swineherds, the tradesmen, the interpreters, and the pilots. The warriors consist of Hermotybians and Calasirians, from different districts, all of Egypt being divided into districts. 165. The Hermotybians come from the districts of Busiris, Sais, Chemmis, Papremis, the island of Prosopitis, and half of Natho. At their most numerous, they numbered 160,000 men. None of them ever plies a trade, but all are wholly devoted to war. 166. The Calasirians come from the districts of Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Athribis, Pharbaethus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, and Myecphoris (this last district consists of an island opposite Bubastis). At their most numerous, the Calasirians numbered 250,000 men. Like the Hermotybians, they are forbidden to pursue any trade, and devote themselves wholly to military training, son following father.187 167. I cannot say for certain whether the Greeks got their attitude about trade, like so much else, from Egypt, since I have observed that the Thracians, Scythians, Persians, Lydians, and nearly all barbarian peoples hold artisans and their progeny in lower esteem than other citizens, and regard those who are not obliged to work with their hands as noble, especially those who are devoted to war. All the Greeks have adopted this attitude, especially the Spartans, though of all the Greeks the Corinthians are the least inclined to disparage the artisans. 168. The warriors are the only Egyptians, besides the priests, to receive special privileges; each was granted a parcel of land—twelve choice aruras, free of tax. (The arura is a square of 100 Egyptian cubits, the Egyptian cubit being the same length as the Samian.) All the warriors received these parcels, but in rotation, the same man never enjoying them twice. Every year 1,000 Calasirians and 1,000 Hermotybians attended the king as a bodyguard. In addition to his parcel of land, each member of this guard received a daily portion of meat and drink, consisting of five pounds of bread, two pounds of beef, and four cups of wine. 169. When Apries and his foreign mercenaries met Amasis and all the Egyptians at Momemphis, the armies engaged. The foreigners fought well but 186. See 2.154 above and note for an earlier discussion of the tensions in Egypt over the pharaoh’s use of foreign troops. 187. According to Lloyd, Herodotus has most likely superimposed onto the Egyptian warrior class the pattern he knew from Sparta.

142

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

were heavily outnumbered and defeated. It is said that Apries believed that his power was so firmly established that not even a god could bring him down. But on joining battle he was defeated, captured, and brought back to his former residence in Sais, now the palace of Amasis. Amasis treated him well and maintained him in the palace for a time; but in the end, when the Egyptians reproached him for supporting the man who had been his and their greatest enemy, Amasis surrendered him to the Egyptians. They strangled him and buried him in his family tomb.188 The tomb is in the temple of Athena, close to the sanctuary, on the left as one enters. The people of Sais buried all the kings from their district in that temple. Amasis’ tomb, though farther from the sanctuary than that of Apries and his ancestors, is also in the temple. It is in the court, and is an imposing cloister, built of stone, and adorned with pillars carved to resemble palm trees, and other costly ornaments. The cloister contains a chamber fitted with folding doors, behind which stands the king’s tomb. 170. The temple of Athena in Sais also contains the burial place of one whose name respect for religion makes it improper for me to mention in such a context.189 It stands behind the shrine and runs the entire length of the wall. Enormous stone obelisks stand in the enclosure, and there is a lake near them, edged in stone, circular in shape, and about as large, it seemed to me, as the lake in Delos called the Wheel. 171. At night on this lake, they perform the passion of that being whose name I refrain from mentioning. The Egyptians call this performance their Mysteries.190 Though I have witnessed these performances and could describe them in further detail, let me keep a religious silence about them. Let me also remain silent about the sacred rites of Demeter (the Greeks refer to them as the Thesmophoria),191 though certain matters may be mentioned without impiety. It was the daughters of Danaus who brought these rites from Egypt and taught them to the Pelasgian women. Later, when all the inhabitants of the Peloponnese were driven from their homes by the Dorians, the rites were lost. Only the Arcadians, who were not forced to emigrate, continued to celebrate them.192 188. An Egyptian commemorative stone records that Apries was in fact killed in battle, and that he had attempted to return to power after a brief period of exile in Babylon. 189. Osiris; see 2.61 and note. 190. The Greek word mysteria refers to religious rites that were kept secret from nonparticipants. 191. A Greek religious ritual that only women took part in, the setting for Aristophanes’ comedy Thesmophoriazusae. 192. For Herodotus’ reconstruction of Greek prehistory, see 1.56–58 and notes. The Arcadians were assumed to predate the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese and to preserve very ancient traditions.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

143

172. When Apries was deposed, Amasis became king. He belonged to the district of Sais, being a native of the town called Sioph. At first the Egyptians looked down on him and held him in no great esteem, since he had been a commoner and of an undistinguished family. In due course, however, Amasis won them over, not by severity but by cleverness. Among the countless treasures in his possession there was a golden foot-basin in which Amasis himself and all his dinner guests were accustomed to wash their feet. Amasis caused this foot-basin to be broken in pieces, and made of the gold a statue of one of the gods, which he set up in the most conspicuous place in the city. The Egyptians, constantly passing the statue, treated it with great reverence. Hearing of this, Amasis called an assembly and revealed that the statue they so revered was once a foot-basin, in which they had vomited, urinated, and washed their feet. His own case, he said, resembled that of the foot-basin, in that formerly he had been only a commoner and was now their king, so they had better honor and reverence him. In this way Amasis won over the Egyptians and made them content to serve him. 173. He adopted the following routine. From dawn to the time when the market fills up, he diligently attended to all the business that was brought to him; thereafter he would drink and joke with his guests, indulging his taste for frivolity and playfulness. His friends were grieved at his behavior and took him to task. “Sire,” said they, “you do not manage yourself well, lending yourself to so many vain pursuits. For you ought to be engaged in affairs throughout the day, seated in state upon a stately throne. Then the Egyptians would know they are being ruled by a great man, and you would be better spoken of. But as it is, you simply don’t behave like a king.” Amasis answered them with these words: “Archers string their bows when they wish to shoot, and unstring them after use. For if a bow were always taut, it would break, and so be useless when needed. So too is the condition of man: were a man to be always in earnest and never to devote himself to play, he would unawares go mad or have a stroke. Knowing that this is so, I divide my time between business and pleasure.” 174. It is said that Amasis, while he was a private citizen, had been fond of drinking and joking and was never inclined to be serious. He would drink and make merry, and if he ran short of funds, he would go about stealing. Those who claimed that he was in possession of their property would conduct him, when he denied it, to the nearest oracle. He was sometimes convicted by the oracles, and sometimes acquitted. And when he became king, he neglected the temples of the gods who had acquitted him, and neither contributed to their adornment nor visited them for sacrifice, but considered them utterly worthless and their oracles false; but the gods who had convicted him he regarded as true gods, whose oracles were truthful, and these he held in the highest honor. 175. His first work was the marvelous gateway of the temple of Athena at Sais, which far surpassed all others in height and grandeur, so enormous are its stones

144

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

and of a quality so superb. He also dedicated colossal statues and several mansphinxes, and brought for its repairs a number of enormous blocks of stone. Some of these were brought from the quarries near Memphis, but the largest were brought from Elephantine, which is a twenty days’ voyage from Sais. But the work that astonished me most is a room made of a single block of stone, which came from Elephantine. It took three years to convey it to Sais. Two thousand men, all of them of the pilot class, were assigned the task of hauling it. On the outside the room is 21 cubits in length, 14 in breadth, and 8 in height. Inside, its length is 18 5/6 cubits, its breadth 12, and its height 5.193 It stands near the temple entrance. They say it was not hauled into the temple because the architect, oppressed by the project (which had by then consumed a considerable amount of his time), groaned aloud. Taking this for a bad omen, Amasis would not allow it to be hauled any farther. Some, however, say that it was left outside because one of the workmen who was levering it was crushed and killed by it. 176. To the other well-known temples Amasis also presented works remarkable for their size. Among them is the recumbent statue, seventy-five feet long, in front of the temple of Hephaestus at Memphis. Two other colossal statues stand on the same base, on either side of it, each twenty feet high, carved in Ethiopian stone. There is another recumbent statue of the same size at Sais. It was also Amasis who built the massive and quite extraordinary temple of Isis at Memphis. 177. During Amasis’ reign, Egypt is said to have been especially prosperous; the river lavished its riches on the earth, and the earth on the people. It is said that during that period 20,000 cities were settled in Egypt. It was Amasis who established the law that every Egyptian should once a year declare before the district governor the source of his livelihood; or, if he failed to do so or could not prove that he made an honest living, should be punished with death. Solon the Athenian borrowed this law from the Egyptians and enacted it for the Athenians.194 They use it still, as it is an excellent law. 178. Becoming fond of the Greeks,195 Amasis granted them various privileges. To the Greeks who reached Egypt and wished to settle there he gave the city of Naucratis.196 He also made grants of land to the Greek traders who did not want to settle in Egypt, where they might erect altars and temples. The largest and 193. Since a cubit is about 1 1/2 feet, the room measured about 29 by 18 by 8 feet. 194. See 1.30 above for an earlier claim (probably fictitious) that Solon, after reforming the constitution in his native Athens, had visited the court of Amasis. 195. Initially Amasis’ rebellion from Apries was anti-Greek in spirit, but, once in power, Amasis no doubt found it advantageous to befriend Greek cities that could supply him with mercenaries. The gifts and offerings described at 2.182 below were part of that strategy, just as were the offerings of Croesus described in Book 1 (1.50–52, e.g.). 196. Originally a trading post on the Nile delta founded by Milesians.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

145

most famous of these, which is also the most frequented, is the temple called the Hellenium. Several Greek cities built it together, including the Ionian cities of Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae; the Dorian cities of Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis; and one Aeolian city, Mytilene. These are the cities to whom the temple belongs and who have the right to appoint consuls of the port. All the other cities that lay claim to it are claiming what does not belong to them. Three cities built separate temples: the Aeginetans a temple of Zeus, the Samians one in honor of Hera, and the Milesians another in honor of Apollo. 179. Naucratis, from ancient times, was Egypt’s only trading port. If anyone arrived at one of the other mouths of the Nile, he had to swear that he had not come voluntarily. He then had to sail his ship to the Canopic Mouth. But if contrary winds prevented him from doing so, he had to transport his cargo in barges around the Delta to Naucratis. Such was the privilege that port enjoyed. 180. When the Amphictyonic League197 contracted to build the present temple of Delphi for 300 talents (the earlier temple on that site had accidentally burned down), one fourth of the sum had to be furnished by the Delphians, who then went from city to city soliciting contributions. In the course of raising the necessary amount they received no trifling contribution from Amasis, who gave them 1,000 talents of alum.198 The Greeks who had settled in Egypt contributed 20 minas.199 181. Amasis formed a friendship as well as a military alliance with the Cyrenaeans. He also decided to take a wife from Cyrene, either as a token of his friendly feeling or because he desired a Greek wife. Accordingly, he married Ladice. Some say she was the daughter of Battus, son of Arcesilaus,200 while others maintain she was the daughter of Critobulus, a leading citizen. Whenever Amasis lay with her, he was unable to have intercourse and would resort to his other wives. When this occurred repeatedly, Amasis spoke thus to Ladice: “Woman, you have bewitched me, and for this you will find no means of escape from the worst death a woman ever suffered.” As Amasis grew no gentler to her when she denied the charge, Ladice made a silent vow to Aphrodite that if Amasis succeeded in having intercourse with her on that very night (the last which could save her from death), she would send a statue to the temple of Aphrodite at Cyrene. Her prayer was

197. A consortium of the Greek cities near the oracle of Delphi. The League assumed joint responsibility for the upkeep and administration of the oracle. 198. Alum, a natural product of the Egyptian coast, had medicinal uses. 199. A mina was one-third of a talent or (if a talent of coined silver is meant here, as is likely) 2,000 drachmas. 200. Battus II governed Cyrene c. 590–560 B.C., and was thus an older contemporary of Amasis.

146

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 2

answered at once; Amasis succeeded in having intercourse with her, and continued to do so whenever he came to her. He loved her dearly from then on. Ladice fulfilled her vow to the goddess. She had the statue made and sent it off to Cyrene, where it remained to my day, looking outward from the city. As for Ladice herself, when Cambyses conquered Egypt and learned who she was, he sent her back unharmed to Cyrene. 182. Amasis also sent offerings to Greek temples. In Cyrene he dedicated a golden statue of Athena and a painted likeness of himself. In Lindos201 he dedicated two stone statues and a remarkable linen breastplate in the temple of Athena. In Samos he dedicated two wooden likenesses of himself to Hera; these have stood, to my day, behind the doors in the great temple. The latter gifts were given in honor of his guest-friendship with Polycrates, son of Aeaces;202 but in Lindos his offerings were made not because of any guest-friendship, but because the temple of Athena is said to have been founded by the daughters of Danaus, who touched at Lindos in their flight from the sons of Aegyptus.203 Amasis was the first man to capture Cyprus and compel it to pay tribute.

201. Lindos was a largely Greek city on the island of Rhodes. 202. On Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in the years 533–522 B.C., and his friendship with Amasis, see 3.40 and 3.43. 203. The fifty Danaids, mythical descendants of Io, were said to have fled Egypt to avoid incestuous marriages that were being forced upon them.

Book 3

1. It was against Amasis that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, launched his expedition, leading an army drawn from the various nations he ruled, including both the Ionian and Aeolian Greeks.1 The expedition was launched for the following reason. Cambyses, on the advice of an Egyptian doctor, who held a grudge against Amasis2 for having torn him from his wife and children and delivered him up to the Persians, had sent a herald to Amasis to ask for his daughter in marriage. (When Cambyses had requested Amasis to send him the best eye doctor in Egypt, this was the man he had selected. Holding this against Amasis, the doctor had urged Cambyses to ask the king for his daughter, so that Amasis would either be grieved if he complied or incur Cambyses’ enmity if he refused.) Dreading the power of the Persians, Amasis was unable to decide whether to hand over his daughter or not; for he was well aware that Cambyses had no intention of marrying her, but would only keep her as his concubine. Reflecting on these matters, he adopted the following course. Apries, the late king, had left a tall and very comely daughter—Nitetis, the only surviving member of her family. Adorning this girl with gold and fine clothes, Amasis sent her off to Persia as his own daughter. In due course, when Cambyses welcomed her and addressed her by her father’s name, she said to him, “Sire, you do not understand that you have been deceived by Amasis, who decked me out and sent me to you as his own daughter, though I am really the daughter of Apries, his master, whom he murdered when he led the Egyptians to rebel against him.” It was this speech, and the cause of quarrel it revealed, that provoked the son of Cyrus, who was highly incensed, to march against Egypt. Such is the Persian story.3 2. The Egyptians, on the other hand, claim Cambyses as belonging to their own country, maintaining that he was the son of Nitetis, Apries’ daughter,4 for they say it was Cyrus who sent to Amasis for his daughter, not Cambyses. Their account, 1. Herodotus here resumes his narrative from the point he had reached at 2.1, as though nearly the whole of Book 2 had been a long “footnote” on Egypt. Cyrus’ son Cambyses, who had survived the Massagetan disaster thanks to his father’s forethought (see 1.208), is now on the throne; the year is 525 B.C. 2. On Amasis, see 2.162–82. 3. An interesting parallel to 1.1–4, where the Persians are cited for tales that explain the entire Greco-Persian conflict as the result of woman-stealing. 4. Conquered countries often find it useful to claim the conqueror as one of their own. Later Egyptian tales, following the subjection of Egypt by the Macedonians, held that Alexander the Great was in fact the son of an Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebo. 147

148

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

however, is incorrect. Familiar as they are beyond all other men with the laws of Persia, they are doubtless aware, first of all, that an illegitimate son is not allowed to reign if there is a legitimate heir; and secondly, that Cambyses was the son of Cassandane, daughter of Pharnaspes, an Achaemenid, and not of the Egyptian woman. The truth of the matter is that they are spreading a false tale in order to claim kinship with the family of Cyrus. 3. Another story (an unconvincing one, in my opinion) has it that a Persian woman came to visit Cyrus’ wives. Struck with admiration when she saw the children, tall and handsome, standing beside Cassandane, she praised them highly. But Cassandane, wife of Cyrus, replied, “Though I have borne him such children, Cyrus slights me and gives all his attention to the woman he recently got from Egypt.” Cassandane thus expressed her vexation with Nitetis, whereupon Cambyses, her elder son, said, “Well then, mother, when I am a man, I will turn Egypt upside-down for you.” He was about ten years old when he astonished the women by saying this, but he never forgot it. For when he grew up and had become king, he did indeed make war on Egypt. 4. There was another matter, quite separate, that helped to bring about the expedition. Among Amasis’ mercenaries5 there was a Halicarnassian named Phanes, a man of good judgment, and brave in battle. Bearing some grudge against Amasis, he fled from Egypt by sea, hoping to obtain an audience with Cambyses. As Phanes was a man of no small standing among the mercenaries, and had detailed knowledge of Egyptian affairs, Amasis was anxious to catch him and sent his trustiest eunuch after him in a trireme.6 The man captured him in Lycia, but did not succeed in bringing him back to Egypt, for Phanes outwitted his captor by getting his guards drunk, and then escaped to Persia. Cambyses was eager to launch his attack on Egypt and was wondering how he could cross the desert, when Phanes arrived and not only told him all of Amasis’ secrets, but advised him about crossing the desert, recommending that he send to the Arabian king to request a safe-conduct. 5. It is only by way of this desert7 that one can pass into Egypt. The country from Phoenicia to the boundaries of Cadytis8 belongs to the people called the Palestinian Syrians. From Cadytis, a city not much smaller, I would think, than Sardis, the trading-places along the coast as far as Ienysus belong to Arabia. From 5. Amasis, like other Egyptian pharaohs of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., imported foreign (and especially Greek) military labor as a prop to his power. 6. A trireme is a warship powered by three banks of oars. The term is sometimes used loosely by Herodotus (see Book 2 note 178) but here may refer to an actual trireme. 7. The long, dry coast of modern Lebanon and the Sinai peninsula posed a grave logistical problem for land armies attacking Egypt. 8. Also known as Gaza.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

149

there as far as Lake Serbonis, near the place where Mount Casius juts out into the sea, it is again Syrian territory. Past Lake Serbonis (in which, legend has it, Typhon9 lies hidden), one is on Egyptian soil. But the whole tract between Ienysus on the one side, and Lake Serbonis and Mount Casius on the other—which is extensive, being the length of a three days’ journey—is a waterless desert. 6. I now propose to point out something of which few who sail to Egypt are aware. Every year, jars full of wine are imported to Egypt from Phoenicia and from all parts of Greece, and yet one might almost say that there is not a single empty wine jar to be seen. How, one might ask, have these jars been disposed of? This, too, I propose to explain. Each governor is required to collect all the jars from his own city and transport them to Memphis. In Memphis they are filled with water and conveyed to this desert tract of Syria. Thus the wine jars that are regularly imported and emptied of their contents in Egypt have for years been transported to Syria, where all the others have gone before them.10 7. It was the Persians, as soon as they conquered the country, who established the means of storing water, and thereby made the passage to Egypt fit for use. But at the time of which I am speaking, there was no water at all, so Cambyses took the advice of his Halicarnassian friend and sent messengers to the Arabian king to request a safe-conduct. The Arabian granted the request, and the two parties exchanged pledges. 8. The Arabians are second to none when it comes to honoring pledges. They exchange them in the following way. When two parties wish to exchange pledges, a third man stands between them and with a sharp stone cuts the palms of their hands near the thumb. Then, taking a flock of wool from each man’s cloak, he dips it in their blood, which he smears on seven stones laid in the space between them. As he does so he calls on Dionysus and Urania. At this point in the ceremony, the man who is giving the pledge commends the stranger (or the citizen, as the case may be) to his friends, who then consider themselves bound to honor it. The only gods the Arabians recognize are Dionysus and Urania, and they say that they cut their hair in the manner of Dionysus: all around in a circle, with the temples shaved. Dionysus in their language is Orotalt, and Urania Alilat.11 9.When the Arabian king had pledged his faith to the messengers of Cambyses, he contrived as follows. After filling camel-skins with water, he loaded these onto 9. A mythical many-headed monster said to have battled Zeus early in his reign. Zeus defeated Typhon with a thunderbolt and imprisoned him under a mountain (Mount Aetna according to other sources, Mount Casius here). 10. Herodotus, with his characteristic love of cleverness and efficiency, seems quite taken with this ancient recycling program. 11. On Urania (an incarnation of Aphrodite) and the name Alilat, see 1.131. The identity of Arab “Dionysus” and the origin of “Orotalt” are more obscure.

150

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

all his camels, drove to the desert, and there awaited Cambyses’ army. This is the more credible account of what took place, though the less credible account should also be mentioned, as it enjoys some currency. The Corys, a large river in Arabia, empties into the Red Sea. It is said that the king of the Arabians created a pipe by stitching together the hides of oxen and other animals. By means of this pipe he channeled water from the Corys to the desert—a twelve days’ journey. He also had large reservoirs excavated in the desert, where the water was received and stored. It is said that the king, using three such pipes, channeled water to three different places. 10. Stationing his army at the Pelusian mouth of the Nile, Psammenitus,12 son of Amasis, awaited Cambyses. (For when Cambyses invaded Egypt, he did not find Amasis alive. After a reign of forty-four years, during which he met with no serious misfortune, Amasis died. His body was embalmed and buried in the tomb that he himself had built in the temple.)13 In the reign of Psammenitus, a prodigious event took place in Egypt. It rained in Egyptian Thebes, a thing that had never happened before and that has never happened since, as the Thebans themselves maintain. For there is no rainfall at all in upper Egypt, but on that occasion rain fell, a light shower, at Thebes. 11. The Persians crossed the desert, took up a position near the Egyptians, and prepared to join battle. Thereupon, the Egyptian king’s Greek and Carian mercenaries, offended with Phanes for leading a foreign army against Egypt, arranged a requital for him. Phanes had left his children behind in Egypt. The Greeks and Carians had these children brought to the Egyptian camp within sight of their father. Standing a mixing bowl between both armies, they led the children up one by one and cut their throats over the bowl. On dispatching all the children, they added wine and water to the bowl; and when all the mercenaries drank, the engagement began. A desperate battle was fought, and though both armies suffered heavy losses, the Egyptians were routed. 12. I beheld a great marvel, which I had learned of from the native people. The bones of those who fell in this battle lie there in two lots, those of each nation separately, just as they were originally divided.The skulls of the Persians are so brittle that if you struck one with a pebble you could pierce it, whereas the skulls of the Egyptians are so firm that you could hardly break one with a stone. The Egyptians easily persuaded me of the reason for this, namely that beginning from childhood the Egyptians shave their heads, and their skulls are hardened by exposure to the sun. This also explains why the Egyptians do not lose their hair. (For baldness is rarer among the Egyptians than among all other peoples.) Exposure to the sun 12. The pharaoh Psamtik III had been on the throne only a year at the time of Cambyses’ invasion. 13. See 2.169 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

151

accounts for the strength of the Egyptians’ skulls, while the Persians’ skulls are fragile because they protect their heads from an early age, wearing turbans. I saw the same thing at Papremis, where the Persians serving under Achaemenes, son of Darius, were slaughtered by Inaros the Libyan.14 13. When the Egyptians were routed in battle, they fled in disorder and shut themselves up in Memphis.15 Cambyses then invited them to come to terms, sending a Persian herald up the river to Memphis in a Mytilenaean ship.16 When the Egyptians saw the ship entering Memphis, they poured in crowds from their fortress and destroyed it. Tearing the crew limb from limb, they carried their remains inside the walls. Besieged thereafter, the Egyptians finally surrendered, whereas their neighbors the Libyans, dreading the fate of Egypt, surrendered without a battle. They agreed to pay tribute, and then sent gifts to Cambyses. The Cyrenaeans and Barcaeans, sharing the Libyans’ dread, did the same. Cambyses accepted the Libyan presents graciously, but scorned the offering from Cyrene (I imagine because it was modest—the Cyrenaeans sent only 500 minas of silver); at any rate, he snatched up the money and with his own hands flung it among his soldiers. 14. On the tenth day after Cambyses seized the fortress at Memphis, he seated Psammenitus, the Egyptian king who had reigned for six months, at the entrance to the town with the rest of the Egyptians, and ventured to test the man’s spirit. Having clothed Psammenitus’ daughter in the garb of a slave, he sent her off with a pitcher to fetch water. Many other girls, the daughters of the foremost citizens, clothed like the king’s daughter, accompanied her.When the girls passed the place where their fathers sat, they cried out and wept, and the fathers, all but Psammenitus, cried out and wept in turn, seeing their children insulted. But Psammenitus, who had looked and seen, bent down to the ground in silence. The water-carriers passed on. Next came Psammenitus’ son with 2,000 other Egyptians of the same age, with ropes around their necks and bridles in their mouth. They were being led away to be executed for the murder of the Mytilenaeans at Memphis and the destruction of their ship. For the king’s judges had decreed that for each Mytilenaean who had died, ten prominent Egyptians must be put to death. Psammenitus watched the young men as they passed and knew that his son was being led to his death. But though the Egyptians who sat near him were weeping and distraught, 14. A famous instance both of Herodotean autopsy, or firsthand witnessing of historical evidence, and of deductive (though in this case erroneous) reasoning. Just what Herodotus saw on these battlefields is unclear. Asheri (A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, Oxford, 2007, p. 409) points out that neither Persians nor Egyptians would have left their own dead exposed, and that the skulls must have belonged to foreign mercenaries on both sides. On Inaros see 3.15 and note. 15. That is, took refuge behind Memphis’ city walls. 16. Mytilene was a Greek city on the island of Lesbos, at this time under Persian dominion.

152

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

Psammenitus repeated the motion he had made when he saw his daughter. When this group, too, had gone past, it happened that an elderly man walked by the place where Psammenitus, son of Amasis, sat with the other Egyptians. The man was one of Psammenitus’ former boon companions, but had been stripped of his property and was now a beggar asking alms from the soldiers. When Psammenitus saw him he burst into tears, and called his friend by his name, and beat his head in grief. Guards were standing by, whose duty it was to inform Cambyses of how Psammenitus behaved as each procession went by. Astonished at what he heard, Cambyses sent a messenger to question him. “Your master Cambyses,” said the messenger, “asks you why, when you saw your daughter insulted and your son going to his death, you neither cried out nor wept, yet honored with these signs of sorrow a beggar who, as Cambyses hears, is not even related to you.” “Son of Cyrus,” was the reply, “my own misfortunes were too great for tears, but the misery of my friend deserved them, since he has fallen from great prosperity and happiness and been reduced to beggary on the threshold of old age.” When the messenger brought back this reply, Cambyses found it excellent; and the Egyptians report that Croesus wept when he heard it (for he, too, had accompanied Cambyses to Egypt),17 as did the Persians, and that even Cambyses himself was touched with pity. He immediately gave orders that Psammenitus’ son should be reprieved, and that Psammenitus himself should be brought into his presence. 15. The men who went for Psammenitus’ son found him no longer alive, since he had been the first to be slain, but they escorted Psammenitus to Cambyses. From then on he lived at Cambyses’ court, and suffered no harsh treatment. Had he only had the sense not to meddle with affairs, he might have recovered Egypt and ruled it as governor, since the Persians tend to honor the sons of kings, and even to give their fathers’ kingdoms to the sons of men who have revolted from them. There are many cases from which one may infer that this is the rule in Persia, and in particular those of Thannyra, son of Inaros, and Pausiris, son of Amyrtaeus, both of whom were allowed to succeed their fathers. And yet no one did the Persians more harm than Inaros and Amyrtaeus.18 But in this case Psammenitus stirred up trouble and paid the penalty. He was caught instigating a revolt in Egypt, and when his guilt was made known to Cambyses, he drank bull’s blood19 and died on the spot. 17. Croesus would now be about seventy years old, if indeed he was still alive (see note 119 to 1.86 above). 18. Herodotus refers to events of his own times, many decades after the end of his narrative. In the mid-5th century B.C. Inaros led a Libyan rebellion against Persian rule, while Amyrtaeus did likewise in Egypt. On the ill-fated rebellion of Amyrtaeus, supported by Athens, see Thucydides 1.110, 1.112. 19. Believed by the Greeks to be toxic.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

153

16. Cambyses now left Memphis and went to Sais, wishing to do that which he actually did when he got there. When he reached the palace of Amasis, he gave orders for the king’s body to be taken from his tomb. When this was done, he ordered his servants to whip the corpse, prick it with goads, pluck out its hair, and inflict every other indignity upon it. When they had worn themselves out in the performance of these activities—as the body had been embalmed, it resisted this treatment and would not come apart—Cambyses ordered them to burn it. This was a sacrilege, since the Persians believe that fire is a god. In fact this practice is prohibited, both among them and among the Egyptians: in the case of the Persians, for the reason I have mentioned, and because they think it wrong to give the corpse of a man to a god; in the case of the Egyptians, because they believe that fire is a living animal that devours whatever it seizes, and then, sated, dies with the food that it feeds on. It is wholly contrary to Egyptian custom to let dead bodies be eaten by animals. That is why they embalm them—to prevent them from being eaten in the grave by worms. Thus Cambyses commanded what neither nation deemed lawful. The Egyptians maintain that it was not Amasis’ body that suffered this abuse, but that of another Egyptian who was of about the same height; it was on that man’s corpse that the Persians were inflicting outrages when they imagined they were inflicting them on that of Amasis. For the Egyptians say that when Amasis was warned by an oracle of what would happen to him after he died, he took precautions. He ordered that the body of this man, whose corpse was now being whipped, should be buried just inside his tomb, near the door, and instructed his son to deposit his body in the innermost recesses of the sepulcher. I myself do not believe that Amasis ever gave these orders; it seems to me that the Egyptians tell this story merely to save face.20 17. After this Cambyses planned three campaigns: one against the Carthaginians,21 another against the Ammonians,22 and a third against the longlived Ethiopians, who lived south of Libya, on the coast of the southern sea.23 He decided to send his fleet against the Carthaginians, and a part of his land forces 20. See 3.2 above and note. In general Herodotus is acutely aware of the nationalistic motives that give rise to rumors and fables. 21. A Phoenician people dwelling on the North African coast. 22. Those dwelling around the oracle of Ammon (see 2.32). 23. The “southern sea” is presumably the body of water Herodotus elsewhere calls the Red Sea, a belt of waters south of both Asia and Africa. In modern terms a location “on the coast of the southern sea” might mean anywhere between the Sudan and South Africa, but of course Herodotus had little sense of African geography. Probably he meant to situate the long-lived Ethiopians vaguely at the southern edge of the oikoumene¯ (the known world). This race should be distinguished from the Ethiopians discussed in Book 2, who bordered on Egypt to the south (see 3.97 below).

154

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

against the Ammonians. To Ethiopia he decided first to send spies, ostensibly with presents for the king, but actually to gather intelligence, and especially to find out if the so-called Table of the Sun really existed. 18. As for the Table of the Sun,24 the story goes that there is a meadow in the outskirts of the city where an abundant supply of boiled meat of all kinds is kept. It is the duty of the magistrates to place the meat there at night; by day, anyone who wishes may come and eat it. The local people say that the land itself brings forth the food. 19. When Cambyses decided to send spies to Ethiopia, he immediately summoned from Elephantine certain Fish-eaters25 who were acquainted with the Ethiopian language, and, while they were being fetched, ordered his fleet to sail against Carthage. The Phoenicians,26 however, refused to take part in the campaign, claiming that they were bound to the Carthaginians by solemn oaths, and that it would be wicked of them to make war on their own children. With the Phoenicians out of it, the rest of the fleet was too weak to undertake the campaign, and thus the Carthaginians escaped enslavement by the Persians; for Cambyses did not think it right to coerce the Phoenicians, since they had willingly placed themselves at his disposal, and his entire naval power depended on them. The Cyprians,27 too, had joined the Persians of their own accord, and served with them in the expedition against Egypt. 20. When the Fish-eaters arrived from Elephantine, Cambyses told them what to say, and sent them off with presents for the Ethiopian king: a crimson robe, a gold chain-necklace, armlets, an alabaster box of myrrh, and a jar of palm wine. The Ethiopians to whom Cambyses was sending these gifts are said to be the tallest and most beautiful men in the whole world. In their customs they differ greatly from the rest of mankind, and particularly in their method of choosing their king: for they appoint the man whom they judge to be the tallest of their citizens, and of a strength equal to his height. 21. When the Fish-eaters arrived among these men, they presented their gifts to the king and addressed him thus: “Cambyses, king of the Persians, hoping to become your friend and ally, has sent us to converse with you, and to offer you these gifts, in which he himself takes the greatest pleasure.” The Ethiopian king, who knew that the men were spies, answered them thus: “The king of the Persians 24. First mentioned here, but no doubt connected to the Homeric idea that the Ethiopians hold extravagant banquets to entertain the gods. 25. Various primitive peoples bearing this name (Ichthyophagoi in Greek) were discussed by Greek and Roman writers; none can be identified with certainty. 26. That is, the inhabitants of Phoenicia proper, now subjugated by the Persians and furnishing the greater part of their navy (as Herodotus goes on to say). 27. Inhabitants of Cyprus, also largely Phoenician.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

155

did not send you with these gifts because he puts a high value on becoming my friend, nor are you telling the truth, since you have come to spy on my kingdom. Nor is your king a just man. For if he were just, he would not have coveted a country that is not his own, nor enslaved a people who never did him any harm. So give him this bow, along with my advice: ‘When the Persians can draw so strong a bow easily, let him come with an army of superior strength against the long-lived Ethiopians. Until then, let him thank the gods that they have not inspired the sons of the Ethiopians to covet a country that does not belong to them.’”28 22. So saying, he unstrung the bow and handed it to his visitors. Taking up the crimson robe, he asked what it was, and how it had been made. The Fish-eaters explained the purple dye and the art of dyeing, whereupon the king said that the dyers were deceitful and so were their garments. Next he asked about the gold chain-necklace and the armlets. When the Fish-eaters explained that the Persians used them as ornaments, the king laughed. Having supposed they were shackles, he remarked that the Ethiopians had much stronger ones. Thirdly, he asked about the myrrh. When they told him how it was made and rubbed on the body, he repeated the remark he had made about the robe. Finally he came to the wine, and having learned how it was made, drank some and found it delightful; then he asked what the king ate and how long the Persians lived. They told him that the king ate bread, and described the nature of wheat—adding that the people in Persia rarely lived beyond eighty.The Ethiopian replied that he was not surprised, if they fed on dung,29 that they died so soon; indeed, he imagined they would probably die even sooner, if they could not refresh themselves with that drink—here he pointed to the wine, the one thing in which he confessed the Persians surpassed the Egyptians. 23.When the Fish-eaters in turn asked the king how long men lived in his country and questioned him about their manner of life, he said that many of his people lived for 120 years, some of them even longer. They ate boiled meat and drank milk. When the Fish-eaters expressed surprise that anyone could live so long, the king led them to a spring, the water of which, when a man bathed in it, made his skin glisten as if he had bathed in oil. An odor, as of violets, wafted from its water. They said that the water of this spring was so weak that nothing would float in it, neither wood, nor any lighter substance; everything sank to the bottom. If this water is truly as they say it is, it would be for this reason that the Ethiopians are long-lived. When they left the spring, the king led them to a prison in which all the prisoners were bound with shackles made of gold.30 Among these Ethiopians, 28. Further evidence that these long-lived Ethiopians are distinct from the Ethiopians of Book 2, who regularly invaded and subjugated Egypt. 29. That is, on grains raised from soil fertilized with manure. 30. A curious inconsistency with the previous chapter, in which the king laughed at the weakness of the gold “shackles” sent by Cambyses.

156

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

bronze is the rarest and most costly of all metals. When they had inspected the prison, they were shown the Table of the Sun. 24. Finally, they were taken to see the Ethiopians’ coffins, which are said to be made of crystal, and fashioned as follows.When they have dried the corpse (either in the Egyptian manner or some other), they cover its entire surface with gypsum and paint it to resemble the living man as closely as possible. Then they enclose it in a crystal pillar that has been hollowed out to receive it. (The crystal is malleable and is mined in great quantities.) The corpse can be seen inside the pillar; it produces no unpleasant odor, nor is it at all unsightly, though its every feature is plainly visible. The next of kin keep the pillar at home for a year, offering it the first fruits and sacrificing to it. Then they carry it out and set it up near the city.31 25. Having seen all there was to see, the spies returned to Egypt and gave Cambyses their report. Infuriated, he immediately marched against the Ethiopians, without ordering provisions, and without reflecting that he was about to take his army to the ends of the earth. Madman that he was, as soon as heard the Fish-eaters’ report he marched off with his entire infantry, ordering the Greeks who were serving with him to remain behind.When he reached Thebes, he detached a body of 50,000 men and ordered them to attack the Ammonians, reduce them to slavery, and burn the oracle of Zeus. He himself continued with his remaining forces toward Ethiopia. Before the army had covered a fifth of the distance, all their food ran out, whereupon the men began to eat their pack animals, until these, too, were all gone. If Cambyses, when he saw what was happening, had changed his mind and led the army back, he would have shown some sense, despite his initial mistake. But as it was, he paid no attention and pressed onward. As long as the soldiers were able to get some sustenance from the earth, they lived on grass; but when they reached the desert, some of them resorted to a dreadful expedient. Certain companies of ten, having drawn lots, devoured one of their own men. Horrified when he learned of this, Cambyses abandoned the expedition, marched back, and arrived at Thebes, having lost enormous numbers of his soldiers.32 From there he went down to Memphis and allowed the Greeks to sail home. 26. So ended the expedition against Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the men sent against the Ammonians started from Thebes with guides. They are known to have reached Oasis,33 a city belonging to the Samians who are said to be of the Aeschrionian tribe.34 The place lies a seven days’ journey across the sands from Thebes and is 31. A fanciful description, not correlated with any other literary accounts or modern evidence. 32. As in the case of Cambyses’ Massagetan campaign in Book 1, the Ethiopian campaign of Cambyses is unconfirmed by external evidence and may be a legend. 33. Herodotus seems to have misunderstood the general Egyptian word as a town name. 34. Evidently Greek mercenary soldiers from Samos, though it is unclear what “the Aeschrionian tribe” refers to.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

157

known in Greek as the Isles of the Blessed.35 It is said that the army got that far, but what became of it thereafter no one can say, except the Ammonians and those who have heard their account. For it never reached the Ammonians, and it never returned home. The Ammonians themselves say that when the army advanced towards them across the desert, and had reached a point about halfway between Oasis and the Ammonians’ country, a violent south wind suddenly burst upon the men as they were taking their breakfast. Carrying heaps of sand, it buried them, and thus they disappeared. Such was the fate of that army, according to the Ammonians. 27.When Cambyses reached Memphis, Apis appeared to the Egyptians.36 (Apis is the god whom the Greeks call Epaphus.) As soon as he appeared, the Egyptians donned their finest clothes and held festive celebrations. Observing these festivities, Cambyses suspected that the Egyptians were rejoicing at his recent misfortune. Summoning the viceroys of Memphis, he asked them why, when he was in Memphis previously, the Egyptians had done nothing of the kind, but saw fit to do so now, when he had arrived having lost a large part of his army. The viceroys explained that the Egyptians’ god had appeared among them. This god had been accustomed to reveal himself at long intervals of time, and whenever he did so, all the Egyptians rejoiced and held a festival. In reply Cambyses said that they were lying, and as liars he condemned them to death. 28. Then he summoned the priests. When they repeated the viceroys’ explanation, Cambyses said that he would soon know whether a tame god had arrived in Egypt. So saying, he ordered them to bring Apis to him, and they went to fetch him. Apis is a calf born of a cow that is never afterward able to conceive.The Egyptians say that a flash of light descends upon the cow from heaven, whereupon she conceives Apis. The calf known by that name has several distinctive marks. It is black, with a white square on its forehead, and the image of an eagle on its back. Its tail has double hairs, and there is a beetle-shaped mark under its tongue. 29. When the priests fetched Apis, Cambyses, like the madman that he was, drew his dagger and aimed at Apis’ belly, but missed the mark and struck the calf’s thigh. With a laugh he said to the priests: “Fools, what sort of gods are of flesh and blood, and sensitive to steel? This god, at any rate, is worthy of the Egyptians. But you won’t get away with trying to make me a laughingstock.” So saying, he ordered those whose duty it was to inflict punishments to flog the priests, and to kill any of the other Egyptians caught celebrating. In this way the festival was 35. In Homer this term refers to a paradise where heroes like Menelaus lived an eternal life. Here it is transferred, by the Greeks serving in the Egyptian army, to denote a place where relief from desert heat and drought could be found. 36. On the god called Apis, worshiped in the form of a bull with special markings (described in 3.28 below), see 2.38 above and notes.

158

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

broken up, and the priests were punished. Meanwhile Apis, wounded in the thigh, lay wasting away in the temple.When he died of his wound, the priests buried him without the knowledge of Cambyses.37 30. And now Cambyses, who even before had not been sound of mind, completely lost his reason, according to the Egyptians, as a result of this crime. First, he murdered Smerdis, his full brother, whom he had sent back to Persia from Egypt out of jealousy, because he drew the bow, which none of the other Persians could bend, the distance of two fingerbreadths.38 (This was the bow the Fisheaters had brought from the Ethiopians.) When Smerdis had returned home, Cambyses dreamt that a messenger arrived from Persia to report that Smerdis was sitting on the royal throne and that his head touched the sky. Alarmed, and supposing that his brother meant to kill him and rule in his stead, Cambyses sent Prexaspes, whom he trusted more than any other Persian, to put Smerdis to death. So Prexaspes went up to Susa39 and murdered Smerdis. Some say he killed him while hunting; others report that he took him down to the Red Sea and drowned him. 31. This was said to be the first outrage Cambyses committed. Next he murdered his sister, who had accompanied him to Egypt and lived with him as his wife, though she was his full sister. Here I will explain how he came to marry her, for it had not been the custom previously for Persians to marry their sisters. Cambyses fell in love with one of his sisters and wished to marry her. As he intended to do what was not customary, he summoned the royal judges and asked if there was any law that permitted a man to marry his sister if he wished to do so. The royal judges are certain picked men, who serve for life or until they have been detected in any wrongdoing.40 These men adjudicate lawsuits and interpret ancestral laws, and all disputes are referred to them. When Cambyses questioned them, they gave him an answer that was both true and safe, namely that they had found no law authorizing a brother to marry a sister; on the other hand, they had discovered a law that permitted the man who is king of the Persians to do whatever he pleased. 37. Archaeology gives the lie to Herodotus’ account. The caskets of the Apis bulls have been excavated at Memphis and one of them, not showing evidence of any unusual death or interment, belongs to a calf that died in 524 B.C., while Cambyses was in Egypt. The account here belongs to a large group of stories in Herodotus that originated as anti-Persian propaganda among conquered peoples (see 1.187, e.g.). 38. Answering the challenge thrown down at 3.21, Smerdis (or Bardiya, as the Persians called him) may indeed have been killed in secret before the invasion of Egypt; but much is unclear about this episode, in part because our most important source, a long inscription on a cliff face at a place called Bisitun, was composed at the behest of a later king, Darius, to justify his usurpation of the throne. Its account of Smerdis’ murder, and the subsequent elimination of a “false Smerdis” (see 3.61–79 below), is therefore not entirely trustworthy. 39. One of several Persian capital cities. 40. See 5.25 for a gruesome instance of this “impeachment.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

159

In this way they did not violate the law through fear of Cambyses, nor perish for upholding the law; instead, they introduced another law that allowed the king to have his way. Cambyses, then, married the sister he loved, and before long married another sister. It was the younger of these who accompanied him to Egypt. 32. As was true in the case of Smerdis, there are two accounts of her death. The Greeks say that Cambyses pitted a lion cub against a puppy, his wife being among the spectators.The puppy was getting the worst of it, when his litter-mate, breaking his chain, came to his brother’ aid; and two against one, the puppies prevailed over the cub. Cambyses, looking on, was delighted, but his wife, sitting near him, began to cry. When Cambyses saw this and asked her why she wept, she said that the sight of the puppy helping his brother reminded her of Smerdis,41 and she realized that there was no one now to help her husband. For this remark, the Greeks say, Cambyses put her to death. The Egyptians, on the other hand, say that when the two were sitting together at table, the woman, taking a head of lettuce, stripped off the outer leaves and asked her husband whether he thought it looked better with the leaves on or off. When he replied that he preferred it with the leaves on, she said, “Yet you have done as I did to this lettuce, and stripped the house of Cyrus.” Flying into a rage, Cambyses leapt on her, though she was pregnant. Thereafter she miscarried and died. 33. These were the crimes Cambyses committed against his own kinsmen, whether his madness was due to his treatment of Apis or to some other among the many maladies that afflict mankind; and in fact Cambyses is said to have suffered from birth from a serious disease that some call the “sacred sickness.”42 It would be nothing out of the ordinary for a serious bodily ailment to have affected his brain. 34. Cambyses unleashed his madness on other Persians as well; Prexaspes, for example, a man who was highly esteemed by the king and carried his messages, and whose son served as Cambyses’ cupbearer—a position of no small honor. Cambyses is said to have once asked him, “What sort of man, Prexaspes, do the Persians think I am, and what do they say about me?” Prexaspes replied, “Sire, they praise you highly in every respect but one: they say you are too fond of wine.” Such, Prexaspes told him, was the opinion of the Persians, and Cambyses, losing his temper, replied, “Aha! So now the Persians say that I drink too much wine, and have lost my mind. Then their former words about me were untrue.” For on an earlier occasion, when the Persians were sitting with him, and Croesus was present, Cambyses had asked what they thought of him as compared with his father Cyrus.The Persians had replied that he surpassed his father; for he had retained all 41. Evidently this royal bride knew the truth about Smerdis’ “secret” assassination. 42. Epilepsy. Herodotus’ cautious language about the term “sacred sickness” reflects a controversy in his day (as seen in the writings of Hippocrates) over whether epilepsy in fact had a divine origin.

160

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

of his father’s possessions, and in addition had acquired Egypt and the command of the sea. But Croesus was dissatisfied with their verdict and said to Cambyses, “In my opinion, son of Cyrus, you are not equal to your father. For you do not yet have a son such as he left behind.” Cambyses was pleased with this reply and praised Croesus’ judgment. 35. Recalling those answers, Cambyses angrily addressed Prexaspes: “Learn for yourself whether the Persians speak the truth, or whether it is they who are out of their minds. Do you see your son standing there by the door? If I shoot him through the heart, it will prove that the Persians talk nonsense. If I miss, then I concede that the Persians are right and that I am out of my mind.” So saying, he drew his bow and struck the boy, who fell to the ground. Then Cambyses ordered the body to be cut open and the wound examined; and when the arrow was found to have lodged in the heart, Cambyses was overjoyed, and said with a laugh to the father, “Now you can see, Prexaspes, that it is not I, but the Persians who have lost their minds. Come now, tell me, did you ever see a mortal shoot so straight?” And Prexaspes, seeing that the king was not in his right mind, and fearing for himself, replied, “Master I do not think the god himself could have shot so well.” On another occasion, Cambyses arrested twelve eminent Persians for no good reason and buried them alive, head downwards. 36. Croesus the Lydian43 thought it right to admonish Cambyses for this behavior. “Sire,” he said, “do not yield to youthful heat and passion, but contain and control yourself. It is sensible to think of consequences, and there is wisdom in forethought.You put your own citizens to death, arresting them for no good reason.You kill children. If you continue to do such things, beware lest the Persians rebel. Your father Cyrus urged me again and again to give you my best advice.” Croesus offered this counsel in a kindly manner, but Cambyses replied with these words: “So, even you dare to advise me—you who made such a success of governing your own country, and gave such excellent advice to my father, recommending that he cross the Araxes and fight the Massagetae in their country,44 though they were willing to cross into ours.You ruined yourself by governing poorly, and you ruined Cyrus when he took your advice.45 But you will not go unpunished, as I have long been waiting for an excuse to get even with you.” So saying, he took up his bow to shoot at Croesus, but Croesus jumped up and ran out.When Cambyses was unable to get off a shot, he commanded his servants to catch Croesus and 43. See 1.86 and note 119 for the problem of how Croesus might have died. Among our sources, only Herodotus gives an “afterlife” to Croesus at the court of Cambyses. 44. See 1.208. 45. Cambyses blames the failure of the Massagetan campaign on Cyrus’ decision to cross the Araxes, and perhaps also on the stratagem of getting the Massagetae drunk, a trick that inflamed the anger of Queen Tomyris.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

161

kill him. The servants, familiar with Cambyses’ moods, kept Croesus concealed, thinking that if Cambyses changed his mind and asked for him, they would be able to produce him and get a reward for saving his life; and if, on the other hand, he did not relent, or miss the man, they could then do away with him. Before long Cambyses did indeed miss Croesus, and the servants, noticing it, let Cambyses know that he was still alive. Cambyses said that that he was glad to hear it, but the men who had saved him would not get away with it; he would put them to death. And that is what he did. 37. In his madness Cambyses inflicted many such atrocities on the Persians and his allies. Tarrying in Memphis, he opened ancient tombs and examined the corpses. He also entered the temple of Hephaestus46 and ridiculed the statue of the god. For the image of Hephaestus resembles the Pataeci of the Phoenicians,47 with which they adorn the prows of their warships. For the benefit of anyone who has not seen them, I should explain: the figure resembles that of a pygmy. Cambyses also went into the temple of the Cabiri,48 which only the priest may lawfully enter. Mocking the statues there, he actually burned them. (These statues resemble that of Hephaestus; they are said to represent his sons.) 38. It is perfectly clear to me that Cambyses was out of his mind. He would not otherwise have set himself to ridicule ancient rites and customs. For if anyone was given the chance to choose out of all the customs in the world those he thought best, he would invariably, after considering them all, end by choosing those of his own country.49 So unless a man were mad, it is unlikely that he would ridicule such things. That all people have this feeling can be inferred from an abundant body of evidence, and is particularly well illustrated in a story told about Darius.50 When he was king of Persia, he summoned the Greeks who were at court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They claimed that no amount of money would induce them to do so. Darius then summoned the Indians known as the Callatiae51 (who eat their parents). The Greeks were present and understood, through interpreters, all that was said. Darius asked the Callatiae what they would take to burn their dead fathers’ bodies. With 46. Hephaestus is Egyptian Ptah. 47. The Pataeci were statuettes that Phoenician sailors placed on their prows, representing misshapen dwarves. 48. On the Cabiri see 2.51 and note 70. 49. Herodotus has himself already given counterexamples to this principle, for example at 1.135. 50. The Persian king who ruled after Cambyses. 51. The “Callatians” are a tribe of South Asians known only vaguely to the Greeks. The term “Indians” as used by Herodotus refers to inhabitants of the Indus valley, today largely part of Pakistan.

162

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

a cry of horror, they bade him be silent. This feeling is universal, and Pindar, it seems to me, was right to say that “custom is king of all.”52 39. While Cambyses was occupied in Egypt, the Spartans launched an expedition against Polycrates, son of Aeaces, who had seized power in Samos.53 At first Polycrates divided his domain into three parts and shared the kingdom with his brothers, Pantagnotus and Syloson; but later, after killing the former and banishing the latter (the younger of the two), he took sole possession of Samos. When the island was his, he concluded a pact of friendship with Amasis, king of Egypt,54 sealing it by an exchange of gifts. Before very long, the rapid increase of his power became the talk of Ionia and the rest of Greece. For wherever he marched, he met with success. He had a fleet of a hundred penteconters,55 and 1,000 archers, and he plundered all countries indiscriminately; for he said that he would more gratify a friend by returning what he had taken than if he had never taken it. He captured many of the islands and several towns on the mainland. Among his other successes, he defeated the men of Lesbos in a sea battle, when they came with all their forces to aid Miletus. It was these Lesbians, bound in chains, who excavated the moat that surrounds the walls of Samos. 40. Polycrates’ extraordinary good fortune by no means escaped the notice of Amasis, who was uneasy about it. When the man’s successes only increased, Amasis wrote him the following letter, and sent it to Samos: “Amasis to Polycrates: It is a pleasure to hear that a friend and ally is prospering. Nevertheless, your remarkable successes do not afford me unmixed pleasure, understanding as I do that the gods are jealous.56 My own wish, both for myself and those I care for, is to succeed in some things, and fail in others, thus passing through life with alternations of fortune, rather than with perpetual success. For I have never known of anyone fortunate in everything whose life did not end in utter ruin. So take my advice and deal with your continual successes as follows: think of the possession 52. Pindar, a Greek poet of the early 5th century B.C., left behind many surviving odes, but the phrase quoted here is not among them. It is, however, quoted more fully by Plato in the dialogue Gorgias (484b). The word here translated as “custom,” Greek nomos, can also mean “law.” 53. Herodotus here switches narrative tracks rather abruptly, showing us events taking place in the Greek world while Cambyses was in Egypt. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos starting about 532 B.C., was at this time engaged in expanding a naval empire, prompting a reaction from the Spartans; they had a vested interest in opposing Polycrates, given that he had overthrown a pro-Spartan regime and was persecuting its sympathizers (see 3.45–46 below). 54. By now a familiar figure. Obviously Herodotus has “turned back the clock” a few years from the earlier portion of Book 3, since Amasis is here still living. 55. A kind of warship. 56. Much the same message as Solon had conveyed to Croesus (see 1.32).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

163

you value most—the one you could least bear to lose, and throw it away, so it will never be seen again. And if, henceforth, your good luck does not alternate with misfortune, then continue to apply the remedy I have suggested.” 41. When he had read the letter, and recognized that Amasis’ advice was good, Polycrates searched among his treasures for the one it would most grieve him to lose, and selected a ring he used to wear, an emerald set in gold, the work of Theodorus of Samos, son of Telecles.57 When he had decided to throw this ring away, he manned a penteconter, went aboard, and ordered the men to put to sea. When they were far from the island, he took off the ring, in sight of everyone on board, and flung it into the sea. This done, he sailed home and mourned his loss. 42. Five or six days later, it happened that a fisherman caught a large and beautiful fish and thought it worthy to be given as a gift to Polycrates. Taking it to his door, he said he wished to see Polycrates. When the request was granted, he presented the fish and said, “Sire, when I caught this fish, I did not think it right to take it to market, though I live by my trade; instead, it seemed to me to be worthy of you and your greatness. So I brought it here and offer it to you.” Delighted with these words, Polycrates replied, “Well done, sir! I thank you doubly, both for your words and for your gift. Come and take supper with me.” The fisherman went home, proud to have been so honored. Meanwhile Polycrates’ servants, on cutting open the fish, found Polycrates’ ring in its belly. As soon as they saw it they snatched it up and brought it with great joy to Polycrates. Restoring it to him, they told him how it had been found.When it occurred to Polycrates that the gods had taken a hand in the affair, he wrote a letter to Amasis in Egypt, describing what he had done and what had happened. 43. When Amasis read Polycrates’ letter, he understood that it is not possible for one man to save another from his destiny, and that Polycrates, since he was fortunate in everything, even finding what he had thrown away, was not going to end well. So he sent a herald to Samos to say that he was dissolving their friendship. He did this so that when the great and terrible calamity fell upon Polycrates, he himself might not grieve as he might have done had Polycrates still been his friend.58 44. It was against Polycrates, whose undertakings continued to prosper, that the Spartans now went to war, having been called in by the Samians who later founded Cydonia in Crete. For Polycrates, at the time when Cambyses, son of Cyrus, was mustering a force against Egypt, had sent secretly to ask him to request troops from Samos. Cambyses readily complied, sending to Samos to ask Polycrates to contribute ships to the naval force he was gathering against Egypt. 57. Evidently a very prolific craftsman; see 1.51 above. 58. The “calamity” anticipated here comes to pass at 3.120–125 below.

164

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

Polycrates immediately picked out those of the citizens whom he thought most likely to plot against him, and sent them off in forty triremes,59 with instructions to Cambyses never to let them return to Samos. 45. Some say that the Samians sent by Polycrates did not reach Egypt; for when they reached Carpathus,60 they took counsel together and decided to sail no farther; others say that they did reach Egypt, where they were put under guard, but subsequently escaped and sailed back to Samos. There Polycrates met them with his fleet, and a battle was fought in which the returning men prevailed; after their victory they landed on the island, but in the fight that ensued they were defeated, whereupon they sailed off to Sparta. There are some who maintain that the Samians who returned from Egypt overpowered Polycrates. But this strikes me as unlikely; for if they had been able to conquer Polycrates by themselves, they would not have needed to call in the Spartans. Furthermore, it does not stand to reason that a man with a large body of mercenaries and a force of native archers could have been defeated by the Samian exiles, who were few in number. As for his own subjects, Polycrates crowded their children and wives together in the sheds by the docks and was prepared to set the sheds themselves on fire if the citizens joined the exiles. 46. When the banished Samians reached Sparta, they came before the chief magistrates and spoke at length, as was natural for persons in great need. At that first audience, the magistrates answered them by saying that they had forgotten the first part of their speech and had failed to understand what followed. At a later audience, the Samians appeared with a sack, and merely said that the sack needed flour. The magistrates replied that the Samians might have dispensed with the word “sack.”61 Nevertheless, they decided to assist them. 47. The Spartans then prepared to march against Samos. The Samians claim that the Spartans were assisting them in return for a favor, since on a previous occasion they had sent ships to aid them against the Messenians.62 But the Spartans say that it was not so much to assist the Samians, as the desire to punish them for stealing both the mixing bowl they had sent to Croesus, and the corselet that Amasis, king of Egypt, had sent them as a gift.63 For the Samians had seized this corselet the year before they took the bowl; it was of linen, embroidered with 59. Triremes are warships powered by 150 oars, more advanced vessels than penteconters, though Herodotus sometimes uses the term loosely to mean warships generally. 60. An island south of Rhodes. 61. A joke concerning the famously terse and gruff Spartan character. 62. The episode is not otherwise known. The Messenians were a subject people dwelling west of Sparta in the Peloponnese, their inveterate enemy in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. 63. The purported theft of the bowl, more than two decades earlier, was discussed at 1.70 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

165

gold and with wool from trees,64 and had many animal figures woven into the fabric. The most remarkable thing about it was that each thread was made up of 360 strands, each of them clearly visible. Amasis dedicated another such corselet to Athena in Lindos.65 48. The Corinthians likewise were eager to join the expedition against Samos; for a generation earlier, about the time of the theft of the bowl, they too had suffered at the hands of the Samians. It happened that Periander, son of Cypselus,66 had sent 300 boys, the sons of the foremost Corcyraeans, to Alyattes at Sardis, to be castrated.67 But when the Corinthians who were conveying the boys touched at Samos, the Samians, when they learned why the boys were being taken to Sardis, urged them to take refuge in the temple of Artemis and refused to allow the Corinthians to drag them away from it.When the Corinthians withheld the boys’ food, the Samians improvised a festival, which is still celebrated in the same way. As long as the boys remained suppliants, the Samians organized nightly round dances; and the dancers—young men and women—carried cakes made of sesame and honey, so that the Corcyraean boys could snatch them from the dancers, and so get enough to eat. They kept this up until the Corinthian guards went away and left the boys behind, whereupon the Samians brought them back to Corcyra. 49. Now if, after Periander’s death, the Corinthians and Corcyraeans had been on friendly terms, the Corinthians would never, for such a reason, have taken part in the expedition against Samos. But the fact is that ever since the original settlement of the island the two peoples have been at variance with one another;68 so the incident was remembered, and the Corinthians bore a grudge against the Samians. Periander had chosen the boys from among the foremost families in Corcyra, and sent them to Sardis to be castrated in revenge for an arrogant act on the part of the Corcyraeans that had touched off the quarrel. 50. After Periander had killed his wife Melissa,69 another misfortune followed. He had two sons by Melissa, one of them seventeen years old, the other 64. A curious early reference to cotton, grown in the Indus valley and as yet barely known to the Greeks. 65. As noted at 2.182. 66. Periander, tyrant of Corinth, has been encountered earlier in the tale of Arion and the dolphin (see 1.24). His dates are in fact earlier than the time indicated here, so Herodotus’ chronology is faulty. 67. The island of Corcyra (modern Corfu) was a colony of Corinth, which Periander was in this case mining for young slaves to become Median palace eunuchs. 68. The hostile relationship is also discussed in Thucydides, where it lies at the root of the first Athenian-Peloponnesian clash (1.24–55). 69. Herodotus does not say more about this wife-killing, but a late source claims that Periander kicked Melissa in anger and caused a miscarriage and hemorrhage. At 5.92G below, Periander is said to have committed necrophilia with Melissa’s corpse.

166

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

eighteen. Their maternal grandfather, Procles, the tyrant of Epidaurus, sent for them and treated them with great kindness, as was natural, since they were his own daughter’s children. When it came time to send the boys home, he spoke a parting word to them: “Well, lads, do you know who killed your mother?” The elder boy took no notice of this question, but the younger, whose name was Lycophron, was disturbed by it—so much so that when he returned to Corinth he would not speak to his father, whom he regarded as his mother’s murderer. He would neither answer when his father spoke to him, nor reply to his questions. At last Periander, enraged by such behavior, drove the boy from the house. 51. He then inquired of his elder son what their grandfather had said to them. The boy described how kindly their grandfather had received them; but as he had taken no notice of Procles’ parting question, he forgot to mention it. Periander persisted, saying it was not possible that that was all—that Procles must have given them some sort of hint; he continued to press him, until at last the boy remembered his grandfather’s question and related it. Periander thought this over; but as he was disinclined to relent, he sent a messenger to the friends with whom his outcast son was staying and forbade them to keep the boy in their house. Then Lycophron, when he was driven from one friend’s house, took shelter with another, but was again driven out by the commands of his father, who threatened those who received him and ordered them to shut their door to him. Thus he was driven from one friend to another; each family, despite their fear, continued to offer him hospitality, as he was Periander’s son. 52. At last Periander issued a proclamation that anyone who sheltered the boy, or even talked to him, would have to pay a sacred fine to Apollo. After this proclamation, no one was willing either to converse with the boy or take him in, and he himself did not think he should try to do what was forbidden; so he endured his lot and sought shelter in the porticoes. After four days, Periander, seeing his son unwashed and hungry, took pity on him. Foregoing his anger, he approached him and said, “Which is better, my son? To be in your present state, or to inherit my throne and wealth, merely on the condition of obeying your father? Though you are my son and a prince of prosperous Corinth, you have chosen a beggar’s life, because you resist and resent the person it least behooves you to treat in such a way. If anything unfortunate has occurred, for which you hold me to blame, remember that I suffer from it as well as you—perhaps even more than you, since it was I who caused it. Now that you know how much better it is to be envied than pitied, and understand what comes of indulging your anger against parents and superiors, come back home.” With these words Periander sought to bring his son around, but the boy’s only reply was that Periander owed the god a sacred fine for talking to him. When Periander realized that his son’s trouble was somehow incurable and desperate, he shipped him out of his sight to Corcyra, which at that time belonged

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

167

to him. When he had sent the boy away, he made war on his father-in-law, Procles, whom he regarded as the chief author of his present troubles. He captured Epidaurus and took Procles himself prisoner. 53. In the course of time, when Periander had grown old and found himself no longer able to oversee and manage his affairs, he sent to Corcyra to invite Lycophron to return and take over the tyranny. For he took no notice of his elder son, whom he considered a dullard. But Lycophron did not even take the trouble to answer the messenger. So Periander, who had set his heart on the boy, now sent his daughter, Lycophron’s sister, thinking he would surely obey her. “Brother,” she said, “would you rather see the tyranny pass into other hands, and our father’s fortune plundered, than return and enjoy it yourself? Come back home and stop punishing yourself. Obstinacy is a weakness. Why try to cure one evil with another? Many prefer mercy to justice, and many, seeking to secure a mother’s rights, lose their patrimony. Tyranny is a slippery thing—it has many suitors. Our father is now an old man. Don’t abandon your property to strangers.” So spoke the sister, who had been told by Periander what to say; but her brother’s only reply was that he would never come to Corinth while his father lived. When she reported this answer, Periander dispatched a third herald to announce that he would go to Corcyra himself, and let his son and heir take his place at Corinth. Lycophron agreed to these conditions, and each prepared to depart—Periander for Corcyra, Lycophron for Corinth. But when the Corcyraeans got wind of what was happening, they murdered the young man to keep Periander away. It was for this that Periander took vengeance on the Corcyraeans. 54. The Spartans arrived with a powerful force and laid siege to Samos.70 In an assault on the walls, they forced their way to the tower near the sea, on the side where some outlying dwellings are, but Polycrates came in person with a strong force and drove them back. At the upper tower, which stood on the hill’s ridge, the mercenaries and many of the Samians sallied out against the invaders; but after withstanding the Spartans for a short time, they fled backwards, and the Spartans pressed their advantage and slew many of them. 55. If all the Spartans had equaled Archias and Lycopes on that day, Samos would have been taken. For these two men, without the support of their companions, pursued the fleeing Samians into their fortress, where they were cut off and killed. I myself met Archias’ grandson in Pitane, his native village.71 He admired the Samians more than any other foreigners, and he told me that his father had been named Samius because his father, Archias, had met with a glorious death in Samos. He said he revered the Samians because they had honored his grandfather with a public funeral. 70. The narrative resumes from the point reached at 3.47. 71. A rare instance in which Herodotus names an individual as his source of information.

168

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

56. After the Spartans had besieged Samos for forty days without making progress, they returned to the Peloponnese. A silly tale has gone about that Polycrates coined a large quantity of the local coin money in lead, coated it with gold, and offered it to the Spartans; they took it—and that was why they departed. This was the first expedition to Asia of the Dorian Spartans.72 57. As for the Samians who had fought against Polycrates,73 when the Spartans were about to abandon them, they sailed off to Siphnos. For they were in need of money, and the Siphnians were then at the height of their prosperity;74 of all the island peoples, they were the wealthiest. Their gold and silver mines were so productive that a tenth part of their output furnished one of the wealthiest treasuries at Delphi; the rest of the mine’s annual yield was divided among the citizens. When they established the treasury, they consulted the oracle and asked if their present prosperity could last for many years. The Pythian priestess replied as follows: When the town hall in Siphnos turns white, And white-browed the marketplace, then let a wise man beware of A wooden host and a scarlet messenger. In those days, the Siphnians’ marketplace and town hall were adorned with Parian marble. 58. The Siphnians were unable to understand the oracle, either when it was given, or afterward when the Samians arrived. For as soon as they anchored at Siphnos, the Samians sent envoys to the city in one of their ships. In early times all Samian ships were painted red; and that was what the Pythian priestess meant when she warned them to beware of a “wooden host and a scarlet messenger.” On their arrival, the Samian envoys asked the Siphnians to lend them ten talents. When the request was refused, the Samians began to plunder their lands. The Siphnians immediately rushed out to protect their crops, and in the ensuing battle were defeated. Many of them were cut off from the town by the Samians, who then exacted the sum of 100 talents from Siphnos. 59. From the Hermionians the Samian exiles took, instead of money, the island of Hydra, off the Peloponnese, and entrusted it to the Troezenians.75 They themselves went on to Crete, where they founded the city of Cydonia. They had not intended, when they sailed, to settle there, but only to drive the Zacynthians from 72. Herodotus here considers Samos part of Asia, though it lies offshore of the continent itself. For “Dorian” as an epithet of the Spartans, see 1.56 and note 61. 73. The pro-Spartan faction (see 3.45–46 above). 74. The language indicates that Siphnos is here at a turning point, on its way to becoming the insignificant island it was in Herodotus’ day. 75. That is, they received money from Troezen, using the island as a kind of collateral.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

169

the island.Yet they remained at Cydonia and prospered for five years. These were the Samians who built the temples that are still to be seen there, including the shrine of Dictyne.76 But in the sixth year they were attacked by the Aeginetans, who with the help of the Cretans defeated them in a naval battle and reduced them to slavery. They cut off the boars’ heads that were carried on the prows of the Samian ships, and dedicated them in the temple of Athena in Aegina. The Aeginetans assisted the Cretans on that occasion to settle an old score. At an earlier period, during the reign of Amphicrates in Samos,77 the Samians had made war on them and done their island great harm, though not without suffering losses themselves. 60. I have talked at greater length about the Samians because they are responsible for three of the greatest Greek masterworks. The first is a tunnel nearly seven stades long, eight feet wide, and eight feet high, driven through the base of a hill 150 fathoms high. Its entire length carries a trench, three feet broad and 20 cubits deep, in which pipes carry water to the city from an abundant source.78 The tunnel’s architect was a Megarian named Eupalinus, son of Naustrophus. The second masterwork is the causeway in the sea, which runs all around the harbor, nearly 20 fathoms deep and more than two stades in length.79 The third great work is a temple—the largest of all temples known to us.80 Its first architect was Rhoecus, son of Phileus, a Samian. Because of these works I have spoken at greater length about the Samians. 61. While Cambyses, in his madness, was lingering in Egypt, two Magi, who were brothers, revolted against him.81 One of them had been left behind by Cambyses as the steward of his household; it was he who instigated the revolt. Aware that Smerdis was dead, and that his death had been concealed from all but a few Persians, while most believed he was still alive,82 the steward ventured to seize the throne. His brother, whom I mentioned as his confederate, bore a remarkable resemblance 76. A goddess of Cretan origin, associated by the Greeks with Artemis. 77. Amphicrates is not well known, but the time period indicated is the 7th century B.C. 78. The remains of this tunnel, corresponding closely to Herodotus’ description, were found in the late 19th century. It had been dug from both sides of the hill at once so as to meet in the middle, a remarkable feat of early Greek engineering. 79. The remains of this jetty, which created an enclosed harbor, can still be seen today. 80. The so-called Heraeum, dedicated to the goddess Hera. 81. Herodotus here resumes the thread of Persian history from 3.38. The Magi were the priestly caste of Persia. 82. See 3.30 above and note 38. It is hard for historians to assess the truth of Herodotus’ version of the death of Smerdis (Bardiya) and the subsequent emergence of a pretender, given that even those who lived through these events were confused (see 3.67 below). It is possible that the “pretender,” named Gaumata in the Bisitun inscription set up by Darius, was in fact the true Smerdis, portrayed later by those who killed him as an impostor.

170

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

to Smerdis, son of Cyrus, whom Cambyses, his brother, had murdered. And not only did the brother resemble Smerdis in appearance, but he also had the same name. Patizithes, the steward, having persuaded his brother that he would manage everything himself, led him to the king’s throne and seated him there. He then sent heralds off in different directions, including to Egypt, to proclaim to the troops that they must henceforth obey Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and not Cambyses. 62. The heralds were making this proclamation, and the man who had been posted to Egypt found Cambyses and the army at Ecbatana in Syria.83 Standing in their midst, he made the proclamation the Magus had commanded. On hearing the herald’s words and supposing that what he said was true, and that he had been betrayed by Prexaspes (who, he imagined, had not put Smerdis to death when sent to Persia to do so), Cambyses looked at Prexaspes and said, “So is that how you carried out my orders?” Prexaspes replied, “Master, this is a lie.Your brother Smerdis has not revolted against you, nor should you fear any quarrel with him, great or small. I did as you ordered, and buried him with my own hands. If the dead can rise from their graves, expect Astyages the Mede to revolt against you. But if the course of nature remains unchanged, no trouble will come to you from that quarter. I therefore recommend that we pursue the herald and question him, to find out who it was that sent him with the order to obey King Smerdis.” 63. When Prexaspes had spoken, and Cambyses had approved his advice, the herald was pursued. When he was brought to the king, Prexaspes said to him: “You claim to have come as a messenger from Smerdis, son of Cyrus. Now tell the truth and no harm will come to you. Did Smerdis give you these orders in person, or was it one of his servants?” The herald replied, “I myself have never seen Smerdis, son of Cyrus, since King Cambyses led the Persians into Egypt. It was the Magus, whom Cambyses left as steward of his household, who gave me my orders; and he said that Smerdis, son of Cyrus, sent you the message.” The man was indeed speaking the truth. Then Cambyses said, “You are an honest man, Prexaspes. Having done as you were ordered, you have escaped all blame. But which Persian can have assumed the name of Smerdis and risen against me?” Prexaspes replied, “I think I understand what has happened, sire. It is the Magi who have revolted—Patizithes, whom you left as steward of your household, and his brother Smerdis.” 64. When Cambyses heard Smerdis’ name, he was struck with the truth of Prexaspes’ words and the fulfillment of his own dream. For he had dreamt that someone told him that Smerdis was sitting on the throne, with his head touching

83. Presumably Cambyses was making his way back toward Persia from Egypt, though Herodotus does not say so.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

171

the sky.84 Understanding that he had killed his brother for no reason, Cambyses wept for Smerdis and lamented his loss; and at last, exasperated at the thought of his misfortune, he leapt upon his horse, intending to march at once to Susa against the Magus. But as he sprang up into the saddle, the cap fell off the scabbard of his sword, and the exposed blade struck his thigh—just at the spot where he had previously struck the Egyptian god Apis.85 Then, believing that he was mortally wounded, Cambyses asked what the name of the city was, and was told it was Ecbatana. Earlier, when he had consulted the oracle at Buto, Cambyses had been told that he would die at Ecbatana. He had assumed that to mean Median Ecbatana, the capital of his empire, where he would die in old age; but, as it turned out, the oracle had meant Syrian Ecbatana. When Cambyses heard the name of the city, the double shock of his wound and of the Magus’ treachery restored him to his senses. Understanding the true meaning of the prophecy, he said, “It is here that Cambyses, son of Cyrus, is fated to end his life.” 65. He said no more at the time; but about twenty days later he sent for the most distinguished Persians who were with the army, and said, “Persians, ­circumstances now compel me to tell you what I have taken the greatest trouble to conceal. When I was in Egypt I had a dream—would that I had never dreamt it! In my dream a messenger from Persia told me that Smerdis was sitting on the throne, with his head touching the sky. Fearing that my brother might rob me of the throne, I acted with more haste than judgment. For it is not in a man’s power to avert his destiny. Fool that I was, I sent Prexaspes to Susa to kill Smerdis. This evil deed was done, and I lived without fear, never imagining, with Smerdis out of the way, that someone else might rise up against me. Mistaken about what was to happen, I slew my brother without any need, and have nevertheless lost my kingdom. For it was Smerdis the Magus, not my brother, of whose rebellion the god was warning me in my dream. The deed lies at my door, however, and you will never again see Smerdis, son of Cyrus. The Magi are in control of the palace: Patizithes, whom I left as my steward, and his brother Smerdis. The man who would have avenged the wrong I have suffered from these Magi has died, by a wicked twist of fate, at the hands of his nearest kinsman. As he is no more, I must now issue my dying orders. I call upon the gods who watch over our royal house, and charge all of you, especially the Achaemenids86 who are here, not to allow the kingdom 84. See 3.30 above. Since (according to Herodotus) the usurper’s name was also Smerdis, the dream was fulfilled. 85. See 3.29. The coincidence is meant to suggest that Cambyses has incurred retribution from the gods. 86. Members of the royal clan.

172

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

to go back to the Medes.87 If they acquire it by guile, by guile win it back; if they wrest it from you by force, by force retrieve it. If you do as I say, may the earth be fruitful for you, and may your wives and flocks bear young, and may freedom be yours forever. If, however, you fail to recover the kingdom, or make no effort to do so, let my curse be upon you, and may your fate be the opposite: may you all perish as miserably as I!” When he had spoken these words, Cambyses wept again at the cruelty of his fate. 66. When the Persians saw their king weeping, they all tore their clothes and gave themselves up to wailing and moaning. Later, when his bone decayed, and gangrene set in, Cambyses died, having reigned for seven years and five months. He left no heirs, male or female. The Persians of Cambyses’ entourage could hardly believe that the Magi had seized power. They though it more probable that Cambyses’ story about the death of Smerdis amounted to a false accusation designed to rouse all the Persians to take up arms against him. 67. They were confident that it was Smerdis, son of Cyrus, who occupied the throne. For Prexaspes vehemently denied having put Smerdis to death, as it was not safe for him, now that Cambyses had died, to admit that the son of Cyrus had perished by his hand. The Magus, meanwhile, having usurped the name of Smerdis, son of Cyrus, ruled without fear for the seven months that remained of the eighth year of Cambyses’ reign. During this period he showed all his subjects such benevolence that his passing was mourned by everyone in Asia but the Persians. For as soon as he ascended to the throne he sent word to each of his subject nations, and granted them a three years’ exemption from military service and taxes. 68. But after seven months, his identity was revealed under the following circumstances. Otanes, son of Pharnaspes, a wealthy and highborn Persian, was the first to suspect that the reigning monarch was not Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and to surmise who he really was. He guessed the truth from the fact that the man never left the citadel or invited any of the distinguished Persians to an audience. Once his suspicions were aroused, he took the following steps. His daughter Phaedymia had been married to Cambyses, and was now taken in marriage, along with the rest of Cambyses’ wives, by the Magus. Sending a message to his daughter, Otanes asked her who it was she slept with—Smerdis, son of Cyrus, or some other man. In reply she declared she did not know; she had never seen Smerdis, son of Cyrus, so she could not tell whose bed she shared. Otanes sent a second message: “If you yourself do not recognize him, ask Atossa who it is with whom you both live. For she surely knows her own 87. See 1.95–130 for the account of how Cyrus, who was half-Mede and half-Persian, led the Persians in an overthrow of the Medes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

173

brother.” His daughter sent him this reply: “I can neither speak with Atossa, nor see any other of his wives. For as soon as this man, whoever he is, took the throne, he dispersed us and gave us all separate chambers.” 69. The matter was now quite plain to Otanes. He sent a third message: “Daughter, as you are well-born, you must brave whatever danger your father imposes on you. If this man is not Smerdis, son of Cyrus, but the person I suspect he is, he must not get away with ruling over the Persians and sharing your bed; instead he must be punished. So do as I tell you. When he next spends the night with you, wait until you are sure he is asleep, and then feel for his ears. If he has ears, then consider yourself to be living with Smerdis, son of Cyrus; but if he has none, know that you are married to Smerdis the Magus.” In reply Phaedymia said she would be taking a great risk if she did so. For if it happened he had no ears and she were caught feeling for them, she knew very well he would kill her. Nevertheless, she promised to do as her father wished. (When Cyrus ruled, he had punished Smerdis the Magus for some serious crime by having his ears cut off.) Phaedymia fulfilled the promise she had given her father. When it was her turn to go to the Magus (in Persia a man’s wives sleep with him in rotation), she went to his bed, waited until he was sound asleep, and then felt for his ears. She quickly discovered that he had none. As soon as it was day, she let her father know what had happened. 70. Taking aside Aspathines and Gobryas, prominent Persians whom he was most disposed to trust, Otanes told them everything. They themselves, it turned out, already suspected how matters stood, and were therefore ready to accept his story. They decided that each of the three should bring in his most trustworthy friend as an accomplice. Otanes brought in Intaphernes, Gobryas Megabyzus, Aspathines Hydarnes. When these six had joined forces, Darius, son of Hystaspes, arrived in Susa from Persia. (Hystaspes was governor there.) On his arrival, the six decided to take him into their confidence. 71. The seven now came together to plan and exchange pledges of loyalty. When it was Darius’ turn to offer his opinion, he said, “I had thought I was the only one who knew that the Magus was ruling, and that Smerdis, son of Cyrus, is dead. This was why I hurried to Susa—to plot the Magus’ death. Since it turns out that you, too, are aware of the deception, I think we had better act at once. To delay would not be the better course.” In reply Otanes said, “Son of Hystaspes, you come of a noble father and seem likely to prove no less a man than he. But I advise you not to be rash or hasty. We must be prudent. And we must add to our numbers before we attack.” To this Darius replied, “Gentlemen, if you take Otanes’ advice, you will all die horribly. For someone aiming at his own gain will betray us to the Magus.You should have acted entirely on your own; but since you chose to recruit others, and have asked my advice, let us act today. Or if not—if you let another day go by, rest assured that no one will betray me to the Magus. I will go to him myself and denounce you all.”

174

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

72. As he saw Darius so heated, Otanes said, “Since you force us to act, and allow us no delay, please tell us how we are to get into the palace and attack them. For guards are posted everywhere, as you well know—or if you have not seen this for yourself, you know it by report. How shall we get past them?” Darius replied, “There are many occasions, Otanes, when words are useless and only deeds will suffice; at other times, words flow easily enough, though no brave action follows. But you know it will not be difficult to get past the guards, for there is no one who will refuse admission to men of rank and distinction, either out of respect, or from fear of the consequences. And I myself have a perfect excuse for getting us in: I will say I have just arrived from Persia and want to report something from my father. Where some lie must be told, let it be told. Those of us who lie, like those who tell the truth, are striving for the same end. Men will lie whenever they stand to profit by their lies, and tell the truth for the same reason—to get something they want, and to be trusted thereafter for their honesty. Thus by opposite paths we reach the same goal. If neither were going to profit, the truthful man would be as likely to lie as the liar, and the liar as likely to tell the truth as the truthful man. The gatekeeper who admits us readily will be rewarded later on; but the man who resists us must at once be treated as an enemy. Forcing our way past him, we must go straight to work.” 73. Gobryas spoke next and said, “Friends, when shall we have a finer opportunity to recover the kingdom, or, should we fail, to die? Consider that we Persians are being governed by a Mede—a Magus—a man who has had his ears cut off! Those of you who were with Cambyses during his last illness surely recall the curses he called down on the Persians if they made no effort to recover the kingdom. At the time we did not believe his words but thought he was speaking slander. Now, however, I cast my vote to follow Darius’ advice, and to break up the meeting for no other purpose than to proceed at once against the Magus.” Thus spoke Gobryas, and all the others approved. 74.While these men were forming their plan, events were unfolding elsewhere. In forming their plan, the Magi had resolved to make a friend of Prexaspes, both because he had been treated monstrously by Cambyses (who with bow and arrow had shot and killed his son),88 and because Prexaspes alone knew of the death of Smerdis, having killed him with his own hand. The Magi also knew that Prexaspes was highly esteemed among the Persians. They therefore summoned him, seeking to procure his loyalty, and bound him by a promise and by oaths never to inform anyone of the deception they were perpetrating in Persia. In return for his silence, they promised him “ten thousand of everything.” Prexaspes agreed, whereupon the Magi, having obtained his promise, made another proposal. Saying they intended to assemble all the Persians at the palace wall, they asked Prexaspes 88. See 3.35 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

175

to climb to the top of a tower and proclaim that the Persians were being ruled by none other than Smerdis, son of Cyrus. They gave him this task because he was the man the Persians trusted most, and he had frequently denied the murder and declared in public that Smerdis, son of Cyrus, was still alive. 75. When Prexaspes said he was ready to do this as well, the Magi summoned the Persians, stood Prexaspes at the top of the tower, and commanded him to speak. Disregarding what the Magi had asked of him, Prexaspes began with Achaemenes,89 and traced the descent of Cyrus’ family. When he came to Cyrus himself, he described all the great services Cyrus had performed for the country. At last he revealed the truth, which he said he had previously concealed because it would not have been safe for him to make it known; but now he was compelled to disclose everything. He said that he himself, forced by Cambyses, had killed Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and that Persia was now in the hands of the Magi. After calling down many curses on the Persians if they failed to recover the kingdom and punish the Magi, he hurled himself headfirst from the tower. Such was the end of Prexaspes, a man who had always been held in high regard. 76. Meanwhile the seven Persians, having decided to attack the Magi without delay, prayed to the gods and set forth, ignorant of Prexaspes’ disclosures and death. Halfway to the palace, they learned what had happened. Standing out of the roadway, they again conferred. Otanes and his party urged delay, arguing that they should not attack while matters were so unsettled; Darius and his party opposed delay, and urged immediate action. While they were wrangling, seven pairs of hawks appeared in pursuit of two pairs of vultures, the hawks plucking at the vultures’ feathers and tearing them. At the sight of this all seven men, emboldened by the omen, approved Darius’ plan and hastened toward the palace. 77. At the gates they met with the sort of reception Darius had foreseen. In awe of the prominent Persians, and having no suspicion of what they were up to, the guards made way for the visitors—it was as if the seven were under divine protection—and no one questioned them. When they passed into the courtyard, however, they encountered the eunuchs who serve as the king’s messengers, who stopped them and asked what they wanted, at the same time threatening the gatekeepers for having let them through. The seven tried to press forward, but the eunuchs resisted them. Then the conspirators, urging one another on and drawing their swords, stabbed the eunuchs who were holding them back, and ran onward to the men’s quarters. 78. Both the Magi were indoors at the time, discussing the affair of Prexaspes. When they heard the uproar and the loud cries of the eunuchs, they leapt up to see what was happening. Perceiving their danger, they prepared to defend themselves, one of them quickly seizing his bow, the other his spear. The Magus with 89. Legendary founder of the Persian royal line.

176

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

the bow found it to be of no use to him, as the fight was at close quarters. The other, however, defending himself with his spear, struck Aspathines in the leg, and Intaphernes in the eye. (Intaphernes survived, though he lost the sight of that eye.) The other Magus, when his bow proved useless, fled into the bedroom that led into the men’s quarters and tried to shut the door behind him. But two of the seven, Darius and Gobryas, rushed in with him, and Gobryas seized the Magus. It was dark in the room, and Darius, standing over the two men locked together on the floor, hesitated to act; for he was afraid that he might strike the wrong man. Seeing Darius standing idle, Gobryas asked why he made no use of his hand. “On your account,” said Darius, “for fear of killing you.” And Gobryas replied, “Thrust the sword through us both.” Darius then drove his dagger home, and by good luck killed the Magus. 79. After killing the Magi, the conspirators cut off both their heads; leaving their own wounded behind in the palace (partly because they were too weak to join them, and partly to guard the citadel) they rushed outside with the heads in their hands, shouting and raising a great uproar. They called out to the other Persians, told them what had happened, and showed them the heads, while at the same time they slew every Magus who crossed their path. When the Persians knew what the seven had done, and learned of the fraud of the Magi, they thought it right to follow the conspirators’ example. Drawing their swords, they, too, set about murdering any Magus they could find. Had darkness not put an end to the slaughter, not a single Magus would have been left alive. On the anniversary of this day, which the Persians regard as their most important public holiday, they hold the great festival known as the Magophonia, or Slaughter of the Magi, during which no Magus may appear in public; all the Magi must stay at home on that day. 80. Five days later, when the uproar had subsided, the conspirators met to discuss their situation. At this meeting speeches were made, unbelievable to some of the Greeks, but they were made nevertheless.90 Otanes spoke first, and recommended that the government be entrusted to the people. “It seems to me that we should no longer be ruled by a single man,” he said, “since the rule of one is neither pleasant nor good.You know to what lengths Cambyses went in his arrogance, and have yourselves experienced the arrogance of the Magi. How could monarchy be a sound form of government, when it allows a man to do as he likes 90. An interesting authorial assertion, perhaps indicating that Herodotus had already put sections of the Histories before the public prior to compiling the whole. It is indeed difficult to imagine that the “debate on government” recounted below represents a historical event rather than, as modern scholars take it to be, an early piece of Greek political philosophy, cast in the form of a Persian dialogue. At 6.43 Herodotus again refers to popular skepticism over the debate, this time singling out the proposal of Otanes, to make Persia a democratic state, as the sticking point.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

177

without being accountable? Even the best of men appointed to this office is likely to be corrupted by such license. For arrogance is fostered in him by abundant luxury, and envy is innate in a human being. These two vices, arrogance and envy, encompass all wickedness; and both lead to acts of violence. Now the absolute monarch, possessing every luxury, ought to be free of envy. Yet in his conduct toward the citizens, just the opposite is seen. He envies the noblest of his subjects, delights in the basest, and is always ready to listen to slanderous tales. He is, besides, the most inconsistent of men. Honor him moderately, and he is offended that you do not show more deference; conciliate him, and he thinks you a flatterer. But the worst of it is that he overturns ancestral customs, abuses women, and puts men to death without trial. Rule by the many, on the other hand, has, in the first place, the finest of names: equality before the law.91 Secondly, it is free of the offenses that kings are likely to commit: it distributes offices by lot,92 it holds its officers accountable, and it puts all questions up for public debate. I recommend, therefore, that we do away with monarchy and raise the people to power. For the people are everything.” 81. Megabyzus spoke next, and recommended that they establish an oligarchy. “I agree with Otanes,” said he, “when he advises us to dispense with tyranny; but in proposing that we give power to the people he misses the mark. For there is nothing so foolish or so insolent as the mindless multitude. It would be intolerable for men escaping a tyrant’s arrogance to fall victim to the arrogance of an unbridled mob. For if a king acts, he at least does so with knowledge; but what knowledge could a mob have, when it has neither been educated nor imbued with a sense of what is right and proper? It rushes blindly into state affairs with all the fury of a river in flood. Let the Persians’ enemies be ruled by democracies; but let us choose from among our own citizens a certain number of the worthiest and place the government in their hands. For we ourselves will be among them, and it is likely that the best men will make the best decisions.” 82. The third man to present his opinion was Darius, who said, “What Megabyzus said against democracy was well said, but I disagree with his views about oligarchy. For when we compare the three forms of government under ideal conditions—democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy—I maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two. For nothing seems better than the rule of the best man. Exercising the best judgment, he governs the people unerringly, while his measures against enemies and traitors will be kept more secret than under other forms of government. In an oligarchy, where many are striving to outdo one another in public service, private animosities are apt to become powerful, since 91. Isonomia in Greek, meaning an “equal distribution” of power. 92. In Athens, the principal democratic regime of Herodotus’ day, many office-holders were chosen by lottery rather than election.

178

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

each man wishes to lead and to see his own views prevail. So they quarrel, and their quarrels lead to civil strife, which often ends in bloodshed. Then monarchy is sure to arise—another clear proof that that form of government surpasses all others.93 Now in a democracy, corruption is inevitable; but corrupt officials do not fall foul of one another. Their friendships are powerful, and they act in concert. And so it goes, until someone, coming forward as the people’s champion, puts such men down. Thereafter, admired by everyone, their champion is soon appointed king—which is another proof that monarchy is the best form of government. In short, all things considered, where did our freedom come from, and who gave it to us?94 Did it result from democracy, oligarchy, or monarchy? Since we were set free by one man, I propose that we preserve the rule of one, and further, that we refrain from changing ancestral ways, since they have served us well. To do so would not be to our advantage.” 83. These three views were presented, and the four other Persians approved the advice of Darius. When Otanes, who was eager to establish a democracy, was overruled, he again addressed the others. “My fellow conspirators, it is clear that one of us must become king, whether we draw lots for it, or let the people choose among us, or use some other method. I will vie not with you in this matter, as I wish neither to rule nor to be ruled. I withdraw, however on one condition: that neither I myself, nor any of my descendants, will be forced to submit to your rule.” The six agreed to this condition, whereupon Otanes stood down. And to this day, Otanes’ is the only Persian family that continues to be free. Its members submit to the king only insofar as they choose to do so, provided that they obey the law of the land. 84. The six remaining conspirators then discussed how they could most fairly appoint a king. They agreed that if the office came to one of them, Otanes and his descendants would receive, every year, a suit of Median clothes and other such gifts as are highly valued by the Persians. They decided to award these gifts to Otanes because he had initiated the revolt and brought the seven together. These privileges were assigned only to Otanes; another was to be shared by all. Any of the seven was permitted to enter the royal presence unannounced, except when the king was in bed with a woman. They also limited the king’s choice of marriage partners to the families of the conspirators. As for the appointment of a king, they settled on a method of selection. They would ride out together into the outskirts of the city, and the man whose horse neighed first after the sun was up would have the kingdom. 93. That is, democracy inevitably decays and becomes a monarchy, a more stable and longlasting form of government. Plato in the Republic turned this formula around, suggesting that an ideal monarchy inevitably decayed and became, in its more decadent stages, a democracy. 94. Referring to the leadership of Cyrus and the revolt of the Persians from the Medes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

179

85. Now Darius employed a clever groom named Oebares. When the meeting had broken up, Darius went to him and said, “Oebares, we have settled on a method of choosing a king.We are to mount our horses, and the man whose horse neighs first after the sun is up will have the throne. So if you have any ingenuity, see to it that I win this prize and no one else.” Oebares replied, “Master, if winning or losing the throne rests on this, take heart and be of good cheer, for no one but you will be king. I have a charm that will serve our purpose.” Darius said, “If you really have anything of the kind, get it ready at once, for the trial is set for tomorrow.” Thereupon, Oebares took the following steps. As soon as it was dark, he took the mare that Darius’ horse was especially fond of, and tethered her on the outskirts of the town. Then he brought Darius’ horse to the place and led him round and round the mare, getting closer every time, and finally allowed him to mount her. 86. Near dawn, the six men, according to plan, rode through the suburb on horseback. When they neared the spot where the mare had been tethered the night before, Darius’ horse sprang forward and neighed. And at the same moment there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, as if it were a sign from heaven; the election of Darius was confirmed, and the other five leapt from their horses and bowed down before him. 87. Some say that Oebares managed matters in the way I have described. The Persians, on the other hand, say that Oebares rubbed the mare’s genitals and then kept his hand hidden in his trousers. When the sun was coming up and the horses were about to start, he placed his hand on the nostrils of Darius’ horse, which at the scent of the mare immediately snorted and neighed. 88. In this way Darius, son of Hystaspes, was appointed king.95 And all the peoples of Asia, except the Arabians, were subject to him; for Cyrus and Cambyses had brought them all under the yoke. The Arabians had never been subjugated by the Persians, but the two countries had been on friendly terms ever since they had allowed Cambyses to pass through their territory on his Egyptian campaign;96 for without the Arabians’ consent the Persians could never have invaded Egypt. The first women Darius married were Atossa and Artystone. Atossa had previously been the wife of her brother Cambyses,97 and then of the Magus; Artystone was a virgin. He later married Parmys, daughter of Smerdis, son of Cyrus, and, in addition to these, Otanes’ daughter, who had exposed the Magus. Once his power was established throughout his dominions, his first act as king was to erect a stone statue with a carving of a man on horseback, and the 95. In 522 B.C. 96. See 3.7 above. 97. See 3.31. Atossa was the surviving sister of the two whom Cambyses married. She is memorably portrayed in Aeschylus’ Persians as the Queen Mother in the next generation.

180

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

following inscription: “Darius, son of Hystaspes, by the excellence of his horse” (the horse’s name followed), “and of his groom Oebares, won the throne of Persia.” 89. Then he established twenty magistracies, which the Persians call satrapies, assigning a governor to each and fixing the tribute to be paid to him by each nation.98 For administrative purposes neighboring nations were joined in a single unit; outlying peoples were assigned to this satrapy or that, according to convenience. The annual revenues of tribute from each satrapy will be listed hereafter. Separate standards were used, depending on whether the tribute was paid in silver or gold. The nations that paid in silver were ordered to use the Babylonian talent as the standard of weight, while the Euboean talent was the standard for those who paid in gold. (The Babylonian talent is equivalent to seventy minas, the Euboean to sixty.) During the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses, the subject nations had not been required to pay any tribute; instead, each nation brought gifts to the king. Because of his imposition of tribute and other similar measures, the Persians say that Darius was a tradesman, Cambyses a slavemaster, and Cyrus a father—Darius being out for gain in everything, Cambyses cruel and contemptuous, and Cyrus, in his gentleness, always concerned with the Persians’ well-being. 90. 1. The Ionians, the Magnesians of Asia, the Aeolians, Carians, Lycians, Milians, and Pamphylians contributed together a total sum of 400 talents of silver. 2. The Mysians, Lydians, Lasonians, Cabalians, and Hytennians paid 500 talents. 3. The people of the southern shore of the Hellespont, the Phrygians, the Thracians of Asia, the Paphlagonians, Mariandynians, and Syrians paid 360 talents. 4. The Cilicians contributed 360 white horses, one for each day of the year, and 500 talents of silver. Of this sum, 140 were used to maintain the cavalry that guarded Cilicia, while the remaining 360 went to Darius. 91. 5.The territory that extended from the city of Posideiium (built by Amphilochus, son of Amphiaraus, on the border between Cilicia and Syria) to the Egyptian border—excluding Arabia, which was free of tax—paid 350 talents. This province contains all of Phoenicia, Palestinian Syria, and Cyprus. 6. Egypt, together with the neighboring parts of Libya and the cities of Cyrene and Barca, which belonged to the province of Egypt, paid 700 talents, in addition to the profits from the fish in Lake Moeris,99 and the 120,000 measures of corn 98. Herodotus’ account of the Persian administrative system is substantially accurate, though he does not use the word satrap, which was the regular Persian (and later Greek) term for the “governor” of a satrapy. It is possible that he relied on Persian documents for the catalogue of satrapies he gives in the next seven chapters. 99. See 2.149, where the fish from the lake are said to bring in a talent a day, in season.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

181

supplied to the Persian troops and their auxiliaries stationed in the White Castle at Memphis. 7. The Sattagydians, Gandarians, Dadicae, and Aparytae contributed together a total sum of 170 talents. 8. Susa and the rest of Cissia paid 300 talents. 92. 9. Babylon and the rest of Assyria contributed 1,000 talents of silver and 500 castrated boys. 10. Ecbatana, the rest of Media, with the Paricanians and the Orthocorybantes, paid 450 talents. 11. The Caspians, Panicae, Pantimathi, and Daritae paid 200 talents. 12. The Bactrians as far as Aegli paid 360 talents. 93. 13. Pactyica, with the Armenians and their nearest neighbors as far as the Black Sea, paid 400 talents. 14. The Sagartians, Sarangians, Thamanaeans, Utians, and Myci, with the inhabitants of the islands in the Red Sea where the king sends those he banishes, paid 600 talents. 15. The Sacae and Caspians paid 250 talents. 16. The Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, and Arians paid 300 talents. 94. 17. The Paricanians and Ethiopians of Asia paid 300 talents. 18. The Matienians, Saspires, and Alarodians paid 200 talents. 19. The Moschi, Tibareni, Macrones, Mossynoeci, and Mares paid 300 talents. 20.The Indians, the most populous nation in the known world,100 paid the largest sum: 360 talents of gold dust. 95. If the Babylonian talents mentioned here are weighed according to the Euboean standard, they make a total of 9,880; and if gold is reckoned at thirteen times the value of the silver, the Indian gold dust will amount to 4,680 talents. Thus Darius’ total annual revenue comes to 14,560 Euboean talents (omitting the fractions of a talent.)101 This was the tribute that came to Darius from Asia and a few parts of Libya. As time went on, additional tribute came in from islands and from settlers in Europe as far west as Thessaly. 96. The Persian king stores his tribute in the following way. He melts it down and pours it into earthenware jars; the jars are later removed, leaving a sold mass of metal. Whenever money is needed, he coins whatever quantity he needs. 100. It is curious that Herodotus thinks the “Indians” (dwellers in the Indus valley and regions further east) so numerous when he knows very little about their region. At 3.98 below he makes clear that under the name “Indians” he is grouping together numerous tribes, not all of which share even a common language. 101. A fantastic amount of money, in the eyes of a 5th-century Greek audience. At its height, the wealthiest Greek city, Athens, had a similar sum in its treasury, but this represented many years of accumulated revenue, not an annual income.

182

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

Stone reliefs from the ruins of the royal Persian palaces at Persepolis depict the peoples of the empire bearing different forms of tribute. Photo credit: Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.

97. These, then, were the provinces, and these the amounts of tribute each had to pay. Persia alone has not been mentioned among the tribute-payers—for the country is exempt from tax. The following peoples paid no set tribute, but brought gifts to the king: The Ethiopians on the Egyptian border, who were subjugated by Cambyses when he marched against the long-lived Ethiopians,102 and who live around sacred Nysa103 and hold festivals in honor of Dionysus. The grain that they and their nearest neighbors use is the same as that used by the Callantian Indians; they too live underground. Every other year, these two nations brought—and still bring today—two choenices104 of unrefined gold, 200 logs of ebony, five Ethiopian boys, and 20 elephant tusks. 102. See 3.17 and note 23. 103. Mount Nysa, supposedly the place where Dionysus was born from Zeus’ calf, was given various locations by the Greeks, though usually in Asia rather than (as here) Africa. 104. The choenix was about equal to our gallon.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

183

The Colchians and the neighboring tribes between them and the Caucasus (the limit of the empire in that direction; north of the Caucasus no one pays heed to the Persians) took it upon themselves to offer a gift, which is still offered every four years, consisting of 100 youths and 100 girls. The Arabians brought 1,000 talents of frankincense every year. Such were the gifts presented to the king by these peoples over and above the tribute. 98. The Indians come by their vast quantity of gold (the dust of which, as mentioned above, they bring to the king) in the following way.105 East of India lies a desert of sand. Indeed of all the inhabitants of Asia we know of and about whom we have definite information, the Indians live farthest toward the east and the rising sun. Beyond them the country is uninhabitable because of the sand.106 The Indian tribes are numerous, and do not all speak the same language. Some are nomadic, others not. Those who live in the marsh country by the river live on raw fish, which they catch from boats made of cane, each boat made out of a single joint.The Indians of these tribes wear clothes made from a kind of rush that grows in the river. Gathering it and pounding it down, they weave it into mats, which they wear as we wear breastplates.107 99. East of these Indians live another tribe, the Padaei, who are nomads and live on raw flesh. They are said to have the following customs. If one of them falls ill, whether man or woman, that person is put to death. In the case of a man, his closest male friends put him to death, claiming that if he wasted away with sickness, his flesh would be spoiled for them. The man denies he is ill, but his friends will not accept his denial; they kill him, and feast on his body. If a woman falls ill, her closest female friends do with her the same as the men. If anyone reaches old age, he is offered in sacrifice, and the others eat his flesh. But this seldom happens, since most of them will have had some disease or other before they get old, and will consequently have been put to death. 100. In another tribe of Indians the customs are very different. They kill no living creature, they sow no seed, and have no houses. They live on grasses and a plant that grows wild in their country, bearing a seed, about the size of a millet seed, in a pod; they gather this seed, and boil and eat it, pod and all. If one of them 105. Following his usual digressive pattern, Herodotus veers away from the main narrative to describe the Indian tribes of the farthest East, since he has already mentioned their gold stocks. Later (3.106–117) he will make yet a further swerve, to discuss the furthest regions of the earth generally (of which India is one). At 3.118 he returns to the main path of the narrative. 106. It is possible that Herodotus had information about the Thar desert east of the Indus valley, but, as is apparent from this passage, he had no knowledge of lands or peoples further east. 107. The plant described here is bamboo.

184

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

falls ill, he goes away to a deserted place and lies down to die; no one takes any thought for the sick or the dead. 101. All the Indian tribes I have mentioned copulate in the open like animals. All the Indians have the same complexion, which is like that of the Ethiopians.108 Their semen is not white like that of other men, but black like their skin. (The semen of the Ethiopians is also black.) Their country is a long way from Persia toward the south, and they were never subject to King Darius.109 102. North of these tribes there are other Indians, around the city of Caspatyrus and in the territory of Patyica, whose manner of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indian tribes, and it is they who go out to obtain the gold. For it is in this region that the sandy desert lies. In this desert there live giant ants, in size smaller than dogs but larger than foxes.110 A number of them, which were caught there, are kept at the palace of the Persian king. These ants, as they burrow underground, throw up heaps of sand, just as ants in Greece throw up soil. Now the sand that the Indian ants throw up is full of gold. The Indians, when they enter the desert to collect this sand, take three camels and harness them abreast, a female in the middle and a male on each side, in a leading-rein. The rider sits on the female, having taken care to choose one that has recently dropped her young;111 for their female camels are as fast as horses, and much better at bearing burdens. 103. I need not describe the camel, as the Greeks are familiar with its appearance. I will, however, mention one thing that has escaped their notice. The camel has in its hind legs four thighs and four knees. The camel’s genitals are turned toward the tail between its hind legs. 104. Having equipped themselves in the manner I have described, the Indians ride out to fetch the gold, timing their journey so as to collect it during the hottest part of the day, when the heat has driven the ants underground. In India, the sun is hottest in the morning (from dawn until the market closes), not, as elsewhere, at noon.112 During this interval the heat is much more intense than it is at noon in 108. The Greeks were intensely interested in resemblances between Indians and Africans, which they at times explained by connecting the two races genealogically. 109. The borders of the Persian empire at its height extended to the Indus valley but no farther. Thus there were some “Indians” who were subject to Persia and impressed into its army, but others who remained autonomous. 110. Many efforts have been made to link these “ants” to a real animal, with the marmot a current favorite. All such efforts are highly speculative, and Herodotus may have gotten his information from a misunderstood Indian folktale. 111. New mothers in the animal kingdom were thought to run faster than others of their kind (so as to safeguard their offspring). 112. Herodotus here seems to assume (as many Greeks did) that an eastern land lay closer to the rising sun than other places.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

185

Greece, so that the natives are said at that time to drench themselves with water. At noon the heat is much the same in India as in other countries, after which, as the sun goes down, the heat becomes equal to what is found in other countries early in the morning. Toward evening the coolness increases, until at sunset it is very cold. 105. When the Indians reach their destination, they fill their bags with sand and ride back as fast as they can. For the ants, according to the Persians, scent the presence of the men and the camels, and rush to pursue them. The speed of these ants so far surpasses that of any other creature that not one of the Indians would escape alive unless they got a good start while the ants were assembling. The male camels, which are slower than the females, soon begin to drag and are cut loose, one after the other, whereas the females, recalling the young they have left behind, never slacken their pace. This, according to the Persians, is the method by which the Indians obtain the greater part of their gold; some is also mined in their country, but in smaller quantities. 106. The remotest regions of the inhabited world were somehow blessed with the finest resources, just as Greece enjoys by far the best and most temperate climate.113 The most easterly country of the inhabited world, as I just mentioned, is India. The fauna of this region, both the four-footed and the winged creatures, are larger by far than those in other countries, with the exception of the horses, which are smaller than the so-called Nisaean horses of Media. The region contains a vast quantity of gold, some of it mined, some washed down by rivers, some carried off in the manner I have just described. And there are trees growing wild that produce a wool superior to sheep’s wool in beauty and quality, which the Indians use for making their clothes.114 107. The most southerly country of the inhabited world is Arabia. It is the world’s only source of frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and the gum called ledanon. Except in the case of myrrh, the Arabians go to great trouble to acquire these substances.They gather the frankincense by burning storax, the gum that the Phoenicians export to Greece. Only by burning storax are they able to gather the frankincense. For large numbers of winged serpents, small in size and various in aspect, keep guard over the frankincense-bearing trees. (They are of the same species as the serpents that try to invade Egypt.)115 Only the smoke of the storax will drive them from the trees. 113. Extremity of heat is the point of departure from the previous discussion of India. In the ten chapters that follow Herodotus tours all the most distant lands of the oikoumene¯ or “inhabited world,” finding in each a pattern similar to that of the ant raids in India: The inhabitants win great wealth by defeating or outsmarting savage creatures. The access to precious goods found in these countries is counterbalanced, in Herodotus’ eyes, by their climatic severity; the Greeks, by contrast, inhabit a poor land but enjoy pleasant weather. 114. Cotton; see 3.47 above and note 64. 115. See 2.75–76 and note.

186

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

108. The Arabians also maintain that their entire country would have been infested with these serpents unless the same thing happened to them as I knew happened to the vipers.116 One can hardly avoid the belief that divine providence, somehow being, as is likely, wise, has made timid animals, which are preyed upon by others, prolific, so that their species may not be eaten up entirely, while savage and noxious creatures are relatively unproductive. The hare, for example, which is hunted by beasts, birds, and men, is remarkably prolific. It is the only animal to conceive while pregnant; for you find in a hare’s womb, at one and the same time, some of the young covered with fur, others quite bare, and still others lately conceived. 117 The lioness, on the other hand, as she is the mightiest and most spirited of beasts, bears a single cub. For in giving birth she casts out her womb along with her young. The reason for this is that when the cub begins to stir inside the mother, his claws, which are sharper than those of any other animal, scratch the womb; and as he grows bigger, he tears it more and more; so that finally, when he is about to be born, no portion of the womb is left intact. 109. As for the vipers and the winged serpents of Arabia, if they increased as fast as nature allowed them, man could not survive on earth. But as it is, whenever they mate, the female seizes the male by the neck at the very moment he emits his seed, and she clings to it until she has bitten it through.Thus the male dies, though he is later avenged by the young, which gnaw at their mother’s womb until they eat their way out of it. Other snakes, on the other hand, which are harmless to men, lay eggs and hatch a vast quantity of young. The reason why winged serpents seem so numerous in Arabia is that they all congregate in that country; they are found nowhere else, whereas vipers are found in all parts of the world. 110. When the Arabians go out to collect cassia,118 they cover their bodies and faces with ox hides and other skins, leaving only holes for the eyes. The plant grows in a shallow lake. Around its shores and in the lake itself live winged creatures, very like bats, which screech horribly, and are terribly fierce. Thus the men who gather the cassia must take care to protect their eyes. 111. Even more remarkable is their way of collecting cinnamon. The Arabians do not know where it comes from or what land produces it, though some make a fair guess that it comes from the country in which Dionysus was brought up. It is said that large birds bring the dry sticks that we Greeks, adopting the Phoenician 116. In the following digression-within-a-digression, Herodotus recounts a vivid (though largely fantastical) example of the principle of tisis, or tit-for-tat balance, that he sees operating throughout the natural world as well as in human life and history. 117. This phenomenon, known as superfetation, is indeed found in rabbits. But the accounts Herodotus goes on to give of lion and snake reproduction are wholly mythical. 118. Cassia is an aromatic plant that was powdered in antiquity and used as an aromatic spice.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

187

word, call cinnamon. They carry them to their nests, made of mud, on mountain precipices, which no man can scale. But the Arabians have invented a method for getting hold of them. They cut up the bodies of dead oxen, or donkeys, or other beasts of burden, into large joints, which they carry to these regions and leave on the ground near the nests. Then they withdraw to a distance, and the birds fly down and carry the joints of meat up to their nests, which, not being able to support the weight, break and fall to the ground. The Arabians then come by and collect the cinnamon, which is later exported to other countries. 112. Stranger still is their way of procuring ledanon, which the Arabians call ladanon. Though found in the most malodorous place, it is the sweetest-smelling of all substances. It is gathered from the beards of he-goats, where it is found sticking like gum, having come from the bushes on which they browse. It is used in many sorts of perfume, and is what the Arabians chiefly burn as incense. 113. So much for the perfumes and spices of Arabia. The whole country is scented with them and exhales a fragrance divinely sweet. There are also two remarkable kinds of sheep, the like of which are found nowhere else. One kind has so long a tail—not less than three cubits—that if these were allowed to trail on the ground, the sheep would develops sores from the constant friction. But the shepherds have learned how to make little wooden carts, which they fix under the tail of each sheep. The other kind of sheep has a broad tail, a cubit in width. 114. The farthest inhabited land toward the southwest is Ethiopia. The country has abundant gold, enormous elephants, all kinds of wild trees, ebony, and men who are the tallest, handsomest, and longest-lived in the world. 115. So much for the remotest regions of Asia and Libya. I cannot speak with any accuracy about Europe’s westernmost areas,119 for I do not admit the existence of a river, called the Eridanus by barbarians, that empties into the northern sea, where amber is said to come from; nor do I know of any islands called the Tin Islands, whence we import our tin.120 In the first place, the name Eridanus is clearly not a barbarian but a Greek word, and was invented by some poet;121 and secondly, though I have looked into this matter, I have never been able to obtain 119. Following the line of discussion introduced at 3.106, that the farthest lands enjoy the most precious resources, Herodotus now turns briefly, and in a more skeptical frame of mind, to the far West, said to be the source of tin and amber. 120. The Eridanus River (perhaps the Elbe) was said to be the place where the sisters of the mythic Phaethon wept over his corpse and produced tears of amber. In fact, amber, fossilized tree sap harvested as a gem, is found chiefly in northern Europe, and was conveyed toward the Greek world by river-borne trade. The name Cassiterides or “Tin Islands” may refer to the British isles, an important source of tin for the Mediterranean world. 121. Herodotus was acutely aware (for his time) of what we might now term “fictional license.” The name Eridanos scans in Greek in dactylic meter, the meter used by Homer and Hesiod, which might explain Herodotus’ assumption that a poet had invented it.

188

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

any eyewitness account of a sea on the far side of Europe.Yet there is no doubt that tin and amber come to us from the remotest lands. 116. The northern parts of Europe are by far the richest in gold, though how it is procured I cannot say with certainty. Legend has it that one-eyed Arimaspian men steal it away from the griffins;122 but I cannot myself believe in the existence of one-eyed men who in all other respects resemble the rest of mankind. Nevertheless, it seems to be true that the remotest regions of the earth, which surround and enclose all other countries, produce the things that we consider to be the most rare and beautiful. 117. There is a plain in Asia that is enclosed on all sides by a mountain rage;123 and in this range are five gorges. The plain once belonged to the Chorasmians and lies on the boundaries of five tribes: the Chorasmians themselves, the Hyrcanians, the Parthians, the Sarangians, and the Thamanaeans. But ever since the Persians seized control of Asia, the plain has been the property of the Persian king. A mighty river, called the Aces, flows from the hills enclosing the plain. In former times, this river, splitting into five channels, ran through the five openings in the hills and supplied water to the five tribes I have mentioned. But now that the region is under Persian control, all these peoples have found themselves in difficulty. For the king blocked up the gorges and built flood-gates to prevent the water from flowing out; as a result the plain has become a large lake, the river still flowing into it but finding no outlet. Consequently, the tribes of this region, who had formerly enjoyed the use of this water, are now deprived of it and have been in great distress. In winter, certainly, they get rain like the rest of the world, but in summer, when they sow their millet and sesame, they always needed the river water. Thus when they find themselves without water, they go in a body with their wives to Persia, and stand wailing at the gate of the king’s palace until the king gives orders to open the flood-gates and let water flow to the tribe whose need is greatest. When this tribe’s land is saturated, the gates are shut and others are opened in turn, according to the needs of the remaining tribes. I have been told that the king never opens the gates until he has been paid a large sum of money over and above the tribute. 122. The story, known from other sources, resembles that of the Indian ant raids (3.102): Arimaspians were thought to plunder the gold from the lairs of griffins—mythic animals composed of lion, bird, and snake features—then escape by riding horses that had recently given birth. 123. This curious chapter forms a kind of transition back to the main narrative from the long digressions of 3.98–116. Having surveyed the most distant parts of the earth in all directions, Herodotus here examines a reservoir from which water flows in all directions. The theme of distribution of resources is maintained, but our gaze is directed back toward Persia and the problem of imperial control. The idea of tribute payment also recalls the long tribute list of 3.89–97, from which point the digressions began.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

189

118. Of the seven Persians who revolted against the Magus, one of them, Intaphernes, was soon put to death for an act of insolence.124 He wished to enter the palace and transact some business with the king. Now it had been agreed that any of the conspirators might visit the king unannounced, provided that he was not, at the time, in bed with a woman. So Intaphernes would not let anyone announce him, and claimed that as one of the seven he had a right to go in. The doorkeeper, however, and the royal messenger barred his way, since the king, as they said, was with a woman. But Intaphernes, thinking they were lying, drew his scimitar and cut off their ears and noses, hung these on his horse’s bridle, tied the bridle around their necks, and let them go.125 119. They presented themselves to the king and told him how they had come by their injuries. Fearing that the six126 had acted in concert, Darius sent for each of them in turn, and sounded them to see if they approved of what Intaphernes done. When he found by their answers that Intaphernes had acted alone, Darius had him arrested with his children and all his nearest kinsmen, strongly suspecting that he and his family were plotting a revolt. When they had been arrested and shackled as condemned criminals, the wife of Intaphernes came and stood at the palace gates, weeping and wailing. After a while, when she continued to stand there and weep, Darius was moved to pity her, and sent a messenger to her to say, “Woman, King Darius grants you as a favor the life of one of your kinsmen. Choose which of the prisoners you wish to save.” On taking thought, she replied, “If the king grants me the life of only one of my kinsmen, I choose my brother.” Astonished at her answer, Darius sent to her again, saying, “Woman, the king asks why it is that you pass over your husband and children and prefer to save your brother, who is not so close to you as your children, nor so dear as your husband.” She replied, “Sire, if the gods will it, I might have another husband and other children when these are gone. But as my father and mother are no more, I could never have another brother. That was the reason for what I said.”127 Darius thought that the woman spoke well, and he granted her not only the life she had asked for, but also that of her eldest son, as he was pleased with her. But he slew all the rest.Thus one of the seven, in the way I have described, was soon put to death. 124. A return to the main path of the narrative from the point reached at 3.88, the beginning of Darius’ reign. 125. Cutting off of ears and/or noses was a common punishment inflicted by the Persians, here given a grotesque twist by Intaphernes. 126. That is, his former co-conspirators. 127. The same reasoning is adduced by Antigone in Sophocles’ famous play as her reason for burying Polynices (lines 905–12), and some scholars think that the playwright was influenced by this passage of Herodotus. But the corresponding passage of Antigone reads strangely and may have been added to the play by a later hand.

190

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

120. At about the time of Camybses’ illness, the following events occurred.128 Oroetes, a Persian who had been appointed by Cyrus as governor of Sardis, conceived an impious desire.Though he had never received any injury, either by word or deed, at the hands of Polycrates of Samos, and indeed had never even set eyes on the man, he conceived the desire to capture Polycrates and put him to death. Oroetes’ desire, according to the most popular account, arose from what happened one day as he was sitting with another Persian at the gate of the king’s palace. The man’s name was Mitrobates, and he was governor of the province of Dascylium. He and Oroetes had been talking, and from talking they fell to quarreling and comparing their merits, at which point Mitrobates reproached Oroetes, saying, “And are you to be counted a man, when you have neglected to add Samos to the king’s domain, though it lies so near your province and is so easy to subdue that one of its inhabitants, with the help of fifteen men-at-arms, raised a revolt and seized it, and reigns there now as tyrant?” Oroetes, they say, was stung by this reproach; but instead of taking revenge on the man who uttered it, he conceived the desire of destroying Polycrates, on whose account he had been maligned. 121. Another less accepted account has it that Oroetes sent a herald to Samos to make a request, the nature of which is not mentioned. The herald found Polycrates reclining in the men’s quarters; Anacreon of Teos129 was there as well. Now the tyrant happened to be lying with his back to the herald when he came forward to speak. And somehow, either to show his contempt for Oroetes’ power, or perhaps by accident, Polycrates did not turn around all the time that the herald was speaking, nor did he give him any answer. 122. These are the two reasons given for the death of Polycrates; the reader may believe whichever he prefers. Oroetes, while residing at Magnesia on the river Maeander, and having learned of Polycrates’ ambition, sent a Lydian named Myrsus, son of Gyges,130 with a message to Samos. For Polycrates is the first Greek we know of to aim at control of the sea—unless we count Minos of Cnossos and any other maritime ruler who may have preceded him.131 But in the so-called age of man, Polycrates was the first to harbor hopes of ruling over Ionia and the islands. Aware, then, that this was Polycrates’ intention, Oroetes sent him the following message: “From Oroetes to 128. Herodotus turns back the clock by a year or so to resume the tale of Polycrates of Samos, a principal thread of 3.39–60. 129. An important Greek poet, many of whose verses still survive. 130. Obviously not the same Gyges who seized the Lydian throne from Candaules (1.7–13). 131. Minos was a mythical king in Crete whose reign dated back before the Trojan War; thus Herodotus does not include him in “human time,” within which history can be written. Our term “Minoan,” describing the Cretan civilization that flourished in the Bronze Age, derives from Minos.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

191

Polycrates: I hear that you aspire to great things, but your means are not equal to your ambition. Do as I propose, and you will at once exalt yourself and save me. King Cambyses is plotting my death. This is reported to me for a certainty. Get me and my money out of the country, keep some of it yourself, and let me keep the rest. As far as it depends on money, you will make yourself master of Greece. But if you have doubts about my wealth, send your most trusted associate, and I will show him my treasures.” 123. Polycrates was delighted with the proposal and accepted it at once. As he had a great desire for money, he sent his secretary, a Samian called Meandrius, son of Meandrius, to look into the matter. It was Meandrius who, not long afterward, dedicated all the furniture from Polycrates’ men’s quarters, an offering well worth seeing, in the temple of Hera. When Oroetes learned that an inspector was coming, he filled eight chests nearly brimful with stones, topping them up with a thin layer of gold. Fastening the chests securely, he kept them ready. When Meandrius arrived and saw the gold, he returned with his report to Polycrates. 124. Polycrates now prepared to visit Magnesia himself, though seers were doing their best to dissuade him, as were his friends, including his daughter, who had dreamt she saw her father suspended in the air, washed by Zeus and anointed by Helios. After this dream, she did everything she could to prevent Polycrates from going to Oroetes. Even as he boarded his penteconter, she uttered words of evil omen, whereupon he threatened her, saying that if he got home safe, he would keep her unmarried for many years—to which she replied that she prayed his threat might be fulfilled, since she would rather remain long unmarried than lose her father. 125. Disregarding all advice, Polycrates sailed and went to Oroetes, taking many of his companions with him, including Democedes, son of Calliphron, a native of Croton and the most distinguished physician of his day. Polycrates, on his arrival in Magnesia, met with an end unworthy of himself and his ambition. For with the exception of the tyrants of Syracuse,132 none of the other Greek tyrants is worthy to be compared, for magnificence, with Polycrates. Having put him to death in a manner unworthy to be related, Oroetes hung his dead body on a cross. He released all the Samians who had accompanied Polycrates, and told them to be grateful to him for their freedom; the rest, who were either foreigners or slaves, he detained, regarding them as prisoners of war. The dream of Polycrates’ daughter was fulfilled when he was hung upon the cross; for he was “washed by Zeus” whenever it rained, and he was “anointed by the sun” when his own moisture seeped from his body. And thus the prosperity of Polycrates came to the end that Amasis the Egyptian king had prophesied.133 132. Gelon and Hieron of Syracuse (the most prominent Greek city in Sicily) reigned in the early 5th century B.C. (on Gelon see 7.154–66). 133. At 3.43 above, after Polycrates miraculously recovered his ring.

192

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

126. Not much later, retribution for the murder of Polycrates overtook Oroetes. For after the death of Cambyses, and throughout the reign of the Magus, Oroetes remained in Sardis and offered no help to his countrymen, whose sovereignty had been usurped by the Medes. On the contrary, in the disorder that prevailed he murdered Mitrobates, the governor of Dascylium, who had taunted him about Polycrates; he also murdered Mitrobates’ son Cranaspes—both distinguished Persians. He was likewise guilty of other acts of violence, including the following. A courier had been sent to him by Darius with a message that was not to his liking; so Oroetes sent a party to ambush the man on his return journey. He was killed, and neither his body nor his horse was ever seen again. 127. As soon as Darius had secured the throne, he longed to punish Oroetes for all his crimes, and especially for the murder of Mitrobates and his son.Yet he thought it unwise, after the recent turmoil, to send an armed force openly against him; for he himself had just begun to rule, while Oroetes, as he learned, was a powerful man, being the governor of Phrygia, Lydia, and Ionia, with a bodyguard of 1,000 Persians. He therefore called a meeting of the leading Persians and addressed them thus: “Which one of you, gentlemen, will undertake a matter for me by skill, without force or tumult? For where guile is needed, force will not serve. Who among you will venture to bring Oroetes to me alive, or to kill him? He has never yet done the Persians any good; on the contrary, he has done us great harm. He has slain two of our number, Mitrobates and his son; and now he kills the messengers I sent to recall him. Before he does the Persians any greater harm, he must be arrested—by death.” 128. Darius made this request, and thirty men gave their promise, each of them ready to act in the affair. Checking their rivalry, Darius told them to draw lots. When all the lots were cast, the mission fell to Bagaeus, son of Artontes. Bagaeus then had several letters written on a variety of subjects, sealed them with the king’s seal, and took them with him to Sardis. On his arrival he came into the presence of Oroetes. Opening the letters one by one, he handed them to the royal secretary (every governor has a royal secretary), and instructed him to read them aloud. His purpose was to test the loyalty of the bodyguard, and to see if they would be willing to revolt from Oroetes. When, therefore, he saw that they reverenced the letters greatly, and to an even greater extent what the letters said, he handed another to the secretary who duly read it aloud: “Persians, King Darius forbids you to protect Oroetes.” The guards, on hearing these words, dropped their spears, and Bagaeus, encouraged by their obedience, handed over the last letter to be read: “King Darius orders the Persians in Sardis to kill Oroetes.” Then the guards drew their swords and killed him. Thus did retribution for the murder of Polycrates overtake Oroetes the Persian. 129. Soon after Oroetes’ property had been confiscated and conveyed to Susa, it happened that King Darius, in the course of a hunt, leapt from his horse

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

193

and sprained his foot.134 The injury was serious, the ball of the ankle joint having slipped out of the socket. Now Darius had been accustomed to keep in attendance certain Egyptian doctors whose professional reputation was unsurpassed. He now consulted these men, but in treating his foot they wrenched it so badly that they only made matters worse. So severe was the pain that for seven days and seven nights Darius was unable to sleep. But on the eighth day, someone who had heard in Sardis of the skill of Democedes of Croton told Darius, who ordered his servants to fetch the man at once.135 When they found him in a neglected state among Oroetes’ slaves, they brought him just as he was, dragging his shackles and dressed in rags, before the king. 130. When Democedes came into the king’s presence, Darius asked him if he was skilled in the art of medicine. Democedes replied that he was not, for he was afraid that if he revealed himself he would never be allowed to return to Greece. But Darius, perceiving that Democedes was dissembling, ordered the men who had fetched him to bring in the whips and goads. At this Democedes made a partial confession; he continued to deny that he was truly knowledgeable, but admitted that he possessed a modicum of skill, as he had lived for a time with a physician. Darius then entrusted himself to his care, and Democedes, by using Greek methods, and exchanging the violent treatments of the Egyptians for gentler means, made it possible for Darius to sleep, and before long made him completely well, though Darius had never expected to regain the use of his foot. The king then presented Democedes with two sets of gold chains, a gift that moved Democedes to ask whether the king intended to double his suffering as a reward for the cure he had effected. Amused by the remark, Darius sent Democedes to visit his wives, and when the eunuchs who were escorting him to their apartments told the wives that this was the man who had saved the king’s life, each of them dipped a bowl into a chest of gold and gave so generously to Democedes that a slave named Sciton, who accompanied him and picked up the staters136 that fell from the bowls, managed to collect a great heap of gold. 131. Having come from Croton originally, Democedes became associated with Polycrates under the following circumstances. He had been oppressed in Croton by a harsh-tempered father. When he could abide the man no longer, Democedes left home and moved to Aegina. He settled there, and in the first year succeeded in surpassing all the other physicians, though he had no equipment or surgical 134. With this humble incident, seemingly insignificant at first, Herodotus begins a sequence that leads into his great theme, the Persian invasions of mainland Greece. 135. Democedes, a great Greek physician, had been brought into Persian territory by Polycrates, where he was enslaved by Oroetes (see 3.125). 136. A large denomination of coin. Staters coined by Darius, bearing an image that resembled that of the Persian king, were known to the Greeks as “darics.”

194

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

instruments. In the second year, the Aeginetans engaged his services and paid him one talent; in the third, the Athenians engaged him for 100 minas; and in the fourth he was engaged by Polycrates for two talents. That is how he came to Samos, and it was mainly because of his success that physicians from Croton came to be held in high esteem. For at the time of Darius’ accident the doctors of Croton were considered the best in Greece, and those of Cyrene the second best. The Argives, during that same period, were considered the best musicians. 132. After Democedes had cured Darius in Susa, Democedes lived there in a large house, dined at the king’s table, and lacked for nothing but the freedom to return to his country. By interceding with the king, Democedes saved the Egyptian physicians who had treated Darius previously, and who were about to be impaled because they had been outshone by a Greek. He also saved an Elean soothsayer who had accompanied Polycrates to Sardis and was lying neglected among his slaves. No one stood higher with the king than Democedes. 133. Shortly thereafter, Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus and wife of Darius, developed an abscess in her breast, which eventually burst and began to spread. While it remained small, she kept it hidden out of shame and said nothing about it to anyone. But when it got worse, she sent for Democedes and showed it to him. Democedes declared that he would make her well, but first she must swear that in return she would do him any favor he might ask, assuring her at the same time that he would ask for nothing that could compromise her. 134. On these terms Democedes treated the abscess and soon effected a cure; and Atossa, having received her instructions from Democedes, spoke thus one night, when in bed with Darius: “My lord, though you have so much power, you sit idle; you make no new conquest, nor do you advance the power of the Persians. It is appropriate for a man who is young and the master of great wealth to engage in some enterprise, to show the Persians that they have a man to govern them. Indeed, there are two reasons for doing so. Not only will the Persians learn that their ruler is a man, but, if you make war, they will be too busy to plot against you. Now, while you are young, you should perform some exploit. For while the body is growing, the mind grows along with it; but as it ages, the mind decays as well, until it becomes dulled to everything.” Thus spoke Atossa, as Democedes had instructed her, and Darius replied, “I myself intend to do everything you have said. For I have already decided to construct a bridge that will join our continent to the other, and to march against the Scythians.137 And this will soon be done.” Atossa replied, “Let the Scythians go for the moment. They will be there for you to conquer whenever you please. For my sake, march first against Greece. I long to have some of those Spartan girls of whom I have heard, and would also like some Argive, Attic, and Corinthian women. And you 137. The bridge and the Scythian campaign will be fully described in Book 4.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

195

have now at court a man better able than anyone to inform you fully about Greece and to act as your guide—I mean the man who healed your foot.” Darius answered, “Wife, as you think we should make trial of Greece first, I had better send Persian scouts ahead, in company with the man you mention. When they have seen and heard everything, they can bring me back a full report. Then, once I am better informed, I will launch the war.” 135. So saying, Darius acted at once. At dawn he summoned fifteen distinguished Persians and ordered them to explore the Greek coast, taking Democedes as their guide. Above all, they were to be sure to bring Democedes back with them and not let him escape. Then he sent for Democedes and entreated him to give the Persians all the guidance and information they needed, and afterward to return to Persia. He also urged Democedes to take with him all of his household furnishings as gifts for his father and brothers, promising that on his return these goods would be replaced many times over. He said he would also contribute a merchant vessel that would accompany him, loaded with valuable goods. Now I do not believe that Darius, when he made these offers, had any ulterior purpose; but Democedes, fearing that Darius was testing him, did not rush to accept everything that was offered, but said that he would leave his own goods behind to enjoy when he returned, though he would accept the merchant vessel that Darius wished to give as a present to his brothers. After issuing his orders, Darius sent Democedes and the Persians down to the coast. 136. At Sidon in Phoenicia they immediately fitted out two triremes138 and a large merchant vessel, which they loaded with all manner of goods. After completing all their preparations, they set sail for Greece. Touching at its coastal settlements, they observed everything and took notes of all they saw. In this way they explored most of the country, and all the most famous places, until they reached Tarentum in Italy. There Aristophilides, king of the Tarentines, out of kindness to Democedes, removed the rudders from the Median ships139 and detained their crews as spies. Democedes, meanwhile, escaped to Croton, his native city, whereupon Aristophilides released the Persians and gave them back their rudders. 137. Setting sail, the Persians went after Democedes, and on reaching Croton found him in the marketplace and arrested him. Some of the townspeople, who feared the power of the Persians, were willing to give him up; but others resisted, kept hold of Democedes, and even struck the Persians with their sticks. The latter then cried out, “Beware what you do, men of Croton. You are rescuing a runaway who belongs to the king. How will King Darius tolerate such an affront? And what 138. Strictly speaking a trireme is a warship powered by three banks of rowers, but Herodotus sometimes uses the term for warships generally. 139. That is, made it impossible for them to sail. Herodotus here uses “Median” (as often) as a synonym for “Persian.”

196

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

good will you do yourselves if you take this man from us? Will we march against any city before this one? Will we try to reduce any other to slavery before your own?” Despite these threats they failed to persuade the people of Croton, who rescued Democedes and also seized the merchant vessel the Persians had brought with them from Phoenicia. Deprived of their guide, the Persians did not seek to pursue their reconnaissance in Greece, but set sail for Asia. And as they departed, Democedes told them to let Darius know that he was engaged to marry the daughter of Milo, the wrestler, who was held in high regard at the Persian court.140 It is my belief that Democedes hastened his marriage by the payment of a large sum of money, in order to show Darius that he was highly esteemed in his own country. 138. Having sailed from Croton, the Persians were shipwrecked on the coast of Iapygia and enslaved by the inhabitants, but were later ransomed and brought back to King Darius by Gillus, a Tarentine exile. In return for this service, Darius was ready to give Gillus whatever he wished. After telling the story of his misfortunes, Gillus asked to be restored to Tarentum. But fearing that he might cause trouble for Greece if a large expedition were sent to Italy on his account, he said he would be content to be escorted home by the Cnidians; for he thought that this people, through their close friendship with the Tarentines, would effect his return. Darius kept his promise; sending a messenger to Cnidus, he ordered the Cnidians to take Gillus back to Tarentum. The order was obeyed, but the Cnidians failed to persuade the Tarentines to receive him, and were unable to apply any force. These were the first Persians who ever came from Asia to Greece; they had been sent to gather information for the reasons I have mentioned. 139. Thereafter King Darius captured Samos. This conquest, his first of a city, Greek or barbarian, was undertaken for the following reason. When Cambyses was conducting his campaign against Egypt, many Greeks arrived in that country—some, as is likely, for trade, others to fight, and a few, too, to see the land. Among the latter was Syloson, son of Aeaces, the brother of Polycrates. Syloson was in exile from Samos, and now met with an extraordinary piece of good fortune. Donning a flame-colored cloak, he was strolling about in the marketplace at Memphis. Catching sight of him, Darius longed for the cloak, approached Syloson, and offered to buy it. (Darius was then serving in Cambyses’ bodyguard, and was not yet an important figure.) Noticing that Darius had set his heart on the cloak, Syloson was inspired to say, “I refuse to sell it at any price, though I am prepared to offer it in quite another spirit, if you really must have it.” Admiring Syloson’s words, Darius accepted the garment. Syloson, meanwhile, understood perfectly well that he had lost it through his own good nature. 140. Milo of Croton was a champion wrestler, a perennial winner at Greek athletic festivals, about whom many stories were told. Herodotus imagines that these stories were heard even in Persia, though it is doubtful that news from Greece traveled so far.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

197

140. When in the course of time Cambyses died, and the seven revolted from the Magus, and Darius, of the seven, ascended the throne, Syloson learned that the kingdom had passed to the man to whom he had once, when asked for it, given his cloak in Egypt. Traveling up to Susa, he seated himself at the entrance of the king’s palace and claimed that he was a benefactor of the king. The porter announced his presence to the king. Astonished, Darius said to him, “Who is this Greek benefactor to whom I am under obligation, having only recently come to power? Hardly any Greeks have visited us yet, and as far as I know I owe nothing to any of them. Nevertheless, bring the man in, that I may know what he means by this claim.” The porter escorted Syloson into Darius’ presence, and the interpreters asked him who he was and on what grounds he claimed to be the king’s benefactor. Accordingly, Syloson recounted the story of the cloak, and said that he was the man who had given it to him. In reply Darius said, “Most generous of men, you are the man who indulged me when I had not yet attained power. Even though the gift was modest, the gratitude I felt was just what I would feel today should I receive something of inestimable value. In return let me give you gold and silver beyond measure, that you may never regret having benefited Darius, son of Hystaspes.” In reply Syloson said, “Give me neither gold nor silver, sire, but recover Samos for me, my native land, which ever since Oroetes killed my brother Polycrates has been in the hands of one of our slaves.141 Give me my country—but with no bloodshed or enslavement.” 141.When he heard this request, Darius dispatched a force under the command of Otanes, one of the seven, with orders to do everything that Syloson had asked. And Otanes, accordingly, went down to the coast and made ready to embark. 142. Power in Samos was now in the hands of Meandrius, son of Meandrius, whom Polycrates had appointed to rule in his absence. Though Meandrius wanted to be the justest of men, he was not given the opportunity. For when Polycrates’ death was reported to him, he adopted the following course. First, he erected an altar of Zeus the Liberator and marked out its sacred precinct, which can still be seen on the outskirts of the town. This done, he assembled all the citizens and said, “As you know, the scepter and all of Polycrates’ authority have been entrusted to me, and it is now in my power to rule over you. But what I censure in another I will not be guilty of myself, if I can help it. Lording it over his equals, Polycrates did not content me, nor would anyone else who so conducted himself. Now, therefore, that Polycrates has fulfilled his destiny, I intend to surrender my office, and to proclaim you equal before the law.142 All I claim in return, as a 141. Meandrius, the Samian who had become ruler after Polycrates’ death, was a free citizen, but Syloson speaks to Darius in the language of autocrats, in which any subject can be considered a “slave.” 142. That is, to make Samos a democracy (see 3.80 above and note 91).

198

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

privilege, is six talents of Polycrates’ money and the priesthood, for myself and my descendants, of Zeus the Liberator. For it is I who built his shrine, and I who now offer you your liberty.” As soon as Meandrius had spoken, one of the Samians rose up and said, “Well, you, at any rate, are unfit to govern us, base-born as you are and a plague! Think instead of accounting for the monies that have passed through your hands.” 143. The speaker, whose name was Telesarchus, was a distinguished citizen. Meandrius, therefore, convinced that if he relinquished power someone else would become tyrant in his place, gave up all thought of relinquishing it. Withdrawing to the citadel, he sent for each of the leading citizens in turn, intimating that he meant to show them his accounts; but he arrested them all and put them in irons. Soon after they had been imprisoned, Meandrius fell ill; at that point Lycarnetus, one of his brothers, thinking that he was going to die, and wishing to make his own seizure of power easier, had all the prisoners put to death. So, as it seems, they did not want to be free.143 144. Accordingly, when the Persians who were to restore Syloson reached Samos, no one raised a hand against them. Meandrius and his partisans declared themselves willing to withdraw from the island on certain terms, which were agreed to by Otanes. After the treaty was made, and the foremost Persians had their thrones placed opposite the citadel, they seated themselves upon them. 145. Now the tyrant Meandrius had a brother, Charileos, who was something of a madman; for some offense or other, he had been shut up in a dungeon. On the present occasion, this man heard what was going on and put his head through the bars of his prison. When he saw the Persians sitting peacefully on their thrones, he shouted out that he wished to have a word with Meandrius. When this was reported to him, Meandrius gave orders to have Charileos released from his dungeon and brought into his presence. As soon as he was brought in, Charileos began abusing and reproaching Meandrius, and tried to persuade him to attack the Persians. “Basest of men” said he, “who can keep me, your own brother, chained in a dungeon, though I have done nothing to deserve imprisonment; but when the Persians cast you out and leave you homeless, you simply look on and haven’t the spirit to punish them, though you could overpower them so easily. If you’re afraid of them, give me your soldiers, and I will take vengeance on them for daring to come here. As for you, I am ready to send you safely out of the island.” 146. So spoke Charileos, and Meandrius agreed to his proposal, not, I imagine, because he had reached such a pitch of folly as to imagine that his own forces could 143. This curious sentence seems to refer to the executed prisoners, and to express the idea that they were better off dead than released and living under the tyranny of Meandrius. But some have taken it to refer to the Samians generally, and to signify that the population had, by inaction, passed up Meandrius’ offer of a democratic constitution.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

199

overcome those of the King,144 but more out of envy at the prospect of Syloson’s effortlessly recovering an undamaged city. He therefore wanted to provoke the Persians against Samos, so that he could turn it over to Syloson in a state of weakness and confusion; for he knew that if the Persians suffered losses they would be even more incensed against the Samians. He himself was sure of getting away safely whenever he wished, since he had a secret underground passage leading from the citadel to the sea. Meandrius accordingly escaped from Samos by ship, and Charileos armed the mercenaries, threw open the gates, and fell upon the unsuspecting Persians, who supposed that everything had been settled by treaty. Thus the most important Persians were killed where they sat, whereupon the rest of the Persian army rushed to the rescue, defeated the mercenaries, and drove them back into the citadel. 147. When Otanes, the general, saw the great losses the Persians had suffered, he decided to forget Darius’ parting order—that is, not to kill or enslave any Samian, but to restore the island unravaged to Syloson.145 He commanded his men to kill everyone they could find, man or boy. Thereupon some of his troops laid siege to the citadel, while others set about killing everyone they met, both inside and outside the temples.146 148. After escaping from Samos, Meandrius sailed to Sparta, taking with him all the valuable possessions he had carried away from the island. On his arrival he acted as follows. Having placed all his gold and silver drinking cups on his table, and ordered his servants to polish them, he went off to converse with Cleomenes, son of Anaxandridas, king of Sparta,147 and in the course of their talk brought him to his house.When Cleomenes saw the cups, he was filled with wonder and astonishment, whereupon Meandrius urged him to take home with him as many as he liked. When Meandrius had made this offer two or three times, Cleomenes displayed exceptional honesty. He refused the gift; and understanding that if Meandrius offered these treasures to other citizens he would obtain the assistance he sought, he went to the ephors and told them that it would be better for Sparta if the Samian stranger left the Peloponnese; for otherwise he might persuade him or some other Spartan to become base.148 149. Having assented, the ephors banished Meandrius by proclamation. 144. The Greeks often referred to the Persian king simply as “the King.” 145. See 3.140–41 above. 146. The phrase “both inside and outside the temples” makes an important point, since to kill a suppliant in a temple was considered a grave sacrilege. 147. Sparta had two kings at any one time, but Cleomenes (who reigned c. 520–c. 490 B.C.) was very much ascendant over his partner. He will be an important figure later in the Histories (5.49–51, 6.73–82). 148. Sparta, alone among Greek states of this period, excluded coined money and other forms of material wealth, though Herodotus’ narrative often shows, as here, that such policies had failed to stamp out greed.

200

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

As for Samos, the Persians swept up the entire population, like fish in a net, and handed the island over to Syloson stripped of men.149 Some time later, however, Otanes was induced to repopulate the island by a dream he had, and a disease that affected his genitals.150 150. When the naval expedition had set sail for Samos, the Babylonians revolted,151 having made all necessary preparations. For throughout the entire period of the Magus’ reign, the revolt of the seven, and all the subsequent turmoil, the Babylonians had been preparing for a siege. And somehow they had managed to do so without being detected. When they had revolted openly, the Babylonians took the following step. In order to reduce the consumption of food, the Babylonians assembled and strangled all the women, each man exempting his mother and one other woman from his household to bake his bread. 151. On learning of the revolt, Darius gathered all his forces and marched against the Babylonians. Attacking Babylon, he laid siege to the city. The Babylonians, however, made light of the siege. Ascending to their ramparts, they danced and hurled insults at Darius and his army. One of them even called out and said, “Why sit there, Persians? Why not depart? For you’ll capture our city when mules bear young.” This was said by a Babylonian who thought that a mule would never foal.152 152. When a year and seven months had passed, Darius and the entire army were chafing at their inability to overpower the Babylonians. And yet Darius had tried every trick and contrivance, including the method by which Cyrus had captured the city.153 The Babylonians were keeping careful watch, and he could find no way to overpower them. 153. Then, in the twentieth month, a marvelous thing happened to Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus. (Zopyrus’ father was the Megabyzus who had been one of the seven.)154 One of Zopyrus’ pack-mules gave birth to a foal. When this was 149. Herodotus refers to a human dragnet used by the Persians, described fully at 6.31. The male Samians thus caught were presumably executed. 150. The implication is that Otanes had offended the gods by his harsh treatment of the Samians, and, having incurred divine punishment in the form of the disease, was seeking to make amends. 151. The conquest of Babylon by the Persians has been related in Book 1 (1.178–91), along with several anecdotes attesting to the Babylonian hatred of their new masters. The Persian royal inscription at Bisitun records two Babylonian revolts against Darius in close succession, in 522 and 521 B.C.; Herodotus has merged these into one long revolt. 152. The mule, a hybrid offspring of horse and donkey, is normally sterile but can, under rare circumstances, give birth (see 7.57). 153. See 1.191, where Cyrus lowered the level of the Euphrates and entered the city through a culvert. 154. That is, the seven conspirators who overthrew the Magi.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

201

reported to him, Zopyrus was incredulous. Thereafter, he himself set eyes on the foal, whereupon he told those who had seen it not to tell anyone what had happened, while he himself gave the matter careful thought. When he recalled the remark of the Babylonian who had said at the outset that the city would be captured when mules bore young, it struck Zopyrus that Babylon could now be captured. For it occurred to him that both the man’s remark and his own mule’s giving birth to a foal were providential. 154. Convinced that Babylon was now destined to be taken, Zopyrus approached Darius and asked him whether the city’s capture was of paramount importance to him; and on being told that it was, gave thought to how he could manage the deed by himself. For among the Persians, noble services are highly honored. Pondering ways and means, Zopyrus concluded that he could only prevail if he mutilated himself and went over to the enemy as a deserter. Thereupon, bearing it lightly, he mutilated himself irreparably. For he cut off his nose and ears,155 shaved his hair atrociously, flogged himself with a whip, and went in this condition to Darius. 155. Darius was mortified at the sight of so eminent a man mutilated. Leaping from his throne with a cry of horror, he asked Zopyrus who had maimed him, and what he had done to deserve such abuse. Zopyrus replied, “The man does not exist, unless it be yourself, who has the power to treat me thus. No, sire, no stranger has inflicted these wounds. Indignant that the Assyrians are laughing at the Persians, I inflicted them on myself.” Darius replied, “Wretched fellow, you give the foulest deed the fairest name when you say you did yourself irreparable harm because of our besieged enemy. How, rash fellow, will the enemy come to terms any sooner because you have been mutilated? How, unless you took leave of your senses, did you come to ruin yourself?” Zopyrus replied, “Had I told you what I meant to do, you would not have allowed it. As it is, I acted on my own initiative. And now, unless you fail us, we will capture Babylon. I will desert just as I am to their city and tell the Babylonians I have suffered this outrage at your hands. I think they will believe me, and entrust me with their troops. For your part, wait until the tenth day after I enter the town, and then post a detachment of 1,000 men at the gates of Semiramis (their loss will not trouble you). Then, seven days later, post another 2,000 at the Nineveh gates. Wait twenty days, lead out another 4,000 men and post them at the Chaldean gates. Let none of these soldiers, neither the earlier detachments nor the later, carry any weapons but daggers; these they may carry. And then, twenty days later, command the rest of the army to attack the city from all directions, taking care to post our Persians156 at the Belian 155. See note 125 to 3.118 above. 156. Presumably the other troops, the pawns, were to have been chosen from the subject peoples impressed into the Persian army.

202

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

and Cissian gates. For I expect that the Babylonians, after the great service I have done them, will entrust everything to me, including the keys of their gates. Then it will be up to me and the Persians to do what we must.” 156. Having left these instructions, Zopyrus fled toward the gates, often glancing behind him in the manner of a deserter. When the men posted on the towers caught sight of him, they hurried down, set one of the gates slightly ajar, and asked Zopyrus who he was and why he had come. He told them that he was Zopyrus, and that he had deserted from the Persians. When the gate-keepers heard this, they conducted him to the assembly. Coming before the Babylonians, Zopyrus poured forth his grievances, claiming that the injuries he had done to himself had been inflicted by Darius, and merely because he had advised him to raise the siege, since there appeared to be no means of capturing the city. “And now, Babylonians,” he said, “my coming will prove a great blessing to you, and a great evil to Darius and the Persians. For he will not have insulted me with impunity; I am fully acquainted with all his plans.” Thus spoke Zopyrus. 157. When the Babylonians saw a Persian of such high rank in such a state—his nose and ears cut off, his body defiled with lashes and blood—they were convinced that he spoke the truth and had come to be their ally. They were therefore ready to grant him whatever he asked. He asked to be put in command of some troops; and when he received a body of men, he adhered to the plan he had made with Darius. On the tenth day after his arrival he led out his men, surrounded the first 1,000 soldiers he had ordered Darius to post there, and slaughtered them. Seeing that his deeds were as brave as his words, the Babylonians were delighted, and declared themselves willing to obey his every command. After waiting the appointed number of days, Zopyrus again selected a contingent of Babylonians, led them out, and slaughtered 2,000 of Darius’ soldiers. Now Zopyrus’ name was on every tongue; all the Babylonians were singing his praises. Again, after waiting the appointed number of days, Zopyrus led his forces out to the gate he had named, surrounded 4,000 Persian soldiers, and slaughtered them. With this success, Zopyrus became everything to the Babylonians, and was accordingly named commander-in-chief of their army and guardian of the wall. 158. When Darius, according to their agreement, attacked the walls on every side, Zopyrus’ deceit was fully revealed. For when the Babylonians had mounted their walls, and were doing all they could to repel the attack of Darius’ army, he threw open the Cissian and Belian gates and let in the Persians. Those Babylonians who saw what had been done fled to the temple of Zeus Belus;157 the rest remained at their posts until they, too, learned that they had been betrayed. 157. As earlier at 1.181, Herodotus has equated Zeus with the Babylonian chief god, Bel or Ba’al (also called Marduk).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 3

203

159. Thus was Babylon captured a second time; and when Darius had become master of the place he destroyed its wall and pulled down all the gates; for Cyrus, after his conquest, had left the wall and gates intact. He then impaled nearly 3,000 of the leading citizens, and restored the city to the remaining Babylonians. And foreseeing that if their race was to be perpetuated the Babylonians would need women, Darius made the following arrangements. (For as I made known at the outset, the Babylonians, with an eye to preserving their food supply, had strangled their women.) He ordered each of the neighboring peoples to send a stated number of women to Babylon, with the result that 50,000 women were brought to the city. It is from these women that the Babylonians of our day are descended. 160. No Persian, in Darius’ judgment, surpassed Zopyrus as a benefactor, whether before his time or after, with the sole exception of Cyrus (for no Persian has ever thought to compare himself with him). It is said that Darius often expressed the view that he would rather have Zopyrus free of disfigurement than twenty Babylons. He rewarded him with the highest honors. Year after year, he gave him all the gifts that are most highly prized among the Persians. He granted him the revenues of Babylon, free from tax, for life, and many other favors. Zopyrus had a son, Megabyzus, who led an army to Egypt against the Athenians and their allies.158 And that Megabyzus had a son, Zopyrus, who deserted from Persia to Athens.

158. Egypt rebelled from Persian rule in the mid-450s (well after the events described in Herodotus’ narrative) and was aided by Athenian ships; Thucydides describes the episode and confirms that Megabyzus son of Zopyrus was sent to put down the rebellion (History 1.109).

Book 4

1. After the capture of Babylon, Darius led an army against Scythia.1 Since Asia abounded in men, and vast sums were flowing into the treasury, the desire seized him to punish the Scythians, who years before had invaded Media, defeated those who came out to oppose them, and so began the wrongdoing. The Scythians, as I mentioned earlier, had ruled upper Asia for twenty-eight years. Having entered Asia in pursuit of the Cimmerians, they had overthrown the Medes, who until they came held power there.2 Thus the Scythians had been away from home for twenty-eight years, and on their return they found trouble waiting for them hardly less serious than their struggle with the Medes: a large army stood ready to oppose their entrance. For the Scythian women, when their husbands’ absence was prolonged, had intermarried with their slaves. 2. The Scythians blind all their slaves, who then prepare milk for them in the following way. They take a tube made of bone and shaped like a flute, insert it into the mare’s vulva, and blow; and while one of them blows, the other milks. They say that they do this because when the mare’s veins are inflated, her udder is forced down. They pour the milk into deep wooden pails, around which they place their blind slaves; the latter stir the milk. The portion that rises to the top is skimmed off and considered the best part; the portion that sinks to the bottom is not considered so good. That is why they blind all their prisoners of war, for they are not tillers of the soil but a nomadic people.3 3. When the offspring of these slaves and the women of Scythia had grown to manhood and learned the circumstances of their birth, they resolved to oppose the army that was returning from Media. First they severed a tract of country by digging a wide trench from the Tauric Mountains to the widest part of Lake Maeotis.4 Then, lying in wait, they resisted all attempts to force an entrance. Many battles were fought, but the Scythians gained no advantage until one of 1. “Scythia” was variously defined by the Greeks but here refers to the region north and east of the Black Sea, modern Bulgaria and Ukraine. The date at which Darius invaded this region, presumably in an effort to push back the nomadic tribesmen who threatened his borders, should probably be placed between 515 and 510 B.C., but evidence about the campaign is scant. 2. These events have been recounted at 1.74. 3. The assumptions behind this chapter are that blinded slaves would be more dependable in that they are unable to escape, and that the Scythians, who obtain their food from the simple processing of milk rather than from agriculture, would not need sighted slaves. 4. That is, to protect most of the Crimean peninsula against an invasion from the east. There is no archaeological evidence for such a trench. 204

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

205

them said, “What are we doing, my friends? In fighting our slaves we are diminishing our own number when we fall, and the number of our subjects when they fall by our hands. Let us therefore drop our shields and bows, and go after them, each of us, with a horsewhip. When they saw us bearing arms, they considered themselves our equals. But when they see us coming with whips instead of weapons, they will realize that they are our slaves and will not stand their ground.” 4. The Scythians acted on this advice, and their opponents were so astounded that they forgot about the battle and fled. Thus the Scythians, after holding sway in Asia and being expelled by the Medes, returned to their native land. It was to punish them for their invasion that Darius was now mustering an army against them.5 5. The Scythians say they are the youngest of all nations, and give the following account of their origin. The first man to live in their country, which before his time was uninhabited, was Targitaus. They say that his parents—though I do not find the story credible, they tell it nevertheless—were Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes.6 Targitaus had three sons, Lipoxais, Arpoxais, and Colaxais, the youngest. During their reign, there fell from the sky four golden implements—a plow, a yoke, a single-edged axe, and a drinking-cup. The eldest of the brothers caught sight of them first, and as he went to pick them up the gold caught fire. He therefore drew back, and the second brother came forward, but the same thing happened.The burning gold drove both brothers away. Last of all the youngest brother drew near, and the flames were extinguished; so he picked up the gold and carried it home. And the elder brothers then agreed to turn over the whole kingdom to the youngest. 6. From Lipoxais were descended the Scythians known as Auchatae; from Arpoxais, the middle brother, those known as the Catiari and Traspies; from Colaxais, the youngest, the Royal Scythians, or Paralatae. All together they are named Scoloti, after one of their kings, but the Greeks call them Scythians. 7. This is the account the Scythians give of their origin, and they add that the period from Targitaus, their first king, to Darius’ invasion of their country, is exactly 1,000 years.Their kings guard the sacred gold with the utmost care, visiting it every year and offering great sacrifices in its honor. They say that if the man appointed to guard the gold falls asleep in the open air during this festival, he will not live out the year; and because of this office he is given as much land as he can ride around in a day. In view of the great size of Scythia, Colaxais gave each of his three sons a 5. As Herodotus has done earlier in the case of Egypt, he begins by asserting the fact of a Persian invasion but then stops the narrative clock for a long excursus on the land being invaded. Herodotus apparently relied on firsthand investigation for his account of Scythia, just as he did earlier for Egypt; he claims to have sailed the Black Sea (4.85–86) and to have seen a bronze cauldron in the town of Exampaeus (4.81; see note there). A few scholars have doubted the veracity of these claims but most accept them. 6. The river Borysthenes (modern Dnieper) flows through the Ukraine. Since in Greek myths rivers can be personified as gods, they can also have offspring.

206

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

separate kingdom, making the one where the gold was kept the largest. It is said that the region north of Scythia can neither be seen nor traversed because of the feathers that pour down. The earth and air are full of them, and they obstruct any view.7 8.The Scythians give this account of themselves and of the land that lies north of them. But the Greeks who live near the Black Sea say that Heracles, when he was driving the oxen of Geryon,8 arrived in the land, then an empty wilderness, which the Scythians now inhabit. (Geryon lived far from the Black Sea, on an island that the Greeks call Erythea, near Gades, which lies on the Ocean beyond the Pillars of Heracles. Legend has it that Ocean, rising in the east, runs around the whole world; but there is no proof that this is so.)9 When Heracles reached the country now called Scythia, and was overtaken by stormy weather and frost, he drew his lion’s skin around him and fell asleep. While he slept, his horses, which were grazing near his chariot, mysteriously disappeared. 9. When he woke up, he searched for them everywhere, wandering over the whole country until he came at last to the place called Hylaea, where in a cave he found a viper-woman: a creature which from the waist upward was a woman, but below it a snake. At first he gazed at her in astonishment; then he asked if she had seen his horses wandering around. She replied that she had his horses, but would not give them back until he lay with her. So Heracles, to get his mares back, complied; but she then postponed the return of the horses, since she wished to keep him with her as long as possible, though all he wanted was to get his horses back and go. At last, giving them up, she said, “When your horses came here, I kept them safe for you, and you have given me my reward; for I have three sons by you. Tell me what I should do with them when they grow up. Should I settle them in this country, where I hold sway, or send them to you?” “When you see the boys grown to manhood,” Heracles replied, “do as I tell you, and you will not be far wrong. Whichever of them you find can draw this bow like this,10 and put on this belt as I will now show you, should settle in this country. But send away those who fail this test. Do this, and you will at once obey me and find happiness for yourself.” 10. Then he strung one of his bows—up to that time he had carried two—and showed her how to fasten the belt. He then put both bow and belt into her hands 7. At 4.31 Herodotus again discusses these falling “feathers” and explains them as a metaphorical description of snow. 8. As one of his famous labors, Heracles (Roman Hercules) had to seize and bring home the cattle of the monstrous king named Geryon. Geryon’s home was in the far West and nowhere near Scythia (as Herodotus goes on to explain), but Heracles was thought to have come back to Greece by way of a wandering path. 9. One of several challenges by Herodotus to the idea, espoused by all other archaic Greek writers, that the oikoumene¯ or inhabited world was surrounded by a continuous band of water (see 2.23 and 4.32). 10. The Scythians used a distinctive kind of bow and were famous for superb archery skills.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

207

and departed. (The belt had a gold cup attached to its clasp.) When the boys grew up, she named the eldest Agathyrsus, the next Gelonus, and the youngest Scythes. Then she remembered Heracles’ instructions and carried them out. Two of the boys, Agathyrsus and Gelonus, failed to perform the appointed task and were therefore banished from the country by their mother. But Scythes, the youngest, succeeded and was allowed to remain. All the Scythian kings are descended from Scythes, son of Heracles; and to this day the Scythians wear cups on their belts.This was the only thing the mother of Scythes did for him. Such is the story told by the Greeks of the Black Sea region. 11. Another story, in which I put more faith than in any other, has it that the Scythian nomads who lived in Asia, when hard pressed by the Massagetae, crossed the Araxes River into the land of the Cimmerians.11 For the land that is now inhabited by the Scythians was formerly the country of the Cimmerians. When they saw the vast Scythian army approaching, the Cimmerians held a council and were divided in their views. Each party urged its own view, though that of the princes was the nobler. The people maintained that they should leave the country and avoid coming to blows with so formidable an invader; but the royal Cimmerians, more courageously, called upon everyone to remain and defend their land. As neither party would give way, the people decided to retire and surrender their country to the invaders without a blow, while the princes, recalling all the good things they had enjoyed, and imagining all the evils they must expect to suffer if they left their homes, decided not to flee but to die where they were and be buried in their own country. Having made their decision, the princes divided themselves into two equal bodies and fought each other until they all lay dead.The Cimmerian people buried them near the river Tyras, where their tomb can still be seen. Then the rest of the Cimmerians departed, and the Scythians, when they arrived, took possession of a deserted land. 12. Even today in Scythia one sees Cimmerian forts, Cimmerian ferries, a tract of land called Cimmeria, and a Cimmerian Bosporus.12 It is clear that the Cimmerians, when they fled into Asia to escape the Scythians, built a settlement on the peninsula where the Greek city of Sinope now stands;13 and it is likewise clear that the pursuing Scythians entered Median territory only because they took the wrong route by mistake. For the Cimmerians kept close to 11. The Massagetae (on whom see 1.204–16) lived east of the Scythians and east of the Araxes (a river flowing either into the Caspian or Aral Sea; see 1.202). Herodotus here seems to envision a westward push by the nomadic tribes of the great Eurasian steppe lands. For the Cimmerians, who are here mapped by Herodotus for the first time, see 1.6 and note 14. 12.The prevalence of “Cimmeria” and “Cimmerian” in this region is attested by its modern name, Crimea. The terms “Cimmerian Ferries” and “Cimmerian Bosporus” both refer to what is today called the Straits of Kerch, the narrow waterway where the Black Sea flows into the Sea of Azov. 13. In northern Anatolia.

208

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

the coast,14 whereas the Scythians who pursued them kept the Caucasus on their right, and as a result turned inland and found themselves in Media. These facts are related by Greeks and barbarians alike. 13. Then there is the account of Aristeas, son of Caustrobius, a Proconnesian, who tells us in the course of his epic poem15 that he was inspired by Apollo to visit the Issedones. He says that beyond the Issedones live the one-eyed Arimaspians, and beyond them the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond the griffins the Hyperboreans, whose land comes down to the sea.16 Except for the Hyperboreans, all these peoples, beginning with the Arimaspians, were continually encroaching upon their neighbors. Thus the Issedones were expelled by the Arimaspians, the Scythians by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians by the Scythians, who forced them from their homes on the shores of the black Sea.Thus even Aristeas does not agree with the Scythians’ account of this region. 14. I have mentioned the native place of Aristeas, the poet who sang of these things. I will now relate a story I heard about him in Proconnesus and Cyzicus. They say that one day Aristeas, who belonged to one of the island’s noblest families, entered a fuller’s shop in Proconnesus and fell dead, whereupon the fuller, shutting up his shop, went to tell his relatives what had happened. But as soon as the news of his death had spread through the town, a man from Cyzicus, who had just arrived from the city of Artaca, contradicted the story, claiming that he had met Aristeas heading for Cyzicus and had talked with him. He therefore strenuously denied the rumor. Meanwhile, the dead man’s relatives arrived at the fuller’s shop with everything they needed for the funeral, as they intended to take the body away. When the shop was opened, Aristeas was nowhere to be seen, dead or alive. Seven years later he turned up in Proconnesus, composed the poem that the Greeks now call the Arismaspea, and then disappeared a second time. 15. That is the story told in these two cities. I will now add what I know happened to the Metapontines in Italy 240 years after Aristeas’ second disappearance, having compared the accounts given to me at Proconnesus and Metapontium. The Metapontines say that Aristeas himself appeared in their country and told them to erect an altar to Apollo, and to place beside it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas of Proconnesus. He told them that theirs was the only country Apollo had visited in Italy, and that he himself had accompanied the god on that occasion, not in his present form but in the shape of a raven. So saying, he vanished. The Metapontines 14. That is, the south coast of the Black Sea. 15. A few fragments exist of the poem known as Arimaspea, by Aristeas of Proconnesus. It described the author’s journey into the far north of the known world, the mysterious land inhabited by Arimaspians and griffins (see 3.115 and note 122). 16. What “sea” is meant is unclear, since Herodotus elsewhere (4.45) claims that no water boundary was known to exist north of Europe. The Hyperboreans, a legendary race of longlived (or perhaps immortal) supermen, are discussed in more detail at 4.32–36 below.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

Hy p

Neurians

Scyth

ia

Black-cloaks

st

he

Gerrh us

nes

is an

Man-eaters Scythian Panticapes Farmers Alazones ae Scythian d i ns p hia Plowmen o r y lli a cy t C B S Olbia dic Hylaea ma o N Hypacyris Carcinitis

209

S yal Ro

ia cy t h

ais Tan

ns

Lake Maeotis

Racecourse of Achilles

Sau Tauri

Mtn

s.

T

au

ric

r

a om

ta

e

Sindica Cimmerian Bosporus

Black Sea 200 kilometers 200 miles

Scythia as described by Herodotus.

then sent to Delphi to ask the god what the apparition meant.The Pythian priestess ordered them to obey it, as this would be to their advantage. They took the advice, and did as they had been directed. And today a statue bearing the name of Aristeas stands beside the image of Apollo in their marketplace, surrounded by laurel trees. 16. No one has accurate knowledge about what lies beyond the region I am now discussing. I have never found anyone who claims to have actually seen it. Even Aristeas, whom I lately mentioned, does not claim in his epic poem to have gone farther than the Issedones, and admits that what he reports of the regions beyond is hearsay, being the account given to him by the Issedones. I will nevertheless relate everything that careful inquiry about these remote regions has brought to my attention. 17. Above the trading post of the Borysthenites, which lies at the midpoint of the Scythian coastline,17 the first people are the Callipidae, a Greco-Scythian tribe. Next to them are the Alazones. These two nations in other respects resemble the 17. The “trading post” Herodotus refers to is the Greek city of Olbia. From this starting point, Herodotus moves west to east through the regions of Scythia in the fifteen chapters that follow; within each region, he also moves from south to north, so as to include every tribe in the vast region he called Scythia.

210

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

Scythians in their practices, but sow and eat corn, onions, garlic, lentils, and millet. Above the Alazones live the Scythian farmers, who sow corn not for their own use but for sale. Beyond the farmers are the Neurians, and north of the Neurians the country, as far as we know, is uninhabited. These are the peoples along the river Hypanis, west of the Borysthenes. 18. Across the Borysthenes, starting from the coast, the first country is Hylaea. North of Hylaea are the Scythian farmers, whom the Greeks at the river Hypanis call Borysthenites, though they call themselves Olbiopolites. These farmers extend eastward a three day’s journey to a river called the Panticapes, and northward an eleven days’ sail up the Borysthenes. Farther inland is a large uninhabited tract, beyond which live the Man-eaters, who are a separate people, unconnected with the Scythians. Beyond them the country is truly deserted; no tribe inhabits it, as far as we know. 19. East of the Scythian farmers, across the river Panticapes, live the Scythian nomads, who neither sow nor plow. The entire region, except Hylaea, is bare of trees. The nomads inhabit a stretch of country extending eastward a fourteen days’ journey as far as the river Gerrhus. 20. On the far side of the Gerrhus lies the so-called Royal district; here live the largest and bravest of the Scythian tribes, who look upon all the other Scythians as their slaves. Their territory extends south to the Tauric country and east to the trench excavated by the sons of the blind slaves,18 and to Cremni, the trading post on Lake Maeotis. Part of it extends to the river Tanais.19 North of the Royal Scythians are the Black-cloaks, a non-Scythian tribe. Beyond the Black-cloaks are lakes and, as far as we know, a region without inhabitants. 21. Once across the Tanais, one is no longer in Scythia; the first region after crossing is that of the Sauromatae,20 who occupy a stretch of country that extends northward a fifteen days’ journey from the northern tip of Lake Maeotis.The country is entirely bare of trees, wild or cultivated. The next region above the Sauromatae belongs to the Budini, whose territory is densely wooded with trees of all kinds. 22. North of the Budini the country is uninhabited for the distance of a seven days’ journey, after which, by turning a little eastward, one reaches the Thyssagetae, a distinct and numerous tribe that gets its living by hunting. Next to them, in the same vicinity, lives another tribe of hunters known as the Iyrcae, who have the following practice. The hunter climbs a tree—the entire region is densely wooded—to lie in wait. Each has a dog and a horse trained to lie on its belly. When the hunter catches sight of his prey, he shoots an arrow, drops onto his horse, and rides in pursuit, his dog following closely. 18. See 4.3 above and note. 19. The Tanais (modern Don) flows into the northern end of the Sea of Azov. 20. The Sauromatae are the subject of a further excursus at 4.110–17.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

211

North and to the east of these tribes lives another tribe of Scythians, who moved to this region after revolting from the Royal Scythians. 23. As far as their country, the region I have been describing is a level plain with deep soil. Thereafter the terrain is stony and rugged. Beyond this rugged region, which is extensive, one reaches a tribe of men who live in the foothills of a lofty mountain range. All the members of this tribe are said to be bald from birth, males and females alike, and to have snub noses and long chins. They speak a language of their own, wear Scythian dress, and live on the fruit of a tree called ponticum; it is about the size of a fig tree, and it produces a fruit like a bean, with a pit inside. When the fruit ripens, they strain it through cloth and obtain a thick dark juice that they call aschy. They lick this up with their tongues, or mix it with milk, and make cakes out of the lees, which are solid. They have few flocks and herds, as the pasturage is poor. Each man lives under a tree, which in winter he covers with thick white felt. In summer the felt is removed. No one harms these people, for they are thought to be sacred. They have no weapons. They settle disputes among their neighbors, and anyone who flees to them for refuge is safe from all harm. They are called the Argippaei.21 24. Up to this point the territory is well known, as are all the peoples between the coast and the bald-headed tribe. For one can easily obtain information about these tribes from the Scythians who visit them; the Greeks also go there from the trading posts on the Black Sea and the Borysthenes. The Scythians who travel that far conduct their business through seven interpreters and seven languages. 25. As far as the Argippaei, the country is known; but beyond the baldheaded men lies a region of which no one can given an accurate account. Lofty and precipitous mountains, which no one can cross, bar further progress.22 The bald men report (though I find this incredible) that goat-footed men inhabit these mountains, and that beyond them there is a tribe of men who sleep for six months of the year23—which I find utterly incredible. The region east of the Argippaei is known to be inhabited by the Issedones; but the region to the north of these two nations is unknown, except for the tales they themselves tell of it. 26. The Issedones are said to have the following customs. When a man’s father dies, all his relatives bring sheep to his house; after sacrificing these, the sheep 21. There are close correlations between these Argippaei and certain Mongolian peoples, who brewed a drink from the wild cherry tree and who lived in yurts (“felt-covered trees”). 22. Possibly the Urals. 23. Perhaps some vague report of Arctic nights lies behind this legend. In Homer’s Odyssey (11.14–19) the Cimmerians, a race dwelling in the far West (and thus a different people than Herodotus’ Cimmerians), are said to live in total darkness.

212

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

and the body of the dead man are cut in pieces, and the two sorts of meat, mixed together, are served at a banquet. The head of the dead man, however, they gild, after stripping off the hair and cleaning out the inside. Thereafter they use it as a sacred image, to which they offer lavish sacrifices every year. Sons perform this rite for their fathers, just as the Greeks commemorate the birthday of the dead. In other respects the Issedones are said to be especially just, and the men and women to have equal authority. Their tribe is well known. 27. The regions beyond them are known only from the accounts of the Issedones themselves; it is from them that the stories of the one-eyed men and the gold-guarding griffins originate; and it is the Scythians who have passed them on to the rest of us. This explains why we call the one-eyed men Arimaspians, which is a Scythian name, arima being the Scythian word for “one,” and spu for “eye.”24 28. The entire region thus far described is afflicted with harsh winters: for eight months the frost is unbearable; the ground is so hard that you need fire, not water, to turn the earth into mud. The sea freezes over, as does the entire Cimmerian Bosporus. At that season the Scythians who live inside the trench25 make warlike expeditions over the ice, and drive wagons across to the Sindi.26 Such is the intensity of the cold during the eight months of winter; and even in the four remaining months the climate is cool. The Scythian winter differs from the winters in all other countries; for there is hardly any rainfall, whereas in summer the rain never lets up; and thunder, which elsewhere is common then, is unknown in Scythia at that time of year, coming only in summer, when it is heavy. If thunder does occur in winter, it is regarded as a portent, as are earthquakes, whether they occur in summer or winter. Horses bear the winter well, but mules and donkeys cannot bear it at all, whereas in other countries mules and donkeys bear the cold easily, while horses, if they are kept standing, suffer frostbite. 29. It seems to me that the cold may explain why the oxen in that region do not grow horns, and there is a verse in Homer’s Odyssey that supports this view: And to Libya, where horns bud quickly on the foreheads of lambs 24. At 3.116 Herodotus expressed skepticism about the existence of one-eyed men, and in the preceding chapter he decided that the river Eridanus was believed to exist merely because of a made-up name. The two lines of reasoning seem to have come together here, where he gives a wholly spurious etymology that would, if accepted, explain how the Arimaspians came to be thought of as one-eyed. In fact their name carries the same Iranian stem aspa, meaning horse, that is seen in Persian names like Prexaspes. 25. That is, in western Crimea. 26. The Sindi were a tribe dwelling on the east side of the Straits of Kerch (Cimmerian Bosporus), the waterway Herodotus here reports freezing solid in winter (as it still does today).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

213

—an accurate observation, implying that in warm countries horns come early, whereas in severe cold cattle either do not grown horns at all, or grow them with difficulty.27 30. And here let me express my surprise (for my account has sought additions from its outset) that mules are not bred in Elis, though it is not a cold place, and there is nothing else to account for it. The Eleans say it is the result of some curse; and their habit is, whenever the breeding season comes, to take their mares into one of the neighboring countries, put the donkeys to them there, and then, when they are pregnant, bring them back to Elis. 31. As for the feathers that the Scythians say fill the air and make it impossible to traverse, or even to see, the most northerly regions of the continent, I am of the following opinion. In the territory north of Scythia it must always be snowing, though less, probably, in summer than in winter. Now anyone who has seen snow falling thickly from near at hand will know what I mean—it looks like feathers. And it is because the winters are so severe that the northern regions of this country are uninhabited. I presume, then, that when the Scythians and their neighbors speak of feathers they really mean snow—because of the likeness between the two. This is the fullest account that can be given about these matters. 32. Of the Hyperboreans nothing is said by the Scythians or by anyone else in that region, except, perhaps, by the Issedones. But even the Issedones, in my opinion, have nothing to say about them; otherwise the Scythians would have repeated it, as they do the story of the one-eyed men. There is, however, a mention of the Hyperboreans in Hesiod, and in Homer’s Epigoni—if in fact Homer was the author of that work.28 33. The Delians29 have by far the most to say about them, for they declare that certain offerings packed in wheat-straw are brought from the Hyperboreans into Scythia, whereupon the neighboring peoples pass them from one to the next until they reach the Adriatic. From there they are sent southward, and the first Greeks to receive them are the Dodonaeans. From there they descend to the Malian gulf, cross to Euboea, and are passed from town to town until they reach Carystus. The Carystians convey them to Tenos, bypassing Andros, and the Tenians bring them to Delos.30 This is how they are said to reach Delos. But on 27. The line from Homer (Odyssey 4.85) mentions only that horns grow quickly in Libya, but Herodotus extrapolates from this the idea that they grow more slowly in Scythia, based on the idea of an opposition between northern and southern global regions. Similar reasoning was used in the description of Egypt (see 2.26, 2.34, and 2.35 with notes). 28. The Epigoni or “Successors,” so entitled because it concerned the sons of a generation of heroes, was one of the so-called Cyclic epics of archaic Greece. Herodotus has already disputed the Homeric authorship of another Cyclic epic, the Cypria (see 2.117 and note). 29. Inhabitants of Delos, the Greek island sacred to Apollo. The mythic Hyperboreans were thought to have a special connection with Apollo, and thus also with the island of Delos. 30. The route followed by these “offerings” overlaps closely with an age-old route of amber trade (see 3.115 and note 120).

214

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

that first occasion the Hyperboreans had entrusted the offerings to two girls whose names, according to the Delians, were Hyperoche and Laodice. To protect the girls, the Hyperboreans had sent five men to accompany them. (Today these escorts, known as Perpherees, are highly honored in Delos.) Later, however, when their messengers did not return, the Hyperboreans, perturbed at the prospect of never getting back the messengers they sent out, began the practice of packing their offerings in wheat-straw and taking them to the border, with instructions to their neighbors to send them forward from one nation to the next. This is how the offerings reach Delos today. I know of something similar to this in Thrace and Paeonia. The women there, when they sacrifice to Artemis the Queen, always bring wheat-straw with their offerings. 34. The girls sent by the Hyperboreans died in Delos; and in their honor the girls and boys of the island cut their hair. The girls, before they marry, cut off a lock of their hair, wind it around a spindle, and place it on the tomb. This tomb is on the left as one enters the temple of Artemis, and has an olive tree growing over it. The boys, like the girls, wind a strand of their hair around a plant shoot and place it on the tomb. Such are the honors paid to these girls by the Delians. 35. There is also a story that before the time of Hyperoche and Laodice, two other Hyperborean girls, Arge and Opis, came to Delos by the same route. Hyperoche and Laodice came to bring Eileithya, the goddess of childbirth, a thankoffering they had promised for easy labor; but Arge and Opis came to the island at the same times as the gods of Delos, and are honored in a different way.The women make collections for them and invoke their names in the hymn that Olen of Lycia31 composed in their honor; the other islanders, and the Ionians too, have learned this observance from the women of Delos. (Olen of Lycia also composed other old hymns that are sung in Delos.) In addition, the ashes from the thigh-bones burnt upon the altar are scattered over the tomb of Arge and Opis, which stands behind the temple of Artemis, facing east, near the banquet hall of the Ceians. 36. So much, then, for the Hyperboreans; for I do not propose to relate the tale about Abaris, who is said to have been a Hyperborean, and to have carried his arrow around the whole world without ever taking food.32 I will only add that if there are Hyperboreans, “dwellers beyond the north wind,” there must also be Hypernotians, “dwellers beyond the south wind.”33 31. An early poet about whom almost nothing is known; he may in fact be a legend. 32.The legendary Abaris was a mystic and a follower of Apollo, reported to have magical powers. Herodotus evidently considered him a Hyperborean. 33. The translations of the two proper names have been inserted to make Herodotus’ point clear. The reasoning, based on north-south symmetry, has been interpreted as a reductio ad absurdum proving that Hyperboreans don’t exist, but there is no reason Herodotus could not have made this assertion in perfect sincerity.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

215

I have to laugh when I see many people drawing absurd maps of the world that show Ocean running all around the earth, and represent the earth itself as circular, as though it were described by a compass, with Europe and Asia equal in size.34 Let me in a few words give a clear idea of the size and shape of these two continents. 37. The Persians inhabit a country that extends to the southern or Red Sea. North of them are the Medes, then the Saspires, then the Colchians, who go as far as the northern sea, into which the Phasis flows. These four nations fill the area from one sea to the other.35 38. West of this region, two large peninsulas, which I will now describe, extend to the sea. One of them, starting at the river Phasis on the north, stretches along the Black Sea and the Hellespont to Sigeum in the Troad. Its southern coast extends along the Mediterranean coast from the Myriandic Gulf, near Phoenicia, to Cape Tropium. This peninsula contains thirty different nations. 39. The other peninsula starts from Persia and extends to the Red Sea. It contains Persia, then Assyria, and then Arabia.Though there is no physical discontinuity, Asia ends by convention at the Arabian gulf, which Darius connected by a canal to the Nile.36 Between Persia and Phoenicia lies an extensive tract of land; and from Phoenicia the peninsula I am describing runs along the Mediterranean coast through Palestinian Syria to Egypt, where it ends.This peninsula contains only three nations. 40. So much for the Asian territory west of Persia. Eastward, beyond the Persians, Medes, Saspires, and Colchians, Asia is bounded on the south by the Red Sea, and on the north by the Caspian Sea and the river Araxes, which flows toward the rising sun.37 The continent is inhabited as far as India; further east it is uninhabited, and no one can say what it is like.38 34. With this sarcastic attack on the symmetrical and theory-based world-maps of archaic Greece (none are extant, but the writings of Ionians like Hecataeus allow us to reconstruct them), Herodotus launches into his own more empirical account of global geography, an excursus that will occupy him through Chapter 45. The idea of a symmetry between “Europe” and “Asia” suggests a world-map divided into northern and southern halves, with Libya ­(modern Africa) not yet considered a separate continent (see 2.16 and note). 35.That is, from the Indian Ocean (“Red Sea”) to the Black Sea (here called the “northern sea”). 36. By “Arabian gulf ” Herodotus denotes the modern Red Sea. For the problem of where (or whether) Libya was divided from Asia, see 2.16 and note. For Darius’ canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, begun by the pharaoh Herodotus calls Necos, see 2.158. 37. “Red Sea” is again Herodotus’ term for the modern Indian Ocean. For the Araxes see 1.202. Herodotus, like many Greeks of his day, thought that Europe constituted the northern, rather than western, region of the globe, and so used the Araxes (a roughly east-west axis) as part of the boundary between it and Asia. 38. Compare 3.98, where Herodotus claimed that India was bounded on the east by a desert.The Greeks would eventually learn of peoples further east than India, but not until the Roman era.

216

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

41. Such, then, are the shape and size of Asia. Libya is part of the second peninsula I mentioned, for it adjoins Egypt;39 Egypt itself forms this peninsula’s narrow neck, the distance from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea being only about 100,000 fathoms (or 1,000 stades); but past this neck, the territory known as Libya is very broad. 42. I am therefore astonished that people have delineated Libya, Asia, and Europe as they have, for these continents differ greatly in size. Europe is as long as the other two combined, and in breadth cannot, it seems to me, be compared to them. As for Libya, we know that it is washed on all sides by the sea except where it joins Asia. This discovery was first made, as far as we know, by the Egyptian king Necos, who, when he stopped excavating the canal between the Nile and the Arabian gulf, sent out a fleet manned by Phoenicians with orders to circumnavigate Libya and return to Egypt and the Mediterranean by way of the Pillars of Heracles.40 Starting from the Red Sea, the Phoenicians sailed into the Indian Ocean. In late autumn they would put ashore, wherever they happened to be, and sow a tract of land with corn. They would then wait for the harvest, reap the corn, and sail on. Two years went by, and in the third they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and returned home. These men maintained—I, for one, do not believe them, though others may—that in circumnavigating Libya they had the sun on their right.41 43. This is how Libya first came to be known, and the next people to give an account of it were the Carthaginians; for Sataspes, son of Teaspis the Achaemenid, did not succeed in circumnavigating Libya, though he had been sent out to do so. But as he dreaded both the length and the loneliness of the voyage, he sailed back, leaving unaccomplished the task his mother had imposed on him.42 For he had raped the virgin daughter of Zopyrus, son of Megabyzus,43 and Xerxes was about 39. The question of whether Libya formed a separate continent was disputed in Herodotus’ day, and Herodotus himself seems not to have made up his mind. He here describes Libya as a promontory of Asia, but at 4.42 just below, he speaks of three continents rather than two. At 2.16–18 he made Egypt (the Nile valley) a dividing line between Asia and Libya. See also 4.45 below where the Nile is adopted by some Greeks, but not others, as a continental boundary. 40. On Necos and his canal see 2.158–59. Scholars are divided on the historicity of his circumnavigation project, but Herodotus’ account contains nothing implausible. Necos used Phoenicians, rather than native Egyptians, for his project because they were the more expert navigators. The Pillars of Heracles are the Straits of Gibraltar. 41. This striking detail has convinced some that the voyage did take place, since a ship sailing westwards, in the southern hemisphere, would indeed have the sun on its right, though no Greek would be able to make sense of the phenomenon. 42. The expedition of Sataspes, which might have gotten as far south as the equator before turning around, is accepted by scholars as historical, though its date is unclear. Xerxes, the Persian king who ordered the voyage, reigned from 484 to 465 B.C. 43. For this Zopyrus, the hero of Darius’ Babylon campaign, see 3.153–60.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

217

to impale him for the crime, when Sataspes’ mother, who was a sister of Darius, begged him off by claiming that she would inflict a penalty even greater than the one he had imposed; she would force Sataspes, she said, to circumnavigate Libya and return to Egypt by way of the Arabian gulf. Xerxes gave his consent; and Sataspes traveled to Egypt, engaged a ship and an Egyptian crew, and set sail for the Pillars of Heracles. After passing through the straits and rounding the Libyan headland known as Cape Soloeis,44 he sailed southward for many months over a vast sea. But when he found that more water than he had already crossed still lay ahead,45 he put about and returned to Egypt. On reaching King Xerxes’ court from Egypt, Sataspes told his story. He claimed that at the farthest point of his voyage the coast was occupied by small men who wore clothes made from the palm tree.46 Whenever he landed, these men would abandon their towns and flee to the mountains. His men, however, did them no harm; they merely entered their towns and took some of their cattle. As for his failure to completely circumnavigate Libya, he laid the blame on his vessel, which he said was held back and could make no further headway. Xerxes, however, refused to believe his story. Exacting the original penalty, he had him impaled for not having accomplished his appointed task. One of Sataspes’ eunuchs, on learning of his death, ran away to Samos with a great deal of his money. This was seized by a certain Samian; though I know the man’s name, I choose to forget it here.47 44. The greater part of Asia was discovered by Darius. Wishing to know where the Indus River (which is the only river but one that produces crocodiles) empties into the sea, he dispatched a party of explorers, including Scylax of Caryanda,48 and others whom he could trust, to sail down the river. These men, setting out from the city of Caspatyrus49 in the district of Pactyica, sailed down the stream in an easterly direction until it reached the sea. There they turned westward, and after a voyage of thirty months reached the place from which the Egyptian king, whom I mentioned earlier, sent the Phoenicians to sail around Libya.50 After this 44. The southern of the two “pillars” forming the Strait of Gibraltar. 45. Presumably he learned this from talking to local inhabitants, but how he or his crew could have communicated with equatorial Africans is unknown. 46. Compare the African expedition of the Nasamonians (2.32), which also encountered men of small stature. 47. In order not to blacken the man’s reputation. 48. Scylax was a Greek navigator from a city subject to the Persians, impressed into Persian service in the late 6th century B.C. Some fragments of his log from the voyage described here are still extant. 49. Location uncertain, but clearly somewhere on the upper end of the Indus valley. 50. That is, Scylax sailed down the Indus to the Indian Ocean, navigated the southern coast of Iran, and sailed up through the Persian Gulf to the north end of the Red Sea.

218

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

voyage, Darius subjugated the Indians and made use of the southern ocean.51 Thus it was discovered that Asia, with the exception of its eastern portion, bears a geographic resemblance to Libya. 45. As for Europe, no one knows whether there is a sea to the east or to the north of it, though in length it is known to be equal to the two other continents combined.52 But I cannot understand why three different women’s names have been given to a single tract, nor why the Egyptian Nile and the Colchian Phasis (or, according to others, the Maeotic Tanais and the Cimmerian Strait) have been fixed upon for their boundaries.53 Nor have I been able to learn who determined their boundaries, or where they got their names. Most Greeks say that Libya was named after a native woman, and Asia after the wife of Prometheus. But the Lydians also lay claim to the latter name and declare that Asia was named not after the wife of Prometheus, but after Asies, the son of Cotys and grandson of Manes, who also gave his name to the tribe called Asias in Sardis. As for Europe, no one knows whether or not it is surrounded by the sea, or where it got its name, unless we say that it came from Europa, the Tyrian woman, and before her time was nameless like the others. But it is clear that Europa was an Asiatic and never visited the country that the Greeks now call Europe, only sailing from Phoenicia to Crete and from Crete to Lycia.54 So much for this subject. We shall in any case continue to use the customary names for these places. 46. The Black Sea region, to which Darius was now leading an army,55 encompasses, with the exception of the Scythians, the most ignorant nations in the world. For we can cite no nation renowned for wisdom, nor any man of repute in 51. Because the Hindu Kush mountains made land travel arduous between India and western Asia, the Persians sought a waterway to connect them with their easternmost province. Nearly two centuries later, Alexander the Great would again attempt to explore and develop this seaway. 52.Taking “Europe” to mean the northern, not the western, portion of the oikoumene¯ (see 4.40 above and note 34). 53. The “three women’s names” refer to Asia, Libya, and Europe, all three derived from the names of mythic heroines (as Herodotus discusses below). The dispute over continental boundaries mentioned here involves the question of whether Libya constituted a third continent (see 2.16 and note). Those who believed it did made the Nile its terminus, and then adopted the Phasis, a roughly east-west-flowing river, as a boundary between Europe and Asia. The alternative scheme envisioned Europe split off from Asia by a north-south axis, formed by the Tanais (Don) River and a line passing through the Straits of Kerch. The latter scheme is adopted by Hippocrates (Airs Waters Places 12), a close contemporary of Herodotus, whereas their predecessor Hecataeus had relied on the former. 54. For Herodotus’ ideas about Europa, see 1.2 and 1.173. In traditional mythology, Europa was carried to Crete by Zeus in the form of a bull. 55. A reminder of the narrative’s main track, from which Herodotus had departed at 4.1.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4 Hyperbor eans

E u r o pe

i an s

Delphi Sparta Inner Sea

Oute r S e a

Libya Atlas Mtns.

e sageta Mas

Cimmerian Caspian Black Sea Bosporus Sea x Ara Hellespont Phasis Athens Medes

Egypt

Asia

Persians Susa

Babylon

rians Bact s anIn du s

di

Pillars of Heracles

ac

Issedones

Lake Maeotis

In

s

Arimaspi ans

es

lt

thr

Ce

Tanais

ter) e (Is b u n Da

219

Arabia N ile

Long-Lived Ethiopians

Red Sea

Arabian Gulf

The world known to Herodotus.

the region, except for the Scythians and Anacharsis.56 The Scythians, on the other hand, have in one respect, and that the most important of all, shown themselves wiser than all other nations, though I do not admire their other customs. They have discovered how to make it impossible for the enemy who invades their country to escape destruction, while they themselves remain entirely out of his reach, unless they wish to engage with him. Having no cities or fortresses, and carrying their dwellings with them wherever they go; accustomed, one and all of them, to shoot from horseback; and depending for food not on agriculture but on their cattle, how could they fail to be unassailable and unconquerable?57 47. They have been helped in this by the nature of their land and its rivers. For the land is level and well-watered, with abundant pasture; and the rivers that run through it are hardly fewer in number than the canals of Egypt. Of these I will mention only those that are well-known and navigable from the sea: they are the Danube58 (which has five mouths), the Tyras, the Hypanis, the Borysthenes, the 56. Anacharsis was one of two Scythian sages who ranked with Solon, Bias, and Thales among the “seven wise men” of the archaic world. For more on his legend, see 4.76–77 below. 57. The mobility of the Scythians will indeed be a critical factor in their success against Darius (4.120–24, e.g.). 58. Called Ister by the Greeks.

220

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

Panticapes, the Hypacyris, the Gerrhus, and the Tanais. I will now describe the courses of these rivers. 48. The Danube, which is the largest river we know of, flows with the same volume summer and winter. It is the westernmost of the Scythian rivers, as well as the largest, since it receives the waters of several tributaries. The tributaries that swell the waters of the Danube are the following: the river called Porata by the Scythians, and by the Greeks Pyretus, the Tiarantus, the Ararus, the Naparis, and the Ordessus. The first of these is a large river, and the most easterly of the five. The Tiarantus is smaller and farther to the west. The Ararus, the Naparis, and the Ordessus flow into the Danube between the two. Thus the Scythian rivers that rise in the country help to fill the Danube, while the Maris, which also empties into it, flows from the country of the Agathyrsi. 49. Three large streams, the Atlas, the Auras, and the Tibisis, which run northerly from the heights of Haemus, flow into it. From Thrace and the country of the Crobyzian Thracians, the Athrus, the Noes, and the Artanes flow into it. From Paeonia and Mount Rhodopa, the Scios, cutting through the Haemus mountains, flows into it. From Illyria, the Angrus, running northward through the Triballic plain, flows into the Brongus, which flows into the Danube. Thus the Danube is increased by these two large rivers. From the country beyond the Umbrians, the Carpis and the Alpis, two rivers running northward, flow into it. For the Danube, rising in the land of the Celts, Europe’s westernmost inhabitants after the Cynetes,59 flows across the entire continent until it empties into the sea along Scythia’s flank. 50. All these tributaries, then, and many others, swell the stream of the Danube, which thereby becomes the greatest of rivers, though if we discount the tributaries and compare each stream singly, the Nile is the greater of the two, since no river or spring flows into it to increase its volume. It seems to me that the Danube maintains the same volume summer and winter because in winter its volume is normal, or slightly above normal, since the land receives little rain, but constant snow. In summer, the snow that fell abundantly in winter begins to melt and flows into the Danube from all quarters, and the water from it, combined with the rains, which in summer are frequent and heavy, increases its volume. Thus the loss of volume that occurs in summer, when the sun’s attractive power is greater, is offset by the increased volumes in the tributaries that flow into it, with the result that to all appearances the river’s volume remains constant throughout the year.60 59. See 2.33 and note. Herodotus greatly mistakes the location of the Danube’s source. 60. Compare 2.24–26, where Herodotus used similar meteorological arguments to explain the curious summer “flooding” (in his theory, really an absence of evaporation) of the Nile. At 2.34 Herodotus pairs the Nile and the Danube as though they were mirror images in southern and northern regions.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

221

51. The Danube, then, is one of the great Scythian rivers; the next river, the Tyras, runs southward from its source in a large lake, which forms the boundary between Scythia and the land of the Neurians. Greeks called Tyritae have established a colony at its mouth. 52. The third river, the Hypanis, rises from a large Scythian lake, around which wild horses graze. The lake is called, quite properly, the Mother of Hypanis. Rising from the lake, the Hypanis, for the distance of a five days’ sail, is shallow and fresh. But from there to the sea, a four days’ sail, its water is terribly bitter. For a bitter spring empties into it—so bitter that, though it is quite small and the Hypanis large, it taints the entire river. The spring rises where the territory of the Scythian farmers borders on that of the Alazones. It takes its name from the region in which it rises: “Exampaeus” in the Scythian language; “Sacred Ways” in Greek. The Tyras and the Hypanis flow close to one another in the country of the Alizones, but afterward diverge, leaving a wide space between them. 53. The fourth of the Scythian rivers is the Borysthenes. After the Danube it is the largest of them all and in my opinion is the most productive, not only of the Scythian rivers, but of all rivers except the Egyptian Nile, with which no stream can be compared. Its banks have the finest and most fertile pasturage for cattle, and it contains an abundance of the finest fish. Its water is very pleasant to drink, and its stream is clear, though all the rivers near it are muddy. The land by its banks produces the richest harvests and, where no grain has been sown, the most luxuriant grass. Great quantities of salt crystallize spontaneously at the mouth of the river, which also produces, among many other remarkable things, a large spineless fish, the sturgeon, which is good for pickling. Flowing from north to south, the Borysthenes is known as far inland as the place called Gerrhus, which is a forty days’ sail from the sea; beyond that point, no one can say where it flows. It enters the territory of the Scythian farmers after running across an uninhabited region. The farmers live along its banks for the distance of a ten days’ sail. This river and the Nile are the only ones of which I do not know the sources, and I doubt they are known to any of the Greeks. As the Borysthenes approaches the sea, it is joined by the Hypanis, which empties into the same marsh. The tongue of land between these rivers is called the Cape of Hippolaus. Here there is a temple of Demeter, and opposite the temple, on the Hypanis, lies the settlement of the Borysthenites.61 So much for these streams. 54.The fifth river, the Panticapes, also rises from a lake; it flows through Hylaea in a southerly direction and empties into the Borysthenes.The land between it and the Borysthenes is occupied by the Scythian farmers.

61.The Greek city of Olbia, where Demeter was indeed worshiped (though no remains of her temple have been found).

222

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

55. The sixth river, the Hypacyris, rises from a lake, and runs directly through the territory of the Scythian nomads. It reaches the sea near the city of Carcinitis, leaving Hylaea and the so-called Racecourse of Achilles to the right. 56.The seventh river, the Gerrhus, splits off from the Borysthenes in the region where that river begins to be known; from there it passes into Gerrhus, the region after which it is named. It forms a boundary between the Nomadic and the Royal Scythians, and runs into the Hypacyris. 57. The eighth river, the Tanais, has its source far up country in a large lake, and empties into an even larger one, Lake Maeotis, which forms the boundary between the Royal Scythians and the Sauromatae. The Tanais is joined by yet another river, called the Hyrgis. 58. These, then, are the most notable of the rivers with which Scythia is provided. The grass that the land produces is more apt to cause bile in cattle than any other we know of, as can be seen when the carcasses are cut open.62 59. These, then, are the Scythians’ most important natural resources. We will now consider their customs. The only gods they worship are Hestia (their most important deity), Zeus, and Earth, whom they consider to be the wife of Zeus; and after these Apollo, Celestial Aphrodite, Heracles, and Ares. These gods are worshiped by the whole nation. The royal Scythians also offer sacrifice to Poseidon. In the Scythian language Hestia is Tabiti, Zeus (quite correctly, in my ­opinion) Papaeus,63 Earth Api, Apollo Oetosyrus, Celestial Aphrodite Argimpasa, Poseidon Thagimasadas. It is not their custom to make statues, or to erect altars or temples, except in honor of Ares. 60. The manner of their sacrifices is everywhere and in every case the same. The victim stands with its forefeet tied together, and the person who is about to sacrifice gives the rope a pull from behind and throws the animal down; as it falls, the sacrificer invokes the god to whom he is offering; then he puts a noose around the victim’s neck, pushes a small stick under the rope, and twists it until the animal is choked. No fire is lighted, no first-fruits offered, no libation poured.64 As soon as the animal is strangled, the sacrificer skins it and proceeds to boil the flesh. 61. As there is no wood in Scythia, the natives have devised the following method for boiling the flesh. After skinning the victim, they remove all the bones and put the flesh into a Scythian cauldron if they happen to have one. (These 62. A second reference by Herodotus to dissection (see also 3.108). Medical and biological science was still in its infancy in Herodotus’ day but advancing rapidly, as can be seen in the writings of Hippocrates, his contemporary. 63. To Herodotus the name Papaeus seems appropriate for Zeus because it suggests Greek words for “father.” 64. All three of these rituals were standard for Greek sacrifices. A libation is a liquid offering (usually of wine), poured on the ground in honor of a god.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

223

c­ auldrons resemble the mixing bowls of Lesbos, except that they are much larger.) Placing the bones beneath the cauldron, they kindle them, and thus boil the meat. If they do not have a cauldron, they place all the flesh in the victim’s belly, pour in a little water, and boil it over the bone-fire. The bones burn very well,65 and the belly easily contains the flesh when it has been stripped off. In this way an ox, or any other sacrificial animal, is made to stew itself. When the meat is cooked, the sacrificer offers a portion of the flesh and entrails by casting it on the ground before him. They sacrifice all kinds of cattle, but most commonly horses. 62. That is how they offer victims to all their gods except Ares, whose worship takes the following form. In every district, at the seat of government, there is a temple of Ares. It consists of a pile of brushwood, three stades in length and breadth and somewhat less in height.66 At the top there is a square platform, accessible on one side but precipitous on the other three. Each year 150 wagonloads of sticks are added to the pile, which is constantly settling because of the rains. Planted atop each mound is an ancient iron scimitar, which serves as the image of Ares. Annual sacrifices of cattle and horses are made to this scimitar, to which more victims are offered than to any of their other gods. Of all the men taken in war, they sacrifice one out of every hundred, though the ceremony differs from that used in the sacrifice of animals. Wine is poured on the victim’s head, after which his throat is cut over a bowl; the bowl is then carried to the top of the pile, and the blood poured upon the scimitar. Meanwhile, down below, they cut off the right arms of all the slaughtered men and toss them into the air. After the other victims are slain, the worshipers depart, leaving hands and arms where they fell, separate from the bodies. 63. These, then, are the observances of the Scythians with respect to sacrifice. They never use pigs for that purpose, nor are they willing even to breed them in any part of their country.67 64. In what concerns war, their customs are as follow. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he kills. He carries back to the king the heads of all the men he slays, since this entitles him to a share of the spoils; if he fails to produce a head, he receives nothing. To strip the head of its skin he makes a cut around the ears and shakes the skull out. Then he scrapes the flesh from the scalp with the rib of an ox, and when the scalp is clean he works it in his fingers until it 65. Untrue, especially in the case of an animal freshly killed. In fact it is usually dried dung that is used as fuel by cattle-herding nomads (but this would have spoiled the point that Herodotus so cherishes, “the ox . . . is made to stew itself ”). 66. Such a quantity of wood (forming a stack more than 500 yards high) is unthinkable in a country nearly barren of trees. 67. Pigs, unlike cows and sheep, cannot be easily herded from place to place, and thus were avoided by ancient nomadic peoples. This in part explains the prohibition against pork in the dietary laws of Islam and Judaism.

224

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

is supple, after which he uses it as a handkerchief. He hangs these handkerchiefs from his horse’s bridle and takes pride in them; for the man who possesses the greatest number is judged the bravest. Many make themselves cloaks, like the ones peasants wear, by stitching a number of these scalps together. Many also flay the arms of dead enemies and use the skin, fingernails and all, as a covering for their quivers. (It turns out that the skin of a man is thick and translucent, and as white as almost any skin.) Many even flay an entire body, and stretch the skin on a wooden frame that they carry about with them when they ride. These are the Scythian customs with regard to skins. 65. They treat the skulls—not all of them, but those of their worst enemies— as follows. They saw off the entire skull below the eyebrows and clean out the inside. If a man is poor, he stretches a piece of rawhide around it on the outside; if he is rich, he also gilds the inside; in either case the skull is used as a drinkingcup.68 This is also done with the skulls of their kinsmen, if in the course of a feud they have overpowered them in the presence of the king. When distinguished foreigners visit them, these skulls are displayed, and the host explains that these men, though his kinsmen, made war on him, and that he got the better of them—all of this being regarded as a proof of courage. 66. Once a year, in each district, the governor mixes a bowl of wine, from which every Scythian who has killed an enemy has a right to drink; those who have not done so are not allowed to taste the wine, but sit apart in disgrace; indeed, this is the most shameful thing that can happen to them. Those who have slain a great many enemies have two cups, and drink from both. 67. Scythia has a great many soothsayers, who prophesy by means of willow wands. They bring great bundles of these wands, which they lay on the ground; then they untie them, place each wand by itself, and utter their prophecy. While they are pronouncing it, they gather the rods into a bundle again as before. This is the traditional mode of prophecy in Scythia; but the Enarees, or effeminates,69 use a different method, which they say they were taught by Aphrodite. They take a piece of the inner bark of the linden tree and split it into three strips, which they keep twining and untwining while they prophesy. 68. Whenever a Scythian king falls ill, he sends for three of the most distinguished soothsayers, who prophesy in the way I have described. The seers generally say that such and such a person (whose name they mention) has sworn falsely by the royal hearth. (This is the customary oath among the Scythians when 68. A skull-cup of exactly this type has been found, but its authenticity is doubtful; a hoaxer may have fashioned it to resemble Herodotus’ description. Images in Scythian art do show the practice of displaying human heads as trophies. 69. For Herodotus’ explanation of the Enarees, a caste of Scythian men who dressed and behaved like women, see 1.105.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

225

they wish to swear with great solemnity.) As soon as the man accused has been arrested, he is brought into the king’s presence. The soothsayers tell him that their prophetic powers have revealed that he has sworn falsely by the royal hearth, and that this is why the king is ill. The man denies the charge and vehemently protests his innocence, whereupon the king sends for six new soothsayers. If they, too, when they have exercised their prophetic skill, convict the accused of perjury, he is immediately beheaded, and his property is divided by lot among the first three soothsayers. If, however, the new six acquit him, others are sent for, and, if necessary, many more besides. And if the majority acquit the man, the original three must be put to death. 69. Their method of execution is the following. A wagon is loaded with brushwood, and oxen are harnessed to it. The soothsayers, with their feet tied together, their hands bound behind their backs, and their mouths gagged, are thrust into the midst of the brushwood. The wood is kindled, and the oxen are startled and put to flight. They are often burnt to death together with the soothsayers, though others are only scorched when the wagon poles are burnt through. Soothsayers, when designated “false prophets,” are burnt to death in this way for other crimes beside the one I have described. And when the king puts one of them to death, he does not spare his sons; all the male offspring are slain with the father, though the females are not harmed. 70. The Scythians use the following ceremony when swearing an oath. Pouring wine into a large earthen bowl, the parties to the oath, having pricked their skin with a knife or an awl, drop some of their blood into the wine. They then dip into the bowl a scimitar, some arrows, a battle-axe, and a javelin, and recite a number of prayers. Finally, the contracting parties and their chief followers drink from the bowl. 71. The burial place of the Scythian kings is in the land of the Gerrhi, who live at the point where the Borysthenes is first navigable.70 When their king dies, the Scythians dig a large square grave.71 When it is ready, they take up the king’s corpse, and, having opened the belly, clean out the inside and fill the cavity with chopped galingale, incense, parsley seed, and anise; then they sew up the opening, coat the entire body with wax, place it on a wagon, and carry it about to all the different tribes. Each tribe, when it receives the corpse, follows the customs of the Royal Scythians: every man chops off a piece of his ear, shaves his head, 70. The location is uncertain, since the course of the river Borysthenes (modern Dnieper) has shifted over time. 71. Herodotus’ description of Scythian burial practices can be compared with the evidence of the kurgans or burial mounds excavated today in former Scythian lands. Aldo Corcella summarizes the comparison as follows (Asheri, Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, Oxford, 2007, p. 632): “Many elements reported by Herodotus have found confirmation. . . . No single tomb, however, mirrors precisely the grandiose picture depicted by Herodotus.”

226

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

makes a cut all around his arm, lacerates his forehead and nose, and thrusts an arrow through his left hand. Then the guardians of the corpse carry it to another Scythian tribe, followed by all those who have already received it.When they have visited all the Scythian settlements, they arrive at the burial place in the land of the Gerrhi, the remotest Scythian tribe. The corpse is placed in the grave upon a mattress. Spears are fixed in the ground on either side of the corpse, and poles stretched across above it to form a roof, which is covered with a thatching of reeds. After strangling one of the king’s concubines, as well as his wine-pourer, his cook, his groom, his body-man, his messenger, and his horses, they bury them all in the open space around the corpse of the king, along with gold cups and a selection of his other treasures. (The Scythians use no silver or bronze.) This done, they raise a mound above the grave, all of them vying with each other to make it as tall as possible. 72. When a year has passed, another ceremony takes place. The Scythians take fifty of the best of the king’s remaining servants. (These are native Scythians, for the king has no bought slaves but chooses people to wait on him from among his subjects.) They strangle fifty of these servants and fifty of the king’s finest horses. When their bowels are removed and the cavities cleaned, their bodies are stuffed with chaff and sewn up. Then they cut a number of wheels in half, arrange them in pairs, with the concave side uppermost, and fix them to posts driven into the ground, two for each half-wheel. Then shafts of wood are driven lengthwise through the stuffed horses from tail to neck, and the horses are mounted upon the wheels. The front pair of wheels supports the horse’s shoulders, the rear pair the belly and hindquarters; the legs are left dangling in mid-air. The horses are bitted and bridled, and the reins pulled taut and fastened to pegs. The fifty strangled youths are then mounted on the fifty horses as follows. Shafts of wood are passed through their bodies, parallel to the spine, as far as the neck. The lower end of the shaft is fixed in a socket in the shaft that runs lengthwise through the horse. After arranging the riders in a circle around the tomb, the mourners depart. 73. This is how they bury their kings. When an ordinary person dies, the nearest relatives lay the corpse in a wagon and take it around to their friends. Each family in turn entertains them with a banquet, and serves the corpse a portion of all that is set before the others. This is done for forty days, and then the body is buried. After a burial, the Scythians purify themselves by washing their heads with soap, and cleansing their bodies as follows. Leaning three sticks against one another, they stretch woolen cloths around them, which they arrange to fit as closely as possible. Inside the tent they set a dish on which they place a number of red-hot stones. 74. Hemp grows in Scythia; the plant resembles flax, but is much coarser and taller. It grows wild and is also cultivated.The Thracians make garments from it that

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

227

closely resemble linen ones. Only an expert could distinguish between the two, and anyone who has never seen a garment made of hemp will think it is made of linen. 75. The Scythians take some of this hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw it onto the red-hot stones. It immediately smokes, giving out a vapor that no Greek steam bath could surpass; the Scythians, delighted, howl with joy.72 This is their substitute for a water bath; for they never wash their bodies with water. The women grind cypress, cedar, and frankincense on a rough stone, mix the powder into a thick paste by adding a little water, and plaster it all over their bodies and faces. It imparts a sweet odor to them; and when they remove the plaster the next day, their skin is clean and glossy. 76. The Scythians shun foreign customs,73 particularly those of the Greeks, as the careers of Anacharsis, and, more recently, Scyles, have shown. Anacharsis,74 after he had traveled widely and given many proofs of his wisdom, was on his way home to Scythia; and as he sailed through the Hellespont, he touched at Cyzicus. Finding the inhabitants celebrating a magnificent festival in honor of the Mother of the Gods,75 he made a vow that if he got home safe and sound he would sacrifice to the goddess exactly as he had seen this done in Cyzicus, and would celebrate a night-festival in her honor. On his arrival in Scythia, he traveled to Hylaea (the forest with all kinds of trees, that lies near the Racecourse of Achilles) and there fulfilled his vow, going through all the sacred rites with the drum in his hand and the images fastened to him. One of the Scythians, catching sight of him, went to tell Saulius, the king, what he had seen. Saulius then came in person, and when he saw Anacharsis performing these rites, he drew his bow and shot him dead. And to this day, if anyone asks about Anacharsis, the Scythians deny that they have ever heard of him—and only because he traveled to Greece and adopted foreign ways. I heard, however, from Tymnes, the steward of Ariapithes,76 that Anacharsis was the uncle of the Scythian king Idanthyrsus, 72. Since hemp is another name for cannabis or marijuana, the effect Herodotus describes here is intoxication rather than (as a Greek might assume) the pleasure of a vapor bath. 73. In this they are similar to the Egyptians (see 2.79). 74. A Scythian “wise man,” according to Greek legend (see 4.46 above and note 56). Many Greek stories about Anacharsis, and a set of letters purportedly written by him, are preserved, but Herodotus’ information comes from a unique source. 75. The Great Mother, or Mother of the Gods, sometimes called Cybele, had an important cult center in Greek Cyzicus, though her rites came to the Greek world from Anatolia. Her rites were orgiastic and ecstatic in nature, and thus very alien to Scythian culture (see 4.79 below, where the Scythians are said to reject the cult of Dionysus because it “drives men mad”). 76. An unusual instance of Herodotus naming an individual as his source of information. Herodotus seems to have traveled to Exampaeus, on the Borysthenes River, but it is not clear how or when he went there (see 4.81 and note 85).

228

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

and the son of Gnurus, grandson of Lycus, and great-grandson of Spargapithes. So if Anacharsis was really a member of this family, let him know that he died at the hands of his brother. For Idanthyrsus was a son of Saulius, and it was Saulius who killed Anacharsis. 77. I have heard another story about Anacharsis from the Peloponnesians. They say that he was sent abroad by the king of the Scythians to acquire some knowledge of Greece, and that on his return home he told the king that all the Greeks were too busy to pursue wisdom, with the exception of the Spartans, who were the only ones able to engage in a sensible conversation. A jest, surely, which the Greeks have invented for their own amusement!77 But there is no doubt that Anacharsis was killed in the way I have described, for adopting foreign ways and consorting with the Greeks. 78. Many years later, Scyles78 suffered a similar fate. Scyles was the son of the Scythian king Ariapithes. His mother, who was not a native Scythian but came from Istria,79 taught him to speak and read Greek. Eventually Ariapithes was treacherously slain by Spargapithes, the king of the Agathyrsi, whereupon Scyles succeeded to the throne and married Opoea, his father’s wife. (Opoea was a Scythian by birth and had borne Ariapithes a son named Oricus.) Though he reigned over the Scythians, Scyles was by no means satisfied with the ­Scythian way of life, but was attracted, as a result of the education his mother had given him, to Greek manners and customs. He therefore made it his practice, whenever he led the Scythian army to the town of the Borysthenites,80 who claim to have come from Miletus originally, to leave the army outside the city walls and enter the town by himself. When the gates had been barred behind him, he would remove his Scythian clothes and don Greek garments, in which he would walk about the marketplace, without guards or attendants. (The townspeople kept watch at the gates, lest any of the Scythians catch sight of him thus arrayed.) Throughout his stay he lived exactly like the Greeks, and even offered sacrifices to the gods in the Greek manner. After a month or more spent in this way, he would change back into his Scythian clothes and depart for home. He made several such visits, and even built himself a house there and married a native woman.

77. A perceptive comment. Much of the Anacharsis literature is, indeed, Hellenic self-satire. 78. Otherwise unknown, though a ring with the legend “of Scyles” has been found near the town from which Scyles’ mother supposedly came. Scyles was a near contemporary of Herodotus, to judge by the royal personages he was associated with, and the events in these chapters probably took place around the middle of the 5th century B.C. 79. Istria (sometimes spelled Histria) was a small Greek city near the mouth of the Danube. 80. Olbia, a Greek city.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

229

79. But he was destined to end badly,81 and the occasion of his downfall was the following. He conceived a desire to be initiated in the Bacchic mysteries, and was on the point of beginning the rites when an ominous event occurred. The house I lately mentioned, that he had built in the city—a large and costly building, surrounded with sphinxes and griffins carved in white marble—was struck by a thunderbolt from heaven and burnt to the ground. Scyles, however, went ahead and was initiated. Now the Scythians reproach the Greeks for Bacchic frenzy; for they deny the propriety of their inventing a god who drives men mad. So as soon as Scyles was initiated, one of the Borysthenites went to the Scythians and said, “You mock us because we celebrate the rites of Bacchus and are possessed by the god. But now the god has taken possession of your king, who is under his influence and has taken leave of his senses. If you don’t believe me, come with me, and I will show him to you.” The Scythian chiefs went with the man, who brought them into the city and placed them secretly on the top of a tower. Scyles soon passed by with a band of revelers, frenzied like the rest, and was seen by the Scythians. Deeply troubled, they departed and told the entire army what they had seen. 80. Later, when Scyles was on his way home, the Scythians revolted from him, choosing as their leader his brother Octamasades, the son of Teres’ daughter. When Scyles learned what was happening and the reason for it, he fled to Thrace. Octamasades marched after him with an army, and was met at the Danube by the Thracian forces. Just as the two armies were about to join battle, Sitalces82 sent Octamasades the following message: “Why must we test one another in battle? You are my sister’s son, and you have my brother with you. Give him back to me, and I will give Scyles back to you.” (Sitalces’ brother had fled from Thrace and taken refuge with Octamasades.) Octamasades agreed to the proposal, surrendered his own uncle to Sitalces, and obtained his brother Scyles in exchange. Sitalces took his brother away with him, but Octamasades beheaded Scyles on the spot. This shows how strictly the Scythians uphold their own customs, and how severely they punish anyone who adopts foreign ways. 81. I was unable to obtain accurate information about the size of the Scythian population. Instead I heard conflicting accounts, some maintaining that the Scythians are numerous, others that they are few for such a powerful nation. My informants did, however, put the following piece of evidence before my eyes.83 There is a place called Exampaeus between the Borysthenes and the Hypanis. 81. On this Herodotean turn of phrase see 1.8 and note 17. 82. King of the Odrysian Thracians, still on his throne at the time Herodotus’ work was in circulation. 83. The language here implies that Herodotus saw the bowl himself, though some interpreters dispute this. See note to 4.3 on the issue of Herodotus’ travels in Scythia.

230

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

I mentioned it a little earlier, when I spoke of its bitter spring, which rises there, flows into the Hypanis and makes the water of that river undrinkable. In Exampaeus there is a bronze bowl six times as large as the bowl Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus, dedicated at the mouth of the Black Sea.84 Those who have never seen that bowl will understand me better if I say that the Scythian bowl can easily hold 600 amphoras,85 and is six fingerbreadths thick. According to the local inhabitants, it was made from arrowheads. When one of their kings, Ariantas, wished to know how many Scythians there were, he ordered them all, on pain of death, to bring him a single arrowhead. An enormous fortune in arrowheads was brought in, and Ariantas decided to create something with them that he might leave as a memorial. He had the bowl made of them,86 and dedicated it at Exampaeus. This was all that I could learn concerning the number of the Scythians. 82. Scythia has no marvels except its rivers, which are larger and more numerous than those of any other country. There is, however, one other thing worth mentioning besides the rivers and the vastness of the plain. On a rock by the river Tyras they show visitors a footprint of Heracles. It resembles the print of a man’s foot, but is two cubits long. So much for this subject. I will now resume the story I set out to tell.87 83. While Darius was preparing to invade Scythia and sending messengers in all directions with his commands, some being required to furnish troops, others to supply ships, and still others to bridge the Thracian Bosporus,88 his brother Artabanus pleaded with him to abandon the campaign, arguing that the Scythians were hard to get at. But the advice, though sound, failed to move Darius.89

84. Pausanias, a Spartan leader of the early 5th century B.C., will figure prominently in Book 9 of Herodotus’ Histories, but there is no mention there of his dedicating a bowl. We learn from other sources that the bowl commemorated the Greek victories over Persia in 480–479 B.C. 85. The same capacity as that of the silver bowl dedicated by Croesus at Delphi (see 1.51 and note 55). Those who disbelieve Herodotus’ claims to have visited Exampaeus argue that a bowl this size, cast of bronze, would be beyond the reach of ancient technology; but that thesis is hard to prove, and Herodotus may simply have exaggerated the size. 86. That is, he melted down the arrowheads to furnish the bronze for the bowl. 87. Herodotus here announces his return to the main narrative path, left behind at 4.3, though he will continue to make digressions on the lands and peoples of Scythia as the campaign of Darius goes forward. 88. The strait still known as Bosporus today, at the entrance to the Black Sea. Herodotus calls it “Thracian” to distinguish it from the Cimmerian Bosporus (Straits of Kerch). 89. Artabanus will argue similarly against the plans of Xerxes, in two important passages of Book 7 (Chapters 10 and 46 to 51). Such “wise advisors” are routinely ignored by Herodotean kings (compare Croesus and Solon in 1.29–33).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

231

Artabanus gave up trying to persuade him; and Darius, when his preparations were complete, marched from Susa at the head of his army. 84. It was then that a Persian named Oeobazus, the father of three sons, all of them serving in the army, asked Darius to let one of his sons remain behind. Replying as if to a friend making a modest request, Darius said that he would leave them all behind. Oeobazus was overjoyed, expecting that his sons would be excused from serving; but the king commanded his officers to put all three of Oeobazus’ sons to death.90 Thus they were all left behind, but with their throats cut. 85. Marching from Susa, Darius reached Chalcedon on the Bosporus, where the bridge was, and then took ship and sailed to the Cyanean rocks, which, according to the Greeks, used to float. Taking his seat in the temple, he looked out over the Black Sea—a sight well worth seeing. No sea in the world is as marvelous; it is 11,100 stades long and 330 wide at its widest part. Its mouth is 4 stades wide, and the Bosporus, the strait that leads into it (and where the bridge was) is 120 stades long. The Bosporus joins the Propontis, which is 500 stades wide and 1,400 long, and flows into the Hellespont, a strait 400 stades long but less than seven wide.91 The Hellespont opens into the wide sea called the Aegean. 86. These measurements were arrived at in the following way. In a summer day a ship can cover a distance of roughly 70,000 fathoms, and in a night 60,000. It takes nine days and eight nights to sail from the mouth of the Black Sea to the river Phasis, which is the sea’s greatest length. This makes a distance of 1,110,000 fathoms, or 11,100 stades. It takes three days and two nights to sail from Sindica to Themiscyra on the river Thermodon, which is the sea’s broadest part. This makes a distance of 330,000 fathoms or 3,300 stades. These are the measurements (and my method of arriving at them) of the Black Sea, the Bosporus, and the Hellespont. The Black Sea is also connected with a lake nearly as large as itself, called Maeotis,92 or Mother of the Black Sea. 90. A similar story is later told of Xerxes (see 7.38–39). 91. “Hellespont” was the Greek term for the Dardanelles, “Propontis” for the Sea of Marmara. The name “Black Sea” (here and throughout this volume) has been translated in the text from the Greek “Pontus” or “Euxine Sea,” in an effort to help readers maintain their geographical bearings. 92. The Sea of Azov, which is in fact far smaller than the Black Sea. Most of the measurements given by Herodotus in this and the previous chapter are larger than they should be, but some by only a small amount: “The Bosporus is approximately 780 meters wide at its narrowest point, against the 710–840 given by Herodotus . . . The sea of Marmara is approximately 80 kilometers wide, against the 90–100 given by Herodotus. . . . The error is much greater in the case of the Black Sea: From the Bosporus to the Phasis . . . the distance is not much greater than 1,200 kilometers, whereas Herodotus reckoned 2,000–3,000” (A. Corcella, in Asheri, Commentary, pp. 642–43). Herodotean distances are given as a range because of uncertainties about the exact length of his stade.

232

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

87. After Darius had seen the Black Sea, he sailed back to the bridge that had been designed for him by a Samian named Mandrocles.93 Then he surveyed the Bosporus, where he erected two white marble columns, on one of which was an inscription in Assyrian characters listing the names of all the nations he was leading; the inscription on the other was in Greek. His army was drawn from all the nations of his empire; this force (including the cavalry but excluding the navy) numbered 700,000 men. The fleet consisted of 600 ships.94 At a later period, the people of Byzantium removed these columns and used them in their own city— with the exception of a single stone—to build the altar of Orthosian Artemis. That stone, covered with Assyrian characters, was left near the temple of Dionysus in Byzantium. The spot where Darius bridged the Bosporus was, by my own reckoning, midway between Byzantium and the temple that stands at the mouth of the strait. 88. Darius was so pleased with the bridge that he bestowed upon its engineer, Mandrocles of Samos, ten of every kind of customary gift. By way of offering first-fruits of these gifts, Mandrocles had a picture painted that showed the entire bridge, with Darius sitting on his throne and his army crossing over. He dedicated this painting in the temple of Hera, with the following inscription: On bridging the Bosporus, rich in fish, To Hera Mandrocles dedicated this memorial. His labor, admired by Darius the King, Won for himself a crown, and for Samos renown. Such was the memorial left by the architect of the bridge. 89. Darius, after rewarding Mandrocles, crossed over into Europe.95 Before he departed, he ordered the Ionians to sail into the Black Sea as far as the Danube, where they were to bridge the river and await his coming. (The Ionians, Aeolians, and Hellespontines were in charge of his navy.) So the naval contingent, passing through the Cyanean Islands, headed straight for the Danube, sailed upstream for two days to the point where the river’s tributaries branch

93. More on Mandrocles and the bridge below at 4.88. Samians were known for their skill at engineering (see 3.60 and notes). The Bosporus bridge, like the one later built by Xerxes at the Hellespont (see 7.36), must have consisted of a row of ships anchored in the straits and lashed together with cables. 94. The first of several wildly inflated estimates Herodotus will give for the size of Persian naval and land forces. It is noteworthy that the number 600 recurs often enough that it seems to be a “stock” figure (see 6.91, 6.95). 95. However the continents of Europe and Asia were defined by the Greeks (see 4.45 and note 52), it was clear to all that the straits of Bosporus and Hellespont separated one from the other.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

233

off, and there built the bridge.96 Darius, meanwhile, after crossing the Bosporus bridge, marched through Thrace. On reaching the sources of the river Tearus, he encamped for three days. 90. The Tearus is said by those who dwell near its banks to be the best river in the world for its healing powers, especially in cases of scabies, whether human or equine. It rises from thirty-eight springs, some of them cold, others hot, and all flowing from the same rock, which lies a two days’ journey both from Heraeum, near Perinthus, and from Apollonia on the Black Sea. The Tearus is a tributary of the river Contadesus. The Contadesus runs into the Agrianes, and the Agrianes into the Hebrus. The Hebrus empties into the sea near Aenus. 91. Encamped at the Tearus, and charmed by the river, Darius erected another pillar close to its source with this inscription: “The springs of the Tearus, which produce the best and most beautiful water, was visited, on his march against Scythia, by the best and noblest of men, Darius, son of Hystaspes, king of Persia and the whole continent.” 92. Marching from there, Darius came to another river, the Artescus, which flows through the country of the Odrysians. Here he pointed to a certain spot where every man in the army was ordered to place a stone as he passed by. When the order was obeyed, he continued his march, leaving great hills of stones behind him. 93. On his way to the Danube, the first people he subdued were the Getae, who think themselves immortal. The Thracians of Salmydessus and those who live above Apollonia and Mesembria, known as the Scyrmidiae and Nipsaeans, surrendered without a struggle; but the Getae, who are the bravest and most just of the Thracians, indulged in senseless pride and were at once enslaved. 94. About their own immortality the Getae believe the following: that they never really die, but that when a person departs this life he goes to Salmoxis, a god who is also called Gebeleizis by some of them. Every five years they send one of their number, chosen by lot, as a messenger to Salmoxis, with instructions to bring him their various requests. They dispatch him in the following way. A number of them, each holding three javelins, take up a suitable position, while others, grasping the messenger by his hands and feet, swing him up in the air so as to make him fall on the points of the javelins. If when impaled he dies, they think that the god is favorably inclined to them; if not, they blame the messenger, who they say is a wicked man, and send off another in his place. They entrust their requests to the messenger while he is still alive. This same tribe of Thracians, in response to thunder and lightning, shoot arrows up into the sky and threaten the god, believing there to be no other god except their own. 96. Another pontoon bridge, consisting of ships anchored side by side and lashed together; it could be easily dismantled by having some of the ships weigh anchor (see 4.97 below).

234

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

95.The Greeks who live on the Hellespont and the Black Sea believe that Salmoxis was in reality a man, and that he lived at Samos, where he was the slave of Pythagoras, son of Monesarchus.97 After gaining his freedom he amassed a great fortune and returned to his own country. Now while theThracians at that time were living in great poverty and ignorance, Salmoxis was conversant with the Ionian way of life and with manners more cultivated than those in use among the Thracians, having associated with the sophist Pythagoras, by no means the weakest wise man among the Greeks. He therefore built a hall to which he used to invite the chief Thracians. Entertaining them sumptuously, he taught them that neither he nor they, his guests, nor any of their descendants, would ever die, but would go to a place where they would live in the perpetual enjoyment of every blessing. While Salmoxis was entertaining the Thracians and imparting this doctrine, he was constructing an underground chamber; and when it was ready, he disappeared. Having descended to his underground room, he lived there for three years. The Thracians missed and mourned for him as if he were dead; then in the fourth year he reappeared, and thereby persuaded them that what he had taught was true. Such is the account of the Greeks. 96. For my part, I neither put complete faith in this story of Salmoxis and his underground chamber, nor discount it altogether, though I do think that Salmoxis lived long before Pythagoras’ time. In any event, whether there was ever really a man of that name, or whether he is a local deity of the Getae, I take my leave of him. The Getae, then, whose practices I described earlier, were now subdued by the Persians and forced to accompany the army of Darius. 97. When Darius, with his infantry, had arrived at the Danube and crossed the river, he ordered the Ionians to dismantle the bridge and follow him across country with the whole naval force.98 They were about to do so when the Mytilenaean general, Coes, son of Erxandrus, having first asked whether the king would welcome a suggestion, addressed him as follows: “Sire, you are about to march against a country no part of which is under cultivation, and in which there is not a single city. So leave the bridge intact, and under the protection of those who built it. If we encounter the Scythians and succeed against them as we hope to do, we will have a safe route of return; or if we fail to find them, our retreat will still be secure.99 I have no fear that the Scythians may defeat us in battle, but rather that if we should fail to find them we may find ourselves in difficulty as we wander about 97. Pythagoras was a Greek sage of the 6th century B.C. who emigrated to Italy and taught mystical and mathematical wisdom to his adherents there. He believed that souls transmigrated after death into other bodies, which may explain his being linked to Salmoxis by the Hellespontine Greeks. 98. That is, to pull the ships up on shore and have their crews follow him on land. 99. Similar concerns were addressed by Croesus at the moment of Cyrus’ invasion of the Massagetae (see 1.208). Cyrus took Croesus’ advice, just as Darius here takes that of Coes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

235

their country. Some may imagine that I only offer this advice for my own sake, in the hope that I may be allowed to remain behind. But that is not true, sire; I am simply proposing what I consider to be in your own best interest. In any event, I intend to follow you, and would not consent to be left behind.” Delighted with the man’s advice, Darius replied, “Friend, when I have returned home safe, be sure to come and see me, and I will requite your good counsel with good deeds.” 98. So saying, he tied sixty knots in a leather strap, summoned the Ionian chiefs to a conference, and addressed them thus: “Men of Ionia, my earlier orders about the bridge are now cancelled. Take this strap; from the day that I begin my march against the Scythians, untie one knot each day. If I fail to return before all the knots have been untied, sail home. Meanwhile, as I have changed my mind, guard the bridge, and do your best to keep it safe. This will be the greatest favor you can do me.” So saying, Darius hastened onward. 99. Scythia is separated from us, at the coast, by Thrace.100 There the coastline makes a sweep, and then Scythia begins, the Danube emptying into the sea at that point, its mouth facing east. Starting from the Danube I will now indicate the extent of the Scythian coastline. Ancient Scythia101 begins on the eastern bank of the Danube and continues, with the Black Sea as its southern boundary, as far as the city known as Cercinitis.102 There, extending into the same sea, lies a mountainous promontory that is inhabited by the Tauri,103 as far as the so-called Rugged Chersonese.That peninsula runs down into the eastern sea, Lake Maeotis. For Scythia is bounded by two seas, one to the south, the other to the east, as is also the case with Attica. And the Tauri occupy a position in Scythia like that which a people would hold in Attica, who, being some nation other than the Athenians (if I may compare small things with large), should inhabit the promontory of Sunium from Thoricus to the village of Anaphlystus, if this tract projected somewhat farther into the sea. For the benefit of those who have not sailed along this stretch of the Attic coast, I will offer a different illustration. It would be as if a people other than the Iapygians were to draw a line from the port of Brundisium to Tarentum, and occupy the promontory.104 Though I mention these two there are many other similar places that Taurica resembles. 100.Yet a further geographic excursus on Scythia, inserted as though Herodotus were keeping his readers in suspense as we await the beginning of the Persian-Scythian war. 101. It is hard to say why Herodotus considers this westernmost region of Scythia “ancient.” 102. In the western portion of the Crimean peninsula (the “mountainous promontory” mentioned in the next sentence). 103. See 4.103 below for more on the Tauri. 104. The two analogies both explain the position of the Tauri on the southern coast of a large peninsula (though Herodotus carefully makes the distinction that the Tauri are a separate race from their neighbors, unlike those in southern Attica or southern Italy). It is interesting that Herodotus uses both an Attic and an Italian example for his analogues, evidently anticipating a Pan-Hellenic audience for his work.

236

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

100. North of the Tauri, and along the coast eastward, is again Scythian territory, as is the region west of the Cimmerian Bosporus and Lake Maeotis as far as the river Tanais, which empties into the northern end of that lake. On the inland side Scythia is bounded, starting from the Danube, by the following tribes: first the Agathyrsi, next the Neurians, then the Man-eaters, and lastly the Black-cloaks. 101. Scythia, then, being a square-shaped country, and having two of its sides reaching down to the sea, extends inland to the same distance that it stretches along the coast. It is a ten days’ journey from the Danube to the Borysthenes, and ten more from the Borysthenes to Lake Maeotis; and it is a twenty days’ journey inland from the Black Sea to the Black-cloaks, whose territory forms its northern border. I reckon a day’s journey at 200 stades.105 Thus the two sides that run straight inland are each 4,000 stades long, and the two at right angles to these are the same length. 102. The Scythians, after taking counsel and concluding that they were not strong enough by themselves to contend with the army of Darius in a fair fight, sent messengers to their neighbors, whose kings had already met and were conferring about the approach of so vast an army. Present at this assembly were the kings of the Tauri, the Agathyrsi, the Neurians, the Man-eaters, the Geloni, the Budini, and the Sauromatae. 103. It is the custom of the Tauri to sacrifice to the Virgin all shipwrecked persons and all Greeks driven to their shores.106 They sacrifice as follows. After the opening ceremonies, they strike the victim on the head with a club. Then, according to some, they hurl the body from the cliff where their temples stand, and impale the head on a stake; others, though agreeing about the head, say that the body is not thrust from the cliff but buried in the earth. The Tauri themselves say that the goddess to whom they sacrifice is Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. They treat prisoners of war as follows. Anyone who captures an enemy cuts off his head, carries it home, and fixes it on a long wooden pole, which he raises above his house, generally over the chimney. The heads are said to act as guardians of the house over which they hang. These people live by plundering and war. 104. The Agathyrsi are exceedingly luxurious and fond of wearing gold ornaments. They share their wives, so that they might be brothers of one another and all being relations might lack both envy and hatred. In all their other customs they resemble the Thracians. 105. The Neurians share the customs of the Scythians. In the generation that preceded the expedition of Darius, they were forced by snakes to abandon their 105. About 25 miles. 106. This savage custom will be familiar to those who have read or seen Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris (or the adaptation by Goethe). The Virgin was a widely worshiped goddess sometimes identified with Greek Artemis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

237

country. Great numbers appeared in their own land, while even more invaded from the uninhabited region to the north. Pressed hard, the Neurians left their homes and went to live with the Budini. The Neurians seem to be magicians. For both the Scythians and the Greeks who live in Scythia say that once a year every Neurian becomes a wolf for a few days, and then is restored to his proper shape. I do not believe this story; but they tell it nonetheless and even swear that it is true. 106. The Man-eaters are the most savage of all human beings. Justice and law are unknown to them. They are nomads, wear Scythian dress, speak a language peculiar to themselves, and are the only people in this region who eat human flesh. 107. The Black-cloaks all wear cloaks of black hue—hence their name. They use Scythian customs. 108. The Budini, a large and powerful nation, all have blue-grey eyes and red hair. They have a city called Gelonus, built entirely of wood, both houses and temples, with a high wooden wall around it, thirty stades long on each side. Here there are temples built in honor of Greek gods and adorned in the Greek manner, with statues, altars, and shrines, all in wood. The Budini hold a triennial festival in honor of Dionysus, and celebrate the mysteries of Bacchus. For the Gelonians were originally Greeks, who, when driven from their trading posts, settled among the Budini.107 Their language is part Scythian, part Greek. 109.The Budini and the Gelonians do not speak the same language, nor do they have the same way of life. The Budini are indigenous nomads, and are the only people in Scythia who eat lice. The Gelonians, on the other hand, work the land, eat grain, and tend gardens. The two tribes are alike neither in appearance nor in complexion. (The Greeks nevertheless refer to the Budini, incorrectly, as Gelonians.) Their country is planted with trees of all kinds. In its most densely wooded part there is a large lake surrounded by a reedy marshland. Otters are caught in this lake, as are beavers and other square-faced animals, whose skins are used for making fringe for their jackets. The testicles of these animals are useful for curing diseases of the womb. 110. The following story is told of the Sauromatae. It is said that when the Greeks fought with the Amazons108 (whom the Scythians call Oiorpata, a word that 107. The presence of de-Hellenized Greeks in this region is plausible, but no archaeological evidence has been found. 108. The Amazons were a legendary race of female warriors, perennially fascinating to the Greeks because of the way they inverted gender norms. There is no evidence that they ever existed in the form the myths represent, but the burials of Sauromatae women sometimes included weapons, so the Greeks may only have exaggerated characteristics of actual steppe tribes. The war between Greeks and Amazons referred to here took place in mythic times, but was often depicted in classical Greek vase paintings and sculptural reliefs.

238

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

means “Man-slayers,” oior being the Scythian word for “man,” and pata for “kill”), and had won a victory in the battle at Thermodon, they put to sea in three ships, taking with them all the Amazons they had captured alive. Once at sea, the captive Amazons attacked and massacred their captors, but as they knew nothing of boats, or how to use rudders, sails, or rowing, they were carried along, after the men had died, by wave and wind, and were blown to Cremni on Lake Maeotis, which is in the territory of the free Scythians. Getting ashore, they traveled inland to an inhabited region. They seized the first herd of horses they came upon, leapt on their backs, and rode about plundering the Scythian territory. 111. The Scythians did not know what to make of this, and wondered where their attackers had come from, since their dress, speech, and nationality were unknown to them. Assuming, however, that they were young men, they engaged them in battle. After the battle, the Scythians got possession of the corpses and discovered that they were women. On taking counsel, they decided not to kill any more of them, but to send out a detachment of their young men, about equal in number to the women, with orders to encamp in their neighborhood and do whatever the women were doing. If the women pursued them, they were not to fight, but to retreat until the pursuit was abandoned, and then to encamp nearby. This they did from a desire to get children by the Amazons. 112.The young men departed and obeyed their orders; and when the Amazons realized that they meant no harm, they ignored them. And now, day after day, the two camps drew nearer to one another. Both parties had nothing but their weapons and horses, and both lived the same sort of life, hunting and plundering. 113. Toward mid-day the Amazons used to scatter by ones and twos to relieve themselves; and the Scythians, when they noticed this, did likewise. One of the young men approached an Amazon who was alone, and she did not reject him but let him lie with her. She signified with her hand (since they did not understand each other’s language) that on the next day he should return to the same place and bring another, indicating two, and that she herself would bring another.The young man returned to his comrades and told them what had happened, and on the next day returned with a friend to the same place and found the Amazon waiting for him and another one with her. Having heard their story, the rest of the young men soon tamed the other Amazons.109 114. Then, joining their camps, they lived together, each man keeping the woman with whom he had first had intercourse. The men were unable to learn the women’s language, but the women managed to pick up that of the men.When they were able to understand one another, the men said, “We have parents and property. Let us therefore give up this way of life and return to live with our 109. From the male Greek perspective Herodotus shared, sexual union could be regarded as a “taming” of the woman by the man.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

239

people. We will keep you as our wives and not take any others.” But the Amazons replied, “We could not live with your women, as our customs are too different. We draw the bow, hurl the javelin, ride on horseback, and know nothing of women’s work. Your women, on the contrary, do none of these things. They stay at home in their wagons and do women’s work, and never go out to hunt or to do anything. We could never get along. But if you want to keep us as your wives and to behave like honorable men, go to your parents and get your share of their property, and then let us go off and live by ourselves.” 115. The young men were persuaded. And when they came back, each with his share of the family property, the Amazons said, “We are afraid to settle down here, since we have deprived you of your parents, and have damaged your land by our raids. If you think fit to keep us as your wives, let us leave this country and settle beyond the Tanais.” The young men were again persuaded. 116. After crossing the Tanais, they traveled eastward for three days, and then northward, for another three, from Lake Maeotis.110 When they reached the country where they now live, they built a settlement. Ever since then the women of the Sauromatae have kept to their old way of life, riding and hunting, both with and without their husbands, going to war, and wearing the same clothes as men. 117. The Sauromatae speak the Scythian language, though they have always spoken a corrupt form of it because the Amazons never learned to speak it properly. They have a marriage law that forbids a girl to marry until she has killed a man in battle. Some of their women, unable to fulfill this condition, die unmarried at an advanced age. 118. The kings of these nations assembled to deliberate;111 and to them the envoys of the Scythians reported that the Persian king, after subjugating the whole of the other continent, had bridged the Bosporus and crossed into Europe, where he had subdued the Thracians and was now building a bridge over the Danube, hoping to conquer all of Europe also. “We beg you,” they said, “not to hold aloof from this struggle. Do not let us be destroyed. Let us act in concert and face the invader together. If you refuse, we must yield to the pressure, and either abandon our country or make terms with the enemy.What else can we do if you refuse to help? And your plight, if you remain neutral, will not on that account be made any easier. For the Persian is coming against you no less than against us, and will not be satisfied, after we are conquered, to leave you in peace. We can offer you a great proof of this: for had the Persian come solely to punish us for the wrong we did when we enslaved his people, he would have marched straight for Scythia 110. Hippocrates, a medical author contemporary with Herodotus, also situated the Sauromatae north of the Sea of Azov, and attributed to them customs similar to those described here (AirsWaters Places 17). 111. Herodotus resumes the main narrative, returning to the point reached at 4.102.

240

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

without injuring any other nation on the way. That would have made it clear to everyone that Scythia alone was his object. But as things stand, from the moment he crossed into Europe he has subjugated every nation that lay in his path. All the Thracian tribes are now subject to him, even our nearest neighbors, the Getae.” 119. The assembled kings, after hearing what the envoys had to say, deliberated. In the end they were divided in their views. The kings of the Geloni, Budini, and Sauromatae agreed to assist the Scythians, but those of the Agathyrsi, Neurians, Man-eaters, Black-cloaks, and Tauri made them this reply: “If you had not been the first to wrong the Persians, we would have thought your request justified, and would have granted it and offered our support. But as it is, you invaded their land without us, and lorded it over the Persians for as long as the god allowed.112 Now that the same god has stirred them up, they are paying you back in kind.We, on the other hand, have never wronged these men, and will not be the first to wrong them now. If they invade our country and begin to injure us, we will not stand for it. But until then we will remain where we are. For we believe that the Persians have not come to attack us, but to punish those who struck the first blow.” 120. When this reply reached the Scythians, they decided not to fight a pitched battle with the Persians (since the neighboring nations refused their alliance), but to retreat before them, driving off their cattle, choking up all the wells and springs as they retreated, and trampling all the vegetation.113 They organized their forces in two divisions. One, commanded by Scopasis, was to be joined by the Sauromatae, and had been ordered, if the Persians advanced against them, to retreat along Lake Maeotis toward the river Tanais; whereas if the Persians retired, they should immediately pursue them. This was one division, and this the route it was ordered to take. Of the other, two sections, the larger under Idanthyrsus and the smaller under Taxacis, were to unite and, after joining the detachments of the Geloni and Budini, retreat before the Persians like the first division, keeping a day’s march ahead of them. This division was to begin by retreating in the direction of the nations that had refused to join the alliance, so as to involve them in the war despite their unwillingness, if they would not on their own initiative engage the Persians. Afterward, the members of this division were to retire to their own country and launch an attack, if that seemed expedient. 121. Having formed this plan, the Scythians advanced to meet Darius’ army, sending their best horsemen as an advance guard. Their wagons, which housed all their wives and children, and all their cattle, except what they needed for food, were ordered to proceed northward in advance of their future line of retreat.

112. Referring to the Scythian invasion of Media in the previous century (see 4.1 and note 1). 113. The objective was to deprive the Persian army of supplies and force it to return home. The stratagem is still today called a “Scythian defense.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

241

122. The Scythians’ advance guard encountered the Persians nearly a three days’ journey from the Danube. Keeping ahead of them by a day’s march, the scouts, whenever they set up camp, devastated all the forage. As soon as the ­Persians caught sight of the Scythian horsemen, they advanced along their track, while the latter retreated before them. The Persians, pursuing the single division under Scopasis, advanced eastward toward the Tanais. The Scythians crossed the river, and the Persians pursued them. In this way they passed through the territory of the Sauromatae and entered that of the Budini. 123. As long as they were in the country of the Scythians and Sauromatae, the Persians did no damage, since the country was dry and barren. But when they invaded the territory of the Budini and came upon their wooden fortress, which was deserted and empty, they burnt it to the ground. They then continued along the Scythians’ track until they reached the uninhabited region, which extends a seven days’ journey above the territory of the Budini. Beyond this tract lies the territory of the Thyssagetae, from which four great rivers, Lycus, Oarus, Tanais, and Syrgis, flow through the land of the Maeotians and empty into Lake Maeotis. 124. When Darius reached this uninhabited region, he halted his army by the banks of the Oarus, and began to build eight large forts, at about sixty stades from one another, the ruins of which were still to be seen in my day. While these were under construction, the Scythians he had been pursuing circled back through the upper country and returned to Scythia. As they had disappeared without a trace, Darius left his fortresses half-finished and returned westward, supposing that the Scythians he had been pursuing were the whole nation, and had fled in that direction. 125. Quickening his pace and entering Scythia, he came upon the two combined divisions of the Scythian army. He followed them, and they, as before, kept a day’s march ahead of him. And as he continued in hot pursuit, they led him, according to plan, into the lands of those who had refused to join their alliance, first of all into the country of the Black-cloaks. A great uproar arose among this people when they found themselves invaded first by the Scythians and then by the Persians. From there the Scythians led the Persians through the lands of the Man-eaters and the Neurians, with the same result. Finally, still retreating, the Scythians approached the Agathyrsi. This people, having witnessed their neighbors’ terror and flight, did not wait for the Scythians to invade their land, but sent a herald to forbid them to cross the border, and to warn them that if they did so they would be resisted by force of arms. The Agathyrsi then hastened to their frontiers, intending to ward off the invaders. The other nations—the Black-cloaks, Man-eaters, and Neurians—offered no resistance when the Scythians and Persians invaded their land, but forgot their threats and fled in disarray, northward into the uninhabited region. The Scythians,

242

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

finding the Agathyrsi prepared to oppose them, changed direction and led the Persians from the Neurians’ country back into Scythia. 126. Finding no end to this, Darius sent a horseman to Idanthyrsus, the Scythian king, with the following message: “Strange fellow, why do you keep running away when other courses are open to you? If you think you are strong enough to oppose me, stay where you are, stop wandering about, and fight! Or if you admit you are too weak, then stop running away, send your master earth and water,114 and come to a conference.” 127. To this Idanthyrsus, the Scythian king, replied, “This is my way, Persian. I have never run in fear from any man, nor do I mean to do so now. There is nothing strange in what I do; this is exactly the sort of life I always lead, even in times of peace. Let me tell you why I am in no hurry to join battle with you. We Scythians have neither towns nor cultivated lands for the sake of which, lest they be captured or ravaged, we might rush to engage you.115 If, however, you are in a hurry to shed blood, we do possess ancestral tombs. Find them and try to destroy them, and you will soon see whether or not we will fight with you. Until then, unless we had a good reason, we would not join battle. This is my answer to your challenge. As for masters, I acknowledge only Zeus, my ancestor, and Hestia, the queen of the Scythians. Instead of earth and water, I will send you more suitable gifts. Finally, in reply to your claim to be my master, I bid you weep. This is the response of the Scythians.” 128. So the herald went off to make this proclamation to Darius. As for the Scythian kings, when they heard the word “slavery,”116 they were filled with rage and sent the division under Scopasis, which included the Sauromatae, with orders to seek a conference with the Ionians who had been left to guard the bridge at the Danube. The Scythians who remained behind decided to stop leading the Persians here and there, and to attack them whenever they found them foraging. Watching for such opportunities, they carried out their plan. On these occasions the Scythian cavalry always put the Persian horsemen to flight; the latter, when routed, would fall back on their infantry, who invariably offered them support. Then the Scythians, after driving the cavalry back, would again retreat, for fear of the infantry. The Scythians made similar raids at night. 129. I will mention one very strange thing that helped the Persians and hampered the Scythians in these attacks. This was the braying of the donkeys and the 114. The sending of earth and water was a symbolic gesture of submission to the Persian king, signifying that the senders put both their lands and their seacoasts at his disposal. 115. The implied contrast here is with typical Greek land warfare, in which an invader threatened the crops of his enemy and therefore forced him to do battle. 116. The word had not actually been used by Darius’ messenger, but evidently the demand for earth and water was interpreted as an attempt at enslavement.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

243

appearance of the mules. The Scythian land, as I have already noted,117 produces neither donkeys nor mules; because of the cold, no specimen of either animal is to be found in the entire country. So when the donkeys brayed, they threw the Scythian cavalry into disarray; often, in the course of an attack, the noise made by the donkeys so upset the horses that they would shy and rear back, pricking up their ears in astonishment. For they had never before heard such a sound or seen such a creature.118 This gave the Persians some slight advantage in the campaign. 130. When the Scythians saw the Persians disconcerted by their raids, they devised a stratagem to keep them longer in Scythia, so that they would eventually come to grief when their supplies ran out.119 This was to go off to a distance from time to time, leaving their herds and flocks in the care of their herdsmen. The Persians would then approach and take the animals, and rejoice in their success. 131. This happened again and again, until at last Darius did not know where to turn. Getting wind of this, the Scythian kings sent a herald to the camp with gifts for Darius: a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. The Persians asked the herald what the gifts signified, but the man replied that he had been told only to deliver them, and to return home as quickly as he could; but if the Persians were wise, he added, they would find out the meaning for themselves. When they had heard the herald’s reply, the Persians took counsel. 132. Darius was of the opinion that the Scythians were offering him earth and water, intending to surrender. This he inferred from the fact that a mouse lives on the earth and eats the same food as man, while a frog lives in water; a bird most resembles a horse, and the arrows might represent the Scythian power, which they were handing over to him. Such was Darius’ interpretation. Gobryas disagreed. (This was the Gobryas who, as one of the seven, had deposed the Magus.) He conjectured that the gifts meant, “Unless you turn into birds, Persians, and fly up to heaven, or into mice and burrow under the ground, or into frogs and jump into lakes, you will not return home, being struck with these arrows.” 133. While the Persians were thus interpreting the gifts, the single Scythian division, which had been posted earlier to keep watch by Lake Maeotis, and had now been sent to hold talks with the Ionians at the Danube, arrived at the bridge. 117. See 4.28. 118. A similar stratagem, employing camels rather than donkeys and mules, had helped Cyrus in his war against Croesus (see 1.80 above). Elephants were later used to deter cavalry charges, in the era of Alexander the Great, and Greek legends spoke of an Asian queen who had tried to desensitize her horses by using stuffed elephants on wheels. 119. That is, the Scythians would lure the Persians deeper into their territory and stretch out their supply lines.

244

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

“Men of Ionia,” began the Scythian herald, “we are here to offer you your freedom if you are ready to listen to us. We have heard that Darius told you not to remain here once you had guarded the bridge for sixty days,120 but to return home. Now, therefore, you ought to wait until the sixty days have passed and then depart, for in doing so you will incur neither his censure nor ours.” The Ionians promised to do so, and the Scythians hurried back to their country. 134. Once the gifts had been sent to the Persians, the Scythians who had stayed behind ranged their infantry and cavalry against them and stood ready for an engagement. But as soon as they had taken up their positions a hare started up between the two armies and began running. All the Scythians who saw it rushed off in pursuit, and when their army was thrown into disorder and shouting was heard, Darius asked what all the fuss was about. Upon learning that the Scythians were chasing a hare, he turned to those of his officers he usually consulted and said, “These men have great contempt for us, and it now strikes me that Gobryas was right about the Scythian gifts. As I have now come around to his way of thinking, we must find the best way of getting safely away.”121 In reply Gobryas said, “Sire, I knew by report that these men were difficult to deal with, and now that I am here myself and have seen how they mock us, I am even more convinced of it. I therefore recommend that as soon as night falls we light our fires as usual, and then, tethering the donkeys and leaving behind on some pretext that portion of our army that is weak and unable to endure hardships, depart before the Scythians march to the Danube and destroy the bridge, and before the Ionians take any steps that may lead to our ruin.” 135. Such was Gobryas’ advice, and at nightfall Darius acted on it. He left in camp his sick soldiers and those whose deaths would matter least, as well as the donkeys tethered as usual. The donkeys were left behind so that their braying would be heard; the men, actually because they were weak and useless, though he told them that he was about to attack the Scythians with his strongest troops and that they were to guard the camp in his absence. Having thus explained his plan to the men he was deserting, he had the fires lighted and marched in haste toward the Danube. The donkeys, aware that the greater part of the army had gone, brayed louder than ever; and the Scythians, when they heard the sound, assumed that the Persians were still there. 136. When day came, and the Persians who had been left behind understood that they were betrayed by Darius, they stretched out their hands toward the Scythians and said all that was proper under the circumstances. On hearing what had happened, the entire Scythian force (both the single division and that made 120. See 4.98 above. 121. A strikingly unexpected decision. Ordinarily a commander would order an instant assault if he saw his enemy’s forces in such disarray.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

245

up of two), accompanied by the Sauromatae, the Budini, and the Geloni, set off for the Danube in pursuit of the Persians. But since the greater part of the Persian army was traveling on foot and was unfamiliar with the routes (for there were no regular roads), while the Scythians were all mounted and well acquainted with the shortest way, the two armies missed one another, and the Scythians reached the bridge long before the Persians. Realizing that the Persians had not yet arrived, they addressed the Ionians on their ships. “Men of Ionia, the sixty days are now up, and you do wrong to remain here. Fear kept you here previously, but now you may dismantle the bridge and hurry home, rejoicing in your freedom; you have the gods and the Scythians to thank for it.We will deal with your former master in such a way that he will never again make war on anyone.” 137. The Ionians now took counsel. Miltiades the Athenian, who was tyrant of the Hellespontine Chersonese and commander of its contingent,122 proposed that they do as the Scythians advised and liberate Ionia. But Histiaeus of Miletus disagreed, and pointed out that now, thanks to Darius, each of them governed his city as tyrant; but if Darius were deposed, he himself would be unable to remain in power at his city, Miletus, nor would any of the rest of them at theirs.123 For each city would be sure to choose democracy in preference to tyranny. The other chiefs had been about to vote with Miltiades; but as soon as Histiaeus had spoken, they all changed their minds and adopted his view. 138. The voters on this occasion included tyrants from the Hellespont, namely Daphnis of Abydus, Hippoclus of Lampsacus, Herophantus of Parium, Metrodorus of Proconnesus, Aristagoras of Cyzicus, and Ariston of Byzantium, all of whom were esteemed by the King; and tyrants from Ionia, namely Strattis of Chios, Aeaces of Samos, Laodamas of Phocaea, and Histiaeus of Miletus, the man who had opposed Miltiades. The only notable Aeolian present was Aristagoras of Cyme. 139. When these men had adopted Histiaeus’ view, they decided what they should do and say next. They planned to remove a part of the bridge on the Scythian side of the river—but only to the distance of a bowshot, in order to appear to be doing something, when in fact they were not, and to prevent the Scythians from crossing the river by the bridge. They also decided to assure the Scythians, while they were taking down the bridge, that they would do everything in their 122. This same Miltiades would later lead the Athenian forces at the battle of Marathon (see 6.103–104), by taking another strong stand in a council of war.The Hellespontine Chersonese is the modern peninsula of Gallipoli, a region colonized by the Athenians but at this time under Persian control. 123.The Persians had governed the Greek cities under their control by appointing puppet rulers such as Histiaeus. Herodotus calls such men turannoi but without intending the connotations of cruel or despotic behavior that the English word “tyrant” carries (see note 29 to 1.20).

246

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

power to please them. This is how they had decided to put Histiaeus’ proposal into practice. Then Histiaeus himself addressed the Scythians on behalf of all the Greeks. “You have brought us good advice, and did well to get here so quickly.You have put us on the right course, and we will do all in our power to advance your cause. As you can see, we are taking down the bridge, and will spare no effort to recover our freedom. Meanwhile, while we get on with our work, make it your business to search for the Persian army; and when you have found it, inflict on the invaders the punishment they so richly deserve, both for our sakes and for yours.” 140. The Scythians, believing once again that the Ionians were telling the truth, turned back to search for the Persians and missed them completely. They were themselves to blame for this, since they had destroyed all the pasturages and choked up all the wells. Had they not done so, they would have easily found the Persians whenever they chose. But as it turned out, the measures that had appeared to be to their advantage were exactly what defeated them. For they were searching for their enemies in places where there was water and provender for their horses, thinking that the Persians would try to effect their escape across such territory. The Persians, however, kept to the route they had followed earlier, and had great difficulty getting to the crossing. It was dark when they arrived, and when they found that the bridge was broken they were terrified, for they imagined that the Ionians had deserted them. 141. In Darius’ army there was an Egyptian whose voice was exceptionally loud. Posting this man at the bank of the river, Darius ordered him to shout for Histiaeus of Miletus. The man did so, and Histiaeus, hearing him at the first summons, sent all the ships to ferry the army across, and repaired the broken section of the bridge. 142. Thus the Persians got safely out of the country, the Scythians having again missed their track. And hence the Scythians judge the Ionians, as free men, to be the basest and most cowardly in the world; and as slaves, to be the most faithful and the least likely to run away. Such are the Scythian taunts at the Ionians’ expense.124 143. Proceeding through Thrace, Darius reached Sestus in the Chersonese. From there he crossed by ship to Asia, leaving a Persian, Megabazus, as commander of his forces in Europe. Darius had once conferred a signal honor on Megabazus when, in a gathering of Persians, he paid him the following compliment. Darius had started to eat some pomegranates; and when he had opened the first one, his brother Artabanus asked him what he would like to have in as great abundance as the seeds of a pomegranate. Darius replied that he would rather 124. One of several places in which Herodotus, by way of reported speech or by the nuances of his version of events, disparages the Ionians, the Greeks living in Asia Minor and the islands offshore.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

247

have that many Megabazuses than be master of Greece. This was the compliment with which Darius had honored the general to whom he now gave the command of the army, 80,000 strong, left in Europe. 144. Megabazus won immortal renown among the Hellespontines for the following remark. When in Byzantium he learned that Chalcedon had been settled seventeen years earlier than that city, he said that the Chalcedonians must have been blind at the time; otherwise, when a site so much finer was open to them, they would never have chosen one so inferior.125 Appointed now as commander at the Hellespont, Megabazus set about subduing all the nations that had not sworn allegiance to Persia.126 145. Meanwhile, another great expedition was launched against Libya. But before I explain the reason for it, I must relate certain preliminary matters.127 The grandsons of the Argonauts were expelled from Lemnos by the Pelasgians,128 who had abducted the women of Athens from Brauron.129 Leaving Lemnos, they sailed to Lacedaemon,130 where they encamped on Mount Taygetus and kindled fires. The Lacedemonians, noticing the fires, sent a messenger to find out who these men were and where they had come from. Questioned by the messenger, they said that they were Minyae, descendants of the heroes who had sailed in the Argo and come ashore at Lemnos, where they had started the families to which they 125. Byzantium and Chalcedon were situated on the European and Asian sides of the Straits of Bosporus, respectively, but harborage and favorable currents made Byzantium a better location. 126. This campaign of Megabazus through Thrace and the Balkans will be related in the first twenty-three chapters of Book 5. Herodotus first moves to a new theater of war, Libya (North Africa), to describe another Persian campaign, though his military narrative will in fact be tiny in comparison with his long historical and ethnographic excurses. 127. These “preliminary matters” take us centuries back in time, to trace the founding and growth of Cyrene, a powerful Greek city on the Libyan coast; and since the founders of Cyrene came from Thera, Herodotus first must describe how Thera (modern Santorini) came to be settled, which requires a further step back in time, to the departure from Lemnos of Thera’s founders. Eventually (by 4.165) this long flashback will “catch up” to the era of Darius, and we will learn that turmoil in the royal house of Cyrene caused the Persians to send armed forces to Libya. 128. A breathtaking leap in time, space, and topic; we are suddenly back in the mythic past and on the island of Lemnos, where, according to legend, Jason and the Argonauts had stopped on their way to Colchis and found an all-female population. The Argonauts stayed there long enough to beget children with the Lemnian women. Two generations later, Pelasgians exiled from Athens arrived on Lemnos and drove out the descendants of the Argonauts so as to take possession of the island themselves. 129. This episode receives a fuller treatment at 6.137–39. 130. The region around Sparta. Some of the Argonauts had come from Sparta, so their grandchildren can claim this region as an ancestral homeland (as they do below).

248

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

belonged. After hearing this account of their descent, the Lacedemonians sent to them a second time and asked why they had come to the country and kindled their fires. The Minyae said that after being driven from their own land by the Pelasgians, they had come to the land of their fathers, as was reasonable; and that now they wanted to settle there, obtain allotments of land, and partake of their privileges.The Lacedemonians, moved chiefly by the fact that the sons of Tyndareus131 had sailed in the Argo, were ready to receive the Minyae on these terms; they gave them grants of land and enrolled them in their tribes. The Minyae at once took Spartan wives, and gave the women they had brought from Lemnos to Spartan husbands. 146. Before long, however, the Minyae grew arrogant. They demanded a share in the royal power, and committed a number of impious acts.The Lacedemonians, therefore, having decided to put them to death, arrested them and threw them into prison. Now the Lacedemonians always executed criminals at night, never in the daytime. So just before the executions were to take place, the wives of the Minyae begged leave to enter the prison, so that each might have a word with her husband. (These women were citizens of Sparta and daughters of the foremost Spartans.) The authorities admitted them, never suspecting that these women would play them a trick. Once inside, they changed clothes with their husbands, after which the Minyae, disguised as women, left the prison. Having thus made their escape, they again encamped on Mount Taygetus. 147. At that very time, Theras was preparing to leave Lacedaemon to found a colony. (Theras was the son of Antesion, grandson of Tisamenus, great-grandson of Thersander, and great-great-grandson of Polynices.) By birth a Cadmeian,132 Theras was the maternal uncle of Eurysthenes and Procles, the two sons of Aristodemus,133 and served as regent in Sparta during his nephews’ minority. But when the boys grew up and succeeded to the throne, Theras found it irksome to be ruled by others after he had wielded power himself. He announced that he would not remain in Lacedaemon but would sail away to join his kinsmen. On the island now called Thera, but at that time Callista, there were certain descendants of Membliarus, son of Poeciles, a Phoenician. For Cadmus, son of Agenor, when searching for Europe, touched at this island; and either because the country pleased him, or for some other reason, he left there a number of Phoenicians, including his own kinsman, Membliarus.134 These men and their descendants had inhabited Callista for eight generations before Theras arrived from Lacedaemon. 131. The twins known as the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux. 132.That is, a member of the aristocratic family tracing its descent from Cadmus, founder of Thebes. 133. The first two Spartan kings, as described more fully at 6.52. 134. Cadmus, founder of Thebes, had emigrated to Greece from Phoenicia (modern-day Lebanon), according to Greek myth.Though Phoenician presence has been documented at several Greek archaeological sites, there is no such evidence as yet on Thera.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

249

148. Theras was now preparing to migrate to Callista with a number of men from the various Spartan tribes. Far from intending to drive out the island’s inhabitants, he meant to settle among them as a kinsman. It was just at this time that the Minyae escaped from their prison and took up a position on Mount ­Taygetus; and the Lacedemonians were planning their destruction when Theras, hoping to prevent bloodshed, begged for their lives and promised to take them out of the country. His prayer being granted, he set sail in three thirty-oared ships to join the descendants of Membliarus, taking with him by no means all, but some few of the Minyae. The greater number of them fled to the land of the Paroreatae and the Caucones,135 whom they drove from their homes; they then divided themselves into six groups, and later built six cities: Lepreus, Macistus, Phrixas, Purgus, Epius, and Nudius. Most of these cities were demolished in my day by the Eleans. The island136 was renamed Thera in honor of Theras, the founder. 149. Theras’ son, however, refused to sail with him, and Theras said he would therefore leave the boy behind, a sheep among wolves. As a result of this remark, the youth came to be called Oeolycus (“Sheep-wolf ”), a name that stuck to him. Oeolycus was the father of Aegeus, who gave his name to the Aegidae, a powerful tribe in Sparta.When all their children were dying in infancy, the men of this tribe were advised by an oracle to build a shrine to the Furies of Laius and Oedipus.137 They did so, and the mortality ceased. The same thing happened to their descendants in Thera. 150. To this point, the Lacedemonians’ account tallies with that of the Theraeans. For the events that followed, the Theraeans are our only authority. Grinnus, son of Aesanius, a descendant of Theras and king of the island, went to Delphi to offer a hecatomb138 on behalf of his native city. He was accompanied by a number of citizens, including Battus, son of Polymnestus, who belonged to the Minyan family of the Euphemidae. Though Grinnus was consulting the oracle on quite different matters, the Pythian priestess, in her reply, said he should found a city in Libya. “My lord,” he answered, “I am now too old and inactive to embark on such a journey. Lay this task on one of the younger men,” and as he spoke he pointed toward Battus. Nothing further happened at the time; the Theraeans returned 135. The central western portion of the Peloponnese. 136. Callista (modern-day Santorini). 137. The “Furies” attaching to an individual are spirits of curse or vengeance arising from the wrongs done to that person. Laius, Oedipus’ father, was killed by his son, and Oedipus later cursed his own sons for warring over control of Thebes. Since Theras’ family was descended from the line that included Laius and Oedipus, they are thought to be afflicted by these ancient Furies. 138. A lavish sacrifice of cattle, designed to win the favor of the god and the priests (and therefore obtain favorable prophecies).

250

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

home and thought no more of the oracle. For they had no idea where Libya was, and would never dare to send out settlers in such uncertainty. 151. For the next seven years no rain fell in Thera; and all the trees on the island, except one, withered and died. In their difficulty the Theraeans sent to Delphi, and the priestess reproached them for not having colonized Libya. As there was nothing else to be done, the Theraeans sent messengers to Crete to inquire whether any Cretan or foreigner had ever visited Libya. These messengers, in the course of their wanderings, visited Itanus,139 where they met a purplefisher140 named Corobius, who told them that he had once been blown off course and had landed at Platea, an island off the Libyan coast. Engaging Corobius’ services for a fee, they brought him to Thera, and soon a small reconnoitering party, under Corobius’ guidance, set sail. They reached Platea and left Corobius there with provisions for a stated number of months, and then hastened home to inform the Theraeans about the island. 152. The Theraeans remained away for a longer period than had been agreed upon, and Corobius’ supplies ran low. He was relieved, however, when a Samian ship on its way to Egypt, under the command of a man named Colaeus, was forced ashore at Platea. When the Samians had heard Corobius’ story, they left him with a year’s supply of food. Setting sail from the island, and anxious to reach Egypt, they were blown off course by the east wind, which did not subside until they had been driven past the Pillars of Heracles and finally, by some divine providence, reached Tartessus.141 This port was in those days a virgin market, and as a result these Samians made on their return home a greater profit than any of the Greeks of whom we have accurate knowledge except Sostratus, son of Laodamas,142 an Aeginetan with whom no one can compare. A tenth part of their profits, which amounted to six talents, they spent on the manufacture of a bronze bowl, cast in the Argive style, with the heads of griffins set around the rim. This bowl, supported by three kneeling figures in bronze, seven cubits tall, they placed as an offering in their temple of Hera.The aid given by the Samians to Corobius was the origin of the strong friendship that united the Cyrenaeans and Theraeans with the Samians.143 153. The Theraeans, when they had left Corobius on the island and sailed back to Thera, told their countrymen that they had established a colony on an island off 139. A town in eastern Crete. 140. That is, a harvester of murex snails, used in the dying of purple cloth. 141. A Phoenician trading post on the Iberian coast west of Gibraltar. 142. A renowned merchant seaman of the 6th century B.C. An anchor dedicated by a certain Sostratus, quite possibly the same man as mentioned here, has been found recently in southern Italy. 143. The time frame of this last sentence is later than the rest of the chapter, since it assumes Cyrene, founded at 4.158 below, is already in existence.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

251

the coast of Libya. The people then decided that colonists should be sent out from each of their seven districts, and that the brothers in each family should draw lots to determine which should go. Battus was chosen to be their king and leader.144 These men departed for Platea in two penteconters. 154. Such is the account of the Theraeans. Their account of the sequel tallies with that of the Cyrenaeans; but in what they relate about Battus these two nations differ widely. For the people of Cyrene tell the following story. In the Cretan city of Oaxus there was a king named Etearchus, who had a daughter named Phronima. When the girl’s mother died, Etearchus took a second wife. This woman had no sooner entered the family than she proved a true stepmother to Phronima, treating her cruelly and plotting against her. Finally she accused her of lewdness; and Etearchus, persuaded by his wife that it was true, devised an infamous punishment for his daughter. He formed a friendship with a man named Themison, a Theraean merchant living in Oaxus, and got him to promise under oath to do him any service he might ask. And when Themison had given his promise, Etearchus brought in his daughter, handed her over to Themison, and told him to take her away and throw her into the sea. Indignant at the deceit, Themison renounced the friendship; and then, to acquit himself of the obligation he had incurred by his oath, he sailed away with Phronima, tied a rope around her, lowered her into the sea, and then, after hauling her up again, returned with her to Thera. 155. Thereafter Polymnestus, a distinguished Theraean, took Phronima to be his mistress. In time she bore him a son, who stammered and lisped. According to the Theraeans and Cyrenaeans, the boy was named Battus (“Stammerer”); but I have an idea he was originally called something else and only came to be called Battus when he went to Libya, where he assumed the name either in consequence of the response given him by the Delphic oracle, or because of the office he held there. For “battus” is the Libyan word for “king,” and it strikes me that the Pythian priestess, when she uttered the prophecy, addressed him by the Libyan word because she knew that he would become a king in Libya. For when he came of age he went to Delphi to consult the oracle about his defective speech, and the priestess gave him this reply: Battus, you have come about your speech. But lord Phoebus Apollo Sends you to Libya, feeder of flocks, to found a city; which was as if she had said in Greek, “King, you have come about your speech.” Battus replied, “Lord, I came to consult you about my speech, but you speak of 144. In this version of events, Battus (who will become the first king of Cyrene) seems to be only a private Theraean citizen, elected to lead a colonizing party; another version, given just below, gives him a more distinguished pedigree and fateful rise to power.

252

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

other things, impossibilities, and command me to found a colony in Libya. What power have I? What followers?” But he did not persuade the priestess to give him any other answer; and when she would only repeat what she had said before, he left while she was still speaking, and returned to Thera. 156. In time, everything began to go wrong both with Battus and with the rest of the Theraeans. Ignorant of the cause of their misfortunes, they sent to Delphi to learn why they were afflicted, and the priestess declared that when they joined Battus in colonizing Cyrene in Libya, their prospects would improve. So the Theraeans sent Battus off with a party of men in two penteconters.145 They reached the coast, but before long, not knowing what else to do, they sailed back to Thera. The Theraeans, however, refused to let them land; they hurled missiles at them as they approached, and ordered them to sail back. Thus compelled to return, they established a settlement on the island off the coast, which, as I mentioned earlier, was called Platea. It is said to be of the same size as the city of Cyrene is today. 157.The settlers remained in Platea for two years; but as nothing good came of it, they all sailed together to Delphi, leaving one of their men behind. When they reached the oracle, and declared that, though they were living in Libya, they were no better off, the priestess relied: If you know sheep-feeding Libya better than I do— If one who has not visited the place knows it better Than one who has—I vastly admire your wisdom. Battus and his men, when they heard this, sailed back to Platea. For it was clear that the god would not let them off until they had settled on the Libyan mainland. Stopping at Platea to take with them the man they had left there, they settled on the coast opposite Platea, at a place called Aziris, which is bordered by a river and enclosed on both sides by beautiful valleys. 158. They remained there for six years, but in the seventh the Libyans persuaded them to move, promising that they would take them to a better place. They now led them farther west, timing the journey so as to pass in the night through the most beautiful part of that whole country—the region called Irasa. The Libyans brought them to a spring called Apollo’s Fountain, and said to them, “Here, Greeks, is the right place for you to settle; for here the sky is pierced with holes.”146 145. Fifty-oared warships. 146. That is, rain falls frequently, an important concern in arid North Africa. It is unclear what motivated the “Libyans” (an indigenous tribe) to lead the Greeks to this spot, but clearly they wanted to keep the more desirable Irasa for themselves, and perhaps also wanted to relocate them into the territory of a neighboring tribe.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

253

159. During the lifetime of Battus the founder, who ruled for forty years, and that of his son, Arcesilaus, who ruled for sixteen,147 the population of Cyrene remained what it had been at the beginning. But in the reign of the third king, known as Battus the Blessed, an oracle delivered at Delphi urged all the Greeks to sail to Libya and join the colony. For the Cyrenaeans were offering land to all comers. The oracle had declared: Whoever comes to lovely Libya Too late for the division of land Will surely live to regret it. Thus a great throng gathered in Cyrene, and the Libyans of the region found themselves cut off from large portions of their lands. So they and their king Adrican, being robbed and insulted by the Cyrenaeans, sent an embassy to Egypt and offered their allegiance to Apries, the Egyptian king, who mustered a large army and sent it against Cyrene. The Cyrenaeans marched out to Irasa, where, at the spring called Thesta, they engaged the Egyptians and conquered them in battle. The Egyptians, who had never made trial of the Greeks in battle, and therefore regarded them with contempt, were bested so brutally that few of them returned home alive. The Egyptians blamed Apries personally for this defeat, and revolted from his authority.148 160. Battus the Blessed had a son named Arcesilaus, who, when he came to the throne, quarreled with his brothers until they left him and departed to another region of Libya, where on their own authority they founded the city known then and now as Barca. At the same time they tried to incite the Libyans to revolt from Cyrene, whereupon Arcesilaus marched against the Libyans who had received his brothers and revolted. Fearing him, the Libyans fled eastward, and Arcesilaus pursued them to a place in Libya called Leucon, where the Libyans decided to attack him. In the engagement that followed, the Cyrenaeans were soundly defeated, losing as many as 7,000 men-at-arms. After this blow, Arcesilaus fell ill and, after taking some drug, was strangled by his brother Learchus, who, in his turn, was treacherously slain by Eryxo, Arcesilaus’ widow. 161. Battus, Arcesilaus’ son,149 who was lame and walked with a limp, succeeded to the kingdom. After the misfortune that had befallen them, the Cyrenaeans sent to Delphi to ask what form of government they should establish in order to ensure their 147. Historically speaking, the time frame is the end of the 7th century B.C. and the start of the 6th. Later in this chapter Herodotus reveals that Apries (see 2.161–63 above), pharaoh in Egypt from 589 to 570 B.C., was on the throne in the time of Battus II, Arcesilaus’ son. 148. The same account has been given at 2.161 as part of the history of Egypt; Herodotus there vowed to supply the fuller account he gives here. 149. Battus III.

254

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

prosperity.150 The priestess advised them to call in a mediator from Mantinea in Arcadia. Accordingly, the Cyrenaeans requested a suitable person, and the Mantineans offered them the services of a man named Demonax, one of their most distinguished citizens. Demonax arrived in Cyrene, acquainted himself with all the circumstances there, and proceeded to divide the Cyrenaeans into three tribes, the first consisting of the Theraeans and their neighbors, the second of the Peloponnesians and Cretans, and the third of all the other islanders. Then, after reserving certain parcels of land and priestly offices for King Battus, he transferred to the people all the privileges that had previously belonged to the kings. 162. Throughout the lifetime of this Battus, these arrangements remained in effect, but when his son Arcesilaus came to the throne, a great uproar arose about the privileges. For Arcesilaus, son of Battus the Lame and Pheretima,151 refused to accept the arrangements of Demonax, and claimed all his ancestral privileges. Defeated in the dispute, Arcesilaus fled to Samos, while his mother took refuge at Salamis in Cyprus. Salamis was at that time ruled by Euelthon, who dedicated the remarkable censer in the Corinthian treasury at Delphi. On her arrival at Euelthon’s court, Pheretima asked for an army to put her party back in power at Cyrene.Thereupon Euelthon, who was disposed to give her anything rather than an army, offered her various gifts. And Pheretima, each time she accepted a present, would say that it was a fine one, but not so fine as to give her the army she had requested. Finding that she repeated this remark each time he offered her a gift, Euelthon finally sent her a golden spindle and distaff, with a quantity of wool. When Pheretima made her usual comment, Euelthon replied that he had sent her a gift which, unlike an army, he considered suitable for women. 163. In Samos, meanwhile, Arcesilaus was collecting anyone he could find, with promises of a general distribution of land. When he had assembled a large army, he sent to Delphi to consult the oracle about his return to Cyrene. The priestess gave him this reply: “Loxias grants your family kingship in Cyrene for a period of eight generations—under four kings named Battus and four named Arcesilaus.152 He advises you not to try for more. As for yourself, be gentle when you are restored. If you find the oven full of jars, do not bake them but cast them away downwind. If, however, you fire up the kiln, avoid the land surrounded by water—otherwise you will die, and the best of the bulls with you.”

150. Battus III was apparently quite young at this time, and the royal family had fallen into such disarray that the citizens of Cyrene could contemplate eliminating the monarchy. 151. Arcesilaus III, who reigned around the time of Cambyses (see 4.165 below). 152. The dynasty would in fact end (as Herodotus knew) around 440 B.C., with the death of Arcesilaus IV.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

255

164. Having heard this utterance, Arcesilaus returned to Cyrene with his Samian troops and recovered supreme power. But then, forgetting the warning of the oracle, he demanded satisfaction from his political opponents, who had sent him into exile. Some of them left the country for good; others were captured by Arcesilaus and sent to Cyprus to be slaughtered. These men, carried off course to Cnidus, were rescued by the Cnidians, who sent them to Thera. A third group of Cyrenaeans shut themselves up in the high tower belonging to Aglomachus. Arcesilaus, piling brushwood around the tower, set it on fire. Afterward, realizing that this was what the priestess meant when she warned him not to bake the jars in the oven, he purposely stayed away from Cyrene, thinking that it might be “the land surrounded by water.” Arcesilaus’ wife was related to him by blood; she was the daughter of Alazir, the king of the Barcaeans. Arcesilaus went to live with Alazir, whereupon the citizens of Barca, together with some of the exiles from Cyrene, recognized him in the marketplace and killed him; they also did away with his father-in-law. Thus Arcesilaus, whether willingly or unwillingly, mistook the oracle and fulfilled his destiny. 165. While Arcesilaus, having brought about his own ruin, was living in Barca, his mother Pheretima retained his privileges in Cyrene, managed the government, and took her seat in council. But on learning of her son’s death, she fled to Egypt. For Arcesilaus had performed services for Cambyses, son of Cyrus; it was he who had handed Cyrene over to Cambyses and fixed a rate of tribute.153 On her arrival, she approached Aryandes as a suppliant and entreated him to avenge her wrongs, claiming that her son’s friendship with Persia had caused his death. 166. Aryandes had been appointed governor of Egypt by Cambyses; in due course he was put to death for attempting to rival Darius. Having heard and seen that Darius was eager to leave a memorial such as no king had ever left before, Aryandes ventured to make himself the equal of Darius, and was soon made to pay the price. Darius had refined gold to the highest degree of purity in order to have coins minted of it; and Aryandes, as governor of Egypt, did the very same with silver, so that to this day the purest silver coinage is the Aryandic. When Darius learned of this, he brought an unrelated charge against Aryandes—of rebellion—and had him put to death.154 167. On the present occasion Aryandes, out of compassion for Pheretima, gave her all the forces in Egypt, both land and sea. He appointed Amasis, a Maraphian, to lead the infantry, and Badres, a descendant of the Pasargadae, to command the fleet. But before launching the expedition, he sent a herald to Barca to 153. See 3.13 above. 154. These events of course took place later than the narrative present, which Herodotus returns to in the next chapter.

256

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

inquire who it was that had slain Arcesilaus. The Barcaeans replied that they were all equally responsible for the deed, since they had suffered many great injuries at his hands. After receiving this reply, Aryandes ordered the troops to march with Pheretima. Arcesilaus’ murder, then, served as a pretext for the expedition; its real object, I presume, was the subjugation of Libya.155 The Libyan tribes are many and various.156 A few of them were obedient to the Persian king, though the majority paid no heed to Darius. 168. The Libyans’ territories lie in the following order.157 The first Libyans west of Egypt are the Adyrmachidae, who for the most part have the same customs as the Egyptians, though they dress like the rest of the Libyans. Their women wear a bronze ring on each leg; they let their hair grow long, and when they catch lice on their bodies, they bite the insects back before throwing them away. They are the only Libyans who do so. They are also the only Libyans to bring girls who are about to be married to see the king. The girl he finds most pleasing is deflowered by him. The territory of the Adyrmachidae extends from the Egyptian border as far as the harbor called Plynus. 169. Next come the Giligamae, who inhabit the territory westward as far as the island of Aphrodisias. In between lies Platea, the island off the coast where the Cyrenaeans settled, and on the mainland are the Harbor of Menelaus and Aziris, where the Cyrenaeans once lived. Silphium begins to be found in this region, extending from Platea to the mouth of the Syrtis. The customs of the Giligamae are like those of the other Libyan tribes. 170. West of the Giligamae are the Asbystae. Their territory lies above Cyrene, and does not extend to the coast, which is occupied by the Cyrenaeans. The Asbystae are distinguished among the Libyans for their use of four-horse chariots.They imitate most of the Cyrenaeans’ customs. 171. West of the Asbystae are the Auschisae, who live south of Barca and reach the sea near Euesperides. Within their territory are the Bacales, a small tribe whose territory extends to the coast near Tauchira, a city belonging to Barca. The Bacales have the same customs as the people south of Cyrene.

155. It will be recalled that Cambyses, while ruling Egypt (a few years before the present narrative), had sent armies against various peoples of North Africa, with disastrous results (3.17 and 3.26). 156. Following his usual pattern, Herodotus departs from his narrative of Persian expansion as soon as a new campaign has begun, in order to survey the lands and peoples in the invasion’s path. In this case, however, the military narrative forms only a tiny appendage to the ethnographic excursus, occupying the final six chapters of Book 4 (4.200–205). 157. Herodotus proceeds east to west along the coast, taking the Libyan tribes in turn, up to Lake Tritonis; at 4.181 he turns his attention inland; then at 4.186 he returns to the coast and continues westward.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

257

172. West of the Auschisae are the Nasamonians, a large tribe.158 In summer they leave their flocks and herds at the seashore, and go up to Augila to gather dates from the many large palms that grow in that region, all of them of the fruitbearing kind. These people also catch locusts, which they dry in the sun and grind into powder. They sprinkle this powder on milk before they drink it. Each man has several wives, whom they share with one another, like the Massagetae.When a man puts up a pole, he is lying with a woman.When a Nasamonian first marries, it is the custom for the bride, on her wedding night, to lie with all the guests in turn; each guest, when he has lain with her, gives her a gift that he has brought from home. In the matter of oaths, their custom is to swear by those of their countrymen who are reputed to have been surpassingly just and noble, laying their hands upon their tombs. For divination, they go to the tombs of their ancestors, and, after praying, lie down to sleep upon their graves; any dream that then comes to them they regard as prophetic. When they exchange pledges, each party drinks from the other’s hand. If there is nothing available to drink, they take some dust from the ground and lick it up. 173. The territory of the Nasamonians borders that of the Psylli, who perished under the following circumstances. The south wind had dried up their reservoirs of water, and thus they were left with none, since their territory lies wholly within the Syrtis.They therefore took counsel, and by common consent made war on the south wind. (Here I merely report what the Libyans say.) And when they reached the desert, the south wind rose and buried them in sand. As the whole tribe was wiped out, the Nasamonians occupied their territory. 174. Farther inland and to the south, in a region where wild beasts are found, live the Garamantes. They avoid all intercourse with men, have no weapons of war, and do not know how to defend themselves. 175. These people live inland of the Nasamonians; the latter’s neighbors along the coast to the west are the Macae, who cut their hair in the form of a crest. They let it grow long in the middle, but shave it close on either side. In war they carry ostrich hides as shields. The river Cinyps, which rises in their country from the crest called the Hill of the Graces, runs through their country to the sea. The Hill of the Graces is densely wooded, unlike the rest of Libya, which is bare of tress. It lies 200 stades from the sea. 176. Next to the Macae are the Gindanes, whose women wear several anklets made of leather; it is said that each woman puts on an anklet for every man with whom she has had intercourse, and that the woman who has the greatest number of anklets is considered the best because she has been loved by the greatest ­number of men. 158. On the Nasamonians see 2.32 above.

258

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

177. A promontory that juts out into the sea from the territory of the Gindanes is inhabited by the Lotus-eaters, who live entirely on the fruit of the lotus. The lotus fruit is about the size of a mastic berry and in sweetness resembles a date. The Lotus-eaters also make wine from it.159 178. The coast beyond the Lotus-eaters is occupied by the Machlyes, who also use the lotus, though not as much as their neighbors. Their territory extends to a large river called the Triton, which empties into the great lake Tritonis. In this lake there is an island called Phla, and there is said to be an oracle that advised the Spartans to establish a settlement there. 179. Legend has it that Jason, when he had finished building the Argo at the foot of Mount Pelion, put on board, in addition to a hecatomb, a bronze tripod. Thus equipped, he set sail, intending to round the Peloponnese on his way to Delphi. Off Cape Malea he was caught by a northerly wind and carried off course to Libya, where, before he sighted land, he found himself in the shallows of Lake Tritonis. As he was at a loss how to find his way out, Triton appeared and ordered him to give him the tripod, and in return he would show him the channel and help them all get safely away. Jason complied, whereupon Triton guided them through the shallows;160 he then placed the tripod in his own temple, and prophesied over it at length, for the benefit of Jason and his companions, foretelling that when a descendant of the Argonauts had carried off the tripod, it was inevitably decreed by fate that 100 Greek cities would be built around Lake Tritonis. When the Libyans in the neighborhood heard the prophecy, they hid the tripod. 180. Next to the Machlyes are the Ausees; both of these tribes live around Lake Tritonis, the river Triton forming the boundary between them. The Machyles let their hair grow long on the back of their heads, the Ausees on the front. At their annual festival of Athena, the girls divide themselves into two groups and fight each other with stones and sticks. They say that this rite has come down to them from their ancestors, and that it is performed in honor of their native goddess, whom we call Athena. If any girls die from their wounds, the Ausees declare them “false virgins.” Before letting them fight, they select the most beautiful girl and dress her in a full suit of Greek armor and a Corinthian helmet; then they put her in a chariot and drive her around the lake. How they dressed the girls in former times, before the Greeks settled among them, I cannot say, but I imagine that the 159. In Homer’s Odyssey the Lotus-eaters, encountered by Odysseus on his way home from Troy, subsist on a flower (not a fruit) called the lotus; this flower induces a state of passive, blissful contentment in whoever partakes of it. Herodotus does not indicate whether he thinks this fruit-eating tribe is the same race as Homer’s Lotus-eaters, but if he did, he must be rationalizing the myth by explaining the effect of the lotus as simple drunkenness. 160. Up to this point Herodotus’ version of this tale largely overlaps with a later one found in Apollonius’ Argonautica (4.1223 ff.). It is not clear where Lake Tritonis should be located or whether it has completely dried up today.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

259

armor they used was Egyptian. For I maintain that both the shield and the helmet came into Greece from Egypt. They say Athena is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis; but blaming her father for something, she gave herself to Zeus, and Zeus made her his own daughter. The women of the tribe are common property; men and women do not cohabit; like the animals, they copulate promiscuously. When a child is grown, the men hold a meeting every third month, and it is assigned to the one it most resembles. 181. So much for the coastal tribes of the Libyan nomads. Inland of their territory lies the region of wild beasts, and beyond that there is a ridge of sand, extending from Egyptian Thebes to the Pillars of Heracles. Along this ridge, at intervals of roughly a ten days’ journey, stand hills formed of lumps of salt. At the top of each, from the middle of the salt, gushes a stream of cold, sweet water. Men live near these springs, past the wild-beast region;161 they are the farthest south, toward the desert, of all the inhabitants of Libya. The first of them, a ten days’ journey from Thebes, are the Ammonians,162 who have a temple derived from that of Theban Zeus.163 For at Thebes too, as I mentioned earlier, the image of Zeus has the face of a ram. The Ammonians have another spring there. Its water is lukewarm at dawn; toward market time it is much cooler; at noon it is extremely cold. That is when the Ammonians water their gardens. As the afternoon advances, the chill lessens until, at sunset, the water is again lukewarm. Its heat increases throughout the night until, at midnight, it boils furiously. Past midnight, the water gradually cools off until dawn. This spring is known as the Fountain of the Sun. 182. Past the Ammonians, a ten days’ journey along the ridge of sand, there is another similar salt hill and spring. This place, called Augila, is also inhabited; and it is here that the Nasamonians come to harvest their dates. 183. A ten days’ journey from Augila there is another salt hill and a spring; fruit-bearing palms grow abundantly here, as they do at the other springs. Here live the Garamantes, a powerful people, who spread soil over the salt and then sow their seeds. From there is the shortest route to the Lotus-eaters, a thirty days’ journey. In their territory are found oxen that walk backwards as they graze. They do this because their horns curve forward and downward; this makes it impossible for them, when grazing, to move forward, since if they tried to do so their horns would stick in the ground. They differ from other oxen only in this and in the thickness and toughness of their hides. The Garamantes have four-horse chariots, in which they chase the Ethiopian troglodytes, who are swifter of foot than any nation of whom we have any knowledge. The troglodytes feed on serpents, 161. Herodotus is describing oases, which he somehow imagines to include mounds of salt. 162. See 2.32–33 above. 163. “Theban” and “Thebes” in this sentence refer to the Egyptian city, not the Greek one.

260

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

lizards, and other reptiles. They speak a language unlike any other, but jibber like bats. 184. A ten days’ journey from the Garamantes there is another salt hill and spring. It is the home of the Atarantes, who alone of all known nations use no names. (Collectively they are known as the Atarantes, but no individual is given a particular name.) They curse the sun when it rises high, and abuse it in the foulest terms, because it burns and wastes both the people themselves and their land. After another ten days’ journey there is another salt hill, a spring, and a settlement. Near the hill rises a mountain called Atlas.The mountain is conical in shape, slender, and so lofty that according to report the top cannot be seen, the clouds obscuring it summer and winter. The natives call it the Pillar of the Sky, and they themselves are named after it, being called Atlantes. They are said to eat no living thing, and never to dream. 185. My knowledge of the names of the tribes that inhabit the sandy ridge extends to the Atlantes and no farther. The ridge extends as far as the Pillars of Heracles and beyond; and at regular intervals of a ten days’ journey, there is a salt mine, with people around it who all build their houses with blocks of salt. No rain falls in this part of Libya; if it were otherwise, the salt walls could not stand. The salt mined there is of two colors, white and purple. South of the ridge, in the interior, the country is a desert; it has no springs, no animals, no rain, no trees, and no moisture. 186. From Egypt to Lake Tritonis Libya is inhabited by nomadic tribes who live on meat and milk. They abstain from cows’ meat for the same reason as the Egyptians, and they breed no pigs. Even at Cyrene the women think it wrong to eat cows’ meat, out of respect for Isis, in whose honor they fast and hold festivals.The women of Barca abstain not only from cows’ meat but also from the meat of pigs. 187. West of Lake Tritonis, the Libyans are no longer nomadic, nor do they adhere to the nomads’ customs or treat their children in the same way. Many, if not all, of the Libyan nomads—I have no precise knowledge on this point— when their children are four years old, burn the veins on their heads with a tuft of greasy wool; others burn the veins on their temples. They do this to prevent them from being afflicted for the rest of their lives by a flow of phlegm from their heads.164 The Libyans say that this practice makes them the healthiest of all peoples. Certainly the Libyans are the healthiest people we know of—though whether this is attributable to the practice I have described I cannot say with certainty; but the healthiest, undoubtedly, they are. If the burning of the veins brings on convulsions, they have discovered that the remedy is to sprinkle goat’s urine on the child. Here I only repeat what is said by the Libyans. 164. Corcella comments: “The use of cauterization is still attested in modern times in the whole of Africa” (Asheri, Commentary, p. 710).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

261

188. The nomads use the following procedure when sacrificing. They begin by offering the victim’s ear, which they cut off and throw over their house.That done, they wring the animal’s neck. They sacrifice only to the sun and moon. This worship is common to all the Libyans. Those who live around Lake Tritonis sacrifice mainly to Athena, and, after her, to Triton and Poseidon. 189. The dress and aegis165 with which the Greeks adorn statues of Athena were taken from the women of Libya. For except that the garments of the Libyan women are of leather, and their fringes made of leather thongs instead of snakes, their dress is exactly alike. The name “aegis” itself shows that the way of dressing the statues of Athena came from Libya. For the Libyan women wear goat skins stripped of the hair, fringed at the edges, and dyed red; and it is from these skins (aegeae) that the Greeks get their word “aegis.” It also seems to me that the crying of women in our sacred rites came from Libya. For the Libyan women are devoted to such cries and utter them beautifully. It was also from the Libyans that the Greeks learned to yoke four horses to a chariot.166 190. The nomads, except for the Nasamonians, bury their dead as the Greeks do. The Nasamonians bury them sitting, and take care, when the dying person is about to breathe his last, to make him sit up, and not to let him die lying down. Their houses, which are portable, are made of asphodel stems twined together with rushes. 191. West of the river Triton, and past the Ausees, are Libyans who till the soil and live in houses. They are called the Maxyes. They let their hair grow long on the right side of their heads and shave it close on the left. They smear their bodies with red paint and claim to be descended from the men of Troy. This region, and the rest of Libya toward the west, has more forest and many more wild beasts than the country of the nomads. For eastern Libya, where the nomads live, is low and sandy as far as the river Triton, whereas the agricultural region to the west is very hilly, densely forested, and full of wild beasts. This is where the huge serpents are found, and the lions, elephants, bears, asps, and horned asses.167 Here too, as the Libyans tell us, are the dog-headed creatures and the headless creatures with eyes in their breasts; and also the wild men, and wild women, and a great many other creatures by no means imaginary.168 165. The aegis was a goat skin wielded by Athena in Homer’s Iliad, possessing magical powers in battle. 166. Carvings and rock paintings from North Africa attest that the use of horse-drawn chariots was widespread there in antiquity. 167. Horned asses are rhinos. 168. It is not clear whether this last group of creatures, “by no means imaginary,” is meant to pose an ironic contrast with those that precede, which Herodotus would therefore be labeling imaginary. “Dog-heads” or kunokephaloi came to be identified by later Greeks with monkeys or baboons, and “wild men and wild women” may also represent a distorted recollection of African primates.

262

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

192. None of these are seen among the nomads; instead, one finds whiterumped antelopes, gazelles, hartebeests, asses (not of the horned kind, but of a kind that can live without water; for they do not drink); also oryxes, whose horns are used for the curved sides of Phoenician lyres, and who are about the size of an ox; foxes, hyenas, porcupines, wild rams, dictyes, jackals, panthers, boryes, land crocodiles about three cubits in length, resembling lizards, ostriches, and small snakes, each with a single horn.169 All these animals are found here, together with those found in other countries, with the exception of the stag and the wild boar, which are not found anywhere in Libya. There are, however, three kinds of mice: the first are called “dipodies” (or two-footed); the next, “zegeries,” which is a Libyan word meaning “hills”; and the third, “echines” (or bristly-haired). Weasels, too, are found in the silphium-region, and resemble those at Tartessus. These, then, are all the animals that are to be found in the land of the Libyan nomads (all, that is, that my extensive inquiries brought to my attention). 193. Next to the Maxyes are the Zauces, whose wives drive their chariots into battle. 194. Their neighbors are the Gyzantes,170 whose country is well supplied with honey; much of it is made by bees, but even more by confectioners. The people all paint themselves red, and eat monkeys, which abound in their hills. 195. Off their coast, according to the Carthaginians, lies an island called Cyrauis. The island is narrow, 200 stades long, easily reached from the mainland, and full of olive trees and vines. In the island there is a lake, and the native girls dip feathers smeared with pitch into the mud at the bottom, and bring up gold dust. Whether this is true or not I do not know; I merely write what is said. But it might be perfectly true, since I have myself seen pitch being drawn from the water of a lake in Zacynthus.171 There are a number of lakes in Zacynthus, of which the largest is seventy feet long each way and two fathoms deep. The Zacynthians lower a pole into the water, with a branch of myrtle tied to one end; the pitch sticks to the myrtle and is brought to the surface. It smells like bitumen, but in all other respects is superior to the pitch of Pieria. They pour it into a hollow dug near the lake, and when they have accumulated a sufficient quantity, they remove it from the hollow and put it in jars. Anything that falls into the lake passes underground and comes up again in the sea, which is no less than four

169. Not all the translations in this long list of exotic animals are secure, and two terms that have no clear correlate have been left untranslated. 170. In some manuscripts their name is spelled Zygantes. 171. Herodotus here brings in an analogue from the Greek world, the island of Zacynthus in the Adriatic Sea. Pitch was used by the Greeks for caulking the seams of ships.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

263

Sicily

Carthage

tes zan Gy s uce Maxyes Za Ausees

Mediterranean Sea

Lake Tritonis

Machlyes Lotus Eaters Gindanes

Cyrene

Libya

Bacales Aucasae Asbystae

Gulf of Syrtis

Macae

Na

Wi l d b e a s t terri

Garamantes

sam

on

tory

es

Sand ridge 200 kilometers

Atarantes salt hills

Garamantes salt hills

Augila salt hills

200 miles

Libya as described by Herodotus.

stades distant. Hence, the account of what happens in the island off Libya may very well be true. 196. The Carthaginians also tell of a country in Libya, and a tribe, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, to whom they bring their cargo. As soon as they arrive, they unload their wares, arrange them in an orderly manner along the beach, return to their ships, and raise a smoke. When the natives see the smoke, they come down to the shore, lay out a quantity of gold in exchange for the wares, and withdraw to a distance. The Carthaginians then come ashore and look at the gold. If they think it represents a fair price for their wares, they collect it and depart. If not, they go back aboard and wait. Then the natives approach and add to the gold until the

264

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

Carthaginians are satisfied.172 Neither party treats the other unfairly; for the Carthaginians do not touch the gold until it comes up to the value of their wares, nor do the natives touch the goods until the Carthaginians have taken away the gold. 197. These, then, are the Libyan tribes we are able to name; and most of them have never, then or now, paid any heed to the king of the Medes.173 I have one last point to make about the country: so far as we know, four peoples, and only four, inhabit it. Two of them are indigenous; two are not. The Libyans and Ethiopians are indigenous, the former living in the north of Libya, the latter in the south. The Phoenicians and the Greeks are immigrants. 198. It seems to me that Libya cannot be compared for the fertility of its soil with either Asia or Europe, except in the Cinyps region, which is named after the river that waters it. That region is equal to any country in the world for cereal crops, and is quite unlike the rest of Libya. Its soil is black and well-watered with springs; so it has nothing to fear from drought, nor is it in danger of damage from heavy rains (for it does rain in that part of Libya). The yields of the harvest equal those in Babylonia. There is also good soil in the land of the Euesperides. For there, in an especially good year, the land produces a hundredfold harvest; but the Cinyps region yields three-hundredfold. 199. The territory of Cyrene, which is the highest tract in the region of Libya inhabited by the nomads, has a remarkable triple harvest. First the crops along the coast begin to ripen and are ready for cutting and picking; after they have been harvested, the crops of the middle tract, known as the hill country, must be gathered in; and about the time when this middle harvest is over, the crops in the highest tract grow ripe. So that all the produce of the first harvest has been eaten and drunk by the time the last comes in. Thus the harvest time occupies the Cyrenaeans for eight full months. So much for this subject. 200. When the Persians sent from Egypt by Aryandes to help Pheretima reached Barca, they laid siege to the city, demanding that the inhabitants give up the men responsible for the murder of Arcesilaus.174 But the townspeople refused, on the grounds that they were all of them equally responsible. The Persians then besieged Barca for nine months, during which time they dug several tunnels leading to the fortress, and also made a number of vigorous assaults. But the tunnels were discovered by a bronzesmith, who carried a bronze shield all around the inner circuit of the town wall, and laid it on the ground. In some 172. A convincing description of how barter was undoubtedly conducted between peoples with no shared language or culture. 173. A reminder that a Persian invasion, to which Herodotus is about to return, is the pretext for all the preceding ethnography. 174. The narrative of the Persian intervention in Libya resumes from the point reached at 4.167.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

265

places the shield, when he laid it down, was dumb; but where the ground had been undermined, the bronze of the shield rang out. Countermining at these spots, the Barcaeans slew the Persian tunnelers; they also succeeded in beating back the direct assaults. 201. When the siege had dragged on, and many had fallen (the casualties were equal on both sides), Amasis, the commander of the infantry, perceiving that though the Barcaeans would never be taken by force, they might be overcome by fraud, contrived as follows. One night he dug a wide trench, laid thin planks of wood over it, and then spread soil over the planks, making the place level with the ground on either side. At dawn he invited the Barcaeans to a conference, to which they gladly came. When terms were agreed upon, oaths were exchanged over the hidden trench to the effect that the parties would adhere to the treaty “so long as the ground beneath our feet stands firm.” The Barcaeans promised to pay a fair sum to the King, and the Persians promised to cause the Barcaeans no more trouble. After the oath the Barcaeans, relying upon its terms, threw open all their gates, came out beyond the wall, and admitted any Persian who wished to come inside. Then the Persians broke down their secret bridge and rushed into the town. They broke down the bridge so that they might abide by their oath; for they had sworn to the Barcaeans that they would adhere to the treaty as long as the ground under their feet stood firm. But once the bridge was broken down, the oath no longer held. 202. When the guiltiest of the Barcaeans were handed over by the Persians to Pheretima, she impaled them on stakes all around the walls of the city. She also cut off the breasts of their wives and fastened them likewise about the walls. She gave the rest of the people to the Persian soldiers as plunder, except for those who belonged to the house of Battus and those who had taken no part in the murder. To these she gave control of the city. 203. When the Persians had reduced everyone else to slavery, they departed for home. On reaching Cyrene, the people, out of respect for an oracle, let them pass through the town. During the passage, Badres, the admiral, recommended that they seize the place; but Amasis, the infantry general, would not allow it, since Barca was the only Greek city they had been ordered to attack. But after passing through the town and taking up a position on the hill of Lycaean Zeus, they regretted that they had not captured Cyrene and tried to enter it a second time. This time the Cyrenaeans refused to admit them, whereupon, though no battle was fought, the Persians panicked and fled to a position nearly sixty stades away.When they had encamped there, a messenger from Aryandes arrived, ordering them home. The Persians then asked the Cyrenaeans to give them provisions. When these were supplied, the Persians set off on their return to Egypt. But the Libyans now harassed them, slaughtering all stragglers for the sake of their clothes and gear, all the way to the border.

266

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 4

204. The farthest point in Libya reached by this Persian army was Euesperides.175 The Barcaeans who were enslaved were sent from Egypt to King Darius, who gave them a village in Bactria to live in.176 They named the village Barca, and it was still inhabited in my day. 205. Pheretima came to a bad end. As soon as she had avenged herself on the Barcaeans and returned home to Egypt from Libya,177 she died a horrible death, her body swarming with maggots while she was still alive. For when all is said and done, human vengeance, when it is too severe, arouses the gods’ anger. Of such severity was the vengeance that Pheretima, daughter of Battus, took on the Barcaeans.

175. A point further west than Barca; Herodotus’ note would have been more appropriately included at the end of 4.202. 176. Deportation of non-cooperative peoples into the interior of Asia was a common Persian means of exerting imperial control. 177. Herodotus does not make clear why this imperious queen, having wreaked such destruction in order to get control of Cyrene, did not remain in the city she had gained but returned to Egypt.

Book 5

1. The Persians, whom Darius had left behind in Europe under Megabazus’ command, now proceeded to subjugate the nations of the Hellespont,1 beginning with the Perinthians, who were unwilling to be subjects of the King, as they had already been roughly handled by the Paeonians.2 For an oracle had directed the Paeonians from the river Strymon to march against the Perinthians; and if the latter, when the armies were drawn up opposite one another, called them by name, then to go out against them; but if not, to hold back. The Paeonians followed their advice. The Perinthians took up a position on the outskirts of their town and challenged the enemy to engage in three duels; for they pitted man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog. And when the Perinthians, having prevailed in two out of three, raised their joyous cry of victory, Io paean,3 the Paeonians guessed that this was what the oracle had meant, and said to one another, “Now the oracle is fulfilled, and we must do our part.” They attacked the Perinthians in the midst of their paean, won a stunning victory, and left few of them alive. 2. This incident had taken place a long time previously. On the present occasion, in spite of a brave struggle for their freedom, the Perinthians were overwhelmed by numbers, and yielded to Megabazus and his Persians. After Perinthus had been subdued, Megabazus marched his army through Thrace, bringing every city and every nation under the control of the King; for he had been instructed by Darius to conquer Thrace.4 3. After the Indians, the Thracians are the largest nation in the world. If they could be united under one ruler, or could agree among themselves, it is my belief that they would be unconquerable and by far the strongest nation on earth. But such unity is impossible for them, and there is no way of bringing it about. The result is that they are weak. They go by various names in the different regions of their country, but all of them have the same way of life except for the Getae, the Trausi, and the tribes north of Creston. 1. The narrative resumes from the point reached at 4.145. By “Hellespont” Herodotus means the region around the Straits of Dardanelles. 2. The Perinthians were Greeks, inhabitants of the city of the Perinthus, whereas the Paeonians were a non-Greek tribe. 3. The words “io paean” made up a ritual cry in the Greek world, sometimes used as a battle cry (the source of the English word “paean”). Etymologically the word had nothing to do with the name “Paeonian” but sounded similar. 4. The region north of the Hellespont and the Aegean, today largely comprising southern Bulgaria. 267

268

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

4. The customs of the Getae, who think themselves immortal, I have already described.5 The Trausi resemble the other Thracians except in their behavior on the occasion of a birth or a death. When a child is born, the family sits round and weeps for all the evils it must endure now that it has come into the world, going through the entire catalogue of human sorrows. When somebody dies, they bury him with laughter and rejoicing, and say that now, having escaped so many miseries, he is perfectly happy. 5. Among the tribes who live beyond Creston, each man has several wives. When a man dies, a sharp dispute arises among the wives, and fierce rivalries among their friends, over which of his wives the departed loved best. The wife who is accorded this honor, after receiving the praises of both men and women, is slain over the grave by her next of kin and buried beside her husband. The other wives are terribly distraught, since not to be chosen is the greatest disgrace. 6. All the other Thracians sell their children to traders.6 They keep no watch over young girls, allowing them to lie with any man they please, but exercise strict control over their wives, whom they purchase at a high price from their parents. They consider a tattoo the mark of high birth, the lack of one the mark of low birth. They regard the idle man as the best, the tiller of the soil as the lowest of the low. To live by war and plunder is thought highly honorable. Such are their most notable customs. 7. The only gods they worship are Ares, Dionysus, and Artemis. Their kings, however, unlike the rest of the citizens, worship Hermes more than any other god; they swear only by Hermes, and claim that they are themselves descended from him. 8. Wealthy Thracians are buried in the following way. The body is laid out for three days, during which, after a period of mourning, they slaughter all sorts of victims and feast upon them. Then the body is buried, with or without cremation. Lastly, they raise a mound over the grave, and hold all sorts of games, in which the greatest prizes are awarded for single combat. Such is the mode of burial among the Thracians. 9. As for the region north of this country, no one can say with any certainty what men inhabit it. But it appears that beyond the Danube lies a boundless wilderness. The only tribe I have heard of as living beyond the Danube are the Sigynnae, who are said to wear Median dress, and to have small, snub-nosed horses that are covered entirely with a coat of shaggy hair, five fingers in length. Though not strong enough to carry men, when yoked to chariots they are exceptionally swift, which is why the people of the region use chariots. Their borders 5. See 4.93–94 above. 6. That is, sell them as slaves. The Greeks had many slaves from Thrace, to judge by the names “Thrax” and “Thrassa” often given to slaves.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

269

reach almost to the Eneti on the Adriatic. They claim to be colonists from Media, but how that can be so, I, for one, cannot imagine, though anything might happen in the course of time.7 The Ligurians above Massalia use the word “sigynnae” to mean “shopkeepers,” though among the Cyprians it means “spears.” 10. According to the Thracians, the country beyond the Danube is infested by bees, and this makes it impossible to penetrate farther. But this strikes me as improbable, since bees cannot tolerate the cold. I rather think that it is on account of the cold that the regions under the Bear8 are uninhabited. Such are the facts I have heard reported about this country, the coast of which Megabazus was now bringing under Persian control. 11. As soon as Darius had crossed the Hellespont and reached Sardis, he recalled the good deed of Histiaeus of Miletus and the good advice of Coes of Mytilene.9 Summoning both men to Sardis, he asked them what they would like in return. Histiaeus, since he held sway in Miletus, desired no additional sovereignty; instead he asked for Myrcinus, in the territory of the Edonians, as he wished to found a city there.10 Coes, on the other hand, because he was a private man without any rule, asked for sovereignty over Mytilene.11 Both requests were granted, and the two men went off to the places they had chosen. 12. In the meantime Darius happened to see something that inspired him to order Megabazus to transfer the Paeonians from Europe to Asia. There were two Paeonians, Pigres and Mastyes, who wished to rule over their countrymen as tyrants;12 so as soon as Darius had crossed into Asia,13 they came to Sardis, bringing with them their sister, a tall and beautiful young woman. Waiting until Darius was sitting in state before the Lydian capital, they dressed their sister as handsomely as they could and sent her with a pitcher on her head to fetch water, leading a horse by a rein and spinning flax as she went. Walking past Darius, she 7. The last clause of this sentence might be taken as an epigraph of Herodotus’ entire work. Herodotus has already accepted the theory that the Colchians, in modern-day Armenia, were colonists from Egypt (2.104); the connection made here, between inhabitants of modern Albania and Iran, seems no more unlikely. 8. That is, the regions lying below the path of the Big Dipper, a constellation seen by the Greeks as a bear and called the Great Bear. 9. Both relating to the preservation of Darius’ line of retreat over the Bosporus bridge (see 4.97 and 4.137–42. 10. A mineral-rich area in modern-day Bulgaria, the site of the later Greek city of Amphipolis. 11. The principal city on the Greek island of Lesbos, at this time under the control of the Persians. 12. “Tyrant” here translates Greek turannos, a word that designates a ruler installed by nonconstitutional means. The English word “tyrant,” however, carries overtones of cruelty and despotism not always present in the Greek word (see note 29 to 1.20). 13. On his return from the invasion of Scythia.

270

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

caught his eye. For her behavior was unlike what one would expect of a Persian or Lydian, or any other Asian woman. Having noticed her, Darius sent some of his guards after her to see what she would do with the horse. The men followed her; and the woman, when she reached the river, watered the horse, filled the pitcher, and returned by the same road, with the pitcher on her head, leading the horse and twirling her spindle. 13. Amazed both at what he heard from his men and at what he himself had seen, Darius gave orders for the woman to be brought into his presence. She came, together with her brothers, who had been watching nearby. When Darius asked what country she belonged to, the young men replied that they were Paeonians and that she was their sister. The king then wished to know who the Paeonians were, where their country was, and what had brought them to Sardis. They told him that they had come to put themselves under his power, that Paeonia was on the river Strymon, not far from the Hellespont, and that the Paeonians were colonists of the Teucrians14 from Troy. Darius then asked if all the Paeonian women were so industrious, and the brothers eagerly declared—for this had been the whole point of what they had done—that they were. 14. Darius now wrote to Megabazus, whom he had left in command in Thrace, instructing him to remove the Paeonians—men, children, and women—from their own land and bring them to him. A horseman rode off at a gallop to the Hellespont, crossed the water, and delivered the letter to Megabazus, who as soon as he read it engaged Thracian guides and marched against Paeonia. 15. When the Paeonians heard that the Persians were coming after them, they assembled and marched to the coast, thinking that the enemy would try to invade their country on that side. Thus the Paeonians stood ready to resist the army of Megabazus. But the Persians, who knew that they had assembled and were guarding the approach near the sea, procured guides, took the inland route before the Paeonians were aware, and fell upon their cities; finding them empty, they easily got possession of them. Once the Paeonians learned that their towns had been seized, they scattered to their homes and gave themselves up to the Persians. Thus a number of Paeonian tribes—the Siriopaeones, the Paeoplae, and the others as far as Lake Prasias—were forced from their lands and brought to Asia. 16. The tribes who lived around Mount Pangaeum and in the country of the Doberes, Agrianians, and Odontians, as well as those who lived on the lake itself, were not conquered by Megabazus. But he did attempt to subdue the latter, who have the following way of living. Platforms supported on long piles stand in the middle of the lake and are approached from the land by a single narrow bridge. Originally the piles that support the platforms were fixed in their places by the whole body of the citizens, but since then they have adopted a different method. 14. Another name for Trojans.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

271

Now the piles are brought from Mount Orbelus, and every man drives in three for each wife that he marries—and each man has a great many wives. Each has his own hut on one of the platforms, with a trapdoor giving access to the water beneath.They tie their infants by the foot with a string to prevent them from tumbling into the water. They fodder their horses and pack animals on fish, which are so abundant in the lake that, when they open the trapdoor and let down an empty basket by a rope, they have only a short time to wait before they pull the basket up quite full of them. The fish are of two kinds, which they call papraces and tilones. 17.The Paeonians who had been subdued were brought to Asia, and Megabazus, having effected their capture, sent an embassy of Persians to Macedonia, choosing the seven men who, after himself, were the most distinguished Persians in the army. The ambassadors were sent to Amyntas to demand earth and water for King Darius.15 It is a very short distance from Lake Prasias to Macedonia; near the lake is the mine that later yielded a talent of silver a day to Alexander;16 and from this mine you have only to cross the mountain called Dysorum to get there. 18. When the seven Persians reached the court of Amyntas17 and came into his presence, they made their demands for earth and water. Amyntas gave them what they asked, and invited them to be his guests for dinner; he then had a magnificent feast prepared and entertained them cordially. After dinner, while the wine was still going around, the Persians said, “My dear Macedonian friend, whenever we hold a banquet like this, it is our custom to get our wives and concubines to come and sit beside us. Since you entertained us cordially, and gave us a splendid feast, and offered earth and water to King Darius, won’t you also to follow our custom in this matter?” Amyntas replied, “Persians, that is certainly not the custom here. With us, men and women are kept apart. But since you, who are our masters, wish it, this too will be granted to you.” So saying, Amyntas sent for the women, who came when they were called and seated themselves in a row opposite the Persians. Then, when the Persians saw that the women were beautiful, they spoke again to Amyntas and said that what he had done was not wise. For it would have been better for the women not to have come at all, than to have them come in this way, and not sit by their sides but opposite them, a torment to their eyes. So Amyntas, of necessity, told the women to sit next to the guests, and as soon as they did so, the Persians, who were the worse for wine, began to touch their breasts and even, in some cases, to try to kiss them. 15. A symbolic demand for submission to Persian sovereignty. 16. Alexander I, who became king of Macedonia after Amyntas, the occupant of the throne at the time of Megabazus’ campaign. The precious metals of Thrace were an important source of income for the Macedonian kings, especially Philip, father of Alexander the Great, in the 4th century B.C. 17. See previous note.

272

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

19. Looking on, Amyntas kept quiet in spite of his grief, as he was terribly afraid of the Persians. But his son Alexander, who was also present and a witness of the Persians’ behavior, could no longer restrain himself, being young and innocent of suffering. In his resentment he said to Amyntas, “Father, give way to youth. Retire now, rather than sit out the drinking. I will stay with our guests and give them what they need.” Guessing that Alexander meant to do something rash, Amyntas replied, “Son, as you are nearly burning with anger, I see that you wish to get me out of the way only to commit some wild act. I beg you not to do these men any harm, lest you ruin us all.You had better bear with their behavior. As for myself, I will withdraw as you suggest.” 20. With this warning, Amyntas retired, and Alexander turned to the Persians and said, “Friends, these women are entirely at your service: sleep with them all, or with however many you like. You have only to make your wishes known. But now, as it is nearly time for bed, and I see you are pretty well drunk, please send these women to bathe.You will soon have them back again.” The Persians agreed, and Alexander, having got the women away, sent them to the women’s quarters. Then, dressing an equal number of smooth-chinned youths in women’s clothing, and arming them with daggers, he brought them into the Persians and said, “Gentlemen, you have had, I think, a perfect feast. Everything we possessed or were able to find has been placed at your disposal as well as this, the greatest token of our hospitality: we offer you our own mothers and sisters, so that you may know that you have been entirely honored by us as you deserve to be, and may report to the king who sent you that a Greek,18 the governor of the Macedonians, entertained you well at board and bed.” So saying, Alexander seated beside each Persian a Macedonian man disguised as a woman. And these men, when the Persians tried to touch them, dispatched them with their daggers. 21. That was the end of the Persian envoys and their suite of attendants. For carriages and servants and baggage of all sorts had accompanied them. Everything and everyone associated with the embassy disappeared. Not very long afterward the Persians made a thorough search for the lost envoys; but Alexander, with great skill, put a stop to it by giving Bubares, the Persian general in charge of the search party, a large sum of money and his own sister Gygaea. Thus the murder of the Persians was hushed up and never detected. 22. Now I happen to know, and will prove in a later part of this history,19 that these descendants of Perdiccas are, as they themselves maintain, of Greek 18. As king in his own right, Alexander did much to bring Macedonia closer to the world of the Greek city-states, and helped promote the idea that his royal dynasty had originated in Greece, in the city of Argos. But the Greeks themselves were unsure that the Macedonians were Greek (a point Herodotus is at pains to prove; see 5.22 below), and modern scholars are divided on the question. 19. See 8.137–39.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

273

nationality. This has also been recognized by those who manage the Olympic games. For when Alexander wished to compete, and had come to Olympia for that purpose, the Greeks who would be running against him tried to exclude him, claiming that foreigners were not allowed to take part. But Alexander proved that he was of Argive descent, and so was accepted as a Greek and allowed to enter the footrace. He tied for first place. 23. Megabazus, meanwhile, having reached the Hellespont with the Paeonians,20 crossed it and proceeded to Sardis. He had learned that Histiaeus of Miletus was fortifying Myrcinus, the city on the Strymon that he had obtained from Darius as his reward for guarding the bridge; so as soon as he reached Sardis with the Paeonians, he said to Darius, “What have you done, sire? Can you have allowed a keen and subtle Greek to get hold of a city in Thrace, where there is abundant timber for ship-building,21 wood suitable for oars, and silver mines, and around which are many Greeks and barbarians who, when they have found a leader, will do whatever he tells them, day and night? Stop the man before you find yourself embroiled in a war with your own subjects. Send for him and stop him, but with a gentle message. And once you have him in your grasp, see to it that he never returns to Greece.” 24. So saying, Megabazus easily persuaded Darius, who thought he had shown commendable foresight in this. Darius therefore sent a courier to Myrcinus with the following message: “Darius the King to Histiaeus. On thinking matters over, I find that no one is more loyal to me and to my affairs than you. And this has been proved not by words, but by deeds. Therefore, as I have an important enterprise in hand, I ask you to come to me, that I may communicate it to you.” Believing the message to be sincere, and deeming it a great honor to be the king’s counselor, Histiaeus came to Sardis. On his arrival Darius said to him, “I will tell you why I sent for you, Histiaeus. From the moment I returned home from Scythia, and you were out of my sight, my only wish has been to see and converse with you. For I am convinced that a man has no more precious possession than a friend who is wise and loyal; that you are both these things my own experience has taught me. Now that you have obliged me by coming to Sardis, I have a proposal for you. Forget Miletus and your new settlement in Thrace, and come with me to Susa. Share all that I have. Be my table-mate and my counselor.” 25. So saying, Darius appointed Artaphernes, his brother by the same father, as governor of Sardis, and departed for Susa, taking Histiaeus with him. He had given Otanes command of the forces at the coast. 20. As part of his mission to relocate them; see 5.17 above. 21. Naval timber was scarce in central and southern Greece, and had to be imported from the north.

274

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

Otanes’ father Sisamnes had been one of the royal judges;22 and as punishment for taking a bribe to pass an unjust sentence, Cambyses had him put to death and flayed. Cutting his skin into strips, he stretched them across the seat of the chair on which Sisamnes used to sit when hearing cases. Having done so, he appointed the son of Sisamnes to be judge in his father’s place, and told him never to forget what his chair was made of. 26. And thus Otanes, who had occupied that seat, became Megabazus’ successor in the command. He proceeded to take Byzantium and Chalcedon, as well as Antandrus in the Troad, and Lamponium. Then, with ships borrowed from the Lesbians, he captured Lemnos and Imbrus, both of which were still inhabited by Pelasgians. 27. The Lemnians, though they fought well and defended themselves bravely, were finally conquered, and the Persians appointed Lycarnetus, the brother of Maeandrius the ruler of Samos, to govern those of them who had survived. Lycarnetus died while governor in Lemnos. The reason Otanes gave for conquering and enslaving all these nations was that some had refused to serve in the Scythian expedition, while others had harassed Darius’ army on its return. 28. Such were Otanes’ exploits when he took over the command. Afterward, for a brief period, there was a respite from trouble, until it broke out again in Ionia.23 This time it came from Naxos and Miletus. Naxos at that time surpassed all the other islands in prosperity; and Miletus had reached the height of her power and was the ornament of Ionia. Previously, for two generations, the Milesians had been plagued by civil disorders, which were corrected by the Parians, whom the Milesians had chosen out of all the other Greeks to settle their disputes. 29. The Parians settled them in the following way. The noblest Parians came to Miletus, and when they saw the widespread ruin there, they said they wished to tour the country. This they did, and whenever they saw in the desolated countryside a well-cultivated field, they took down the name of its owner; and after going through the whole region and finding only a few names, they returned to Miletus, called the people together, and announced that they were entrusting the government to those persons whose land they had found well-cultivated. For they were of the opinion (they said) that such men would manage public affairs as well as they had managed their own. The other Milesians, who had previously been at variance, were told to take their orders from these men. 30. Now, however, trouble arose for Ionia from Miletus and Naxos. A number of wealthy Naxians, banished by the common people, fled to Miletus, where 22. See 3.31 and note. 23. The Ionian revolt began in 499 B.C. Herodotus preserves nearly all the evidence we have for its progress, and in his account it seems an ill-advised and disorganized affair; but he may be indulging his disdain for the Ionian Greeks.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

275

Aristagoras, son of Molpagoras, happened to be serving as regent of the government. Aristagoras was the son-in-law and nephew of Histiaeus, son of Lysagoras, whom Darius was detaining in Susa. For sovereign power in Miletus belonged to Histiaeus; but he chanced to be in Susa when the Naxians, his former guestfriends, reached Miletus. On their arrival, the Naxians asked Aristagoras to lend them such aid as would enable them to recover their country. Reflecting that he would be ruler of Naxos if with his help these men were restored to their city, Aristagoras used their friendship with Histiaeus to cloak his purpose, and made them the following proposal. “I cannot provide you with a force strong enough to restore you against the will of the Naxians who hold the city; for I understand that they have 8,000 men-at-arms and a great many warships. But I will do everything I can to help you. What I have in mind is this: Artaphernes happens to be a friend of mine; and he, as you may know, is the son of Hystaspes and the brother of Darius. He is in command of the whole coastal region of Asia, with a large army and many ships.24 I think I can persuade him to do whatever we require.” Thereupon the Naxians empowered Aristagoras to manage the affair for them as well as he could, and told him to promise gifts and pay for the soldiers, since they were confident that when they appeared in Naxos, the people would submit to their orders, as would the other islanders; for at that time none of the Cyclades was subject to Darius. 31. Aristagoras then went to Sardis and told Artaphernes that Naxos, though small, was a fine and fertile island, lying near Ionia, and abounding in treasure and slaves. “Attack this land and restore the exiles. If you do so, I am prepared to offer you, first of all, an enormous sum over and above the war expenses, which it is fair that we who are undertaking the war should pay; and, secondly, you will acquire for the King not only Naxos but the other islands that depend on it: Paros, Andros, and all the rest of the Cyclades. Making these islands your base, you could easily attack Euboea, a large and prosperous island no smaller than Cyprus, and quite easy to take. A hundred ships would suffice to subdue them all.” “Your plan is likely to be of great benefit to the King,” Artaphernes replied, “and you give excellent advice on all points except the number of ships. Instead of 100, 200 will be ready for you in spring. But the king must first give his approval.” 32. Delighted with this answer, Aristagoras returned to Miletus. And Artaphernes, after he had sent a messenger from Sardis to lay Aristagoras’ proposal before the King and had received his consent, prepared 200 triremes and a vast army of Persian and allied troops. These he put under the command of Megabates, one of the Achaemenids, who was a cousin both of Darius and himself. It was to Megabates’ daughter (if there is any truth in the story) that Pausanias the Spartan, 24. Artaphernes was at this time serving Darius, his half-brother, as satrap of the Persian province of Lydia. Satraps were entrusted with the command of regional armies.

276

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

the son of Cleombrotus, was subsequently betrothed, when he conceived the desire of making himself master of Greece.25 Having named Megabates to the command, Artaphernes sent the army to Aristagoras. 33. Setting sail, Megabates touched at Miletus, where he took Aristagoras on board along with the Ionian troops and the Naxian exiles. He then headed ostensibly for the Hellespont; but when he reached Chios, he anchored the fleet off Caucasa, intending to cross from there to Naxos as soon as he got a northerly wind. The Naxians, however, were not destined to perish at this time;26 and therefore the following events unfolded. As Megabates was making the rounds of the watch on the ships, he noticed a Myndian27 ship on which no watch had been set. Indignant at this carelessness, he ordered his guards to find the captain, whose name was Scylax, and to fasten him in an oar-hole, with his head sticking out while his body remained inside. When Scylax was thus bound, someone reported to Aristagoras that Megabates had bound his friend the Myndian and was mistreating him. Aristagoras went to Megabates to get Scylax released, but the Persian refused, whereupon Aristagoras went himself and set Scylax free. Informed of this, Megabates was furious and spoke angrily to Aristagoras. To this the latter replied, “What business is it of yours? Didn’t Artaphernes send you here to obey me, and to sail wherever I ordered? Why are you meddling?” Incensed at these words, Megabates waited until nightfall, and then sent men by boat to Naxos, to warn the Naxians of their peril. 34. For the Naxians had no idea that the expedition was directed against them; as soon, therefore, as the warning reached them, they brought everything from the open country inside the walls, and prepared for a siege by provisioning their city with food and drink, and strengthening their defenses. Thus the Persians, when they crossed the sea from Chios, found the Naxians well prepared for them. They nevertheless attacked the place and besieged it for four months. Finally, when all the stores that the Persians had brought with them were exhausted, and Aristagoras had spent a great deal of his own money, and still more was needed to sustain the siege, the Persians gave up the attempt. They built forts for the Naxian exiles and withdrew to the mainland, having utterly failed in their undertaking. 25. Herodotus here alludes to events that took place just after the period covered by the Histories. Pausanias, regent to a young Spartan king, appears in Book 9 of the Histories as a talented commander who led the combined Greek forces against the Persians in 479 B.C. But in the very next year, as Herodotus here indicates, Pausanias colluded with the Persians in an effort to become a puppet ruler over the very Greeks he had defended. The story can be read in full in Thucydides, 1.128 ff. 26. An inversion of Herodotus’ more usual formulation, that “things were destined to turn out badly” for one individual or another. 27. Myndos was a Greek island subject to Persia and therefore required to send its ships and crews to serve in the Persian navy. The outrage of Aristagoras in the episode that follows has much to do with the tensions that resulted from such servitude.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

277

35. Aristagoras was now unable to fulfill his promise to Artaphernes. At the same time, the demand on him to meet the expedition’s expenses was pressing, and he was afraid that, owing to the failure of the siege and his quarrel with Megabates, he might be deprived of his authority in Miletus. These various fears had already led him to contemplate rebellion, when the man whose head had been tattooed arrived from Susa with Histiaeus’ command to revolt from the King. For Histiaeus, though he had been wanting to order Aristagoras to take this step, could find only one safe way of making his wishes known, since the roads were guarded. He shaved the head of his trustiest slave, pricked the message on his scalp, and waited for the hair to grow back. Then, as soon as it had grown, he sent the man to Miletus with orders to do nothing when he arrived except to tell Aristagoras to shave off his hair and look at his head. The message on the head, as I mentioned earlier, was an order to revolt.28 Histiaeus did this because it vexed him to be detained at Susa, and because he hoped that, if a revolt took place now, he would be sent down to the coast to deal with it, whereas if Miletus did not revolt, he doubted he would ever see the city again.29 36. With this purpose in mind Histiaeus sent off his messenger; and thus it turned out that all these various motives to revolt were brought to bear upon Aristagoras at the same time. He therefore held a council of his supporters, declared his own views, and revealed the message he had been sent by Histiaeus. All his friends approved his advice and recommended revolt, except for Hecataeus the chronicler.30 He, in the first place, urged them by all means to avoid engaging in war with the King of the Persians, whose resources he described, and whose subject nations he enumerated. When this argument failed to convince them, he next advised them to do all they could to win control of the sea. He went on to say that, in view of the weakness of Miletus, of which he was well aware, he saw only one way of achieving this, namely by seizing the treasures in the temple at Branchidae, which had been deposited there by Croesus the Lydian. This would at least give them the means of gaining command at sea, and would prevent the treasures from falling into the hands of the enemy. These treasures were of great 28. Scholars have speculated that, due to space limitations, the message was the single Greek word ANASTESON, “revolt.” 29. It is typical of Herodotus to prefer individual and personal motives to the nationalistic and ideological ones that were certainly at work. According to his own account, Histiaeus was well aware that the Ionians were strongly in favor of democracy over one-man rule (see 4.137), so it is easy to imagine that he saw an opportunity to harness this desire for freedom. 30. For Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus’ principal predecessor in Greek geographical writing and often the target of his attacks, see note to 2.15. It is curious to find him in a “cameo” role here at the start of the Ionian revolt, but it is not impossible that he was present at the council described here or even made the remarkable proposal Herodotus here attributes to him (see next note).

278

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

value, as I showed in the first part of my history.31 Hecataeus’ advice was rejected; but they did decide, nevertheless, to revolt, and to send one of their number to Myus, where the fleet had been stationed since its return from Naxos, and there attempt to seize its commanders. 37. Iatragoras was the man they sent on this errand, and by guile he seized Oliatus, son of Ibanolis, of Mylasa; Histiaeus, son of Tymnes, of Termera; Coes, son of Erxandrus (to whom Darius had given Mytilene); Aristagoras, son of Heraclides, of Cyme; and many others.32 Thus Aristagoras revolted openly from Darius, and set to work to scheme against him in every way he could think of. First, in order to induce the Milesians to support the revolt, he professed that he was abdicating his tyranny in favor of a popular government.Then he did the same in the rest of Ionia, where he got rid of the tyrants. Some he expelled; others, whom he had arrested on the ships that had sailed against Naxos, he handed over to the cities to which they belonged, hoping thereby to gain their goodwill. 38. As soon as the Mytilenaeans got their hands on Coes, they led him out and stoned him to death; the Cymaeans, on the other hand, let their own tyrant go free, as did most of the other cities. Accordingly, this form of government ceased throughout all the cities. And Aristagoras of Miletus, after he had put down the tyrants and ordered each city to appoint a board of generals, sailed in a trireme to Sparta; for he needed to find some powerful ally. 39. Anaxandrides, son of Leon, was no longer king of Sparta. He had died, and his son Cleomenes had ascended the throne, having obtained it not by right of merit but by right of birth. Anaxandrides had married his sister’s daughter, to whom he was devoted; but the marriage produced no children. In light of this fact, the ephors33 summoned him and said, “If you do not make provision for yourself, we, at any rate, cannot allow the family of Eurysthenes34 to die out. As your present wife bears no children, get rid of her and take another. In doing so you will please the Spartans.” Anaxandrides replied that he would do neither of 31. At 1.92 Herodotus briefly mentioned that Croesus’ offerings to the Branchidae temple were equal in value to his magnificent dedications at Delphi. The idea of seizing temple offerings, which were believed to be sacred to the god of that temple, is a highly irreverent one; later in the Histories Herodotus reports that a series of miracles prevented the Persians from committing a similar sacrilege at Delphi (8.37–39). Nonetheless it is conceivable, under the extreme pressure the Ionians were feeling at this juncture, that such a course would be proposed. 32. The Aristagoras captured here is not the man who has been discussed up to this point (and who is mentioned again in the next sentence), just as this Histiaeus is a different Histiaeus. 33. For the board of five ephors, annually elected at Sparta, see note 76 to 1.65. 34. One line of Spartan kings was said to be descended from Eurysthenes, the other from Procles, as Herodotus explains at 6.51–52.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

279

these things; and that those who counseled him to divorce his wife when she had done no wrong, and marry another, were not giving sound advice; nor would he obey them. 40. At this, the ephors and elders took thought and made the king another proposal. “As we see that you are fond of your wife, take our advice, and do not refuse, lest the Spartans pass some unpleasant decree about you. We do not now ask you to divorce your present wife. Give her all the privileges she now enjoys; but take another wife as well, who may bear you children.” Anaxandrides consented, and from then on had two wives in two separate households—an unprecedented thing in Sparta. 41. Not long afterward, his second wife gave birth to Cleomenes. And no sooner had she presented the Spartans with an heir to the throne than, by some strange coincidence, the first wife, who had previously been childless, also became pregnant. Though she was indeed pregnant, the second wife’s relatives, when they heard the news, claimed that she was only pretending to be pregnant, and meant to pass off another’s child as her own. They raised such an outcry that when her time came, the ephors, who were suspicious, sat round her bed and kept watch as she gave birth. At this time she bore Dorieus, and after him, quite soon, Leonidas, and then, again quickly, Cleombrotus. Some even say that Cleombrotus and Leonidas were twins. The second wife, on the other hand, the mother of Cleomenes—she was a daughter of Prinetades, son of Demarmenus—never had another child. 42. Cleomenes, it is said, was not of sound mind, and even verged on madness, whereas Dorieus was the foremost among all his age-mates, and took it for granted that he would win the kingdom by right of merit. When, therefore, after the death of Anaxandrides, the Spartans kept to their custom, and put Cleomenes, his eldest son, on the throne, Dorieus was indignant. As he could not bear the thought of being ruled by Cleomenes, he asked the Spartans for a body of men, and took them off to found a colony, though he had neither consulted the oracle at Delphi about a suitable site, nor observed any of the customary usages. He sailed away, in a fit of pique, to Libya, with some Theraeans to act as guides.35 These men brought him to Cinyps,36 where he settled by the banks of a river, on the most beautiful tract of land in Libya. But in the third year he was driven out by the Macae37—a Libyan people—and the Carthaginians, and returned to the Peloponnese. 43. There Antichares of Eleon advised him, on the strength of the oracles given to Laius, to found the city of Heraclea in Sicily; for the whole region of Eryx, 35. The connections between Thera and Sparta, and the forays made by Theraeans into Libya, have been traced by Herodotus in the preceding book (4.145–53). 36. A river running into the Mediterranean, on the North African coast west of Cyrene. 37. See 4.175.

280

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

according to this man, belonged to the Heraclids, since Heracles himself had conquered it. On receiving this advice, Dorieus went to Delphi to ask the oracle whether he would acquire the territory he was after. The priestess prophesied that he would, whereupon Dorieus fetched the men who had accompanied him to Libya and sailed with them along the coast of Italy. 44. Just at this time, according to the Sybarites,38 they and their king Telys were about to make war on Croton. The Crotoniates, greatly alarmed, asked Dorieus to assist them. He consented, took part in their campaign, and helped them to capture Sybaris. Such is the account of the Sybarites; the Crotoniates, on the other hand, claim that no foreigner aided them in their war against the Sybarites except Callias of Elea, a soothsayer of the Iamid clan, who came over to their side after deserting Telys, because he found, on offering sacrifice, that the omens were not favorable to an attack on Croton. So say the Crotoniates. 45. Both parties produce evidence to support their claim. The Sybarites point to a shrine and sacred precinct near the dry bed of the Crathis, and declare that it was Dorieus who, after capturing the city, dedicated it to Athena Crathias. But they regard as their surest proof the death of Dorieus, who fell, they maintain, because he disobeyed the oracle. For had he done only what he had been sent to do, and nothing more, he would have conquered and kept possession of the country of Eryx, and neither he nor his forces would have perished. The Crotoniates, in turn, point to the fact that many land allotments in their territory were assigned to Callias of Elea (they were still, in my day, in the possession of his family), whereas there are none belonging to Dorieus and his descendants. Yet if Dorieus had really helped them in the Sybaritic war, he would have received much more than Callias. Such is the evidence produced on each side; you may adopt whichever view you find credible.39 46. Other Spartans sailed with Dorieus as co-founders. These were Thessalus, Paraebates, Celeas, and Euryleon. They and the troops under their command reached Sicily; but there they fell in battle, defeated by the Phoenicians and the Egestaeans.40 The only survivor was Euryleon, who collected the few surviving troops, captured Minoa, a colony of Selinus, and helped the Selinusians to free themselves from their tyrant Peithagoras. Later, after deposing Peithagoras, Euryleon attempted to become tyrant in his place, and even reigned at Selinus for a brief period. But after a while the people rose up in revolt against him; and though he fled to the altar of Zeus of the Marketplace, they nevertheless put him to death. 38. A Greek population in southern Italy. Their later reputation for luxurious living gave rise to the English word “sybarite.” 39. An unusual shrug of the shoulders by Herodotus, who normally likes to express his own preference in such conflicts between sources. 40. The Egestaeans were a Greek people settled in Sicily (sometimes called Segestaeans).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

281

47. Another man who accompanied Dorieus, and died with him, was Philippus, son of Butacides, of Croton. After he had been engaged to marry a daughter of Telys of Sybaris, he was banished, whereupon the marriage came to nothing. In his disappointment, he sailed for Cyrene; and from there he joined in Dorieus’ expedition, with his own trireme41 and at his own expense. Philippus was an Olympic victor, and the most beautiful Greek of his day. His beauty won him honors from the Egestaeans which they accorded to no other man; for they erected a hero’s shrine42 over his tomb, and they still propitiate him with sacrifices. 48. This, then, was the end of Dorieus, who, had he remained in Sparta and put up for a time with being a subject of Cleomenes, would have been king of Lacedaemon. For Cleomenes did not rule for long,43 and he died without a male heir, leaving only a daughter, whose name was Gorgo. 49. But Cleomenes was still king when Aristagoras, the tyrant of Miletus, reached Sparta.44 Aristagoras appeared for the interview, according to the Lacedemonians, with a bronze plate on which the circuit of the whole world had been engraved, with all its seas and rivers. He opened the discussion in the following way: “Do not be surprised, Cleomenes, at my haste in coming here. The circumstances are these. That the sons of the Ionians are slaves instead of free men is a reproach and the greatest grief not only to us, but to the rest of Greece, and especially to you, who are the leaders of the Greek world. We therefore beseech you, in the name of the gods of Greece, to save the Ionians, who are your own kinsmen, from slavery. You could easily do so; for the barbarians are not valiant, and you are the bravest warriors in the world. They carry bows and arrows and short spears,45 and fight in trousers and turbans. That will show you how easy they are to conquer! Furthermore, the inhabitants of Asia have more valuable things than all the rest of the world put together—gold, silver, bronze, richly embroidered garments, beasts of burden, and slaves—all of which, if you so desired, could be yours. Their nations border on one another, as I will show. Here, next to the Ionians, are the Lydians; their country is fertile, and their wealth incomparable.” (As he spoke, Aristagoras 41. A warship with three banks of oars. 42. The term “hero” in Greek has a religious layer of meaning that its English derivative has lost. Heroes in the Greek world were partly divine and had powers that endured even after the death, either real or apparent, of their mortal bodies. 43. In fact, Cleomenes reigned for three decades, from 520 to 490 B.C., as Herodotus was aware (he records Cleomenes’ death in Book 6). 44. 499 B.C. 45. The Persian preference for missile weapons (arrows and javelins) over thrusting spears is a running theme in Greek artistic representations of the Greco-Persian wars. The Greeks (and especially the Spartans) thought of their own infantry tactics, employing phalanx formations that required soldiers to stand firm in the face of danger, as the pinnacle of male virtue; the Persian reliance on archery, by contrast, seemed to them a less noble style of fighting.

282

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

pointed to the map.) “Next to them,” he went on, “come the Phrygians, who possess more flocks and more abundant harvests than any nation that I know. Past them are the Cappadocians, whom we Greeks call Syrians. Their neighbors are the Cilicians, whose territory extends to this sea, where Cyprus lies, the island you see here. The Cilicians pay an annual tribute to the king of 500 talents. After them come the Armenians, who also possess numerous flocks and herds. Next come the Matieni, who inhabit this country. Then comes Cissia, where you see the river Choaspes marked, and the city of Susa on its banks, where the Great King lives and the treasuries stand in which his wealth is stored. Once you capture this city, you may venture to vie with Zeus for wealth. Then should you not postpone the wars you wage over meager strips of poor land, with your rivals the Messenians, Arcadians, and Argives, who have no gold or silver (which men think worth fighting and dying for), when you might so easily conquer all of Asia?46 Can you really decide to do otherwise?” “Milesian guest,” Cleomenes replied, “you will have my answer three days hence.” 50. That was as far as they got at the time. But when the day appointed for the answer came, and the two men met again, Cleomenes asked Aristagoras how many days it took to journey from the Ionian coast to the palace.47 At this point Aristagoras, who had managed everything else so cleverly, and succeeded in misleading the king, made a slip; for he ought not to have told him the truth if he wanted to induce the Spartans to cross into Asia. But he did, and said that it took three months. Cleomenes stopped Aristagoras from saying any more about the road, and addressed him thus: “Milesian guest, leave Sparta before sunset. Your proposal to lead the Spartans a three months’ journey from the sea is unacceptable.” 51. So saying, Cleomenes went home. But Aristagoras took an olive branch in his hand,48 and went to the king’s house, where he entered in the manner of a suppliant, and begged Cleomenes to listen and to send the child away. For Gorgo, Cleomenes’ daughter, happened to be standing beside her father. An only child, she was then a little girl of eight or nine. But Cleomenes told Aristagoras to say what he wished and not to hold back because of the child. Thereupon Aristagoras 46. Aristagoras’ proposal may seem fantastical, but behind it lies a quite valid assessment of the relative effectiveness of Persian and Greek infantry tactics. Herodotus himself (if the words he puts into the mouth of Demaratus at 7.104 reflect his own views) believed that the heavyarmed Spartan infantryman was ten times as effective in battle as his Persian counterpart. The invasion here described was in fact attempted by a Spartan king of the 4th century B.C., Agesilaus, and was carried through to completion by Alexander the Great later in that century. 47. Cleomenes has seen Aristagoras’ map but could have no idea of its scale. 48. Carrying an olive branch meant that one was seeking the protection of a god or powerful individual, the origin of its use today as a symbol of peace.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

283

Black Sea

Ca

spi a

Phrygia

Ha

ly s docia pp a a C

A rm e n i a

es rat

Eu ph

d oa lR ya

Ro

Cilicia

Mediterranean Sea

n Sea

Sardis Ly d Ephesus ia

Matieni Gyndes

Ti gr

Choaspes

is

Cissia

Susa

300 kilometers 300 miles

The Persian Royal Road.

began by promising ten talents49 if Cleomenes would do as he asked; and when Cleomenes shook his head, Aristagoras continued to raise his offer until it reached fifty talents. At this the child cried out, “Father, the stranger will corrupt you, unless you get up and go.” Pleased with his child’s warning, Cleomenes went into another room, and Aristagoras left Sparta for good, without managing to say any more about the road to Susa. 52. Here I offer an account of that road.50 Royal stations51 and excellent inns are found along its whole length, and the road is safe throughout, since it traverses inhabited country. In Lydia and Phrygia there are twenty stations over a distance of 94½ parasangs.52 Past Phrygia, one reaches the river Halys; here there are gates through which you must pass before you can cross the stream, and a strong guard-post. Beyond the river and into Cappadocia, 28 stations 49. An enormous sum of money, especially in Sparta, from which gold and silver money were excluded by state policy. 50. The so-called Royal Road was a Persian-built highway connecting Susa to Sardis, such that communications could pass quickly between the center of the empire and its western periphery. 51.These stations are described further at 8.98. They were maintained by the royal authorities to help speed the transit of official messengers. 52. In this chapter Herodotus, unusually, employs a Persian unit of distance, the parasang, an indication that he had gained his information from a Persian source. At 2.6 and again at 5.53 below, Herodotus states that a parasang translates to about 30 Greek stades, which in modern terms would mean about 3.7 miles.

284

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

and 104 parasangs bring you to the border of Cilicia, where the road passes through two sets of gates, both of which are guarded. Beyond these, you travel through Cilicia, where there are 3 stations over a distance of 15½ parasangs. The boundary between Cilicia and Armenia is the river Euphrates, which has to be crossed in a boat. In Armenia there are 15 resting-places over a distance of 56½ parasangs. There is one guard-post. Four rivers run through this country, all of which have to be crossed in boats.53 The first is the Tigris; the second and third are both called Zabatus, though they are different rivers and flow from different sources, one rising in Armenia, the other in the territory of the Matieni. The fourth river is called the Gyndes; it is the river Cyrus once divided into 360 channels. Leaving Armenia and entering the land of the Matieni you have 137 parasangs to go, with 34 stations; past these you are in Cissia, where 11 stations and 42½ parasangs bring you to another navigable river, the Choaspes, on the banks of which the city of Susa is built. Thus the total number of stations, or resting-places, on the road from Sardis to Susa is 111. 53. If the royal road has been correctly measured in parasangs, and the parasang equals, as it does, 30 stades, then the distance from Sardis to the Palace of Memnon (450 parasangs) will be 13,500 stades. Traveling, then, at the rate of a 150 stades a day, one will take exactly 90 days to make the journey. 54. So Aristagoras was quite correct when he told Cleomenes that it was a three months’ journey from the sea to Sardis. But if anyone seeks still greater accuracy, I should point out that the journey from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to the total.54 This will make the entire distance between the Aegean and Susa (or the “city of Memnon”) 14,040 stades, Ephesus being 540 stades from Sardis, which would increase the three months’ journey by three days. 55. Driven from Sparta, Aristagoras went to Athens, which had freed itself from its tyrants55 in the way I will now describe. Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus and brother of the tyrant Hippias, in spite of a vivid dream that warned him of his fate, had been slain by Harmodius and 53. That is, they are too wide and fast for permanent bridges. 54. Herodotus assumes that the Spartan forces requested by Aristagoras would land at Ephesus, on the west coast of Turkey, for the march inland. He does not bother to add the further journey needed to reach Ephesus from Sparta, since the point at issue was how far the Spartans would be “from the sea (the Aegean).” 55. The Pisistratids, or family of Pisistratus, were rulers of Athens during much of the 6th century B.C. Herodotus has narrated already the way in which Pisistratus himself took power (see 1.59–64), but when he here picks up the thread of 6th-century Athenian history, he has skipped over a segment in which Pisistratus died and passed on power to his son Hippias (in 527 B.C.). It should be recalled that the word “tyrants” here and elsewhere is used in the Greek sense, without necessarily implying cruel behavior.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

285

Aristogeiton,56 who both belonged to the family of the Gephyraeans. But during the four succeeding years the oppression the Athenians suffered was worse than before. 56. Hipparchus had dreamt, on the night before the Panathenaia, that a tall and beautiful man stood over him and recited these riddling verses: Bear unendurable sufferings, lion, with an enduring heart; Never will the sinner escape the penalty of his sin. As soon as day came Hipparchus was seen communicating his dream to the interpreters; but later he put it out of his mind and took part in the procession in which he perished.57 57. The Gephyraeans, the family to whom the murderers of Hipparchus belonged, came from Eretria58 originally, according to their own account. But my researches have made it clear that they were in reality Phoenicians, descendants of those who came with Cadmus into the country now called Boeotia,59 where they were allotted Tanagra, in which they later settled. After the Cadmeians were expelled by the Argives, the Gephyraeans were expelled by the Boeotians and took refuge at Athens. The Athenians received them among their citizens on certain terms, by which they were excluded from a few privileges not worth mentioning. 58. When the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, and to whom the Gephyraeans belonged, had settled in that region, they introduced into Greece a great many accomplishments, including the art of writing, of which the Greeks until then had, I think, been ignorant.60 At first they formed their letters like all the other Phoenicians, but as time went on, and they changed their language, they also changed the form of their letters. At that period many of the Greeks in their 56. A very important moment in Athenian history here receives only summary treatment. Harmodius and Aristogeiton, angered by personal slights and insults they had received, plotted to assassinate both Hippias and his brother Hipparchus at a Panathenaic procession, but the plot miscarried and they killed only Hipparchus. In the wake of his brother’s murder, Hippias became a harsher and more paranoid ruler. 57. No sooner has Herodotus begun his account of Athenian liberation from the Pisistratids than he embarks on a digression concerning the Phoenician presence in archaic Greece and the origin of the Greek alphabet. 58. A Greek city on the island of Euboea. 59. On the supposed Phoenician origins of Cadmus, legendary founder of Thebes, see note 134 to 4.147. 60. Herodotus is correct in his basic thesis that the Greek alphabet came from Phoenicia, though the Greeks introduced vowels that made the writing system much easier to use. A different, non-alphabetic writing system, developed on Crete, had been used in the Greek world in an earlier period, but had become extinct shortly after 1200 B.C., and all memory of it was lost by Herodotus’ time.

286

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

neighborhood were Ionians.They were taught these letters by the Phoenicians, and adopted them, with a few changes, for their own use, though they continued to call the letters Phoenician, as was only fair, since the Phoenicians had introduced them into Greece. From ancient times the Ionians have called paper made of papyrus “skins” because at one time, when papyrus was scarce, they used goat- and sheepskins instead. Even today many of the barbarians still write on such skins. 59. I myself have seen Cadmeian characters engraved on some tripods in the temple of Ismenian Apollo in Boeotian Thebes, most of them identical to the Ionian. One of the tripods bears the following inscription: Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of the Teleboae. and must date from about the time of Laius, son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus, and great-grandson of Cadmus. 60. Another of the tripods has this hexameter inscription: Scaeus the boxer, victorious in the games, dedicated me To far-shooting Apollo—a beautiful offering. This Scaeus might be the son of Hippocoon; and the tripod, if it was dedicated by him and not by another man of the same name, would belong to the time of Oedipus, son of Laius.61 61. The inscription on the third tripod is also in hexameters: Laodamas himself dedicated this tripod to you, Keen-sighted Apollo—a beautiful offering. It was during the reign of this Laodamas, son of Eteocles, that the Cadmeians were driven out of their country by the Argives, and took refuge with the Encheles. The Gephyraeans remained behind, and were later forced by the Boeotians to withdraw to Athens, where they have temples set apart for their own use, which the other Athenians are forbidden to enter; one of them is the temple of Achaean Demeter, in which secret rites are performed. 62. Now that I have related Hipparchus’ dream, and traced the descent of the Gephyraeans, the family to whom his murderers belonged, I must return to my original theme, namely the way in which the Athenians were freed from their tyrants.62 Hippias was still tyrant, and he bitterly resented the Athenians for the murder of Hipparchus. The Alcmeonids,63 an Athenian family that had 61. Eager to trace these “Cadmeian” writings to the time soon after the reign of Cadmus, Herodotus greatly overstates the ages of these inscriptions. In fact alphabetic writing in Greece was only as old as the 8th century B.C., i.e., about three centuries before Herodotus’ time. 62. The narrative resumes from the point reached at 5.56. 63. See note 64 to 1.59 for more on the Alcmeonids, the wealthy and politically progressive family that set itself up in opposition to the Pisistratids.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

287

been banished by the Pisistratids, attempted with the help of the other exiles to procure their own return by force and to liberate Athens. Having seized and fortified Lipsydrium above Paeonia, they suffered heavy losses, and their undertaking failed. Thereafter, determined to take any step that might help them against the Pisistratids, they contracted with the Amphictyons64 to build the temple that now stands in Delphi, but in those days did not exist. As the Alcmeonids were prosperous and had always distinguished themselves, the temple they actually built was more beautiful in many respects than the one that had been planned; for example, though the agreement had been to use porine stone throughout, they built the façade of Parian marble. 63. The Athenians say that the Alcmeonids, during their stay at Delphi, bribed the Pythian priestess to tell any Spartans who came to consult the oracle, whether on public or private business, to liberate Athens. And the Spartans, when no other answer was returned to them but this, dispatched an army under the command of a distinguished citizen, Anchimolius, son of Aster, to expel the Pisistratids from Athens, though they were bound to them by the closest ties of friendship. For the Spartans think the commands of a god more important than the obligations of men.65 They sent this force by sea.66 Touching at Phalerum, Anchimolius disembarked the army. But the Pisistratids, informed of their plans beforehand, had summoned assistance from Thessaly, with which country they had an alliance.The Thessalians, in reply to their appeal, sent them, by public vote, 1,000 cavalrymen under the command of their king Cineas of Condia. With this reinforcement, the Pisistratids contrived as follows. They cleared the plain of Phalerum so as to make it fit for horses, and then sent their cavalry out against the enemy.67 Falling on their army, the horsemen slaughtered a great many Spartans, including Anchimolius, and drove the survivors back to their ships. Such was the fate of the first expedition from Sparta. Anchimolius was buried at Alopecae in Attica, and his tomb may be seen near the temple of Heracles in Cynosarges. 64. Afterward, the Spartans equipped a larger force against Athens, putting it under the command of Cleomenes, son of Anaxandrides, one of their kings.68 64.The Amphictyons were the executive board that administered the oracular shrine at Delphi. 65. Herodotus here avoids the issue of whether the oracle’s command to liberate Athens in fact came from the gods. He reports both an Athenian claim, that the priests had been bribed to produce this oracle, and a pious Spartan belief in its divine origin. But at 5.90 below he endorses the view that the priests had been bribed. 66. The year is 511 B.C. 67. It was unusual in this era for a Greek army to have a substantial cavalry arm. The Thessalians were one of few Greek peoples whose lands readily supported the grazing of horses. 68. Herodotus writes as though he had not just been discussing Cleomenes at 5.49–51.

288

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

These troops went by land instead of by sea. When they entered Attica, they were met by the Thessalian cavalry, which they soon routed, killing more than forty men. The survivors fled straight to Thessaly. Cleomenes then marched to Athens, and, with the aid of those Athenians who wished for freedom, besieged the tyrants, who were shut up within the Pelargican walls.69 65. Now the Spartans would have had little chance of expelling the Pisistratids, since they had no intention of conducting a siege, and the Pisistratids were well supplied with food and water; it is likely, then, that the Spartans would have kept up the siege for a few days and then returned to Sparta. But an event now occurred that proved most unlucky for the besieged, and most fortunate for the besiegers.The children of the Pisistratids were captured while being removed from the country. This calamity threw all their plans into disarray; in order to ransom their children, they consented to the terms of the Athenians and agreed to leave Attica within five days. Thereafter they withdrew to Sigeum on the Scamander, after reigning over the Athenians for thirty-six years.70 Their family was descended from Neleus of Pylos, as were Codrus and Melanthus, who in ancient times, after settling in the country, became kings of Athens. It was in memory of his ancestor that Hippocrates called his son Pisistratus; he named him after the Pisistratus who was a son of Nestor.71 This, then, is how the Athenians got free of their tyrants. I will now relate everything that the Athenians did or suffered from the time of their liberation to the revolt of Ionia from Darius, and the arrival in Athens of Aristagoras of Miletus with his request for aid.72 66. The power of Athens had been great before; but now that the tyrants were gone, it became greater still. Two men held power in the city: Cleisthenes, an Alcmeonid, who is said to have bribed the Pythian priestess,73 and Isagoras, son of Tisander, who was of a distinguished house, but whose descent I have been unable to trace. The members of his family sacrifice to Carian Zeus. These men vied with one another for power, and Cleisthenes, who found himself losing ground, 69. The walls that at this time surrounded the acropolis, a nearly impregnable hilltop in the center of Athens. 70. From 546 to 510 B.C. 71. Nestor, king of Pylos in Homer’s Iliad, had a son named Pisistratus, and Herodotus here assumes that the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus was named for him because of a connection to the Pylian royal line. The Hippocrates referred to here is not the same person as the famous physician whose name survives in the modern “Hippocratic oath.” 72. The long excursus below, extending to 5.97, chronicles about eleven years of Athenian history (510–499 B.C.), during which Athens adopted a more democratic constitution and also found new strength in its struggles with enemies and rivals. This stretch of the Histories, though sketchy, constitutes our best ancient source for a foundational phase in the birth of Greek democracy (Aristotle’s account at Constitution of the Athenians 20–21 gives another version). 73. See 5.63 above and note 65.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

289

secured the support of the common people.74 He then changed the number of Athenian tribes from four to ten, and abolished the old names; for previously the four tribes had been named after Geleon, Aegicores, Argades, and Hoples, the four sons of Ion; but now he named the new tribes after other heroes, all of whom were native Athenians except for Ajax.75 Ajax was admitted because, though a foreigner, he was a neighbor and ally of Athens.76 67. In doing so, it seems to me, he was imitating his maternal grandfather, Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon. For the earlier Cleisthenes, after his war with Argos, put a stop to the contests of the rhapsodes at Sicyon, because in the Homeric poems Argos and the Argives are always praised.77 And for the same reason—because the hero was an Argive—he conceived the desire to drive Adrastus, son of Talaus, out of his country. For Adrastus had a shrine at Sicyon, which stood, and still stands, in the town’s marketplace. With this in mind, Cleisthenes went to Delphi and asked the oracle if he might expel Adrastus. The priestess replied that Adrastus had been king of Sicyon, whereas he was a mere stone-thrower. As the god would not grant his request, Cleisthenes went home and tried to think of some other means by which he might make Adrastus withdraw of his own accord. Lighting on a plan, he sent to Boeotian Thebes, saying that he wished to bring Melanippus, son of Astacus, to Sicyon.78 The Thebans consented, whereupon Cleisthenes carried Melanippus back with him, assigned him a precinct in the city hall itself, and established him there in the greatest security. (Here I should explain that Cleisthenes did so because Melanippus was Adrastus’ worst enemy, having slain his brother Mecistes and his son-in-law Tydeus.) After assigning the precinct to Melanippus, Cleisthenes transferred to him the sacrifices and festivals that had been held in Adrastus’ honor. Until that time the people of Sicyon had paid 74. That is, Cleisthenes reached out to the demos, the great mass of the Athenian population, with policies that favored them over the aristocracy. 75. The “tribes” at Athens were age-old social groupings that controlled the distribution of many offices and privileges. Cleisthenes broke apart these bastions of political power and reformed them along new lines, making room for many new participants. 76. Ajax came from Salamis, an island off Attica; the connection between Salamis and Athens will be crucial in Book 8. 77. The elder Cleisthenes ruled at Sicyon, a Greek city in the northern Peloponnese, in the early 6th century B.C. Herodotus wants to connect this man’s manipulation of mythic history—the banning of Homeric recitations that would have praised Argos, an enemy of Sicyon, for example—to the nationalistic use of mythic names by his grandson Cleisthenes, described in the previous chapter. 78. To “bring” a mythic hero to a city meant installing his cult and rites and even, in some cases, reburying his remains there (or what were taken to be his remains; see 1.67–68 above). “Expelling” a hero meant removing the cult and, perhaps, the remains.

290

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

Adrastus extraordinary honors because the country had once belonged to Polybus, and Adrastus was the son of Polybus’ daughter. When Polybus died without a male heir, he left his kingdom to Adrastus. In addition to other ceremonies, the Sicyonians honored Adrastus with tragic choruses, which they assigned to him rather than Dionysus, because of his sufferings. Cleisthenes now assigned the choruses to Dionysus, and transferred all the other rites to Melanippus. 68. Such was his treatment of Adrastus. Cleisthenes also changed the names of the Dorian tribes so that the Sicyonians would not have the same tribal names as the Argives. And on this occasion he made a point of mocking the Sicyonians, for the names he chose were derived from the words “donkey,” “pig,” and “swine.” He did so in the case of all the tribes but his own, which he named the Archelai (“rulers of the people”), after his own kingly office. The others he named the Hyatae (“pig-men”), Oneatae (“donkeymen”), and Choireatae (“swine-men”). The Sicyonians kept these names during the reign of Cleisthenes and for sixty years after his death. Then they took counsel together, and the tribes were renamed Hylles, Pamphyli, and Dymanatae; they added a fourth tribe, the Aegiales, named after Aegialeus, son of Adrastus. 69. This, then, is what the Sicyonian Cleisthenes had done; and the Athenian Cleisthenes, who was the man’s grandson and namesake, decided, out of contempt, I assume, for the Ionians, that his tribes should not be the same as theirs.79 For when he secured the support of the common people, whom he had previously disdained, he changed the names of their tribes and increased their number, appointing ten phylarchs80 instead of the original four, and incorporating the ten demes in each tribe.81 Once he had induced the common people to support him, he found himself much more powerful than his adversaries. 70. Isagoras, defeated in his turn, hatched a plot against Cleisthenes. He summoned Cleomenes the Spartan, who had been his guest-friend during the siege of the Pisistratids.82 (It has been alleged that Cleomenes had intercourse with 79. A further point of connection between the grandfather and grandson: Just as the elder Cleisthenes had shown contempt for the Dorians in Sicyon, by giving them humiliating tribal names, the younger one uses tribal names to distance Athens from its Ionian heritage. 80. Tribal executives. 81. The word “deme” in Greek means, roughly, “village,” but was used by Cleisthenes to denote territorial units of Attica, including sections of the city of Athens itself. Demes were combined to form trittyes, three of which (from different parts of Attica) were combined to form the tribes. Herodotus claims that each tribe had 10 demes, but in fact the number varied, since there were 139 demes in all (or an average of about 14 per tribe). 82. That is, Isagoras had received Cleomenes into his home and billeted him during the siege. This benefaction presumably arose from the aristocratic outlook the two men shared, and it was on the basis of that shared outlook that Isagoras called in Cleomenes to help him against Cleisthenes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

291

Isagoras’ wife.) Cleomenes began by sending a herald and ordering the city to expel Cleisthenes, together with many other Athenians, calling them the “Accursed.” Cleomenes had been instructed by Isagoras to use this expression; for the Alcmeonids and their partisans had been implicated in a murder, while Isagoras and his friends were not. 71. The “Accursed” at Athens got their name as follows.83 There was an Athenian named Cylon, a victor in the Olympic games, who aspired to a tyranny, and attempted, with the help of a band of friends his own age, to seize the Acropolis. When the attempt failed, he took sanctuary at the statue there. Then the presidents of the naucraries, who at that time were in charge of affairs, persuaded the fugitives to leave their refuge, promising to spare their lives.84 Nevertheless they were all slain, and the Alcmeonids85 are said to have murdered them. All this happened before the time of Pisistratus. 72.When Cleomenes’ message arrived, demanding the expulsion of Cleisthenes and the “Accursed,” Cleisthenes himself departed.86 Cleomenes, however, despite his departure, came to Athens with a small body of men, and on his arrival banished 700 Athenian families, whose names were given to him by Isagoras. He then tried to dissolve the Council,87 and to transfer power to 300 of Isagoras’ partisans. The Council resisted and refused to obey him, whereupon Cleomenes, Isagoras, and their followers seized the Acropolis. The rest of the Athenians, who sided with the Council, besieged them for two days; on the third day a truce was made, and all the Spartans were allowed to leave the country.88 And thus Cleomenes’ warning was fulfilled. For when he first ascended to the Acropolis to take possession of it, he was just entering the sanctuary of the goddess, in order to address her, when the 83. Herodotus here turns back the clock to c. 640 B.C., to a poorly-documented episode of early Athenian history. 84. The “presidents of the naucraries” were magistrates in charge of the old, pre-Cleisthenic demes of Attica. It is an exaggeration to say that such men “were in charge of affairs” in early Athens, but Herodotus appears to want to shift blame onto them from Megacles, an Alcmeonid who was at this time an archon or chief magistrate. 85. Meaning, chiefly, Megacles (see previous note). 86. The “curse of the Alcmeonids” was still felt to be a live issue, more than a century after the murder of Cylon and his supporters; indeed the same curse was invoked against Pericles, also an Alcmeonid, in 432 B.C., more than two centuries after Cylon (see Thucydides 1.126). 87. The Boule¯ or Council at Athens, mentioned here for the first time in Greek literature, was a body of 400 or possibly 500 citizens responsible for setting the agenda followed by the Assembly. Cleisthenes had either just established this body or, if (as some believe) an earlier version was set up by Solon, had expanded its powers. 88. Herodotus gives a bare-bones summary of a tumultuous series of events.Whereas Isagoras had sought to impose a conservative regime—or even one-man rule (see 5.74 below)—with the help of Spartan military force, a widespread uprising forced the Spartans out and made way for the restoration of Cleisthenes’ populist reforms.

292

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

priestess rose from her seat before he had passed the door and said, “Go back, Lacedemonian stranger, and do not enter the temple. It is not lawful for a Dorian to come in.” Replying, “Woman, I am not a Dorian, but an Achaean,” Cleomenes disregarded the warning, made his attempt, and was driven out with his Spartans.The rest were thrown into prison by the Athenians and put to death. Among them was Timesitheus the Delphian, of whose prowess and valor I could report great things. 73. After these men died in prison, the Athenians recalled Cleisthenes and the 700 families banished by Cleomenes, and sent ambassadors to Sardis to form an alliance with the Persians;89 for they knew that they were now in a state of war with Cleomenes and the Spartans. When the ambassadors reached Sardis and delivered their message, Artaphernes, son of Hystaspes, the governor, asked who these Athenians were, and in what part of the world they lived, that they wanted to become allies of the Persians. Then, having been informed, he gave them this brief reply: “If the Athenians offer earth and water to King Darius,90 he would form an alliance with them; if not, they had better depart.” After consulting together, the envoys, who were eager to form an alliance, accepted the terms—for which they were severely censured on their return to Athens. 74. Understanding that in word and deed he had been insulted by the Athenians, Cleomenes was mustering an army from every part of the Peloponnese, though without revealing his object, which was to take revenge on the Athenians and to establish Isagoras, who had escaped with him from the Acropolis, as tyrant of Athens. Accordingly, he marched with a large army into Eleusis,91 while the Boeotians, by prearrangement, captured Oenoe and Hysias, the two villages at the border of Attica; and at the same time the Chalcidians invaded from another direction and plundered Attic territory. The Athenians, though threatened from two sides, deferred taking action against the Boeotians and Chalcidians, and marched against the Peloponnesians in Eleusis. 75. Just when the two armies were on the point of joining battle, the Corinthians,92 having decided that they were perpetrating a wrong, changed their minds and departed. Then Demaratus, son of Ariston, the other Spartan king93 and joint commander of the expedition, who until then had not been at variance with Cleomenes, followed their example. 89. A surprising development, in view of Persian subjection of the Ionian Greeks. The new Athenian regime felt enough of a threat from Sparta that it was willing to reach out to a foreign power, even one that might itself have been perceived as a threat. 90. That is, if they accept Persian sovereignty over their city. 91. A town on the eastern border of Attica. 92. Members of the Spartan coalition army. 93. Sparta had two kings at any one time. Demaratus and Cleomenes, joint kings in the late 6th century, would, with their enmity, demonstrate the drawbacks to this system (see 6.62–66).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

293

As a result of this dissension, a law was enacted at Sparta making it illegal for both kings to accompany the army on campaign, as had been the custom until then. The new law also provided that, as one of the kings had to remain at home, one of the Tyndaridae94 should also stay behind, though previously both had accompanied the army as auxiliaries. On the present occasion in Eleusis, when the other allies saw that the Spartan kings were at odds, and that the Corinthians had deserted their post, they likewise withdrew and departed. 76. This was the fourth time the Dorians had invaded Attica, having come twice for war and twice for the good of the Athenian populace. The first invasion took place when they founded Megara, and would be rightly placed in the reign of Codrus of Athens.95 The second and third occasions were the expeditions from Sparta to drive out the Pisistratids. The fourth was the present attack, when Cleomenes led a Peloponnesian army as far as Eleusis.96 77. When this inglorious expedition dispersed, the Athenians, wishing to take their revenge, marched first against the Chalcidians; but since the Boeotians were hastening to their aid at the Euripus, the Athenians decided to deal with them first. In the battle that followed, the Athenians won a clear victory, slaughtering many of the enemy and taking 700 prisoners. On the very same day, they crossed into Euboea, engaged the Chalcidians, and defeated them too. After the victory, they left 4,000 settlers on the land of the “horse-breeders,” as the wealthy Chalcidians were called. All the Chalcidian prisoners were put in irons and kept under guard, as were the Boeotians, until they were ransomed at two minas apiece. The shackles in which they were bound the Athenians hung up in the Acropolis, where they were still to be seen in my day, hanging against the walls that had been scorched by the Mede,97 opposite the shrine that faces west. With a tenth part of the ransom the Athenians had a chariot-and-four made in bronze; it stands on the left just as one enters the gateway of the Acropolis. The inscription runs as follows: Taming Chalcis and Boeotia, the sons of Athens, In valorous fight, quelled their arrogance With dark bands of iron. A tenth of the ransom Made these steeds and chariot for Pallas. 94. The Tyndaridae, or sons of Tyndareus, are the deities Castor and Pollux; the reference here is apparently to statues or images of them. 95. Codrus was a legendary Athenian king of the mythic past. 96. To Herodotus’ original audience, who were seeing frequent Spartan invasions of Attica as part of the so-called Peloponnesian War, this chapter would have resonated strongly. 97. The burning of the acropolis by the Persians will be narrated at 8.53 below.

294

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

78. The Athenians, then, increased in strength. Here equality before the law makes clear not only in one respect but in every way that it is a weighty thing, if the Athenians under a tyranny were not better in war than any of their neighbors, but once rid of tyrants proved by far to be the first. This plainly shows that they were willingly base as long as they were held down, working as though for a master, but when they became free, each one was eager to work for himself.98 79. The Thebans, meanwhile, who wished to punish the Athenians, sent to Delphi, and were told by the priestess that they would be unable, by themselves, to take their revenge; but she urged them, when they had brought the matter before “the many-voiced,” to ask their “nearest” to help them. On their return home, the messengers called an assembly and reported the oracle’s response. The people, hearing that they had been advised to ask help of their “nearest,” said, “Aren’t our ‘nearest’ the men of Tanagra, Coroaea, and Thespiae? They, at any rate, have always fought at our side and been our loyal allies. What need have we to ask their help? But that may not be what the oracle means.” 80. As they were considering the question, one of them grasped the truth and said, “I think I understand what the oracle means. Asopus,99 they say, had two daughters, Thebe and Aegina. The god means that, since these two were sisters, we ought to ask the Aeginetans100 for aid.” As no better solution was offered, the Thebans at once sent word to the Aeginetans, asking for their aid, as the people “nearest” to them. The Aeginetans replied that they would send them the Aeacidae101 as helpers. 81. The Thebans now, relying on the aid of the Aeacidae, attempted an attack, but were soundly beaten by the Athenians. They therefore sent to Aegina again, giving back the Aeacidae and asking for some men instead. The Aeginetans at that period, puffed up by great prosperity, and remembering their ancient feud with Athens, responded to the Thebans’ request for aid by waging an undeclared war against the Athenians. While the latter were occupied in their struggle with the Boeotians, the Aeginetans sent warships to Attica, plundered Phalerum and a number of villages along the coast, and thereby inflicted great damage on the Athenians. 98. Herodotus’ sole comment on Athenian democracy, the system that by his day had made Athens the richest and most powerful city in Greece, focuses not on any ideological contrast between freedom and autocracy, but on the success Athenians experienced when they were able to profit from their own labors. 99. A river near Thebes, here personified as a god. 100. Inhabitants of Aegina, an island off Attica; longstanding foes of Athens (see 5.82 below). 101. Mythic heroes who were the twin sons of Aeacus, a legendary king of Aegina. See note 78 to 5.67 on the idea of “sending” such heroes to another place.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

295

82. The hatred the Aeginetans had long had reason to feel for the Athenians arose from the following circumstances. Once, many years before, the land of Epidaurus would bear no crops. When the Epidaurians consulted the oracle at Delphi about their trouble, the priestess told them to erect statues of Damia and Auxesia, and promised that things would go better for them once they had done so. The Epidaurians then asked whether they should make the statues of bronze or of stone, and were told to use neither material: the statues should be made from the wood of a cultivated olive tree. Then they asked the Athenians to let them cut down some olive trees, as they considered the Athenian trees to be especially sacred. It has also been said that at that time Athens was the only place where olives grew. The Athenians said they would give the Epidaurians permission to fell the trees, but on condition that they offered annual sacrifices to Athena Polias and Erechtheus.The Epidaurians agreed, obtained what they had asked for, made the statues from the olive wood, and erected them. From then on their land bore its crops, and they kept the promise they had made to the Athenians. 83. Now at that time, as in the past, the Aeginetans were in many things subject to the Epidaurians,102 and had to cross over to Epidaurus to have their lawsuits adjudicated. Later, however, the Aeginetans built a fleet and, growing arrogant, revolted from the Epidaurians. Once the feud had begun, the Aeginetans, who were superior at sea, proceeded to ravage Epidaurus; they even carried off the statues of Damia and Auxesia and set them up at a place called Oea, in the interior of their island, about twenty stades from the city. There they instituted certain ceremonies in their honor, consisting partly of sacrifices, partly of female satiric choruses, and appointed ten men to furnish the choruses for each of the two goddesses. These choruses did not harangue men, but only the women of the country. Similar religious ceremonies were also in use among the Epidaurians, as well as rites of which it is not lawful to speak. 84. After the statues were stolen, the Epidaurians ceased to send the annual tribute to the Athenians, and when the latter sent to remonstrate with them, the Epidaurians argued that they were doing no wrong. They had fulfilled their obligations while they had the statues in their possession, but now that they had been deprived of them, their obligation was at an end; as the Aeginetans now had the statues, the Athenians should exact payment from them. The Athenians then sent to Aegina, and demanded the return of the statues, but were told in reply that Aegina had nothing whatever to do with Athens. 85. The Athenians say that after they had issued their demand, they sent an official delegation of citizens to Aegina in a single trireme, and that these men, when they reached Aegina, tried to tear the statues from their pedestals, on the 102. Inhabitants of Epidaurus, a Greek city in the eastern Peloponnese.

296

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

grounds that they were made of their wood. When they failed to do so, they tied ropes round them and tried to haul them off. In the midst of their hauling there was a clap of thunder and an earthquake, and the crew of the trireme suddenly went mad and fell to slaughtering one another like enemies, until only one man was left, who returned alone to Phalerum.103 86. Such is the Athenian account, whereas the Aeginetans deny that the Athenians arrived in a single trireme—for they could easily have repulsed one ship, or several, even if they had no fleet at all. In fact, they say, the Athenians came against them with a large number of ships, which is why they yielded and did not risk a battle. The Aeginetans do not explain clearly whether they yielded because of their own inferiority at sea or because they were planning to do what they actually did. They report that the Athenians landed unopposed and went after the statues. But as they were unable to pry them from their pedestals, they tied ropes round them and began to haul. Then, they report—and some may believe them, though I myself do not—the two statues, while being hauled away, fell to their knees, and have remained in that position ever since. The Aeginetans also maintain that when they learned that the Athenians were planning to attack them, they alerted the Argives, so that when the Athenians landed, Argive reinforcements were waiting to oppose them. The Argives had managed to cross from Epidaurus without attracting attention, and fell upon the Athenians before they were aware of their presence. It was at that moment that the thunderclap occurred, and the earthquake. 87. The Argives and Aeginetans agree in giving this account; and the Athenians themselves admit that only one of their men returned alive to Attica. The Argives, however, say that the man got away after they had destroyed the rest of the Athenian troops, whereas the Athenians attribute the destruction of their army to divine agency. And even this one man did not long survive. For when he returned to Athens, bringing word of the calamity, the wives of the men who had been sent with him to Aegina thought it a terrible thing that he alone should be saved; they therefore crowded around him and struck him with the brooches by which their gowns were fastened—each woman, as she struck, asking him where her husband was. The Athenians thought that the deed of the women was even more horrible than the destruction of their troops; but as they had no other means of punishing them, they changed their dress and forced them to wear the costume of the Ionians. Until then, the Athenians women had worn Dorian dress, which closely resembles the Corinthian style; but from then on they were forced to wear the linen tunic, which does not require a brooch. 88. If truth be told, however, this kind of dress is not originally Ionian but Carian, since in ancient times all Greek women wore the dress that we now call Dorian. It is also reported that the Argives and Aeginetans made it a custom 103. One of the harbors used by Athens.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

297

for their women to use brooch-pins half again as long as they used to be, and for brooches to be the principal thing offered by women in the shrines of these goddesses; they also prohibited the bringing of anything made in Attica into the temple, even an earthenware jar, and made it a law that from then on only native drinking vessels should be used. From that time to my day the women of Argos and Aegina have continued to wear brooches with longer pins than formerly—and all because of their quarrel with the Athenians. 89. Such was the beginning of the feud between the Athenians and the Aeginetans. And now, when the Thebans requested help,104 the Aeginetans, recalling the incident of the statues, were eager to aid the Boeotians, and set about ravaging the coast of Attica. The Athenians were about to attack them in return when an oracle from Delphi advised them to wait until thirty years had passed from the time that the Aeginetans wronged them, and then, in the thirty-first year, after first setting apart a precinct for Aeacus, to declare war. If they followed this advice, they would succeed; if, on the other hand, they went to war at once, they would ultimately conquer the island, but only after great suffering and exertion. On receiving this warning the Athenians set apart a precinct for Aeacus—the one that can still be seen in their marketplace; but in light of the wrong they had suffered at the hands of the Aeginetans, they could not bear to wait thirty years to start the war. 90. As the Athenians were preparing to take their revenge, they were deterred by new trouble from Sparta. The Spartans had learned that the Alcmeonids had corrupted the Pythian priestess,105 and that she had acted against them and the Pisistratids. They regarded the affair as a double calamity; for while they had driven their own guest-friends into exile, they had thereby gained no goodwill from Athens. They were also provoked by certain prophecies warning them of atrocities at the hands of the Athenians. Of these they had been ignorant until Cleomenes brought them to Sparta. He had found them in the Athenian Acropolis, where the Pisistratids had left them when they were driven from Athens. Finding them there, Cleomenes had carried them off.106 91.When, therefore, the Spartans got hold of them, and saw that the Athenians were growing in power, and were by no means ready to submit to their authority, it occurred to them that if the people of Attica were free, they would be a match for them, whereas if they were held down by tyranny, they would be weak and obedient.107 On realizing this, they sent for Hippias, son of Pisistratus, from Sigeum on the Hellespont, where the Pisistratids had taken refuge. 104. The narrative resumes from the point reached at 5.81. 105. See 5.63 above and note 65. 106. The prophecies were evidently inscribed on tablets or recorded on papyrus. 107. Another highly resonant chapter for the original audience of the Histories; see note 96 to 5.76 above.

298

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

Hippias came at their summons, whereupon the Spartans sent for deputies from their other allies, and addressed the assembly as follows: “Friends and allies, we confess we have acted improperly. Misled by false oracles, we drove from their country those who were our guest-friends, men who promised to keep Athens subject to us; and then we put power into the hands of an ungrateful people— a people who, after being liberated by us, raised their heads high and grossly insulted us, driving us out of their city with our king. Since then they have been growing in renown and strength, as their neighbors the Boeotians and Chalcidians know full well, and as others will soon discover, if they offend them. Such was our mistake; but we will now try, with your help, to rectify matters. That is why we invited you and Hippias to this meeting—that we may unite our forces and restore him to Athens, giving him back the power we took from him.” 92. Such was the speech of the Lacedemonians. Most of the allies disapproved of it. But the only one to speak up was Sosicles of Corinth, who exclaimed: A.108 “Surely the sky will be below the earth, and the earth above the sky, and human beings will have their province in the sea, and fishes on land, when you, Spartans, are prepared to put down democracies and reestablish tyrannies, than which there is nothing more unjust or more bloodthirsty. If you think it desirable to have the cities under autocratic rule, begin by putting a tyrant over yourselves before trying to establish them elsewhere. Since you are unacquainted with tyranny and take the utmost care that it should never arise in Sparta, you are treating your allies unworthily. If you knew what tyranny was as we do, your advice about it would be sounder than it is. B. “The government of Corinth was once an oligarchy. One clan, the Bacchiads, who intermarried only among themselves, held power there. Amphion, one of this clan, had a lame daughter named Labda. Since none of the Bacchiads wished to marry her, she was taken to wife by Aetion, son of Echecrates, a man from the village of Petra, who belonged by descent to the Lapithae and the family of Coenus. As he had no children, either by Labda or any other wife, Aetion went to Delphi to consult the oracle about progeny.The moment he entered the shrine, the priestess greeted him with these words: No one honors you, Aetion, worthy though you are. Labda is pregnant, and will bring forth a boulder That will fall upon the rulers, and right the city of Corinth. This response, though given to Aetion, somehow reached the ears of the Bacchiads, who had been unable to interpret an earlier prophecy about Corinth, though it referred to the same event as Aetion’s: 108. The speech that follows is so long that the chapter in which it is contained is traditionally subdivided into lettered segments. Sosicles, the impassioned Corinthian speaker, is otherwise unknown; in some manuscripts of Herodotus his name appears as Socleas.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

299

An eagle is pregnant on the rocky heights, and will bear a lion, Mighty and ravenous; he will bring many to their knees. Pay heed to this, Corinthians, you who dwell By lovely Pirene and lofty Corinth. C. This prophecy had been unintelligible to the Bacchiads; but as soon as they heard the answer given to Aetion, they grasped its meaning, since the two so closely agreed. But though they now understood both prophecies, they kept quiet, since they intended to do away with the child that Aetion was expecting. As soon as his wife gave birth, the Bacchiads sent ten of their number to Aetion’s village, with orders to kill the child. Arriving in Petra, they entered Aetion’s house, and asked to see the child. Labda, who knew nothing of why they had come, and thought they were asking to see the baby out of friendship for its father, brought it out and gave it to one of them to hold. Now on their way to Petra, these men had decided that whoever first got hold of the baby would dash it to the ground. But when Labda put it in the man’s arms, the baby, by a divine chance, smiled at him. Seeing the smile, the man was touched with pity and could not bring himself to kill it, but passed it on to his neighbor, who gave it to the third; and so it went through all the ten, none of whom could bring himself to kill it. So they gave the baby back to its mother and left the house. Standing near the door, they began to blame and reproach one another, especially the man who had taken the child up first, for not doing what had been agreed upon. Finally, after a considerable time, they decided to go back and all take part in the murder. D. “But Corinth was fated to suffer at the hands of Aetion’s offspring. For Labda, who had been standing near the door, heard everything that the men said. Afraid that they would change their mind and kill her baby, she hid it in the most unlikely place she could think of—a chest, for she knew that if they returned they would search her entire house. And that is just what happened. They entered the house, and after hunting everywhere without finding the child, decided to go away and tell the people who had sent them that their orders had been carried out. E. “This they did; and Aetion’s son grew up, and was named Cypselus after the chest, in memory of the danger he had escaped. Reaching manhood, he went to Delphi, and on consulting the oracle, received a double-edged answer, on the strength of which he made his attempt and became master of Corinth.The prophecy ran thus: Fortunate is he, who comes to my house, Cypselus, son of Aetion, king of glorious Corinth, He and his sons also, though not the sons of his sons. This was the prophecy; and on seizing power he proved a tyrant in deed: many of the Corinthians he banished, many he deprived of their property, and an even greater number of their lives.

300

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

F. “He ruled for thirty years, remained prosperous to the end, and was succeeded by his son Periander.109 “At first Periander was gentler than his father; but after he had corresponded through messengers with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus, he became even more bloodthirsty. He sent a herald to Thrasybulus to ask his opinion on how he might best and most safely govern his city. Thrasybulus led the messenger from the city and took him into a field of corn. As he walked through this field, continually asking the man about his coming to Corinth, he kept breaking off and throwing away the ears of corn that overtopped the rest. In this way he went through the entire field, destroying the tallest and most beautiful part of the crop. Then, without a word, he sent the messenger away. When the man returned to Corinth, Periander was eager to hear what Thrasybulus had advised, but the messenger replied that he had said nothing; he also expressed surprise that Periander had sent him to a man who was evidently out of his mind, since he did nothing but destroy his own property. And then he described what he had seen Thrasybulus do. G. “Understanding what his action meant, Periander grasped that Thrasybulus was advising him to murder all the leading citizens. From then on he treated his subjects with terrible cruelty. Everything that Cypselus, in his career of killing and banishing, had left undone, Periander completed for him. “Once, on a single day, for the sake of his wife Melissa, Periander stripped all the women of Corinth naked. For he had sent messengers to Thesprotia to consult the oracle of the dead on the river Acheron about a deposit that had been entrusted to his care by a friend. The ghost of Melissa110 appeared and said that she would not reveal, either by word or sign, where the deposit lay; for she was cold and naked, since the clothes that had been buried with her were of no use, as they had not been burned. And to prove that what she said was true, she added that Periander had put his loaves into a cold oven.When this message was brought to him, Periander was convinced by her token,111 since he had copulated with her corpse; he immediately issued a proclamation to the effect that all the women of Corinth should come to the temple of Hera. The women accordingly came forth, dressed in their finest clothes, as to a festival, and Periander, having secretly posted his guards for this purpose, had them all stripped, the freeborn women and servants alike. Then he gathered their clothes into a pit; and while praying to the spirit of Melissa, burned the whole heap. He then sent to the oracle a second time, and Melissa’s ghost told him where he had put his friend’s deposit. 109. On Periander, infamous tyrant at Corinth in the early 6th century B.C. (about a century before the narrative present), see 1.20–24, 3.48–53. 110. Periander had secretly murdered Melissa, according to Herodotus (3.48). 111. That is, Periander was convinced that the ghost truly was the spirit of Melissa, since no one else could know of his necrophilia.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

301

“Such is tyranny, Lacedemonians, and such are its deeds. We Corinthians were amazed when we saw that you were sending for Hippias; and now we are even more surprised to hear you speak as you do. We implore you, in the name of the gods of the Greeks, not to burden our cities with tyrants. Will you persist, contrary to all justice, in seeking to restore Hippias? Know, if you do, that the Corinthians, at any rate, will not agree with you.” 93. When Sosicles, the ambassador from Corinth, had finished his speech, Hippias, invoking the same gods, declared that the Corinthians would surely surpass everyone in their longing for the Pisistratids when the day came for them to be harassed by the Athenians. Hippias spoke thus because he was more familiar with the prophecies than any man living. The rest of the allies had so far kept quiet; but when they heard Sosicles express himself so boldly, every one of them spoke in his support, and urged the Spartans not to meddle with the affairs of any Greek city. 94. Hippias now departed; and Amyntas of Macedon offered him Anthemus, while the Thessalians offered him Iolcus. But Hippias would have neither of these cities, and returned to Sigeum. This place Pisistratus had taken by force of arms from the Mytilenaeans, and on gaining possession of it had appointed as tyrant his illegitimate son Hegesistratus, whose mother was an Argive woman. But Hegesistratus could not enjoy in peace what he had received from his father; for there was a prolonged war between the Athenians at Sigeum and the Mytilenaeans at Achilleum, the latter demanding the return of their territory, the former refusing to admit their claim and arguing that the Aeolians had no greater right to the Trojan territory than themselves, or than any of the other Greeks who on Menelaus’ behalf had avenged the abduction of Helen.112 95. In the course of their war, incidents of all kinds occurred, including one that involved Alcaeus the poet.113 In the course of an engagement in which the Athenians were victorious, Alcaeus ran away, and the Athenians kept his weapons and hung them up at the temple of Athena in Sigeum. Alcaeus composed a poem describing his misadventure to his friend Melanippus, and sent it to him at Mytilene. The Mytilenaeans and Athenians were reconciled by Periander, who was chosen by both parties to act as an arbitrator. He decided that each side should retain what it currently possessed. In this way Sigeum came under the control of Athens. 96. On his return to Asia from Lacedaemon, Hippias moved heaven and earth to set Artaphernes114 against the Athenians, and did all he could to bring 112. Since Sigeum was near the site of now-extinct Troy, the Athenians there use Homer’s Iliad to support their claim to the site, seeing that their ancestors had taken part in the attack on Troy. 113. An archaic Greek poet who made his home in Mytilene, the principal city of Lesbos. 114. The Persian satrap in Lydia, the westernmost Persian province, and half-brother of king Darius.

302

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

about Athens’ submission to himself and Darius. When the Athenians learned of Hippias’ machinations, they sent envoys to Sardis to urge the Persians not to listen to the Athenian exiles. Artaphernes replied that if they wished to be safe, they must take Hippias back. The Athenians refused, and therefore made up their minds to be openly at variance with the Persians. 97. It was at this critical moment, when the Athenians had made their decision and were already on bad terms with the Persians, that Aristagoras of Miletus, who had been driven from Sparta by Cleomenes the Lacedemonian,115 arrived at Athens. He knew that Athens, after Sparta, was the next most powerful Greek state. Appearing before the people,116 he repeated what he had said in Sparta about the resources of Asia and the Persian way of fighting—how they used neither shield nor spear and would be easy to conquer. He also reminded them that Miletus was a colony from Athens, and therefore ought to receive their help, since they were so powerful. Indeed there was nothing that Aristagoras did not promise them, so great was his need, until at last he won them over. Apparently it is easier to deceive a crowd than an individual; for Aristagoras, though he had failed to impose on Cleomenes the Lacedemonian, managed to deceive 30,000 Athenians.117 Persuaded by his appeal, they voted to dispatch twenty ships to assist the Ionians, appointing Melanthius, a distinguished Athenian, as their commander. These ships turned out to be the beginning of misfortunes for Greeks and barbarians alike. 98. Sailing ahead of the others, Aristagoras arrived in Miletus, having devised a plan from which no benefit could possibly arise for the Ionians—indeed, this was not even his object; he acted solely from a desire to annoy King Darius. He sent a man into Phrygia to the Paeonians from the river Strymon, whom Megabazus had captured, and who now lived in a district and a village of their own in Phrygia.118 When the man reached the Paeonians, he spoke as follows: “Men of Paeonia, Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus, has sent me to inform you of a way for you to save yourselves, if you follow his advice. All Ionia has revolted from the king, and you now have a chance to return to your own country.You need only make your way to the coast; we will manage the rest ourselves.” The Paeonians were delighted, and taking with them their children and wives, hastened to the coast, only a few staying behind out of fear. The rest, on reaching the sea, crossed over to Chios. A large troop of Persian cavalry had pursued them closely; and having failed to 115. As described at 5.51, the point from which the story of the Ionian revolt is now resumed. 116. That is, in the Ekklesia or Assembly, the open meeting of the citizenry that decided most matters of state policy. 117. The figure “30,000” seems far too large to refer to the number of citizens present in the Assembly on any one occasion; it might perhaps refer to the total number of full citizens at this point in Athens’ development. 118.The deportation of the Paeonians was narrated in the first twenty-three chapters of Book 5.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

303

overtake them, the Persians sent a message across to Chios and urged them to return. When the Paeonians refused, the Chians took them from Chios to Lesbos, and the Lesbians took them to Doriscus. From there they made their way on foot to Paeonia. 99.The Athenians reached Miletus with twenty of their own ships, and brought with them five triremes belonging to the Eretrians, who had joined the expedition not for the Athenians’ sake but to fulfill an obligation to the Milesians. (The Milesians had previously assisted the Eretrians in their war with the Chalcidians, when the latter had received the support of Samos.)119 When these two contingents reached Miletus, and the other allies had assembled, Aristagoras proceeded to attack Sardis. He did not himself accompany the expedition, but remained in Miletus, having appointed to the command of the Milesians his own brother Charopinus, and Hermophantus, another Milesian. 100. The Ionian fleet sailed for Ephesus, where the ships were left at Coresus in Ephesian territory; the troops, a large force, then headed inland with Ephesian guides. They marched along the river Cayster, crossed the ridge of Tmolus, and descended upon Sardis, which they seized without opposition. The whole city fell into their hands except the citadel, which Artaphernes defended in person with a considerable force. 101. But though they had taken the city, they were prevented from plundering it. For most of the houses in Sardis were constructed of reeds, and all the brick houses had thatched roofs. As soon as one house was set on fire by a soldier, the flames rapidly spread from house to house until the whole city was engulfed. As Sardis burned, the Lydians and Persians, enclosed by a ring of fire (as the city’s outlying districts were in flames) and unable to get out, poured into the marketplace and gathered at the banks of the Pactolus. (This river, which carries gold dust to Sardis from Mount Tmolus, flows through the marketplace, and then joins the Hermus, which, in turn, flows into the sea.) So the Lydians and Persians, brought together in this way, were forced to defend themselves; and the Ionians, seeing some of the enemy resisting, and others advancing toward them in large numbers, grew alarmed, and retreated to the mountain that is called Tmolus; from there, toward nightfall, they returned to their ships. 102.Thus Sardis was burnt; and in the conflagration a temple of the native goddess Cybele was destroyed—which the Persians later made a pretext for burning the temples of the Greeks. As soon as the Persians west of the river Halys learned what was happening, they assembled and hastened to aid the Lydians; finding that the Ionians had already left Sardis, they followed on their track and overtook them at Ephesus. 119. This war took place in the late 8th century B.C. and is also mentioned by Thucydides (1.15).

304

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

The Ionians drew themselves up in array, but in the fight that followed were badly beaten. Large numbers were slain by the Persians; among other well-known men, they killed Eualcides, the Eretrian commander, a man who had won crowns at the games, and had been highly praised by Simonides of Ceos.120 The survivors dispersed to their cities. 103. After this battle, the Athenians utterly abandoned the Ionians.121 Though Aristagoras repeatedly appealed to them through ambassadors, they refused to help him. But the Ionians, though deprived of Athenian aid, continued to prepare for war against the King, since their recent conduct toward him left them no alternative. Sailing into the Hellespont, they brought Byzantium and all the nearby cities under their authority; then, leaving the Hellespont, they won the greater part of Caria to their side; even Caunus, which had previously held aloof, now, after the burning of Sardis, joined their alliance. 104. All the cities on Cyprus, too, except Amathus, volunteered to assist the Ionians. The Cyprians had revolted from the Medes under the following circumstances. There was a man named Onesilus, a younger brother of Gorgus, the king of Salamis, and son of Chersis, who was the son of Siromus and grandson of Euelthon. Onesilus had often encouraged Gorgus to revolt from the king, and now, on learning of the revolt of the Ionians, pressed him with great urgency. But as Gorgus refused to listen to him, Onesilus kept watch until his brother left the city, and then, with the help of his partisans, shut the gates on him. Deprived of his city, Gorgus fled to the Medes; and Onesilus, being now ruler of Salamis, tried to persuade all the Cyprians to join the rebellion. He prevailed on all but the Amathusians, who refused to listen to him, whereupon he laid siege to Amathus. 105.While Onesilus was engaged in the siege of Amathus, King Darius received word that Sardis had been seized and burned by the Athenians and Ionians, and that the man who had created the league and planned its exploits was Aristagoras of Miletus. It is said that when Darius first learned what had happened he gave no thought to the Ionians, knowing full well that they would be made to pay for their revolt; but he asked who the Athenians were, and then, on being told, called for his bow. Taking it up, he set an arrow on the string, shot it into the air, and said, “Grant, O Zeus, that I may punish the Athenians.”122 Then he ordered one of his 120. A Greek poet of the early 5th century B.C., many of whose epigrams survive. It was common in the Greek world for victors at the athletic festivals to have their victories commemorated in odes. 121. Presumably the withdrawal of the Athenian contingent was the result of decisions made back in Athens, but it is not clear why the city so quickly changed its stance toward the Ionian rebellion. 122. Though Herodotus has elsewhere reported that Persians do not worship personified gods (1.131), in direct speech he has them refer to Zeus and other Greek deities as though they believed in them.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

305

servants every day, when his dinner was served, to repeat to him three times the words, “Master, remember the Athenians.” 106. After giving this order, Darius summoned Histiaeus of Miletus, whom he had long been detaining at court,123 and said, “I am told, Histiaeus, that your deputy, to whom you entrusted Miletus, has raised a rebellion against me. He has brought men against me from the other continent, and, prevailing on the Ionians—who will be duly punished—to join this force, has robbed me of Sardis. Now then—does this strike you as well done? And can it have been managed without your knowledge and advice? Beware, in future, lest you be held to blame for this.” In reply Histiaeus said, “Sire, what are you saying? Am I likely to have planned anything that might cause you distress, small or great? Why should I do so? To satisfy what need? Have I not everything that you have, and am I not thought worthy to share in all your counsels? If my deputy is indeed doing as you say, rest assured he has acted entirely on his own initiative. For my part, I cannot possibly believe that he and the Milesians are rebelling against you. But if they are really doing so, and what you have heard is true, think how ill-advised you were, sire, to pull me away from the coast. For the Ionians, it would appear, have only waited until I am out of sight to do what they have long desired to do; whereas, if I had been there, not a single city would have stirred. Let me therefore hasten to Ionia, that I may set everything right for you, and deliver into your hands the deputy of Miletus, who has caused all the trouble. Once I have managed this affair to your satisfaction, I swear by the gods of your royal house, I will not take off the clothes in which I reach Ionia until I have made Sardinia, the biggest island in the world, your tribute-paying subject.”124 107. So said Histiaeus, hoping to deceive the king; and Darius believed him and let him go, telling him to return to Susa when he had done as he had promised. 108. In the meantime—while the news about Sardis was reaching the king, and Darius was shooting the arrow and conversing with Histiaeus, and Histiaeus, with Darius’ permission, was hastening to the coast—the following events took place. Onesilus of Salamis, who was still besieging Amathus,125 received word that a Persian named Artybius was expected to arrive in Salamis with a large Persian force. Onesilus therefore sent heralds to all parts of Ionia with an appeal for aid. 123. See 5.23–24. It should be remembered, in the scene that follows, that Histiaeus secretly encouraged the revolt with the message tattooed onto his messenger’s head. 124. It is surprising to find Histiaeus here alluding to Sardinia, a faraway place (west of Italy) scarcely accessible to the Greeks, never mind the Persians. Perhaps the improbable distance of the place is the very point: Histiaeus secretly twits Darius by offering him a prize that, as only he knows, is impossible to deliver. 125. See 5.104 above.

306

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

After deliberating briefly, the Ionians crossed from Cilicia and marched against Salamis,126 while the Phoenicians sailed around the promontory called the Keys of Cyprus. 109. Such being the position, the tyrants of Cyprus called together the Ionian commanders and addressed them as follows: “Men of Ionia, we Cyprians offer you a choice of engaging either the Persians or the Phoenicians. If you prefer to make trial of the Persians on land, disembark at once and array yourselves for battle, while we, in turn, go aboard your ships and engage the Phoenicians at sea.127 Alternatively, you may prefer to take on the Phoenicians. But whichever you choose, be sure to fight so that Ionia and Cyprus, so far as it depends on you, may preserve their liberty.” To this the Ionians replied, “The common council of Ionia sent us here to guard the sea, not to hand over our ships to you and engage the Persians on land. We will therefore keep to the post that was assigned to us, and there try to make ourselves useful. And may you remember what you suffered when you were the slaves of the Medes, and fight like men.” 110. The Persian army arrived on the plain of Salamis, and the Cyprian kings marshaled their troops opposite them, stationing picked men from Salamis and Soli against the Persians, and the rest of the Cyprians against the rest of their army. Onesilus volunteered to oppose Artybius, the Persian commander. 111. Artybius rode a horse that he had trained to rear up against a hoplite.128 Onesilus, informed of this, now consulted his Carian shield-bearer, a distinguished warrior of great mettle. “I hear that Artybius’ horse rears up and attacks with his hooves and teeth anyone he encounters. So think for a moment, and tell me which of the two you prefer to strike, the horse or Artybius himself.” The attendant replied, “Sire, I am ready to do both or either, and will by all means do whatever you command. Nevertheless, I will tell you what I think will be best for you. Since you are a king and a general, I think you should fight with another king or general. For if you bring down a general, it will be a great feather in your cap, while if he brings you down (which heaven forbid)—well, to die at the hands of a worthy opponent is only half a misfortune. We, your attendants, will meanwhile take on your opponent’s attendants and the horse. Have no fear of the animal’s wiles: I promise you he will never rear up against anyone again.” 112. Just after this exchange, the armies joined battle on land and at sea. In the naval engagement, the Ionians surpassed themselves—especially the Samians— and defeated the Phoenicians. In the battle fought on land, Artybius, mounted 126. This Salamis is a city on Cyprus, not the island of the same name. 127. The point of this swap is that the Cyprians were better sailors than the Ionians, while the Ionians were better soldiers than the Cyprians. 128. A hoplite is a heavy-armed infantryman, trained to fight in the Greek style (in phalanx formation). Normally cavalry charges could be fended off by such close-packed hoplites.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

307

on his horse, charged at Onesilus, who, as he had agreed with his shield-bearer, aimed a blow at the rider; and when the horse, rearing up, brought his forefeet down on Onesilus’ shield, the Carian swung his curved sword and severed its legs. The horse fell, and Artybius, the Persian general, with him. 113. In the course of the battle, Stesenor, the tyrant of Curium, who commanded a considerable body of men, turned traitor. (Curium is said to have been a colony from Argos.) His example was soon followed by the war-chariots from Salamis, whereupon the Persians prevailed over the Cyprians. Many fell in the rout of the Cyprian army, including Onesilus, son of Chersis, who had instigated the Cyprian revolt, and Aristocyprus, the king of Soli. Aristocyprus was the son of Philocyprus, whom Solon the Athenian, when he visited Cyprus,129 praised in his poems beyond other tyrants. 114. The Amathusians, because Onesilus had besieged them, cut off his head and took it with them to Amathus, where it was hung up over the city gates. In time the suspended head was hollowed out, and a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with a honeycomb. On seeing this the Amathusians consulted the oracle, and were advised to take down the head, bury it, and perform annual sacrifices to Onesilus as a hero; if they did so, their prospects would improve. 115. And to this day the Amathusians perform these ceremonies. As for the Ionians who had prevailed in the sea battle, when they learned that the cause of Onesilus was lost and that all the Cyprian cities were besieged except Salamis, which the inhabitants had surrendered to Gorgus, their former king, they instantly returned home to Ionia. Of the Cyprian towns that were besieged, Soli held out the longest; the Persians took it in the fifth month, by undermining the wall.130 116. Thus, after a year of freedom, the Cyprians were again reduced to slavery. Meanwhile Daurises, who was married to a daughter of Darius, together with two other Persian generals, Hymaees and Otanes, who were also married to daughters of Darius, pursued the Ionians who had attacked Sardis,131 defeated them, and drove the survivors to their ships. They then divided the various cities among themselves and proceeded to plunder them. 117. Daurises headed for the towns on the Hellespont, and seized Dardanus, Abydus, Percotes, Lampsacus, and Paesus, each city in one day. Then, on his way 129. As Herodotus has recounted, Solon went on a ten-year sojourn abroad after crafting new laws for the Athenians (1.29–30). 130. That is, by digging tunnels under the wall and causing it to collapse. The fact that such an operation took five months underscores the difficulty of mounting siege operations in this era. 131. These Ionians had already been bested in an initial battle with the pursuing Persian army, But “survivors” had dispersed to their home cities (5.102). The Persians here send out a more organized force to punish these survivors, along with the cities that sponsored their attack.

308

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

from Paesus to Parium, receiving word that the Carians had thrown in their lot with the Ionians and revolted from the Persians, he turned back; leaving the Hellespont, he marched toward Caria. 118. The Carians somehow learned of this movement before Daurises arrived, and gathered at a place called White Pillars on the Marsyas, a river that rises in Idrian country and empties into the Maeander. When the Carians had assembled, they considered various plans, the best of which, it seems to me, came from Pixodarus, son of Mausolus, from Cindya, who was married to a daughter of Syennesis, the Cilician king. His advice was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and fight with the river at their backs, so that, being unable to flee, they would be compelled to stand their ground and prove even braver than they were by nature. But his view did not prevail; it was decided, instead, to make the Persians have the Maeander behind them, so that if they were defeated and put to flight, they would have no retreat open but would be driven into the river. 119. The Persians soon approached, crossed the Maeander, and engaged the Carians at the banks of the Marsyas. After a long and desperate battle, the Carians were finally overwhelmed by numbers. Some 2,000 Persians fell and nearly 10,000 Carians. The Carians who managed to escape were cooped up at Labraunda, in the sanctuary of Zeus Stratius132 and in the large grove of sacred plane trees. (The Carians are the only tribe we know of that offers sacrifices to Zeus Stratius.) There they considered plans for saving themselves—in doubt whether they would do better to surrender to the Persians or to abandon Asia for good. 120. But in the course of their deliberations, the Milesians and their allies came to offer aid, whereupon the Carians abandoned their earlier plan and again prepared for war. Engaging the Persians a second time, they were defeated even more decisively than before. All the allies suffered losses, but the Milesian contingent the severest of all. 121. Afterward, however, the Carians repaired their misfortune in another action. When they learned that the Persians intended to attack their cities, they laid an ambush on the road to Pedasus. Falling into their trap at night, the Persians were slaughtered, together with the commanders Daurises, Amorges, and Sisimaces, and also Myrsus, son of Gyges. The leader of this ambush was Heraclides, son of Ibanollis, of Mylasa. 122. In the meantime Hymaees, another of the Persian commanders who pursued the Ionians after their attack on Sardis, marched to the Propontis133 and captured the Mysian city of Cius. But on learning that Daurises had left the Hellespont and was heading for Caria, he in turn left the Propontis and led his 132. The epithet Stratius means “Helper of Armies.” 133. The Sea of Marmora.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 5

309

army to the Hellespont, where he subdued all the Aeolians of the Troad and also the Gergithians, the remaining descendants of the ancient Teucrians. After conquering these peoples, he died of disease in the Troad. 123. Meanwhile Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, and Otanes, the third general, were directed to make war on Ionia and the neighboring territory of Aeolis. They captured Clazomenae in Ionia and Cyme in Aeolis. 124. As these towns were falling, it became clear that Aristagoras of Miletus was, after all, a spineless, weak-willed fellow. Though he had embroiled Ionia in turmoil and confusion, he began, seeing that he stood no chance against Darius, to look about for a means of escape. He called his followers together, and, saying they ought to have some place of refuge in case they were driven from Miletus, asked whether he should go as head of a colony to Sardinia or sail to Myrcinus, the town in Edonia that Histiaeus had received as a gift from Darius and had begun to fortify.134 125. Hecataeus the historian, son of Hegesander, objected to both places, and proposed that Aristagoras, if he were driven from Miletus, should build a fortress on the island of Leros and bide his time, so that he might later return from Leros to Miletus. This was the advice of Hecataeus.135 126. Aristagoras, however, was determined to go to Myrcinus. He therefore entrusted Miletus to Pythagoras, a distinguished citizen, and sailed to Thrace with all who were willing to accompany him. There he took possession of the place in question. But at a later time, while besieging a neighboring town, he was killed with all his men by the Thracians, who had been willing to leave the place under a truce.136

134. See 5.11 and 5.23. 135. As in 5.36, Hecataeus, Herodotus’ forerunner in both Greek prose and natural science, steps forward with an ingenious scheme for staying clear of trouble. There is no other evidence attesting to his presence at Aristagoras’ side at this time, but also nothing to rule it out. For Hecataeus, see note to 2.15. 136. A final, bitter commentary on the character of Aristagoras, a man for whom Herodotus has little respect or affection. Evidently Aristagoras had established a secure position in this siege such that his enemy was willing to come to terms, but, in pressing for a total victory (and thus the slaughter or enslavement of his foes), he ended up getting himself killed.

Book 6

1. Aristagoras, then, having instigated the Ionian revolt, met with this end.1 Meanwhile Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, when he had obtained Darius’ permission to leave Susa, went to Sardis; and on his arrival, Artaphernes, the governor, asked him what he thought had been the cause of the rebellion. Feigning complete ignorance, Histiaeus replied that he had no idea and was utterly astonished at what had happened. But Artaphernes, who knew that he was lying and had detailed knowledge of the revolt,2 said, “With regard to this affair, Histiaeus, matters stand thus: you made the shoe, and Aristagoras put it on.” 2. So spoke Artaphernes, and Histiaeus, unnerved by the knowledge he displayed, escaped to the coast that very night, thus breaking his word to King Darius. For though he had undertaken to subdue Sardinia, the biggest island in the world,3 his real purpose was to assume command of the Ionians in their war against the king. Crossing over to Chios, he was put in bonds by the islanders, who suspected him of intending to meddle in their affairs on Darius’ behalf. But when they learned the truth, namely that he was hostile to the king, they released him. 3.When the Ionians asked him why he had urged Aristagoras to revolt from the king, thereby doing them such harm, Histiaeus did not disclose the real cause, but told them that King Darius had planned to expel the Phoenicians from their own country and place them in Ionia, and to settle the Ionians in Phoenicia, and that this was why he had sent Aristagoras the order. The king had made no such plans, but Histiaeus succeeded in alarming the Ionians. 4. After this, Histiaeus, by means of a certain Hermippus, a man from Atarneus,4 sent letters to a number of Persians in Sardis who had previously conferred with him about a rebellion.5 But Hermippus did not give the letters to the persons to whom they were addressed; instead, he gave them to Artaphernes, who, realizing what was afoot, ordered Hermippus to deliver the letters 1. As narrated at the end of Book 5. The book and chapter divisions of the Histories are not the work of Herodotus but of later editors; the divide between Books 5 and 6 is purely artificial, since the tale of the Ionian revolt overlaps it. 2. It is unclear how Artaphernes could have learned about the message tattooed on the head of the messenger, Histiaeus’ sole encouragement of the revolt. 3. See 5.106 and note. 4. A small Greek city in northern Anatolia. 5. Members of the Persian nobility were often eager to increase their power by plotting against the central authority. 310

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

311

according to their addresses, and then bring him the replies that were sent to Histiaeus. When he had seen them he put many Persians to death, and caused an uproar in Sardis. 5. Balked of his hope, Histiaeus persuaded the Chians to take him back to Miletus; but the Milesians had had a taste of freedom, and were too well pleased at having got rid of Aristagoras to be willing to receive another tyrant in their country. When Histiaeus attempted, under cover of darkness, to return to Miletus by force, one of the inhabitants wounded him in the thigh. Driven thus from his own country, he returned to Chios. Thereafter, when he could not persuade the Chians to give him ships, he crossed over to Mytilene, where he was successful. Fitting out eight triremes,6 the men of Lesbos sailed with him to Byzantium. There they lay in wait, and seized all the ships that passed out from the Black Sea, except those whose crews promised to obey his orders.7 6. While Histiaeus and the Mytilenaeans were thus engaged, Miletus was expecting a heavy combined attack by land and sea. The Persian commanders had united their forces and were advancing against it, regarding all the other cities as of lesser importance. Among the naval contingents, the Phoenicians showed the greatest zeal;8 serving with them were the Cyprians (who had lately been subjugated), the Cilicians, and the Egyptians. 7. While the Persians were preparing to march against Miletus and the rest of Ionia, the Ionians, informed of their intentions, sent their representatives to the Panionium.9 In their deliberations it was decided to levy no land force to oppose the Persians; the defense of Miletus was to be left to the Milesians, while they themselves should prepare every available ship and muster at Lade, a small island lying off Miletus. From there they would fight a naval action in defense of the place. 8.The Ionian fleet soon began to arrive, together with the Aeolians of Lesbos; the contingents were marshaled in the following order: at the eastern end of the line were 80 ships from Miletus; next to them came twelve from Priene and three from Myus; then came seventeen from Teos and 100 from Chios.The Erythraeans and Phocaeans followed, the former with eight ships, the latter with three; beyond these were the inhabitants of Lesbos, who furnished 70; last of all, on the western end of the line, came 60 ships from Samos—making a grand total of 353 triremes. 9. The barbarian fleet, on the other hand, numbered 600 vessels. When these arrived off the coast of Miletus, and the land army assembled, the Persian 6. Warships with three banks of oars. 7. Histiaeus, in other words, became a privateer. His story is resumed at 6.26. 8. Throughout the period of the Greco-Persian conflicts, the Phoenicians provided the Persians with their most reliable and expert ships’ crews, followed by the Egyptians and Ionian Greeks. The Persians themselves had little naval expertise. 9. See 1.148.

312

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

commanders, learning the size of the Ionian fleet, began to fear that they might be unable to overpower it. If they did not prevail at sea, they might fail to capture Miletus and would in consequence be roughly treated by Darius. In their concern, they resolved on the following course. Calling together the Ionian tyrants, who had fled to the Medes when Aristagoras deposed them, and who were accompanying the expedition against Miletus, the Persians addressed them thus: “Men of Ionia, now is the time to show yourselves benefactors of the house of the king. Each of you must try to detach your own citizens from the allied forces. Promise them that they will suffer no harm on account of their rebellion; that their temples will not be burned, nor any of their private buildings; nor will they be treated more harshly than before the outbreak. But if they refuse to yield and insist on fighting, threaten them with the fate that will surely overtake them: tell them that when they are defeated they will be enslaved, their sons will be made eunuchs, their daughters will be carried away to Bactra,10 and their land given to others.” 10. Thus spoke the Persians, and the Ionian tyrants sent by night to their respective citizens, and reported the words of the Persians. But the people were all steadfast, and refused to betray their countrymen, those of each city thinking that they alone had been addressed. These events occurred soon after the arrival of the Persians at Miletus. 11. Soon afterward, meetings were held by the Ionians assembled at Lade, and among the various speakers was the Phocaean commander Dionysius, who said, “Our affairs, Ionians, are on a razor’s edge, either to be free or slaves, and if the latter, runaways.11 Come then: if you are willing to endure hardships, and so for the present submit to a life of toil, you will thereby be able to overcome your enemies and secure your freedom. If, on the other hand, you persist in your laxity and disorder, I see no hope of your escaping the king’s vengeance for your revolt. So be persuaded and put yourselves under my orders. Then, if the gods remain impartial, I promise you either that our enemies will decline a battle, or, if they fight, that they will suffer heavy losses.” 12. Heeding his appeal, the Ionians committed themselves to Dionysius. Every day he led the ships out in column to give the rowers practice in the maneuver of cutting through one another’s line,12 and to exercise the marines13 in arms; and 10. A city in Bactria, in what is now northern Afghanistan. Repatriation deep into the Asian hinterland was regarded as a harsh fate by the Greeks, who treasured proximity to the sea. 11. That is, having revolted from Persia and burned Sardis, the Ionians will suffer harsh punishment if they again submit to Persian authority, just as if they were slaves who had defied their master. 12. An important tactic in naval warfare, by which an attacking ship slipped through a line of enemy vessels in order to come at them and ram from behind. 13. The armed infantrymen who manned the decks of the triremes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

313

he would keep the ships at anchor for the remainder of the day, with the result that the men got no respite from toil. For seven days they continued to obey his orders; but on the eighth, being unused to such work and worn out by their labors and the sun, they spoke among themselves as follows: “Which god have we offended that we take our fill of these evils? So senseless have we become, having sailed straight out of our minds, that we entrusted ourselves to a Phocaean braggart who contributed three ships! He has enlisted us only to plague and abuse us. Many of us, in consequence, are now ill, and many more should expect to be. Any hardships would be preferable to these; even the slavery with which we are threatened, however harsh, can’t be worse than our present drudgery. Come then, let us refuse to obey his orders.” So said the Ionians, and from then on no one was willing to obey, but as a land army they set up tents on the island14 and stayed in the shade, and continued to refuse to embark or go out to sea. 13. The Samian commanders, when they learned what was happening, decided to accept the terms that Aeaces, son of Syloson,15 had been asked by the Persians to offer them, on condition that they withdraw from the Ionian confederacy. For when they saw the Ionians’ utter lack of discipline, they realized that it would be impossible to contend with the forces of the king; since even if they defeated the fleet that had been sent against them, they knew that there would be another five times as strong. As soon, therefore, as they saw the Ionians shirking their duty, they took advantage of the occasion it offered them to provide for the safety of their houses and temples. Aeaces, who proposed the desertion, was the son of Syloson and grandson of the earlier Aeaces. He had formerly been tyrant of Samos, and along with the other Ionian tyrants had been ousted by Aristagoras of Miletus. 14. The Phoenicians soon sailed forward, and the Ionians put their ships in line and went out to meet them. The two sides approached, and, once they joined battle, I cannot relate with any certainty which of the Ionian contingents fought bravely and which like cowards, for blame is cast on all sides. As for the Samians, it is said that in accordance with their agreement with Aeaces they abandoned their station, hoisted sail, and headed for home—except for eleven ships, whose captains, disregarding the orders of their commanders, stayed and fought. (To honor the bravery of these men, the commonwealth of Samos erected a column on which their names, and the names of their fathers, were inscribed.The column still stands in the marketplace.) The ships of Lesbos too, when they saw the Samians, who were next in line, turning to flee, soon followed their example, as did the majority of the Ionians. 15. Of those who remained and fought, the most roughly treated were the Chians, who displayed great valor and refused to shirk their duty. They furnished, 14. Lade, off the coast of Miletus. 15. See 3.139–40 and 4.138 for Syloson and his son Aeaces.

314

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

as I mentioned earlier 100 ships, each manned with forty Chian citizens,16 all of them picked men. When they saw most of their allies betraying the common cause, they scorned to emulate such cowardly behavior; left alone with a few friends, they repeatedly cut through the enemy line until at last, having captured many enemy ships, they lost nearly all of their own. Then, with the remainder of their vessels, the Chians fled to their own country. 16. Those of their ships that were disabled made straight for Mycale17 with the enemy in pursuit, and there were run ashore and abandoned, the crews continuing overland on foot. On their way, they entered the territory of the Ephesians. It was night, and the local women were celebrating the Thesmophoria.18 When the Ephesians, who had not yet heard of the Chians’ predicament, saw armed men invading their country, they supposed them to be robbers who were after their women. They marched against them in full force and slew them all. Such was the fate of the Chians. 17. Dionysius the Phocaean, who had captured three enemy ships, also took to flight when he realized that all was lost. He would not, however, return to Phocaea, which he knew would share the fate of the rest of Ionia and be reduced to slavery. Instead he headed at once for Phoenicia, where he sank a number of trading vessels and seized a considerable sum of money. Then he sailed for Sicily, where he established himself as a buccaneer, and plundered the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, but did no harm to the Greeks. 18. The Persians, after defeating the Ionians in the sea battle, laid siege to Miletus by land and sea, digging mines under the walls, and making use of every known siege engine, until at last, five years after the revolt of Aristagoras, they took the city by storm.19 All its inhabitants were reduced to slavery, and thus the oracle’s prediction was fulfilled. 19. For long ago, when the Argives had consulted the oracle at Delphi about the safety of their city, they received a prophecy that concerned others besides themselves; for while a part of it touched on Argos, there was a passage that referred to Miletus. The former I will mention in its proper place; the latter ran as follows: One day, Miletus, deviser of evil deeds, You will yourself be a feast for many, and a splendid prize. Your wives will wash the feet of many long-haired men, And my temple at Didyma will be cared for by others. 16. Referring to the number of soldiers on deck (see note 13 to 6.12 above), not to the far more numerous oarsmen. 17. A naval station near Miletus. 18. An ecstatic religious festival celebrated exclusively by women. 19. In 494 B.C.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

315

This fate had now befallen the Milesians; most of the men were killed by the Persians, who wear their hair long; the wives and children were made slaves, and the temple at Didyma, both shrine and oracle, was plundered and burned. The wealth of this temple I have often spoken of elsewhere in my story.20 20. The Milesians who were captured alive were taken as prisoners to Susa. Doing them no other harm, King Darius settled them in Ampe, a city on the shores of the Red Sea, near the place where the Tigris flows into it. Miletus itself, and the plain around the city, were occupied by the Persians themselves, while the hill country was given to the Carians of Pedasus. 21. The people of Sybaris, who after the loss of their city lived in Laus and Scidrus, failed to show a sympathy equal to that of the Milesians. For when Sybaris was captured by the Crotoniates,21 all the Milesians, from the youth upwards, shaved their heads and observed deep mourning. And indeed, of all the cities we know of, these two had been united by the strongest ties of friendship. The Athenians, on the other hand, showed their great distress over the capture of Miletus in many ways, and especially in their treatment of Phrynicus.22 For when this author produced his drama The Capture of Miletus,23 the whole audience burst into tears; and the people fined Phrynicus 1,000 drachmas for having reminded them of their own misfortunes, and forbade anyone ever to stage that play again. 22. Miletus, then, was emptied of Milesians. In Samos the wealthier citizens were by no means pleased by the way their commanders had colluded with the Persians.24 They therefore held a conference immediately after the sea-fight, and decided that they would not remain to become the slaves of Aeaces and the Persians, but before the tyrant returned, would sail away and found a colony elsewhere. It happened that about this time the Zanclaeans of Sicily had sent to Ionia to invite settlers to Cale Acte, where they wanted an Ionian city to be founded.25 Cale Acte lies on the north coast of Sicily facing Tyrrhenia.The people of Samos were the only Ionians to accept the invitation, and they set sail with those Milesians who had managed to escape. 20. See 1.46 and 1.92, where the Asian site here called Didyma is referred to by Herodotus as Branchidae. 21. See 5.44 above. The date of that calamity was 510 B.C., about fifteen years prior to the fall of Miletus. 22. A tragic playwright of the early 5th century B.C., whose works are now lost. 23. It was unusual for Athenian playwrights to choose historical rather than mythic themes for their dramas; Aeschylus’ surviving Persians is the only other known example. 24. Herodotus draws an interesting class distinction here. Evidently the poorer Samians, being also partisans of the Persian puppet ruler Syloson and his son Aeaces, had led the defection from Lade, while the aristocracy supported the revolt. 25. Zancle was a Greek colony in Sicily, near the island’s northeast tip. The north coast of Sicily had as yet few Greek cities, leaving Zanclaean shipping open to piracy by native Sicels.

316

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

23. In the course of their voyage they reached the country of the Epizephyrian Locrians,26 just at the moment when the Zanclaeans and their king, whose name was Scythes, were laying siege to a Sicilian city that they hoped to capture. Anaxilaus, the tyrant of Rhegium, who was on bad terms with the Zanclaeans, and knew how matters stood, conferred with the Samians, and persuaded them to forget about Cale Acte, their present objective, and to seize Zancle itself instead, since it was left without men. The Samians consented and took possession of the town, and the Zanclaeans, as soon as the news reached them, rushed to the rescue and summoned their ally Hippocrates, the tyrant of Gela,27 to aid them. Hippocrates came with his army to assist them; but on his arrival he seized Scythes, the Zanclaean king, who had just lost his town, and sent him away in shackles, together with his brother Pythogenes, to the city of Inyx. He then entered into negotiations with the Samians, exchanged oaths with them, and agreed to betray the people of Zancle. The reward for his treachery was to be half of all the movable goods and slaves in the city, and all he could find in the open country. The greater number of the townspeople he kept as slaves; the 300 leading citizens he handed over to the Samians to have their throats cut. The Samians, however, did not do this. 24. Scythes, the monarch of the Zanclaeans, escaped from Inyx to Himera, and from there passed into Asia and went up to the court of Darius.28 Darius considered him the most upright man who had ever come to him from Greece; for with the king’s leave he visited Sicily, and then returned to Persia, where he lived in great prosperity and died in old age.This, then, is how the Samians escaped from Persian domination, and acquired without any trouble the beautiful city of Zancle.29 25. After the sea battle off Miletus, the Phoenicians restored Aeaces, son of Syloson, to Samos. They did this by the order of the Persians, who regarded Aeaces as one who had advanced their interests and therefore deserved a reward. They also spared the Samians, because of the desertion of their ships, and did not burn either their city or their temples, as they did those of the other rebels. Immediately after the capture of Miletus, the Persians recovered Caria,30 bringing some of the cities over by force, while others submitted of their own accord. 26. A Greek people in southern Italy. 27. Not the same person as the physician Hippocrates. Gela is in southern Sicily. 28. A journey that took Scythes by sea to Ephesus, then overland, by the Royal Road, to Susa. It was common for Greek political leaders who were dispossessed by their own cities to seek asylum with the Persians. 29. Herodotus gives the Samians a remarkable “free pass” for their treacherous seizure of Zancle. Perhaps his view of them was mollified by their unwillingness to kill the 300 captives mentioned in the previous chapter. 30. Caria had been drawn into the revolt at an early stage (see 5.103), and had held its own prior to the battle of Lade (5.121).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

317

26.Word of Miletus’ fate reached Histiaeus of Miletus, who was still at Byzantium intercepting Ionian merchant ships as they sailed out of the Black Sea.31 Leaving his business in the Hellespont in the hands of Bisaltes, son of Apollophanes, of Abydus, he set sail for Chios with his troops from Lesbos. When a Chian garrison refused to admit him, he engaged in battle at a place called the Hollows, and slaughtered a great number. Then, basing himself in Polichne, he and his crews from Lesbos prevailed over the rest of the Chians, who had been weakened by the sea battle. 27. It often happens that there is some warning when great misfortunes are about to overtake a city or a nation. And the Chians, before this happened, had indeed received remarkable omens. They had sent a choir of 100 of their young men to Delphi, and only two of them had returned; the remaining 98 had been carried off by a pestilence. At about the same time, just before the sea battle, the roof of a schoolhouse had fallen in on some children who were learning their letters; and out of 120 children only one escaped. These were the signs that the god sent to warn them. They were followed by the sea battle, which brought the city to its knees, and then by the arrival of Histiaeus and his recruits from Lesbos, by whom the Chians, in their weakened state, were easily conquered. 28. Histiaeus now led a large force of Ionians and Aeolians against Thasos.32 While he was besieging the place, news came that the Phoenicians had left Miletus and were sailing to attack the other Ionian states. Leaving Thasos unconquered, Histiaeus hastened to Lesbos with all his troops. From Lesbos, finding his men short of food, he crossed to the mainland, intending to harvest the crops in the area around Atarneus and in the Mysian territory in the plain of the Caicus. It happened, however, that the Persian general Harpagus,33 who was in the neighborhood at the head of a large army, attacked Histiaeus’ party as it came ashore, took Histiaeus prisoner, and killed most of his men. 29. Histiaeus was captured in the following way. The Greeks and Persians engaged at Malene, in Atarnaean territory; for a long time it was an even contest, until at last the Persian cavalry came up and fell upon the enemy. This action was decisive, and the Greeks were routed; and Histiaeus, who did not expect that Darius would punish his fault with death, succumbed to a desire for life. When he was overtaken in the rout by a Persian, and was about to be run through, he cried out in Persian that he was Histiaeus of Miletus.34 31. See 5.5 above. 32. It is no longer clear at this point what side Histiaeus is on or what his objectives are. Thasos had rich gold mines (see 6.46 below), so he may have been hoping to raise money, even by attacking his own fellow Greeks, and thereby increase the size of his private navy. 33. Not the same Harpagus as the one who served under Astyages and Cyrus in Book 1. 34. Presumably Histiaeus, ever resourceful, had learned to speak Persian while residing in Sardis.

318

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

30. Now if, when taken prisoner, Histiaeus had been brought to Darius, he would not, I believe, have suffered any harm, and Darius would have pardoned him. But as it was, Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, and Harpagus, his captor, who wished to prevent him from escaping and regaining influence at court, took him to Sardis and there impaled his body. Embalming his head, they sent it to King Darius in Susa. When Darius learned what had happened, he reproached Artaphernes and Harpagus for not having brought Histiaeus to him alive, and ordered his servants to wash and tend the head, and then bury it with all the honors due to one who had been a great benefactor to Persia and the King. So ends the story of Histiaeus. 31. After wintering near Miletus, the Persian fleet sailed out in the following year and easily took the islands that lay off the mainland: Chios, Lesbos, and Tenedos. Whenever they seized an island, the barbarians “netted” the inhabitants in the following way. The men joined hands so as to form a chain across the island from north to south, and then moved through it from end to end, hunting out its inhabitants. The Persians also seized the Ionian cities on the mainland, though without netting the inhabitants, as it was not practicable. 32. And now the Persian commanders fulfilled the threats they had issued when the Ionians encamped opposite them; as soon as they got possession of the cities, they picked out the handsomest boys and castrated them, dragged the loveliest girls off and sent them to the king, and burned their cities, temples and all. Thus were the Ionians for the third time reduced to slavery; first by the Lydians, and then twice in succession by the Persians.35 33. The fleet, after leaving Ionia, sailed to the Hellespont36 and took all the towns on the left-hand shore as one enters the strait; for the cities on the right bank had already been subjugated from inland. The places on the European side of the Hellespont are the Chersonese,37 which contains many cities, Perinthus, the strongholds on the Thracian coast, Selymbria, and Byzantium. The Byzantines and their opposite neighbors, the Chalcedonians, instead of awaiting the arrival of the Phoenicians, left their country and sailed into the Black Sea, where they settled in the city of Mesembria. The Phoenicians, after burning the aforementioned places, proceeded to Proconnesus and Artace, which they likewise burned; then they returned to the Chersonese to seize all the cities they had not plundered on their earlier visit. Cyzicus they spared; for before their arrival the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the king, having made terms

35. The first and second of these three subjugations were narrated in Book 1, where the Ionians were forced to pay tribute first to Croesus, then to Cyrus. 36. The Straits of Dardanelles and surrounding region. 37. The peninsula today called Gallipoli.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

319

with Oebares, son of Megabazus, the governor of Dascylium. In the Chersonese they subdued all the cities except Cardia. 34. Up to that time the cities of the Chersonese had been ruled by Miltiades, the son of Cimon and grandson of Stesagoras. He had inherited them from Miltiades, son of Cypselus,38 who had acquired sovereign power there in the following way. The Dolonci, a Thracian tribe to whom the Chersonese then belonged, being harassed in a war with the Apsinthians, sent their kings to Delphi to consult the oracle. The priestess told them to take back with them as a colonist into their country the first man who offered them hospitality after they left the temple. Taking leave, the Dolonci traveled by the Sacred Road39 and passed through Phocis and Boeotia, and then, as no one invited them in, they turned off and headed for Athens. 35. At that period Pisistratus held supreme power in Athens, though Miltiades, son of Cypselus, was also influential. He belonged to a family that regularly contended in four-horse chariot races, and traced his descent back to Aeacus and Aegina, though in later times his ancestry was Athenian, Philaeus, son of Ajax, having been the first of his family to be naturalized at Athens. It happened that as the Dolonci passed his house, Miltiades, who was sitting in his porch, caught sight of them, and noticing that they wore foreign dress and carried spears, called out to them. On their approach, he invited them in, offering them lodging and hospitality. They accepted his invitation, and, when the banquet was over, told him all about the oracle and entreated him to obey the god. Miltiades was at once persuaded; for he disliked Pisistratus’ government and was glad to be out of the way. He therefore went straight to Delphi and asked the oracle if he should do as the Dolonci desired. 36. The priestess advised him to do so, whereupon Miltiades, son of Cypselus, who had already won the four-horse chariot race at Olympia, collected every Athenian who wished to join in the venture, sailed with the Dolonci, and took possession of the country. Those who had invited him made him their ruler. His first act was to build a wall across the neck of the Chersonese from Cardia to Pactya, so that the Apsinthians would be unable to invade and plunder the country. The breadth of the isthmus at that point is 36 stades, the total length of the Chersonese being about 420 stades. 37. Once he had completed the wall and shut out the Apsinthians, Miltiades attacked the people of Lampsacus, whereupon he was ambushed and taken 38. Though they have different fathers, the two men named Miltiades are related, on their mother’s side, as uncle and nephew. 39. A road that connected Delphi and Eleusis, both holy sites, with Thebes and other major cities.

320

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

prisoner. Now it happened that Miltiades was held in high regard by Croesus the Lydian. And when Croesus learned of his capture, he sent a command to the Lampsacenes to let Miltiades go. If they refused, he said, he would wipe them out like a pine tree. The Lampsacenes were baffled by this threat, and perplexed as to what this saying meant, until at last one of their elders grasped the true sense of the phrase, and told them that the pine is the only tree that, when felled, sends up no fresh roots but utterly dies. So the Lampsacenes, who were afraid of Croesus, let Miltiades go. 38. Miltiades thus escaped, thanks to Croesus. Later, dying childless, he left his authority and property to Stesagoras, son of his half-brother Cimon. Ever since Miltiades’ death the people of the Chersonese have offered him the traditional sacrifices of a founder, with equestrian and athletic contests, in which no Lampsacene is allowed to compete. During the war with the Lampsacenes, Stesagoras also died childless. He was struck on the head with an axe in the council house by a man who pretended to be a deserter but was actually an enemy—and a bitter one. 39. When Stesagoras died, the Pisistratids sent his brother Miltiades, son of Cimon, in a trireme to undertake the management of affairs in the Chersonese.The Pisistratids had treated Miltiades well in Athens, just as if they had not been accomplices in the death of his father, an incident I will discuss elsewhere.40 On his arrival in the Chersonese Miltiades stayed at home, ostensibly to pay his respects to his brother Stesagoras.When they heard of this, the leading men from all the towns in the Chersonese came together.When they arrived in a body to mourn with him, Miltiades had them arrested. He then made himself master of the Chersonese, retained 500 mercenaries, and married Hegesipyle, daughter of Olorus, the Thracian king. 40.This Miltiades, son of Cimon, had only recently returned to the Chersonese when he was involved in a difficulty greater than those he had already faced.41 He had fled three years earlier, when the Scythian nomads, provoked by King Darius, joined forces and marched as far as the Chersonese. Miltiades did not await their attack but fled, and stayed away until the Scythians withdrew, whereupon the Dolonci recalled him. This had occurred three years earlier. 41. On learning that the Phoenicians were at Tenedos,42 Miltiades loaded five triremes with his possessions and sailed for Athens, starting from Cardia and sailing through the Black Gulf. Just as he passed beyond the Chersonese, he encountered the Phoenician fleet. Miltiades himself escaped with four of his ships to Imbros, though the Phoenicians captured the fifth. The commander of that ship happened to be Miltiades’ eldest son Metiochus. (Metiochus’ mother was not 40. See 6.103 below. 41. As narrated in the next chapter, after a hastily inserted flashback. 42. As part of their punitive operations, on behalf of the Persians, following the failure of the Ionian revolt (see 6.28, 6.33). The year is 493 B.C.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

321

the daughter of Olorus the Thracian, but a different woman.) He and his ship were captured, and when the Phoenicians learned that he was Miltiades’ son, they decided to bring him to the king, thinking they would thereby win great favor; for it was Miltiades who had advised the Ionians to consent when the Scythians entreated them to break up the bridge of ships and sail home.43 But when the Phoenicians brought Metiochus to the king, Darius did him no harm; in fact, he treated him very well: he gave him a house and property, and a Persian wife, by whom he had children who were accounted Persians. Miltiades himself sailed from Imbros and arrived safely at Athens. 42. Over the course of this year the Persians did no more harm to the Ionians; on the contrary, they instituted measures that were greatly to their advantage. Artaphernes, the governor of Sardis, summoned representatives from all the Ionian cities and forced them to enter into agreements with one another to settle their disputes by arbitration and refrain from plundering one another. He also had their territories measured in parasangs (the parasang is the Persian equivalent of thirty stades), and assessed the tribute that each city was to pay at a rate that has remain unaltered down to the present day;44 the rate was nearly the same as it had been before the revolt. These measures were conducive to peace. 43. In the following spring,45 Darius passed over all his other commanders and sent Mardonius, son of Gobryas, down to the coast in command of an enormous body of men, some to serve on land, others at sea. (Mardonius was then a young man; he had recently married Artozostre, the king’s daughter.) When he had led this force to Cilicia, he took his ship and continued along the coast with his fleet, while other commanders led the land army to the Hellespont. In the course of his voyage along the coast of Asia he came to Ionia, where he did something that will greatly surprise those Greeks who do not accept that Otanes gave as his opinion to the seven conspirators that the Persians should have a democracy;46 for Mardonius put down the Ionian tyrants and set up democracies in the cities. Having done so, he hastened to the Hellespont, and when a vast number of ships had been assembled, and a large force of foot-soldiers, he ferried the troops across the strait and proceeded through Europe against Eretria and Athens.47 43. See 4.137. 44. A mysterious statement, since the liberation of Ionia in 479 B.C., described in Book 9, should have ended such tribute payments. Perhaps Herodotus means that the Persians continued to claim the old assessments but without collecting them; or he may mean that Athens, the new imperial hegemon in the Aegean, assessed tribute at the same rate as the Persians. 45. The beginning of 492 B.C. 46. See 3.80 above. 47. With this understated sentence, Herodotus announces the beginning of Persia’s effort to punish the two cities of European Greece that had aided the Ionian revolt—an effort that, as Herodotus judges just below, was merely a pretext for a campaign of conquest.

322

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

44. These places, then, were the ostensible objects of their expedition, but the Persians actually intended to subjugate as many of the Greek cities as they could. The fleet subdued the Thasians, who did not even lift a hand to resist them, while the land army added the Macedonians to the list of Darius’ subjects. (All the tribes east of Macedon had already been brought under Persian control.) From Thasos the fleet sailed across to the mainland and proceeded along the coast to Acanthus, and from there attempted to round Mount Athos.48 But here they were caught by a violent north wind, against which they could not contend. Many of them were driven ashore and wrecked on Athos. In fact it is said that nearly 300 were lost with more than 20,000 men. The sea around Athos abounds in wild sea creatures, therefore some of the men were seized and devoured by these creatures, while others were dashed against the rocks. Some, who did not know how to swim, were drowned, and some died of the cold. 45. While this trouble was overtaking the fleet, on land Mardonius and his army in Macedonia were attacked in camp one night by the Brygi, a Thracian tribe; here large numbers of the Persians were killed, and even Mardonius himself was wounded. But even so the Brygi did not escape enslavement by the Persians. For Mardonius would not leave their country until he had subdued them. Nevertheless, the casualties his army had sustained at their hands, and the severe damage done to his fleet off Athos, induced him to begin his retreat. And thus the expedition, having failed disgracefully, returned to Asia.49 46. A year later, Darius received information from some neighbors of the Thasians that those islanders were planning a revolt; he therefore sent a herald and ordered the people of Thasos to dismantle their walls and bring their ships to Abdera. The Thasians, after they had been besieged by Histiaeus of Miletus,50 had decided to apply their wealth to building warships and a stronger wall. Their revenue was derived partly from their property on the mainland and partly from their mines. Their goldmines at Scapte Hyle yielded 80 talents a year; those in Thasos yielded less, but still were so profitable that the islanders, who were exempt from taxes on their own produce, enjoyed an annual revenue from the mainland and their mines of 200 talents—and in an especially good year of 300. 47. I myself have seen these mines; and by far the most remarkable are those that the Phoenicians discovered when they came with Thasus to colonize the island, which afterward took its name from him. These Phoenician mines lie between 48. The mountain that stood at the south end of the easternmost spur of the Chalcidice, a headland perilous to ships. Later (7. 23–24) Xerxes will cut a canal to allow his navy to avoid rounding Athos. 49. The failure of Mardonius in this abortive invasion partly explains his determination, in Book 7, to get Xerxes to mount a new campaign. 50. See 6.28.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

323

Coenyra and a place called Aenyra, facing Samothrace. An entire mountain has been turned upside down in the search for gold. 48. Such was their wealth; yet at the King’s command the Thasians dismantled their wall and took all their ships to Abdera. Darius now began to test the Greeks,51 and to find out whether they were inclined to resist him or surrender. He sent heralds throughout Greece with orders to demand earth and water for the King. At the same time he sent other heralds to his tribute-paying cities on the coast, and ordered them to build warships and horse-transports. 49. While these were being prepared, the heralds in Greece obtained what they asked from many towns on the mainland and from all the islanders whom they visited. Among the islanders who gave earth and water were the Aeginetans. Upon hearing what the Aeginetans had done, the Athenians took immediate action, thinking that it was out of hostility to them that they had submitted,52 and that they intended to join the Persian attack on Athens. Glad, in fact, to have the excuse, they corresponded with Sparta and accused the Aeginetans of being traitors to Greece. 50. In response to the accusation, Cleomenes, son of Anaxandridas, one of the Spartan kings,53 crossed to Aegina, intending to seize the men most responsible. But when he tried to arrest them, a number of Aeginetans resisted him, conspicuous among them a certain Crius,54 son of Polycritus, who declared that Cleomenes would never get away with the arrest of a single Aeginetan—for he was acting without authority from the Spartan government, having been bribed by the Athenians; otherwise both Spartan kings would have come together to make the arrest. (He said this by command of Demaratus.)55 As Cleomenes was being driven from Aegina, he asked Crius his name, and when he told the truth, Cleomenes said, “Now cover you horns, Ram, with bronze, for you will meet with great evil.” 51. Meanwhile Demaratus, son of Ariston, who had remained behind in Sparta, was maligning Cleomenes. He was the other of the two kings, but he belonged to the inferior house; not that his family was of any lower origin than the other, 51. That is, the European Greek cities, not as yet subjugated. 52. The recent hostilities between Athens and Aegina were narrated at 5.83–89. Since Aegina lay just off the Attic coast, Athens felt that the island’s submission to Persia posed a dire strategic threat. 53. Herodotus speaks as though Cleomenes is just entering the narrative, but in fact we have seen him in several episodes of Book 5. 54. The name means “Ram,” as is made clear in the remark below. 55. The other Spartan king; see next chapter. In fact the Spartans had recently declared that the two kings could never march together on a single campaign (see 5.75).

324

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

since both have a common ancestor; but the house of Eurysthenes, as it is the elder branch, is held in higher esteem.56 52. The Spartans, not agreeing with any poet, maintain that it was Aristodemus himself—the son of Aristomachus, grandson of Cleodaeus, and great-grandson of Hyllus—who brought them to the land they now possess, not Aristodemus’ sons.57 Soon afterward, his wife Argeia gave birth to twins. (Argeia is said to have been the daughter of Autesion, the son of Tisamenus, grandson of Thersander, and great-grandson of Polynices.)58 Aristodemus lived to see his children, but shortly afterward fell ill and died. The Spartans of that time resolved, according to law, to name the elder of the two children king. But they were at a loss to know which of the two to choose, as they were both so alike and of the same size. When they found themselves baffled, or even before then, they asked the boys’ mother; but she said that she could not tell them apart herself. Though she knew perfectly well how to tell them apart, she pretended not to, wishing that both in some way might be kings. Bewildered, the Spartans sent to Delphi to ask how they should proceed. The priestess replied that they should let both be kings, but give the elder the greater honor. Thus the Spartans were no less at a loss to discover which baby was the elder, until a certain Messenian named Panites advised them to watch the mother and see which she washed and fed first. If she always kept to the same order, the Spartans would have their answer, whereas if her routine varied, and no difference could be detected in the way she handled the children, it would be clear to them that not even she knew which child was which, whereupon they would have to try some other plan. The Spartans followed the Messenian’s advice. Keeping watch on the mother, without letting her know why, they discovered that she always fed and bathed the boys in the same order. So they took the boy whom the mother favored, regarding him as the firstborn, and raised him at public expense. The boy was named Eurystheus, and his brother Procles. When the brothers grew up, the story goes that they quarreled throughout their lives; and their descendants have continued the feud to this day. 53. This version of the story is given only by the Spartans. In what follows I offer the common Greek tradition. The Dorian59 kings, it is said, going as far back 56. This point of information gives Herodotus his cue for a long digression on the kingship at Sparta, extending to the end of Chapter 60. 57. That is, the account of the poets (now lost, but known from other sources) said it was Aristodemus’ son who led the Spartans to their homeland; the Spartans say it was Aristodemus himself. 58. Descent from Polynices, son of Oedipus, places Argeia in the royal line of Thebes. The connections between this line and the Spartan aristocracy have already been mentioned at 4.147. 59. For the Greek subgroup “Dorian,” to which the Spartans belonged, see 1.56–57 and notes.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

325

as Perseus, son of Danae (and thus omitting the god)60 are given correctly in the common Greeks’ lists, and rightly considered to have been of Greek nationality. I say “as far back as Perseus” and no farther, because Perseus has no mortal father by whose name he can be called, as Heracles, for example, has Amphitryon. If, on the other hand, we trace the ancestry of Danae, daughter of Acrisius, we find that the chiefs of the Dorians are genuine Egyptians.61 54. This, then, is the genealogy of the Spartan kings according to the Greeks, though the Persians maintain that Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek; his ancestors, therefore, were not Greek. And the forefathers of Acrisius, they say, were not in any way related to Perseus, but were Egyptians, as the Greeks likewise maintain. 55. So much for this subject. How it came to pass that Egyptians acquired sovereign power over the Dorians has been treated by other writers;62 I will therefore leave the subject alone, though I will mention some points that no other writer has touched upon. 56.The Spartans have accorded their kings the following privileges: two priesthoods, of Spartan Zeus and of Celestial Zeus, and the right to wage war on any country they please, without opposition from any Spartan, under pain of disgrace. On campaign, the kings march out first and return last; they are assigned a bodyguard of 100 picked men, and have the right to sacrifice as many cattle as they wish. They are given the skins and chines of all the slaughtered animals for their own use. 57. Such are their privileges in war. In peace their privileges are as follows: At public sacrifices they are given the first seats at the feast; they are served first and receive a double portion of everything. They make the first libation,63 and are given the hides of the sacrificed animals. Every month, on the first and seventh day, each king receives a full-grown animal to offer up to Apollo; also a medimnus64 of barley meal and a Laconian quart of wine. At public games they always have the seats of honor. They appoint the officials who have to entertain foreigners, and each king nominates two of the Pythians, the officials who are sent to consult the oracle at Delphi, and who dine with the kings at public expense. If the kings do not attend the public supper, 60. Zeus was thought to have been the father of Perseus, but Herodotus refuses to carry his genealogical inquiry that far back. 61. The Egyptian origins of many Greek institutions, especially religious rites and cults, has been posited by Herodotus in Book 2. Here he makes a similar claim regarding genealogy, based on the Egyptian origins of the Danaid dynasty of Argos, to which Danae belonged. 62. These accounts no longer survive, and it is not clear who Herodotus refers to. 63. A drink offering made by spilling liquid (usually wine) on the ground. 64. A dry measure equal to about twelve gallons.

326

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

two choinices of meal and a cotyle of wine65 are sent to each of them at his house. When they do attend, they receive double portions of everything, a privilege they also enjoy when a private citizen invites them to dinner. They have custody of all the oracles, and the Pythians also have knowledge of them. In certain legal matters the kings act as sole judges. These are as follows. When a girl inherits her father’s estate and has not been betrothed by him to anyone, the kings decide who is to marry her; they judge all matters concerning the public roads; and if a person wishes to adopt a child, he must do so in the presence of the kings. They sit in council with the twenty-eight Elders;66 and if they are not present, the Elders who are their nearest relatives have their privileges and cast two votes, in addition to their own. 58. Such are the privileges the Spartan state has granted the kings during their lifetime. When they die they receive the following honors. Horsemen carry news of the death throughout the country, while in the city the women go around beating cauldrons. At this signal, two people from each household, one man and one woman, must put on mourning or be subject to a heavy fine. One custom observed at the death of their kings is the same as that in use among most of the barbarians in Asia: when one of their kings dies, not only the Spartans but a certain number of the country folk from every part of Laconia are forced to attend the funeral. Many thousands of people assemble—the country folk, the helots,67 and the Spartans themselves, men and women intermingled; and all of them strike their foreheads, wail without ceasing, and declare that the king who has just died was their best. If a king dies in battle, they make a statue of him, place it on a well-draped couch, and carry it to the grave. After the burial, they observe ten days of mourning, during which there are no assemblies or elections of magistrates. 59. There is another custom they share with the Persians.68 When a king dies, and another comes to the throne, the new king forgives all debts owed by Spartan citizens either to the king or to the public treasury. And likewise among the Persians, each king, when he begins to reign, remits arrears of tribute from all the provinces. 60. In one respect the Spartans resemble the Egyptians. Their heralds, fluteplayers, and cooks inherit their professions from their fathers. A flute-player 65. About two quarts of meal and nine ounces of wine. 66. For the Spartan Gerousia or Board of Elders, see note 76 to 1.65. 67. Greek slaves who originally came from Messenia, the region west of Laconia, and who served as the slave labor supporting the Spartan citizenry. 68. An interesting comparison, given all that Herodotus does later (principally in the dialogues between Demaratus and Xerxes) to contrast Spartan and Persian customs. It is noteworthy that the Persians, according to Herodotus (see 7.61), traced their ancestry to Perseus just as the Spartans did.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

327

must be the son of a flute-player, a cook the son of a cook, a herald the son of a herald. Other citizens, merely because they have loud voices, cannot adopt the profession of herald and exclude the heralds’ sons; instead, each follows his father’s profession. 61. While Cleomenes was in Aegina working for the common good of Greece, Demaratus continued to malign him69—not because he cared about the Aeginetans, but out of envy and spite. Accordingly, on his return home Cleomenes gave thought to how he might deprive Demaratus of his kingly office, and soon found a means of attacking him. When Ariston reigned in Sparta,70 though he had married twice, he had no children. Unwilling to admit that this might be his own fault, he took a third wife. The marriage came about in the following way. Ariston had a friend, a Spartan citizen, to whom he was particularly devoted, and this man’s wife was by far the most beautiful woman in Sparta, though as a child she had been exceedingly homely. When yet a babe in arms, her nurse, seeing that she was homely, and that her parents, who were wealthy people, were distressed about her appearance, took steps to rectify matters. Every day she carried the child to the temple of Helen.71 (This temple stands at Therapne, above the temple of Apollo.) Taking the baby in, she would lay her before the statue and entreat the goddess to take away the child’s homeliness. One day as the nurse was leaving the temple, a woman appeared and asked her what it was she held in her arms. The nurse told her it was a baby. The woman asked to see it, but the nurse refused, as the child’s parents had forbidden her to show it to anybody. But when the woman persisted, the nurse, seeing how anxious she was to have a look, finally showed it to her. Then the woman caressed the little girl’s head and said that she would be the most beautiful woman in Sparta. From that day on, the child’s appearance was transformed, and when she came of age she was given in marriage to Agetus, son of Alcides—the man who was Ariston’s friend. 62. Ariston now fell in love with this woman, and his desire so chafed him that he contrived the following ruse. He went to his friend, the woman’s husband, and promised that he would give him as a gift whatever object among his possessions Agetus chose, provided that his friend would do the same for him. Agetus, fearing nothing where his wife was concerned, seeing that Ariston was also married, consented. The agreement was confirmed by oath, and Ariston then gave Agetus whatever it was he had chosen. Then, when it was his turn to say what he wanted 69. The narrative resumes from 6.51, where Cleomenes was attempting to stop Aegina from medizing (going over to the Persian side). 70. Around 550 B.C., about sixty years before the narrative present. 71. Helen, wife of Menelaus and daughter of Leda, had only partial divine ancestry, but was accorded the cult honors of a hero, a semi-divine being, by some Greek cities.

328

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

in exchange, he asked for his friend’s wife. Agetus said he would consent to anything but this. But he was bound by his oath; and that, together with Ariston’s trick, forced him to let his wife go. 63. Thus Ariston took this woman as his third wife, after divorcing the second; and she, before ten months72 were up, gave birth to a son—Demaratus. One of his servants came and told him the news, as he sat in council with the ephors.73 Counting on his fingers the months since his marriage—for he remembered the date—he exclaimed with an oath, “The child can’t be mine.” The ephors heard the remark, but paid no attention to it at the time. Later on, when the boy grew up, Ariston regretted what he had said; for he had become convinced that Demaratus was really his son. The boy was given the name Demaratus for the following reason. Some time earlier, the whole Spartan people had prayed that Ariston, whom they regarded as the most distinguished king who had ever reigned in Sparta, might have a son. This was why the boy was named Demaratus.74 64. In the course of time Ariston died and Demaratus succeeded to the throne. But it was fated, evidently, that Ariston’s remark, when it became common knowledge, would strip Demaratus of the sovereignty. This was brought about by Cleomenes, whose hostility Demaratus had twice incurred—first when he had led the army home from Eleusis,75 and more recently when Cleomenes had crossed to Aegina against the islanders who had sided with the Persians. 65. Bent on revenge, Cleomenes made an agreement with Demaratus’ kinsman Leotychides, the son of Menares and grandson of Agis, whereby he would make Leotychides king in place of Demaratus, on condition of getting his support against the Aeginetans. Now Leotychides was already a bitter enemy of Demaratus. For he had been engaged to marry Percalus, the daughter of Chilon and granddaughter of Demarmenus; but Demaratus, laying a plot, had carried off the bride and married her himself. This was the origin of the quarrel, and now Leotychides, at Cleomenes’ earnest request, declared under oath that Demaratus had no right to reign in Sparta, since he was not Ariston’s son. After he took the oath, Leotychides prosecuted Demaratus, and brought up against him the remark Ariston had made when the servant told him of the child’s birth—how he had counted the months and declared under oath that the child was not his. Relying on this remark, Leotychides asserted that Demaratus was not Ariston’s son, and therefore had no right to the throne; and he produced as witnesses the ephors who were with Ariston at the time and heard what he said. 72. Since the Greeks used lunar months of twenty-eight days, the normal term of pregnancy was reckoned at ten months rather than our nine. 73. On the office of ephor at Sparta see 1.65 and note 76. 74. The name means “Prayed for by the people.” 75. See 5.75–76.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

329

66. At last, as the question continued to be disputed, the Spartans resolved to ask the oracle at Delphi whether Demaratus was Ariston’s son.This had been Cleomenes’ idea, and as soon as the decision was made, he enlisted the support of Cobon, son of Aristophantus, the most powerful man in Delphi; and Cobon persuaded the priestess Perialla to give the answer that Cleomenes wanted. Accordingly, when the messengers posed their question, the priestess replied that Demaratus was not Ariston’s son. Some time later all this became known, whereupon Cobon was banished from Delphi, and Perialla deprived of her office. 67. This was how Demaratus was deposed; but his flight from Sparta to the Medes was the result of a later affront. After losing his kingly office, he was elected to serve as a magistrate, and once when he was in the audience at the festival of the Gymnopaediae,76 Leotychides, who was now king in his place, sent a servant to ask him, by way of insult and mockery, how it felt to be a magistrate after being a king. Pained at the question, Demaratus replied that he himself had had experience of both, but Leotychides had not. He added that this question would be the beginning for Sparta of infinite blessings or infinite woes. So saying, and covering his head in his cloak, he left the theater and went home, where he prepared a bull for sacrifice and offered it to Zeus. Then he called for his mother. 68. When she came, he placed a portion of the entrails in her hands,77 and earnestly entreated her in these words: “Mother, I implore you by all the gods, and especially by Zeus the guardian of our hearth, to tell me the truth.Who was really my father? Leotychides, in our dispute, said that when you married Ariston you were already pregnant by your previous husband; and others tell an even more disgraceful tale, that you lay with a stable-boy, and that I am his son. So I beseech you by the gods to tell me the truth. For if you have done anything of the kind, you are not the only one; many women have done the same. And many in Sparta say that Ariston was sterile, for otherwise he would have had children by his other wives.” 69. So spoke Demaratus, and his mother replied, “My son, since you implore me so earnestly to tell the truth, the whole truth will be told to you. On the third night after Ariston brought me to this house, an apparition resembling Ariston came to my bed, and afterward took the garlands he was wearing and placed them on my head. He departed, and when Ariston came in later, and saw me wearing the garlands, he asked me who gave them to me. I said that he had given them to me himself, but he denied it. Thereupon I swore an oath that it was so, and reproached him for his denial, since he had so recently lain with me and given me the garlands. When Ariston heard my oath, he understood that the gods had taken a hand in the matter. Furthermore, the garlands turned out to have 76. A midsummer religious festival at Sparta. 77. The gesture makes the mother a sharer in the sacrifice and thus “under oath.”

330

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

come from the shrine of the hero Astrabacus78 that stands by our courtyard gates, and the soothsayers declared that the apparition was Astrabacus himself. Thus, my son, I have told you all you wish to know. Either you are the son of that hero, Astrabacus, or of Ariston, for on that night I conceived you. As for your enemies’ grounds for attacking you, namely the fact that Ariston himself, when your birth was announced to him, denied before many witnesses that you could be his son, because the ten months had not yet elapsed—he blurted that out from mere ignorance of such matters. For some women give birth at nine months, or even at seven; they do not all carry their children until the tenth month. You, my son, were a seven months’ child. Ariston himself admitted before long that his remark sprang from ignorance. Pay no heed to the other stories about your birth, for you have heard the whole truth. As for stable-boys, may their children be born to Leotychides’ wife and the wives of all who say such things!” 70. So she spoke, and Demaratus, having learned all that he wanted to know, took provisions for a journey and went to Elis, giving it out that he was going to Delphi to consult the oracle. The Spartans, however, suspecting that he intended to flee the country, pursued him; but he hastened, and somehow managed to cross from Elis to Zacynthus. The Spartans followed, tried to lay hands on him, and took away his servants; but when the Zacynthians would not give him up to them, he was able to escape. He later crossed to Asia and presented himself to King Darius, who received him cordially and gave him land and cities. Such was the fate that brought Demaratus to Asia.79 He had won distinction among the Spartans for his many brilliant deeds and wise counsels; and he was the only Spartan king to confer honor on his country by winning the prize at Olympia in the four-horse chariot race. 71. After Demaratus was deposed, Leotychides, son of Menares, succeeded to the throne. He had a son, Zeuxidamus, called “Puppy” by some of the Spartans; Zeuxidamus did not reign at Sparta but died before his father, leaving a son, Archidamus. Leotychides, after Zeuxidamus’ death, married again. His second wife, Eurydame, who was the sister of Menius and daughter of Diactorides, bore him no male offspring but only a daughter, Lampito, whom he gave in marriage to Archidamus, Zeuxidamus’ son. 72. Leotychides himself did not grow old in Sparta, but paid the full penalty for his treatment of Demaratus. He led the Spartan army to Thessaly, and might have subjugated the whole country, but was bribed by a large sum of money. Caught in the very act, sitting in his tent on a glove stuffed with money, he was brought to trial and banished from Sparta, and his house was razed to the ground. He himself fled to Tegea, where he ended his days. 78. An obscure semi-divine figure who had cultic rites at Sparta. 79. Demaratus will later figure prominently in Herodotus’ account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (see 7.101–104, 7.234–39, 8.65), which he apparently accompanied.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

331

All this, however, took place long afterward.80 73. On the present occasion, Cleomenes, having brought his scheme against Demaratus to a successful conclusion, immediately took Leotychides with him, and crossed over to attack the Aeginetans, bearing a terrible grudge against them for their former effrontery.81 Now that both kings had come against them, the Aeginetans thought it best to make no further resistance. Accordingly, the two kings chose ten of their wealthiest and most distinguished citizens, among whom were Crius, son of Polycritus,82 and Casambus, son of Aristocrates, who wielded the most power. Taking these men to Attica, they put them in the hands of their bitterest enemies, the Athenians. 74. Some time later, when it became known that he had used base arts against Demaratus, Cleomenes was seized with fear of the Spartans, and fled into Thessaly. From there he passed into Arcadia, where he began to stir up trouble, and tried to unite the Arcadians against Sparta. Binding them by various oaths to follow wherever he led, he was especially eager to take their foremost citizens with him to the city of Nonacris, in order to make them swear by the water of the Styx. For it is in that city, according to the Arcadians, that the waters of the Styx are visible; and one can indeed see a little water trickling from a rock into a basin surrounded by a stone wall.83 Nonacris, the site of this spring, is an Arcadian city near Pheneus. 75.When the Spartans learned what Cleomenes was doing, they grew fearful and brought him home, restoring to him his former powers. But as soon as he returned, he was seized by madness, though he had never been altogether sound of mind. He began thrusting his scepter into the face of every Spartiate he met. As a result of his deranged behavior his relatives put him in the stocks.While thus bound, and finding himself alone with a single guard, he asked the man for a dagger. The guard at first refused, but when Cleomenes threatened him with what he would do to him once he was freed, he grew frightened, being a helot,84 and gave him what he asked for. As soon as he got the blade, Cleomenes began to mutilate himself, beginning with his legs. He cut gashes in his flesh, working his way up to his thighs, and from them to his hips and flanks, until he reached his belly, which he minced up as for a sausage and thus died. 80. In the mid-470s B.C., past the point at which the narrative of the Histories concludes. 81. See 5.50 above. 82. The “Ram” with whom Cleomenes had tangled previously. 83. Normally a river of Hades, the Styx was thought to flow above ground for a stretch in the Peloponnese before descending underground. The water of the Styx was thought to have deadly properties, and any oath sworn by it was thought to be unbreakable except at dire peril. 84. See note to 5.58 above.

332

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

Most of the Greeks say that Cleomenes met with this fate because he had bribed the Pythian priestess to speak as she had about Demaratus.85 The Athenians, however, say it was because he cut down the sacred grove of the goddesses when he invaded Eleusis.86 The Argives, on the other hand, maintain it was because he had executed certain Argives who had fled to the sacred precinct of Argos, and at the same time, in disregard, burned down the grove itself.87 76. For Cleomenes had once been told, when he consulted the oracle at Delphi, that he would capture Argos. Thereupon he marched at the head of the Spartan army to the river Erasinus. This river is said to flow from Lake Stymphalis, the waters of which empty into an unseen chasm and reappear in Argos, where the Argives call them the Erasinus. Having reached the banks of this river, Cleomenes offered sacrifices to it; but as the omens were not favorable to his crossing, he said he admired the Erasinus for refusing to betray its countrymen; nevertheless, he said, the Argives would not escape him. He then retreated and led his troops down to Thyrea, and after sacrificing a bull to the sea proceeded in boats to the Tirynthian territory and Nauplia. 77. The Argives, when they learned of this, marched to the coast to defend their country, and on reaching the place known as Sepeia, near Tiryns, took up a position opposite the Spartans, leaving a smallish space between the two armies. Now the Argives had no fear of a pitched battle, but rather of being deceived by some trick. For that was the danger to which the oracle that was issued by the Pythian priestess for the joint benefit of the Argives and Milesians88 seemed to allude. The oracle ran as follows: But when the female conquers the male and drives him out, And thereby wins great glory in Argos, Then will she cause many Argive women to tear their cheeks. For thus will they speak in generations to come: A terrible thrice-coiled serpent was tamed by the spear and slain. Worried by the coincidence of all these things, the Argives decided to follow the signals of the enemy’s herald. Whenever, therefore, the Spartan herald gave an order to the soldiers of his own army, the Argives did the same on their side. 78. When Cleomenes learned that the Argives were doing whatever his herald ordered, he issued a command to his men: the next time the herald gave the word 85. See 6.66 above. 86. See 5.74–75, where the cutting down of the grove was not mentioned. 87. The story follows in the next seven chapters. The date of the Spartan invasion of Argos is unclear. 88. The Milesian portion of the oracle has been recounted already at 6.19, where Herodotus looks ahead to this passage.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

333

for the soldiers to go to dinner, they should take up arms and attack the Argives. The plan succeeded; for the Spartans fell upon the Argives just as, after the signal, they had begun their meal. Many were slain, but many more escaped to the grove of Argos,89 where they were surrounded and closely watched. 79. Cleomenes now took the following step. Having learned from certain deserters the names of the Argives who were confined in the sacred precinct, he sent a herald to summon them. Calling them out by name, the herald said that he had received their ransoms. (Among the Peloponnesians, the ransom is fixed at two minas for each prisoner.) In this way Cleomenes got about fifty of these men to come out, whereupon he had each of them killed. The men who were still in the enclosure knew nothing of what was happening; for the grove was so dense that they could not see what was taking place outside. But at last one of them climbed a tree and saw what was being done. After that, none of those who were summoned came out. 80. Cleomenes then commanded all the helots to heap up wood around the grove. When his orders were obeyed, he set the place on fire. As it burned, he asked one of the deserters to which god the grove belonged. The man replied that it was the grove of Argos. On hearing this Cleomenes groaned aloud and said, “Apollo, author of oracles, you utterly deceived me when you said that I would capture Argos! For now I believe that your oracle has been fulfilled.” 81. After this Cleomenes sent the greater part of the army back to Sparta, and with 1,000 of his best men went to the temple of Hera to offer sacrifice. The priest, however, forbade him, declaring that it was not lawful for a foreigner to sacrifice in that temple. Cleomenes then ordered his helots to drag the priest from the altar and flog him, whereupon he performed the sacrifices himself and departed for Sparta. 82. On his return home, his enemies accused him before the ephors, alleging that he had accepted a bribe not to take Argos, though he might easily have done so. To this he replied—whether he lied or told the truth I cannot clearly say—that when he had taken the shrine of Argos, he supposed that the god’s oracle had been fulfilled; and for that reason he did not think it right to make an attempt on the city of Argos until he had consulted the oracle and learned, by means of a sacrifice, whether the god meant to grant him the place or oppose him. So he offered sacrifices in the temple of Hera, and when the omens were favorable, a flame flashed from the breast of the statue, and he knew with absolute certainty that he would not capture Argos. For if the flame had come from the head, he would have captured the city from top to bottom; but as it had flashed from the breast, he understood that he had done as much as the goddess wished. What Cleomenes 89. The name Argos here refers not to the city but to its eponymous early king, supposedly a son of Zeus. The double meaning of the name plays a central role in the story (see 5.80).

334

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

said seemed convincing and likely to the Spartans, and he was acquitted by a large majority. 83. Argos, however, was left so short of men that the slaves managed the state and filled all government offices until the sons of the slain Argives came of age. These young men then regained control, and the slaves, when driven out, fought a battle and got possession of Tiryns. For a time Tiryns and Argos were on friendly terms; but a certain Cleander, a soothsayer from Phigalea in Arcadia, approached the slaves and persuaded them to attack their masters. Then they were at war with one another for a considerable time; but finally the Argives with much difficulty gained the upper hand. 84. The Argives claim that Cleomenes went mad and died a miserable death on account of this behavior, whereas his own countrymen maintain that his madness had no divine cause but resulted from drinking unmixed wine, a habit he had acquired from the Scythians. For these nomads, eager to take revenge on Darius for invading their country,90 sent ambassadors to Sparta to form an alliance; the plan was that they themselves should try to invade Media by way of the river Phasis, and the Spartans should march inland from Ephesus and join forces with them. It is said that when the Scythians came to Sparta to discuss this mission, Cleomenes spent a great deal of time with them, and from associating with them more than was proper acquired the habit of drinking his wine without water, a practice that the Spartans believe caused his madness.91 Ever since then, whenever the Spartans wish to drink less diluted wine, they order it to be poured “Scythian style.” This, then, is what the Spartans have to say about Cleomenes; my own view is that his death was the penalty he paid for his treatment of Demaratus. 85. When the Aeginetans learned that Cleomenes had died, they sent ambassadors to Sparta to denounce Leotychides with regard to their friends who were being held as hostages. So the Spartans convened a tribunal, and determined that the Aeginetans had been outrageously abused by Leotychides. They condemned him to be given up to the ambassadors and taken away to Aegina in exchange for the Aeginetans who were held in Athens. The ambassadors were about to lead Leotychides away when a distinguished Spartan, Theasides, son of Leoprepes, interfered, and said to them, “What are you proposing to do, men of Aegina? Lead away the Spartan king, whom his countrymen have handed over to you? Though now in anger they have passed this sentence, yet the time may come when they will punish you, if you do this, by wreaking havoc on your country.” When they 90. As related in Book 4. 91. This is the fourth cause Herodotus has given for the madness of Cleomenes; the other three all concerned violations of religious sanctions. The Greeks thought of wine as a dangerously potent drink that had to be mixed with water.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

335

heard this warning, the Aeginetans changed their minds; and instead of taking Leotychides with them as a prisoner, they made an agreement with him whereby he would come with them to Athens and effect the surrender of the hostages.92 86. But when, on his arrival there, Leotychides asked for the hostages to be given back to him, the Athenians, who were unwilling to comply, made various excuses, saying that as two kings had left the men with them, they did not think it right to restore them to only one. Accordingly, when the Athenians refused to restore the men, Leotychides spoke to them as follows:93 A. “Men of Athens, you must do as you see fit. Give up the hostages and be honorable, or withhold them and be the opposite. I should like, however, to tell you what happened once in Sparta in connection with a pledge. “The story goes that three generations ago there lived in Sparta one Glaucus, son of Epicydes, a man who in all respects was an exemplary citizen, and who had a reputation for justice surpassing that of all the Spartans of his day. In due course, a certain Milesian came to Sparta and expressed a desire to talk to Glaucus: ‘I am a Milesian,’ he said, ‘and I have come to you because I wish to have the benefit of your honesty. For when I heard much talk of your honesty in Ionia and throughout Greece, and when I noticed that Ionia is always in a precarious state—property never staying long in the same hands, whereas the Peloponnese, on the contrary, is stable, I decided to turn one half of my property into money, and to place it in your hands, well assured that with you it will be safe. I therefore ask you to take the money and with it these tallies, which I ask you to keep carefully. Then you can return the money to the man who brings you the corresponding halves.’ B. “Thus spoke the stranger from Miletus, and Glaucus accepted the pledge on the terms he proposed. Many years later, the sons of the Milesian who had deposited the money with Glaucus came to Sparta. They requested an interview with him, presented their halves of the tallies, and asked for the money. But Glaucus, trying to hold them off, said, ‘I fail to recall this transaction, and nothing you say revives my memory of it. But I desire, once I have remembered, to do what is just: if I received a deposit, I want to make proper restitution; if I did not, I will adhere to Greek law in my dealings with you. I therefore reserve my decision. You will have it four months hence.’ C. “The Milesians, disappointed and convinced that they had lost their money, departed, whereupon Glaucus went to Delphi to consult the oracle. When he 92. The Aeginetans brought to Athens, at 6.73 above. 93. As he had done with Sosicles of Corinth at 5.92, here Herodotus uses Leotychides as a storytelling vehicle, placing in his mouth the kind of tale that he himself tells whenever opportunity arises. As in the case of that earlier speech, this one has been subdivided into lettered segments.

336

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

asked whether or not he should break his oath and keep the money, the priestess rebuked him with these words: Today, Glaucus, son of Epicydes, it is more profitable To swear falsely and steal a man’s money. Pledge your word, since, in any event, Death comes also to the man whose word is honest. But the child of Oath is nameless and has neither hands Nor feet; yet he is swift to pursue the perjurer until he has Seized and destroyed his offspring and his entire house. The progeny of a man who keeps his oath fare better. “On hearing this reply, Glaucus begged the god to forgive him for his question, but the priestess answered that to make trial of the god and to act are equivalent. D. Thereupon Glaucus sent for the Milesian strangers and restored their money. “And now I will tell you, gentlemen, why I have related this story. Of Glaucus, today, there is not a single living descendant; no family bears his name: it has vanished, root and branch, from Sparta. Reflect, therefore, that there is but one sound course where a pledge is concerned, namely to restore it upon request.” When despite his story Leotychides failed to move the Athenians, he went home. 87. The Aeginetans had yet to be punished for the crimes which, to please the Thebans, they had committed against Athens. Now, however, on the grounds that they were themselves wronged, and that Athens was responsible, they prepared to exact vengeance. The Athenians were then celebrating the festival they held every four years at Sunium; the Aeginetans, accordingly, lay in ambush and captured the Theoris, a state vessel carrying a number of high-ranking Athenians, whom they seized and imprisoned. 88. At this outrage, the Athenians delayed no longer, but contrived in every way to punish the Aeginetans. There was in Aegina an eminent man called Nicodromus, son of Cnoethus, who was on bad terms with the Aeginetans because they had previously banished him from the island. When this man learned that the Athenians were planning to injure the Aeginetans, he agreed to betray the island, and named the day on which he would make his attempt and expect them to arrive with troops to assist him. In due course Nicodromus, fulfilling his part of the agreement, seized what is called the Old Town. The Athenians, however, failed to arrive at the appointed time. 89. For their fleet was not a match for the Aeginetans.They had asked the Corinthians to lend them some ships, but in the meantime the undertaking failed. At that period the Corinthians were on excellent terms with the Athenians, and therefore provided them with twenty ships, charging five drachmas apiece, since it was illegal to give them for nothing. With these and their own, the Athenians manned seventy vessels and sailed for Aegina, but arrived a day later than the appointed time.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

337

90. Meanwhile Nicodromus, when he found that the Athenians had not come in good time, took ship and escaped from Aegina with a number of other Aeginetans. These people were allowed by the Athenians to settle at Sunium, which they made their base for raids on the Aeginetans on the island. But this occurred at a later date.94 91. When the wealthier Aeginetans had prevailed over the common people who had revolted together with Nicodromus, they arrested a number of them and led them out to death. But in the course of doing so they committed a sacrilege that, despite all their efforts, they were never able to expiate, being driven from the island before they could appease the goddess whom they had provoked. Having taken 700 of the common people prisoner, they were leading them out to death when one of them escaped from his chains. He fled for refuge to the portico of Demeter the Lawgiver, laid hold of the door handles, and clung to them. His pursuers tried to drag him away, and, when they failed to loosen his grip, cut off his hands. Then they led him away, leaving the hands still clinging to the handles. 92. This was how the Aeginetans treated each other. When the Athenians arrived, seventy ships engaged them but were defeated, whereupon the Aeginetans summoned their old allies, the Argives.95 But this time the Argives refused to send help, angered because some Aeginetan ships that Cleomenes had taken by force had put in at Argive ports and assisted the Spartan invasion. The Spartans had also been helped by men from Sicyonian ships; and the Argives had imposed a joint fine of 1,000 talents, 500 on each party. The Sicyonians acknowledged that they had done wrong and agreed to pay 100 talents at once, and so be clear of the debt. The Aeginetans, however, had stubbornly refused to admit their fault. It was for this reason that when the Aeginetans now requested help, the Argive state refused to send a single soldier, though nearly 1,000 volunteers went to their rescue under the command of Eurybates, a pentathlete.96 Most of these men did not return home, but were slain by the Athenians in Aegina. Eurybates himself, engaging in a series of single combats, killed three men, but died at the hands of the fourth, one Sophanes of Decelea. 93. Afterward the Aeginetans caught the Athenian fleet when it was in some disorder and overpowered it, capturing four ships with their crews. 94. While the Athenians and Aeginetans were embroiled in war, the king of Persia was pursuing his own plan. Day after day his servant told him to “remember

94. The time frame for all the events in Chapters 88–92 is unclear. 95. Herodotus has described an Argive-Aeginetan alliance against Athens at 5.86; it is not clear whether the two passages relate to different wars or different versions of the same one, nor is the time frame of either passage clear. At 6.94 below it seems that the Athenian-Aeginetan war preceded the Persian attack of 490 B.C., but some scholars dispute Herodotus’ sequencing. 96. The pentathlon combined wrestling, running, high jump, javelin throw, and discus.

338

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

the Athenians”;97 the Pisistratids were forever slandering the Athenians;98 and Darius himself was eager to have an excuse to subdue those Greek peoples who had not offered him earth and water. In view of the failure of his expedition,99 the king relieved Mardonius of his command and appointed other commanders, who were to lead the army against Eretria and Athens—Datis, a Mede, and his own nephew Artaphernes, son of Artaphernes; they were instructed to subjugate Athens and Eretria and to bring those enslaved into his presence. 95. The new commanders left the court and went down to the Aleian plain in Cilicia, taking with them a vast and well-equipped land army. Encamping, they were joined by the naval force that the various subject peoples had been ordered to supply, and by the horse-transports that Darius had ordered his tributary states to prepare the year before. The horses were embarked in the transports, the troops in the warships, whereupon the entire fleet, amounting to 600 triremes,100 sailed for Ionia. From there, instead of taking the coastal route to the Hellespont and Thrace, they started from Samos and sailed across the Icarian Sea and through the islands, presumably because the commanders dreaded the passage around Athos, where they had suffered disaster the year before.101 They were also constrained by their previous failure to capture Naxos.102 96. When the Persians, approaching from the Icarian Sea, anchored off the island, the Naxians, who remembered their previous experience, did not resist them but fled to the hills. Catching some of them, and carrying these off to slavery, the Persians burned the town, temples and all. This done, they sailed away to the other islands. 97. While the Persians were thus occupied, the Delians left their island103 and fled to Tenos. And as the Persian fleet drew near, Datis sailed ahead in advance and commanded the other ships to anchor not at Delos but at Rhenaea, across from it. On finding out where the Delians had fled, he sent a herald to them with this message: “Why have you fled, holy men, and judged me so unfairly? I surely have sense enough, even without the king’s orders, to spare the country where the two gods were born—both the land and its inhabitants. Return therefore 97. That is, remember their participation in the Ionian attack on Sardis. 98. Hippias, the son of Pisistratus deposed from tyranny over Athens in 510 B.C., was last seen at Sardis with Artaphernes (5.96), but by this time may have attached himself to Darius’ court. It is not clear what other “Pisistratids” were there with him. 99. See 6.45. 100. This number cannot be relied upon; Herodotus speaks of “600 ships” often enough that it may be a stock estimate (see 4.87, 6.6). 101. See 6.45–46. The wreck of the Persian fleet at Athos was in fact two years earlier. 102. See 5.34. 103. Delos was a sacred island, said to have been the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

339

to your houses and your island.” When he had had this message conveyed to the Delians, he heaped 300 talents of frankincense upon the altar, and burned it as an offering.104 98. He then sailed with his army against Eretria, taking with him both Ionians and Aeolians. After he had departed, Delos, as the Delians reported, was shaken by an earthquake, the first and last shock that has been felt there to this day.This may have been a portent whereby the god warned men of the evils that were in store; for in the three successive generations encompassing the reigns of Darius, son of Hystaspes, Xerxes, son of Darius, and Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, more misfortunes befell Greece than in the twenty generations preceding Darius—misfortunes caused in part by the Persians, but in part by the struggles among the leading Greek states for supremacy.105 Thus it was not surprising that Delos should then be shaken, though it had never been shaken before. And in fact there was an oracle, which contained these words: Delos also will I shake, though it has never yet been unshaken. (In Greek, Darius means “Worker,” Xerxes “Warrior,” and Artaxerxes “Great Warrior.”106 It would be correct for the Greeks to use these names when referring to these kings in their own language.) 99. Sailing from Delos, the barbarians touched at the other islands, where they recruited troops and took away a number of children as hostages. Going from one island to the next, they came at last to Carystus; but here the people refused to give hostages or agree to march against their neighbors, by whom they meant Athens and Eretria. The Persians accordingly laid siege to Carystus and ravaged the land around it until the Carystians came over to their side. 100. When the Eretrians horse-breeders learned that the Persian army was sailing against them, they asked the Athenians for help, and their request was not refused; for the Athenians gave them as auxiliaries the 4,000 men they had settled in the land of the Chalcidian horse-breeders.107 But at Eretria things were in an unwholesome state; for though they had requested assistance from Athens, their 104. It is unclear what the point of this extravagant offering and this promise of protection was, since the Persians have elsewhere burned Greek temples without scruple. Perhaps Datis needed to mollify the Ionian Greeks sailing with his fleet. 105. The three reigns mentioned by Herodotus spanned the period 522 to 424 B.C., though it is not certain whether this passage implies that Artaxerxes’ reign had ended. The latest events mentioned by Herodotus elsewhere in the Histories date to 430 B.C. The great war between Athens and Sparta, to which Herodotus here seems to refer, began officially in 431 B.C., though it was possible several years earlier than that to guess that war was coming. 106. All three translations are erroneous. 107. See 5.77.

340

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

own views were divided; some of them were determined to leave the city and take refuge in the Euboean hills, while others, who hoped to receive a reward from the Persians, were preparing to betray the city. When Aeschines, son of Nothon, one of the leading men in Eretria, learned how matters stood, he revealed the whole state of affairs to the Athenians who had already arrived, and entreated them to return to their own land and not perish with his countrymen. 101. The Athenians followed Aeschines’ advice, and, crossing over to Oropus, got safely away. The Persian fleet now approached and anchored at Tamynae, Choereae, and Aegilia, three places in Eretrian territory. Disembarking their horses, they prepared to attack the enemy. But the Eretrians had no intention of marching out and engaging them in battle. Their only concern, once they had decided not to abandon the city, was, if possible, to defend their walls. The assault on their fortress was vigorous; it lasted for six days, and many fell on both sides. But on the seventh, two notable citizens, Euphorbus, son of Alcimachus, and Philagrus, son of Cynes, betrayed the place to the enemy. Entering the city, the Persians plundered and burned the temples, in revenge for the burning of their own temples in Sardis,108 and, in accordance with Darius’ orders, carried away the inhabitants as slaves. 102. A few days after conquering Eretria, the Persians sailed for Attica, pressing the Athenians hard, and hoping to deal with them as they had dealt with the Eretrians. And since there was no place in Attica so suitable for cavalry as Marathon, and no place so close to Eretria, it was to Marathon that Hippias, son of Pisistratus, led the army.109 103. When the Athenians learned of this, they marched to Marathon to defend the place. They were commanded by ten generals,110 one of whom was Miltiades. It had been the fate of Miltiades’ father, Cimon, son of Stesagoras,111 to be banished from Athens by Pisistratus, son of Hippocrates. In his banishment, he had the good fortune to win the four-horse chariot race at Olympia, thereby gaining the same honor as his half-brother Miltiades. At the next games he won the prize again with the same mares; but on that occasion he caused Pisistratus to be proclaimed the victor, and by yielding him this honor was allowed to return 108. See 5.101. 109. Hippias, son of Pisistratus, was by now in his seventies, but apparently still vigorous enough to guide the Persians to Attica. He was hoping of course to be reinstated by the Persians as tyrant of Athens. 110. The Athenian constitution provided for the annual election of ten strategoi to lead various military contingents and operations. It was rare for all ten to be present on a single campaign, but the Persian landing at Marathon called for extraordinary measures. 111.The same family members are discussed at 6.34 above.Their clan is known as the Philaids.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

341

to his country. At a later Olympic festival he won the prize a third time with the same mares, after which he was slain by Pisistratus’ sons. (By then Pisistratus himself had died.) Sending men to lie in wait for him, they killed him at night near the council house. He was buried outside the city, beyond what is called the Hollow Road; and opposite his tomb were buried the mares that won the three prizes. This same feat had been achieved once previously, namely by the mares of Evagoras of Laconia, but never except by them. At the time of Cimon’s death, his elder son Stesagoras was living in the Chersonese with Miltiades, his uncle; the younger, who was called Miltiades after the founder of the colony in the Chersonese, was with his father in Athens. 104. It was this Miltiades who was now commanding the Athenians, having escaped from the Chersonese and twice nearly lost his life: first when the Phoenicians chased him as far as Imbros in their eagerness to arrest him and take him to the King,112 and again when, after avoiding this danger and reaching his own country, where he thought he was safe, he found his enemies waiting for him, and was prosecuted in court for his tyranny in the Chersonese.113 But he escaped this too, and was thereafter elected general by the people. 105. The generals’ first measure, before they left the city, was to send as a messenger to Sparta an Athenian named Philippides,114 a professional long-distance runner. Philippides himself later told the Athenians that he met the god Pan near Mount Parthenium, above Tegea. He said that Pan, who called him by name, told him to ask the Athenians why they paid no attention to him, though he was welldisposed to them, and had often been helpful to them and would be so again. The Athenians believed Philippides’ story, and once their affairs were again in order, they built a temple to Pan under the acropolis, and have continued to propitiate him with annual sacrifices and a torch race. 106. On the occasion of which I speak, when Philippides was sent by the Athenian generals, and, as he claimed, met Pan on his way, he reached Sparta the day after he left Athens115 and addressed the magistrates: “Spartans,” he said, “the Athenians ask you to hasten to their aid, and not allow their city, the most ancient in Greece, to be enslaved by barbarians. For Eretria has already been enslaved, and Greece weakened by the loss of one notable city.” Philippides had delivered the message entrusted to him, and the Spartans were willing to help the Athenians, 112. See 6.41 above. 113. Herodotus leaves unclear what “enemies” Miltiades had, but they probably included the Alcmeonids, an aristocratic family staunchly opposed to the Pisistratid tyranny (with which Miltiades had collaborated). Xanthippus, who finally helped bring Miltiades down (see 6.136 below), belonged to the Alcmeonid family. 114. His name is found in some manuscripts as Pheidippides. 115. A distance of about 150 miles.

342

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

but could not do so at once, as they did not wish to violate their custom. For it was then the ninth of the month; and they refused to march out on the ninth, but had to wait until the moon was full.116 107. So they waited for the full moon, and meanwhile Hippias, son of Pisistratus, guided the barbarians to Marathon. He had had a strange dream the night before. He dreamt that he was sleeping with his mother, and he imagined that the dream meant that he would return to Athens, regain his power, and die of old age in his native country. Such was Hippias’ interpretation. He was now acting as a guide to the Persians. First he landed the prisoners from Eretria on Aegilia, an island belonging to the Styraeans,117 after which he brought the fleet to anchor off Marathon, disembarked the barbarians, and arrayed them for battle. While he was thus occupied, he was seized by an unusual fit of sneezing and coughing; and as he was elderly, and most of his teeth were loose, it happened that one of them was driven out by a forceful cough. The tooth fell in the sand, and Hippias took great pains to find it, but it was nowhere to be seen. With a groan, he said to those standing nearby, “This land is not ours; and we shall never be able to vanquish it. My only share in it is the part my tooth possesses.” 108. Hippias thus concluded that his dream had been fulfilled. The Athenians were drawn up in a precinct sacred to Heracles, when they were joined by the Plataeans, who came in full force to aid them. Some time earlier, the Plataeans had placed themselves under the authority of the Athenians, who in return had already undertaken many labors on their behalf. This had come about in the following way. The Plataeans were being pressed hard by the Thebans;118 and as Cleomenes, son of Anaxandridas, happened to be in their neighborhood with the Spartan army, the Plataeans first of all offered to put themselves under Spartan authority. But the Spartans declined, saying, “We live too far from you, and our alliance would be cold comfort to you.You might be enslaved many times over before any of us heard of it. We advise you to surrender yourselves to the Athenians, who are your neighbors, and well able to assist you.” The Spartans gave the Plataeans this advice not out of good will but because they wanted to embroil the Athenians in wars with the Boeotians. The advice was taken; and when the Athenians were performing the sacrifice to the twelve gods, the Plataeans came and sat as suppliants by the altar, 116. It is curious Herodotus does not allude to a religious festival the Spartans held between the 7th and 15th day of this particular month (roughly, September). During that festival, the Carneia, no Dorians were allowed to march out on campaign. It was the Carneia that also prevented the Spartans from relieving Leonidas at Thermopylae (see 7.206). 117. Styra is a town on the southwest coast of Euboea. 118. The time frame of this flashback is uncertain, but it is at least two decades before the narrative present. Plataea lay more or less on the border between Theban and Athenian territory, that is between Boeotia and Attica.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

Marathon

343

Marsh

Plain of Marathon Greek Army

Persian Fleet

Persian Army

Bay of Marathon

Athens

10 kilometers 10 miles

The battle of Marathon as described by Herodotus.

and gave themselves up to the Athenians. When the Thebans got wind of this, they marched against the Plataeans, and the Athenians hastened to their aid. But as the two armies were about to engage, the Corinthians, who happened to be present, intervened. Both sides agreed to take them as arbitrators, whereupon they reconciled the parties, and fixed the boundaries between the two countries, with the condition that if any of the Boeotians no longer wished to belong to Boeotia, the Thebans would not interfere with them. The Corinthians, after issuing this decision, departed to their homes; and the Athenians had also set off on their return, when the Boeotians attacked them. In the battle that followed, the Athenians were victorious, at which point they refused to be bound by the borderline the Corinthians had fixed, but crossed it and made the river Asopus the frontier between the territory of the Thebans and that of the Plataeans and Hysiaeans. These were the circumstances under which the Plataeans gave themselves up to Athens; and now they had come to aid the Athenians at Marathon. 109. The Athenian commanders were divided in their views: some were opposed to risking a battle, on the grounds that they were too few to engage the army of the Medes,119 while others, including Miltiades, were in favor of fighting 119. In this passage Herodotus uses “Mede” to mean “Persian,” though elsewhere he sometimes distinguishes the two peoples.

344

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

at once.When the less worthy view seemed likely to prevail, Miltiades approached the man who would cast the eleventh vote, Callimachus of Aphidna, who had been appointed by lot to serve as polemarch. For in ancient times the Athenians granted the polemarch a vote equal to that of the generals. Going to Callimachus, Miltiades said, “It rests with you now, Callimachus, either to reduce Athens to slavery, or to ensure her freedom and thereby leave to posterity a memorial surpassing even that of Harmodius and Aristogeiton.120 The Athenians now face the gravest danger they have ever known, and if they bow to the Medes, it has already been made clear what they will suffer when they are handed over to Hippias. But if Athens survives, she may become the foremost Greek city. If you ask me how this can be, and how it has come to you to have final authority in this matter, I will now explain. We generals are ten in number, and our votes are divided: half of us wish to engage, half to avoid a battle. It is my own belief that if we do not fight, there will be at Athens a bitter dissension, which will shake men’s resolutions,121 and we will submit to Persia; but if we attack before any unsoundness infects any of us, and if the gods deal impartially, we will be able to overcome the enemy. Accordingly, the decision is yours; everything depends on you. If you agree with me, your country will be free, and your city the foremost in Greece; the opposite course will bring the opposite result.” 110. So saying, Miltiades persuaded Callimachus, and by the vote of the polemarch the decision was made to fight. Thereafter, all the generals who had been in favor of joining battle, when their turn for duty came,122 ceded it to Miltiades. But though he accepted their offers, he nevertheless waited, and would not fight until his own day of command arrived. 111.When the command came round to Miltiades, he marshaled the Athenians in the following order. The polemarch, Callimachus, led the right wing; for it was the custom at that time to give the right wing to the polemarch; the tribes followed, in their regular order; and finally, on the left wing, were the Plataeans.123 Ever since this battle, when the Athenians offer sacrifices at their quadrennial festivals, the Athenian herald prays that both the Athenians and the Plataeans may be blessed with good fortune. The result of the deployment of the Athenian troops at Marathon was that their front was equal in breadth to that of the Medes. 120. The “tyrant-slayers” who had killed Hipparchus in an effort to end the Pisistratid tyranny (see 5.55 and note 56). 121. What Miltiades fears is that the faction at Athens that hoped for Persian victory and a restoration of Hippias, will gain more adherents. 122. Evidently the leadership of the army rotated among the ten generals on a daily basis. 123. In an infantry battle the two “wings” —the ends of the line formed by the massed phalanx—were vital positions; they had to hold their place as they advanced in order for the whole line to stay tightly connected.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

345

Consequently, their center, which was only a few ranks deep, was its weakest point, while the two wings were strong. 112.When the tribes were set in array, and the sacrifices gave favorable omens, the Athenians, as soon as they were let go, advanced at a run toward the barbarians.124 The distance between the two armies was not less than eight stades, and the Persians, when they saw the Athenians approaching on the double, made ready to meet them, thinking that the Athenians had taken leave of their senses and were courting their own destruction. For they saw a small force of men running at them without the support of horsemen or archers. Such was the opinion of the barbarians; but the Athenians in close order fell upon them, and fought in a manner that did them credit.They were the first Greeks, as far as we know, to charge the enemy at a run, and the first who dared to set eyes on Median dress and the men who wore it. Up to that time, the very name of the Medes had struck terror into the Greeks. 113. The fighting at Marathon was prolonged. In the center, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae were posted, the barbarians gained the upper hand, and managed to break the Greek line and pursue the enemy inland; but on the wings the Athenians and Plataeans were victorious. Having prevailed, they let the routed barbarians escape, and then, joining the two wings together, fell upon those who had broken their own center.125 Here again they triumphed, pursued the routed enemy, and cut them down, chasing them all the way to the sea, where they called for fire126 and laid hold of the ships. 114. It was in the struggle here that the polemarch Callimachus, after distinguishing himself, lost his life; one of the generals, Stesilaus, son of Thrasyles, was also slain; and Cynegirus, son of Euphorion,127 having taken hold of a ship’s sternpost, had his hand cut off with an axe, and so perished, together with many other well-known Athenians. 115. The Athenians secured in this way seven enemy ships, but the barbarians pushed off with the remainder, and when they had taken aboard the Eretrian 124. This running charge was no doubt intended to spare the phalanx from spending a long time within range of Persian arrows. Herodotus says below that it spanned eight stades, about a mile, which is no doubt a huge exaggeration, since soldiers carrying heavy metal armor and shields would be exhausted by such a run. Whatever its length, though, this rapid advance required stamina and, more importantly, intrepid boldness. 125. Herodotus’ brief description gives only a vague idea of the battle of Marathon, but it is the best evidence we have. The principal question left unanswered is what the Persian cavalry was doing during the clash. It was vastly superior to any cavalry the Greeks could have assembled, and would have caused great disarray in the Athenian ranks had it been employed, but, for reasons that are not well understood, this never happened. 126. That is, torches with which to burn the ships. 127. Brother of the playwright Aeschylus. Aeschylus himself (as we know from other sources) also took part in the battle.

346

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

prisoners from the island where they had left them, they sailed around Sunium for Athens, hoping to reach the city before the Athenians returned.128 In Athens the Alcmeonids were accused of having suggested this course; it was said that they had an understanding with the Persians, and signaled to them, by raising a shield, when they were aboard their ships.129 116. While the barbarians were sailing around Sunium, the Athenians hastened back to defend their city, and succeeded in reaching it before the barbarians appeared. And as their camp at Marathon had been a precinct of Heracles, so now they encamped at another precinct of the same god at Cynosarges. When the barbarian fleet arrived, it rode at anchor for a while off Phalerum, which at that time was the main harbor of Athens, and then sailed back to Asia. 117. In the battle of Marathon the barbarians lost about 6,400 barbarians, the Athenians 192.130 A remarkable thing occurred on the battlefield. Epizelus, son of Cuphagoras, an Athenian soldier, was fighting bravely when he suddenly lost his sight in both eyes, though his body had not been struck or hit. From that time on, for the rest of his life, his blindness persisted. I have heard that in relating what happened to him he used to say that he thought he was confronted by a gigantic warrior, whose beard overshadowed his entire shield; but the apparition passed him by, and killed the man at his side. 118. On his way back to Asia with his army, Datis stopped at Myconos, where he had a dream. What the dream was is not recorded; but as soon as it was day he ordered the ships to be searched. Finding in a Phoenician vessel a statue of Apollo overlaid with gold, he inquired where it had been stolen; and as soon as he learned to what temple it belonged, he took it with him in his own ship to Delos, and placed it in the temple there, instructing the Delians, who had by that time come back to their island, to take it back to Delium in Thebes, which lies on the coast opposite Chalcis. After giving these orders, Datis sailed away; but the Delians did not restore the statue; and it was not until twenty years later that the Thebans themselves, warned by an oracle, brought it back to Delium. 128. From Marathon, on the east coast of the Attic peninsula, the Persians hoped to sail around the southern tip (Cape Sunium) and land on the west coast, then disembark and attack the city itself before the Athenian army had time to return overland. The sailing distance involved is about seventy miles, the overland distance twenty-four. 129. No shield raised in Athens could possibly have been seen at Marathon, though Herodotus is correct to note that some Athenians were hoping to profit by a Persian victory and a restoration of Hippias.The Alcmeonids, who had intermarried with the Pisistratids (see 1.61), would be easy targets of suspicion of collusion, though Herodotus is determined to clear their name (see 6.121–25 below). 130. Such lopsided death tolls were not uncommon in ancient infantry clashes, though the Persian casualties in this case are no doubt exaggerated.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

347

119. When Datis and Artaphernes reached Asia, they brought the enslaved Eretrians to Susa. King Darius, before their capture, had harbored a bitter grudge against these men for having injured him without provocation; but now, when he saw them brought into his presence as his subjects, he did them no further harm, but settled them at Ardericca, one of his own stations in Cissia, about 210 stades from Susa, and 40 stades from the well that produces three different substances: bitumen, salt, and oil. They draw the liquid with a swing-beam,131 and instead of a bucket, make use of half a wineskin. With this the man dips, draws up the liquid, and pours it into a tank; from the tank it is drained into another vessel, and the three substances are separated: the bitumen and the salt harden at once, while the oil [ . . . ]132 The Persians call this oil rhadinace; it is dark, and has a heavy odor. Here, then, in Ardericca, King Darius established the Eretrians; and they have remained there to my own day, and still speak their original language. 120. After the full moon, 2,000 Spartans headed for Athens.133 So eager were they to arrive in time that they reached Attica on the third day after leaving Sparta. They came too late for the battle; but as they wished to look at the Medes, they went to Marathon to view the bodies. Then, having praised the Athenians for their good work, they returned home. 121. I find it astonishing, and can in no way credit the report that the Alcmeonids had an understanding with the Persians, and held up a shield as a signal, wishing Athens to be subject to Hippias and the barbarians.134 For the Alcmeonids were manifestly more averse to tyrants than even Callias, the son of Phaenippus and father of Hipponicus. Callias was the only Athenian who dared, when Pisistratus was banished from Athens, to purchase the man’s property when it was put up for sale by the public crier, besides showing the strongest hostility to him other ways. [122. He was a man who deserves to be remembered by one and all, on several accounts. First of all, he exceeded everyone in his efforts on behalf of his country’s freedom; then, by the prizes he won at the Olympic games—where he was victorious in the horse race, and came in second in the four-horse chariot race—and by an earlier victory at the Pythian games, he distinguished himself among the Greeks for his extravagant expenditure. He was also remarkable in his conduct with respect to his three daughters; for when they came of age, he gave each of 131. A device that allowed a container to be swung round over a well and then lowered. 132. There is a small gap in the text here where no doubt Herodotus described the collection of the oil into containers.The entire task was messy and hazardous, and therefore was assigned to the Eretrians as a kind of endless collective punishment. 133. See 6.106 and note 116. At the full moon (on the 15th of the month) the Spartan religious festival called Carneia was completed. 134. See 6.115 and note 129.

348

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

them a generous dowry, and sought to gratify their inclinations; for he allowed them to choose their husbands from among all the citizens of Athens, and gave each to the man she had herself selected.]135 123. Now the Alcmeonids were at least as averse to tyrants as Callias. So I am astonished at the charge made against them, and cannot believe that they held up a shield; for these men remained in exile throughout the period of tyranny in Athens, and it was they who devised the stratagem that deprived the Pisistratids of their power. Indeed I regard the Alcmeonids far more than Harmodius and Aristogeiton as the true liberators of Athens. For Harmodius and Aristogeiton, by assassinating Hipparchus, merely exasperated the surviving Pisistratids, without doing anything to undermine their tyranny; whereas the Alcmeonids actually effected the liberation of Athens, if in fact it was they who bribed the Pythian priestess to urge the Spartans to set Athens free, as I related earlier.136 124. Perhaps they bore some grudge against the people of Athens, and therefore betrayed their country; yet none of the Athenians were better thought of, or held in higher honor, than the Alcmeonids. So it does not stand to reason that they would have held up a shield for any such reason. A shield was held up; that is a fact and cannot be denied; but as to who did it, I can say no more than I already have. 125. Even in ancient days the Alcmeonids were an eminent family; but from the time of Alcmeon, and later of Megacles,137 their prestige was unsurpassed. For Alcmeon, son of Megacles,138 gave all the assistance he could to the Lydians whom Croesus had sent from Sardis to consult the oracle at Delphi,139 and when Croesus learned from the Lydians who occasionally conveyed his messages to the god that Alcmeon was serving him well, he invited the man to Sardis. When Alcmeon arrived, Croesus offered him, as a reward, as much gold as he could carry on his person at one time. With an eye to making the most of Croesus’ offer, Alcmeon prepared himself with care. Putting on a large tunic, very baggy in front, and the widest boots he could find, he followed the king’s servants to the treasury. Falling upon a heap of gold dust, he crammed as much around his legs as his boots could contain, filled the baggy front of his tunic, sprinkled the dust 135. This chapter has been placed in brackets because it is almost certainly an addition by a later author. 136. See 5.63. 137. These two patriarchs of the clan lived in the 6th century B.C. 138. A different Megacles from the one just mentioned. In Greek aristocratic families sons were often named after their grandfathers. 139. See 1.47–48 above. The messengers apparently passed through Athens on their way from Sardis to Delphi. Herodotus’ chronology is somewhat in error, as Alcmeon lived at least a generation before Croesus’ reign.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

349

through his hair, took more into his mouth, and proceeded from the treasury, scarcely able to drag his legs along and looking more like anything than a human being. His mouth was stuffed and everything else swelled up. Croesus was overcome with laughter when he caught sight of his visitor, and gave him all the gold he was carrying, and an equal amount in addition. In this way Alcmeon’s family became enormously rich, and Alcmeon was able to keep racehorses, with which he won the chariot race at Olympia. 126. Afterward, in the next generation, Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon,140 raised the family to an eminence unprecedented in the Greek world. For this Cleisthenes, who was the son of Aristonymus, grandson of Myron, and great-grandson of Andreas, had a daughter, Agariste, whom he wished to give in marriage to the best man in all of Greece. So during the Olympic games, after winning the chariot race, he issued a proclamation to the effect that any Greek who thought himself worthy to become Cleisthenes’ son-in-law should come to Sicyon in sixty days, or sooner if he liked; for he intended, within a year from that sixtieth day, to select the man to whom he would marry his daughter. Accordingly, all the Greeks who were proud of their own merits or their native land flocked to Sicyon as suitors; and Cleisthenes had a racetrack and a wrestling ring specially built for this purpose. 127. From Italy came Smindyrides, son of Hippocrates, a Sybarite. Sybaris was then at the height of her prosperity, and Smindyrides surpassed all his countrymen in luxurious living. From Siris came Damasus, son of Amyris the Wise. These were the two suitors from Italy. From the Ionian gulf came Amphimnestus, son of Epistrophus, an Epidamnian. From Aetolia came Males, the brother of that Titormus who surpassed all the Greeks in strength, and who, wishing to avoid his fellow men, went to live in the remotest parts of Aetolia. From the Peloponnese came Leocedes, son of Pheidon, the tyrant of Argos, who instituted the system of weights and measures throughout the Peloponnese, and who committed an act of surpassing arrogance when he expelled the Elean directors of the games, and proceeded to manage them himself; then there was Amiantus, son of Lycurgus, from Trapezus in Arcadia, and Laphanes, an Azanian from Paeus, whose father Euphorion, as the story goes in Arcadia, received the Dioscuri under his own roof, and thereafter kept open house for all comers; and lastly, Onomastus, son of Agaeus, from Elis. From Athens came Megacles, son of the Alcmeon who visited the court of Croesus, and Hippocleides, son of Tisander, the wealthiest and handsomest of the Athenians. There was one Euboean, Lysanias, who came from Eretria, then a flourishing city. From Thessaly came Diactorides, one of the Scopadae, from Crannon; and Alcon came from Molossia. This was the list of suitors. 140. Grandfather of the Cleisthenes who led the democratic reforms at Athens; see 5.67 above and note, and 6.131 below.

350

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

128. When these men had arrived on the appointed day, Cleisthenes began by asking each in turn about his country and family. Then he kept them with him for a year, and made trial of their manly excellence, temper, education, and character, both individually and all together. He sometimes took the younger suitors to the gymnasia, though he evidently regarded their conduct at the banquettable to be the most important test of all. This went on throughout their stay, and from first to last he entertained them magnificently. Somehow or other the suitors who came from Athens pleased him most, and of these he came to prefer Hippocleides, son of Tisander, both for his manly virtue, and because some of his ancestors were related to the family of Cypselus of Corinth. 129.When the day arrived that had been fixed for the betrothal, and Cleisthenes had to declare his choice, he held a banquet, at which he entertained all the suitors and all the people of Sicyon. When the feast was over, the suitors competed with each other in music and speechmaking. As the carousal proceeded, Hippocleides, who outshone the rest, asked the flute-player to play him a dance tune. When the man obliged, Hippocleides began to dance. Perhaps he danced in a way that pleased himself, but Cleisthenes, who was observing him, began to have serious doubts about the whole affair. Soon, after a pause, Hippocleides sent for a table; and when it was brought, he climbed onto it and danced first some Laconic figures, then some Attic ones, after which he supported his head on the table and gesticulated with his legs. During the first and second dances, Cleisthenes restrained himself and managed to avoid an outburst, though he now loathed the prospect of having Hippocleides as a son-in-law; but when he saw the man tossing his legs in the air, he could no longer contain himself. “Son of Tisander,” he cried, “you have danced away your marriage!” “It matters not to Hippocleides,” was the man’s reply. 130. Thereafter the remark became proverbial.141 Having called for silence, Cleisthenes addressed the entire company. “Suitors of my daughter, I commend you all, and, if it were possible, would gratify you all, rather than select one of you and reject the rest. But as it is impossible, seeing that I have only one daughter to give, to please you all, I offer each of you whose hopes for a marriage I must disappoint a talent of silver, in appreciation of the honor you have done me by wishing to marry into my family, and to compensate you for your long absence from home; and my daughter Agariste I betroth to Megacles, son of Alcmeon, in accordance with the laws of Athens.” Megacles declared his readiness, and the betrothal was solemnized. 131. So ended the affair of the suitors; and thus did the Alcmeonids become the talk of the Greek world. From this marriage was born that Cleisthenes (named after his maternal grandfather, Cleisthenes of Sicyon), who reorganized the Athenian tribes and 141. In fact the “proverb,” no doubt used to express indifference to consequences, is found only here in extant Greek literature.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

351

established their democracy, and his brother Hippocrates. Hippocrates became the father of another Megacles and another Agariste, the latter named after Cleisthenes’ daughter. This Agariste married Xanthippus, son of Ariphron. During her pregnancy she dreamt that she gave birth to a lion, and a few days later bore Xanthippus a son—Pericles.142 132. After defeating the Persians at Marathon, Miltiades, who had been esteemed among the Athenians before the battle, was held in even higher regard. Accordingly, when he asked the Athenians for seventy ships, together with troops and money, without even revealing what country he meant to attack, but merely declaring that he would make them rich if they accompanied him, since it was a place where they might easily get as much gold as they wanted, they were so elated that they gave him everything he requested. 133. On obtaining ships and men, Miltiades set sail for Paros, for the alleged purpose of punishing the Parians for having been the aggressors, since they had contributed a trireme to the Persian forces at Marathon. But this was merely a pretext; the truth was that he bore a grudge against the Parians because Lysagoras, son of Tisias, a Parian by birth, had maligned him to Hydarnes the Persian.143 On reaching the island, he drove the Parians inside their walls and laid siege to the place. Sending a herald to the inhabitants, he demanded 100 talents, and threatened that if they refused to pay, he would press the siege until he had taken the town. The Parians, however, had no intention of giving Miltiades any money; instead, they used every means they could devise for the defense of their city, one of which was particularly ingenious: by working at night,144 they raised those sections of the wall that were vulnerable to attack to double their original height. 134. Thus far all the Greeks give the same account of this episode; for the sequel, the Parians themselves are my only informants. Miltiades was at a loss how to proceed, when a captive slave woman named Timo, who was a Parian by birth and had served as a minor priestess in the temple of the infernal goddesses, came to him and said that if he set great store by the capture of Paros he should follow her advice. In accordance with her proposal, Miltiades went to the hill in front of the town, and there leapt over the fence surrounding the shrine of Demeter the Lawgiver, since he was unable to open the door. He then proceeded to the sanctuary, intending to do something inside—either to remove some of the 142. The sole reference by Herodotus to the greatest leader of his own day. Pericles rose to prominence in Athens in the 460s B.C. and dominated Athenian politics for the three decades leading up to the start of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). He may already have died (in 429 B.C.) by the time Herodotus wrote the above passage. 143. Nothing more is known of this slander or what motivated it. Hydarnes appears to be the son of the Persian nobleman of the same name, who helped overthrow the Magi (see 3.70). 144. In order to avoid being spotted and targeted by the invaders.

352

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

A damaged Greek helmet bearing the inscribed name of Miltiades, perhaps originally the property of the general who led the Athenians at the battle of Marathon. Photo credit: Oren Rozen, Helmet of Miltiades the Younger, 2011. www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en.

sacred objects that it was not lawful to touch or to do something else. But just as he reached the door, a sudden thrill of horror came over him, and he ran back the way he had come; and in jumping down from the wall, he twisted his thigh, or, as some say, fractured his knee. 135. So Miltiades returned home in a weakened state, without bringing the Athenians any money, and without annexing Paros, having merely besieged the fortress for twenty-six days and plundered the rest of the island. When the Parians discovered that the priestess Timo had acted as Miltiades’ guide, they wished to punish her; and as soon as the siege ended they sent messengers to Delphi to ask whether they should put the priestess to death because she had given their enemies a means of capturing their country, and had revealed to Miltiades the sacred things that are not to be spoken of to the male sex. But the Pythian priestess would not permit them to do so, declaring that Timo was not to blame: it was fated for Miltiades to come to a bad end, and Timo had been sent to lead him into trouble. 136. Such was the answer the Pythian priestess gave to the Parians. When Miltiades returned from Paros, the Athenians raised an outcry, especially Xanthippus, son of Ariphron,145 who brought a capital charge against him, prosecuting him for having deceived the Athenians. Miltiades, though he was present 145. Father of Pericles (see 6.131) and a member of the Alcmeonid family.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

353

in court, did not speak in his own defense because his leg was gangrened; he lay on a couch and his friends pleaded his cause, speaking at length about the battle at Marathon and the capture of Lemnos, and recalling how, after taking vengeance on the Pelasgians, he had turned the island over to the Athenians.146 The people took his side to the extent that they spared his life; but they fined him fifty talents for the wrong he had done them. Soon afterward his thigh rotted and mortified, and he died. The fifty talents were paid by his son Cimon.147 137. Miltiades had obtained possession of Lemnos in the following way. There were certain Pelasgians whom the Athenians had driven out of Attica,148 whether justly or unjustly I cannot say, since I only know what is reported about it. Hecataeus, son of Hegesander, says in his chronicles that they did so unjustly. According to him, the Athenians had given the Pelasgians a tract of land at the foot of Mount Hymettus in payment for building the wall around the acropolis. But later, when the Athenians saw that this land, previously barren and worthless, had been brought into excellent condition, they were seized with envy and longed to recover it. And so, without any better excuse, they forced out the Pelasgians. The Athenians, on the other hand, maintain that they were justified in expelling the Pelasgians. They say that the Pelasgians, when they lived at the foot of Mount Hymettus, used to venture forth and harass their children. For at that time the Athenians used to send their sons and daughters to fetch water from the Nine Springs, since in those days neither they nor any of the other Greeks had household slaves; and whenever the daughters came, the Pelasgians, in their insolence and contempt, used to rape them. But even this did not satisfy them; for they were finally caught in the act of plotting to attack Athens. The Athenians assert that they then showed how much better men they were than the Pelasgians. For though it was in their power to put the Pelasgians to death when they caught them plotting, they spared their lives, and only demanded that they leave the country. The Pelasgians accordingly left Attica, and settled in various places, including Lemnos. Such are the differing accounts of Hecataeus and the Athenians. 138.These Pelasgians, after they had settled in Lemnos, wished to take revenge upon the Athenians. As they were well acquainted with the Athenian festivals, they procured some penteconters,149 ambushed the Athenian women when they were celebrating a festival in honor of Artemis at Brauron, and abducted a great many, whom they took to Lemnos and kept there as concubines. These women, when they had children, taught them to speak the language of Attica and to behave like 146. The account of this episode follows at 6.137–40. 147. This Cimon, mentioned only here and at 7.107, was destined to play a huge role in Athenian politics in the 460s B.C. 148. See 4.145 and notes. 149. Warships of fifty oars.

354

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 6

Athenians. Their sons refused to associate with the sons of the Pelasgian women, and if a Pelasgian boy struck one of them, they all supported and defended one another; the Greek boys even claimed the right to lord it over the others, and succeeded in dominating them. When the Pelasgians became aware of this, they took counsel. Dismayed, they asked one another what these sons of their concubines would do when they grew up, if at this early age they already supported one another against the sons of their lawful wives and tried to rule them. They decided in consequence to kill the sons of the Attic women; then, having done so, they killed their mothers as well. From this deed, together with the earlier one when the Lemnian women killed their husbands as well as Thoas,150 it has become customary throughout Greece to call all savage acts “Lemnian deeds.” 139. After the Pelasgians had killed their sons and concubines, the earth brought forth no crops, and neither their wives nor their flocks bore young as rapidly as before. Pressed by famine and childlessness, they sent to Delphi to ask how they might obtain deliverance from their troubles. The priestess ordered them to pay the Athenians whatever penalty the Athenians chose to impose upon them. The Pelasgians accordingly went to Athens and declared their willingness to make full amends for their wrongdoing. The Athenians had a couch placed in their council house and adorned it with their richest coverlets, and set beside it a table heaped with all manner of good things, and then told the Pelasgians to surrender their land to them in a similar condition. In reply the Pelasgians said, “When a ship sails with a northerly wind from your country to ours in a single day, then we will surrender it.” They said this because they knew that what they asked was impossible, since Attica is a long way south of Lemnos. 140. Nothing further happen at the time; but many years later, when the Hellespontine Chersonese was under Athenian control, Miltiades, son of Cimon, reached Lemnos by ship during the period of the northerly winds, having sailed there in a day from Elaeus in the Chersonese.151 On his arrival he ordered the Pelasgians off the island, reminding them of the oracle, which they had thought would never be fulfilled. The people of Hephaestia obeyed the command; but in Myrina no one would admit that the Chersonese was part of Attica, so the town was besieged until it, too, was forced to surrender. Thus did Miltiades and the Athenians get possession of Lemnos.

150. Thoas was a legendary king of Lemnos, supposedly a son of Dionysus. According to surviving myths, he was hidden by his daughter when the Lemnian women decided en masse to murder their husbands, and was thus saved; but in the version of the tale Herodotus knew, even Thoas was killed. 151. Since the Chersonese (modern Gallipoli) had fallen under Athenian control, Miltiades could claim that it constituted part of Attica and thus that his short sail had fulfilled the oracle.

Book 7

1. When news of the battle of Marathon reached King Darius, son of Hystaspes, his anger against the Athenians, which had already been provoked by their attack on Sardis, only grew greater, and he was more eager than ever to make war on Greece. He instantly sent messengers to his subject states with orders to raise an army much larger than before, and to furnish ships, horses, provisions, and transports. These orders were published, and Asia was in a ferment, with the bravest men being enrolled for the war against Greece, and with the preparations. In the fourth year,1 the Egyptians, who had been enslaved by Cambyses,2 revolted from the Persians, whereupon Darius was more intent on war than ever, and earnestly desired to march against both peoples. 2. As he was about to launch these expeditions against Egypt and Athens, a fierce quarrel broke out between his sons over the sovereignty, since according to Persian law a king must not go out with his army until he has appointed his successor. Darius, before he became king, had had three sons by his former wife, the daughter of Gobryas; and since he began to reign, Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, had borne him four. Artobazanes was the eldest of the first three, Xerxes of the last four. It was between these two, being the sons of different mothers, that the rivalry arose: Artobazanes claiming the crown as the eldest of all Darius’ sons, since it was the custom, universally established, for the eldest to inherit his father’s authority; Xerxes arguing that he was the son of Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, and that it was Cyrus who had won the Persians their liberty. 3. Darius had not yet announced his decision when Demaratus, son of Ariston, arrived in Susa after being deprived of his crown at Sparta and having gone into voluntary exile.3 As rumor has it, when he heard about the dispute between Darius’ sons, he went to Xerxes and advised him to bolster his argument by pointing out that when he was born Darius was already king, whereas when Artobazanes was born, he was a mere private citizen. It would therefore be neither reasonable nor right that the crown should pass to anyone but himself. For even at Sparta, Demaratus went on to suggest, the custom was that if a king had sons before he came to the throne, and another son was born afterward, the latter should be heir to his father’s kingdom.4 Xerxes followed this advice, and Darius, 1. 486 B.C. 2. As narrated in the first portion of Book 3. 3. See 6.63–70. 4. There is no other evidence for this custom at Sparta. 355

356

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

acknowledging the justice of the argument, appointed him his successor. But it seems to me that even without this advice Xerxes would have become king, for Atossa held all the power. 4. Darius, then, after naming Xerxes as his successor, was inclined to go to war; but he was prevented by death while his preparations were still in progress. He died in the year following this incident5 and the Egyptians’ rebellion, before he had the opportunity to punish either the insurgent Egyptians or the Athenians. He had reigned for thirty-six years, and at his death the sovereignty passed to his son Xerxes. 5. Now Xerxes at first was by no means eager to march against Greece, but devoted himself to collecting an army against Egypt. But Mardonius, son of Gobryas, who was at court and had more influence with him than any of the other Persians, being his own cousin, the son of Darius’ sister, was constantly introducing the subject.6 “Master,” he would say, “it is not fitting that the Athenians, after doing the Persians a great injury,7 escape unpunished. By all means complete the work you now have in hand; but once you have tamed the insolence of Egypt, then lead an army against Athens.You will thereby acquire a good report among men, and others will hesitate in future to attack your country.” This was an argument for revenge, but Mardonius would add that Europe was an exceptionally beautiful region, with all kinds of cultivated trees and an excellent soil, and worthy for only a king among mortals to possess. 6. Mardonius was promoting this expedition because he longed for new adventures and hoped to become governor of Greece himself; and in time he had his way, and persuaded Xerxes to make the attempt. Certain other developments helped his cause. In the first place, messengers arrived from the Aleuadae, the royal family of Thessaly, with an invitation to Xerxes, promising all the assistance it was in their power to give.8 And the Pisistratids, who had come up to Susa,9 seconded their views and worked upon him even more effectively by means of Onomacritus of Athens, a collector of oracles, who had compiled and arranged the oracles of Musaeus. The Pisistratids had made up their quarrel with him before coming to Susa. For he had been banished 5. In the autumn of 486 B.C. For Herodotus this would have been the year following the Egyptian invasion, since the Greeks divided their years at midsummer. 6. In the debate that follows, it should be recalled that Mardonius has already failed once in an attempt to lead an invasion of Greece, six years earlier (see 6.43–45). 7. That is, by aiding the Ionian revolt in 499 B.C. 8. The Aleuadae, descendants of a legendary Aleuas, were not exactly kings but tagoi or “chieftains” of the Thessalian confederacy in northeast Greece, and allies of the Pisistratids (see next note). 9. Of these “kinsmen of Pisistratus” Herodotus has named only Hippias, the deposed tyrant of Athens (see 5.62–65) who, now probably in his seventies, was still hoping for restoration.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

357

from Athens by Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, when he was caught by Lasus of Hermione in the very act of inserting into the oracles of Musaeus a prophecy that the islands near Lemnos would disappear in the sea. Accordingly, Hipparchus had banished him, though until then they had been close friends. Now, however, he went to Susa with the Pisistratids, and they spoke admiringly of him to the King; while he, whenever he was in the King’s presence, would recite selections from his oracles. Taking care to omit any that foretold disaster for the barbarians, he quoted only those passages that promised them the greatest success. He told Xerxes that a Persian was destined to bridge the Hellespont, and that his army would march from Asia into Greece. And while Onomacritus plied Xerxes with his oracles, the Pisistratids and Aleuadae continued to press their advice on him. 7. Thus Xerxes was persuaded to march against Greece. First, however, in the year following the death of Darius, he sent an army against the Egyptian rebels and subdued them; then, having reduced Egypt to an even harsher servitude than his father had imposed, he turned it over to his brother Achaemenes. Years later, while serving as governor, Achaemenes was murdered by Inaros, son of Psammetichus, a Libyan.10 8. After the conquest of Egypt, when Xerxes was about to take in hand the expedition against Athens, he convened an assembly of the foremost Persians to learn their views and apprise them of his wishes. When they met, he addressed them as follows:11 A. “Persians, I shall not be introducing any new custom, but shall simply follow the tradition I inherited. I have learned from my elders that we Persians have never remained inactive since Cyrus deposed Astyages and we wrested the hegemony from the Medes.12 A god is guiding us, and it is by following his guidance that we have gained our prosperity. Now I need not recount the deeds of Cyrus, Cambyses, and my own father Darius—how many nations they conquered and added to our empire.You know very well what they achieved. As for myself, from the day I came to the throne I have not ceased to consider how I may keep pace with my predecessors in this office, and add as much power as they did to the Persian empire. And I have now discovered a way to win not glory only but a territory as large and as rich as our own—indeed even richer than our own—and 10. The rebellion of Inaros in the late 460s B.C. took place after the time frame of the Histories but was well known to Herodotus. He has mentioned it earlier at 3.12 and 3.15. 11. The speeches that follow are long enough that they have been subdivided into lettered sections. Herodotus here begins constructing his characterization of Xerxes, the richest and most complex portrait of the many he paints in the Histories. For an equally rich but contrasting portrait, see Aeschylus’ play Persians. 12. As recounted in Book 1.

358

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

at the same time obtain satisfaction and revenge. I have called you together now to tell you what I intend to do. B. “I plan to bridge the Hellespont and march an army through Europe into Greece, and punish the Athenians for the injuries they inflicted on my father and the Persians. Darius himself, as you know, was preparing to make war on these men. But death prevented him from taking his revenge. On his behalf, therefore, and on behalf of all the Persians, I will not cease until I have captured Athens and burned it to the ground, in revenge for the injury they inflicted without provocation on me and my father. These men, as you remember, came to Sardis with our slave, Aristagoras of Miletus, and burned our temples and sacred groves. Next, I presume everyone knows how they treated our troops when they landed on Greek soil under the command of Datis and Artaphernes.13 C. “For these reasons I am bent on launching this war, an undertaking from which I find we will derive several advantages. If we subjugate these men and their nearest neighbors, who inhabit the land of Pelops the Phrygian,14 we will render the Persian empire the terrestrial counterpart of Zeus’ ethereal domain. The sun will look down upon no country bordering our own. With your help as I proceed across the entire continent of Europe, I will make all countries one.15 For I understand that once the nations I mentioned are eliminated, no city remains, nor any race of men, that will be able to oppose us in battle.Thus both guilty and innocent will bear the yoke of slavery. D. “For your part, you would oblige me by doing as follows: when I name the day, let each of you hasten to the muster. And to the man who arrives with the best-equipped army I will give the gifts our countrymen consider the most valuable.This you must do. But lest I appear to consult only my own wishes, I will now lay the business before you, and ask any of you who may be so inclined to express his views.” So saying, he paused. 9. Mardonius spoke next, and said, “In truth, my lord, of all the Persians who have ever lived, and of all who are yet to be born, you are the greatest. Perfectly true and right is each word you have just spoken; but best of all your determination not to let the Ionians in Europe,16 a worthless lot, make fools of us. For 13. The reference is to the battle of Marathon. Xerxes petulantly characterizes the Athenian self-defense there as a strike against Persia. 14. The “land of Pelops” is the Peloponnese. Invading this peninsula would of course mean challenging the Spartans, who up to this point had not come into conflict with the Persians; Xerxes is clearly contemplating a campaign of conquest rather than a punitive expedition. 15. An improbable vow, unless Xerxes drastically underestimates the size of the European landmass. This speech and those that follow were most likely composed by Herodotus, not based on a report of anything actually said. 16. Mardonius here speaks like a true Persian. Since most of the Greeks in Asia were Ionians, the Persians tended to use the term “Ionian” to refer to all Hellenes (Aeschylus captures the same speech habit in Persians).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

359

it would indeed be a dreadful thing if we who have conquered and enslaved the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and many other great nations, not for any harm they had done us but only to increase our empire, should fail to punish the Greeks, who injured us without provocation. A. “What have we to fear? Their numbers? Their wealth? We know how they fight; we know how weak their power is. We have already subjugated their kinsmen who live in Asia—the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians. I myself have had experience of these men when by your father’s orders I invaded their country. And though I got as far as Macedonia, and nearly reached Athens itself, not a single soldier came out to oppose me in battle.17 B. “Yet, from what I am told, the Greeks are in the habit of starting wars in the most foolish way, through sheer stubbornness and stupidity. When they declare war on one another, they seek out the finest and most level plain, and there assemble and fight, with the result that even the victors never depart without heavy losses; as for the defeated, they are utterly annihilated.18 Now surely, as they all speak the same language, they ought to exchange heralds and ambassadors, and settle their difference by any means rather than battle. Or if it is really impossible to avoid fighting, they ought to find a strong position to fight from, and then put one another to the test.Yet these Greeks, despite their absurd manner of fighting, never even thought of opposing me when I led my army to Macedonia. C. “Who, then, sire, would think of resisting you, when you march against them with all the warriors of Asia, and all her ships? For my part, I doubt the Greeks would be so reckless. But if the event proves me wrong, and they are foolish enough to meet us in battle, then they will learn that we are the best soldiers in the world. Nevertheless, let us spare no pains. For nothing comes without trouble; but all that man acquires is gained by effort.” 10. Having in this way smoothed over Xerxes’ proposal, Mardonius paused. The other Persians kept silent; for no one dared to put forward an opposing view. But Artabanus, the son of Hystaspes and uncle of Xerxes, relying on his relationship, spoke as follows: A. “Sire, it is impossible, if no more than one view is expressed, to choose the better course; one must then accept whatever advice has been offered. But if opposing views are presented, a fair choice can be made. In like manner we cannot recognize pure gold by itself; it is only when we rub it on other gold that 17. Mardonius means he was unopposed by Greek soldiers, since the Thracians did indeed fight him (see 6.45). The claim is spurious in any case, since Mardonius had not reached the territory of any major Greek city before he retreated to Asia. 18. The Greek way of war in this period involved “set” battles, in which both sides agreed to the time and place of the fight. This meant that most battles took place on open ground where the terrain gave no advantage to either side. In such settings, Mardonius claims, the casualty rate ran higher than where high ground or obstructions offered safe refuge.

360

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

we distinguish which is the purer. I warned your father, Darius, my own brother, not to attack the Scythians,19 a race of men who had no city anywhere in their entire land. But since he hoped to subdue these nomadic tribes and would not listen to me, he invaded their country, and before he came home lost many brave soldiers. But you, my lord, intend to attack a nation far superior to the Scythians, a people distinguished for prowess both on land and at sea. It is therefore my duty to tell you what you have to fear from them. B. “You say that you mean to bridge the Hellespont and march your army through Europe to Greece. But suppose that you met with some disaster by land or sea, or even both. These Greeks are said to be valiant; and one might infer as much from the fact that the Athenians alone destroyed the great army that went to Attica under Datis and Artaphernes. Or suppose they were not successful on both fronts. Still, if they defeated us at sea, and then sailed to the Hellespont and destroyed our bridge, the consequences, sire, would indeed be dire. C. “I make this out not from any special cleverness of my own; but I remember how narrowly we escaped disaster when your father, after bridging the Thracian Bosporus and the Danube, marched against the Scythians. On that occasion the Scythians used every expedient to persuade the Ionian guard to break up the bridge. And if, on that day, Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, had followed the tyrants’ advice instead of rejecting it, the Persian empire would have been destroyed.20 Surely it is a dreadful thing even to hear said, that the King’s fortunes once depended entirely on one man. D. “So do not court such danger unnecessarily, sire, but listen to me. Break up this assembly, and when you have weighed the matter well beforehand, announce your decision. I find the greatest profit in good deliberation; for even if anything turns out contrary to it, nonetheless one’s plan has been well deliberated, and it has been overcome by chance; as for the man who deliberates badly, if fortune attends him, he has a windfall, but nonetheless his plan has been badly deliberated. E. “You see how the god21 blasts with lightning the larger creatures, and will not permit them to make a great show, while he does not even graze those that are small. You see how he always hurls thunderbolts against the largest houses and trees, since he is inclined to cut down everything that exalts itself. Thus a large army is also destroyed by a small one, when the god in his envy strikes fear 19. See 4.83, where Artabanus played a role at the court of Darius similar to the one he plays here. 20. Referring to 4.136–42. 21. Here Artabanus, like Solon and Amasis before him, speaks of “the god” in the singular, signifying divinity generally. The pronoun “he” is used in this translation for lack of a better alternative, but this should not be taken to imply that “the god” is imagined as a male anthropomorphic being.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

361

in men’s hearts, or sends a thunderstorm, and they perish in a way they do not deserve. For he allows no one to be proud but himself. F. “Haste in any enterprise breeds mistakes, which in turn are likely to cause serious harm; delay, on the other hand, has its advantages. These may not be immediately apparent, though in time they may be discovered. G. “Such is my advice to you, sire. “As for you, Mardonius, son of Gobryas, quit talking nonsense about the Greeks, who do not deserve to be maligned. For in slandering the Greeks, you incite the king to make war in person; indeed, you seem to me to be directing all your efforts to that end. Heaven forbid you should succeed! Slander is a despicable thing, in which two parties do wrong, and one man suffers by it. The slanderer does wrong in that he abuses a man behind his back; and the man who listens to him does wrong in that he believes before he has learned the truth. The slandered person is wronged by both; for he is accused of baseness by the one, and believed to be base by the other. H. “But if we are obliged to make war on these men, at least let the king stay here in Persia. Then let the two of us stake our children on the outcome. Embark on the war with the men you want and as large an army as you please. If matters turn out as you say they will for the king, then let my children be put to death, and me along with them; but if the outcome accords with my prediction, let yours meet with the same fate, and yourself as well, if you get home alive. But if you refuse this wager, and persist in marching an army against Greece, I declare that many a man left at home will one day hear that Mardonius has brought a great disaster upon Persia, and that his body lies as prey to dogs and birds somewhere in the land of the Athenians or Spartans—unless, of course, you will have perished earlier, on your journey, learning for yourself the quality of those men on whom you are urging the king to make war.” 11. Thus spoke Artabanus, and Xerxes, in a rage, replied, “Artabanus, you are my father’s brother, and that alone will save you from paying the price your empty words deserve. But this dishonor I do impose on you, cowardly and faint-hearted as you are: you will not accompany me on my march against Greece, but will stay here with the women. Everything I spoke of I will accomplish without your help. May I not be thought the son of Darius, son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames, son of Ariaramnes, son of Teispes, son of Cyrus, son of Cambyses, son of Teispes, son of Achaemenes,22 if I fail to punish the Athenians! For I know very well that if we remain quiet, they will not, but will surely invade our country. We need only judge by what they have already done; for it was they who invaded Asia and burned Sardis. Retreat is now impossible for either side; our choice is between 22. This lineage splices together two different lines of descent. Darius was indeed descended from all these ancestors, but some through his mother, others through his father.

362

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

inflicting and suffering harm. Either all we possess must pass to the Greeks, or all they possess must pass to the Persians. There is no middle course for our enmity. It is therefore right that we who were injured first should now take our revenge, so that I may discover that terrible thing that is to happen to me if I march against men whom Pelops the Phyrgian, a slave of my forefathers,23 once vanquished so thoroughly that to this very day both the people and their land bear the name of the conqueror.” 12. So ended the conference. Later that evening Xerxes began to be troubled by the advice of Artabanus. Reflecting on it during the night, he concluded that it was not, after all, to his advantage to lead an army into Greece.24 When he had reached this decision he fell asleep. The Persians say that sometime that night he dreamt that a tall and beautiful man stood over him and said, “Have you changed your mind, Persian, and decided not to lead your army against the Greeks, after commanding the Persians to levy troops?You do not do well to change your mind, nor will anyone forgive you for doing so. Continue to tread the path that you chose during the day.” So saying, the man seemed to Xerxes to fly away. 13. The next morning Xerxes took no account of the dream, but called together the same Persians as before and said to them, “Men of Persia, pardon my sudden change of heart. My understanding has not yet reached its maturity, and those who urge me to engage in this war do not leave me alone for a moment. When I heard the advice of Artabanus, my youthful blood boiled over at once,25 and I threw out words more unseemly than they should have been against an elder. Now, however, I confess my mistake, and I will follow his advice. Understand, then, that I have decided against making war on Greece, and cease to trouble yourselves.” The Persians, overjoyed at his words, bowed low before him. 14. But that night, the same vision again stood by Xerxes’ bed and said, “Son of Darius, can you have openly renounced the expedition and taken no account of my words, as if you had not heard them spoken? Rest assured that unless you at once undertake the war, this will be the result: as you have become great and mighty in a short time, so you will be humbled just as quickly.” 15. Terrified by the vision, Xerxes leapt out of bed and sent a messenger to summon Artabanus. When he came, Xerxes said, “Artabanus, I lost my head at first, and gave you a foolish answer in return for your sound advice. But I soon repented, and understood that I should do as you advised. But though I desire to 23. Pelops was generally thought to be Lydian, not Phrygian, by the Greeks. The idea that he was a “slave” of Xerxes’ forefathers probably recalls the myths in which Perseus (claimed by the Persians as their ancestor), through his wife Andromeda, enjoyed sovereignty over western Anatolia. 24. A strange and unexplained change of heart, reflecting poorly on Xerxes’ self-confidence. 25. Xerxes was most likely in his mid-thirties.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

363

do so, I assure you I cannot. For since my change of heart, I have been haunted by a dream that opposes my intentions, and has just left me with threats of violence. Now if this dream is sent by a god, and if it his pleasure that we should march against Greece, the same vision will come to you and will give you the same commands as it gave to me. And this is most likely to happen, I think, if you put on my clothes, and then, after sitting on my throne, go to sleep in my bed.”26 16. Thus spoke Xerxes, but Artabanus would not at first obey his command; for he did not think himself worthy to sit on the royal throne. Finally, however, he was forced to give way, and did as Xerxes ordered. But first he said, A. “Sire, I have judged it equal to be wise oneself or to be willing to obey him who speaks well. You possess both faculties, but the companionship of wicked men is leading you astray; just as they say about the sea, though it is most useful to men: when the blasts of winds rush upon it, they do not allow it to enjoy its own nature. As for myself, I was not so much pained because you reproached me as by the fact that when two opinions were proposed to the Persians—one set on increasing pride, the other on checking it and saying that it is bad to teach the soul to search always for more than it has—you preferred the one that was more dangerous both for yourself and for the Persians. B. “Now you say that from the time you adopted the better course, and gave up the idea of going to war with Greece, a dream has haunted you, sent by some god or other, that will not allow you to give up the expedition. But such things, my son, do not come from god. As I am older than you by many years, I will tell you what these phantoms are that come to us in sleep. Nearly always these visitations are the shadows of what we have been thinking about during the day; and in recent days we have been occupied with this expedition. C. “Now if your dream is not, after all, as I have explained it, but there is indeed something divine in it, then you have summed the matter up perfectly: let it appear to me as well as to you with its commands. But it is not more likely to come to me if I wear your clothes than if I wear my own, or if I sleep in your bed than if I sleep in mine—supposing, that is, that it means to come at all. For this phantom of yours is surely not so foolish as to think that I am you simply because I wear your clothes. But now we must learn whether it will disregard me, and not deign to appear, whether I wear my clothes or yours, but continues to come to you. For if it visits you often, even I would declare it to be divine. 26. A remarkable experiment. Nowhere else in surviving Greek literature is the idea expressed that a “dummy” sleeper could receive a dream intended for someone else, and Artabanus mocks the notion below.

364

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

“As for the rest, if you have made up your mind, and there is no dissuading you, but I must now sleep in your bed, then let us see if the phantom comes. But until it does, I will keep my present opinion.” 17. Thus spoke Artabanus; and then, hoping to prove that Xerxes was mistaken, he did as he had been ordered. He put on the king’s clothes, seated himself on the royal throne, and then went to the king’s bed. As he slept, the same vision that had visited the king stood over him and said, “Are you the man who in pretended concern for Xerxes is trying to dissuade him from making war on Greece? You will not escape unpunished, either now or in future, for seeking to prevent what is fated to happen. As for Xerxes, he has already been told what will happen to him if he disobeys me.” 18. It seemed to Artabanus that the vision, after issuing these threats, was about to burn his eyes out with hot irons. At this, with a shriek, he leapt from his bed. Sitting beside Xerxes, he described his dream in detail, and went on to say, “I, sire, as a man who has seen many great empires overthrown by weaker ones, tried to prevent you from yielding to your youth, aware as I am that insatiable desire is an evil. I could remember the expedition of Cyrus against the Massagetae and what came of it; I could recall Cambyses’ expedition against the Ethiopians; and I had taken part in Darius’ attack on the Scythians.27 With all these ventures in mind, I believed that the world would consider you blessed if you remained at peace. But as this impulse has come from god, and a heaven-sent destruction seems about to overtake the Greeks, I confess that I was mistaken. Tell the Persians what the god has ordained; make them follow the orders that were given previously; and since the god is offering you this great opportunity, be unremitting in your own efforts.” Both Artabanus and Xerxes were now encouraged by the vision. Xerxes, at daybreak, laid the whole matter before the Persians, while Artabanus, who had been the only one openly to oppose the expedition, now as openly promoted it. 19. After Xerxes had decided to go to war, a third vision appeared to him. The Magi28 were consulted about it, and said that it had reference to the entire earth, and revealed that all mankind would become Xerxes’ servants. In the dream, Xerxes imagined that he was crowned with olive, the branches of which spread over the whole earth; then suddenly the crown vanished from his head. After the Magi had thus interpreted the dream, all the Persians who had assembled departed to their respective provinces, where each showed great zeal in executing Xerxes’ orders; for they all hoped to win the promised gifts. Xerxes, meanwhile, in the course of gathering his forces, ransacked every corner of the continent. 27. Artabanus neatly recapitulates three failed invasions led by three previous Persian kings, recounted by Herodotus in Books 1, 3, and 4. 28. The priestly caste attending the Persian kings.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

365

20. Following the conquest of Egypt, Xerxes spent four full years mustering troops and gathering provisions and equipment; toward the close of the fifth year,29 at the head of an enormous body of men, he began his march. Of all the expeditions we know of, Xerxes’ was by far the greatest. Darius’ expedition against the Scythians bears no comparison with it, nor does that of the Scythians (which Darius’ invasion was designed to avenge), when they, in pursuit of the Cimmerians, invaded Media and subjugated nearly all of upper Asia; nor that of the Atreidae30 against Troy, which we hear of in stories; nor that of the Mysians and Teucrians, who before the Trojan War crossed the Bosporus into Europe, subjugated all the Thracians, and, advancing to the Adriatic coast, marched as far south as the river Peneus.31 21. All these expeditions together, even with others added to them, are not to be compared with the expedition of Xerxes. Was there a nation in Asia that Xerxes did not take with him against Greece? Was there a river, except the greatest, that his army did not drink dry? Some nations furnished ships, others were assigned to the infantry; some had to supply horses, others horse-transports and crews; some supplied warships for the bridges, others vessels and provisions. 22. Since the earlier fleet had been shipwrecked sailing around Mount Athos,32 Xerxes spent nearly three years preparing for this danger. A fleet of triremes lay at Elaeus in the Chersonese; and from this base detachments of the various nations of which the army was composed were sent in shifts to Athos, where they were excavating a canal under the lash. The people who lived around Athos also took part. Two Persians—Bubares, son of Megabazus, and Artachaees, son of Artaeus—were in charge of the project. Athos is a lofty and famous mountain stretching far out into the sea. It is inhabited, and where the mountain ends on the inland side it forms an isthmus, about twelve stades wide, the whole extent of which is a plain with some low hills; the isthmus separates the sea near Acanthus from the sea opposite Torone. On it, at the foot of Athos, stands the Greek city of Sane; and south of it, on Athos itself, are the cities of Dium, Olophyxus, Acrothous,Thyssus, and Cleonae, whose inhabitants Xerxes was now proposing to turn into islanders.33 23. I will now describe how the canal was excavated. The ground was divided into sections for the crews of the various nations on a line drawn straight across 29. In the spring of 480 B.C. (spring being the “close” of the Greek year). 30. Agamemnon and Menelaus. 31. An invasion not mentioned by other Greek authors until very late. Herodotus adverts to it again at 7.75 but supplies little elaboration. 32. See 6.44. 33. That is, by cutting a canal through the isthmus north of them. There are traces today of this canal, which required digging at least sixty feet down into the earth.

366

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

the isthmus from Sane. When the trench reached a certain depth, the men at the bottom continued to dig, and passed the soil up to others above them, who stood on steps and passed it on to the men higher up, until it reached the men at the top, who carried it away and disposed of it. Now at all the sections except the one being excavated by the Phoenicians, the edges of the trench were constantly caving in, which doubled the labor. For the crews were making the trench the same width at the top as it was meant to be at the bottom. The Phoenicians, however, who display ingenuity in all their undertakings, in this instance surpassed themselves. When they had obtained the section that was assigned to them, they made the top of the trench twice as wide as it needed to be at the bottom, and gradually narrowed its width the deeper they dug. The bottom of their portion turned out to be equal in width to that of all the others. In a nearby meadow the laborers had a marketplace and a bazaar; and grain already ground was brought over in large quantities from Asia. 24. It seems to me, when I consider this canal, that Xerxes, in making it, was actuated by pride—by a desire to display his power and to leave a memorial behind him. For although it would have been feasible—and enormously laborsaving—to haul the ships across the isthmus,34 yet he ordered the construction of a channel for the sea wide enough to accommodate two triremes sailing side by side under oars. The same people who were assigned to excavate the canal were also given the task of bridging the river Strymon.35 25. Xerxes meanwhile assigned the Phoenicians and Egyptians the task of preparing cables for his bridges, some of papyrus, some of white flax; and provision depots were being set up, lest either men or pack animals go hungry on their march to Greece. He made careful inquiries about sites, and the most convenient were chosen for these depots, the provisions being transported from many different parts of Asia in merchant ships and ferryboats. The largest quantity was taken to a place called the White Cape in Thrace; some stores were conveyed to Tyrodiza in Perinthian territory, some to Doriscus, some to Eion on the Strymon, and some to Macedonia. 26. While these works were in progress, the land army was marching with Xerxes toward Sardis, having set forth from Critalla in Cappadocia. Incidentally, I cannot say which of the Persian governors received the king’s prize for the bestequipped contingent; nor do I even know whether the question was ever decided. When the army, after crossing the river Halys, entered Phrygia, it proceeded across the country to Celaenae, where the springs of the Maeander rise, as do those of another river of comparable size called the Catarrhactes. This stream rises in 34. At the Greek world’s more important isthmus, the Isthmus of Corinth, ships were dragged on rollers from one side to the other. Today a canal cuts through it. 35. The river in Thrace that would need to be crossed by the land army.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

367

the marketplace of Celaenae and empties into the Maeander. Here, too, the skin of Marsyas the Silenus is hung up, which according to Phrygian legend Apollo placed there after flaying Marsyas.36 27. In this city there lived a certain Pythius, son of Atys, a Lydian. This man entertained Xerxes and his entire army at a lavish banquet, and at the same time offered the king a sum of money for the war. At the mention of money, Xerxes turned to the Persians in his suite and asked them who this Pythius was and how much money he had that he made this offer. The Persians replied, “Sire, this is the man who gave your father Darius the golden plane-tree and the golden vine.37 And he is even now the wealthiest man in the world, after yourself.” 28. Marveling at their words, Xerxes now addressed Pythius himself, and asked him how much money he possessed. Pythius replied, “Sire, I will neither conceal anything from you nor pretend not to know my worth; in fact, I will tell you precisely. For as soon as I heard that you intended to sail against Greece, I looked into the matter, as I wished to give you money for the war, and found, on calculating, that I possess 2,000 talents of silver and just 7,000 short of four million Daric staters of gold. This I offer you as a gift, for I derive wealth enough for my needs from my slaves and the produce of my estates.” 29. Such was his reply, and Xerxes, delighted with Pythius’ words, said, “My Lydian friend, since I left Persia you are the only man I have met who has been willing to entertain my army; and nobody but you has come forward of his own free will to contribute money for the war.You have entertained my army sumptuously, and now promise an enormous sum of money.Therefore, in return for your generosity, I make you my guest-friend, and, in addition I will give you 7,000 staters of my own, which are needed to make up your four million. Continue, then, to enjoy all that you have acquired; and have the good sense to remain always the man you are today. For you will never regret it, now or hereafter.”38 30. Having spoken thus and fulfilled his promise, Xerxes pressed onward. Passing the Phrygian city of Anaua, and a lake from which salt is collected, he came to Colossae, a large Phrygian city, where the river Lycus empties into a chasm and disappears; it reappears nearly five stades farther on and then it, too, empties into the Maeander. Leaving Colossae, the army approached the border between Phrygia and Lydia and arrived at the city of Cydrara, where an inscribed pillar, erected by Croesus, marks the boundary between the two countries. 36. Greek myth held that Marsyas, a satyr, had been flayed after losing a musical contest to Apollo. 37. These two objects, containing vast amounts of gold and gems, were among the most precious possessions of the Persian kings. 38. The point of this genial exchange will become clear in chapter 38.

368

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

31. As the road leaves Lydia and enters Phrygia, it divides, one track leading left into Caria, the other to the right toward Sardis.The traveler who takes the latter road must cross the Maeander and pass the city of Callatebus, where there are confectioners who make honey out of wheat and the fruit of the tamarisk. Xerxes, who took this road, came upon a plane-tree so beautiful that he presented it with golden ornaments,39 and put it under the care of one of his Immortals.40 The next day he entered the Lydian capital. 32. In Sardis his first concern was to send heralds into Greece to demand earth and water,41 and to require that preparations be made everywhere to feast the king. The demand for earth and water was sent to all the Greek cities except Athens and Sparta. These renewed demands for submission were issued because Xerxes was confident that all the Greeks who had previously refused when Darius made the demand42 would now, out of fear, comply with his own. He sent his heralds in order to satisfy himself on this point. 33. He then prepared to advance to Abydus, where a bridge across the Hellespont from Asia to Europe had already been built. Midway between the cities of Sestus and Madytus in the Chersonese, a rugged promontory runs out into the sea opposite Abydus. It was here, not long afterward, that the Athenians under Xanthippus, son of Ariphron, seized Artayctes, the Persian governor of Sestus, and nailed him alive to a plank.43 He was the man who brought women into the temple of Protesilaus in Elaeus and committed various acts of sacrilege. 34. Toward this promontory the men to whom the duty was assigned carried two bridges from Abydus; one was built by the Phoenicians with cables of white flax, the other by Egyptians with cables of papyrus. (It is seven stades across from Abydus to the opposite shore.) The strait had been bridged, but a violent storm arose and tore the work to pieces, sweeping everything away. 35. When Xerxes learned of this, he became enraged, and gave orders that the Hellespont should receive 300 lashes, and that a pair of fetters should be thrown into it. I have also heard that he sent people to brand it with irons.44 It is certain that he ordered those who scourged it to utter, as they did so, these barbaric45 39. An appreciation of natural beauty was one of the hallmarks of the Persian kings, who maintained royal parklands in various parts of the empire. 40. Herodotus explains the meaning of the name of this elite corps at 7.83 below. 41. Symbols of submission to Persian sovereignty. 42. See 6.48. 43. The last event narrated by Herodotus in the Histories (9.116–17). 44. As would be done to a rebellious slave. 45. Herodotus here calls attention to the un-Hellenic behavior of Xerxes by calling his words barbarike, “befitting a barbarian.” This is the sole passage of the Histories in which the Greek word barbaros (or its derivatives) clearly carries a demeaning tone.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

369

and arrogant words: “You bitter stream, your master lays this punishment on you because you injured him without provocation. But King Xerxes will cross you whether you like it or not. No man sacrifices to you, and rightly so; for you are a muddy and briny river.” While the sea was punished by his command, he also ordered that the engineers responsible for building the bridges should have their heads cut off. 36. The men to whom this disagreeable duty was assigned did as they were told, and other engineers bridged the strait as follows. They joined together penteconters and triremes, 360 for the one on the Black Sea side, and 314 for the other. The ships were placed at right angles to the Black Sea, and parallel to the current of the Hellespont, in order to lighten the tension on the cables. Having joined the ships, they moored them with enormous anchors: those on the side toward the east to secure the ships against winds blowing down the strait from the Black Sea, those on the western side, facing the Aegean, to secure them against winds blowing from the west and south. The engineers left gaps in three places, to afford a passage for anyone who wished to sail small boats into or out of the Black Sea. When the ships were in position, they hauled the cables taut from the shore by means of wooden capstans. This time, instead of using the two sorts of cable separately for each bridge, both bridges had two white flax cables and four papyrus ones. The thickness and quality of both kinds were the same, but the flax was heavier, a cubit weighing one talent. When the channel was bridged, they cut planks equal in length to the width of the bridge, and these were laid side by side over the taut cables and lashed together on the top. This done, brushwood was spread over the planks, a layer of soil was heaped over the brushwood, and the entire surface trodden down into a solid mass. Finally, they ran a fence along each edge for the entire length of the bridge, high enough to prevent the pack animals and horses from seeing over it and taking fright at the water.46 37. The bridges were now ready; and when news came that the works at Athos were finished, including the breakwaters at either end of the canal, which had been built to prevent the flood tides from silting up the entrances, the army, having wintered in Sardis and fully equipped itself, started on its march to Abydus at the approach of spring. As soon as the host set out, the sun left its seat in the heavens and disappeared, though the weather was clear and cloudless, and day turned into night.47 Troubled at the sight, Xerxes asked the Magi what the 46. This remarkable description is tinged with Herodotus’ characteristic admiration for engineering and technology, even when it is used by an aggressor against his own people. The width and currents in the Hellespont make a permanent bridge impractical even today. Previous crossings had been managed by ferries, but Xerxes’ army was too numerous for these. 47. Astronomical calculations do not confirm a solar eclipse at this time and place. The qualification that the weather was clear recalls Herodotus’ discussion in Book 2 of winter storms that can blow the sun out of its track (2.24–25).

370

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

portent meant. They declared that the god was warning the Greeks that their cities would be destroyed, since the sun prophesied for the Greeks, the moon for the Persians. Thus informed, Xerxes continued the march in high spirits. 38. The army had just begun its march when Pythius the Lydian, terrified by the portent, and emboldened by Xerxes’ gifts, came to the king and said, “Master, I would ask a favor of you, something easy for you to grant, though to me it would mean much.” Xerxes, thinking that Pythius would request almost anything but what it turned out to be, said he would oblige him, and urged him to speak freely. Taking courage, Pythius said, “Master, I have five sons; and it happens that all of them have joined your expedition against Greece. Take pity on an old man, sire, and release one of them from service—the eldest—that he may take care of me and my property. Take the other four; and when you have accomplished your purpose, may you return home in safety.” 39. Enraged, Xerxes answered with these words: “Wretched fellow, how dare you mention your sons, when I am myself marching against Greece with sons, brothers, servants, and friends? As my slave, was it not your duty to follow with your whole family, wife and all? Rest assured that a man’s temper lives in his ears, and when it hears good things, his body is filled with delight; but when it hears the opposite, it swells with rage. When you did me good service, and promised more, you cannot boast that you were more generous than the King; so now your punishment will be less than your effrontery deserves. Your deeds of hospitality will protect you and four of your sons; but you will pay with the life of the one you cling to most.” On replying thus, Xerxes immediately commanded those who are assigned such tasks to find Pythius’ eldest son, cut him in half, and place one half of his body on the left side of the road, the other on the right, so that the army might march out between them. 40. Xerxes’ servants carried out their orders, and the army marched out between the two halves of the corpse. First came the baggage-carriers and beasts of burden, followed by a vast host of many nations mixed together indiscriminately, amounting to more than half the army. Then a gap was left, to separate these troops from the King. He was preceded by 1,000 horsemen, a select body of Persians, followed by 1,000 spearmen, also picked troops, with their spearheads pointing toward the ground; next came the ten sacred “Nisaean” horses, handsomely caparisoned.These horses are named after the vast Nisaean plain in Media, where enormous horses are bred. Behind these horses came the sacred chariot of Zeus, drawn by eight white steeds, with the charioteer on foot behind them holding the reins; for no mortal may mount that chariot. Then came Xerxes himself, riding in a chariot drawn by Nisaean horses, with his charioteer, Patiramphes, son of Otanes the Persian, standing by his side. 41. This was how Xerxes marched from Sardis—and whenever he was so inclined, he would leave his war chariot and travel in a covered carriage. Behind

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

371

him marched 1,000 spearmen, the best and noblest of the Persians, holding their spears in the usual position; after them came 1,000 picked Persian cavalry, and then 10,000, also selected from the remaining Persians, and serving as foot soldiers.48 Of these 1,000 had golden pomegranates instead of spikes on the buttend of their spears; these men encircled the other 9,000, whose spears had silver pomegranates. The troops who pointed their spears toward the ground also had golden pomegranates, while those immediately behind Xerxes had golden apples. Behind the 10,000 infantry came 10,000 Persian horsemen, after which there was a gap of four stades, and then came the rest of the army in a disorderly throng. 42. From Lydia the army headed for the river Caecus and Mysia. Beyond the Caecus, keeping Mount Cane on its left, it passed through Atarneus to the city of Carene. From there it traveled across the plain of Thebe and passed Atramyttium and the Pelasgian city of Antandrus. Keeping Mount Ida on its left, it entered Trojan territory. As they encamped overnight at the foot of Ida, a storm of thunder and lightning burst upon them and killed a great many men. 43. When the army reached the Scamander, the first river since the march from Sardis began that failed to provide enough water for the men and cattle, Xerxes ascended to the citadel of Priam,49 since he had a desire to see Troy. When he had seen everything and learned about the place from the people there, he sacrificed 1,000 oxen to the Trojan Athena, while the Magi poured libations to the heroes. During the night that followed, a panic fell upon the camp, but at dawn the army marched onward, keeping the cities of Rhoetium, Phrynium, and Dardanus, which borders Abydus, on its left, and the Teucrians of Gergis on its right. 44. When they reached Abydus, Xerxes wished to view his entire army. On a nearby hill, a throne of white marble had been prepared for his use by the people of Abydus. Xerxes took his seat on it and, gazing down over the shore, was able to see at one view his whole army and all his ships. While thus engaged, he felt a desire to witness a sailing match, which accordingly took place and was won by the Phoenicians of Sidon, to the great delight of Xerxes, who was pleased both with the race and with his army. 45. And when he saw the entire Hellespont hidden by ships, and all the beaches and plains of Abydus filled with men, he called himself blessed—and a moment later burst into tears. 46.When his uncle Artabanus, the man who had at first spoken his mind so freely and advised the king not to march against Greece, noticed that Xerxes was weeping, he said to him, “Your actions, sire, present a marked contrast. A moment ago you deemed yourself blessed, yet now you weep.” “I was overcome with sorrow,” 48. The so-called Immortals (see 7.83). 49. Priam was the legendary king of Troy at the time of the Trojan War. Troy in Xerxes’ day was no longer a thriving city but a nearly deserted ruin.

372

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Xerxes replied, “when I thought of the brevity of life, since not one of all this great multitude of men will be alive in a hundred years’ time.” In reply Artabanus said, “And yet we have known sadder things in life than that. Short as it is, there is no man, either here or elsewhere, who is so happy as not to have wished—and not only once, but often—that he were dead rather than alive. For the calamities that befall us, and the diseases that rack us, make life, brief though it may be, seem long. Thus death, in view of the wretchedness of our life, becomes our most desirable refuge; and the god, who gives us a taste of life’s sweetness, is shown to be envious.”50 47. In reply Xerxes said, “Artabanus, let us say no more about human life, which is indeed as you describe it, nor let us remember bad things when we have good things at hand. But tell me this: if the vision we saw51 had not appeared to you so plainly, would you have held to your original view and tried to dissuade me from marching against Greece, or would you have changed your mind? Come now, tell me the truth.” “Sire,” Artabanus replied, “may the dream we saw turn out as we both desire.Yet I am still full of dread, and can scarcely maintain my composure, when I consider all our dangers, and especially when I see that the two most important things are against you.” 48. “Strange fellow,” replied Xerxes, “what two things do you mean? Does my land army seem to you too small? Do you think the Greek army will be several times as large, or is it our fleet that you deem inferior? Or are you afraid on both accounts? If you feel that our force is inadequate, another armament could be mustered at once.” 49. Artabanus replied, “Sire, no sensible person could find fault either with this army or with the numbers of your ships. If you add to them, the two things I speak of will only oppose you the more.Those two things are the land and the sea.To my knowledge there is no harbor anywhere large enough to accommodate your fleet and to protect it in the event of a storm.Yet you would want not one such harbor only, but many in succession along the coast by which you sail. Since there is not a single one, you should bear in mind that man is fortune’s slave, not its master. Such is the first of the two enemies; I will now speak of the second. Should you meet with no other opposition, the land itself will become more and more hostile to you the farther you advance; for men are never sated by success. Even if no one resists you, the mere distance, increasing as time goes by, will finally produce a famine. That man would be best if when taking counsel he trembles, reflecting on everything that might happen, but in action is bold.” 50. Xerxes answered with these words: “There is good sense, Artabanus, in everything you have said. But do not fear everything alike, or calculate every 50. For this use of “the god” to denote the divine forces at work in human life, see note to 7.10E. 51. Referring to the dream the two men had both experienced (see 7.14–18).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

373

risk; for if in every matter that comes before us you weigh every disadvantage, you would never do anything at all; and it is better to be bold and suffer half the evils than to fear everything and suffer nothing at all. If you find fault with every course that is proposed, without ever pointing out a sound one, you are as likely to be wrong as the person who gives the opposite advice; indeed, you are on par with him. And as for that sound course, how could a man ever be certain? I doubt he ever could be. Success generally comes to those who are willing to act, not to those who weigh everything and hesitate. You see how the power of Persia has grown. If the kings who preceded me had felt as you do, or, even if they had not, had listened to advisers like yourself, you would never have seen our country in its present prosperity. It was by running risks that my ancestors extended their power. For only by great risks can great empires be won. We are therefore emulating our predecessors, and we set out at the best season of the year.52 When we have subjugated all of Europe, we will return home without having suffered famine anywhere or any other unpleasantness. For we are carrying abundant provisions with us, and will have the grain of all the countries and nations that we enter. We are marching against agricultural peoples, after all, not nomads.” 51. Thereupon Artabanus said, “Sire, since you will not allow for any fear, accept, at least, one piece of advice from me; for in such undertakings there is much to be discussed. Cyrus, son of Cambyses, subjugated and made tributary to Persia all Ionia except Athens. I therefore advise you not to lead these Ionians against their fathers. For we are well able to defeat our enemies without their help. If they come with us, they must either prove themselves base by helping to enslave their mother country, or highly honorable by helping to keep her free. In the former case, they will do us little good, whereas in the latter they may be able to do your army serious harm. Bear in mind the truth of the old proverb: the end is not always apparent in the beginning.” 52. To this Xerxes replied, “Artabanus, of all the views you have expressed, it is in your fear that the Ionians will desert us that you are most mistaken. We have the strongest possible proof of their loyalty—a proof that you witnessed yourself, along with everyone else who took part in Darius’ campaign against the Scythians. When it rested with them to save or to destroy the entire Persian army, they treated us honorably and faithfully, and did us no harm at all.53 Besides, as they will have left their children, wives, and property behind in our country, is it conceivable that they will rebel? Have no fear, therefore, on this account; but take heart and keep safe for me my house and empire. For to you, and you alone, I entrust my sovereignty.” 52. Because the crops would be ripe in the fields and would furnish food for the invaders. 53. Referring to the decision, urged by Histiaeus of Miletus, to reassemble the Bosporus bridge (4.136–42).

374

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

53. So saying, Xerxes sent Artabanus back to Susa and again summoned the foremost Persians. When they had arrived, he addressed them thus: “Persians, I have brought you together because I wished to ask you to show yourselves brave men, and not to disgrace the Persians’ past achievements, great and worthy as they are. Let each and all of us exert ourselves to the utmost, for we are aiming at the common good. Give your all in this war, and for this reason. I have been informed that the men we are marching against are brave warriors, and that if we defeat them there is no army in the world that will ever be able to resist us. And now let us pray to the gods who keep watch over Persia, and then cross the bridge.” 54. All that day they prepared for the crossing; on the next they burned all sorts of spices on the bridges, and strewed the roadway with myrtle branches, while they awaited the sun, which they wished to see as it rose. And as it came up, Xerxes poured wine into the sea from a golden goblet, and prayed, as he faced the sun, that no calamity might prevent him from subjugating Europe, or turn him back before he had reached its farthest boundaries. As he ended his prayer he cast the goblet into the Hellespont, and with it a golden bowl and a Persian sword, which they call an acinaces.54 I have not been able to ascertain whether he threw these things into the sea as an offering to the sun, or whether he regretted having scourged the Hellespont, and hoped by his gifts to atone for what he had done. 55. At that point the crossing began. The infantry and cavalry crossed by the bridge nearer the Black Sea, the pack animals and servants by the one toward the Aegean. The Ten Thousand55 led the way, all with garlands on their heads, and these were followed by a mass of troops of many nations. These forces crossed on the first day. On the next day the first to cross were the horsemen and the troops who carried their spears pointed downward. These men also wore garlands. Then came the sacred horses and the sacred chariot, and after them Xerxes himself with his spearmen and his thousand horsemen, followed by the rest of the army; at the same time the ships sailed over to the opposite shore. According to another account I have heard, the king crossed last. 56. When Xerxes had passed over into Europe, he watched his troops coming over under the lash.56 The crossing continued for seven days and seven nights without a break. It is said that just after Xerxes had crossed the bridge, a Hellespontine57 exclaimed, “Why, O Zeus, do you in the likeness of a Persian, and with the name Xerxes instead of Zeus, wish to lead all of mankind to the 54. A short straight sword, about a foot in length. 55. An elite infantry unit serving directly under the Persian king. 56. The last phrase gives important coloration to the whole scene. Xerxes’ power, as Herodotus depicts it, though enormous, was founded on compulsion of his troops (see 7.103). 57. That is, a Greek dwelling near the Hellespont.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

375

destruction of Greece? For you could have destroyed it easily, without taking all that trouble.” 57. When the whole army had crossed, and the troops began to march, a great portent occurred—a mare gave birth to a hare. Xerxes paid no attention to it, though one could easily divine its meaning, namely that Xerxes was about to launch an army against Greece with the greatest pomp and splendor, but would return to the same place running for his life. There had been an earlier portent in Sardis, when a mule dropped a foal with two sets of genitals, male and female— the male uppermost. 58. Xerxes, however, ignoring both omens, marched forward with his land army. But the fleet sailed down the Hellespont and proceeded along the coast in the opposite direction; for it was heading westward toward Cape Sarpedon, where it had been ordered to wait. The army marched eastward along the Chersonese, keeping on its right the tomb of Helle, daughter of Athamas, on its left the city of Cardia. After passing through the city that is called Agora, it skirted the shores of the Black Gulf and crossed the river from which the gulf takes its name. The river failed on that occasion, its volume insufficient to supply the army’s needs. From there the army turned west, passed the Aeolian city of Aenus and Lake Stentoris, and came to Doriscus. 59. Doriscus is a vast plain on the coast of Thrace, through the middle of which flows the large river Hebrus. Here there was a royal fort, also called Doriscus, where Darius had maintained a Persian garrison ever since his invasion of Scythia. The place seemed to Xerxes a suitable spot for drawing up and counting his forces, and this he proceeded to do. When the fleet reached Doriscus, the captains, at Xerxes’ command, moved all the ships to the adjoining beach, where Sale stands, a Samothracian town, and Zone. The beach extends to Serreum, the wellknown promontory. In ancient times this district belonged to the Cicones. Here the ships were hauled ashore and allowed to dry out.58 Meanwhile, at Doriscus, Xerxes was counting his troops 60. I cannot say with certainty the exact number of men each nation contributed, since this has not been recorded, but the entire land army was found to number 1,700,000 men.59 The counting was done as follows. They assembled a body of 1,000 men, made them stand as close together as possible, and drew a circle around them. The men were then dismissed, and a fence was built around the circle to about the height of a man’s navel. That done, other troops were brought into the enclosure, until the whole army had been counted. After the counting, the army was drawn up into divisions according to nationality. 58. In order to save the hulls from becoming waterlogged or riddled with marine worms. 59. A vastly exaggerated number. Historian Michael Flower, writing in The Landmark Herodotus, thinks that a number only 5 percent of this one may even be too large.

376

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

61. The following nations were serving in the army.60 The Persians, who wore the soft felt cap called the tiara, particolored tunics with sleeves, breastplates of iron fashioned to look like the scales of a fish, and trousers. They carried wicker shields, from which quivers were suspended, short spears, large bows with cane arrows, and daggers suspended from their girdles beside the right thigh. They were commanded by Otanes, the father of Xerxes’ wife Amestris. In ancient times the Persians were called Cephenians by the Greeks, but Artaeans by themselves and their neighbors. It was not until Perseus, son of Danae and Zeus, visited Cepheus, son of Belus, married his daughter Andromeda, and had by her a son named Perses (whom he left behind in that country because Cepheus had no male heir) that the nation took, from this Perses, the name of Persians.61 62. The Medes were equipped in the same way as the Persians (in fact their attire is actually Median, not Persian).62 They were commanded by Tigranes, an Achaemenid. In ancient times the Medes had been known to everyone as Arians; but when Medea of Colchis came to them from Athens, they changed their name.63 That is the account that they themselves give. The Cissians were equipped in the Persian manner, except that instead of felt caps they wore turbans. They were commanded by Anaphes, son of Otanes.64 The Hyrcanians were equipped in the same way as the Persians, and were commanded by Megapanus, who later became governor of Babylon. 63. The Assyrians wore helmets made of bronze, and plaited in a barbarian style that is not easy to describe. They carried shields, spears, daggers similar to those of the Egyptians, and wooden clubs knobbed with iron; they wore linen corselets. These people, whom the Greeks call Syrians, were called Assyrians by the barbarians. Serving with them were the Chaldaeans. Their commander was Otaspes, son of Artachaees. 64. The Bactrians wore caps almost exactly like those worn by the Medes, and carried native cane bows and short spears. The Sacae, or Scythians, wore trousers and tall pointed hats.65 They carried native bows, daggers, and the battle-axe, or 60. Following the model of Homer, who in Book 2 of the Iliad gave a catalogue of the Greek forces at Troy, Herodotus opens his “Xerxiad” with a roll call of the various contingents in the Persian army, extending to Chapter 99. But the descriptions of the weaponry and armor of each contingent adds an ethnographic touch that is all Herodotus’ own. 61. This very Herodotean etymological genealogy has the curious consequence of making the Persians kinsmen of the Spartans (see 6.53–54). 62. As mentioned earlier at 1.135. 63. Only Herodotus reports that Medea landed in Media after fleeing from Corinth and Athens. His mythology, like his genealogy, is heavily influenced by the similarity of names. 64. It is interesting to note that all non-Persian contingents are led by Persian commanders rather than members of their own race. 65. These distinctive hats can be seen on Scythian figures in both Greek and Persian art.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

377

sagaris. Though these people were in fact Amyrgian Scythians, the Persians called them Sacae, since that is the name they give to all Scythians. The Bactrians and the Sacae were commanded by Hystaspes, son of Darius and Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. 65. The Indians were dressed in clothes made from trees;66 they carried cane bows and cane arrows tipped with iron. They marched under the command of Pharnazathres, son of Artabates. 66. The Arians carried Median bows, but in other respects were equipped like the Bactrians. Their commander was Sisamnes, son of Hydarnes. Also in Bactrian equipment were the Parthians and Chorasmians under Artabanus, son of Pharnaces; the Sogdians under Azanes, son of Artaeus; and the Gandarians and Dadicae under Artyphius, son of Artabanus. 67.The Caspians wore leather cloaks and carried the cane bow of their country and the scimitar.They were commanded by Ariomardus, the brother of Artyphius. The Sarangians were conspicuous for brightly dyed clothing and boots reaching halfway to the knee; they carried bows and Median spears. Their commander was Pherendates, son of Megabazus. The Pactyans wore leather cloaks and carried native bows and daggers. They were commanded by Artayntes, son of Ithramitres. 68. The Utians and Myci under the command of Arsames, son of Darius, and the Paricanians under Somitres, son of Oeobazus, were equipped like the Pactyans. 69.The Arabians wore the zeira,67 fastened with a belt, and carried at their right side long bows, which curved backward when unstrung. The Ethiopians were clothed in the skins of leopards and lions, and carried long bows carved from palm-wood, no less than four cubits in length. They had small cane arrows tipped not with iron but with sharpened stone, of the kind used for engraving seals. They also carried spears with tips of sharpened antelope horn, and knotted clubs. When going into battle, they smeared half their bodies with chalk and half with vermilion. The Arabians from the country above Egypt were commanded by Arsames, son of Darius and Artystone, daughter of Cyrus. Of all his wives, Artystone was Darius’ favorite; he had a statue made of her in beaten gold. Her son Arsames was commanding the Arabians and the Ethiopians from the country above Egypt. 70. The eastern Ethiopians—for two kinds were serving in the army68—had been marshaled with the Indians. They differed from the other Ethiopians only in their language and their hair; for their hair is straight, while that of the Ethiopians in Libya is the woolliest in the world. They were equipped in most respects like the Indians, though they wore on their heads the scalps of horses, with the ears 66. From cotton, which Herodotus elsewhere calls “wool from trees” (3.47, 3.106). 67. Apparently a long, flowing cloak. 68. Ever since Homer the Greeks had thought of the Ethiopians as “divided in two,” dwelling both on the east coast of Africa and near India.

378

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

and mane attached. The ears were made to stand upright, while the mane served as a crest. For shields they carried the hides of cranes. 71. The Libyans were clothed in goatskin and carried javelins hardened in fire. Their commander was Massages, son of Oarizus. 72. The Paphlagonians wore plaited helmets on their heads and carried small shields and short spears.They also had javelins and daggers, and on their feet wore native boots reaching halfway to the knee. The Ligyans, Matieni, Mariandynians, and Syrians (or Cappadocians, as the Persians call them) had the same dress and gear as the Paphlagonians. The Paphlagonians and Matieni were under the command of Dotus, son of Megasidrus, while the Mariandynians, Ligyans, and Syrians were led by Gobryas, son of Darius and Artystone. 73. The dress of the Phrygians resembled, with a few small differences, that of the Paphlagonians. According to the Macedonians, the Phrygians had been known as Briges when they were Europeans and lived in Macedonia; but when they migrated to Asia they changed their name at the same time as they changed their country. The Armenians, who were descended from Phrygian colonists, were equipped like the Phrygians. Artochmes, Darius’ son-in-law, commanded both tribes. 74. The Lydians were armed much like the Greeks. These people were known in ancient times as Maeonians, and took their present name from Lydus, son of Atys. The Mysians wore native helmets and carried small shields and javelins hardened in the fire. They are Lydian colonists, and are called Olympieni, after Mount Olympus.69 Both the Lydians and the Mysians were under the command of Artaphernes, son of that Artaphernes who landed with Datis at Marathon. 75. The Thracians wore fox-skin caps, corselets, particolored cloaks, and deerskin boots. They carried javelins, small light shields, and small daggers. After they had crossed to Asia, they came to be called Bithynians; previously, as they themselves report, they had been called Strymonians, after the river by which they lived, and from which, according to their own account, they were driven by the Teucrians and Mysians.70 The commander of these Asiatic Thracians was Bassaces, son of Artabanus. 76.The [ . . . ]71 carried small ox-hide shields and a pair of Lycian hunting spears. They wore bronze helmets adorned with crests and with the ears and horns of an ox, also in bronze. Their legs were bound with bands of red cloth. In the country of these people there is an oracle of Ares. 69. Not the Mount Olympus in Greece but a different mountain in western Asia. 70. See 7.20 and note 31. 71. The name of some Anatolian people has fallen out of the manuscripts.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

379

77. The Cabalians, who are Maeonians but are known as Lasonians, had the same equipment as the Cilicians. (I will describe it when I come to the Cilician contingent.) The Milyans carried short spears, and had their clothes fastened with brooches; some of them carried Lycian bows and wore leather helmets. All of these nations were led by Badres, son of Hystanes. 78. The Moschians wore wooden helmets and carried shields and small spears with long heads. The Tibareni, Macrones, and Mossynoeci were similarly equipped. The officers of these contingents were the following. The Moschians and Tibareni were under the command of Ariomardus, son of Darius and Parmys, daughter of Smerdis, son of Cyrus; the Macrones and Mossynoeci were led by Artayctes, son of Cherasmis, the governor of Sestus on the Hellespont. 79. The Marians wore the plaited helmets of their country and carried small leather shields and javelins. The Colchians wore wooden helmets and carried small ox-hide shields, short spears, and daggers. Both contingents were under the command of Pharandates, son of Teaspis. The Alarodians and Saspires, armed like the Colchians, were led by Masistius, son of Siromitras. 80.The islanders who came from the Red Sea, where they inhabited the islands to which the King sends those called “Deportees,”72 were attired and equipped almost exactly like the Medes, and were commanded by Bagaeus’ son Mardontes, who died in battle the following year, serving as general at Mycale. 81. These, then, were the nations who served in the infantry. Their commanders, whose names I have already recorded, were in charge of marshaling and numbering the troops. They were also responsible for appointing the chiliarchs (the captains of a thousand) and myriarchs (the captains of ten thousand), while the latter appointed the hecatonarchs (captains of a hundred) and decarchs (captains of ten). There were also other officers, who gave orders to the various contingents and nations; but those whom I mentioned above were the commanders. 82. Over these commanders, and over the entire infantry, were six generals: Mardonius, son of Gobryas, Tritantaechmes, son of Artabanus (the man who voted against the war with Greece), Smerdomenes, son of Otanes (the latter two were nephews of Darius, and thus were cousins of Xerxes), Masistes, son of Darius and Atossa, Gergis, son of Ariazus, and Megabyzus, son of Zopyrus. 83. These generals commanded all the infantry except for the Ten Thousand. This body of picked Persian troops was under the command of Hydarnes, son of Hydarnes. They were called the Immortals because if any one of them was killed or fell ill, his place was immediately filled, so that their number was never greater or less than 10,000. 72. See 3.93.

380

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Of all the troops the Persians were the best equipped and the most valiant. Their arms have already been described, but they were also conspicuous for the abundant gold with which they adorned themselves. They were accompanied by covered carriages containing their concubines and a large train of well-dressed attendants. Special provisions, separate from those of the other soldiers, were carried by camels and pack animals. 84. All these nations use cavalry, but for this expedition only the following provided it: (i.) The Persians, who were armed in the same way as their infantry, except that some of them wore on their heads devices of hammered bronze or iron. 85. (ii.) A nomadic tribe called Sagartians—a people whose language is Persian, but whose equipment is half-Persian, half-Pactyan, who supplied eight thousand horses. It is not their custom to carry weapons of bronze or iron, except daggers; they use lassos made of plaited thongs. Relying on these whenever they go to war, they fight in the following manner. When they meet the enemy, they throw their lassos, which have a noose at one end; and whatever the noose catches, horse or man, they drag toward them. The enemy, entangled in the toils, is immediately slain. They had been drawn up with the Persians. 86. (iii.) The Medes and Cissians, who were equipped like their infantry. (iv.) The Indians, also equipped like their infantry, some on horseback, some in chariots drawn by horses or by wild asses. (v.) The Bactrians and Caspians, equipped like their infantry. (vi.) The Libyans, equipped like their infantry, but all riding in chariots. (vii.) The Caspeirians and Paricanians, equipped like their infantry. (viii.) The Arabians, equipped like their infantry, but all riding on camels, which in speed are not inferior to horses. 87. These were the only nations that furnished cavalry, and the total number, not counting camels or chariots, was 80,000.73 All the horsemen were marshaled in regiments, and the Arabians were placed last, to avoid frightening the horses, who cannot endure the presence of camels. 88. The cavalry commanders were Harmamithres and Tithaeus, two sons of Datis. The third cavalry commander, Pharnuches, who was to have served as their colleague, had been left ailing in Sardis. Just as the army was leaving Sardis, he met with an unfortunate accident: a dog ran under his horse’s feet, and the horse, not having seen it coming, was startled, and, rearing up, threw its rider. After his fall, Pharnuches began to spit blood, and later fell into a consumption. As for the horse, Pharnuches’ servants at once dealt with him as their master ordered. Leading him to the spot where he had thrown his master, they cut off his legs at the knees. So Pharnuches was relieved of his command. 73. Another hugely exaggerated figure.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

381

89. The triremes, numbering 1207,74 were furnished by the following nations: (i.) The Phoenicians, with the Syrians of Palestine, furnished 300 ships. Their crews wore helmets closely resembling those of the Greeks, and linen corselets; they carried rimless shields and javelins. This nation, according to their own account, lived in ancient times at the Red Sea, but migrated to the coast of Syria, where they live today. This part of Syria, together with the territory that extends from there to Egypt, is called Palestine. (ii.) The Egyptians furnished 200 ships. They wore plaited helmets and carried concave shields with large rims, boarding-spears, and large pole-axes. Most of them wore breastplates and carried large daggers. 90. (iii.) The Cyprians furnished 150 ships. Their kings wore turbans, the common sailors felt caps. In other respects they were dressed and armed like the Greeks. According to their own account, some of them came from Salamis and Athens, some from Arcadia, some from Cythnus, and some from Phoenicia and Ethiopia. 91. (iv.) The Cilicians furnished 100 ships. They wore native helmets and woolen corselets and carried light rawhide shields. Each man carried two javelins and a sword closely resembling an Egyptian dagger. In ancient times they were known as Hypachaeans; they took their present name from Cilix, son of Agenor, a Phoenician. (v.) The Pamphylians furnished 30 ships and were armed exactly like the Greeks. They were descended from the Greeks who after the fall of Troy were dispersed with Amphilochus and Calchas. 92. (vi.) The Lycians furnished 50 ships. They wore greaves and breastplates, and carried bows of cornel wood, cane arrows without feathers, and javelins. They wore goatskins, which hung from their shoulders, and hats encircled with feathers. They also carried daggers and scythes. The Lycians came from Crete, and were once called Termilae; they got their present name from Lycus, son of Pandion, an Athenian. 93. (vii.) The Dorians of Asia furnished 30 ships and carried Greek weapons. Having come originally from the Peloponnese, they were armed in the Greek fashion. (viii.) The Carians furnished 70 ships. They were equipped like the Greeks, except that they carried scythes and daggers. Their ancient name was mentioned in the first part of this history.75

74. The same number is given by Aeschylus (Persians 341), showing either that Herodotus knew this play or that both authors used a common source. A more realistic number, according to Michael Flower (The Landmark Herodotus 822–23), would be only half of this one or less. 75. See 1.171.

382

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

94. (ix.) The Ionians furnished 100 ships, and were equipped like the Greeks.76 These people, according to the Greek account, during the time that they lived in the Peloponnese and inhabited the country that is now known as Achaea, (before the arrival in the Peloponnese of Danaus and Xuthus), were called Pelasgians of the Coast. They took their present name from Ion, son of Xuthus. 95. The islanders furnished 17 ships and were equipped like the Greeks. They too were a Pelasgian race, and were later known as Ionians for the same reason as those who inhabited the twelve cities founded from Athens. The Aeolians furnished 60 ships, and were equipped like the Greeks. They too, according to the Greeks, were originally called Pelasgians. The Hellespontines from the Black Sea, who are Ionian and Dorian colonists, furnished 100 ships and were equipped like the Greeks. The Abydenians were not included, as they had been assigned by the king to remain at home and guard the bridges. 96. All the ships also carried Persians, Medes, or Sacae as marines.77 The best ships were the Phoenician, and of these the best were the Sidonian. Each contingent, naval or infantry, had a native leader; but I shall not mention the names of these leaders, as I am not obliged to do so for the purpose of my inquiry. Some of them were not worthy of mention, and every nation had as many leaders as it had cities; and in any case, these leaders were not accompanying the army as commanders, but merely as slaves, like the rest of the troops.78 I have already mentioned the Persian generals who had the actual command and headed the contingents sent by the various nations. 97. The naval commanders were Ariabignes, son of Darius, Prexaspes, son of Aspathines, Megabazus, son of Megabates, and Achaemenes, son of Darius. Ariabignes, who was the son of Darius by a daughter of Gobryas, commanded the Ionian and Carian contingent, and Achaemenes, who was a full brother of Xerxes, the Egyptian. The rest of the fleet was commanded by the other two. All together, the triaconters, penteconters, cercuri, and horse-transports numbered 3,000. 98. Next to the commanders, the following were the most renowned of those who sailed with the fleet: Tetramnestus, son of Anysus, from Sidon; Matten, son of Siromus, from Tyre; Merbalus, son of Agbalus, from Aradus; Syennis, son of Oromedon, from Cilicia; Cybernisus, son of Sicas, from Lycia; Gorgus, son of Chersis, and Timonax, son of Timagoras, from Cyprus; and Histiaeus, son of Tymnes, Pigris, son of Hysseldomus, and Damasithymus, son of Candaules, from Caria. 76. The reason that Herodotus here distinguishes Ionians from “Greeks” is made clear in what follows. 77. That is, as armed soldiers fighting from the decks. 78. See note 56 to 7.56 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

383

99. As for the other subordinate officers, I need not mention them, though I am compelled to speak of Artemisia. I am exceedingly surprised that a woman waged war against Greece. After her husband’s death she had obtained the sovereign power, and though she now had a grown-up son, her audacity and courage inspired her to sail with the fleet, though there was no necessity for her to do so. She was the daughter of Lygdamis;79 by race she was on his side a Halicarnassian, though on her mother’s a Cretan. She commanded the troops of Halicarnassus, Cos, Nisyra, and Calydna, and furnished five ships. Hers were the most distinguished in the fleet, after the Sidonian; and she gave Xerxes sounder advice than any of his other allies.The cities under her rule are Dorian; for the Halicarnassians were colonists from Troezen, while the others were from Epidaurus. 100.This concludes our discussion of the naval forces. After his forces had been counted and drawn up in order, Xerxes had a desire to ride through their ranks and see everything in person. Riding in his chariot to the contingents of all the nations, he made various inquiries, and had his scribes write down the answers, until he had gone from one end of the army to the other, both cavalry and infantry. Then, when the ships had been hauled down from the beach and launched, he left his chariot and went aboard a Sidonian ship. Seating himself under a golden canopy, he sailed along past the prows of the ships, inquiring about each and having the answers recorded, as he had done with the army. The captains had taken their ships about 400 feet from the shore, and arranged them in a single line, the prows facing the land, and with the marines on deck, armed as if for battle, while the king, sailing along between the ships and the shore, reviewed the fleet. 101. After he had sailed down the whole line and gone ashore, he sent for Demaratus, son of Ariston,80 who was accompanying him on his march to Greece, and said, “It would please me now, Demaratus, to put a few questions to you.You are a Greek, and a native, as I have learned both from yourself and the other Greeks with whom I have conversed, of a city by no means the smallest or the weakest in that country. Tell me, then, whether the Greeks will dare to lift a hand against me. My own view is that even if all the Greeks and the other nations of the west gathered together, they would not be able to withstand my attack, since they are not united. But I would like to know what you think.” In reply Demaratus said, “Sire, would you like a true answer or a pleasant one?” Xerxes urged Demaratus to speak the truth, and assured him that there would be no unpleasant consequences. 79. Another Lygdamis, the grandson of this one, reigned in Halicarnassus in Herodotus’ own day and, according to the Suda (a medieval biographical reference work), persecuted Herodotus and his family. 80. A former Spartan king, driven into exile by Cleomenes (see 6.61–70). No other evidence attests to Demaratus’ presence at Xerxes’ side in this campaign.

384

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

102. Encouraged, Demaratus said, “Sire, since you press me to tell the whole truth, and to say nothing that will one day be proved a lie, poverty has been Greece’s inheritance from old, but valor she has gained by wisdom and strict laws; and by her valor Greece wards off poverty and despotism. Though I think highly of all the Greeks of the Dorian lands, what I am about to say applies not to all, but to the Spartans only. First then, they will never accept any terms from you that would reduce Greece to slavery; secondly, they will fight you even if all the other Greeks submit to your will. As for their numbers, you need not ask how many they are that they are able to do so. If 1,000 of them should take the field, they will fight you; and so will any number, whether less than that or more.” 103. At this Xerxes burst out laughing and said, “What are you saying, Demaratus? That 1,000 men would fight an army like mine? Come then, would you, who were once, as you say, their king, be willing right now to take on ten men? And yet if all your fellow citizens are such as you describe them, then you, as their king, according to your customs, ought to be ready to fight with twice the number. So if every Spartan is a match for ten of my soldiers, I would expect you to be a match for twenty. In that case your claim would be well founded. But if you Greeks, who think so much of yourselves, are of the same size and quality as those with whom I have conversed at my court, take care lest your words be nothing but an empty boast. Let me put the matter as reasonably as I can. How could 1,000 men, or 10,000, or even 50,000, especially if they were all free and not subject to one master, stand up to an army as vast as mine? Suppose they have 5,000 men; then we would be more than a thousand to one! Now if Greece were under the control of a single man, their fear of him might make them unusually courageous; or despite being outnumbered they might be compelled by the lash. But left to their own free choice, they will surely act differently. I, for one, suspect that if the Greeks had to engage the Persians only, and the numbers were equal on both sides, they would find it hard to stand their ground. We too have among us the sort of men you were speaking of—not many, I admit, but a few. For some of my Persian spearmen would be willing to take on three Greeks at one time. But as you are ignorant of such things, you talk nonsense.” 104. In reply Demaratus said, “Sire, I knew from the first that if I told you the truth I would displease you. But as you demanded the strict truth, I told you how matters stand with the Spartans. Yet you are well aware what my love for them is likely to be now, when they have deprived me of my rank and my hereditary honors, and have made me a cityless exile. It was your father who took me in and gave me sustenance and a home. It would surely be unreasonable to reject such kindness; any sensible man would cherish it. I claim the ability to fight neither with ten men nor two, and I would not even willingly fight one; but were there a necessity or some great conflict that urged me, I would with the greatest pleasure fight one of those men who claim to be a match for three

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

385

Greeks. So it is with the Spartans; fighting singly, they are inferior to none, but fighting together they are the bravest of all. Being free they are not altogether free; for their master is law, which they fear more than your subjects fear you— at least they do whatever it commands, and its command never varies; it forbids them to flee from any battle before any multitude, and requires them to stand their ground and conquer or die. If in saying this I seem to you to be talking nonsense, I am willing to hold my tongue in future; but on this occasion, being compelled, I spoke. Nevertheless, sire, I pray that everything may turn out as you desire.” 105. Such was Demaratus’ reply; and Xerxes was not at all angry with him, but only laughed, and gently dismissed him. After this conversation, and after he had appointed Mascames, son of Megadostes, governor of Doriscus81 in place of the man who had been appointed to the post by Darius, Xerxes proceeded toward Greece through Thrace. 106. This Mascames, whom Xerxes left behind, was a man of such ability that gifts were sent him every year by the king, in recognition of his superiority to all the governors that had been appointed either by himself or Darius. In like manner, Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, showed the same favor to the descendants of Mascames. Persian governors had been appointed in Thrace and throughout the Hellespont before Xerxes’ expedition; but after it was over, all of them, except for the governor of Doriscus, were driven out by the Greeks; no one was able to oust Mascames, though many tried.82 It is for this reason that annual gifts are sent to him by the Persian king. 107. Of the other governors driven out by the Greeks,83 Xerxes considered none a brave man except Boges, the governor of Eion. Xerxes never tired of praising this man; and those of his sons who were left in Persia, and survived their father, he treated with marked respect. And indeed the man was worthy of the highest praise. For when he was besieged by the Athenians under Cimon, son of Miltiades,84 and it was open to him to depart from Eion under a truce and return to Asia, he refused, lest the king think that he had survived out of cowardice; so rather than surrender, he held out to the end. When all the food was gone, he raised a vast funeral pyre, cut the throats of his children, wife, concubines, and servants, and cast them all into the flames. Then, collecting all the gold and silver 81. The fortress the army had reached at 7.59, from which point the narrative now resumes. 82. Mascames continued to hold this fortress for fifteen years or more after the Persians generally had been driven from the region. Artaxerxes came to the Persian throne in 465 B.C. 83. Having mentioned Mascames’ later career, Herodotus looks past the endpoint of his narrative to see how others fared following the Greek defeat of Persia. 84. This siege took place in 476 and 475 B.C. The Miltiades referred to is the victor of Marathon.

386

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

in the town, he flung it from the walls into the Strymon,85 and finally leapt into the fire himself. For this action he is rightly praised by the Persians even today. 108. From Doriscus Xerxes marched toward Greece, and on the way forced all the nations through which he passed to join the expedition. For as I mentioned earlier, the entire region as far as Thessaly had been enslaved and made tributary to the king by the conquests of Megabazus, and, more recently, Mardonius.86 After leaving Doriscus, Xerxes passed the Samothracian forts, of which the westernmost is Mesembria. The next city is Stryme, which belongs to Thasos. Between the two cities flows the river Lisus, which on that occasion failed to supply sufficient water for Xerxes’ army, but was drunk dry. This region was formerly called Gallaica, but is now known as Briantica. Strictly speaking, however, it is actually Ciconian. 109. After crossing the dried-up channel of the Lisus, Xerxes passed the Greek cities of Maronia, Dicaea, and Abdera, and two famous lakes in their neighborhood: Lake Ismaris, between Maronia and Stryme, and Lake Bistonis near Dicaea, which received the waters of two rivers, the Trauos and the Compsatus. At Abdera there was no famous lake for him to pass, but he crossed the river Nestus, which there flows into the sea. Next he marched past the mainland cities that belong to the Thasians, in one of which there is a lake nearly thirty stades in circumference, full of fish and very salty, which was drunk dry by the pack animals alone.87 The name of this city is Pistyrus. All these coastal cities, which were Greek, Xerxes kept on his left as he marched westward. 110. The Thracian tribes through whose territory he marched were the Paeti, Cicones, Bistones, Sapaei, Dersaei, Edoni, and Satrae. Some of these lived at the coast, and furnished ships for the king’s fleet; others lived inland, and of these all the tribes I have mentioned, except the Satrae, were forced to serve in the infantry. 111. The Satrae have never, so far as we know, been subjugated by anyone, but are the only Thracians who to this day have kept their freedom. They inhabit lofty mountains, covered with snow and a great variety of trees, and are consummate warriors. They are the Thracians who have an oracle of Dionysus, situated on their highest mountain range. The Bessi, a Satraean tribe, interpret the oracles, which are delivered, as at Delphi, by a priestess; and her answers are not more elaborate. 112. Once he had passed through the region mentioned above, Xerxes marched next past the Pierian forts, one of which is called Phagres, the other Pargamus. Here his route lay close to the forts’ walls, as he kept on his right the great range 85. So that it would not fall into Cimon’s hands. 86. See 5.2 and 6.43–45. 87. The exaggeration by Herodotus (or his source) of the size of Xerxes’ army is belied by this sentence, since the animals would have become ill or died had they drunk salt water.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

387

of Pangaeum, where there are gold and silver mines; these are worked partly by the Pierians and Odomantians, but mostly by the Satrae. 113. Then he passed through the country of the Paeonian tribes who live north of Pangaeum (the Doberes and the Paeoplae), and continued westward as far as the river Strymon and the city of Eion, where Boges, whom I mentioned earlier,88 and who was then still alive, was governor. The region around Mount Pangaeum is called Phyllis; it extends westward to the river Angites, which empties into the Strymon, and southward as far as the Strymon itself, which the Magi were then trying to propitiate by slaughtering white horses. 114. After employing these and many other enchantments on the river, they crossed it by the bridges that they found at a place called Nine Ways, in the territory of the Edonians; and when they learned that the name of the place was Nine Ways, they took nine native boys and nine girls and buried them alive on the spot. Burying people alive is a Persian custom. I have heard that Xerxes’ wife Amestris in her old age89 buried fourteen Persian boys of distinguished family, hoping that the supposed god of the underworld would accept them in place of herself. 115. From the Strymon the army, marching westward, came to a strip of coast on which the Greek city of Argilus stands. This tract, and the region above it, is called Bisaltia. From there, keeping the Gulf of Posidium on his left, Xerxes marched through the so-called plain of Syleus, passed the Greek city of Stageira, and reached Acanthus. Like the others whom I mentioned before, the inhabitants of these places and of the country around Mount Pangaeum were pressed into his service. Those on the coast were forced to serve in the fleet, those inland to follow with the infantry. The road that Xerxes’ army took remains untouched to this day;90 the Thracians do not plough it or sow crops on it, but hold it in great honor. 116. On reaching Acanthus, Xerxes proclaimed a guest-friendship with the Acanthians and sent them as a present a suit of Median clothes, commending them highly for their zealous support of the war and for their work on the canal.91 117. It was while Xerxes was here that Artachaees, the superintendent of the canal, fell ill and died. This man, an Achaemenid, had been highly esteemed by Xerxes. He was the tallest of all the Persians (he stood four fingerbreadths short of five cubits)92 and had the loudest voice in the world. Xerxes was deeply distressed at his death, and had him carried out and buried with great ceremony; the 88. See 7.107 above. 89. Amestris lived until the 420s B.C., so the cruelty Herodotus reports is one of the latest events recorded in the Histories. 90. See previous note. Herodotus implies he is writing this sentence long after the events he is describing. 91. The Athos canal; see 7.22–24. 92. About eight feet tall.

388

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

whole army helped to raise a mound over his grave. The Acanthians, in obedience to an oracle, offer sacrifice to Artachaees as a hero, invoking him by name in their prayers. His death was a source of great grief to Xerxes. 118. The Greeks who had to feed the army and provide feasts for Xerxes were reduced to utter ruin. Some were even forced to abandon house and home. When the Thasians, for example, on behalf of the mainland towns, received and feasted the army, Antipater, son of Orgeus, one of their foremost citizens, and the man to whom the arrangements were entrusted, proved that the meal cost 400 talents of silver.93 119. The hosts in the other cities published similar estimates. For the feast, which had been ordered well in advance, was considered a matter of great importance. As soon as a city learned from the king’s heralds that it was expected to entertain the king and his army, its stores of grain were divided up amongst the townspeople, who all prepared wheat flour and barley meal over the course of many months. They bought up and fattened the best cattle they could find, and raised land birds in cages and waterfowl in ponds. They also had gold and silver drinking-cups made, as well as mixing bowls and whatever else is needed for service at the table. These preparations were made for the king himself and his tablecompanions; for the rest of the army, the preparations were confined to food. On the arrival of the army, there was a tent already pitched where Xerxes would rest, while the soldiers camped in the open air. When the dinner hour came, the hosts were put to great trouble. The guests ate their fill, and then, after spending the night there, pulled up the tent the next morning, seized everything it contained, and marched away, leaving nothing behind. 120. It was on one of these occasions that Megacreon, an Abderite, wittily advised his fellow citizens to go to their temples in a body, together with their wives, and implore the gods to spare them half their future ills, while expressing their gratitude for the blessing lately received, namely that King Xerxes was not in the habit of taking food twice a day. For if the people of Abdera had been told to provide breakfast as well as dinner, they would either have had to flee before he arrived, or, if they awaited his coming, have been reduced to beggary. 121.The host cities, though sorely pressed, fulfilled nonetheless the duties that had been assigned them. At Acanthus Xerxes left the fleet and ordered the naval commanders to wait for him at Therma, a settlement on the gulf to which it has given its name. For it was through this town, Xerxes had learned, that the shortest route lay. From Doriscus to Acanthus his land force had been marching in three sections, one of which proceeded along the coast in company with the fleet, and was commanded by Mardonius and Masistes, while another followed an inland route under Tritantaechmes and Gergis; the third, with which Xerxes himself 93. An amount that would have paid the daily wage of 24,000 average workers.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

389

traveled, marched midway between the other two, and was led by Smerdomenes and Megabyzus. 122. The fleet, when it had been dismissed by Xerxes, sailed through the canal that had been excavated at Athos, which led to the bay on which the towns of Assa, Pilorus, Singus, and Sarte are situated; from all these places the fleet received reinforcements. From there it headed for the Thermaic Gulf. Rounding Ampelus, the promontory at Torone, it sailed past the Greek cities of Torone, Galepsus, Sermyles, Mecyberna, and Olynthus, receiving more ships and men. This region is called Sithonia. 123. From Cape Ampelus the fleet sailed directly to Cape Canastraeus, the point of Pallene that juts out farthest into the sea, and gathered additional ships and men from Potidaea, Aphytis, Nea, Aega, Therambi, Scione, Mende, and Sane. These cities are in the region that is now called Pallene, but used to be called Phlegra. From there the fleet followed the coast toward its appointed destination, receiving additional troops from the cities that lie near Pallene, and border on the Thermaic Gulf, namely Lipaxus, Combria, Lisae, Gigonus, Campsa, Smila, and Aenea. This entire region is still known as Crossaea. From Aenea, the last of these towns, the fleet arrived in the Thermaic Gulf, off the territory of Mygdonia, and proceeded to the meeting at Therma. It also came to Sindus and Chalestra on the river Axius, which forms the boundary between Mygdonia and Bottiaea. Bottiaea has a small strip of coastline, which is occupied by the cities of Ichnae and Pella. 124. While the fleet waited near the Axius and Therma and the towns in between, Xerxes with the army left Acanthus and headed for Therma by the inland route. He passed through Paeonia and Crestonia to the river Echeidorus, which rises in the country of the Crestonians, flows through Mygdonia, and reaches the sea by way of the marsh near the Axius. 125. It was during this march that the pack-camels were attacked by lions,94 which came down from their lairs at night and never attacked either the men or the other pack animals, but only the camels. I marvel at what it might have been that compelled the lions to leave all the other animals untouched and attack the camels, when they had never seen that beast before or had any experience of it. 126. There are many lions in these parts, and wild oxen, with enormous horns that are imported into Greece. The lions are found in the region between the river Nestus, which flows through Abdera, and the Achelous, which flows through Acarnania. One never sees a lion anywhere in Europe east of the Nestus, or in the continent west of the Achelous; they are found only in the region between these two rivers. 127. On reaching Therma, Xerxes halted his army. The camp extended along the coast from Therma in Mygdonia to the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon, two 94. Parts of Europe used to have lion populations, as Herodotus goes on to explain.

390

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

streams that unite and form the border between Bottiaea and Macedonia. While the barbarians encamped there, all the rivers I have mentioned were sufficient to supply the Thessalian troops except the Echeidorus, which failed. 128. From Therma Xerxes could see the lofty peaks of Olympus and Ossa in Thessaly. On learning that between them there was a narrow gorge, through which the Peneus ran, and a road leading to Thessaly, he had a sudden impulse to go by sea and view the mouth of the Peneus. He intended to lead the army by the upper road through the inland parts of Macedonian into Perrhaebia, and down past the city of Gonnus; for he had heard that that was the safest route. No sooner had he felt this impulse than he acted upon it. Going aboard the Sidonian ship that he always used for such outings, he gave the signal for the rest of the fleet to put to sea, leaving the land army in camp. The sight of the river-mouth astonished him; summoning his guides, he asked them whether it was possible to turn the course of the river so as to make it flow into the sea at any other point. 129. There is a legend that in ancient times Thessaly was a lake, enclosed on all sides by towering mountains. Pelion and Ossa, their bases merging, do indeed enclose it on the east, while Olympus forms a barrier on the North, Pindus on the west, and Othrys on the south. Within this ring of mountains lies the hollow plain of Thessaly. Of the many rivers that flow into it, the five most important are the Peneus, the Apidnus, the Onochonus, the Enipeus, and the Pamisus. These rivers flow down from the mountains that surround Thessaly, unite into a single stream, and empty into the sea through one narrow gorge. After their waters commingle, all the other names disappear, and the river is known as the Peneus. It is said that in ancient times the gorge that gives the water an outlet did not exist; and therefore the rivers, which were then, like Lake Boebeis, without names, though they flowed with as much water as they do today, made Thessaly a sea. The Thessalians themselves maintain that the gorge through which the water flows out was caused by Poseidon, and that is a reasonable assumption. For anyone who believes that Poseidon causes earthquakes and that the chasms that result are the work of this god, would say at the sight of this cleft that Poseidon was responsible for it.95 To me it seemed clear that the mountains had been torn apart by an earthquake. 130. So when Xerxes asked if there was any other outlet by which the Peneus could reach the sea, the guides, who were familiar with the country, replied, “Sire, this is the river’s only outlet, since Thessaly is surrounded on all sides by mountains.” In reply Xerxes is reported to have said, “The Thessalians are wise. Aware of their danger, they submitted to us in good time, recognizing that theirs is a country that may be easily taken and subdued. An enemy need only turn the river in upon their land by a dam that would fill up the gorge and force the stream from 95. Herodotus does not himself bring Poseidon into his account of the geology of the region, though he also avoids any challenge to the beliefs of the pious.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

391

its present channel, and all of Thessaly, except for its mountains, would be under water.” In praising the Thessalians, he was referring to the Aleuadae, the Thessalian family who had been the first Greeks to submit to the king.96 He may have thought that they made their offer of friendship on behalf of the whole people. Then, having seen the place and made this remark, Xerxes sailed back to Therma. 131. His stay in Pieria lasted for several days, during which a third part of his army was cutting down the woods on the Macedonian mountain range to give his troops a passage into Perrhaebia. And now the heralds who had been sent into Greece to demand earth and water97 rejoined the army, some of them emptyhanded, others with earth and water.98 132. Those who gave earth and water were the following: the Thessalians, Dolopes, Aenianes, Perrhaebi, Locrians, Magnetes, Malians, Achaeans of Phthiotis, Thebans, and all the Boeotians except the Thespians and Plataeans. Against these nations the Greeks who had undertaken to resist the barbarians swore an oath to the effect that, once their affairs were well settled, they would exact from all the Greeks who had yielded without necessity to the Persians a tithe of their goods, and give it to the god at Delphi. 133. Xerxes sent no heralds in quest of earth either to Athens or Sparta for the following reason. When Darius, some time earlier, had sent to these cities for earth and water, the heralds who made the request were thrown at Athens into their pit,99 at Sparta into a well, and told to get the king earth and water from there.100 It was on this account that Xerxes did not send to ask them. What unpleasantness befell the Athenians for their treatment of the heralds I cannot say; perhaps it was the devastation of their city and the countryside around it, though I do not myself believe that this occurred as a result of this crime. 134. But upon the Spartans fell the wrath of Agamemnon’s herald Talthybius. For Talthybius has a shrine in Sparta; and his descendants, the Talthybiadae, still enjoy the privilege of being the only persons permitted to hold the office of herald. Now for a long time after the incident involving the heralds,101 the Spartans were unable, when sacrificing, to obtain favorable omens. 96. See 7.6 and note 8. 97. See 7.32. 98. The narrative chronology, which has been tightly sequential thus far in Book 7, will become jumbled in the forty-eight chapters that follow, and will generally precede what has already been narrated, as Herodotus recounts what the Greeks have been doing while Xerxes prepared his march. He will loop back to the point in time reached here at 7.179. 99. The so-called barathron, a place used for state executions. 100. The witticism is clearly unhistorical, for the Spartans and Athenians could not have so closely coordinated their actions. Heralds were normally thought to be under special divine protection. 101. That is, those sent by Darius to Sparta and Athens.

392

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Troubled by their plight, and regarding it as a great calamity, the Spartans held frequent assemblies at which the public herald would ask whether any Spartan was willing to die for Sparta. Thereupon two Spartans, Sperthias, son of Aneristus, and Bulis, son of Nicolaus, both men of noble birth, and among the wealthiest Spartiates,102 willingly offered themselves to Xerxes in atonement for the heralds of Darius slain at Sparta. So the Spartans sent these men to the Medes to be put to death. 135. The courage of these men was worthy of wonder, as were their spoken words. On their way to Susa, they visited Hydarnes, a Persian by birth, who had the command of all the nations on the Asian seaboard. He welcomed them graciously and invited them to dinner. During the meal he said, “Men of Lacedaemon, why do you refuse to be friends with the king?You have only to look at me and my position to see that the king knows how to reward merit. Now the king regards you, too, as men of merit; and if you submitted to him, he would give each of you a Greek territory to rule.” “Hydarnes,” they replied, “your advice is one-sided.You know one half of what is at stake, but not the other. For you understand what it is to be a slave, but have never tasted freedom and cannot know whether it is sweet or not. If you should ever experience it, you would advise us to fight for it, and not with spears only but with axes.” This was their reply to Hydarnes. 136. Thereafter, when they reached Susa and came into the king’s presence, and the guards commanded them, and even tried to force them, to fall down and make obeisance to the king,103 they refused, and declared that they would never do such a thing, even if their heads were forced to the ground. For it was not their custom to worship men, nor had they come to Persia for that purpose. So they fought off the ceremony, adding words to this effect: “King of the Medes, the Spartans have sent us here in place of the heralds who were slain in Sparta, that we may suffer punishment on their account.” In reply, Xerxes with true greatness of soul said that he would not emulate the Spartans, who by murdering the heralds had broken the laws that all peoples hold sacred. He did not intend to do the very thing for which he blamed them, or, by putting the two men to death, to free the Spartans from the stain of their crime. 137. This conduct on the part of the Spartans caused the wrath of Talthybius to subside for a time, despite the fact that Sperthias and Bulis returned home alive. But many years later it was reawakened, as the Spartans maintain, during the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. In this, I believe, the divine was clearly seen. For that the wrath of Talthybius struck heralds, and did not subside until it was satisfied, was simple justice; but that it should have struck the sons 102. Full citizens of the Spartan state. 103. See 1.134 and note. The Persian ritual of proskynesis, a self-prostration before the King, was detested by the Greeks because it treated a mortal as a god.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

393

of the very men who had visited the king because of it—Nicolaus, son of Bulis, and Aneristus, son of Sperthias (the same man who captured Halieis, a Tirynthian colony, with a fully-manned merchant ship)—this does seem to me to be evidence of divine intervention.Yet these two men, having been sent by the Spartans as ambassadors to Asia, were betrayed by Sitalces, son of Teres, the king of Thrace, and by Nymphodorus, son of Pythes, of Abdera; when taken prisoner at Bisanthe on the Hellespont, they were brought back to Attica, where they were put to death by the Athenians, together with Aristeas, son of Adeimantus, of Corinth.104 This, however, took place many years after the king’s expedition, and I will now return to my story. 138. The king’s expedition, though it was in name directed against the Athenians, was actually launched against the whole of Greece. The Greeks had long been aware of this; but they did not all view the matter in the same light. Some of them had given earth and water to the Persian, and were therefore confident, thinking that they would suffer no harm at the barbarians’ hands; whereas others, who had refused to submit, were living in great dread, partly because they considered the number of battle-worthy ships in Greece too few to engage the enemy,105 and partly because most of the Greek states were unwilling to take part in the war, and eagerly sided with the Medes. 139. Here I am compelled to express an opinion that I know will offend most people,106 but which, as it seems to me to be true, I will not withhold. If the Athenians, from fear of the approaching danger, had abandoned their country,107 or if they had remained and submitted to Xerxes, there would have been no attempt to oppose Persia by sea. And in that case, the course of events on land would have been as follows. However many walls the Peloponnesians had built across the Isthmus, the Spartans would have been deserted by their allies. Not that the allies would have deserted them willingly; but they would have been helpless to do otherwise, as each city, one after the other, fell victim to the barbarian fleet. 104.This incident occurred in 430 B.C., in the second year of the Peloponnesian War. It is thus one of the latest episodes related by Herodotus and helps provide an endpoint to his process of composition and revision.Thucydides (2.67) confirms the episode reported here but claims that Sadocus, son of Sitalces, was responsible for the heralds’ arrest, not Sitalces himself. 105. The Greeks realized that a victory on land would not win the war, since the enemy fleet could easily bypass any land-based defenses. A victory at sea would also be needed if the Persians were to be repelled. This calculation figures centrally in the assessment, made by Herodotus just below, that Athens, with its naval power, held the key to the war’s outcome. 106. If this passage, like the one just before, was composed after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 432 B.C., then Herodotus’ concern that his opinion will be unpopular is easily understood. Athens was by that time disliked as an imperialist aggressor, and most Greeks looked to Sparta as their liberator (see Thucydides 2.8). 107. That is, if they had left the region en masse to find a new homeland.

394

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Thereupon the Spartans, left on their own, would have displayed great deeds and nobly died. Either that would have been their fate, or else, before things came to that pass, the sight of one Greek state after another going over to the Medes might have prompted them to make terms with Xerxes. And thus, in either case, Greece would have bowed to the Persian yoke. I am unable to make out what possible use the walls across the Isthmus108 would have been if the king held sway at sea. So anyone who declares that the Athenians were the saviors of Greece would not fall short of the truth. For it was they who held the scales: whichever side they joined was bound to prevail. It was they, too, who, having chosen that Greece should remain forever free, roused all the Greeks who had not yet gone over to the Medes; and thus it was they who, after the gods,109 drove back the king. Not even the terrifying prophecies that came to them from Delphi, and filled them with dread,110 could persuade them to abandon Greece. They had the courage to stand their ground and meet the invader. 140. The Athenians had sent their messengers to Delphi to consult the oracle, and as soon as the customary rites had been performed in the sacred precinct and they had entered the sanctuary and taken their seats, the priestess, whose name was Aristonice, uttered the following prophecy: Wretches, why do you sit here? Flee to the ends of the earth, Leaving your homes and the citadel of your wheel-shaped town. Neither the head nor the body remains in place, Nor the feet, nor the hands, nor anything in between; But all is annihilated. Since fire, and keen Ares, Speeding along in a Syrian chariot, will lay her low. Many another tower will he destroy, not yours alone; To devouring fire he will give many shrines of the gods, Which even now stand bathed in sweat, Quaking with fear, while black blood, A harbinger of impending woe, drips from the rooftops. Be gone from the temple, and steel your hearts to grief. 141. On hearing this reply, the Athenian messengers were overcome with profound despair, whereupon Timon, son of Androbulus, a distinguished Delphian, seeing that they were giving themselves up for lost, advised them to take up olive branches, enter the shrine a second time, and consult the oracle as suppliants. 108. Meaning the Isthmus of Corinth, the line of defense urged by Sparta (see 7.207, 8.49). 109. Herodotus adds, almost as an afterthought, that the gods were primarily responsible for the Persian defeat. 110. See the next chapter, which relates an episode that preceded the arrival of Xerxes in Greece by at least several months.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

395

Following his advice, the Athenians went in again and said, “Lord, respect these olive boughs, and prophesy something better about our native land. Otherwise we will not leave your sanctuary, but will stay here until we die.” Thereupon, the priestess uttered a second prophecy, which ran as follows: Pallas111 cannot appease Olympian Zeus, Though she entreats him with many words and great cunning. Yet to you I will speak this other word, as firm as adamant: When all is taken within the bounds of Cecrops,112 And all that sacred Cithaeron113 shelters, Then far-seeing Zeus grants to Athena’s prayer That the wooden wall will abide for you and your children. Await not quietly the horde of horse and foot, But turn your back to the foe and withdraw. A day will come when you will meet him in battle. Divine Salamis,114 you will destroy women’s sons When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in. 142. Since this response both seemed and was gentler than the first, the envoys wrote it down and returned with it to Athens. When on their arrival they presented it to the people, and the attempt to interpret it began, among the various views that were expressed there were two that appeared to be directly opposed to one another. Certain older men supposed that the god meant to tell them that the Acropolis would survive; for in ancient times it had been fenced in with a thorn-hedge; and they imagined that this hedge was the “wooden wall” of the oracle. Others, however, maintained that the god was pointing at their ships; and their advice was that everything should be abandoned in favor of the immediate preparation of their fleet. Yet those who said that the “wooden wall” meant the ships were perplexed by the last two lines of the oracle: Divine Salamis, you will destroy women’s sons When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in. These words caused great distress among those who took the wooden wall to be the ships. For the interpreters understood these verses to mean that if they prepared for a sea battle, they would be defeated at Salamis.

111. An epithet of Athena. 112. Cecrops was a mythical early king of Athens. 113. A mountain in the north of Attica. 114. An island in the Saronic gulf, just west of Attica (not the Cyprian city of the same name).

396

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

143. But there was a man in Athens who had recently come to the fore; his name was Themistocles, and he was said to be Neocles’ son.115 This man declared that the explanation of the interpreters was not altogether sound. For if, he argued, the verse in question had referred to the Athenians, it would not have been expressed so mildly; the phrase used would have been “wicked Salamis” rather than “divine Salamis,” had the island’s inhabitants and their neighbors been doomed to perish there. Interpreted properly, the oracle threatened the enemy, not the Athenians. He therefore advised his fellow citizens to prepare to fight at sea, since their fleet was the “wooden wall” to which the oracle alluded. When Themistocles had presented this view of the matter, the Athenians found his explanation preferable to that of the professional interpreters, who had not only tried to deter them from preparing to fight at sea, but had opposed their even lifting a hand in their defense, and were advising them to abandon Attica and settle elsewhere. 144. On a previous occasion Themistocles’ advice had prevailed in a timely fashion. When great wealth had accumulated in the Athenian public treasury from the mines at Laurium,116 the Athenians were about to distribute it among the adult citizens at the rate of ten drachmas apiece. On that occasion Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to reconsider the distribution and use the money to build 200 warships for use in their war against the Aeginetans.117 It was actually the onset of the Aeginetan war that saved Greece, having compelled the Athenians to become a maritime people. For though the new ships were not used for the purpose for which they had been built, they became a windfall to Greece in her hour of need.These ships, then, were ready before the war, but the Athenians now set to work to build more, and they decided in council, after the debate about the oracle, to take the god’s advice and meet the invader at sea with all their forces, together with any other Greeks who were willing to join them. 145. Such, then, were the oracles that had been received by the Athenians. The Greeks who were loyal to the Greek cause, having assembled and conferred, exchanged pledges and decided that their first step should be to put an end to 115. Herodotus introduces the great Athenian statesman Themistocles in a way that calls attention to his humble origins. Rather than having “recently come to the fore,” Themistocles had in fact been prominent in Athenian politics for more than a decade. But in his lineage, which was far less aristocratic than that of his predecessors Cleisthenes and Miltiades, Themistocles was indeed a newcomer. 116. The silver mines at Laurium, in the south of Attica, furnished steady revenue for the Athenian state, but had become especially productive around 483 B.C., the probable date of the debate described here. 117. For the longstanding hostilities between Athens and Aegina, see 5.80–89, 6.73, 6.85– 91. Themistocles, according to other sources, only used Aegina as a pretext to get funds committed for shipbuilding, having actually foreseen that the new navy would be needed against the Persians.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

397

their feuds and internecine quarrels.118 For various states had become embroiled in disputes, the most important being the war between the Athenians and Aeginetans. Then, having learned that Xerxes and his army had reached Sardis, they decided to send spies into Asia to gather intelligence about the King’s forces. At the same time they resolved to send ambassadors to Argos to conclude an alliance with the Argives against the Persians;119 they also sent envoys to Gelon, son of Deinomenes, in Sicily, to the people of Corcyra, and to those of Crete, urging them to send aid to Greece. They did this in the hope of uniting, if possible, the entire Greek world, and of bringing all the states to act in concert in the face of dangers that threatened all alike. Gelon’s power was said to be enormous—far greater than that of any Greek state. 146. Once these decisions were made, and their disputes were settled, they sent three men off to Asia to gather information. These men reached Sardis and learned all they could about the king’s forces, but they were caught, interrogated by the infantry generals, and sentenced to death. But when Xerxes was told that they were about to be executed, he disapproved of the generals’ decision, and sent some of his guards to conduct the Greeks into his presence if they were still alive. The guards found the spies alive, and brought them to the king, who, when he learned why they had come, ordered his guards to take them around, show them all of his infantry and cavalry, and then, when they had seen everything, to send them away unharmed to whatever country they pleased. 147. When giving these orders, Xerxes explained that if the spies had been put to death, the Greeks would not have been able to learn beforehand that Xerxes’ power exceeded its reputation; whereas the killing of three men would not have done their enemies any serious harm. But if, on the other hand, the spies returned to Greece, he was confident that his power would become known, whereupon the Greeks would surrender their freedom, and thereby spare the Persians the trouble of marching against them. This reasoning was similar to that which he had used on another occasion. When he saw provision-ships sailing through the Hellespont from the Black Sea on their way to Aegina and the Peloponnese, his attendants, learning that they were enemy vessels, were ready to seize them, and looked to Xerxes for the signal to do so. Xerxes asked them where the ships were headed, and when they said, “To your enemies, master, with a cargo of grain,” he replied, “And are we not 118. Herodotus gives little fanfare to mark this first-ever Panhellenic congress. It took place at the Isthmus of Corinth (as we learn at 7.172), a convenient spot since it was neither inside nor outside the Peloponnese. There were thirty-one cities involved in the joint defense of Greece, at least by the time of the war’s conclusion. 119. The aloofness of the Argives is explained below at 7.148–52.

398

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

sailing there as well, carrying grain and other necessities? What harm are they doing in carrying our grain for us?” The spies, then, after they had seen everything and been sent on their way, returned to Europe. 148. The Greeks who had united to resist the Persian king, after sending spies into Asia, sent ambassadors to Argos. The Argives give the following account of their own behavior. They say that they were aware from the beginning that the might of the barbarian had been aroused against Greece, and knew that the Greeks would try to enlist them as an ally against the Persian. So they sent envoys to Delphi to ask the god what they should do. For 6,000 Argives had recently perished at the hands of the Spartans under Cleomenes, son of Anaxandrides;120 it was that loss that prompted them to consult the oracle.When they had asked their question, the Pythian priestess gave them this response: Hateful to your neighbors, dear to the immortal gods, Hold your lance at rest, sit still, keep watch, Guard your head, and the head will save the body. Such was the priestess’ response. Thereafter, when the Greek envoys arrived in Argos, they entered the council chamber and said what they had been instructed to say. The Argives replied that they were ready to join the league on condition that they obtain a thirty-year truce with the Spartans, and that they share with Sparta the command of the league. Though by right the sole command should be theirs,121 they would nevertheless be content to have the leadership divided equally. 149. Such, according to the Argives, was the reply made by their council, despite the fact that the oracle had forbidden them to join the Greek alliance. For though they feared the oracle, they were eager to conclude a thirty years’ truce with the Spartans, to give their sons time to grow up during the interval. They were concerned that if they failed to conclude a truce, and suffered a second defeat at the hands of the Spartans, they would be forever under the yoke of Sparta. The Spartan envoys replied to the Argives’ demands by saying that they would refer the question of a truce to their people; but when it came to the hegemony, they had received their instructions, and their answer was that Sparta had two kings and Argos only one; and though it was out of the question for either of the Spartan kings to be deprived of his command, nothing prevented the Argive king from having one vote like each of the Spartans. The Argives say that they found the Spartans’ arrogance insufferable, and that rather than yield anything 120. See 6.76–81. The conflict had occurred in 494 B.C. 121. Presumably on the grounds of mythic tradition: Agamemnon, leader of the Greek coalition against Troy, was an Argive.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

399

to it, they preferred to be ruled by the barbarians.122 Accordingly, they told the envoys to be out of their country before sunset, or they would be treated as enemies. 150. Such is the Argives’ own account of the incident. But there is another story, which is told throughout Greece, to the effect that Xerxes, before he launched the expedition, sent a herald to Argos who is supposed to have said, “Men of Argos, King Xerxes has a message for you: ‘We Persians believe we are descended from Perses, whose father was Danae’s son Perseus, and whose mother was Cepheus’ daughter Andromeda. Thus we are your descendants,123 and it would therefore be improper either for us to make war on our ancestors, or for you, on behalf of others, to treat us as enemies. You should instead keep quiet and hold aloof. For if things turn out as I wish, there is no people I will hold in higher esteem than you.’” It is said that the Argives took Xerxes’ message very seriously. For the time being they made no promise and put forward no demand. But afterward, when the Greeks requested their aid, they made the demand I have mentioned, knowing full well that the Spartans would never yield the command, and that they would therefore have a pretext for holding aloof from the war. 151. Some of the Greeks say that this account is corroborated by an incident that occurred many years later. Callias, son of Hipponicus, and certain others who accompanied him, had gone to Susa, city of Memnon,124 about a different matter. While they were there, it happened that some representatives of Argos arrived to ask Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, if the friendship they had formed with his father still held good, or if he regarded them as his enemies. King Artaxerxes replied that the friendship indeed held good, and that he considered no city to be a better friend to him than Argos. 152. For my own part I cannot accurately tell whether Xerxes did or did not send a herald to Argos, or whether Argive ambassadors went to Susa and asked Artaxerxes about their friendship; nor do I offer any other opinion on this matter than that of the Argives themselves. But this much I do know: that if everyone brought his own troubles into the open, in order to exchange them for those of their neighbors, everyone, when they had taken a look at their neighbor’s troubles, would gladly carry away their own.125 So the conduct of the Argives may 122. This contentiousness between rivals was the normal state of affairs in the Greek world, and in the late 5th and 4th centuries B.C. would lead to the revival of Persian hegemony in the region. At various times, every major Greek city sought alliance with Persia against its Greek enemies. 123. Perseus being of Argive origin. 124. So called because a “Palace of Memnon” stood at the center of the city (see 5.53). The embassy of Callias here described was part of a negotiation between Athens and Persia, datable only vaguely in the mid-5th century B.C. 125. Herodotus uses a word here that is correctly translated “troubles,” but the context seems to imply that he is really speaking of wrongdoings.

400

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

not have been more shameful that that of others. I am obliged to report all that is said, but I am under no obligation to be persuaded by it, and let this saying be understood to apply to my whole history.126 For it is even said that it was the Argives who invited the Persian king to invade Greece, because their war with the Spartans was going badly, and anything seemed better to them than their present misery. So much for the Argives. 153. Other ambassadors, including Syagrus the Spartan, were sent by the allies to Sicily, to confer with Gelon. Gelon’s ancestor, who first settled at Gela, came from the island of Telos, which lies off Tropium. When Gela was settled by Antiphemus and the Lindians of Rhodes, he took part in the expedition.127 In the course of time his descendants became high priests of the earth goddesses, an office they have held ever since Telinus, one of Gelon’s ancestors, obtained it in the way I will now describe. A party of men from Gela, defeated in a civil clash, fled for refuge to Mactorium, a hill town nearby. Telines reinstated these men not through force of arms, but solely by means of the sacred symbols of the earth goddesses. Where and how he came by them I cannot say; nevertheless, it was upon these that he relied; and he brought the exiles back to Gela on condition that he and his descendants would serve as high priests of the goddesses. And from what I have heard of him, I marvel that Telines accomplished such a feat. For I have always imagined that acts of this kind are performed not by ordinary men, but only by those who are stouthearted and strong. But Telines, according to the people of Sicily, was quite the opposite sort of man, being effeminate and rather soft. In any event, that was how he obtained this office. 154. When after a seven-year reign as tyrant of Gela, Cleandrus, son of Pantares, died at the hands of Sabyllus, a citizen of Gela,128 Hippocrates, Cleandrus’ brother, succeeded to the throne. During his reign, Gelon, who was a descendant of the high priest Telines, served with many others, including Aenesidemus, son of Pataecus, in his bodyguard. Before long Gelon’s merit caused him to be appointed commander of the entire cavalry. For when Hippocrates was laying siege to Callipolis, and then to Naxos, Zancle, Leontini, Syracuse, and many barbarian cities, Gelon served with extraordinary distinction. Of the cities I mentioned, only Syracuse escaped enslavement by Hippocrates. The Syracusans were saved, after a defeat at the river Elorus, by the Corinthians and Corcyraeans, who 126. An important statement of purpose on Herodotus’ part. Modern historians and, even more so, modern journalists tend to be more circumspect about “reporting all that is said,” and would not readily repeat a slander like the one that follows. 127. The foundation of Gela dates to the early 7th century B.C. 128. Cleandrus had become tyrant around 505 B.C. and thus was assassinated around 498. Hippocrates ruled another seven years, so Gelon came to power around 491.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

401

Italy Mediterranean Sea

Locri

Zancle Eryx

Rhegium

Egesta Selinus

Himera

Sicily

Mt. Etna

Acragas Gela

Casmenae

Syracuse

Camarina

100 kilometers 100 miles

Greek cities of Sicily in the 5th century B.C.

reconciled the parties on condition that the Syracusans would cede Camarina (which in ancient times belonged to them) to Hippocrates. 155. Now when Hippocrates, after ruling for the same length of time as his brother Cleandrus, died at the city of Hybla during a war against the Sicilians, Gelon, pretending to support Hippocrates’ sons, Euclides and Cleandrus, against the citizens of Gela, who were eager to recover their freedom, defeated the insurgents in battle; and then, supplanting the young sons, he seized power himself. After this success, he took control of Syracuse. The Syracusan “landowners,” as they were called, had been driven out by the common people with the help of their own slaves, the Cyllyrians, and had fled to Casmenae. Gelon brought them back to Syracuse and got possession of the town; for the common people surrendered themselves and their city at his approach. 156. Once he had acquired Syracuse, Gelon had less interest in governing Gela. Entrusting it to his brother Hiero, he proceeded to strengthen Syracuse, which meant everything to him. The city grew rapidly and flourished. For Gelon razed Camarina to the ground, brought all its inhabitants to Syracuse, and made them citizens; he

402

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

did the same for more than half the population of Gela. As for the Megarians in Sicily,129 after he had laid siege to their city, and they had surrendered and agreed to his terms, he took the rich men to Syracuse and made them citizens too, though they had started the war against him, and expected to be put to death for it; whereas the common people of Megara, who had played no part in the war, and therefore never expected to suffer any reprisals, were also brought to Syracuse, where he sold them as slaves to be exported. He dealt in like manner with the Euboeans of Sicily,130 making the same distinction. In both cases he was actuated by his belief that the common people are uncongenial to live with. In this way Gelon became a powerful tyrant. 157. When the Greek ambassadors reached Syracuse and came to confer with Gelon,131 they spoke as follows: “The Spartans and their allies have sent us to enlist your support against the barbarian. For you are doubtless aware that the invader is approaching—that a Persian, having led all the forces of the east out of Asia, has bridged the Hellespont, and is about to make war on Greece. Though he professes to be marching against Athens, his true aim is the subjugation of all the Greeks. As you have acquired enormous power, and as lord of Sicily you possess no small portion of the Greek world, we ask you to help us, and to add your forces to ours in order to keep our country free. For if all of Greece unites, and a great force assembles, we will be a match for the invaders in battle. But if some of our cities turn traitor, and others refuse to help, and only a part of the whole remains sound, then there is reason to fear that all of Greece may fall. Do not flatter yourself that if the Persian prevails in battle and subdues us, he will not, thereafter, advance against you. So take precautions beforehand. By helping us you will be defending yourself. Well-laid plains are usually crowned with success.” 158. So spoke the ambassadors; and Gelon replied with great vehemence: “Men of Greece, you have had the effrontery to come here with your selfish words and urge me to help you resist the barbarian. Yet on a previous occasion when I was waging war with the Carthaginians,132 and asked you to join with me in fighting barbarians, and when I entreated you to exact satisfaction from the Egestaeans for the death of Dorieus, son of Anaxandrides,133 and promised to help you free 129. That is, the inhabitants of Sicilian Megara, not the city in Greece proper called by the same name. 130. See above note. 131. Resuming the narrative from 7.153. 132. There is no evidence on which to date this conflict, though it probably fell within the preceding three years. The Carthaginians, a Phoenician people based in North Africa, were at this time competing aggressively with various Greek states for control of Sicily and the shipping lanes off its shores. 133. See 5.42 above, where Gelon’s role is not mentioned.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

403

the trading posts from which you have derived enormous benefits and profits, you refused either to help me or to avenge Dorieus’ murder; but as far as you were concerned, this entire region might now be under barbarian rule. Yet my affairs are in order and have prospered. And now the war has come round to you—so you remember Gelon! But though you have treated me dishonorably, I will not make a like return. I am ready to aid you, and to furnish 200 triremes, 20,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 cavalry, 2,000 archers, 2,000 slingers, and 2,000 light-armed horsemen; and I undertake to provision the entire Greek army for the duration of the war. I promise these things on one condition—that I serve as commander-in-chief of the Greeks against the barbarian. On any other terms I will neither come myself nor send others.” 159. At this Syagrus lost patience, and exclaimed, “Agamemnon, son of Pelops, would groan if he heard that Sparta had been robbed of her command by Gelon and the Syracusans! Say no more of our giving you the chief command. If you wish to come to the aid of Greece, know that you will be under Spartan generals. Or, if you decline to serve under a leader, withhold your aid.” 160. Thereupon Gelon, noting Syagrus’ hostile tone, made his final proposal: “My Spartan friend, reproaches tend to rouse a man’s anger. Yet your insulting words will not persuade me to make you a discourteous reply. Surely if you cling so eagerly to your right to the command, it is reasonable that I should cling still more to mine, as I have a much larger fleet and an army many times larger than yours. But since you find my proposal so repugnant, I will make a concession. Suppose you command the infantry, and I the fleet. Or, if you would prefer to command at sea, I will lead the land forces. You must either content yourselves with these terms, or do without this powerful alliance.” 161. Such was Gelon’s offer. At this the Athenian envoy, anticipating his Spartan colleague, replied, “King of Syracuse, Greece sent us here to ask for an army, and not for a commander. But you make it clear that you will not send troops unless you are appointed to lead, and this command is what you long for. Now when you asked to have supreme command of the entire Greek armament, we were content to keep quiet, knowing that the Spartan envoy was competent to respond for us both. But since, having been denied command of the entire force, you now ask to command the fleet, understand that even if the Spartan consented to this, we would not. For the command at sea, unless the Spartans desire it, belongs to us. If they prefer to keep it, we will not oppose them, but we refuse to yield it to anyone else. What would be the advantage of our having built the greatest Geek naval force if we yielded the command of it to the Syracusans? For we are Athenians, the most ancient nation in Greece, and the only Greeks who have never migrated.134 134. This claim of autochthony, of always having lived on the same land, is endorsed by Herodotus at 1.56.

404

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Even the poet Homer said that we sent to Troy the man most adept at arraying and marshaling an army.135 So we cannot be faulted for speaking as we do.” 162. Gelon replied with these words: “Athenian stranger, you have, it seems, no lack of commanders, though you may not have men for them to command. Since you concede nothing and claim everything, you had better hasten back to Greece and say that the spring of the year is lost to her.” The meaning of the expression was this: as the spring is clearly the best season of the year, so were his troops the best of the Greek army; Greece, therefore, deprived of his alliance, would be like a year with the spring taken from it. 163. The Greek ambassadors, having concluded their negotiation with Gelon, sailed for home. Gelon, meanwhile, who feared that the Greeks might be unable to overpower the barbarian, but could not bear the prospect of going to the Peloponnese only to be commanded—he, the tyrant of Sicily!—by the Spartans, adopted a different course. As soon as he heard that Xerxes had crossed the Hellespont, he sent off three penteconters, under the command of Cadmus, son of Scythes, a native of Cos, with orders to go to Delphi with a large sum of money and an abundance of friendly words; there he was to wait and see how the war turned out; if the Persians prevailed, he was to give Xerxes the money, and with it earth and water from Gelon’s domain. If the Greeks won, he was to bring the money back to Sicily. 164. At an earlier time this Cadmus had inherited from his father the tyranny of Cos, in a prosperous state, and had of his own accord, without any threat of danger, but purely out of a sense of justice, placed the power in the hands of the people. He then departed for Sicily, where he seized the city of Zancle (or Messene, as it was afterward called) and settled there. This was how Cadmus came to Sicily, and was the reason why Gelon, who already had evidence of his honesty, chose him for the mission to Greece. And now Cadmus added to his former honorable deeds an action that may have surpassed them all. Having in his possession the large sum of money that Gelon had entrusted to him, and that he might have kept for his own use, he preferred not to; and when the Greeks had prevailed in the sea battle, and Xerxes had departed,136 he brought the entire amount back with him to Sicily. 165. The Sicilians, however, maintain that Gelon, despite the necessity of serving under the Spartans, would nevertheless have come to the Greeks’ aid had it not been for Terillus, son of Crinippus, the tyrant of Himera. Driven from his city by Theron, son of Aenesidemus, the king of Agrigentum, Terillus brought into Sicily at this very time an army of 300,000 men, from Phoenicia, Libya, Iberia, Liguria, Helisycia, Sardinia, and Corsica—under the command of Hamilcar, son 135. The Athenian Mesnestheus is so described at Iliad 2.552–54. 136. Herodotus looks ahead to the events of Book 8.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

405

of Hanno, the king of Carthage. Terillus had prevailed on Hamilcar to bring this force partly by their friendship, but more through the zealous support of Anaxilaus, son of Cretines, the tyrant of Rhegium; for Anaxilaus, who was married to Terillus’ daughter Cydippe, and wished to be of service to his father-in-law, gave his own sons to Hamilcar as hostages in order to persuade him to make the expedition. Thus, as it was impossible for Gelon to give the Greeks any assistance, he sent the money to Delphi. 166. The Sicilians also say that the victory of Gelon and Theron over Hamilcar the Carthaginian took place on the same day as the Greek victory over the Persian at Salamis.137 Hamilcar was a Carthaginian on his father’s side only, since his mother came from Syracuse; he won the throne of Carthage by his valor; and I have heard that after the battle and the defeat he disappeared. Gelon searched for him everywhere, but could find no trace of him, alive or dead. 167. The Carthaginians themselves give the following quite plausible account of this matter. They say that during the whole course of the battle, which lasted from dawn until evening, Hamilcar remained in camp making sacrifices and seeking favorable omens, burning whole carcasses on an enormous pyre; and seeing, finally, as he poured libations on the victims, that his army was being routed, he threw himself into the flames, was consumed, and thus disappeared. Regardless of the manner of Hamilcar’s disappearance—whether the Phoenicians’ account is correct or some other—the fact remains that the Carthaginians offer sacrifice to him, and in all their colonies monuments have been erected in his honor, in addition to the one—the greatest of all—in Carthage itself. 168. The same envoys who had visited Sicily also went to Corcyra,138 where they requested aid in the same words as they had used to Gelon. The Corcyraeans immediately promised to send assistance and to come and help the Greeks, declaring that they could not stand by and see Greece vanquished; for if she fell, they would be reduced to slavery on the very next day. Thus they were bound to help her to the utmost. They made this fair-seeming answer, but when the time came to act upon it, they changed their minds; and though they manned sixty ships, they took their time about putting to sea; then they sailed no farther than the Peloponnese, where they kept their ships at anchor near Pylos and Taenarum, off the Lacedemonian coast, waiting, like Gelon, to see how the war would turn out. Having no hope that the Greeks would prevail, they supposed that the 137. A remarkable coincidence, if it is only that; but some ancient writers claim that Persia and Carthage had coordinated their campaigns such that the Greeks would be attacked simultaneously from the east and west. The battle in which Gelon prevailed over the Carthaginians is known as the battle of Himera. Herodotus is looking ahead to the time frame of Book 8. 138. Modern Corfu, a Greek island in the Adriatic.

406

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Persians, after winning a great victory, would then be masters of all of Greece. They therefore acted in such a way that they would be able to say to Xerxes something to this effect: “Sire, though the Greeks tried to enlist our aid, and though we had a considerable force and could have provided a greater number of ships than any Greek state except Athens, we refused, since we would not oppose you or do anything to displease you.” They hoped that such a speech would get them better treatment than the other Greek states; and it would have done so, in my opinion. At the same time, they also had an excuse ready to give their countrymen, which they used in due course. For when the Greeks reproached them for their failure to send aid, the Corcyraeans claimed that they had manned sixty ships, but had been prevented by the Etesian winds139 from rounding Cape Malea, and therefore it was not from any cowardice on their part that they had missed the battle of Salamis. In this way the Corcyraeans escaped the reproaches of the Greeks. 169. The Cretans, when the Greek envoys arrived to request aid, acted as follows. They sent state messengers to Delphi to ask the god whether it would be to their advantage to lend aid to Greece. “Fools!” the priestess replied. “Do you not still complain of all the tears that Minos sent you for assisting Menelaus? Was he not angry because the Greeks declined to help you avenge his death at Camicus,140 whereas you helped them avenge the abduction by a barbarian of a woman from Sparta?”141 When the Cretans heard this answer, they gave up all thought of assisting the Greeks. 170. For legend has it that Minos went to Sicania, or Sicily, as it is now called, in search of Daedalus, and there met with a violent death. In the course of time all the Cretans except the Polichnites and the Praesians, encouraged by some god, launched a vast expedition into Sicania, and besieged the city of Camicus for five years. (In my day Camicus belonged to Agrigentum.) Finally, unable to take the place or to carry on the siege, since their provisions were gone, they gave up and sailed away. As they neared Iapygia, a great storm overtook them and cast them out on land. Their vessels were dashed in pieces, and therefore, as they had no means of returning to Crete, they founded the city of Hyria, changing their name from Cretans to Messapian Iapygians, and becoming mainlanders instead of islanders. From Hyria they founded the other towns, which the Tarentines, at a much later time,142 suffered heavy losses in attempting to seize. Indeed this was the worst slaughter of Greeks that I know of. And it was not only the Tarentines 139. These “Yearly” winds, associated with summer, might still have been blowing at the time of the battle (late September). 140. Supposedly Minos, the legendary king of early Crete, had been killed at Camicus, in Sicily, as Herodotus goes on to explain. 141. Referring to the Trojan War, in which the Cretans had taken part. 142. Possibly 473 B.C. The Tarentines are Greeks from the Italian city of Tarentum.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

407

who suffered but also the people of Rhegium, who had been forced to aid the Tarentines by Micythus, son of Chirus, and lost 3,000 men. The Tarentine losses were beyond counting. Micythus had been a household servant of Anaxilaus, and was left by him in charge of Rhegium. It was he who was afterward expelled from Rhegium, whereupon he settled at Tegea in Arcadia and dedicated the many famous statues at Olympia. 171. But this account of the Rhegians and the Tarentines has been a digression. According to the Praesians, men of many nations, but especially Greeks, settled in Crete, which had been depopulated.143 Then in the third generation after Minos’ death came the Trojan war, in which the Cretans were among the most ardent supporters of Menelaus. But a retribution awaited them on their return from Troy; famine and plague afflicted both men and cattle, so that Crete was again left destitute of men. The few survivors were joined by new settlers, the third wave of “Cretans,” by whom the island has been inhabited ever since. The Pythian priestess, having reminded the Cretans of these events, prevented them from assisting the Greeks in spite of their inclination to do so. 172.TheThessalians did not submit to the Medes until they were compelled;144 for they made it perfectly clear that the machinations of the Aleuadae145 were not to their liking. As soon as they learned that the Persian was about to cross over into Europe, they sent messengers to the Greek deputies who had met to confer at the Isthmus. These deputies had been chosen from all the cities that were loyal to the common cause. The Thessalian messengers on their arrival addressed the assembly as follows: “Men of Greece, the pass of Olympus146 must be defended in order to save Thessaly as well as the rest of Greece. We are ready to help you defend it, but you, for your part, must send us a strong force. Otherwise we give you fair warning that we will make terms with the Persian. For it would not be right, merely because our country lies before all the rest of Greece, to die alone in your defense. If you refuse to lend aid, you have no power to coerce us: no compulsion is stronger than powerlessness. We will therefore do what we can to save ourselves.” So spoke the Thessalians. 173. In response the Greeks decided to send an army by sea to Thessaly, to defend the pass. When this army had assembled, it sailed out through the Euripus.147 On reaching Alus in Achaea, the men disembarked, left the ships there, 143. Having ended one digression, Herodotus returns to another thread only remotely connected to the main story (in that it explains the Pythian reply to the Cretans at 7.169). 144. To the extent a continuous thread can be traced, the narrative resumes from 7.145. 145. See 7.6 and note 8. 146. The vale of Tempe, as is made clear below. The time frame (as Herodotus makes evident in the next chapter) is well before the already-narrated visit of Xerxes to this vale (7.128–30). 147. The straits at the northwest corner of Euboea.

408

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

and proceeded overland to Thessaly. There they occupied Tempe, the pass that leads from lower Macedonia into Thessaly along the course of the river Peneus, between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa. It was here that 10,000 Greek menat-arms, joined by the Thessalian cavalry, pitched their camp. The Spartans were under the command of Euanetus, son of Carenus, who had been selected from the polemarchs,148 though he did not belong to a royal house. The Athenians were commanded by Themistocles, son of Neocles. But they stayed there only for a few days; for messengers arrived from Alexander, son of Amyntas, the Macedonian,149 reporting the number of the invader’s troops and ships, and advising the Greeks to withdraw from Tempe and not remain in the pass to be trampled underfoot by the invader. As their counsel seemed to be good, and the Macedonian friendly, the Greeks followed their advice. Yet it seems to me that they were mainly persuaded to leave by the fear they felt on learning that there was another pass into Thessaly though upper Macedonia and Perrhaebia, near the city of Gonnus—the pass by which Xerxes actually invaded. The Greeks therefore returned to their ships and sailed back to the Isthmus. 174. Such were the circumstances of the expedition to Thessaly. It took place when the king was at Abydus, just as he was about to cross from Asia into Europe. And consequently the Thessalians, finding themselves without allies, no longer hesitated, but went over to the Medes—and so whole-heartedly that in the course of the war they proved of the greatest use to Xerxes. 175. The Greeks, on their return to the Isthmus, then gave thought, in light of Alexander’s words, to where they should make a stand, and what places they should occupy. The view that prevailed was that they should guard the pass at Thermopylae, since it was narrower than the pass into Thessaly, and closer to home. The path by means of which the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae were intercepted150 was not known to them until, after their arrival, they learned of it from the people of Trachis. The Greeks decided to guard this pass in order to prevent the barbarians from entering Greece, and at the same time to send the fleet to Artemisium in the territory of Histiaeotis; for as these places are near to one another, it would be easy for the fleet and army to communicate. Some description of the two places is in order. 176. Artemisium is where the sea of Thrace contracts into a narrow channel between the island of Sciathus and the mainland of Magnesia.151 From this 148. High military commanders, second only to the Spartan kings. 149. King Alexander I, who as prince had already shown his hatred of Persian occupation (see 5.19–21). Macedonia had nevertheless become subject to Persia, such that Alexander could help the Greeks only furtively. 150. Looking ahead to subsequent events. 151. That is, the straits formed by the north end of Euboea and the mainland.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

409

channel you come to Artemisium, which lies on the beach of Euboea and contains a temple of Artemis. As for the entrance into Greece at Trachis, the pass is fifty feet wide, though it is even narrower both above and below Thermopylae. At both Alpeni and the river Phoenix, near the city of Anthela, it is only wide enough to accommodate a single carriage. West of Thermopylae rises a steep and lofty mountain, impossible to scale, that extends to Oeta. East of the pass lie swamp and sea. Along that stretch there are hot springs, which the local people call the Cauldrons, and above them stands an altar of Heracles. A wall had once been built across the pass, and many years earlier a gateway had been added to it. These were built by the Phocians, in fear of the Thessalians, when the latter were coming from Thesprotia to settle in the land of Aeolis, which they still occupy.152 Since the Thessalians were trying to subjugate Phocis, the Phocians built the wall to protect themselves, and likewise diverted the hot water from the springs into the pass, so that the ground would be cut into gullies, resorting to all possible means to prevent the Thessalians from invading their country. The wall had been built in ancient times, and the greater part of it now lay in ruins. Now, however, the Greeks decided to rebuild it, and there prevent the barbarians from entering Greece. They planned to procure their provisions from Alpeni, the village that lies closest to the road. 177.These, then, were the places that the Greeks thought would suit their purpose. Having weighed every eventuality, and grasped that in this terrain the barbarians would be unable to make use of their vast numbers or of their cavalry,153 they decided to await the invader there. And when news reached them that the Persians were in Pieria, they broke up from the Isthmus and proceeded, some on foot to Thermopylae, others by sea to Artemisium. 178. As the Greeks were hastening to their stations, the Delphians, alarmed for themselves and for Greece, consulted the oracle. The god advised them to pray to the winds, who would be good allies to Greece. As soon as they received this prophecy, the Delphians sent word of it to all the Greeks who were eager for freedom; and by reporting the oracle at a time when they were wracked with fear of the barbarian, earned their eternal gratitude. Thereafter they erected an altar to the winds in Thyia—a place named after Cephisus’ daughter, who has a precinct there—and propitiated them with sacrifices. And even today, in honor of the oracle, the Delphians sacrifice to the winds. 179. Xerxes’ fleet now left Therma; and ten of its swiftest ships headed straight for Sciathus, where three Greek ships, one from Troezen, one from Aegina, and 152. Events that were already “ancient history” in Herodotus’ day, as he indicates below. 153. Horsemen, who need large stretches of open ground to mount charges, would be useless to the Persians in such a tight space.

410

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

one from Attica, were on the lookout. The instant they saw the enemy approaching, the Greek ships fled. 180. The barbarians at once gave chase, and the Troezenian ship, which was commanded by Prexinus, fell into their hands. Then the Persians, selecting the handsomest marine, took him to the prow of the ship and cut his throat, thinking the sacrifice of their first handsome Greek prisoner a good omen for their cause. The man’s name was Leon, and his name may have had something to do with his fate.154 181. The Aeginetan ship, under the command of Asonides, gave the barbarians considerable trouble. One of its marines, Pytheas, son of Ischenous, distinguished himself on that day. For after his ship was captured, he stood his ground and fought until he was nearly cut to pieces. When on falling he did not die but continued to draw breath, the Persian marines did all they could to save him, since he had fought so bravely. They dressed his wounds with myrrh, and bound them with linen bandages. On returning to their base, they showed him off admiringly to the entire army, and treated him with great kindness; but all of his captured shipmates were treated merely as slaves. 182. Thus two of the Greek ships were captured. The third, whose captain was Phormus of Athens, fled to the mouth of the Peneus, where it ran aground. The barbarians got possession of the hull, but not of the men. For as soon as they had run the ship aground, the Athenians leapt out and made their way through Thessaly back to Athens. 183. When the Greeks encamped at Artemisium learned what had happened by signal-fires from Sciathus, they were so frightened that they moved their ships from Artemisium to Chalcis, intending to guard the Euripus, and leaving lookouts on the heights of Euboea. Meanwhile three of the ten barbarian ships sailed as far as Myrmex, the sunken rock that lies in the channel between Sciathus and Magnesia, and set up the stone pillar they had brought to mark the spot. Now that the course was clear, the entire barbarian fleet set sail from Therma, eleven days after the king’s departure. (The rock, which lay in their path, had been made known to them by Pammon of Scyros.) After a day’s sail, the barbarians arrived at Sepias in Magnesia and the beach that lies between the city of Casthanaea and Cape Sepias. 184. The Persian fleet reached Sepias, and the army Thermopylae, without sustaining any loss. At the outset, according to my calculations, the fleet from Asia, which included the contingents of the various nations, numbered 1,207 ships, and at the rate of 200 men per ship carried 241,400 men. In addition to the 200 native soldiers, each ship carried 30 fighting men, who were either Persians, Medes, 154. The name means “lion,” but it is not clear how this meaning relates to his having his throat cut.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

411

or Sacae, making an additional 36,210 men. Besides the 1,207 triremes, there were 3,000 penteconters, carrying roughly 80 men apiece; hence, the penteconters were carrying 240,000 men. Thus the fleet from Asia was carrying a total of 517,610 men. The number of foot soldiers was 1,700,000; that of horsemen 80,000. The Arabian camel-brigade and Libyan charioteers numbered 20,000. Thus the fleet, infantry, cavalry, camel-brigade, and charioteers included a total of 2,317,610 men. Such was the force from Asia, excluding the camp followers and the men in the food-transports. 185. To this amount we must add the forces gathered in Europe, though I can only estimate their number. The Greeks from Thrace and from the islands of its coast furnished 120 ships, which would have carried 24,000 men. The infantry furnished by the Thracians, Paeonians, Eordi, Bottiaeans, Chalcidians, Brygi, Pierians, Macedonians, Perrhaebi, Aenianes, Dolopes, Magnesians, Achaeans, and the peoples who inhabited the Thracian seaboard, I would estimate numbered 300,000 men. These numbers, added to those of the force from Asia, bring the total number of fighting men to 2,641,610. 186. Such being the number of fighting men, I believe that the soldiers’ attendants and the crews of the provision-boats, and of the other vessels that sailed with expedition, were not less but rather more numerous than the troops who actually fought. But I will assume, for the purpose of my calculation, that they were equal to them in number. I must therefore add to the earlier sum an exactly equal amount, and conclude that Xerxes, son of Darius, reached Sepias and Thermopylae with an army of 5,283,220 men.155 187. Such was the number of Xerxes’ entire host. As for the women, cooks, concubines, and eunuchs, no one could accurately estimate their number, any more than that of the baggage-horses, other pack animals, and Indian dogs that followed the army, since they were too numerous to count. So I am not at all surprised that rivers should in some instances have failed to supply the army; indeed, I find it astonishing that the supplies of food for so many thousands never gave out. For I calculate that if each man consumed no more than a choenix of wheat a day, the daily consumption of wheat amounted to 110,340 medimni156, and this without counting what was consumed by the women, eunuchs, pack animals, and dogs. And among so many thousands of men, there was no one who, for beauty and stature, was more worthy than Xerxes himself to wield so vast a power.157 188. The Persian fleet, as I mentioned, reached the Magnesian coast between the city of Casthanaea and Cape Sepias, where the ships of the first row moored at the shore, while the remainder, as the beach did not extend very far, rode at 155. For the reliability of all these numbers, see 7.60 above and note. 156. A medimnus is a measure of volume equivalent to about fifty quarts. 157. An odd tribute to Xerxes, placed in an odd context.

412

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

anchor, eight rows deep. They remained in this position during the night, but at dawn the calm and stillness gave way to a raging sea, when a violent storm, driven by a furious east wind, known by the natives as the Hellespontian, attacked the fleet. Everyone who became aware of the wind as it was rising, and were moored where this was feasible, anticipated the storm by dragging their ships up on the beach, and thus saved themselves as well. But the ships that were caught out at sea were driven ashore, some of them to the place known as the Ovens, at the foot of Mount Pelion, others onto the beach itself. A number were driven to Cape Sepias, while others were dashed to pieces at Meliboea and Casthanaea. The storm was not of the kind to be resisted. 189. It is said that the Athenians, in response to an oracle advising them to “ask help from their son-in-law,” had called on Boreas.158 Boreas, according to the Greeks, had married a woman from Attica—Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus.159 The Athenians, as we are told, believed that this marriage made Boreas their son-in-law; and when they noticed from their station at Chalcis in Euboea that the wind was rising—or perhaps even before then—they offered sacrifice to Boreas and Oreithyia, begging them to come to their aid and to destroy the barbarians’ ships as they done earlier at Athos. Now whether this was why Boreas assailed the barbarians at their anchorage I cannot say;160 but the Athenians declare that Boreas, having aided them earlier, did so as well on this occasion. They therefore, on their return home, built a shrine in honor of Boreas beside the river Ilissus. 190.Those who put the Persian losses in this storm at the lowest say that 400 of their ships were destroyed, along with countless men and an enormous quantity of treasure. The wreck, however, proved a great windfall for Aminocles, son of Cretines, a Magnesian who owned land in the neighborhood of Sepias. For he subsequently retrieved many gold and silver drinking-cups that were washed ashore, and found Persian treasure-chests containing untold quantities of gold. This made him a man of great wealth, though in other respects he was unlucky; for he lived with the grief of having killed his son.161 191. The number of food-transports and merchant ships lost in the storm were beyond counting. And consequently the commanders of the Persian fleet, fearing 158. The god representing the stormy North Wind. 159. Erechtheus was a legendary king of early Athens. 160. As earlier in his discussion of whether Poseidon causes earthquakes (see 7.129), Herodotus avoids taking a position on the idea of divine causation of natural phenomena, a topic that was hotly debated by the thinkers of his day. 161. Nothing else is known of how Cretines caused his son’s death, but Herodotus clearly felt that the principle that human life consists of a balance of good and bad, and that great fortune is counterbalanced by great misfortune, was at work in this instance (see 7.203 below).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

413

that the Thessalians might attack them in their weakened state, erected a high barricade around their camp out of the wreckage cast ashore. The storm lasted three days, after which the Persian Magi brought it to an end by propitiating the wind with sacrifices and incantations, and performing sacrifices to Thetis and the Nereids—or it may be that the storm ended of its own accord.162 The reason the Magi sacrificed to Thetis was that they had learned from the Ionians that it was from here that she had been carried off by Peleus, and that the entire promontory of Sepias was sacred to her and the other daughters of Nereus. 192. The wind, then, ceased on the fourth day. The Greek scouts ran down from the heights of Euboea on the second day of the storm, and described in detail the destruction of the Persian fleet. On hearing the news, they prayed to Poseidon the Savior, poured libations, and hastened back to Artemisium, expecting that only a few ships would be left to oppose them. Arriving there a second time, they lay at anchor. From that time to this the Greeks have continued to address Poseidon by the title of savior. 193.When the wind had dropped and the sea grew calm, the barbarians hauled their ships down to the water and sailed along the coast. Rounding the southern promontory of Magnesia, they sailed straight into the bay that leads to Pagasae. There is a place in this bay where it is said that Heracles was put ashore to fetch water, and was left behind by Jason and his companions on the ship Argo, when they were sailing to Aea in Colchis in quest of the golden fleece.163 The place came to be called Aphetae (“putting forth”), because the Argonauts intended to put forth from there after watering their ships. It was here, then, that Xerxes’ fleet came to anchor. 194. Fifteen of their ships, which had fallen behind, happening to catch sight of the Greek ships at Artemisium, mistook them for their own, sailed toward them, and fell into the hands of their enemies. These ships were under the command of Sandoces, son of Thamasius, the governor of Cyme in Aeolis. Sandoces, who was one of the royal judges, had been crucified by Darius some time before on a charge of taking a bribe to render an unjust decision. But while he was still on the cross, Darius reflected that the man had done the royal house more good than harm; and realizing that he had acted with more haste than wisdom, ordered him to be taken down. Thus Sandoces escaped death at the hands of King Darius and survived; but this time, sailing toward the enemy fleet, he was not destined to escape again. For when the Greeks

162. See note 160 to 7.189 above. Thetis was a sea goddess and the mother of Achilles. 163. An unusual version of the myth. Other versions, like that in Apollonius’ poem Argonautica, have Heracles left behind at a landing in Asia.

414

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

saw his ships approaching, they guessed their mistake, put out to sea, and captured them without difficulty. 195. In one of the ships they captured Aridolis, the tyrant of the Alabandians in Caria, and in another the Paphian general Penthylus, son of Demonous, who had brought twelve ships from Paphos, and, after losing eleven in the storm off Sepias, was captured in the remaining one as he sailed toward Artemisium. The Greeks, after questioning these prisoners as much as they liked about Xerxes’ forces, sent them in chains to the Isthmus of Corinth. 196. The barbarian fleet, except for the fifteen ships commanded, as I mentioned, by Sandoces, arrived at Aphetae. Xerxes and the land army, meanwhile, had marched through Thessaly and Achaea, and two days earlier had entered the territory of the Malians. In Thessaly Xerxes had held races between his own horses and those of the Thessalians, which he had heard were the best in Greece. The Greek mares, however, were left far behind. Of the Thessalian rivers, only the Onochonus failed to supply enough water for the troops; but in Achaea even the largest of them, the Apidanus, barely sufficed. 197. When Xerxes arrived at Alus in Achaea, his guides, who wished to tell him all they knew, related a local legend about the shrine of Zeus Laphystius to the effect that Athamas, son of Aeolus, had conspired with Ino to murder Phrixus. Thereafter the Achaeans, warned by an oracle, had imposed the following penalty upon Phrixus’ descendants. This was that the eldest member of the family should be forbidden to enter the council-house (which the Achaeans call the people’s house), and they themselves should keep watch to see that the law was obeyed. If one of them enters, he can never depart except to be sacrificed. The guides also told Xerxes that many of them, when caught entering and threatened with death, are seized with such fear that they flee to some other country; later, if they return, and are found to be the persons who entered the council-house, they are crowned with garlands, led out, and sacrificed. The reason that this penalty was imposed upon the descendants of Cytissorus, son of Phrixus, is that when the Achaeans, in obedience to an oracle, were about to sacrifice Athamas, son of Aeolus, as a sin-offering on behalf of their country, Cytissorus came from Colchian Aea and rescued Athamas, thus bringing the wrath of the god upon his own posterity. Having heard this story, Xerxes avoided the sacred grove, and commanded his entire army to do likewise; he showed the same respect to the house and precinct of the descendants of Athamas. 198. Such were the actions of Xerxes in Thessaly and Achaea. From there he advanced into Malis, along the shores of a bay in which there is a daily ebb and flow of the tide. Alongside this bay lies a plain, part of which is wide, part very narrow. Lofty, impassable mountains, known as the Cliffs of Trachis, enclose the whole territory of Malis. Coming from Achaea, the first city you reach on this

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

415

bay is Anticyra, near which the river Spercheius, flowing down from the country of the Aenianes, empties into the sea. Twenty stades past the Spercheius there is another river, the Dyras, which according to legend came to Heracles’ aid when he was burning.164 Roughly twenty stades past the Dyras there is another stream, the Melas. 199. The city of Trachis lies about five stades beyond the Melas. At Trachis the plain between the hills and the sea is broader than anywhere else; for there its area is 5,000 acres. South of Trachis there is a cleft in the mountain range that encloses Trachinian territory; the river Asopus issues from this cleft and flows along the foot of the hills. 200. Farther south another smallish river, the Phoenix, flows down from the same hills and joins the Asopus. It is at the Phoenix that the plain is narrowest, there being room only for a path wide enough to accommodate a single carriage. From the Phoenix to Thermopylae is a distance of fifteen stades, and between them lies the village of Anthela, which the river Asopus passes on its way to the sea. The plain around Anthela is somewhat broader; it contains a temple of Amphictyonian Demeter, as well as the seats of the Amphictyonian deputies, and a temple of Amphicyton himself. 201. King Xerxes pitched his camp at Trachis in Malian territory, while the Greeks occupied the pass. This pass the Greeks in general call Thermopylae; but the natives and their neighbors call it Pylae. Here, then, the two armies took up their positions, one being in control of the region north of Trachis, the other of mainland to the south. 202. The following Greek contingents awaited Xerxes at Thermopylae: 300 men-at-arms from Sparta, 500 from Tegea, 500 from Mantinaea, 120 from Orchomenus in Arcadia, 1000 from the rest of Arcadia; from Corinth there were 400 men, from Phlius 200, and from Mycenae 80. These were the numbers from the Peloponnese. From Boeotia there were 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans. 203. In addition to these, the Locrians of Opus and the Phocians had obeyed the call, the former sending all the men they had, the latter 1,000. For the envoys had prevailed on these two cities to send troops by reassuring them that the Greeks at Thermopylae were merely an advance force, and that the rest of the allies would arrive any day; the sea, meanwhile, was being guarded by the Athenians, Aeginetans, and the rest of the fleet, so that there was no cause for alarm. For it was not a god invading Greece, but a man; and no man now existed or ever would exist who was not liable to misfortune from the day of his birth—and the greater the man, the greater the misfortune. Their invader therefore, being only human, was 164. According to legend, Heracles’ wife, Deianeira, accidentally sent him a poisoned robe that clung to him and caused him immense pain; he committed suicide by climbing onto a lighted pyre.

416

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

Malian Gulf

Persian Camp

Gulf of Magnesia

Alpenus

Trachis

Greek Thermopylae Camp

Route of Persian flanking force

O e ta

Artemisium ean Mt ns .

Euboea Malian Gulf Trachis

Alpenus Thermopylae

Route of Xerx es ’

Fle

et

Route of Xerxes’ Army 15 kilometers 15 miles

The battles of Thermopylae and Artemisium.

bound to fall from his glory.165 On hearing this appeal, the Locrians and Phocians had hastened with their troops to Trachis. 204. The contingents of the various nations served under their own commanders, but the one who was most respected, and who had the command of the entire force, was Leonidas the Spartan, son of Anaxandrides, son of Leon, son of Eurycratides, son of Anaxander, son of Eurycrates, son of Polydorus, son of Alcamenes, son of Telechles, son of Archelaus, son of Agesilaus, son of Doryssus, son of Leobotas, son of Echestratus, son of Agis, son of Erysthenes, son of Aristodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, son of Heracles.166 Leonidas had come to be king of Sparta quite unexpectedly. 205. Having two older brothers, Cleomenes and Dorieus, he had no thought himself of ever succeeding to the throne. But when Cleomenes died without 165. The moral wisdom expressed earlier by Solon, Amasis, and Artabanus, Herodotus’ three great warners, now sounded a fourth time at the start of the Greco-Persian clash. 166. Both here and at 8.131 below, Herodotus traces the lineage of Spartan kings back through twenty generations to reach the god Heracles. By the mythic scheme adopted by Herodotus and the Greeks generally, the Spartans (and other Dorians) originated from the Heraclids or children of Heracles.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

417

a male heir, Dorieus by then having perished in Sicily, the throne passed to Leonidas.167 He was older than Cleombrotus, Anaxandrides’ youngest son, and, moreover, was married to Cleomenes’ daughter. Leonidas had now come to Thermopylae, accompanied by the 300 men assigned to him by law,168 whom he had himself chosen, and who were all fathers of living sons.169 He had also taken with him the Thebans I mentioned, under the command of Leontiades, son of Eurymachus. The reason he had made a point of taking troops from Thebes, and from Thebes only, was that the Thebans were strongly suspected of being favorably disposed to the Medes. Leonidas therefore summoned them to war, wishing to see whether they would comply with his demand, or openly renounce the Greek alliance. The Thebans did send the men, though they were otherwise inclined. 206. Leonidas and his men were sent by the Spartans in advance of the main army so that the sight of them might encourage the other allies to fight, and prevent them from going over to the Medes, as they might have done if they knew that Sparta was hanging back. They intended, once the Carneia170 was over (for that was the festival that now detained them at home), to leave a garrison in Sparta, and hasten in full force to lend aid. The rest of the allies proposed to act similarly. For the Olympic festival171 fell exactly at this same period. None of them expected the battle at Thermopylae to be decided so soon—which is why they sent forward only their advance guards. 207. As for the Greek forces at Thermopylae, when the Persian army drew near the pass, they were seized with fear, and held a conference to consider retreat. The Peloponnesians generally were inclined to fall back upon the Peloponnese and guard the isthmus.172 But when the Phocians and Locrians took offense at this proposal, Leonidas cast his vote for remaining where they were and sending envoys to the allied cities to request reinforcements, since they were too few to stand their ground against the army of the Medes. 167. For the death of Cleomenes, see 6.82–84; for Dorieus, 5.45–48. 168. At 6.56, in listing the privileges of Spartan kings, Herodotus mentions an elite force of only 100 men. 169. The preference for men with living sons indicates some apprehension on the Spartans’ part that the force would not return. The son would be able to continue the father’s line after his death. 170. A religious festival celebrated at Sparta in late summer, during which military sorties were forbidden; see 6.106 and note 116. 171. The quadrennial athletic games held at Olympia. 172. Meaning the Isthmus of Corinth. The temptation to deploy this “fortress Peloponnese” strategy will be a continuing source of tension in the Greek alliance throughout the war, since it offered no protection to the states north of the Isthmus.

418

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

208. During the conference Xerxes sent a mounted spy to ascertain the Greeks’ numbers and to see what they were doing. He had heard, before he left Thessaly, that a small force was assembled at Thermopylae, led by the Spartans under Leonidas, a Heraclid. The horseman rode up to the camp and looked about, but could not see the entire army. For those who were posted within the wall (which had been rebuilt and was carefully guarded) were out of sight. But he did observe the troops who were posted outside, whose weapons were lying in front of the wall. At the time these happened to be the Spartans, and the spy saw some of them exercising, others combing their hair.173 Astonished at the sight, he counted their numbers, took accurate note of everything, and rode quietly back; for no one pursued or took the least notice of him. 209. On his return he told Xerxes all he had seen. Though Xerxes listened, he was unable to grasp the truth, namely that the Spartans were preparing to die and kill with all their might. Since their behavior appeared to him absurd, he sent for Demaratus,174 who was in camp. When Demaratus arrived, Xerxes questioned him about every detail of the scout’s report, as he wished to understand what the Spartans’ behavior might mean. Demaratus replied, “Once before you heard me speak of these men, sire, when we were setting out for Greece. But you laughed at my words when I told you how I saw this business would turn out.175 I make an earnest effort at all times, sire, to tell you the truth. So hear me once more. These men have come to fight us for the pass; and it is for this that they are now preparing. For it is their custom, whenever they are about to risk their lives, to adorn their heads. Let me assure you, however, that if you can subdue these men and the Lacedemonians who remain in Sparta, there is no nation in the world that will dare to lift a hand in its defense. For you have now to deal with the finest kingdom in Greece and the bravest men.” Xerxes, who found what Demaratus said incredible, again asked how it was possible for so small a force to fight with his army. Demaratus replied, “Treat me like a liar, sire, if things do not turn out as I say.” But still the king was unconvinced. 210. Xerxes let four days go by, constantly expecting that the Greeks would run away. But when, on the fifth, they had not departed, and their continued presence seemed to him mere shamelessness and want of judgment, he lost his temper and sent out the Medes and Cissians, with orders to take them alive and bring them into his presence. The Medes rushed forward and charged the enemy, but fell in large numbers. Others took their places and would not be beaten back, though they suffered heavy losses. They made it clear to everyone and not least 173. Spartan men, unlike other Greek males, wore their hair long. 174. The exiled Spartan king. 175. See 7.101–105.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

419

to the king himself that he had many human beings in his army, but few men. The battle continued throughout the day. 211. The Medes, after meeting with such rough treatment, at last withdrew, and their place was taken by the band of Persians the king called his Immortals. Under Hydarnes’ command, these men advanced into the fray in the expectation that they would soon bring the business to an end. But when they engaged the Greeks, they succeeded no better than the Medes; things went as before, the two armies fighting in a narrow space, and the barbarians using shorter spears than the Greeks, and having no advantage from their numbers. The Spartans fought in a way that did them credit, showing their expertise when pitted against an inexperienced enemy. Often they would all turn their backs, pretending to flee in confusion, whereupon the barbarians would rush after them with much noise; then, at their approach, the Spartans would wheel round and face them and inflict innumerable casualties. The Spartans suffered losses too, though not many. And finally, when the Persians found that their assaults on the pass were of no avail, whether they attacked by divisions or in any other way, they withdrew. 212. During these assaults, it is reported that the king, who was watching the battle, leapt up three times from his throne, in terror for his army. Next day the fighting resumed, but with no better success for the barbarians. They attacked in the hope that the Greeks, being so few in number, would be disabled by their wounds and incapable of further resistance. But the Greeks were marshaled by detachments and by nations, and each contingent took its turn except the Phocians, who had been posted on the mountain to guard the path.176 So when the Persians found that things were no better for them than on the previous day, they again withdrew. 213. At a loss how to proceed, Xerxes was approached by a man from Malis, Ephialtes, son of Eurydemus, who hoped to receive a rich reward from the King for telling him of the path that led over the mountain to Thermopylae; and thus Ephialtes destroyed the Greeks who held the pass.177 Thereafter, in fear of the Spartans, Ephialtes fled to Thessaly; and in his absence a price was set upon his head by the Pylagori at an assembly of the Amphictyons at the Pylaea.178 Some time later he returned to Anticyra, where he died at the hands of Athenades of Trachis. Athenades killed Ephialtes not for his treachery but for another reason, 176. The fatal path called Anopaea, mentioned at 7.175 and described further below. 177. This looks ahead to what follows. 178. The “Pylagori” (literally, “those who gather at the Pylaea”) were the representatives to the Amphictyonic League, a coalition of Greek states that jointly administered the Delphic oracle and other regional affairs. The term “Pylaea” was applied to their place of assembly, which alternated between Delphi and Thermopylae.

420

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

which I will explain in due course;179 but he was honored nonetheless by the Spartans. 214. Another story has it that Onetes, son of Phanagoras of Carystus, and Corydallus of Anticyra were the persons who informed the king and guided the Persians around the mountain—an unconvincing story, in my opinion. For one must bear in mind that the deputies of the Greeks, the Pylagori,180 presumably after conducting a thorough investigation, offered the reward not for the heads of Onetes and Corydallus, but for that of Ephialtes of Trachis; moreover, we know that this was the reason for Ephialtes’ flight. Certainly Onetes, though he was not a Malian, might have been aware of the path, if he had spent much time in the neighborhood. But since it was Ephialtes who actually led the Persians around the mountain by the path, I leave his name on record as the guilty one. 215. Xerxes was delighted; and in his joy, he promptly sent off Hydarnes and his troops. They set out from camp at about the time the lamps were lit. The path was first discovered by the native Malians, who afterward led the Thessalians along it to attack Phocis at the time when the Phocians were protected from invasion by the wall that they had built across the pass. And ever since, the path has been put to nefarious use by the Malians. 216. The path begins at the Asopus, where that stream flows through the mountain cleft, and, running along the ridge of the mountain (which, like the path, is called Anopaea), ends at the city of Alpenus, the first Locrian town you reach coming from Malis, near the rock called Melampygus and the seats of the Cercopes. This is the narrowest part of the pass. 217. The Persians took this path after crossing the Asopus. They marched throughout the night, keeping the mountains of Oeta on their right and those of Trachis on their left. At dawn they neared the summit of the ridge. This part of the mountain, as I mentioned before, was guarded by 1,000 Phocian hoplites,181 who had been posted to defend the passage and protect their country. They had been given the guard of the mountain path, while the other Greeks were guarding the pass below, because they had volunteered for the service, and had promised Leonidas to hold the post. 218. The Phocians became aware of the Persians’ ascent in the following way. On their way up to the summit the Persians had escaped the Phocians’ notice, as the entire mountain was covered with oak trees. But it was a windless night, and the fallen leaves, when trampled underfoot, made a loud rustling. Jumping up, the 179. The promise goes unfulfilled, perhaps because Herodotus died before completing his work. 180. See previous chapter. 181. Hoplites are infantry warriors bearing a shield, thrusting spear, and metal armor.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

421

Phocians were rushing for their weapons when the barbarians appeared. The Persians were astonished to see men arming themselves; never expecting opposition, they had encountered an army. Fearing that these troops were Spartans, Hydarnes asked Ephialtes who they were; on learning the truth, he arrayed the Persians for battle. The Phocians, when assailed by a great volley of arrows, fled to the summit of the mountain—for they imagined that they were the object of the attack—and prepared to die. But the Persians with Ephialtes and Hydarnes, paying no further attention to them, made haste to descend the mountain. 219. The Greeks at Thermopylae received their first warning of the death that was coming with the dawn from the seer Megistias, who read their doom in the victims as he was sacrificing. Then deserters came in with news of the Persians’ flank movement. It was still night when these men arrived. And lastly, as day was breaking scouts came running from the heights with the same news. The Greeks then held a council, and their opinions were divided: some were opposed to abandoning their post, while others were opposed to remaining. After the council, the army split up; some departed and dispersed to their various cities, while others made ready to stand by Leonidas. 220. It is also reported that Leonidas himself dismissed the troops who departed, to spare their lives, but considered it unbecoming for himself and the Spartans to abandon the post they had been originally sent to guard. Here I am inclined to think that Leonidas gave this order when he perceived that the allies had no heart for the fight and were reluctant to share his danger, though he himself could not, with honor, draw back. And by remaining at his post Leonidas won great glory, and Sparta did not lose her prosperity. For when the Spartans, at the outset of the war, consulted the oracle, the Pythian priestess had proclaimed that either Lacedaemon must be overthrown by the barbarians, or a Spartan king must perish. The prophecy, delivered in hexameter verse, ran as follows: As for you who dwell in spacious Sparta, Either your glorious city will be sacked by Perseus’ sons,182 Or the land of Lacedaemon will mourn the death of a king, A descendant of Heracles. Neither the strength of bulls or lions Will hold him; for he has the might of Zeus, And will not be restrained until one of these two is torn apart.183 Weighing these words, and wishing to gain the whole glory for the Spartans, Leonidas dismissed the allies; I find it unlikely that they departed in disorder as the result of a quarrel. 182. As noted by Xerxes at 7.61, the Persians traced their descent from Perseus. 183. “He” and “him” in the final two lines refer to Xerxes, or perhaps to a generic Persian; “one of these two” means either the Spartan state or its Heraclid king.

422

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

221. I find strong support for this view in the case of the seer Megistias, who accompanied the army—an Acarnanian, said to be of the family of Melampus184—who was led by his inspection of the sacrificial victims to warn the Greeks of the danger that threatened them. He clearly received orders from Leonidas to leave Thermopylae, lest he perish with them. Megistias, however, though told to depart, refused, though he sent away his only son, who was serving in the army. 222. So the allies, when ordered by Leonidas to retire, obeyed him and departed. Only the Thespians and Thebans remained with the Lacedemonians. The Thebans were kept back by Leonidas as hostages,185 very much against their will. But the Thespians refused of their own accord to desert Leonidas and his men, and stayed, and died with them. Their commander was Demophilus, son of Didromes. 223. At sunrise Xerxes made libations, after which he waited until the time when the market is full186 before he began to advance. He had been directed to do so by Ephialtes, as the descent from the mountain is much quicker, and the distance much shorter, than the circuit and ascent. As the barbarians with Xerxes approached, the Greeks under Leonidas, understanding that they were going to their deaths, ventured much farther than on previous days into the wider part of the pass. For before this they had been holding the wall, and would set out from there to fight at the narrowest point of the pass. But now they engaged the enemy beyond that point, and many of the barbarians were falling. Behind them the company commanders, brandishing whips, were lashing all their men onward. Many fell into the sea and drowned, though far more were being trampled to death by one another. No heed was paid to the dying. For the Greeks, aware that death was looming for them at the hands of those who were circling the mountain, showed the barbarians all the strength they possessed, setting their lives at naught and fighting with reckless fury. 224. By this time most of their spears were broken, and they were killing Persians with their swords. It was in this struggle that Leonidas fell, fighting gallantly, together with many other famous Spartans; their names I have learned, as those of men who proved their worth. Indeed, I have learned the names of all the 300.187 184. Melampus was a legendary Greek sage and seer (see 2.49). Acarnania is a region famous for its prophets, in the far northwest of mainland Greece. 185. That is, as guarantees that their city, which had already made gestures of joining the Persian side (see 7.132), would remain loyal to Greece. The statement is sometimes regarded as a slander against Thebes, promulgated by Greeks who resented the part played by that city later in the war. 186. Herodotus has no better way of designating an hour of mid-morning. 187. An inscribed stone at Sparta, set up in 440 B.C., recorded all 300 names.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

423

Many famous Persians fell as well, including two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, whose mother was Phratagyne, daughter of Artanes. Artanes, the son of Hystaspes and grandson of Arsames, was King Darius’ brother; and when he gave his daughter to Darius, he made him also his heir, since she was his only child. 225. Two of Xerxes’ brothers also fell. There was a fierce struggle over the body of Leonidas, in which the Greeks thrust the enemy back four times, and at last by their valor carried it away. The fighting continued until the Persians with Ephialtes arrived, and then, when the Greeks knew that they had come, their way of fighting changed. Withdrawing to the narrowest part of the pass, behind the wall, they formed up in one compact body—all except the Thebans188—on the small hill at the entrance of the pass, where the stone lion in honor of Leonidas stands today.189 Here they defended themselves to the last, with their daggers, if they still had them, or, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the barbarians, some approaching head on after pulling down the wall, and others, having gone round, closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them with arrows and javelins. 226. Among all the Spartans and Thespians who fought so bravely, one man is said to have distinguished himself above all the others, namely the Spartan Dieneces. It is said that before the battle he was told by a native of Trachis that when the barbarians shot their arrows, there were so many of them that they hid the sun; Dieneces, undaunted by these words, and making light of the Median numbers, remarked that their Trachinian friend brought splendid news; for if the Medes hid the sun, their battle would be fought in the shade. These and other remarks of a similar kind are said to have been left on record by Dieneces. 227. After Dieneces, two Spartan brothers, Alpheus and Maron, the sons of Orsiphantus, are said to have distinguished themselves. Among the Thespians the greatest glory was won by Dithyrambus, son of Harmatides. 228. The dead were buried where they fell; in honor of them, and of the men who died before the troops dismissed by Leonidas left the pass, an inscription was erected, which says: Here four thousand from the Peloponnese Once fought three million.190 188. See note to 7.222. 189. The name Leonidas is connected to the Greek word for “lion.” No trace remains of this monument, but a similar stone lion, no doubt based on this original, still stands at Chaeronea, the site where the Greeks were defeated by Philip of Macedon in 338 B.C. 190. The estimate (wildly exaggerated) of Persian numbers slightly exceeds that of Herodotus (see 7.185). As for the 4,000 Peloponnesians mentioned here, Herodotus’ careful tabulation at 7.202 lists only 3,100.

424

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

This was set up in honor of all. Another honors the Spartans alone: Report to the Spartans, friend, that here We lie, obedient to their commands. This was for the Lacedemonians. For the seer, there is the following: Here lies renowned Megistias, slain by the Medes When they crossed the river Spercheius; A seer who knew clearly that death was approaching, But scorned to forsake his Spartan commanders. The inscriptions and pillars, except for the seer’s, were erected in honor of the dead by the Amphictyons. The pillar honoring Megistias was set up for friendship’s sake by Simonides, son of Leoprepes.191 229. It is said that two of the 300, Eurytus and Aristodemus, could have returned in safety to Sparta, had they been of one mind, since they had been released from the camp by Leonidas and lay ill at Alpeni, both of them afflicted with severe ophthalmia. Or, had they not wished to return home, they might have died with their comrades. But as they could not agree, they took opposite courses. Eurytus, when he learned that the Persians were approaching round the mountain, asked for his weapons, donned them, and ordered his helot192 to lead him to the fray. The man did so, and then fled, and Eurytus charged into the thick of the battle and was killed. But Aristodemus, his courage faltering, stayed behind. Now if Aristodemus alone had fallen ill and then returned to Sparta, or if both men had returned together, it seems to me that the Spartans would have felt no anger; but since one of them perished, while the other, availing himself of the excuse that was open to them both, was unwilling to die, the Spartans could hardly have done other than rage at Aristodemus. 230. Some maintain that this was how Aristodemus returned safely to Sparta, while others say that he had been sent from camp as a messenger; and that though he might have returned in time to take part in the battle, he deliberately loitered on the road and thus survived, while his fellow messenger joined in the battle and perished. 231. On his return to Lacedaemon, Aristodemus met with reproach and disgrace. No Spartan would give him a light to kindle his fire, or even speak to him, and he had to endure the ignominy of being called Aristodemus the Trembler. Afterward, however, he made amends for everything at the battle of Plataea.193 191. Simonides was a Greek poet of the early 5th century B.C. famous for his commemorations of the dead; all three of the above inscriptions are thought to be his work. 192. The helots were state-owned slaves at Sparta, taken from neighboring Messenia. Spartan soldiers went to war accompanied by helots, who tended their persons and gear. 193. The sequel to Aristodemus’ story is found at 9.71.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

425

232. Another of the 300 is also said to have survived the battle, a man named Pantites, who had been sent as a messenger into Thessaly. It is said that on his return to Sparta he found himself in such disgrace that he hanged himself. 233. The Thebans under Leontiades remained with the Greeks, and fought against the king’s army, only as long as they were forced to do so. But when they saw the Persians gaining the upper hand, and the Greeks under Leonidas hastening to the hill, they broke away from them, approached the barbarians with outstretched hands, and said what was perfectly true, namely that their sympathies were with the Medes, that they had been among the first to give earth and water to the king, and that they were not to blame for the harm done to him, since they had come to Thermopylae under duress.194 So saying, they survived; for the Thessalians bore witness to the truth of their statements. But all did not go well for the Thebans. For a few were killed by the Persians on their first approach, and all the others, at Xerxes’ command, were branded with the royal mark, beginning with Leontiades, their commander.195 (This man’s son, Eurymachus, was later killed by the Plataeans when he had seized their city with the 400 Thebans under his command.)196 234. That, then, is how the Greeks acquitted themselves at Thermopylae. And Xerxes, when the battle was over, summoned Demaratus for questioning. He began by saying, “You are a good man, Demaratus. The truth of your words proves it. Everything has turned out as you said it would. Tell me, therefore, how many Lacedemonians are left? And how many of them are as valiant as these men were? Or are they all as good?” “Sire,” Demaratus replied, “there are a great many Lacedmonians, and they inhabit many towns. But what you really wish to learn I will now tell you. There is a town in Lacedaemon called Sparta, which contains about 8,000 men.197 All of them are the equals of those who fought here. The other Lacedemonians, though brave, are not their equals.” “Tell me, then, Demaratus,” Xerxes replied, “how we may with least trouble defeat these men. You must be well acquainted with their methods and policies, as you were once their king.” 235. Demaratus replied, “Sire, since you are consulting me in earnest, I do right to give you my best advice. Accordingly, I urge you to dispatch 300 ships from the fleet to Laconia. Off the coast there is an island called Cythera. Chilon, one of our wisest men,198 once said that it would be better for the Spartans if it were 194. See 7.222 and note. 195. Branding with hot irons was often inflicted on recaptured runaway slaves. 196. An episode of the Peloponnesian War, dating to 432 B.C.; see Thucydides 2.2–6, where Eurymachus is said to have planned the Theban attack on Plataea but not to have led it. 197. The figure may be high but is not seriously out of line with other evidence. The population of Sparta dropped off precipitously during the next century, however. 198. A Spartan sage of the mid-6th century B.C.

426

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

sunk into the sea, since he always expected that it would afford an opportunity for the sort of venture I am now suggesting. He did not, of course, foresee your expedition, but dreaded the prospect of any such attack. Let your ships make this island their base, and from it harass the Lacedemonians.199 If they are embroiled in a war so close to home, you need have no fear that they will help the other Greeks while your army is engaged in conquering them. Thus the rest of Greece will be subdued, whereupon Lacedaemon, left on her own, will be powerless. If you reject this course, you may expect the following consequences.There is a narrow isthmus in the Peloponnese, where all the Peloponnesians who have formed a league against you will assemble; and there you will have to fight bloodier battles than any you have yet witnessed. But if you do as I have advised, the Isthmus and the cities of the Peloponnese will surrender to you without a battle.” 236. Achaemenes, Xerxes’ brother and the commander of the fleet, who happened to be present and was afraid that Xerxes might be persuaded to act on Demaratus’ advice, now spoke up. “Sire,” he said, “I see you entertaining the proposals of a man who envies your prosperity and may even betray your cause. Indeed, the Greeks delight in such behavior: they envy success, and hate superior power. In our present circumstances, having just lost 400 ships in the storm, if you send another 300 to sail around the Peloponnese, our adversaries will become a match for us in battle. But if you keep our fleet together, the Greeks would never risk an engagement, as they will surely be no match for us. Besides, if our fleet and army advance together, they can support each other. But if you separate them, no aid will come from you to the fleet, or from the fleet to you. Only arrange your own affairs well, and you need not worry about the enemy, or concern yourself about where they will fight, what they will do, or how many they are. For they are as capable of managing their own affairs as we are of managing ours. And even if the Spartans do come out against the Persians to battle, they will hardly repair the injury they have already sustained.” 237. Xerxes replied, “You counsel me well, Achaemenes, and I will do as you say. Though Demaratus advised what he thought best for me, his judgment is not as sound as yours. But I refuse to admit that he is not well disposed to me. For that is disproved both by his previous advice, and also by the fact that, in general, a citizen often envies his prosperous fellow-citizen, and shows his ill will by his silence. When asked for his advice, he will not give his best thoughts unless he has attained a high degree of virtue; and such men are rare. But a foreigner delights in the good fortune of his foreign friend, and will give him the best 199. Through his mouthpiece Demaratus, Herodotus conveys an essential point about Persian strategic errors in the war. The Persians could have fragmented the Greek coalition at various points by merely threatening battle or by turning the Greeks’ flank. Instead they chose to engage head-on, and lost.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 7

427

advice he can. Therefore, as Demaratus is my friend, I bid everyone to abstain, in future, from maligning him.” 238. So saying, Xerxes went among the corpses; and having been told that Leonidas was king and commander of the Lacedemonians, he ordered his head to be cut off and impaled. It is clear to me by many other proofs (this being not the least among them) that while Leonidas was still alive King Xerxes was more angry with him than with any other man; for otherwise he would never have departed from custom about the corpse, since normally the Persians, more than any other nation I know of, honor men who distinguish themselves in war. His order was nevertheless carried out. 239. I will now return to that point in my account where there was an omission. The Lacedemonians were the first Greeks to learn that the king was planning to invade their country; and it was then that they sent to consult the oracle at Delphi and received the answer I spoke of earlier.200 The way they received the news was quite remarkable. Demaratus, son of Ariston, when he was in exile among the Medes, was not, I dare say—and as is reasonable to suppose—well disposed to the Spartans. One may therefore question whether what he did on that occasion was done out of good will or malignant joy. At any rate, when the news reached him in Susa that Xerxes had decided to lead his army into Greece, he wished to pass the information to the Spartans. As he had no other means at his disposal, since the danger of discovery was great, he contrived as follows. He took a pair of wooden folding tablets, and, scraping off the wax, wrote on the wood underneath what the king was planning to do, and then spread wax over the message. In this way the guards along the road, seeing nothing but a blank tablet, would give its bearer no trouble. When the tablet reached Sparta, no one knew what to make of it, as I understand, until Gorgo, the daughter of Cleomenes and wife of Leonidas, guessed the truth, and told the others that if they scraped off the wax they would find a message written on the wood. Taking her advice, they found the message, read it, and then passed it on to the other Greeks. That, then, is the story of what happened.

200. At 7.220. It is curious that Herodotus did not place this story there, since in other passages he has no difficulty managing such digressions. Perhaps he wanted it to serve as a coda to the Thermopylae narrative, since throughout the Histories he likes to give quiet endings to intense action sequences.

Book 8

1. The following contingents were serving in the Greek fleet:1 The Athenians furnished 127 ships. These were manned in part by the Plataeans, whose courage and enthusiasm led them to undertake this duty, despite their lack of naval experience; the Corinthians furnished 40 ships, the Megarians 20. The Chalcidians also manned 20, which had been provided to them by the Athenians; the Aeginetans furnished 18, the Sicyonians 12, the Lacedemonians2 10, the Epidaurians 8, the Eretrians 7, the Troezenians 5, the Styraeans 2, and the Ceians 2 triremes and 2 penteconters. The Opuntian Locrians came in aid with 7 penteconters. 2. These, then, were the nations that served at Artemisium, and I have given the number of ships that each contributed. The total number of ships, not counting the penteconters, was 271. The fleet’s commanding officer, Eurybiades, son of Euryclides, was appointed by the Spartiates, since the allies had refused to serve under the Athenians,3 and had declared that unless a Lacedemonian held command they would break up the intended expedition. 3. There had been talk from the first, even before the Greek allies had sent ambassadors to Sicily to solicit an alliance, of entrusting the Athenians with the command at sea. But the allies resisted the proposal, and the Athenians yielded; for they regarded the salvation of Greece of paramount importance, and understood that if they wrangled about the command, Greece would be ruined. And in this they were perfectly right; for internal strife is as much worse than war against a common enemy as war itself is worse than peace. Aware of this, the Athenians did not protest but waived their claim, and continued to do so as long as they needed the allies. This was made clear in due course. For after the Persians had been driven from Greece, and the allies were waging war in Persian territory, the Athenians used the arrogance of Pausanias as an excuse to deprive the Lacedemonians of the command. But this happened at a later time.4 1. Having completed his account of the land battle at Thermopylae, Herodotus moves offshore to follow events at sea, picking up this thread from the point reached at 7.196. 2. Lacedaemon was the region that included Sparta as well as the perioeci or surrounding inhabitants. It was these perioeci who manned the ships, since true Spartans were trained exclusively for infantry combat. 3. Not through any mistrust of Athens but rather a sense that the Spartans were the natural leaders in military matters, and a dislike of dividing the command (see 7.161 and next chapter). 4. In 478 B.C., just past the end of Herodotus’ narrative. Pausanias, leader of the combined forces at that time, had made himself widely hated by his arrogant and scornful behavior, prompting the Greeks in the anti-Persian coalition to seek a change of leadership. 428

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

429

4. On the present occasion, when the Greeks who reached Artemisium saw the number of enemy ships lying at Aphetae, and the throngs of troops everywhere, it was clear that things had gone rather differently with the Persians from what they had expected.5 Taking fright, they began to consider withdrawing from Artemisium to the inner parts of their country. As soon as the Euboeans learned what they were debating, they entreated Eurybiades to wait a few days, while they removed their children and household members to a place of safety. When they failed to persuade him, they went to Themistocles, the Athenian commander,6 and with a bribe of thirty talents induced him to arrange matters so that the fleet would stay and fight at sea in defense of Euboea. 5. Themistocles managed to detain the fleet by doing as follows. He gave a share of the money—five talents—to Eurybiades, as if they came from himself. Having secured Eurybiades’ cooperation, Themistocles addressed himself to the only commander who still resisted, Adeimantus, son of Ocytus, the Corinthian, who declared that he would sail away from Artemisium. Addressing himself to this man, Themistocles said with an oath, “You will surely not forsake us, since I will pay you more for staying than the king of the Medes would ever send you for deserting your friends”—and promptly sent on board Adeimantus’ ship three talents of silver. So these two commanders, won by gifts, adopted the views of Themistocles, and thus the wishes of the Euboeans were gratified. Themistocles, too, came out ahead; for he kept the rest of the money, and no one knew of it.7 The two men who had received their share thought that it came from Athens for this very purpose. 6. Thus the allies stayed at Euboea and fought a sea battle. The battle unfolded as follows. The barbarians8 reached Aphetae early in the afternoon, and saw for themselves what they had previously heard reported, namely that a small Greek fleet lay at Artemisium. Though eager to engage at once, in the hope of capturing them, they decided not to sail straight towards them, lest the Greeks, seeing them coming, take to flight and elude them after dark. In that case they might get clear away, whereas the Persians were determined that not even a torchbearer, as they put it, would escape alive.9 5. The Greeks had hoped that a greater number of Persian ships had been wiped out by the sea-storm (see 7.192). 6. That is, the commander of the Athenian naval contingent, the largest in the fleet. 7. Use of trickery and interest in money are both strong elements of Herodotus’ portrayal of Themistocles the Athenian. It should be remembered that, at the time Herodotus was writing, Athens had become hugely wealthy by collecting tribute, by force if necessary, from subject Greek cities. 8. As seen earlier, Herodotus uses this term to mean “non-Greeks,” without the negative overtones it bears today. 9. The torchbearer, a Spartan official who kept alive the flame used for sacrifices, was normally considered a sacred personage who could not be killed.

430

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

7.To this end they contrived as follows.They detached 200 ships with orders to sail outside Sciathus, in order to escape detection by the enemy, and then around Euboea (by way of Cephareus and Geraestus) and into the straits of Euripus. In this way they hoped to trap the Greeks; for the detached ships would block their retreat from behind, while the rest of the fleet would press upon them in front.10 Acting on this plan, they dispatched the 200 ships, though they themselves did not intend to attack the Greeks on that day, or until they knew by signal that the detachment sailing round Euboea had arrived. Meanwhile they held a muster of the other ships at Aphetae. 8. During the muster, the following event occurred. The Persians had with them a man named Scyllias, a native of Scione,11 who was the greatest diver of his day. After the shipwreck off Pelion, he had retrieved a great deal of property for the Persians, and at the same time obtained a considerable share for himself. Scyllias had long been wanting to desert to the Greeks, but no opportunity had occurred until then. How he managed to reach the Greeks I cannot say for certain, and I am surprised if what is said is true. For it is said that he dived into the sea at Aphetae and did not come up until he reached Artemisium, a distance of nearly eighty stades.12 There are other stories told about this man that are clearly false, though some are true. My own opinion is that on this occasion he made his way to Artemisium by boat. In any case, as soon as he arrived he informed the commanders about the shipwreck and about the ships that had been sent around Euboea. 9. On receiving this news, the Greeks held a council, and after prolonged debate decided that they should stay where they were until after midnight, and then put out to sea to meet the ships that were sailing around Euboea. Later in the day, when no one approached them, they sailed out against the barbarians, intending to test their manner of fighting and skill in maneuvering.13 10. When Xerxes’ commanders and crews saw the Greeks sailing toward them with their few ships, they thought they were insane, and immediately put to sea, confident that they would easily capture them—a very reasonable expectation, as their own ships were more seaworthy and many times more numerous. With 10. A similar tactic was adopted later at Salamis (see 8.76), and indeed that later episode may have furnished a model for an invented one here. It has struck modern historians as improbable that the Persians, operating in unfamiliar waters and off hostile coasts, sent a contingent of their fleet so far from the main body. Since Herodotus later reports that this whole contingent was lost in a storm (8.13), it is easy to suppose that it never existed at all. 11. A Greek who had been pressed into Persian service, like many Greeks who lived in conquered territory. 12. About ten miles. 13. Herodotus gives no details of how this bold decision was made, in contrast to his indepth treatment of similar decisions before the battles of Marathon and Salamis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

431

this in mind, they decided to surround the Greek ships in the open sea. Now those of the Ionians who were well-disposed to the Greeks, and were serving in the Persian fleet against their will, were distressed when they saw the Greeks surrounded; for they felt sure, in view of their apparent weakness, that none of them would escape alive. But those who were in favor of the attack on Greece14 now vied with each other to be the first to capture an Athenian ship, and thereby win a reward from the king. For throughout their camps it was the Athenians who were most talked of. 11.When the Greeks15 were given the signal, they brought their sterns together, and turned their prows to face the barbarians; then, at a second signal, though enclosed within a narrow space and facing the enemy head on, they applied themselves to the task in hand and captured thirty ships. Among the prisoners was a man renowned throughout the fleet—Philaeon, the son of Chersis and brother of Gorgus, the king of the Salaminians.16 The first Greek to capture an enemy ship was an Athenian, Lycomedes, son of Aeschraeus, for which feat he was awarded the prize of valor. Victory was still in doubt when night came on and put an end to the fighting. The Greeks sailed back to Artemisium, and the Persians—who were surprised at the result—to Aphetae. In this battle the only Greek in the Persian force to desert and join his countrymen17 was Antidorus the Lemnian, whom the Athenians rewarded with the gift of a piece of land in Salamis. 12. After dark—it was then midsummer18—there was a violent downpour of rain, which lasted throughout the night, with deafening thunder from Pelion. Corpses and fragments of wreckage drifted to Aphetae, where they floated around the prows of the ships and disturbed the action of the oars. The soldiers who were listening were thrown into a panic and thought the end was near, so daunted were they by their plight. For before they could catch their breath after the storm and the wreck of their ships off Pelion, they were faced with a difficult fight at sea, and now, the battle scarcely over, they were exposed to torrential rain, the rushing of swollen streams into the sea, and crashing thunder. 13. If the Persians at Aphetae passed a wretched night, far worse were the sufferings of those who had been dispatched to sail around Euboea, since they were on the open sea when the storm fell on them, and they met with a sorry end. 14. Herodotus is still speaking of Ionian Greeks, some of whom had so cast their lot with the Persians as to hope that the Greeks of the mainland would be defeated. 15. By “the Greeks” Herodotus means the Spartan-led coalition, not the Ionians just spoken of. 16. That is, king of the Phoenician city of Salamis on Cyprus, not the island Salamis off Attica (the place referred to just below). Gorgus the Cyprian was one of the naval chiefs (see 7.98). 17. That is, to bring his ship over to the Spartan-led coalition. 18. In fact it was likely the end of August.

432

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

For they were sailing near the Hollows of Euboea when the wind and rain began; swept along by the gale, and not knowing where they were carried, they crashed upon the rocks.19 The god was contriving to reduce the superiority of the Persian fleet and cut it down to the size of the Greek.20 14. These men, then, were lost near the Hollows of Euboea. The barbarians at Aphetae were glad when day dawned, and remained quietly at their station, content, after so many misfortunes, to enjoy an interval of peace. Meanwhile, the Greeks received a reinforcement of fifty-three ships from Athens. The arrival of these ships heartened them, as did the news (which reached them at the same time) that all the barbarian ships that were sailing around Euboea had been destroyed in the storm. Waiting for the same hour as on the previous day, they put out to sea and encountered a contingent of Cilician ships, which they sank. At nightfall they sailed back to Artemisium. 15. On the third day, the barbarians’ commanders, dismayed that so few ships were getting the better of their fleet, and fearing Xerxes’ displeasure, did not wait for the Greeks to start a battle, but made ready and put their ships to sea at midday. It happened that the battles at sea took place on the same days as the land battles at Thermopylae. The aim of the Greeks at sea was to guard the Euripus, just as for Leonidas and his men it was to guard the pass.21 And while the Greeks were exhorting one another not to let the barbarians enter Greece, the Persians were urging their comrades to destroy the Greek force and gain a passage into their country. 16. Xerxes’ fleet now advanced in good order to the attack, while the Greeks remained motionless at Artemisium. The barbarians therefore assumed a crescent formation and moved forward, intending to surround the enemy, whereupon the Greeks sailed out to meet them, and the battle began. In this engagement the two fleets were about evenly matched; for Xerxes’ force harmed itself by its own size, the ships falling into disorder and running afoul of one another.22 Yet the men fought bravely and did not give way, feeling that it would be a disgrace to be routed by so small a fleet. The Greeks sustained heavy losses in ships and men, though the barbarians lost far more of both. Having contended thus, the fleets separated. 19. See note to 8.7 above. 20. As he does on several occasions, though nowhere quite as strongly as here, Herodotus ascribes the Persian defeat in Greece to divine agency. 21. Both the pass at Thermopylae and the straits of Euripus formed narrow choke-points where an invader could be stopped. The Persian fleet could have avoided Euripus by sailing around the east coast of Euboea, but that would have meant losing contact with the land army. 22. In the narrow confines of the straits, the ships could not easily avoid cutting one another off or fouling one another’s oars, a problem that was magnified in the subsequent battle at Salamis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

433

17. On the Persian side the Egyptians distinguished themselves above the rest; for besides performing other great exploits, they captured five Greek ships together with their crews. On the Greek side the Athenians won the prize of valor on that day, and among them the most conspicuous was Cleinias, son of Alcibiades,23 who was serving at his own expense with 200 men on board his own ship. 18. Both fleets, on separating, hastened gladly to their anchorages. The Greeks, after the fighting, managed to retrieve their corpses and wrecked ships. But they had been so roughly handled, especially the Athenians, half of whose ships had been damaged, that they decided to leave their station and withdraw further south. 19. Now Themistocles, thinking that if the Ionians and Carians could be detached from the barbarian fleet,24 the Greeks might be able to defeat the rest, assembled his commanders at the beach to which the Euboeans were driving their cattle. He told them he thought he had a scheme whereby he could deprive the king of his best allies. This was all he revealed to them at the time. Meanwhile, in view of their present circumstances, he advised them to slaughter as much of the Euboeans’ cattle as they pleased (since it was better that their own troops have them than their enemies), and to give orders to their men to light fires as usual. As for their retreat, he said he would take care to watch for the proper moment, and would see to it that they got home unharmed. These words satisfied the commanders, who had the fires lighted, and turned their attention to the cattle. 20. The Euboeans had paid no attention the oracle of Bacis,25 thinking it had no significance, and had neither removed their goods from the island, nor fetched in supplies, as they would have done had they thought a war was imminent; they had therefore brought their troubles on themselves. The oracle ran as follows: When a stranger throws a yoke of papyrus over the sea, Take care to drive the bleating goats far from Euboea. As they had ignored this warning at the time, the direst misfortunes, both now and in future, were likely to afflict them. 21. While the Greeks were thus engaged, their lookout arrived from Trachis. Polyas, a native of Anticyra, had been posted at Artemisium with a boat ready 23. An Alcmeonid and therefore wealthy enough to pay his own crewmen, as Herodotus goes on to note. Cleinias’ son was the Alcibiades who gained fame as a military leader in the late 5th century B.C. 24. That is, if these natural allies of the Greek coalition, though pressed into Persian service, could be induced to desert. 25. “Bacis” was elsewhere a word that meant “prophet” (like Roman “Sibyl”), though Herodotus here treats it as the name of a person.

434

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

for his use. If a sea battle took place, he was to carry the news to the Greeks at Thermopylae; likewise Abronychus, son of Lysicles, an Athenian, had been posted with Leonidas, and had a triaconter26 ready to bring news to Artemisium if the army was in trouble. It was this Abronychus who now arrived with news of what had befallen Leonidas and his men. On hearing the news, the Greeks no longer delayed their departure, but set sail at once, in the order in which they had been stationed, the Corinthians leading, the Athenians bringing up the rear. 22. Themistocles now selected the swiftest ships, sailed to all the wateringplaces along the coast, and cut messages into the rocks, which were read by the Ionians on the following day when they arrived at Artemisium.27 The messages ran thus: “Men of Ionia, you do wrong to make war on your fathers, and to help to enslave Greece.Your best course would be to join our side; if that is impossible, you can at least hold aloof from the engagement, and ask the Carians to do the same. If you can do neither, but are hindered, by a compulsion too strong to resist, from attempting to desert, then at least, in the next battle, fight badly, remembering that you and we are of the same blood, and that our quarrel with the barbarian first arose on your account.” In leaving this message Themistocles probably had two possibilities in mind: either it would escape the king’s notice, and prompt the Ionians to come over to the Greeks; or it would be reported to him, and make a ground of accusation against the Ionians, who would be distrusted and not allowed to take part in sea battles. 23. As soon as Themistocles cut the messages, a man of Histiaea sailed to the barbarians at Aphetae and told them that the Greeks had fled from Artemisium. Incredulous, they put the man under guard and dispatched swift ships to reconnoiter. When the man’s report was confirmed, the entire fleet sailed at sunrise to Artemisium, where they waited until midday, and then sailed on to Histiaea. They took this city, and overran all the coastal villages of Ellopia,28 a district that belonged to Histiaea. 24. While they were there, a herald reached them from the King. Before sending him, Xerxes had done as follows with the bodies of those who fell at Thermopylae. Of the 20,000 men in the Persian army who had been slain, he left 1,000 on the field, and buried the rest in trenches; and these he covered with earth and leaves, to prevent their being seen by anyone from the fleet. The herald, on reaching Histiaea, assembled the entire force and spoke as follows: “Comrades, King Xerxes grants permission to all who so desire, to leave their posts, and see how he fights with the senseless men who expected to overpower his army.” 26. A small warship rowed by thirty oars, useful in this case as it would be less visible to the Persians. 27. The scheme mentioned at 8.19 above. 28. The northern half of Euboea.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

435

25. He had no sooner made this announcement than it became difficult to find a boat, so great was the number of those who wished to view the spectacle. All who crossed the strait toured the battlefield to see the dead. Though many helots were among the slain, everyone thought that the bodies were all Lacedemonians and Thespians. But no one was deceived by what Xerxes had done with his own corpses. It was indeed truly laughable; for on one side 1,000 men lay scattered about the field, and on the other side were the 4,000 lying together on one spot. This day was devoted to sight-seeing; on the next the seamen returned to their ships at Histiaea, while Xerxes and his army set out on their march. 26. A few Arcadian deserters29 now came to them—poor men who were in need of employment. The Persians brought them into the King’s presence and asked them what the Greeks were doing. (One man acted as the Persian spokesman.) The Arcadians replied that the Greeks were holding the Olympic games, where they were viewing gymnastic and equestrian contests. When the Persian asked what prize they were contending for, they replied that the winner received an olive wreath. On hearing this, Tritantaechmes, son of Artabanus, made a remark that was truly discerning, though it led Xerxes to call him a coward; for when he learned that the prize was not money but a wreath, he could not help crying out for all to hear, “Good heavens, Mardonius, what sort of men are these against whom have you brought us to fight—men who contend with one another not for money but for honor!” 27. Meanwhile, immediately after the defeat at Thermopylae, the Thessalians sent a herald into Phocis. The Thessalians had always been on bad terms with the Phocians, and especially so since their latest overthrow. For not many years before this invasion by the King,30 the Thessalians and their allies had invaded Phocis in full force, and were roughly handled by the Phocians and defeated. The Phocians were blocked up in Parnassus; but they had with them a soothsayer, Tellias of Elis, who devised the following stratagem. He took 600 of their bravest men, smeared their bodies and weapons with white chalk, and sent them against the enemy at night, ordering them to kill everyone they encountered who was not painted white like themselves.31 The Thessalian sentries were the first to see them, and took them for some sort of ghostly apparition; their panic spread to the rest of the troops, who were so terrified that the Phocians killed 4,000 of them, and got possession of their bodies and shields. Half the shields were sent as an offering to the temple at Abae, the other half to Delphi. From a tenth part of the booty 29. Greeks from the northern Peloponnese, doubtless among the troops who had been sent north to guard Thermopylae. 30. Possibly in the late 6th century B.C. 31. Night attacks were very rare in this era of Greek warfare because of the difficulty of distinguishing friend from foe.

436

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

were made the giant statues that stand around the tripod in front of the temple at Delphi, and also the similar figures at Abae. 28. Besides inflicting this defeat on the Thessalian infantry during the blockade, the Phocians also did irreparable harm to the Thessalian cavalry when it invaded their territory. They excavated a large trench at the pass near the city of Hyampolis; and after filling it with empty wine jars, they covered the jars with dirt, made the surface level with the rest of the ground, and awaited the invading Thessalians. The Thessalian horsemen charged forward as if they meant to take the Phocians by storm, whereupon their horses fell among the wine jars and broke their legs. 29. Bearing a grudge about both incidents,32 the Thessalians sent a herald to Phocis with the following message: “Phocians, give way now and confess that you are not our equals. For in the past, when it suited us to support the Greeks, we were always considered more important than you; and now our influence with the barbarian is so great that we could, if we chose, have you expelled from your country and (what is worse) sold as slaves.Yet though we have you in our power, we will not dwell on past wrongs; requite them with a payment of fifty talents of silver, and we undertake to avert the evils that are threatening your country.”33 30. The Phocians were the only people in the region who had not sided with the Medes, and for no other reason, as far as I can see, than their hatred for the Thessalians. If the Thessalians had joined the alliance of the Greeks, it seems to me the Phocians would have sided with the Medes. In reply to the Thessalians’ message, the Phocians refused to pay anything and declared that it was equally in their power to side with the Medes if they chose to do so; but they would never willingly become traitors to Greece. 31. The Phocians’ reply so angered the Thessalians that they offered to serve as guides for the barbarian army. From Trachinia the army entered Doris. In this place there is a narrow tract of Dorian territory, barely thirty stades across, between Malis and Phocis. In ancient times this tract was called Dryopis, and was the mother country of the Dorians of the Peloponnese. The Persians did not plunder this part of Doris on their way through; for the inhabitants were on their side, and the Thessalians wished them to be spared. 32. When from Doris they invaded Phocis, they failed to capture its inhabitants; for some of them had ascended to the heights of Parnassus, where one crest, called Tithorea, not far from the city of Neon, can accommodate a large body of men, and had now received a number of Phocians with their belongings. But the majority had taken refuge with the Ozolian Locrians and placed their goods in the city of Amphissa, which lies above the plain of Crisa. The land of Phocis, however, 32. Herodotus here returns to the narrative present, the aftermath of the battle of Thermopylae, after a brief flashback. 33. That is, by persuading their Persian allies not to ravage the territory of Phocis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

437

was completely overrun; for the Thessalians led the Persian army through the whole of it; and wherever they went they torched and plundered everything, and burned the cities and temples. 33. Along the valley of the Cephisus they ravaged everything and burned down the cities of Drymus, Charadra, Epochus, Tethronius, Amphicaea, Neon, Pediae, Tritae, Elatia, Hyampolis, Parapotamii, and Abae. At the last-named city there was a temple of Apollo, richly adorned with treasuries and many dedicatory offerings. There was an oracle there, as indeed there is today. This temple was plundered and burnt. A few Phocians were pursued and caught near the mountains, and some of the women were raped by so many troops that they perished. 34. After passing Parapotamii, the barbarians reached Panopeis; and there the army separated into two bodies.The stronger and more numerous continued with Xerxes toward Athens, entering Boeotia at Orchomenus. All the Boeotians had gone over to the Medes, and their towns were in the possession of Macedonian garrisons, whom Alexander had sent there, to make it clear to Xerxes that the Boeotians were on the Persian side.34 35. The other division, taking guides, proceeded toward the temple of Delphi, keeping Parnassus on their right. They, too, plundered all the parts of Phocis through which they passed, and burned the cities of the Panopaeans, the Daulians, and the Aeolidae. This division had been detached from the rest of the army for the purpose of despoiling the shrine at Delphi, and conveying its treasures to King Xerxes. For Xerxes, as I have learned, was better acquainted with what was noteworthy there than with what he had left at home, since the treasures at Delphi were constantly talked of; he was especially familiar with the offerings made by Croesus, son of Alyattes.35 36. When the Delphians learned that the barbarians were approaching, they were overcome with fear. In their alarm, they consulted the god to learn whether they should bury the sacred treasures or carry them away to some other country. The god told them to leave the treasures untouched, as he was capable of defending his own property. On receiving this answer, the Delphians began to think about their own safety. They sent their women and children across the gulf into Achaea, and most of the men ascended to the heights of Parnassus, and stored their goods in the Corycian cave, while some escaped to Amphissa in Locris. Thus all the Delphians, except sixty men and the interpreter of the oracle, abandoned the city. 34. Alexander, king of Macedon, was playing a double game in this war; though he harbored pro-Greek sympathies (see 7.173), he here demonstrates his loyalty to his Persian overlords while also protecting the interests of his Boeotian neighbors. These included Thebes, a city that had earlier been divided in its loyalties but by now has wholly medized. 35. See 1.50–51.

438

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

37. When the barbarian invaders drew near and were in sight of the temple, the interpreter, whose name was Aceratus, saw in front of the shrine some of the sacred weapons that no human being may lawfully touch; these had been removed from the inner shrine. He rushed to report the marvel to the Delphians who were still in the city. Meanwhile the barbarians were rapidly approaching, and when they had reached the temple of Athena Pronaea, they were met with portents even more remarkable than the one seen by Aceratus. That weapons should move by their own power and appear lying outside the shrine was remarkable enough; but what followed was surely one of the strangest things ever seen. For just as the invaders reached the temple of Athena Pronaea, thunderbolts fell on them from the sky, and two crests, splitting off from Parnassus, came crashing down upon them, killing a large number, while from inside the shrine there came a shout of victory and a battle-cry. 38. All these things happening together struck terror into the barbarians, who turned and fled. The Delphians, seeing this, came down and slaughtered a great many of them. All who survived fled straight for Boeotia. I have learned that these men, on their return home, declared that they had also seen another miraculous sight: two colossal men-at-arms, of more than human stature, pursuing them and cutting them down. 39.These men, according to the Delphians, were two local heroes, Phylacus and Autonous, each of whom has a sacred precinct near the temple; that of Phylacus lies beside the road above the temple, that of Antonous near the spring of Castalia at the foot of the peak called Hyampia.The rocks that fell from Parnassus were still seen in my day. They lie in the precinct of Pronaea, where they fell after crashing through the barbarian troops. That was how these men were forced to depart from the temple.36 40. Meanwhile the Greek fleet, having left Artemisium, came to anchor, at the Athenians’ request, at Salamis. The Athenians had urged the commanders to take up this position so that they might convey their children and wives out of Attica, and, in addition, might confer about their next move. Disappointed in their hopes, they were about to hold a council to discuss their predicament. For they had expected to find all the Peloponnesian forces drawn up to resist the enemy in Boeotia. But they found nothing of the kind; on the contrary, they learned that the Peloponnesians were only concerned about their own safety and were fortifying the Isthmus with a wall, where they intended to guard the Peloponnese and

36. These supernatural events do not help the modern historian understand how Delphi escaped plundering. It should be recalled that the oracle had advised the Greek states to either submit to Persia or flee, and so it is likely the Delphians had come to some understanding with Xerxes that now protected them.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

439

let the rest of Greece fend for itself.37 It was when they heard this news that the Athenians made the request to the fleet to put in at Salamis. 41. While the rest of the fleet proceeded to Salamis, the Athenians anchored off their own coast. On their arrival, they issued a proclamation that every Athenian should do his utmost to save his children and households.38 Thereupon most of them sent their dependents to Troezen, though some sent them to Aegina, others to Salamis.39 The Athenians hastened to remove their families partly from a desire to obey the oracle,40 but still more for another reason. The Athenians say that an enormous serpent lives in the temple, and is the guardian of the Acropolis. This is what they maintain, and every month, as if the serpent actually exists, they set out its food, which is a honey-cake. Now until this time the honey-cake had always been consumed; but now it remained untouched. The priestess told the people of this, whereupon they were all the more ready to depart, since they believed that the goddess herself had already abandoned the Acropolis. As soon as everything was removed, they sailed back to their station at Salamis. 42. And now the rest of the Greek ships, which had been ordered to muster at Pogon in Troezen, learned that the fleet from Artemisium had reached Salamis, and joined it there. Many more vessels assembled than had fought at Artemisium, and they were furnished by more cities.41 The fleet was under the same commander, Eurybiades, son of Euryclides, who was a Spartan, though not of royal blood. But the city that sent by far the greatest number of ships, and the swiftest, was Athens. 43. The following nations served in the Greek fleet. From the Peloponnese came the Lacedemonians with eleven ships; the Corinthians with the same number as at Artemisium; the Sicyonians with fifteen; the Epidaurians with ten; the Troezenians with five; and the Hermiones with three. These peoples (except for the Hermiones) are of Dorian and Macedonian descent, and had last emigrated 37. The Athenians may have hoped for better but, realistically, once Thermopylae had fallen, Attica and Boeotia could no longer be defended. Only in a narrow pass or at an isthmus did the Greek land army have a chance of resisting Xerxes’ superior numbers. 38. Herodotus presents this evacuation as though it were a rushed, last-minute measure taken while Xerxes was approaching, but in fact the Athenians must have prepared such a plan well in advance. Indeed a stone inscription called the Themistocles Decree, which came to light in the 1950s, indicates that the city began preparing for an evacuation well before Xerxes entered Greece, though scholars are divided as to the stone’s authenticity. 39. Since Aegina and Salamis were islands and Troezen lay south of the Isthmus, the Athenians had hopes of defending these places with their fleet. 40. Herodotus does not specify which oracle he means, of the two that Athens has received (7.140–41). 41. The catalogue that follows shows nine more cities and fifty-four more ships than before.

440

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

from Erineus, Pindus, and Dryopis.The Hermiones are Dryopes, and were driven out of the country now called Doris by Heracles and the Malians. 44. The contingents mentioned above were from the Peloponnese. From the mainland of Greece beyond the Peloponnese came the Athenians with 180 ships, a greater number than that contributed by any other nation; and these were manned wholly by Athenians.42 The Plataeans did not serve aboard the Athenian ships at Salamis; for when the Greeks, after their withdrawal from Artemisium, arrived off Chalcis, the Plataeans disembarked in Boeotia on the opposite shore and set to work removing their property and households, and were consequently left behind. (When the Pelasgians occupied the region that is now called Greece, the Athenians, a Pelasgian people, were called Cranai. In the reign of King Cecrops they were called Cecropids; when Erechtheus succeeded, they changed their name to Athenians; and when Ion, son of Xuthus, became their general, they took their name from him, and were called Ionians.)43 45. The Megarians furnished the same number of ships as at Artemisium; the Ambraciots came with seven; the Leucadians with three. The Ambraciots and Leucadians are Dorians from Corinth. 46. Of the islanders, the Aeginetans furnished thirty ships. They had other manned ships, but these were guarding their own territory; their best thirty ships were the ones that fought at Salamis. The Aeginetans are Dorians from Epidaurus. Their island used to be called Oenone. The Chalcidians furnished the same twenty ships that served at Artemisium; the Eretrians furnished their original seven. These islanders are Ionians. The Ceians, who are Ionians from Attica, furnished the same number of ships as at Artemisium. The Naxians furnished four; this contingent, like those from the other islands, had been sent by their fellow citizens to join the Medes; but they disregarded their orders and joined the Greeks at the urging of Democritus, a distinguished citizen who was now serving as trierarch. The Naxians are Ionians of Athenian descent. The Styraeans furnished the same ships as at Artemisium, the Cythnians one trireme and one penteconter. These two nations are Dryopes. The Seriphnians, Siphnians, and Melians also served; they were the only islanders who had not given earth and water to the barbarian. 47. All these nations are situated on this side of the river Acheron and the country of the Thesprotians; for the Thesprotians border on the Ambraciots and Leucadians, the two most distant peoples to contribute to the fleet. Beyond them there was only one people that helped the Greeks in their danger. This was the 42. This detail attests to the Athenian commitment to the war effort, since 180 ships required over 35,000 crewmen, an enormous number for a single city to provide. 43. All the figures named in this strangely inserted excursus belong to Athens’ mythic past.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

441

people of Croton, who sent one ship, under the command of Phayllus, a man who had won three victories at the Pythian games. The Crotoniates are, by descent, Achaeans. 48. Most of the allies furnished triremes; but the Melians, Siphnians, and Seriphnians brought penteconters. The Melians, who are of Lacedemonian descent, furnished two; the Siphnians and Seriphnians, who are Ionians of Athenian descent, one each. The total number of ships, not counting the penteconters, was 378. 49. When the commanders from these various contingents assembled at Salamis, a council of war was held, and Eurybiades proposed that anyone who wished to speak should say which place he thought most suitable, among those still under their control, for engaging the enemy at sea, excluding Attica, which had already been given up. Most of those who spoke held that the fleet should sail to the Isthmus and fight there in defense of the Peloponnese, on the grounds that if they were defeated at Salamis they would be besieged on an island, where they could get no help, whereas if they were defeated at the Isthmus, they could escape to their own people. 50. While the commanders from the Peloponnese were still conferring, an Athenian arrived with the news that the barbarians had entered Attica and were torching the whole country. For the division of the army under Xerxes had marched through Boeotia, where it had burned down Thespiae and Plataea (whose inhabitants had fled to the Peloponnese), and then entered Attica, where it was destroying everything. The Persians had burned down the two cities after learning from the Thebans that they had refused to side with the Medes. 51. It had taken the barbarians one month to cross the Hellespont. From there, where they began their march, it took them another three to reach Athens, which they entered during the archonship of Calliades.44 The barbarians captured a deserted city. The few Athenians they found were in the temple45—stewards and poor folk, who had barricaded the acropolis with doors and planks and were holding out against the enemy. It was partly their poverty that had prevented them from seeking shelter in Salamis, and partly their belief that they had discovered the true meaning of the oracle uttered by the Pythian priestess—that the “wooden wall” would never be taken.46 They thought that this barricade was the place of refuge alluded to in the oracle, and not the ships. 44. Herodotus and other Greek historians had no better way to give exact dates than by the naming the archon (or chief magistrate) then in office in Athens, since calendar years were not numbered as they are now. 45. It is unclear which temple is meant, since all the buildings that stood on the acropolis at this time were destroyed by the Persians. 46. See 7.141.

442

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

52. The Persians occupied the hill opposite the acropolis, which the Athenians call the Areopagus, and laid siege to the Athenians, attaching burning pitch to their arrows and shooting them into the barricade. The besieged Athenians nevertheless continued to defend themselves, though their situation was dire and the barricade had betrayed them. They would not even listen when the Pisistratids came to them and offered terms of surrender.47 Among their other defensive measures, they rolled boulders down upon the barbarians when they tried to approach the gates. So for a long time Xerxes was perplexed and unable to capture them. 53. But at last, despite the difficulty, the barbarians found a way in. For the oracle had declared that the entire mainland of Attica must fall under Persian control. There is a place right in front of the Acropolis, behind the path up to the gates, where the ascent is so steep that no watch was kept, since it was not thought possible that any man could climb it; here, despite the steepness of the rock face, a few soldiers managed to scramble up by the temple of Aglaurus, Cecrops’ daughter. As soon as the Athenians saw them on the summit, some flung themselves from the wall and perished, while others fled for refuge to the inner part of the temple. But the Persians rushed for the gates, threw them open, and massacred those in the sanctuary. When all lay dead, they despoiled the temple and burned everything on the acropolis. 54. Xerxes, now in complete possession of Athens, sent a horseman to Artabanus48 to report his success. On the following day he summoned the Athenian exiles who were accompanying him, and ordered them to go up to the acropolis and offer sacrifice in their traditional manner. He may have been prompted by a dream to give this order, or perhaps his conscience was troubled by the burning of the temple. The exiles did as they were told. 55. I will explain why I allude to these matters. On the Athenian acropolis there is a temple of Erechtheus the Earth-born,49 as he is called, and within it is an olive-tree and a spring of salt water. According to Athenian legend, these were placed there by Poseidon and Athena when they vied with one another for the country, as tokens of their claim to it.50 Now this olive had been burned with the rest of the temple when the barbarians captured the place. But on the day after the fire, when the Athenians, who had been ordered by the king to offer 47. Presumably these “Pisistratids” are the children of Hippias, former tyrant of Athens, though Herodotus does not specify. Hippias himself could conceivably have still been on the scene, as he was at Marathon (see 6.107–109), though probably he was dead by this time. 48. His cautious uncle, sent back from the Hellespont to oversee the royal house back in Susa (see 7.52–53). 49. A legendary early king of Athens, to whom the temple called Erechtheum is dedicated. 50. According to the myth, these two gods had competed to see which could give the most beneficial gift to Athens. The olive tree and salt spring on the acropolis were thought to be their gifts.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

443

sacrifice, went up to the place, they saw that a fresh shoot, nearly a cubit long,51 had sprouted from the stump. Such, at any rate, was the account given by these Athenians. 56. Meanwhile, at Salamis, the news of what had happened to the acropolis at Athens was so disturbing that some of the commanders did not even wait for the business under discussion to be decided, but hastened on board their ships and hoisted sail as if they meant to flee at once. Those who remained behind passed a resolution to fight in defense of the Isthmus. Night came on; and the commanders, after the council broke up, returned to their ships. 57. When Themistocles returned to his ship, Mnesiphilus,52 an Athenian, asked him what the council had decided to do. On learning that the decision was to sail to the Isthmus and fight there in defense of the Peloponnese, Mnesiphilus exclaimed, “Impossible! If they move the fleet from Salamis, you’ll no longer be fighting for one country. Everyone will scatter to their own homes, and neither Eurybiades nor anyone else will be able to prevent the dispersal of our forces. Greece will be ruined by foolish counsels. Go back at once and do all you can to have the decision reversed.You may be able to persuade Eurybiades to change his mind and remain here.” 58. This suggestion delighted Themistocles; and without even replying, he went straight to the ship of Eurybiades and told the commander that he wanted to speak with him about a matter of public importance. Eurybiades invited him to come on board and say whatever he wished. Taking a seat beside him, Themistocles went through all the arguments of Mnesiphilus as if they were his own, and added several new ones, until at last, by sheer persistence, he persuaded Eurybiades to leave his ship and reassemble the commanders. 59. As soon they had gathered, and before Eurybiades had even explained why he had called them together, Themistocles, unable to contain his anxiety, broke into earnest speech. The Corinthian commander, Adeimantus, son of Ocytus, interrupted him and said, “In the games, Themistocles, those who start before the signal are thrashed.”53 “True,” replied Themistocles in his own defense, “but those who start too late are not crowned.” 60. For the moment, he replied gently to the Corinthian,54 and in addressing Eurybiades refrained from using any of the arguments he had advanced earlier 51. About a foot and a half. 52. Otherwise unknown, which seems to be the point. The story Herodotus had heard (probably concocted by Themistocles’ enemies) made an anonymous Athenian, not Themistocles himself, responsible for the strategic insight which follows. 53. That is, Themistocles should have waited to be called on by the presiding officer, just as a competitive runner should wait for the starter’s signal. 54. In contrast to the next time (8.61).

444

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

about the danger of the force dispersing if they left Salamis. For it would not have been becoming to accuse anyone in the presence of the allies. A.55 But he took up a new line of reasoning, and said, “It is now in your power to save Greece, if you take my advice and engage the enemy here, instead of moving the fleet to the Isthmus as these others suggest. Listen and compare the two courses. At the Isthmus you will have to fight in the open sea, which will be greatly to our disadvantage, since our ships are slower and fewer in number; and even if everything else goes well you will lose Salamis, Megara, and Aegina. The land army of the Persians will follow their fleet; so you will yourselves be drawing them toward the Peloponnese and putting all of Greece in danger. B. “If, on the other hand, you do as I advise, you will secure the following advantages. First, judging by what is most probable when few ships engage many in a narrow space, we will likely gain the upper hand. For we would have the advantage in a narrow space, they in the open sea. Secondly, Salamis, where we have put our women and children, will be preserved. Indeed, you will also achieve the end you especially cherish: for by remaining here, you will be fighting in defense of the Peloponnese no less than at the Isthmus. If you are prudent, you will not draw the enemy in that direction. C. “If things turn out as I expect, and we defeat them at sea, they will not be near your Isthmus, nor will they have advanced farther than Attica; they will retreat in disorder, and we will profit by the preservation of Megara, Aegina, and Salamis—where according to an oracle we will prevail over our enemies.56 When men lay reasonable plans, they usually succeed; but when their plans are unreasonable, the god is unwilling to favor their proposals.” 61. At this point Adeimantus the Corinthian again attacked Themistocles, ordering him to be silent, since he was a man without a country; at the same time he called on Eurybiades not to put the question to a vote at the suggestion of a man without a city, and urged Themistocles to provide himself with a city before he offered his advice.The point of his reproach was that Athens had been captured and was in enemy hands. Themistocles now addressed a great many cutting remarks to Adeimantus and the Corinthians generally, and argued that with 200 ships of their own, all fully manned, Athens had both a city and a country greater than theirs; since there was no Greek state that could resist them if they chose to attack.57 62. After pointing this out, he turned to Eurybiades and spoke more vehemently than ever. “If you stay here,” he said, “and act like a brave man, all will 55. Because of the length of the following speech, lettered subdivisions are used in the text. 56. The last clause applies only to Salamis (see 7.141). 57. A statement that would have had grim resonance for Herodotus’ original audience, among whom many had either been attacked by the Athenian navy, in its capacity as enforcement arm of the vast Athenian empire, or had participated in those attacks.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

445

be well; if not, you’ll be the ruin of Greece. For in this war everything depends on the fleet. I beg you to listen to me. If you refuse, we will pick up our families and sail, just as we are, to Siris in Italy, which has long been ours, and which the oracles declare we are to colonize some day or other.58 As for you, when you have lost allies like us, you will recall my words.” 63. At these words of Themistocles, Eurybiades changed his mind; chiefly, as it seems to me, because he feared that if he withdrew the fleet to the Isthmus, the Athenians would sail away; and without the Athenians, the rest of their ships would be no match for the enemy. He therefore decided to remain and fight it out at Salamis. 64. And now the commanders, despite their skirmish of words, on learning the decision of Eurybiades made ready to fight where they were. Day dawned; and just as the sun rose, the shock of an earthquake was felt both on land and at sea, and the Greeks decided to pray to the gods and to call upon the Aeacids59 to aid them. Their decision made, they acted at once; they prayed to all the gods, and called upon Ajax and Telamon in Salamis, and sent a ship to Aegina to fetch Aeacus himself and the other Aeacids. 65. A story used to be told by Dicaeus, son of Theocydes, an Athenian exile who was respected among the Medes. He said that after the evacuation of Athens, while Xerxes’ army was devastating Attica, he happened to be with Demaratus the Spartan in the Thriasian plain. There they saw a cloud of dust, such as an army of 30,000 might raise, advancing from Eleusis.60 Wondering who these men could be, they suddenly heard the sound of voices, and Dicaeus thought he recognized the Iacchus hymn that is sung at the mysteries. As Demaratus was unacquainted with the rites of Eleusis, he asked Dicaeus what it was they were hearing. Dicaeus replied, “Demaratus, this can only mean that some great calamity is in store for the king’s army. For it is perfectly clear, since Attica is deserted, that the sound we hear is a divine one, and is coming from Eleusis to aid the Athenians and their allies. If it descends upon the Peloponnese, the king and his land army will be in danger; if it moves toward the ships at Salamis, the king may well lose his fleet. Every year the Athenians celebrate a festival in honor of the Mother 58. Siris was a Greek city on the instep of the Italian “boot.” It is unclear in what sense Themistocles considers it “ours” or what oracle he refers to, and it would be characteristic of his tactics to invent both ideas. 59. See 5.80 and note 101. The Aeacids, whose statues resided near Salamis on Aegina, were thought to have special powers over their own region. 60. At Eleusis, on Attica’s western border, the goddesses Demeter and Persephone were worshiped in what is called a mystery cult, with rites that were thought to ensure a happy afterlife to the initiates. Athens had a special connection to this cult, and a sacred procession, made up of those wishing to join it, left the city once a year to travel to Eleusis. Along the way these initiates chanted a refrain “O Iacchus” (the “Iacchus hymn” referred to below).

446

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

and the Maiden,61 and any Greek who wishes, whether from Athens or elsewhere, may be initiated. The sound you hear is the Iacchus hymn that is always sung at that festival.” In reply Demaratus said, “Keep this to yourself and tell no one else.62 For if your words are reported to the king, you will lose your head. Neither I nor anyone else will be able to save you. Therefore say nothing. The gods will look out for the king’s army.” Such was Demaratus’ advice; and now they saw the cloud of dust, from which the voice had issued, rise high into the air and drift toward Salamis, heading for the station of the Greek fleet. Then they knew that the fleet of Xerxes was destined to be destroyed. Such was the story told by Dicaeus, son of Theocydes, who called on Demaratus and others to bear witness to the truth of it. 66. The Persian sailors,63 after they had viewed the Spartan dead and returned from Trachis to Histiaea, waited there for three days; then they sailed down through the Euripus, and in another three days reached Phalerum. It seems to me that the Persian forces both by land and sea when they invaded Attica were as numerous as they had been at Sepias and Thermopylae. For I estimate that the losses the barbarians incurred as a result of the storm and in the actions at Thermopylae and Artemisium were made good thereafter by the various nations who had since joined them. These included the Malians, Dorians, and Locrians; the Boeotians in full force except the Plataeans and Thespians; and in addition to these the Carystians, Andrians, Tenians, and all the other island peoples except the five whom I mentioned earlier.64 For the farther the Persian advanced into Greece, the more peoples followed him. 67. All of these troops came to Athens except the Parians, who stayed behind in Cythnos and waited to see how the war would end. The rest of the forces reached Phalerum, where they were visited by Xerxes, who wished to converse with the commanders and hear their views. When he had seated himself, the tyrants and commanding officers were summoned to appear before him, and took their seats according to the rank the king had assigned to them: the king of Sidon first, the king of Tyre second, and so on in their order. When all had taken their places, and were seated in orderly array, Xerxes sent Mardonius to question each man about whether they should fight at sea.65 61. Demeter and Persephone, goddesses associated with agriculture and spring growth. 62. An interesting echo of the Eleusinian mysteries themselves, since the initiates were forbidden to reveal to any outsider what they had seen. 63. After following events among the Greek fleet after Artemisium, Herodotus now turns to the Persian side, resuming from 8.25. He returns to the Greeks at 8.78. 64. See 8.46, where six island states are mentioned in the Greek coalition, not five. 65. That is, whether to now engage the Greek fleet, or wait for a better opportunity.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

447

68. Mardonius accordingly went round the entire company, beginning with the Sidonian king, putting his question. Everyone gave the same answer, advising him to engage the Greek fleet, except Artemisia,66 who spoke as follows: A. “Tell the king what I say, Mardonius—I, whose courage and achievements at Euboea were not among the least distinguished: ‘It is my right, my lord, to tell you what I believe to be most to your advantage. Here then is my advice. Spare your fleet and do not fight at sea. These people are as far superior to yours in seamanship as men are to women. What need have you to run risks at sea? Are you not master of Athens, the principal object of your expedition? Is not the rest of Greece in your power? No one now resists you; those who did have got what they deserved. B. “‘Let me tell you how I think things will go with your enemies. If you avoid rushing into a naval engagement, and keep the ships here near the land, then whether you stay where you are or march toward the Peloponnese, you will easily achieve your original purpose. The Greeks cannot hold out against you for long; you will soon disperse them, and each contingent will flee to its own city. I hear they have no provisions on this island; nor is it likely, if your infantry marches toward the Peloponnese, that the troops who came from there will remain here quietly.67 They will not care to fight at sea on behalf of the Athenians. C. “‘But if you rush at once into a naval battle, I fear that the defeat of your fleet may harm your land army. And bear in mind, sire, that good masters are apt to have bad slaves, and bad masters good ones. Now as you are the best master in the world, your servants must necessarily be the worst. The Egyptians, Cyprians, Cilicians, and Pamphylians, who are supposed to be your allies, are utterly worthless!’” 69. As she was speaking, all the allies who were well-disposed to Artemisia considered her advice unfortunate, imagining that the king would punish her for urging him not to fight at sea; those, on the other hand, who envied her standing with the king (since he favored her above all the other allies), rejoiced at her protest, thinking that she would pay for it with her life. But when the allies’ views were reported to Xerxes, he was particularly pleased with Artemisia’s. He had always admired her, but now he praised her more than ever. Nevertheless, his orders were that the advice of the majority should be followed; for he assumed that at Euboea68 the naval forces had shirked their duty because he was not present, whereas this time he had made arrangements to witness the sea battle. 66. See 7.99 and note. 67. That is, the Peloponnesian ships will leave Salamis to aid their countrymen in defending the Isthmus. 68. Meaning the previous engagement at Artemisium.

448

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

70. Orders were now given to put out to sea, and the ships proceeded toward Salamis, where they took up their battle stations at leisure. But it was too late in the day for them to begin the battle, as night was falling; so they prepared to engage the next day. The Greeks, meanwhile, were racked by fear and dread, especially those from the Peloponnese, who were troubled that they had been detained at Salamis and were about to fight on behalf of Athenian territory, and feared that if they were defeated they would be caught and besieged on an island, while their own country was left unprotected. 71.That very night the Persian army set out for the Peloponnese, where, however, every possible measure had been taken to prevent the enemy from invading by land. For as soon as the news reached the Peloponnese of the death of Leonidas and his men at Thermopylae, the inhabitants of all the cities flocked to the Isthmus, where they encamped under the command of Cleombrotus, son of Anaxandrides, the brother of Leonidas. Their first act was to block the Scironian Way,69 after which it was decided in council to build a wall across the Isthmus. As tens of thousands assembled, and each man labored, the wall was soon finished. Stones, bricks, wood, and baskets filled with sand were all used in the building, and the laborers worked ceaselessly, day and night. 72. The nations who came in full force to the Isthmus to lend aid were the following: the Lacedemonians, all the Arcadians, the Eleans, the Corinthians, the Sicyonians, the Epidaurians, the Phliasians, the Troezenians, and the Hermiones. All these nations, alarmed by the danger that threatened Greece, joined in the work; but the other Peloponnesian cities, though the Olympic and the Carneian festivals were now over, remained indifferent. 73. Seven peoples inhabit the Peloponnese.70 Two of the them, the Arcadians and Cynurians, are indigenous, and continue in the places they inhabited in ancient times; the third, the Achaeans, has never left the Peloponnese, though it did migrate from its original territory, and inhabits a land that once belonged to others.The four others, namely the Dorians, Aetolians, Dryopes, and Lemnians, are all immigrants. The Dorians have many famous cities, the Aetolians have only Elis, the Dryopes have Hermione and Asine (the latter lies near Cardamyle in Laconia), and the Lemnians all the towns of the Paroreatae. The Cynurians, an indigenous people, appear to be the only Ionians, though they too have become Dorianized over the long period in which, as dwellers around Orneae, they have been governed by the Argives. All the cities of these seven peoples, except the ones I mentioned above, remained neutral in the war. But by doing so, if I may speak frankly, they were in effect siding with the Medes.71 69. A difficult path leading into the Peloponnese. 70. Despite the urgency of the action, Herodotus continues to pause for ethnographic excursuses when he has information to impart. 71. Argos was by far the most powerful city in this neutral camp (see 7.148–51).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

449

74.The Greeks at the Isthmus, convinced that everything was now at stake, and not expecting that the fleet would distinguish itself, worked ceaselessly on their fortification. The Greeks at Salamis, on the other hand, when they heard what their compatriots were doing, grew alarmed—not so much for themselves as for the Peloponnese. At first they conversed in whispers, expressing surprise at the folly of Eurybiades; but soon the smothered discontent broke out, and another assembly was held, at which the old subjects were gone over again, one side arguing that they should sail to the Isthmus and risk a battle for the Peloponnese rather than remain and fight for a territory already taken by the enemy, while the Athenians, Aeginetans, and Megarians maintained that they should stay and fight at Salamis. 75. When Themistocles saw that he would be outvoted by the Peloponnesians, he slipped quietly from the meeting and sent a man by boat to the fleet of the Medes, having told him exactly what to say. The man’s name was Sicinnus. He was one of Themistocles’ slaves and acted as tutor to his sons. At a later time, when the Thespians72 were enrolling new citizens, Themistocles established him as a Thespian and made him a rich man. Sicinnus made his way by boat to the barbarian commanders and said, “The Athenian commander,73 without the knowledge of the other Greeks, has sent me to you. He favors your king’s cause and hopes to see your side prevail over his countrymen. He desires me to inform you that the Greeks have grown fearful and are contemplating flight. You have at this moment an opportunity of incomparable glory, if you will only prevent their escaping. For they are at odds with one another and will not now resist you. On the contrary, you will see a fight between those who favor and those who oppose your cause.” On delivering this message, Sicinnus withdrew and departed. 76. The barbarian commanders believed what he had said, and proceeded to land a large force of Persians on the islet of Psyttaleia, which lies between Salamis and the mainland. Then, at midnight, they advanced their western wing to surround Salamis, while at the same time the ships stationed near Ceos and Cynosura74 also advanced and filled the whole strait as far as Munychia75 with their ships. This was done to prevent the Greeks from escaping, and to trap them at Salamis, where vengeance might be taken upon them for the battles at Artemisium. They landed the Persians on Psyttaleia because the men and wrecks, as soon as the fighting began, were likely to be washed ashore there, since the islet 72. Inhabitants of Thespiae in Boeotia. The modern word “thespian,” used of actors, is from a different root. 73. Themistocles. 74. The eastern portion of Salamis. 75. A hill on the western shore of Attica, in Piraeus.

450

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

lay in the very path of the impending battle, and the troops stationed there would thus be able to save their own men and slay their enemies. All these movements were carried out in silence, to prevent the Greeks from becoming aware of them; and they occupied the whole night, so that the men had no time for sleep. 77. I cannot say that there is no truth in oracles, or seek to discredit those that speak clearly, when I consider the following: When with ships they bridge the sea from Cynosura To the sacred shore of Artemis of the golden sword, Mad with hope at the sack of shining Athens, Then shall divine Justice extinguish Greed, the child of Hubris, Dreadful and furious, who thinks to swallow up all things. Bronze will meet bronze, and Ares with blood will Dye the sea red. Then will the all-seeing son of Cronus76 And mistress Victory bring to Greece the day of her freedom. When I consider this oracle, so clearly expressed by Bacis,77 I dare not deny the truthfulness of oracles, nor will I accept the denials of others. 78. Meanwhile, the Greek commanders at Salamis were still wrangling. They did not yet know that the barbarian ships had surrounded them, but imagined that they remained in the same places where they had seen them during the day. 79. In the midst of their dispute, Aristides crossed over from Aegina. This man, an Athenian and the son of Lysimachus, had been ostracized by the people.78 Yet I believe, from what I have learned about his character, that no man in Athens was as noble and just as he. Coming to the council, and standing outside, he called for Themistocles, though the man was not his friend; indeed, he was his most determined enemy. But in view of the great dangers threatening them, Aristides forgot their quarrel in his desire to confer with him. He had already heard that the Peloponnesians were eager to withdraw the fleet to the Isthmus. As soon, therefore, as Themistocles came out, Aristides said, “Our rivalry at all times, Themistocles, and especially at this moment, ought to be over which of us will do our country the most good. Let me tell you, then, that the Peloponnesians may say as much or little as they like about sailing away—it will make no difference. For I have seen with my own eyes that however much the Corinthians or Eurybiades himself may 76. The “son of Cronus” is Zeus. 77. On Bacis see 8.20 and note. 78. Ostracism was an Athenian constitutional procedure for preventing rivalries from blocking or impeding the governing process. If the citizenry decided to do so, it could force one of the rivals, chosen by vote, to leave Athens for ten years. Aristides, an opponent of Themistocles, had been ostracized three or four years before this time, but in the crisis atmosphere of 480 B.C., Athens recalled such men from exile.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

451

wish it, they cannot now retreat. For the enemy has surrounded our fleet.79 Pray go in and tell them so.” 80. “You give excellent advice,” replied Themistocles, “and your news is also good. For you have seen with your own eyes what I most wanted to happen. It is I who am responsible for what the Medes have done. For as our men would not fight here of their own accord, it was necessary to make them fight, regardless of their wishes. But give them the good news yourself. For if I tell them, they will think I have invented it and will not believe me. Pray go in and inform them yourself. If they believe you, it will be for the best; if not, it will make no difference. For if, as you say, we are surrounded on all sides, escape will be impossible.” 81. Aristides accordingly went in and reported that he had come from Aegina and had barely managed to slip through the blockading vessels, as the entire Greek camp was surrounded by Xerxes’ ships. He advised them, therefore, to prepare at once to resist the enemy. That said, he withdrew, whereupon another dispute arose; for most of the commanders refused to believe the report. 82. But while they were still in doubt, a Tenian trireme, commanded by Panaetius, son of Sosimenes, deserted from the Persians and brought the whole truth. For this reason the Tenians were inscribed on the tripod at Delphi among those who vanquished the barbarian. With the addition of the Tenian ship that came over to them at Salamis, and the Lemnian trireme that had joined them earlier at Artemisium, the Greek fleet was brought to the full number of 380 ships. For until then it had fallen short of that figure by two. 83. As the Greek allies believed the Tenians’ report, they prepared for battle. At daybreak the marines were assembled; and of all the speeches made to them, the best was that of Themistocles. In it he contrasted all that was noble and base in human nature and fortune, and exhorted the men to choose the nobler part. Then, having wound up his speech, he ordered the men to board their ships, which they did. And just as they were embarking, the trireme that had been sent to Aegina to fetch the Aeacids80 returned to the fleet.The Greeks now set sail with all their ships, and the barbarians immediately attacked. 84. Most of the Greeks began to back water, and were about to touch the shore,81 when Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian captain, raced forward and 79. Presumably Aristides has seen this envelopment because he had just then been brought to Salamis from Aegina in a small craft capable of crossing enemy lines. 80. See 8.64 above. Herodotus must be wrong about the timing of the ship’s arrival, as a trireme could not have sailed unseen past the Persian fleet except at night. 81. In retreat. The description of the battle of Salamis that follows can be compared with the account given by Aeschylus in Persians, in a messenger’s speech (lines 351–470). Aeschylus was a participant in the battle and wrote about it eight years later; Herodotus, by contrast, gathered information at secondhand.

452

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

rammed an enemy ship. When the two ships became entangled and could not separate, the rest of the Greek fleet hastened to aid Ameinias, and the battle began. Such is the Athenian account of how it started; but the Aeginetans maintain that the ship that had gone to fetch the Aeacids was the one that started it. It is also reported that the specter of a woman appeared and urged them on in a voice that was heard throughout the fleet;82 but first it rebuked them, saying, “Strange men, how much longer will you back water?” 85. The Athenians were facing the Phoenicians, who held the western end of the line towards Eleusis; opposite the Lacedemonians were the Ionians, who held the eastern end toward the Piraeus.83 A few of the Ionians followed the advice of Themistocles and fought half-heartedly, but most did not. Here I could list the names of many enemy commanders who captured Greek ships, but I will only mention Theomestor, son of Androdramas, and Phylacus, son of Histiaeus, both of whom were Samians. I name these two because Theomestor, in reward for this service, was appointed tyrant of Samos by the Persians, and Phylacus was enrolled among the king’s benefactors and presented with a large estate. In the Persian language the king’s benefactors are called orosangae. 86. So fared these officers; but the majority of barbarian ships at Salamis were sunk or disabled, some by the Athenians, others by the Aeginetans. Since the Greeks fought in a disciplined manner and kept in line, while the barbarians fell out of formation and had no plan, the outcome was inevitable.Yet the barbarians fought valiantly that day—far better than they had at Euboea. Every man did his best through fear of Xerxes, thinking that the king was watching him. 87. I cannot speak with certainty about how the various Greek or barbarian contingents performed in this battle; but I do know that Artemisia conducted herself in such a way as to enhance her already distinguished reputation with the king. For after his fleet had fallen into disarray, Artemisia’s ship was chased by an Attic trireme. Unable to escape (since other friendly ships were ahead of her, while her own chanced to be closest to the enemy), she adopted a course that turned out greatly to her advantage. Pressed closely by her pursuer, she charged ahead and rammed a friendly ship, a Calyndian, which had Damasithymus, the Calyndian king, on board. I cannot say whether Artemisia had quarreled with Damasithymus at the Hellespont; nor do I know whether she deliberately attacked his ship, or whether it was merely by chance that it got in her way. But when she rammed and sank it, she had the good fortune to obtain a double advantage. For the captain of the Attic trireme, when he saw her ram an enemy, supposed her ship was a Greek 82. Aeschylus also reports that at the outset of the battle a disembodied voice exhorted the Greeks to fight for their homeland and ancestral shrines (Persians 401–405). 83. Just as in an infantry battle, so in a naval clash, units form up in line, with the best holding the wings or line-ends.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

Eleusis

453

Thria sia n

ain Pl

Bay of Eleusis Megara

Salamis Salamis

s leu ega A . Mt

Throne of Xerxes

Greek Fleet

Munychia Hill

Piraeus Psyttaleia

Saronic Gulf

Athens

Bay of Phalerum Phalerum

Persian Fleet

15 kilometers 15 miles

The battle of Salamis, showing Persian fleet movements the night before the battle.

one, or else had deserted from the Persians and was fighting on the Greek side. He therefore abandoned the chase, and turned away to attack others. 88. So in the first place Artemisia had the good fortune to escape with her life; in the second, it turned out that in the very act of doing harm to the king she raised herself even higher in his esteem. For it is said that Xerxes, who was watching the battle, observed the sinking of the ship, whereupon someone in his suite said, “Do you see, master, how well Artemisia is fighting? She has just sunk an enemy ship.” Xerxes asked whether it was truly Artemisia’s doing, and they replied that it was, for they knew her ensign, and naturally assumed that the vessel she had sunk belonged to the enemy. Lucky in every way, as I have said, Artemisia was especially fortunate in the fact that none of the men on board the Calyndian ship survived to accuse her. In response to what was told him, Xerxes is said to have remarked, “My men have become women, and my women men!” 89. Among those who fell in this struggle was the commander Ariabignes, the son of Darius and brother of Xerxes, and many other well-known Persians, Medes, and allies. But few of the Greeks perished. For as they knew how to swim, those who did not fall in hand-to-hand combat swam across to Salamis when their

454

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

ships were sunk. But most of the barbarians, being unable to swim, perished by drowning. The greatest destruction took place when the ships in the front rank turned to flee. For those stationed behind them, in trying to press forward and perform some valorous exploit before the eyes of the king, fell foul of those on their own side that were fleeing. 90. In the confusion, the following incident took place. Certain Phoenicians whose ships had been destroyed came to the king and blamed their loss on the Ionians, claiming that they were traitors. But the upshot was that the Phoenicians themselves, and not the Ionians, were punished with death. For while the Phoenicians were speaking, a Samothracian ship rammed an Attic trireme. The Attic ship was sinking, when an Aeginetan ship, bearing down on it, sank the Samothracian ship. But as the Samothracians are javelin fighters, they hurled their lances at the Aeginetan marines from their own sinking ship, swept them from the decks, leapt aboard, and seized their ship. This saved the Ionians. For when Xerxes saw the exploit, he turned on the Phoenicians—he was distressed beyond measure and inclined to blame anyone—and ordered their heads to be cut off, that they might not cast aspersions on braver men. Xerxes watched the battle from the base of Mount Aegaleus, opposite Salamis, and whenever he saw any of his own captains fighting with distinction, he would find out his name, and have his secretaries write it down, together with the names of his father and his city. The presence of the Persian Ariaramnes, who was a friend of the Ionians, had a share in bringing about the punishment of the Phoenicians. 91. When the rout of the barbarians began, and they were trying to escape to Phalerum,84 the Aeginetans, who were lying in wait for them in the strait, performed remarkable exploits. For the Athenians in the midst of the fray were disabling the ships that resisted or tried to flee, while the Aeginetans were catching those that tried to sail down the strait. Hence any ships that escaped the Athenians fell into the hands of the Aeginetans. 92. At that point Themistocles’ ship, in pursuit of an enemy vessel, chanced to meet the ship of Polycritus, son of Crius the Aeginetan,85 which had just rammed a Sidonian trireme. The Sidonian ship was the same that had captured the Aeginetan patrol ship off Sciathus (the one that had Pytheas, son of Ischenous, on board, the man whom the Persians kept with them out of admiration for his gallantry when grievously wounded).86 When this ship was seized with him and its Persian crew, he got safely home to Aegina.

84. One of the harbors serving Athens, a city now in Persian hands. 85. Crius, it should be recalled, had defied the efforts of the Spartan-Athenian alliance to stop Aegina from medizing (see 6.50). 86. See 7.181.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

455

When Polycritus caught sight of the Attic ship and recognized the admiral’s ensign, he shouted to Themistocles, jeering at him for having accused the Aeginetans of siding with the Medes. While thus taunting Themistocles, Polycritus rammed the Sidonian ship. The barbarians whose ships escaped destruction reached Phalerum, where they came under the protection of the land army. 93. The Greeks whose service in the battle of Salamis was most esteemed were the Aeginetans, and after them the Athenians. The individuals most cited for gallantry were Polycritus the Aeginetan and two Athenians, Eumenes of Anagyrus and Ameinias of Pallene. It was Ameinias who had chased Artemisia; and had he known that she was on board that ship, he would never have abandoned the pursuit until he had captured her or been captured himself. For the Athenian captains had received special orders about her; and a reward of 10,000 drachmas had been promised to the man who took her alive. That a woman was waging war on the Athenians was regarded as something of an affront to their dignity. But Artemisia escaped, as I said before; some others also got away with their ships, and these were now assembled at Phalerum. 94. The Athenians say that at the very start of the engagement the Corinthian commander Adeimantus, stupefied by fear, hoisted sail and fled, whereupon the Corinthians, seeing their commander’s ship in flight, sailed off as well. When the Corinthian ships had reached that part of the coast of Salamis where the temple of Athena Sciras stands, they were met by a strange cutter. No one appears to have sent this vessel, and the Corinthians, when it met them, were unaware of how the battle was going. In light of what happened next, the cutter is thought to have been a divine apparition.When it drew near, the men on board hailed them, saying, “Adeimantus, while you are playing the traitor by withdrawing these troops and running away, the prayers of the Greeks are being answered, and they are prevailing over their enemies.” Adeimantus, however, would not believe what they said, so they told him that he might take them with him as hostages, and put them to death if he did not find the Greeks winning. Thereupon Adeimantus and the other Corinthians reversed course and returned to the Greek camp, though they arrived after the engagement was over. This is the story told by the Athenians about the Corinthians; the Corinthians, however, repudiate their account, and maintain that they were among the foremost fighters at Salamis. The rest of Greece bears witness in their favor. 95. In the midst of the confusion the Athenian Aristides, son of Lysimachus, whom I lately mentioned as being a man of excellent character, performed the following service. He took a number of Athenian men-at-arms, who had been posted along the shore of Salamis, and, landing with them on the islet of Psyttaleia, slaughtered all the Persians who had been stationed there. 96. After the battle, the Greeks hauled over to Salamis all the wrecks that were found floating in the neighborhood, and prepared themselves for another

456

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

engagement, expecting that the king would fight again with his remaining ships. Many of the wrecks had been carried by a westerly wind to a beach on the Attic coast called Colias. And thus not only were the prophecies of Bacis and Musaeus about this battle fulfilled, but also the prophecy uttered many years earlier by ­Lysistratus, an Athenian soothsayer. The words of it were, “The Colian women will roast their food with oars.” This prophecy, which the Greeks had forgotten about at the time, would be fulfilled after the king was gone. 97. Xerxes, when he realized the extent of his loss, grew fearful that the Greeks, either at the suggestion of the Ionians or on their own initiative, might decide to sail straight to the Hellespont and destroy the bridges there.87 In that case he would be trapped in Europe and in mortal danger. He therefore made plans to escape. But as he wished to conceal his purpose both from the Greeks and from his own men, he began to build a causeway across the channel to Salamis, yoking together Phoenician trading vessels to serve as a bridge and a breakwater. He also made other preparations, as if he meant to fight again at sea. Now everyone who saw Xerxes engaged in these activities believed that he meant to remain and prosecute the war in earnest; but he did not deceive Mardonius, who was thoroughly acquainted with the workings of the king’s mind. 98. At the same time Xerxes sent a courier to Persia to report his present misfortune. Nothing mortal travels as fast as these Persian couriers.The whole system is a Persian invention, and it works as follows. Riders with horses are stationed along the route, equal in number to the days needed to complete the journey, a rider and horse for each day. Nothing hinders these couriers from covering their appointed distance with all possible speed—neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor dark of night.88 The first rider passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the whole route,89 as in the Greek torch-race that is held in honor of Hephaestus. The Persian name for this postal system is angareion. 99. Xerxes’ first message to reach Susa, which announced the capture of Athens, so elated the Persians who had remained behind that they strewed all the roads with myrtle, burned incense, and devoted themselves to feasting and merry-making. The second, however, so distressed them that everyone tore their clothes and gave themselves up to incessant weeping and wailing, laying the blame for the disaster on Mardonius; and their grief sprang less from the 87. Since the bridges were made of ships anchored in the strait, a powerful navy could easily have severed them. The risks Xerxes now faced were similar to those that had confronted his father Darius in Scythia (see 4.136–42). 88. This sentence, in a different version, has been adopted by the U.S. Postal Service as an unofficial slogan and is inscribed on its administrative building on West 34th Street in New York City. 89. So that a fresh horse and rider carry the message forward each day.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

457

loss of the ships than from the alarm that they felt about the king’s personal safety.90 100. Hence they remained in this state until Xerxes himself returned home. Now Mardonius, perceiving that Xerxes took the defeat at Salamis very hard, suspected that the king was planning to decamp from Athens. Weighing the likelihood that he would be punished for having persuaded the king to undertake the war, he concluded that it would be better for him to risk a new engagement, and either become the conqueror of Greece (which was the result he expected), or, failing that, to die nobly in a great cause. He therefore approached Xerxes with the following proposal. “Do not grieve, master,” he said, “or take too much to heart our recent loss. For our struggle will not depend wholly on a few planks and timbers, but on our horses and horsemen. None of these Greeks, whom you imagine have won a decisive victory, will venture to leave his ship in order to oppose you, nor will the Greeks on the mainland. Those who have done so have paid the price. So if you think it best, let us at once attack the Peloponnese. Or, if you prefer, let us wait a while. But do not, in any case, lose heart. For the Greeks cannot avoid being called to account for the injuries they have done you, both now and in the past; nor can they escape becoming your slaves.This will be your best course. But if you are determined to depart and lead your army away, I have another proposal. Do not, sire, make the Persians a laughingstock in the eyes of the Greeks. For none of our reverses have been our fault; you cannot say that we have on any occasion fought like cowards. If the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cyprians, and Cilicians disgraced themselves, their conduct reflects no discredit on the Persians. Since your countrymen are not responsible for what has occurred, pay heed to my proposal. If you have decided not to stay here, depart for home with the greater part of the army. But first let me select 300,000 troops, and I will make it my duty to hand Greece over to you enslaved.” 101. Xerxes was charmed and delighted, despite his misfortunes, and told Mardonius he would take counsel and determine which of these courses he would adopt. He therefore conferred with his Persian advisers, and decided to send for Artemisia as well, since on a previous occasion she had been the only person who knew what should be done. When she arrived, he dismissed all his advisors and bodyguards and addressed her as follows: “Mardonius is urging me to remain here and attack the Peloponnese. He maintains that my Persians and my land army are not to blame for the recent defeat, and would be glad of an opportunity to prove it. He therefore urges me either to do that, or to let him select 300,000 troops, with which he undertakes to deliver Greece to me enslaved, while I return 90. The arrival at Susa of the news from Salamis is dramatized by Aeschylus in the play Persians, though without any reference to Mardonius.

458

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

home with the rest of my forces. As you advised me so wisely to avoid the sea battle, pray advise me now.Which of these two courses would I be wise to adopt?” 102. Thus did Xerxes appeal to her, and she replied, “Sire, it is a difficult thing to give you the best advice. Nevertheless, as matters now stand, I think you should return home. If Mardonius wants to remain, and undertakes to do as he has said, leave him behind with the troops he desires. If his plan succeeds, and he subjugates the Greeks, as he promises, the conquest will be yours, master; for your slaves will have achieved it. If, on the other hand, things go badly for him, it will be no great calamity, provided that you are safe, and your house is in no danger. The Greeks, too, will have to run many a race for their lives. As for Mardonius, if he comes to grief it will not matter. A Greek victory will not count for much; they will merely have killed your slave. As for yourself, you will return home having gained the object of your expedition, for you have burned Athens.” 103. Xerxes was pleased with this advice, as Artemisia had exactly uttered his own thoughts. For Xerxes would not have remained, it seems to me, even if all his advisors, men and women alike, had urged him to do so. He had been too badly frightened. As it was, he commended Artemisia and sent her off to Ephesus with his sons. For some of his illegitimate sons had accompanied him on the expedition. 104. As guardian of his sons Xerxes also sent Hermotimus, a Pedasian, who enjoyed a position of honor second to none among his eunuchs. The Pedasians inhabit the region above Halicarnassus; in their country, whenever any misfortune is about to befall any of their neighbors within a certain time, the priestess of Athena grows a long beard. This has already occurred on two occasions. 105. Hermotimus, as I mentioned, was a Pedasian, and of all the men we know he took the cruelest vengeance for an injury. He had been a prisoner of war, and when put up for sale was purchased by Panionius, a native of Chios. This Panionius made his living by the most infamous trade: whenever he got hold of boys of unusual beauty, he castrated them, conveyed them to Sardis and Ephesus, and sold them for enormous sums of money. For among the barbarians eunuchs are more valued than the uncastrated, since they are regarded as more trustworthy. Among the many boys whom Panionius, in plying his trade, had treated in this way, was Hermotimus. But the Pedasian was not without his share of good fortune; for he was eventually sent from Sardis, along with other gifts, as a present to the king. And as time went on, he was valued by Xerxes more highly than any of his other eunuchs. 106. When Xerxes was on his way to Sardis with the Persian army, Hermotimus was dispatched on business to Atarneus, a district in Mysia that belongs to Chios. There he found Panionius. Recognizing him at once, Hermotimus engaged him in a long and friendly conversation, in the course of which he enumerated the

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

459

many blessings he enjoyed thanks to him, and promised to do as much for him in return, if he brought his household to Sardis and settled there. Gladly accepting the offer, Panionius brought his sons and wife to Sardis. When Hermotimus had got Panionius and his whole family into his power, he spoke thus: “No man ever earned a living by more impious deeds than you. What harm did I or any of my people do you or yours that you made me a nothing instead of a man? No doubt you thought the gods took no notice of your crimes; but they are just, and for your wicked deeds have delivered you into my hands. So you cannot now complain of the vengeance I am about to take.” After these reproaches, Hermotimus sent for the man’s sons—four in number—and forced him to castrate them with his own hand.Then his sons were forced to castrate him. Thus retribution—and Hermotimus—overtook Panionius. 107. After entrusting his sons to Artemisia, Xerxes summoned Mardonius and ordered him to select the troops he wanted, and to see that he made his deeds answer to his words. He did nothing more that day; but as soon as night fell he issued his orders, and the captains immediately left Phalerum and hastened straight to the Hellespont to guard the bridges for the king’s return. Off Cape Zoster, where some small promontories jutted out from the coast, the Persians took the rocks for ships, and fled far away. In time, however, discovering their mistake, they rejoined the company and continued the voyage. 108. At daybreak the Greeks, seeing the barbarian land force in the same place, thought that their fleet must still be lying at Phalerum; and as they expected another attack by sea, they made ready to defend themselves. But as soon as they learned that the ships had departed, they decided to pursue them. They sailed as far as Andros; but as they saw nothing of the Persian fleet, they put in there and held a conference. Themistocles thought that they should follow on through the islands, straight to the Hellespont, and destroy the bridges. Eurybiades, however, was of the opposite opinion, and declared that if they destroyed the bridges they would be doing Greece the worst possible harm. For if the Persian were cut off from retreat, and forced to stay in Europe, he would be sure to give them trouble, as inaction would ruin him and leave him with no chance of getting home, and his troops would starve; whereas if he exerted himself, the whole of Europe would eventually come over to him; for the various cities and nations would either be conquered in battle or agree to submit; and he could sustain his troops on the annual Greeks harvests. But evidently, in consequence of his defeat at Salamis, he preferred not to remain in Europe. He should therefore be allowed to flee and return home; thereafter, said Eurybiades, they could contend with him for his country. The other Peloponnesian commanders agreed with him. 109. At that point Themistocles, realizing that he would be unable to persuade the majority to sail to the Hellespont, changed about and addressed the Athenians,

460

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

who of all the allies were the most distressed that the barbarians had escaped, and were eager, if the other Greeks refused to join them, to sail by themselves to the Hellespont. “I have often seen,” he began, “and more often heard tell of defeated men, driven by necessity, rallying and renewing hostilities. But as we have had the good fortune to save ourselves and all of Greece by repulsing this great cloud of men, let us not pursue the fugitives. For it was not we who performed this exploit, but the gods and heroes, who refused to grant one man sovereign power over both Asia and Europe—and especially a man like this, ungodly and arrogant, who accords equal esteem to things sacred and things profane, who has thrown down and burned the statues of the gods, and who even scourged the sea and sent shackles into its depths.91 But at present all is well with us; so let us remain in Greece and take care of ourselves and our families. Let each man, now that the Persian is gone, repair his own house, and diligently sow his land. And let us sail for the Hellespont and Ionia in the spring.” Themistocles spoke in this way in the hope of establishing a claim upon the king, so that he would have some recourse if he found himself in trouble with the Athenians—which is exactly what happened.92 110. He was dissembling; but the Athenians were persuaded by him. For they had always thought him wise, and as he had lately proved himself truly wise and judicious, they were ready to follow his advice. Once they had accepted his proposal he lost no time in getting a message to the king, choosing for this errand men whom he could trust to keep his instructions secret, even under torture. Among them was his servant Sicinnus. When these men reached Attica, the others remained with the boat, while Sicinnus went to the king and spoke as follows: “I have been sent by Themistocles, son of Neocles, the commander of the Athenians and the best and wisest of all the allied commanders, to convey this message: ‘Themistocles the Athenian, in his desire to assist you, has succeeded in restraining the Greeks, who were impatient to pursue your ships and to break up the bridges at the Hellespont. May you now return home at your leisure.’” 111. After conveying this message the men sailed back to the fleet. The Greeks, having decided neither to pursue the barbarian ships any farther nor to sail to the Hellespont to destroy the bridges, laid siege to Andros, hoping to take the place by storm. For the Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles’

91. See 7.35. It is unclear how Themistocles would have known of this episode, though the speech here put in his mouth is probably an invention in any case. 92. Herodotus refers knowingly to events that lie past the endpoint of his narrative. Around 471 B.C. Themistocles was ostracized and forced to leave Athens, and found refuge at Xerxes’ court after claiming he had helped the King escape from Europe (see Thucydides 1.137).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

461

demand for money.93 To his declaration that the money had to be paid, since the Athenians would soon arrive in possession of two powerful gods, Persuasion and Necessity, the Andrians replied that Athens might well be a great and prosperous city, since she was blessed with such useful gods; but they were terribly poor, pinched for land, and had two useless gods, who always abided with them and would never leave—namely Poverty and Helplessness.These were their gods, and therefore they would pay no money; for the power of the Athenians could never be stronger than the Andrians’ powerlessness. This reply and their refusal to pay led to their being besieged. 112. As Themistocles’ desire for wealth knew no bounds, he sent threatening demands for money to the other islands; he used the same messengers he had sent to the king, and warned the inhabitants that if they failed to give what was asked, he would bring the Greek fleet against them, and besiege them until they surrendered. By means of these threats, Themistocles managed to collect enormous sums from the Carystians and Parians, who, when they heard that Andros was already besieged because she had sided with the Medes, and that Themistocles was the most prestigious of all the commanders, sent the money out of fear. Whether any of the other islanders also sent money I cannot say; but I think some of them probably did.The Carystians, however, though they complied, failed to postpone their misfortune; the Parians, on the other hand, having appeased Themistocles with money, received no visit from the fleet. In this way Themistocles, while at Andros, extorted money from the islanders without the other commanders’ knowledge.94 113. Xerxes and his army waited only a few days after the battle of Salamis, and then marched into Boeotia by the same route they had followed on their advance. Mardonius wished to escort the king a part of the way; and as it was not then the campaigning season,95 he thought it would be better to winter in Thessaly and 93. Andros, unlike some other Aegean islands, had medized (see 8.66), and therefore, under plans agreed to by the Spartan-led coalition (see 7.132), was liable to pay an indemnity as an offering to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. It is unclear whether Themistocles is here collecting this indemnity or imposing a new one, as a way to subsidize the continuing activities of the Greek fleet. The use of strong-arm tactics by Themistocles, the Athenian admiral, is described by Herodotus in such a way as to anticipate Athens’ use of its fleet to enforce demands for tribute from subject Greek states, as it did throughout much of the 5th century B.C. Herodotus also attributes the attack on Andros, in the next chapter, to Themistocles’ greed, but it is likely that the Greek fleet by this time was in serious financial arrears. 94. See previous note. It is unlikely Themistocles alone was responsible for these exactions. 95. The battle of Salamis took place in early autumn, the start of the rainy season. Greek and Near Eastern armies typically avoided campaigning during this time of year. Also, Persian food stocks were badly in need of replenishment, since Xerxes had counted on being able to live off the harvest of the conquered territories.

462

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

make an attempt on the Peloponnese the following spring. On his arrival in Thessaly, Mardonius picked out his troops; these included, first, the Persian Immortals, all except their commander Hydarnes, who refused to leave the king; next, the Persian troops who wore breastplates, and the 1,000 picked horsemen; and, lastly, the Medes, Sacae, Bactrians, and Indians, both infantry and cavalry. These contingents he took in their entirety. From the rest of the allies he chose small numbers of men—those who were of noble appearance and were known to have distinguished themselves. The Persians, men who wore necklaces and bracelets, furnished the largest contingent; next were the Medes, who equaled the Persians in number, but in valor were inferior. His whole army, including the horsemen, numbered 300,000 men.96 114. While Mardonius was selecting his troops and Xerxes was still in Thessaly, the Spartans received a message from the oracle at Delphi, urging them to demand satisfaction from Xerxes for the slaughter of Leonidas, and to accept what he offered. The Spartans at once sent a herald, who caught up with the Persian army while it was still in Thessaly. Coming into Xerxes’ presence, the man spoke as follows: “King of the Medes, the Lacedemonians and Heraclids of Sparta demand satisfaction for the murder of their king, whom you killed while he was defending Greece.” Xerxes burst out laughing, and for a time did not answer; at last, however, he pointed to Mardonius, who happened to be standing nearby, and said, “Mardonius here will give them the satisfaction they deserve.” 115. The herald accepted this answer and went home. Xerxes then left Mardonius in Thessaly, and marched in haste to the Hellespont. He reached the crossing in forty-five days, but with hardly a fraction, so to speak, of his original army. Wherever they marched, the troops seized and consumed the local harvest. If they found no grain, they would eat the grass in the fields, and strip the trees, whether cultivated or wild, of their bark and leaves.97 Nothing was left in the army’s wake. Plague and dysentery devastated the soldiery. Many died, and others who fell ill were left behind, the inhabitants being commanded by Xerxes to tend and feed them. Some of these remained in Thessaly, others at Siris in Paeonia, and others in Macedon. It was at Siris that Xerxes, during the march to Greece, had left the holy chariot of Zeus;98 but on his return he was not able to recover it. For the Paeonians had given it to the Thracians; and when Xerxes demanded it back, they said that the mares as they grazed were stolen by the Thracian tribes who lived around the sources of the Strymon. 96. Another wildly inflated troop count. 97. The hunger and thirst experienced by the retreating Persians are described memorably by a messenger in Aeschylus’ Persians (480–513). 98. See 7.40.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

463

116. Here, too, the king of the Bisaltae99 and of Crestonia performed a monstrous act. He had refused to become the willing slave of Xerxes, and had fled inland to Mount Rhodope, and had also forbidden his sons to join the expedition against Greece. But these young men, either because they cared little for his orders, or because they longed to see the war, joined the army of Xerxes. And for this reason, when all six sons returned home unharmed, their father gouged out their eyes. 117. This was the pay they received. When the Persians who marched from Thrace reached the Hellespont, they made haste to cross in ships to Abydus. They did not find the bridges intact, since they had been broken apart by a storm. Halting there, the troops obtained more food than they had met with on their march. And as a result of their immoderate gorging and the change of water, many of the men who had survived now perished. The remainder reached Sardis with Xerxes. 118. Another story has it that Xerxes, when he departed from Athens, traveled by land only as far as Eion on the Strymon; there he entrusted the army to Hydarnes for the march to the Hellespont, while he himself crossed to Asia on a Phoenician ship. During the voyage, a strong wind, blowing from the mouth of the Strymon and raising enormous swells, overtook Xerxes’ ship. As the storm grew more violent, and the ship labored heavily, since its deck was crowded with the many Persians who were accompanying Xerxes, the king, overwhelmed by fear, hailed the captain and asked if there was any way to escape their danger. The captain replied, “There is none, master, unless we get rid of some of these passengers.” It is said that Xerxes, on hearing this, said, “Men of Persia, let each of you now prove his concern for the king; for my safety lies in your hands,” whereupon the Persians, after making obeisance, leapt into the sea; and the ship, lightened in this way, arrived safely in Asia. As soon as Xerxes stepped onto dry land, he presented the captain with a golden crown because he had saved the life of the king; but because he had lost so many Persians, he cut off his head. 119. I find this account incredible in every respect, particularly with regard to the Persian deaths. For if the captain had said such a thing to Xerxes, not one person in ten thousand could doubt that the king would have made the deck passengers descend into the hold—they were Persians, after all, and the foremost Persians at that; and would have cast into the sea an equal number of rowers, who were Phoenicians. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, Xerxes returned home by road with the army. 120. And there is strong proof that he did so. For on his return journey, Xerxes is known to have passed through Abdera, where he established a league of friendship with the Abderites and presented them with a golden scimitar and a gold-embroidered tiara. The Abderites also maintain (though I do believe them) 99. A non-Greek tribe north of the Chalcidice.

464

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

that on reaching Abdera Xerxes loosened his belt for the first time since fleeing Athens, since it was not until then that he felt himself out of danger.100 Now Abdera lies closer to the Hellespont than the Strymon and Eion, where Xerxes, according to the other account, boarded a ship. 121. When the Greeks failed to capture Andros,101 they sailed away to Carystus, ravaged its land, and returned to Salamis. On their arrival, their first order of business was to select first-fruits as offerings to the gods; these consisted of various objects, including three Phoenician triremes, one of which was dedicated at the Isthmus, where it was still to be seen in my day; another at Sunium; and the third, which was an offering to Ajax, at Salamis itself. Then they divided the spoils and sent the first-fruits to Delphi. These were used to fashion the statue of a man, twelve cubits high,102 holding in its hand the beak of a ship. It stands beside the golden statue of Alexander of Macedon.103 122. After the first-fruits had been sent to Delphi, the Greeks asked the god, in the name of their entire confederacy, if he had received his full share of the spoils and was satisfied. The god replied that he was satisfied with the offerings of all the Greeks except those of the Aeginetans, from whom he demanded the prize of valor they had won at Salamis. Upon hearing this, the Aeginetans dedicated the three golden stars that stand atop a bronze mast in the corner near the bowl of Croesus. 123. After the division of the spoils, the Greeks sailed to the Isthmus,104 where a prize of valor was to be awarded to the man whose conduct in the war was deemed most commendable. The commanders met at the altar of Poseidon to cast their votes for first and second place, and each man cast the first vote for himself, since each considered himself the most deserving; but for second place the majority voted for Themistocles. Consequently no commander got more than a single vote for first place, while Themistocles won for second place by a wide margin. 124. Envy, however, prevented the commanders from deciding the question, and they all sailed away to their homes without awarding the prize.Yet Themistocles was regarded everywhere as by far the cleverest man in Greece. But because he received no prize from those who had fought at Salamis, he went straight to Lacedaemon to be honored. The Spartans received him hospitably and showed him great respect. Though they gave the prize of valor—an olive wreath—to 100. That is, his need for haste had been so great that he had not paused to change clothes. 101. The narrative of Greek activities resumes from 8.112. 102. About eighteen feet. Later writers report that the statue represented Apollo. 103. Alexander I (see 7.173), not his descendant Alexander the Great. 104. The gathering point for an earlier Panhellenic assembly (see 7.172) and most subsequent ones.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

465

Eurybiades, they also presented Themistocles with an olive wreath, for his wisdom and sagacity. He was also given the most beautiful chariot in Sparta, and received many commendations. On his departure he was escorted as far as Tegea by the 300 picked Spartans called the Knights. Themistocles is the only man we know of who was escorted from their city by the Spartans. 125. When Themistocles had returned to Athens, Timodemus of Aphidna, who was one of his enemies, but otherwise a man of no distinction, grew so mad with jealousy that he maligned him for his journey to Sparta, declaring that he had won his honors there not by his own merit, but by the fame of Athens. The endless repetition of his remark finally prompted a reply from Themistocles: “Let me put it this way,” he said: “I would never have been rewarded by the Spartans had I been a Belbinite105—nor would you, my dear fellow, had you been an Athenian.” 126. Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, a man whom the Persians had always respected, and who was held in even higher esteem after the battle of Platea, escorted the king as far as the strait, with 60,000 of Mardonius’ picked troops. When the king was safe in Asia, Artabazus set out on his return march. On his arrival near Pallene, he found that Mardonius was wintering near Thessaly and Macedonia; and as he was in no hurry to rejoin the army, he thought it his duty, as the Potidaeans had just revolted, to reduce them to slavery. For as soon as the king had passed their territory on his homeward march, and the Persian fleet had fled from Salamis, the Potidaeans, like the other inhabitants of Pallene,106 had openly revolted from the barbarians. 127. Artabazus, therefore, laid siege to Potidaea; and as he suspected that the Olynthians were also likely to revolt, he besieged their city as well. Olynthus was at that time occupied by the Bottiaeans, who had been expelled from the region near the Thermaic gulf by the Macedonians. On capturing the city, Artabazus led the inhabitants out to a lake and slaughtered them. He then turned the city over to those of Chalcidian stock, having appointed Critobulus of Torone as governor. It was in this way that the Chalcidians got possession of Olynthus. 128. Once he had taken Olynthus, Artabazus turned all his attention to Potidaea. He was vigorously prosecuting the siege when Timoxenus, the commander of the Sciones, conspired with him to betray the town. How they managed at first I cannot say, for this has not been reported; but the plot came to an end as follows. Whenever Timoxenus and Artabazus wished to communicate, they would wrap a letter around the notched end of an arrow; the feathers were then put on over the paper, and the arrow was shot to a place agreed upon. The plot was finally discovered when Artabazus, on one occasion, shot his arrow toward the accustomed place, missed his mark, and hit a Potidaean in the shoulder. As commonly 105. That is, an inhabitant of an obscure place, like the tiny island of Belbina. 106. The westernmost spur of the Chalcidice.

466

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

happens in war, a crowd gathered around the wounded man; and when the arrow was pulled out, they noticed the letter and took it at once to the commanders— those of Potidaea and of the other cities of the peninsula. When the commanders had read the letter and learned who the culprit was, they decided not to charge Timoxenus with treachery; they did this out of regard for the city of Scione, so that the Scionaeans would not be branded forever afterward with the name of traitors. 129. After Artabazus had prosecuted the siege for three months, there was an unusual low tide that lasted a long time. When the barbarians saw that the sea was now a shallow swamp, they proceeded across it to Pallene. But when they were two-fifths of the way there, and three-fifths of the distance remained, they were caught by an enormous flood-tide, the highest that had ever been seen, according to the local people, who often see such tides. All the men who could not swim were drowned, and those who could were killed by the Potidaeans who sailed out against them. The Potidaeans maintain that what caused the flood and the ensuing disaster of the Persians was the profanation, by the very men who died, of the temple and statue of Poseidon that stands outside their town—a good explanation, in my opinion. Afterward Artabazus led the remainder of his men away and joined Mardonius in Thessaly. 130. So fared the Persians who had escorted the king to Asia.When the remainder of Xerxes’ fleet had escaped from Salamis to Asia, and conveyed the king and his army across the strait107 from the Chersonese to Abydus, it wintered in Cyme. In early spring the ships assembled at Samos, where some of them had passed the winter. Most of the marines were Persians or Medes; and the command of the fleet was taken by Mardontes, son of Bagaeus, and Artayntes, son of Artachaees; there was a third commander, Ithramitres, Artayntes’ nephew, who had been chosen for the post by his uncle. Since they had suffered substantial losses, they went no farther west, nor did anyone compel them to do so. They therefore remained at Samos to keep watch in case Ionia revolted. Their fleet, including the Ionian contingent, numbered 300 ships. It never occurred to them that the Greeks would come to Ionia; on the contrary, they assumed that they were content to guard their own country, especially since they had not pursued the Persian fleet when it fled from Salamis, but had readily given up the chase. The barbarians had lost heart about their prospects at sea, but thought that Mardonius and his army were bound to be victorious. So they remained at Samos, giving thought to how they might harass their enemies, and waiting to hear how Mardonius would fare. 131. The arrival of spring, and the knowledge that Mardonius was in Thessaly, roused the Greeks to action. Before the infantry assembled, the fleet, which 107. The Hellespont.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

467

consisted of 110 ships, proceeded to Aegina under the command of Leotychides.108 This Leotychides, who was both general and admiral, was the son of Menares, son of Agesilaus, son of Hippocratides, son of Leotychides, son of Anaxilaus, son of Archidamus, son of Anaxandrides, son of Theopompus, son of Nicandrus, son of Charilaus, son of Eunomus, son of Polydectes, son of Prytanius, son of Europhontus, son of Procles, son of Aritodemus, son of Aristomachus, son of Cleodaeus, son of Hyllus, son of Heracles.109 He belonged to the younger of the royal houses. All his ancestors, except the two listed next to himself, had been kings of Sparta. The Athenian vessels were commanded by Xanthippus, son of Ariphron.110 132. When the whole fleet had gathered at Aegina, Ionian messengers arrived at the Greek station. They had recently visited Sparta and entreated the Lacedemonians to help them free Ionia. (Herodotus, son of Basileides,111 was one of their party.) These men—seven originally—had conspired to murder Strattis, the tyrant of Chios. When they were caught (one of their number had exposed the plot), the remaining six had fled from Chios and gone to Sparta, and now to Aegina, entreating the Greeks to sail to Ionia. But it was only with great difficulty that they persuaded them to sail even as far as Delos. Beyond Delos the Greeks considered themselves in danger, for they were unfamiliar with those parts and assumed that they were full of enemy troops. As for Samos, it seemed to them as far away as the Pillars of Heracles.112 So it turned out that while the barbarians were afraid of the sail west of Samos, the Greeks, despite the entreaties of the Chians, did not dare to sail east of Delos. Thus fear preserved an interval between the enemy forces. 133. While the Greeks were sailing to Delos, Mardonius, who was wintering in Thessaly, sent a man named Mys, a native of Europus, to make the rounds of all the oracles that it was possible for him to consult. What he hoped to learn from the oracles when he gave this order I cannot say, for this has not been reported; but I assume he wished to inquire about the business that he had in hand, and not for any other purpose. 134. It is certain that Mys went to Labadeia and paid one of its inhabitants to go down to Trophonius, and to Abae at Phocis, where he consulted the god; and at Thebes, where he went first, he consulted the oracle of Ismenian Apollo, where one seeks oracles by means of sacrificial victims, as at Olympia; he also paid a foreigner—not a Theban—to pass the night in the temple of Amphiaraus. No Theban is permitted to consult this oracle, because Amphiaraus, through an 108. One of the Spartan kings (see 6.71). 109. See 7.204 above and note 166. 110. An Alcmeonid (see 6.136 and note 145). Herodotus does not say why Themistocles was not returned to the leadership of the fleet. 111. No relationship to Herodotus the historian. 112. The Straits of Gibraltar, a place proverbially far from Greece.

468

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

oracle, gave the Thebans their choice: they could have him as a prophet or as an ally in war, but not in both capacities. They chose to have him as an ally, and thus no Theban may pass the night in his temple. 135. One thing that the Thebans say happened at this time seems to me quite remarkable. Mys the Europian,113 they say, in the course of going around to all the oracles, visited the sacred precinct of Apollo Ptoius. The temple, which is called Ptoium, belongs to the Thebans, and stands on the mountainside overlooking Lake Copais, near the city of Acraephia. Mys entered the shrine accompanied by three Theban citizens whom the state had appointed to take down whatever answer the god might give. The prophet began to deliver his oracles, but in a foreign language. The Thebans accompanying Mys were astonished to hear a foreign language instead of Greek, and did not know what to do. Mys, however, snatched the tablet they had brought with them, and, telling them that the response had been given in the Carian dialect, wrote it down himself, and returned to Thessaly. 136. Mardonius, when he had read the oracles’ responses, sent Alexander, son of Amyntas, a Macedonian,114 as an ambassador to Athens. He chose Alexander for two reasons. First, because he was connected to the Persians by marriage; for his sister Gygaea was married to Bubares, a Persian, and by him had a son, Amyntas. The boy was named after his maternal grandfather, and enjoyed by the king’s gift the revenues of Alabanda, a large city of Phrygia; secondly, because he knew that Alexander was a public host and a benefactor of Athens. Mardonius therefore thought that by sending him he would be most likely to bring the Athenians over to the Persian side. He had heard that they were a numerous and warlike people, and he assumed that they deserved most of the credit for the Persians’ defeat at sea. If he could form an alliance with them, he assumed, justifiably, that he would prevail at sea, while by land he believed that he was already superior. So he counted upon overcoming the Greeks. Perhaps, too, the oracles were advising him to make Athens his ally, and it was in obedience to them that he sent Alexander on this mission. 137. Seven generations earlier, Alexander’s ancestor Perdiccas had acquired sovereign sway over the Macedonians in the following way.115 Three brothers, Gauanes, Aeropes, and Perdiccas, descendants of Temenus, had been driven out of Argos and had taken refuge in Illyria. From there they crossed into Upper Macedonia and came to the town of Lebaea. There they worked as hired laborers for the king—one of them tending the horses, another the oxen, the youngest of them, Perdiccas, the sheep and goats. In those early times poverty was not confined to the common folk; even the kings were poor, and so in Lebaea it was 113. An inhabitant of the city named Europus. 114. See note 103 to 8.121 above. 115. The legend that follows adheres to the belief, widely held in the Greek world, that the Macedonian royal line had originated in Argos. The family was known as the Argeads.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

469

the king’s wife who cooked the food. Whenever she baked their bread, the loaf she made for the youngest laborer, Perdiccas, rose to twice the usual size. When this happened time and again, she told her husband. It immediately occurred to the king that this portended some great calamity. Summoning the laborers, he ordered them to leave the country. They replied that they had a right to their wages, and would go as soon as they were paid. The sun was shining down the chimney into the room where they were; and when he heard wages mentioned, the king, god-stricken116 as he was, pointed to the sunshine and said, “There’s your pay—the only wages you deserve.” Gauanes and Aeropes, the elder brothers, were dumbfounded; but Perdiccas, who had a knife in his hand, traced a line with it around the patch of sunlight on the floor, and said, “Sire, we accept what you offer us.”117 Then he gathered the light of the sun three times into the folds of his tunic, and left the town; and his brothers went with him. 138. When they were gone, one of his advisers told the king what the boy had done, and in what sense the youngest of the three had accepted the wages offered. The king was provoked and sent horsemen after the brothers with orders to kill them. There is a river in that region, to which the Argive descendants of these brothers offer sacrifices as to a savior. After the sons of Temenus had crossed it, it rose so high that the horsemen were unable to get across. The brothers escaped into another part of Macedonia and settled near the place called the Gardens of Midas, son of Gordias, where roses grow wild, each bloom having sixty petals and a fragrance surpassing that of all other varieties. It was here, according to the Macedonians, that Silenus was captured.118 Above the gardens rises a mountain called Bermius, which is so cold that no one can scale it. Making the mountain their base, the brothers gradually conquered all of Macedonia. 139. It was from the Perdiccas of whom we have been speaking that Alexander was descended: he was the son of Amyntas, son of Alcetas, son of Aeropes, son of Philippus, son of Argaeus, son of Perdiccas—the Perdiccas who first won sovereign power. 140. A. When Alexander reached Athens as Mardonius’ ambassador, he spoke as follows: “Men of Athens, Mardonius speaks thus: ‘The king has sent me a message, saying, “I am willing to forgive all the injuries done me by the Athenians. So do as follows, Mardonius. Give them back their land, and let them take whatever other territory they desire, and be self-governing. If on these terms they consent to ally themselves with me, then rebuild the temples that I burned.” Such are 116. The Greek word translated here as “god-stricken” describes a sudden, seemingly divine inspiration. 117. Since this circle included the hearth, Perdiccas’ gesture gave him symbolic possession of the entire house. 118. According to myth, the wise satyr Silenus was captured by Midas, the Phrygian king, and made to reveal his wisdom.

470

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

the orders I have received, and I must carry them out, unless you hinder me. I have this to say to you: What madness drives you to oppose the King in battle? You could never defeat him, and you cannot hold out against him indefinitely. You have seen the size and prowess of his army, and have learned the size of my present force. Even if you should defeat this army (which you cannot reasonably hope to do), another force many times as large will take its place. Do not fancy yourselves equal to the King, only to lose your country and find yourselves in constant peril of your lives. Agree, instead, to make peace. It is your power to do so on the handsomest terms, now that the King is thus inclined. Make an alliance with us, without guile or deceit, and be free.’ B. This is the message, Athenians, that Mardonius has instructed me to give you. I need not speak of the good will I bear you, nor would you be learning of it for the first time; I merely entreat you to obey Mardonius. For I see clearly that you will not be able to fight with Xerxes forever. Had I seen you could, I would not have come to you with this message. For the king’s power surpasses that of man, and his reach is long. Accordingly, if you do not hasten to conclude a peace, though the terms he offers are excellent, I fear for you, the only ally to be constantly suffering casualties, living as you do in the path of danger, your territory being the chief battleground of the contending powers. Be persuaded, I pray you! For it will be worth a great deal to you if the great king is prepared to forgive past offenses and make you his only Greek ally.” 141. Now the Spartans, when they learned that Alexander had come to Athens to bring about an alliance between the Athenians and the barbarian, and remembered the prophecies warning that the Dorians would one day be driven from the Peloponnese by the Medes and the Athenians, were so afraid that the Athenians might make terms with Persia that they instantly decided to send ambassadors to Athens. And it so happened that these ambassadors and Alexander had their audience at the same time. For the Athenians had long been delaying the latter’s audience, as they felt sure that the Spartans would hear that an ambassador had come from the barbarian to negotiate a peace, and would immediately send ambassadors of their own. Hence they arranged matters on purpose, so that the Spartans might be present when they declared their views. 142. After Alexander had spoken, the ambassadors from Sparta addressed the Athenians. “The Spartans have sent us to entreat you not to do a thing unprecedented in Greece, or to accept any of the barbarian’s proposals. Such conduct on the part of any of the Greeks would be indecent and dishonorable; but for you it would be far worse, for many reasons. It was you who stirred up this war—none of us desired it.119 It began as a struggle for your territories only—now all of Greece is involved. But apart from these considerations, it would be an intolerable thing 119. The reference is to the Athenian participation in the Ionian revolt, almost two decades earlier. King Cleomenes of Sparta at that time declined to support the revolt.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

471

if the Athenians, who have always been known as liberators, should now become responsible for bringing slavery upon Greece. We do, however, sympathize with you in your distress—the loss of two harvests,120 and the ruin, over so long a time, of your homes and property. To compensate you, the Spartans and their allies undertake to provide support for your women and your household members who are unfit for combat, for as long as the war endures. Do not be seduced by Alexander of Macedon, who is smoothing down Mardonius’ words. He only does what he has to do: a tyrant himself, he aids a tyrant’s cause. But you, at least if you are sensible, should do otherwise; for you must surely know that with barbarians there is neither faith nor trust.” 143. The Athenians replied to Alexander with these words: “We, too, are aware that the Medes’ power is many times greater than our own; there is no need to reproach us with ignorance on that score. But we cling so to our freedom that we will defend ourselves as best we can. Do not try to persuade us to make terms with the barbarian, for we will never consent. And tell Mardonius that the Athenians say, ‘As long as the sun keeps to its present path, we will never make peace with Xerxes.121 On the contrary, we will oppose him ceaselessly, trusting in the gods and heroes whom he treated with disrespect, and whose temples and statues he destroyed with fire.’ Never come to us again with words like these, and never imagine you are doing us good service when you urge us to commit acts of sacrilege. For we would not want you, our public host122 and friend, to suffer any harm at the hands of the Athenians.” 144. Such was the Athenians’ reply to Alexander. To the ambassadors from Sparta they spoke thus: “No doubt it was natural for the Spartans to fear that we might come to an agreement with the barbarian.Yet your fear does you no credit, aware as you must be of the Athenians’ firm resolve, namely that no quantity of gold exists anywhere on earth, nor any country, no matter how outstanding in beauty and fertility, in return for which we would be willing to side with the Medes and enslave Greece. Even if we wished to do so, many powerful considerations would deter us. The first and greatest is the burning and destruction of the temples and statues of our gods. We must take the utmost vengeance on the man who did this—not make terms with him. Secondly, the Athenians would not do well to betray the Greek people, who share the same blood, the same language, 120. One harvest had been lost due to the evacuation of Attica; presumably the second, in the following year, was endangered because few had been able to sow their fields fully in the present autumn (see 8.109). 121. This solemn vow is undercut in the following book by Athenian hints that they might consider medizing (9.7). 122. The Greek word is proxenos, referring to a post that involves representing the interests of another state inside one’s own borders.

472

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 8

the same temples, sacrifices, and customs.123 Know, therefore, if you did not know it already, that as long as a single Athenian remains alive, we will never make peace with Xerxes. “We appreciate, however, your solicitude on our behalf, and your willingness, in view of our losses, to support our families. Your kindness is everything one could wish. But we will carry on as we are, without putting you to any trouble. That being our resolve, send out an army as soon as possible. For we guess that the barbarian will not wait long to invade our country,124 but will do so as soon as he hears that we decline to do as he asks. Now therefore, before he enters Attica, is the time for us to meet him in Boeotia.” When the Athenians had given them this answer, the Spartan ambassadors departed for home.

123. An unusual acknowledgment that the Greeks formed a single people, despite the differences among their city-states. It should be noted that, in earlier literature (the Homeric poems, for example), the Greeks are not referred to by that shared name. 124. The Athenians anticipate that Mardonius’ forces will leave their Boeotian quarters in the spring and re-invade Attica. The Athenians had by this time left their places of refuge (Salamis, Aegina, and Troezen) and returned to Athens and its surrounding territories, though Herodotus does not make this clear until later (9.6).

Book 9

1. When Alexander returned with the Athenians’ response, Mardonius set out from Thessaly and quickly led his army toward Athens, forcing all the nations through whose lands he passed to furnish him with troops.The chief men of Thessaly, far from regretting what they had done earlier, urged the Persians to attack more vigorously than ever. Thorax of Larissa in particular, who had escorted Xerxes on his flight from Europe, now openly encouraged Mardonius in his march against Greece. 2. When the army reached Boeotia, the Thebans tried to persuade Mardonius to halt, telling him that there was no place more suitable for him to encamp. They discouraged him from advancing farther, and advised him to position himself there, and take steps to subdue all of Greece without a battle. For if the Greek contingents continued to hold together, it would be hard for the whole world to overcome them.1 “But if you do as we advise,” said the Thebans, “you will easily learn their plans. Send money to the leading men in their cities; by doing so you will divide Greece against itself, after which, with the aid of your partisans, you will easily subdue your adversaries.” 3. Such was the advice of the Thebans; but Mardonius paid it no heed. He was driven by a desperate desire to capture Athens a second time—partly, no doubt, out of stubbornness, and partly because he desired to inform the king at Sardis, by signal fires through the islands, that he had taken the city. But on his arrival in Attica there were no Athenians to be found; they had again retreated, some to the fleet, but the greater part to Salamis. So he gained possession of a deserted town. Ten months after Athens had been taken by Xerxes, Mardonius captured it for the second time. 4. From Athens Mardonius sent a man to Salamis—Murychides, a Hellespontine Greek—to offer the Athenians the same terms that had been conveyed to them by Alexander.2 Though aware of their unfriendly attitude, Mardonius sent to them a second time because he hoped their stubbornness would give way when they saw that all of Attica was occupied and under his power. This, then, was why he sent Murychides to Salamis.

1. The “Greek contingents” are the individual city-states (some thirty in all) that had pledged to join forces to resist the Persians, but whose interests were often in conflict due to geography and political ideology, or whose relations were tainted by previous antagonisms. 2. See 8.140A. 473

474

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

5. Now when Murychides went to the council-house, and said what Mardonius had instructed him to say, one of the councilors, a man named Lycidas, expressed the view that their best course would be to accept Murychides’ proposal and lay it before the people. This was the view he expressed, either because Mardonius had bribed him, or because he actually favored such a course. But the Athenians, both those inside the council-house and those outside, were so indignant when they heard it that they surrounded Lycidas and stoned him to death. Murychides, the Hellespontine Greek, they sent away unharmed. Now with all the outcry about Lycidas in Salamis, the wives of the Athenians soon learned what had happened; thereupon, of their own accord, each one urging on her neighbor and taking her along, they flocked to Lycidas’ house and stoned to death his wife and children. 6. The Athenians’ crossing to Salamis came about under the following circumstances. As long as they expected that an army from the Peloponnese would come to their aid, they remained in Attica. But when they found that the allies were hanging back and slow to move, and that the invader was actually said to be in Boeotia, they conveyed all their belongings to safety and crossed over to Salamis. At the same time they sent ambassadors to Lacedaemon, to chastise the Spartans for allowing the barbarian to invade Attica instead of joining forces and meeting him in Boeotia.3 They were also to remind them of everything the Persian had promised the Athenians if they changed sides, and to warn them that if no aid came from Sparta, they would find some means of escape. 7. The Spartans were then celebrating the Hyacinthia,4 and the people thought it of the utmost importance to attend to the god’s service; meanwhile the wall they were building at the Isthmus5 was now receiving its battlements. When the Athenian messengers, accompanied by envoys from Megara and Plataea, reached Lacedaemon, they came before the ephors6 and spoke as follows: A. “The Athenians have sent us to tell you that the king of the Medes offers to give us back our country, and wishes to make an alliance with us on fair and equal terms, without guile or deceit, and to give us, in addition to our own, any 3. Boeotia, with its relatively flat, open ground, was judged the best place for a pitched land battle, though the Spartans might have preferred to hold their position at the Isthmus wall instead. 4. A Spartan religious festival in honor of Apollo that fell in early summer. 5. The defensive wall designed to keep the Persians from entering the Peloponnese (see 8.71). The wall had initially been thrown up in haste, but was now made more complete and secure. 6. The board of five ephors, annually elected at Sparta, had various executive powers, but this is the first occasion on which Herodotus depicts them taking charge of military strategy, which has formerly been the province of the kings.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

475

country we choose. But we, because we reverence Hellenic Zeus,7 and are appalled at the thought of betraying Greece, have refused his offer, though we ourselves have been wronged and betrayed by the other Greeks, and are well aware that it is more profitable to make terms with Persia than to prolong the war. Still, we will never willingly make terms with the enemy.Thus we, in our dealings with the Greeks, avoid what is base and false. But you, who were in terror lest we make terms with the Persian—now that you know we are resolved never to betray Greece, and now too that your wall across the Isthmus is almost built—take no further account of us. You promised us you would go out and meet the Persian in Boeotia,8 but you have broken your word and allowed him to invade Attica. At this time, therefore, the Athenians are incensed with you; for you have not acted properly. They urge you, however, to send out your army at once, so that together we may meet Mardonius in Attica. Now that we have lost Boeotia, the best place to fight him, within our country, is the plain of Thria.” 8. When the ephors had heard this address, they deferred their response until the next day, and on the next day deferred it until the next. From day to day, for the next ten days, they put off giving their answer. Meanwhile all the Peloponnesians were busy fortifying the Isthmus, and their wall was nearing completion. I cannot explain why the Lacedemonians were so anxious, at the time when Alexander of Macedon came to Athens,9 that the Athenians should not side with the Medes, and now seemed not to care about it, except that at the earlier time the fortification of the Isthmus was not complete, and in their dread of the Persians they were still working at it, whereas now that the wall was finished, they supposed that they had no further need of the Athenians. 9. At last, under the following circumstances, the Spartans gave their answer, and their army marched forth. The day before the final interview was to take place, Chileus of Tegea, the most influential foreigner in Lacedaemon, learning from the ephors exactly what the Athenians had said, addressed them as follows: “The case stands thus, gentlemen. If the Athenians are not with us, but ally themselves with the barbarians, then however mighty our wall across the Isthmus may be, the gates will be wide open for the Persian to enter the Peloponnese.10 So listen to them before they change their minds and adopt a policy that may ruin Greece.” 7. Herodotus equated Zeus with other, non-Greek divinities like Egyptian Ammon and Babylonian Bel, so the expression “Zeus Hellenios” limits the god to the form in which the Greeks knew him. 8. Herodotus has not previously reported any such promise, though it is reasonable to suppose that one was given. 9. See 8.140–41. 10. In that the Persian navy would be able to convey troops into the Peloponnese by sea.

476

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

10. Such was Chileus’ advice. Instantly taking his words to heart, the ephors, saying nothing to the Athenian ambassadors, sent out 5,000 Spartans that very night, posting seven helots with each warrior.11 They entrusted the command of this force to Pausanias, son of Cleombrotus. The sovereignty had passed to Pleistarchus, son of Leonidas; but as Pleistarchus was still a boy, his first cousin Pausanias was serving as regent. For Pausanias’ father, Cleombrotus, son of Anaxandrides, was no longer living; he had died shortly after bringing home the troops who had been building the wall at the Isthmus. (Cleombrotus had brought them home because an eclipse of the sun had occurred during a sacrifice he was offering to learn whether he should march against the Persian.)12 Pausanias appointed Euryanax, the son of Dorieus and a member of his own family, to share the command. 11.When day came, the ambassadors, who knew nothing about the departure of the troops, came before the ephors to announce that they intended to leave Sparta and return to their respective homes. They addressed the ephors in these words: “You remain here, Spartans, celebrating the Hyacinthia and disporting yourselves, having betrayed your allies. Wronged by you and destitute of allies, the Athenians will now make peace with the Persian on such terms as they can. At that point, it is clear that, having become the King’s allies, we will march with the barbarians against any country they please. The consequences to yourselves you will then appreciate.” So spoke the ambassadors, and the ephors declared under oath that their army must already have reached Oresthium, on their march against the strangers. (The Spartans refer to barbarians as “strangers”.)13 The ambassadors, in their ignorance, asked what they meant, whereupon they learned the truth. Taken by surprise, they hurried off after the army. Picked troops numbering 5,000, drawn from the Lacedemonians’ neighbors,14 went with them. 12. So the Athenian ambassadors hastened toward the Isthmus. The Argives, meanwhile, had promised Mardonius that they would prevent the Spartans from marching out;15 so as soon as they learned that the forces under Pausanias’ command had left Sparta, they sent the fastest runner they could find with a message 11. Helots were Greek laborers forced into serving the Spartan state. Herodotus gives no reason why the Spartan force was sent off in secret, but he reports at 9.12 below that the Argives were determined to stop them from leaving. 12. The death of King Cleombrotus, and the accession of the young Pleistarchus, belong to the time frame of Book 8 (the eclipse here mentioned can be dated to October 2, 480 B.C.). 13. That is, the Spartans used the word xenoi, also applied to non-Spartan Greeks, to refer to those whom other Greeks knew as barbaroi. 14.The perioeci who dwelt in the environs of Sparta but were not eligible for Spartan citizenship. 15. Herodotus has not reported such an agreement earlier. Argos was last seen refusing to participate in the Spartan-led coalition (7.148–49), and perhaps, according to rumor, entertaining an approach by messengers from Xerxes (7.150); but here Herodotus implies that an agreement had indeed been reached between the Argives and Persians.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

477

to Attica. When the runner reached Athens, he said, “Mardonius, the Argives have sent me to tell you that the youth of military age have marched from Lacedaemon, and that the Argives are too weak to stop them. So lay your plans accordingly.” After conveying this message, the runner returned home. 13. On hearing this report, Mardonius no longer cared to remain in Attica. Until then he had kept still because he wished to learn what the Athenians would do, and had neither harmed nor ravaged Attic territory; for he had hoped they would come to terms with him. Now, however, that he had failed to win them over, and their whole policy was clear, he decided to withdraw from Attica before Pausanias’ force reached the Isthmus. First, however, he burned Athens, and tore down and demolished any walls, houses, or temples that remained standing. His reason for retreating was that the terrain of Attica was unsuitable for cavalry.16 Furthermore, if he were defeated in battle, his only route of escape was by a narrow road, where a few troops might block his army. He decided to withdraw to Thebes, where he could join battle near a friendly city, and on ground suitable for cavalry. 14. He was already on the road when news reached him that another force of Lacedemonians, 1,000 strong, had arrived in Megara in advance of Pausanias. Having heard this news, and wishing, if possible, to destroy this force first, he turned his army around and headed for Megara, while the cavalry, pushing on ahead, overran the Megarid. This was the westernmost point in Europe that was reached by this Persian army. 15. Soon Mardonius received word that the Greeks were assembled at the Isthmus; he then turned back to withdraw by way of Decelea.17 The chief magistrates of Thebes had sent for some Asopians; and it was these men who guided the army to Sphendale and then on to Tanagra, where it halted for the night. The next day, Mardonius proceeded to Scolus, in Theban territory. And there, though the Thebans were on his side, he cut down all the trees in the neighborhood—not from any enmity toward the Thebans, but for his own pressing needs; for he wanted to build a palisade to protect his army, and to have a place of refuge to which his troops might flee if the battle went against him. His forces were stationed along the Asopus, from Erythrae, past Hysiae, to the territory of Plataea; the palisade, however, did not extend so far, but enclosed an area roughly ten stades square. While the barbarians were at work on this palisade, a Theban named Attaginus, son of Phrynon, having made elaborate preparations, invited Mardonius and fifty of the noblest Persians to a banquet. His invitation was accepted and the banquet was held in Thebes. 16. Since horsemen need flat, open ground to mount charges, the terrain of Boeotia was far more advantageous to the Persians than rocky Attica. 17. That is, by the road leading north through Attica into Boeotia.

478

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

16. I heard the following story from Thersander, a highly respected citizen of Orchomenus. Thersander told me that he was himself invited by Attaginus to this dinner, one of the fifty Thebans who were asked; and that Attaginus had not kept the two peoples separate, but had placed a Persian and a Theban side by side on each couch. When the meal was over, and the drinking had begun, the Persian who shared his couch addressed Thersander in Greek, and asked him what city he came from. Thersander replied that he was from Orchomenus, whereupon the Persian said, “Since we have broken bread together and shared the wine, I wish to leave you with something by which you may remember the soundness of my judgment; thus you will be forewarned, and may be able to provide for your own safety. Do you see these Persians feasting, and the army we left encamped beside the river? Very soon you will see only a few surviving.” And as he spoke, the Persian wept. Surprised at what he had said, Thersander replied, “Should you not tell this to Mardonius and the other prominent Persians?” In reply the man said, “What the god has ordained, my friend, no human being can avert; for no one is willing to obey those who speak the truth. Many of us know that what I say is true; yet we obey, constrained by necessity. And this is the worst of human sorrows: to know much and have no power to act.”18 This story I heard myself from Thersander of Orchomenus;19 he also told me that he repeated it to various people before the battle was fought at Plataea. 17. While Mardonius was encamped in Boeotia, most of the local Greeks who sided with the Medes contributed troops to his army, and joined the invasion of Attica; only the Phocians held aloof. For though they, too, had assuredly given their allegiance to the Mede, they had done so not willingly, but by necessity. Not many days after the barbarian army arrived in Thebes, 1,000 Phocian hoplites went there under the command of Harmocydes, a highly distinguished citizen. When they reached Thebes, Mardonius ordered them to take up a position in the plain, apart from the rest of the army. As soon as they had done so, the entire barbarian cavalry drew up near them. At that point, a rumor went through the camp of the Greek contingents serving with the Persians that the cavalry intended to hurl its javelins at the Phocians. The same rumor reached the Phocians. Harmocydes, the Phocian commander, then exhorted his men as follows: “Phocians, clearly these men have planned beforehand to murder us—I suppose because of 18. The story gives no clue as to how the nameless Persian foresaw the defeat of his army, but there were others, both among the medizing Thebans and the Persians, who felt that the forces under Mardonius were no match for the Greeks (see 9.41 below). 19. A rare case where Herodotus reports the name of an individual source. If Thersander had been a young man at the time of the Persian invasion, he might have lived to the time of the publication of the Histories, some fifty years later.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

479

the accusations of the Thessalians.20 So now let every one of you prove himself a brave man. For it is better to die defending ourselves than to allow them to slaughter us in this disgraceful way. But let every one of them know that they are mere barbarians, whereas the men they plotted to murder are Greeks.” 18. When the cavalry that surrounded the Phocians charged at them, as though with deadly intent, and the horsemen brandished their spears as though they meant to hurl them (and some of them actually did so), the Phocians held their ground, drawing together and closing their ranks as tightly as possible. Thereupon the horsemen wheeled about and rode away. I cannot say with certainty whether they had come to slay the Phocians (at the Thessalians’ behest), but when they saw them venturing to defend themselves retreated to avoid suffering casualties (in obedience to Mardonius’ instructions), or whether Mardonius had wanted to test their courage. In any event, after the cavalry had retired, Mardonius sent a herald to the Phocians with this message: “Take heart, Phocians. For contrary to what I had heard, you have plainly shown yourselves brave men. Be gallant in the coming war. As for services rendered, you will not surpass either myself or the king.” 19. The Lacedemonians, meanwhile, had arrived at the Isthmus and encamped; and the other Peloponnesians who were loyal to Greece, when they heard or saw that the Spartans were on the march, did not think it right to remain behind and take no part in their expedition. Accordingly, when their sacrifices gave good omens, they advanced in one body from the Isthmus to Eleusis. Sacrifices were performed there as well, and when the omens were favorable, they continued onward in company with the Athenians, who had crossed over from Salamis and joined them in Eleusis. On reaching Erythrae in Boeotia, they learned that the barbarians were encamped at the Asopus. After some discussion, they drew up opposite them on the foothills of Cithaeron. 20. When the Greeks would not come down into the plain, Mardonius sent his entire cavalry against them under the command of Masistius (or Macistius, as the Greeks call him), a distinguished Persian officer who rode a Nisaean horse with a golden bit and other splendid trappings. The cavalry advanced against the Greeks, and attacked them in squadrons, inflicting heavy losses at each charge, and insulting them by calling them women.21 21. By chance the Megarians happened to be stationed at the position most open to attack, and where the ground was best suited for a cavalry charge. Pressed hard by repeated assaults, they sent a herald to the Greek commanders with the 20. The mutual hatred between Phocians and Thessalians has been described at 8.27–30. 21. By staying up in the hills rather than descending to the plain where the Persians were, the Greeks were essentially declining to begin battle, a posture the Persian considered “womanish.” The hills protected them from cavalry charges, though Masistius nevertheless managed to inflict some casualties.

480

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

following message: “The Megarians say: ‘We cannot, fellow allies, continue without assistance to resist the Persian cavalry. We have been holding this station from the start, and though pressed have thus far mounted a steady and valiant resistance. Now, however, unless you send us reinforcements, we warn you that we will have to abandon our post.’” On receiving this message, Pausanias called for volunteers to relieve the Megarians. When the others were unwilling to go, the Athenians offered themselves, and sent out 300 picked men under the command of Olympiodorus, son of Lampon. 22. These troops, taking along the archers, marched out to relieve the Megarians, and occupied a dangerous post on behalf of all the other Greeks present at Erythrae. The battle continued for some time, and came to an end in the following way. As the Persian cavalry was attacking in squadrons, the horse of Masistius, which was ahead of the others, was shot in his flank with an arrow. Rearing up in pain, the horse threw his rider. As soon as Masistius was down, the Athenians were upon him. They seized his horse, and sought to kill Masistius himself, who struggled to defend himself. At first, however, they could not dispatch him, owing to his armor. For under his red tunic, he was wearing a golden breastplate covered with scales;22 so the blows aimed at his chest had no effect, until one of the soldiers, grasping the reason, struck him in the eye, and he died. This occurred without any of his horsemen seeing it; for he fell just as they were wheeling about and preparing for another charge. But on halting they missed him at once, as no one came to draw them up in order. Understanding at once what must have happened, they rallied one another and charged back together, hoping to recover the body. 23. When the Athenians saw that instead of charging in squadrons, the entire mass of the cavalry was about to attack them, they called out to the rest of the army for support. While the infantry was coming to their assistance, a fierce struggle took place about the body of Masistius. As long as the 300 were fighting by themselves, they were getting by far the worst of it, and were forced to surrender the body; but when the other troops joined them in full force, the barbarian horsemen could no longer hold their ground. They failed to retrieve the body, and lost, in the attempt, a number of their men. Retiring about two stades, they gave thought to what they should do. Being without a commander, they decided to return to Mardonius. 24. When the cavalry reached camp, Mardonius and the whole army mourned Masistius. They shaved their heads, cut off the manes of their horses and pack animals, and gave themselves up to incessant wailing. All Boeotia resounded with their cries of grief as they mourned the man who, after Mardonius, was held in

22. According to later writers this breastplate was subsequently hung up by the Athenians in the Erechtheum on the acropolis.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

481

the highest esteem, both by the king and by his subjects. Thus the barbarians, in their traditional manner, paid their respects to the dead Masistius. 25. The Greeks, on the other hand, having withstood and repelled the barbarians’ cavalry attack, were greatly encouraged. They placed the body of Masistius on a wagon, and paraded it through the ranks. It was certainly worth seeing, as Masistius was a tall and remarkably handsome man, and the men left their posts to look at him. The commanders now decided to leave the high ground and go down into Plataea, a more convenient position than the area around Erythrae, particularly because it was better supplied with water. It was therefore thought best to remove to this region, and encamp in their regular order near the spring called Gargaphia. Taking up their weapons, they proceeded through the foothills of Cithaeron, past Hysiae, and into Plataean territory. There they stationed the contingents among the low hills and flat country near the spring and the sacred precinct of the hero Androcrates. 26. And now, while the various contingents were taking up their positions, a sharp dispute arose between the Tegeans and Athenians, both of whom claimed the right to hold one of the wings,23 and cited past deeds, recent and ancient, in support of their claims. The Tegeans said, “All the allies have always deemed us worthy of this post in all the joint Peloponnesian expeditions, ancient and recent, ever since the Heraclids tried to force their way back into the Peloponnese after the death of Eurystheus.24 It was then that we won the right, and this is how we earned it. When we marched out to the Isthmus, together with the Achaeans and the Ionians who then lived in the Peloponnese, and took our stand against the invaders, Hyllus is said to have proclaimed that the two armies need not risk a general engagement; instead, the Peloponnesians should select their best warrior, and Hyllus would engage him in single combat upon agreed conditions. The Peloponnesians approved the proposal, and the parties swore a solemn oath to this effect: if Hyllus prevailed over the Peloponnesian commander, the Heraclids would return to their ancestral home; but if he were defeated, they would withdraw, lead their army away, and not attempt to return to the Peloponnese for 100 years. Thereupon Echemus, son of Aeropes, son of Phages, who was our king and commander, volunteered and was selected to represent the Peloponnesian allies. He engaged Hyllus in single combat and killed him. For this act we were 23. In an infantry battle the strongest troops were generally positioned on the wings or lineends, and hence the Greeks regarded these stations (especially that on the right wing) as places of honor. 24. The Heraclids, or sons of Heracles, were bitter foes of Eurystheus, a legendary king of Tiryns in the Peloponnese. The Heraclids were led by Hyllus, son of Heracles by Deianeira (mentioned below).

482

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

rewarded by the Peloponnesians of that day with many important privileges; we enjoy them still, and among them is the right of leading one of the wings in any joint expedition. Now we would not seek to oppose you, Lacedemonians; we offer you the choice of whichever wing you prefer; but we claim the right to command the other one, just as in the past. And even apart from the exploit just mentioned, we are more deserving of the post than the Athenians. Recall, for example the many glorious fights we have fought against Sparta herself,25 among other towns. So it is only fair that we, rather than the Athenians, hold the other wing. For neither of late nor in ancient times have their achievements equaled our own.” 27. Thus spoke the Tegeans, and in reply the Athenians said, “We are aware that we are gathered here not to make speeches, but to fight the barbarian. But as the Tegean has laid on us the task of relating the noble deeds, both ancient and recent, our two nations have performed, it is incumbent on us to present the grounds, in services rendered, of our hereditary right to take precedence over the Arcadians. When the Heraclids (whose commander they claim to have killed at the Isthmus) were fleeing enslavement by the Mycenaeans, and were driven away by all the Greeks they approached, we alone received them, and with their help put an end to the insolence of Eurystheus, after winning a joint victory over the forces then in power in the Peloponnese.26 And when the Argives with Polynices had marched against Thebes, and were slain and denied burial, we launched an expedition against the Cadmeians, recovered the bodies, and buried them in our own country, in Eleusis.27 We also enjoyed a notable victory over the Amazons from the river Thermodon, when they invaded Attic territory.28 In the Trojan struggle we were inferior to none. But there is no point in recalling these ancient affairs; a nation that was brave in those days might have grown cowardly, and a nation cowardly then might now be brave. Enough, therefore, of ancient history. Even if we had done nothing but fight at Marathon29—though in fact we have performed exploits as many and as noble as any of the Greeks—our achievement there would be enough to qualify us for the privilege we are claiming, and for others besides. There we 25. For the ancient conflicts between Sparta and Tegea, see 1.66–68. 26. In an episode of the myth that precedes the one invoked by the Tegeans, Athens had offered asylum to the Heraclids and defended them against the attacks of Eurystheus. 27. The myth here referred to is the war of the “seven against Thebes.” The sons of Oedipus, Polynices and Eteocles, fought one another over control of Thebes, and the losing side, under Polynices, was denied burial until Theseus of Athens intervened. The “Cadmeians” are the Thebans. 28. Another mythic episode from the time of Theseus. The defeated Amazon queen, Hippolyta, became Theseus’ wife. 29. As described in Book 6. Athens and Plataea were at this point the only Greek cities whose soldiers had defeated the Persians on land.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

483

stood alone,30 and engaged in single combat with Persia; and having attempted so great an exploit, we came out of it alive, and conquered forty-six nations.31 Does not that one achievement entitle us to hold this post? But as it is inappropriate at such a moment to wrangle about who will hold which place, we are ready to do as you command, Lacedemonians, and to hold whatever part of the line, and face whatever nation, you consider most convenient. For wherever we are placed we will try to fight like men. Point us to our post, and rely on us to obey you.” 28. Such was the reply of the Athenians, and the entire Lacedemonian army shouted out that the Athenians were worthier to have the left wing than the Arcadians. Thus the Athenians prevailed over the Tegeans and obtained the post. Thereupon the Greek troops, both those who came originally and those who had joined later, were drawn up in the following order. The 10,000 Lacedemonians held the right wing. The contingent’s 5,000 Spartans were guarded by 35,000 light-armed helots, seven placed around each warrior.32 Next to themselves the Spartans stationed the 1,500 Tegean hoplites, in recognition of their courage. Next came the 5,000 Corinthians, beside whom, at their request, Pausanias had stationed the 300 Potidaeans who had arrived from Pallene. Then came 600 Arcadians from Orchomenus, 3,000 from Sicyon, and 8,000 from Epidaurus; then 1,000 from Troezen, 200 from Lepreum, 400 from Mycenae and Tiryns, 1,000 from Phlius, and 300 from Hermione; then 600 from Eretria and Styra, 400 from Chalcis, 500 from Ambracia, 800 from Leucas and Anactorium, and 200 Paleans from Cephallenia; then 500 from Aegina, 3,000 from Megara, and 600 from Plataea. Last of all, but first at the end of the left wing, came the 8,000 Athenians, under the command of Aristides, son of Lysimachus.33 29. All these troops, except the helots, seven of whom attended each Spartan, were hoplites, and they amounted to 38,700 men.34 The light-armed troops consisted of the 35,000 stationed with the Spartans (seven for each man), each of whom had been equipped for battle; and of 34,500 others, who belonged to the other Lacedemonians and the rest of the Greeks—at the rate of one light-armed man to every hoplite. Thus the total number of light-armed men was 69,500. 30. The speakers ignore the participation of the Plataeans at Marathon. 31. The list of Xerxes’ invasion forces at 7.61–80 includes exactly forty-six nations, but many of these were doubtless not present at Marathon. 32. Herodotus does not make clear what these helots (state-owned slaves) were expected to do, but since they are not mentioned in the battle description that follows, it seems likely they were personal attendants. 33. On Aristides, the ostracized leader who had returned from exile the year before, see 8.79 and note. 34. Historian Michael Flower accepts this figure as reasonably accurate (The Landmark Herodotus, NY, 2009, p. 820).

484

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

30. Thus the entire Greek forces at Platea, including both light-armed and heavy-armed, was 1,800 men short of 110,000; and this deficiency was made up by the Thespians, whose surviving troops (1,800 exactly) had joined their force; but these men were not armed. 31. Such was the strength and arrangement of the Greek troops when they took up their position at the Asopus. The barbarians under Mardonius, when they had ceased mourning for ­Masistius, also advanced to the Asopus, having learned that the Greeks were in Plataea. When they arrived, Mardonius marshaled them against the Greeks in the following order. Facing the Lacedemonians, he posted his Persians, who, as they far outnumbered the Lacedemonians, were arrayed in greater depth, and extended their front so that part of them faced the Tegeans. And on the advice of the Thebans, he saw to it that the strongest troops faced the Lacedemonians, the weaker ones the Tegeans. Next to the Persians he placed the Medes, who faced the ­Corinthians, Potidaeans, Orchomenians, and Sicyonians; then the Bactrians, who faced the Epidaurians, Troezenians, Lepreans, Tyrinthians, Mycenaeans, and Phliasians; then the Indians, who faced the Hermiones, Eretrians, Styraeans, and ­Chalcidians; then the Sacae, who faced the Ambraciots, Anactorians, ­Leucadians, Paleans, and ­Aeginetans; and last of all, facing the Athenians, Plataeans, and ­Megarians, he placed the Boeotians, Locrians, Malians, Thessalians, and the 1,000 Phocians. Not all the Phocians had joined the Medes; some of them had withdrawn to the hills around Parnassus. Sallying from the mountain, they harassed and raided ­Mardonius’ army and the Greeks who served in it, and so did good service to the Greek cause. Mardonius also posted opposite the Athenians the Macedonians and the peoples living around Thessaly. 32. I have named here the greatest and most celebrated of the national contingents that were marshaled by Mardonius on this occasion. Mingled with them were troops of other nations, including Phrygians, Mysians, Thracians, Paeonians, and so on; there were also Ethiopians and Egyptians. (The Egyptians belonged to the Hermotybian and Calasirian tribes, whose weapon is the sword, and who are the only fighting men in Egypt.) These men had been serving with the fleet, but Mardonius disembarked them before he left Phalerum. The number of barbarians, as I have already mentioned, was 300,000. As for the Greeks who were serving under Mardonius, no one knows their number, for they were never counted. I would guess that there were roughly 50,000 of them.35 The troops thus marshaled were infantrymen. The cavalry was stationed separately. 35. Michael Flower (The Landmark Herodotus, p. 822) supposes that the Persians in fact had between 50,000 and 90,000 troops at Plataea, and implies that the Greeks indeed had the 50,000 that Herodotus estimates. So the size of the two armies may have been approximately equal.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

485

33. The day after Mardonius’ forces had been marshaled, and the contingents had taken their places in line, both sides performed sacrifices. The man who officiated for the Greeks was Tisamenus, son of Antiochus, who accompanied the army as a soothsayer. He was an Elean by birth, and belonged to the Clytiad branch of the Iamidae,36 but the Spartans had made him their fellow-citizen under the following circumstances. Having no children, he had gone to Delphi to consult the oracle, and the Pythian priestess had replied that he would win the five important contests. Misunderstanding the oracle’s meaning, Tisamenus devoted himself to athletics, thinking he would win athletic contests. He trained for the Olympic pentathlon, and missed winning it by one event, the wrestling match. (He lost to Hieronymus of Andros.) The Spartans now realized that Tisamenus’ prophecy referred not to athletic contests, but battles; they therefore tried to persuade him, for a fee, to serve as joint-commander with the Heraclid kings in their wars. When he saw that the Spartans were eager to secure his services, Tisamenus raised his price. If the Spartans naturalized him and gave him all the privileges of a Spartan citizen, he would do as they asked; no other reward would satisfy him. At first the Spartans took offense, and stopped asking for his services; but later, under the great threat of the Persian invasion, they went to Tisamenus and agreed to his terms. Noting their change of heart, Tisamenus now declared that the conditions no longer satisfied him; they must also make his brother Hegias a Spartan citizen, with the same rights as himself. 34. Here Tisamenus was imitating Melampus37 (if a demand for citizenship may be compared with a demand for sovereignty). For when the women of Argos went mad,38 and the Argives tried to hire Melampus from Pylos to cure them, he claimed half the kingdom as his reward. The Argives found the demand outrageous and left him; but later, when more of their women were afflicted, they agreed to his terms, and went back to him to promise what he asked. At that point Melampus, noting their change of heart, raised his demand, and told them that unless they also gave his brother Bias a third of the kingdom, he would not do as they wished. So the Argives, who were in dire straits, consented to this as well. 35. The Spartans likewise gave Tisamenus everything he asked, so great was their need of him; and Tisamenus of Elis, having thus become a Spartan citizen, subsequently, in his capacity as soothsayer, helped the Spartans to win five important contests. (He and his brother are the only men to whom the Spartans have ever granted citizenship.) They were the following: the first was the present battle at Plataea; the second, that fought at Tegea against the Tegeans and Argives; the third, that at Dipaees against all the Arcadians except the Mantineans; the fourth, that 36. The Iamidae were a family based in Elis, famous for the prophetic powers of it members. 37. A legendary wise man and wonder-worker. 38. According to the myth, Dionysus drove them mad for not observing his rites.

486

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

against the Messenians at Ithome; and the fifth, that at Tanagra against the Athenians and Argives.39 The latter was the last of the five contests. 36. This Tisamenus, then, whom the Spartans had brought to Platea, was acting as soothsayer for the Greeks. He found the omens favorable if the Greeks fought on the defensive, but unfavorable if they crossed the Asopus and struck the first blow. 37. For Mardonius, who was eager to engage the enemy, the omens were likewise unfavorable for beginning the battle, but favorable for fighting in his own defense. For he, too, made use of Greek rituals, having enlisted the services of a soothsayer, Hegesistratus of Elis, the most distinguished of the Telliads.40 At an earlier period, the Spartans had arrested Hegesistratus and put him in bonds, pending execution, on the grounds that he had done them great harm. At that point Hegesistratus, realizing, in his predicament, that his life was at stake, and that he would suffer torture before his execution, did a thing mere words cannot describe. Though bound in the stocks, which were made of wood but reinforced with iron, he somehow got hold of an iron tool that had been brought in, and instantly performed the bravest deed we know of. He cut off the broad part of his own foot, having judged that he could then extricate the part that remained. Then, as the prison was guarded, he dug through a wall of his cell and ran away to Tegea, traveling at night and hiding in the woods by day.Though the Spartans went out in full force to search for him, Hegesistratus reached Tegea on the third night. Having discovered half his foot lying in the prison (though the man himself was nowhere to be found), the Spartans marveled at his daring. Having thus escaped his captors, Hegesistratus took refuge in Tegea, which at the time was not on friendly terms with Sparta. When his wound healed he procured a wooden foot, and became an open enemy to Sparta. But this hatred proved his undoing; for at a later time—after Plataea—while he was performing his duties in Zacynthus, the Spartans caught him and put him to death. 38. But the death of Hegesistratus occurred at a later time—after Plataea.41 At present he was serving Mardonius on the Asopus. Handsomely paid, he was performing sacrifices with great zeal, partly out of hatred for the Spartans, partly for the sake of the money. So when the omens were unfavorable both for the Persians and for their Greek allies (the latter had their own seer, Hippomachus of Leucas), and when Greeks continued to pour in, Timagenidas, son of Herpys, a Theban, 39. Only the last two of these five battles can be securely dated, but all of them fall in the period after the end of Herodotus’ narrative, between 475 and 450 B.C. The battle of Tanagra occurred in 457 B.C. The Spartans besieged the Messenians, their own enslaved helots, at Mount Ithome around 465 B.C. (but the name “Ithome” is an editorial correction for the manuscript reading “Isthmus”). 40. The Telliads of Elis were a Greek clan renowned for prophecy. 41. That is, after the battle of Plataea, described below.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

487

advised Mardonius to guard the passes of Cithaeron, as he would be able to cut off a great many of the Greeks who were streaming through them every day. 39. The armies had already been encamped opposite one another for eight days when Timagenidas offered this advice. Mardonius grasped that it was sound, and at nightfall sent his cavalry to the pass of Cithaeron that leads to Plataea. (The Boeotians call this pass “Three Heads”; the Athenians call it “Heads of Oak.”) The horsemen sent on this mission did not ride out in vain. They caught 500 pack animals advancing into the plain, bearing provisions from the Peloponnese to the Greek camp, together with the men driving them. On seizing this prey, the Persians slaughtered them, beasts and men, without mercy; when they had had their fill of killing, they surrounded those that were left, and drove them back to the camp to Mardonius. 40. Two more days passed after this incident, as neither side wished to begin the battle. The Persians tested the Greeks by advancing as far as the Asopus, but neither side ventured to cross.42 Nevertheless Mardonius’ cavalry harassed the Greeks incessantly; for the Thebans, who had made the Medes’ cause their own and were zealous supporters of the war, always led the way until the actual battle, when the Persians and Medes took over and displayed extraordinary valor. 41. Nothing more occurred for ten days. Then, on the eleventh day after the two armies had encamped at Plataea—by which time the Greeks’ numbers had greatly increased, and Mardonius was chafing at the delay—a conference was held between Mardonius, son of Gobryas, and Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, a man whom Xerxes esteemed more highly than almost any other Persian. Artabazus expressed the view that they should break up camp at once, and withdraw the whole army to the Thebans’ fortress, where abundant provisions had been brought in for the men and fodder for the pack animals. From there, sitting quietly, they could easily achieve their purpose. As they had plenty of gold, both coined and uncoined, and an abundance of silver and drinking-cups, they should distribute these things unsparingly among the Greeks, particularly among their chiefs, who would soon hand over their liberty, without risking another battle. His view agreed with that of the Thebans, since he had more foresight than the Persian commander. Mardonius, on the other hand, being more stubborn and reckless, was utterly unwilling to yield. Their army, it seemed to him, was far stronger than that of the Greeks; they should therefore join battle as soon as possible, and not allow the enemy forces to increase any further. Moreover, they should ignore Hegesistratus’

42. A land battle of this era required both sides to come forward and array their troops. One side might come forward first and make clear that it was offering battle, but the other side could decline to meet them.

488

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

prophecies, and not require them to be favorable, but should engage the enemy in the traditional Persian way. 42. No one spoke in opposition when Mardonius expressed this opinion, and thus his view prevailed. For the king had given control of the army not to Artabazus but to Mardonius, who now sent for his own company commanders and his Greek allies’ generals and asked them whether they were aware of a certain prophecy which said that the Persians would be destroyed in Greece. Everyone remained silent; some because they were unaware of the prophecy, while others, though aware, because they did not think it safe to speak. Mardonius therefore said, “Well, gentlemen, as you are either unaware or do not dare to speak, I will do so, as I have been well informed. There is an oracle that says that the Persians will come into Greece and plunder the temple at Delphi, whereupon they will all perish. Accordingly, as we have been forewarned, we will neither go to that temple nor attempt to plunder it, and hence we will escape destruction.43 So be glad, all of you who are well-disposed to the Persians, and rest assured that we will defeat the Greeks.” So saying, he again ordered the commanders to prepare themselves, and to make ready for a battle the next day. 43. As for the prophecy that Mardonius said pertained to the Persians, I happen to know that it actually referred to the Illyrians and the army of the Encheles.44 There are, however, some verses of Bacis that did refer to this battle: By the Thermodon, and the grassy banks of the Asopus, Will be a gathering of Greeks and a howling in foreign tongues, And there, before their allotted time, many Medes shall fall, Armed with the bow, when the day of doom comes. These verses, and some others like them that Musaeus45 wrote, I know referred to the Persians. The river Thermodon flows between Tanagra and Glisas. 44. After Mardonius had asked his questions about the oracles and spoken his encouraging words, darkness fell and the watches were set. Late that night, when the camp was quiet and the men seemed to be asleep, Alexander, son of Amyntas, the king and commander of the Macedonians, rode up to the Athenian guardposts and asked to speak with the commanders. Most of the guards stayed at their posts, but a few ran to their officers and reported that a man on horseback had come from the camp of the Medes and would say nothing, except that he wished to speak with the commanding officers, whom he mentioned by name. 43. Mardonius’ speech here ignores the fact that the Persians had attempted to plunder Delphi the previous year (see 8.35–39). 44. The Encheles were an Illyrian tribe. The war referred to took place in the time of Cadmus, legendary founder of Thebes. 45. A legendary seer.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

489

45. The commanders immediately followed the guards back to their post. When they appeared, Alexander addressed them thus: “Men of Athens, I trust to your honor what I am about to say, and charge you to keep it secret and tell no one but Pausanias, lest you ruin me. I would not be speaking unless I were greatly concerned for the common welfare of Greece. I am myself a Greek by descent,46 and would not want to see Greece exchange her freedom for slavery. Know, then, that Mardonius and his army are unable to obtain favorable omens; otherwise he would long since have joined battle. He has now decided to ignore the omens and to attack at dawn. I imagine he dreads your growing numbers. So prepare yourselves. And if it turns out Mardonius postpones the engagement, hold your ground. For their supplies of food will only last a few more days. If this war ends as you hope it will, do not forget to do something for my freedom;47 for the sake of Greece I have run a great risk, in my desire to inform you of Mardonius’ plans, and thus save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon.” So saying, he rode back to the camp and the post assigned to him. 46. The Athenian commanders, going to Pausanias48 at the right wing, reported what Alexander had said. Unnerved by the report, Pausanias said, “Since the engagement will begin at dawn, you Athenians had better stand opposite the Persians, while we face the Boeotians and the other Greeks now stationed opposite you. For you are acquainted with the Medes and their manner of fighting, having fought them at Marathon, whereas we are ignorant and without experience of these men. None of the Spartans here has ever fought against the Medes, whereas we have had experience of the Boeotians and Thessalians. So take up your weapons, and come over to our post on the right, while we fill your place on the left.” In reply the Athenians said, “We, too, as soon as we saw the Persians drawn up opposite you, had in mind to propose the very change you mention, but were afraid that our advice would not please you.49 Now, however, as you have mentioned it yourself, we are glad to consent, and will do as you wish.” 47. As the plan suited both sides, at dawn the Spartans and Athenians changed places. But the Boeotians took note of the change and informed Mardonius, who at once brought his Persians to face the Lacedemonians. Then Pausanias, seeing that his own movement was detected, led his Spartans back to the right wing, whereupon Mardonius led his Persians back to the left. 48. When the contingents again occupied their original stations, Mardonius sent a herald to the Spartans with this message: “Lacedemonians, the people 46. See the myth at 8.137–39, explaining how the Macedonian royal family originated in Argos. 47. That is, to liberate Macedonia from Persian occupation. 48. The Spartan commander and leader of the coalition. 49. Because the right wing was considered the place of greatest honor.

490

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

hereabout say that you are the bravest of men.They admire you because you never retreat in battle or abandon your post, but stand your ground and either slay your enemies or are slain yourselves. But now it turns out that none of this is true. Before we even engage and come to blows, we see you fleeing, abandoning your post, and placing the Athenians in danger, while you station yourselves opposite our slaves. These are hardly the deeds of brave men.You disappoint us exceedingly. In light of your renown, we expected you to send us a challenge, proposing to fight by yourselves against our Persian contingent. We would have agreed to this. But you have made no such offer; instead we find you cowering before us. Well, as you sent no challenge, we will do so. Why shouldn’t you on behalf of the Greeks, since you are thought to be the bravest, and we on behalf of the barbarians, fight a battle with equal numbers on each side? If it seems a good thing that the rest fight as well, let them fight afterward; otherwise, if it is thought sufficient that we fight on behalf of all, then let us do so, and let the winning side win for its entire army.” 49. On conveying this message, the herald waited a while; then, when no one answered him, he returned to Mardonius and reported what had happened. Mardonius was overjoyed, and so puffed up by his empty victory that he at once sent the cavalry out against the Greeks.When the horsemen attacked, they harassed the entire Greek army with their javelins and arrows; being mounted bowmen, they were difficult to engage. They also choked up and spoiled the spring of Gargaphia, from which the whole Greek army got its water. Only the Lacedemonians had been stationed near the spring; the rest of the Greeks were more or less distant from it, depending on their position in line, though they were all close to the Asopus. But as the Persian horsemen, with their missile weapons, prevented them getting water from the river, these Greeks resorted to the spring. 50. Under the circumstances, seeing their men deprived of water and harassed by the cavalry, the Greek commanders went in a body to Pausanias on the right wing to discuss these and other matters. For besides the difficulties just mentioned, other problems troubled them even more. Their stores of food were exhausted, and the servants who had been sent to bring supplies from the Peloponnese had been prevented by the Persian cavalry from returning to their camp.50 51. Taking counsel, the commanders decided that if the Persians delayed that day and did not give battle, they would go to “the island,” a tract of land in front of Plataea, ten stades from the army’s present camp beside the Asopus and Gargaphia. The tract is a sort of island on the mainland. A river known as the Oeroe, splitting into two channels inland of Cithaeron, flows down into the plain; its channels, separated from one another by as many as three stades, later commingle to form one stream. (The local inhabitants say that Oeroe is the daughter of Asopus.) It was to this place that the commanders planned to move, in order 50. See 9.39 above.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

491

to obtain access to an abundant supply of water, and to escape the enemy cavalry. They decided to decamp that night, at the second watch, to prevent the Persians from noticing them as they departed, and thus escape being pursued and harassed by the horsemen. It was also decided that once they reached the “island,” which the Oeroe surrounds as it flows down from Cithaeron, they would detach, during the same night, one half of the army and send it to that mountain range, to relieve those whom they had sent to procure provisions, and who were cut off there. 52. Having formed this plan, they passed the entire day under attack by the enemy cavalry; it was not until evening that the horsemen desisted. After dark, at the time appointed for their retreat, most of the Greeks took up their baggage and departed, though they had no intention of going to the place agreed upon; on the contrary, once they were on their way, they fled straight to Plataea,51 so anxious were they to escape the Persian cavalry. There they halted, and pitched their camp at the temple of Hera, which stands outside the city, about twenty stades from Gargaphia. 53. As soon as Pausanias saw some of the troops leaving camp, he ordered the Lacedemonians to take up their arms and follow those who were departing, believing that they were on their way to the station agreed upon. The other troop commanders were ready to obey Pausanias, but Amompharetus, son of Poliades, the commander of the Pitanate contingent,52 refused to budge, saying that he would not run away from the “strangers”53 and thus deliberately bring disgrace on Sparta. (Amompharetus was surprised when he saw what was happening, as he had not attended the earlier conference.) Pausanias and Euryanax were indignant at his disobedience; but they thought it would be even worse, as a result of his refusal, to leave the Pitanate contingent to its fate; for Amompharetus and his men would surely perish if the rest of the army adhered to their plan and abandoned them. With this in mind, they kept the Laconian army where it was, and tried to convince Amompharetus that he was mistaken. 54. While the Spartan commanders were admonishing Amompharetus, the only man in their army and that of the Tegeans who was being left behind, the Athenians did as follows. Familiar with the Lacedemonians’ tendency to say one thing and do another, they remained quietly at their post until the retreat began. Then they sent a horseman to find out whether the Spartans intended to depart, and to ask Pausanias for instructions. 51. The city of Plataea was at this point deserted and destroyed (see 8.50), but the Greeks no doubt were able to use its ruined fortifications as protection from Persian cavalry attacks. 52. Pitana was a region of Lacedaemon. Thucydides (1.20) rejected the idea that there was a special regiment called “Pitanate.” 53. The Spartans habitually called foreigners xenoi rather than barbaroi (see 9.11 above).

492

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

55. The herald found the Lacedemonians still in their old position, and their leaders quarreling. For when Euryanax and Pausanias remonstrated with Amompharetus, and urged him not to endanger the lives of his men by remaining behind after the others had withdrawn, they were unable to persuade him; they had just begun to quarrel when the Athenian herald arrived. At that point Amompharetus took up a rock in both hands, placed it before Pausanias’ feet, and said that with this pebble he was casting his vote54 not to run away from the “strangers.” (By “strangers” he meant barbarians). Pausanias, in reply, called him a fool and a madman; then, when the herald made his inquiries, Pausanias told him to describe his present predicament, and ask the Athenians to move closer to them, and follow their lead, if and when they departed. 56. The herald then returned to the Athenians. Dawn found the Spartans still wrangling. Pausanias had not yet moved; but now, assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that Amompharetus would not remain behind if the other Lacedemonians withdrew, he gave the order for retreat, and led all the rest of his troops through the hills. The Tegeans accompanied them. The Athenians, as ordered, proceeded in the opposite direction. For while the Lacedemonians kept to the slopes and foothills of Cithaeron, in fear of the barbarian cavalry, the Athenians took the lower road through the plain. 57. At first, imagining that Pausanias would never dare to leave them, Amompharetus remained firm in his determination to keep his men at their post; but when Pausanias and his troops had moved away, and Amompharetus suspected that they would abandon him altogether, he ordered his men to take up their arms, and led them at a walking pace toward the main army. The army was waiting for them about four stades ahead, having halted by the river Moloeis at a place called Argiopius, where there is a temple of Eleusinian Demeter. They had stopped there so that they would be able to assist Amompharetus and his men if they remained at their original post. And just as Amompharetus rejoined the army, the entire barbarian cavalry arrived and began to harass them. The horsemen had followed their usual practice and ridden up to the Greek camp; and when they found it deserted, they rode forward, overtook the retreating army, and resumed their attacks. 58. When Mardonius learned that the Greeks had departed during the night, and saw that their camp was deserted, he summoned Thorax of Larissa and his brothers, Eurypylus and Thrasydaeus, and said, “What do you say now, sons of Aleues, seeing the place deserted? For you, who are neighbors of the Lacedemonians, used to tell me that they were surpassing warriors, and never fled from battle.Yet earlier you saw them deserting their ranks, and now we can all see that they ran away last night. Faced with the world’s greatest fighters, they plainly 54. Voting in some Greek cities was done by casting pebbles into urns.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

493

showed that they are worthless men who have distinguished themselves among worthless Greeks. I can excuse you, who were unacquainted with the Persians, for praising men of whom you had some knowledge. But I am quite astonished at Artabazus, that he should have been afraid of the Lacedemonians, and have therefore given us such cowardly advice55—urging us to break up our camp, withdraw our troops to Thebes, and allow ourselves to be besieged. The King will be hearing from me about it—but that can wait. At present we must not let these Greeks get away from us; they must be pursued until they are overtaken and made to give satisfaction for all the harm they have done the Persians.” 59. So saying, Mardonius crossed the Asopus and led the Persians at a run along the track of the Greeks, whom he believed were in flight. He was actually leading his men after the Lacedemonians and Tegeans only; for he did not notice the Athenians, who had taken the route that led into the plain, and were hidden from view by the hills. As soon as the other barbarian contingents saw that the Persians were hastening after the Greeks, they raised their standards and joined in the chase as fast as they could, without marshaling their men in any sort of order. They swept forward, a shouting and unruly mob, thinking they would utterly overwhelm the Greeks. 60. When the barbarian cavalry approached, Pausanias sent a horseman to the Athenians with this message: “Men of Athens, though faced with the battle that will determine whether Greece will be free or enslaved, we have both been betrayed, the Lacedemonians and Athenians alike, by the allies who fled last night.56 So our present course has been determined for us: we must mount a defense where we are best able to protect one another. If the barbarian cavalry had begun by proceeding against you, we would have come to your aid with the Tegeans, who remain loyal to Greece. Now, though, as their entire cavalry has come out against us, it is your duty to help defend the contingent that is pressed the hardest. But if you are in any difficulty that prevents you from coming to our aid, do us the favor of sending your archers. We recognize that in this war you are by far the most dedicated contingent, so we rely on you to obey us.” 61. On receiving this message, the Athenians set out to assist the Spartans and defend them as best they could. But as they sallied forth they were attacked by the Greek troops under the king’s command who had been posted opposite them. And this attack so harassed them that they were no longer able to help their allies.Thus the Lacedemonians and Tegeans were left to fight alone. Including their light-armed troop, the Lacedemonians numbered 50,000, while the Tegeans, who never left them, numbered 3,000. Once again they performed sacrifices, as they were on the point of joining battle with Mardonius and his forces. The omens were not favorable; and meanwhile many of their men fell, and many more were wounded. For the Persians 55. See 8.41 above. 56. Referring to the troops who had retired to Plataea.

494

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

Persian Army

Persian Camp

Asopus

Gargaphian Spring

Erythrae Spartans & Tegeans

Plataea

Athenians

Mt. Citha e ro n

Greek Allies

5 kilometers 5 miles

The battle of Plataea as described by Herodotus.

had made a barricade of their wicker shields, and from behind it were raining arrows on the enemy. As his men were being pressed hard, and the omens remained unfavorable, Pausanias raised his eyes to the temple of Hera, called upon the goddess for her aid, and begged her not to let them be robbed of their hope. 62. As he uttered this prayer, the Tegeans dashed forward to lead the charge, and a moment later the Lacedemonians obtained favorable omens. They, too, now advanced against the Persians, who threw down their bows and prepared to meet them. First there was a struggle at the barricade of shields. Then, after this was swept down, the fighting was fierce and prolonged at the temple of Demeter, and ended in hand-to-hand combat; for the barbarians would take hold of the Greek spears and break them. In courage and strength the Persians were not inferior to the Greeks, but they were inadequately armed,57 untrained, and far inferior in skill. Sometimes singly, sometimes in groups of ten men—now fewer, and now more—they charged into the Spartan ranks, where they fell. 63. The Persians pressed hardest wherever Mardonius, mounted upon a white horse, and surrounded by his 1,000 picked men, the cream of the army, fought in person. As long as Mardonius was alive, the Persians continued to resist, and in their own defense slaughtered many Lacedemonians. But after his death, and the slaughter of his bodyguard, which included the strongest Persian troops, the 57. The Greek word Herodotus uses here, anoploi, implies that the Persians lacked the heavy shield and metal armor with which Greek hoplites were usually equipped. Native Persian troops wore cuirasses with metal plates attached (see 7.61), but their shields were made of wicker; most other contingents fighting alongside the Persians had no metal gear at all.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

495

remainder yielded to the Lacedemonians and took to flight. Their lack of armor made them particularly vulnerable; for they had to fight without defensive gear against heavily armed infantrymen.58 64. Thus the warning of the oracle was fulfilled, and satisfaction for the murder of Leonidas59 was exacted from Mardonius; and thus Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus and grandson of Anaxandrides, won the finest victory known to us. (Cleombrotus’ lineage, identical to that of Leonidas, has already been given.)60 Mardonius was killed by Arimnestus, a distinguished Spartan, who in later years, after the Persian wars, led 300 men to Stenyclerus to do battle with the entire Messenian army;61 he died there with the 300 under his command. 65. When the Persians at Plataea were routed by the Lacedemonians, they fled in disorder to their camp, and took refuge in the wooden fort they had built in Theban territory. I find it astonishing that though the battle was fought near the sacred precinct of Demeter, not a single Persian soldier appears to have fallen on the sacred soil, or even to have set foot upon it, while around the precinct, on unhallowed ground, vast numbers were slain. It seems to me—if one may speculate about divine matters—that the goddess herself was keeping them out, because they had set fire to her sanctuary in Eleusis.62 66. Now Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, had disapproved from the start of the king’s leaving Mardonius behind, and had done his best, though without success, to dissuade Mardonius from risking an engagement.63 Displeased, accordingly, with the man’s strategy, he acted as follows. He had under his command a considerable force of nearly 40,000 men; and though well aware of how the contest was bound to turn out, he ordered his troops, as soon as the fighting began, to follow him in good order, and at whatever pace he set. After issuing these commands, he proceeded as if he meant to lead his army to battle; but when, as he advanced along the road, he saw that the Persians were already in flight, he changed his order of march, wheeled his men around, and beat a hasty retreat—not to the wooden palisade or to the Theban fortress, but to Phocis, as he wished to reach the Hellespont64 as soon as possible. 58. See previous note. 59. Leonidas was killed at Thermopylae and his body impaled (see Book 7). 60. See 7.204 above. 61. An episode of the war between the Spartans and Messenians in 464 B.C. 62. Herodotus once again asserts his belief in the divine causation of recent events. The burning of the sanctuary at Eleusis was not mentioned earlier, but presumably occurred during the general torching of Attica the previous summer (see 8.50). Eleusis was the point of origin of the mysterious dust cloud that seemed to foretell the outcome of Salamis (8.65). 63. See 9.41. 64. His route of retreat back to Asia.

496

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

67. Most of the Greek on the king’s side fought half-heartedly. The Boeotians, on the other hand, engaged in a prolonged struggle with the Athenians. For the Thebans who sided with the Medes,65 far from shirking their duty, fought so hard that 300 of their foremost warriors fell at Plataea at the hands of the Athenians. When they, too, were routed, they fled to Thebes, though not in company with the Persians and the whole crowd of allies, who ran away without striking a blow or distinguishing themselves in any way. 68. The fact that the rest of Mardonius’ troops, when they saw the Persians running away, fled before they had even joined battle, makes clear to me that the barbarians’ power depended entirely on the Persians. And thus the whole army fled except the cavalry—especially the Boeotian cavalry. These horsemen provided aid to the fugitives by keeping close to the Greeks and acting as a barrier between their friends and the Greeks.66 Yet the victors continued to pursue and slaughter Xerxes’ troops. 69. In the course of the rout, word was brought to the Greeks who were stationed near the temple of Hera and had taken no part in the action,67 that the battle had begun and that Pausanias was prevailing. On hearing this, the contingents rushed forward in no sort of order, the Corinthians and their division taking the route through the foothills that led straight to the temple of Demeter, while the Megarians, Phliasians, and those with them took the level route through the plain. When the Megarians and Phliasians neared the enemy, the Theban horsemen, who had caught sight of them advancing in disorder, rode against them. (Their commander was Asopodorus, son of Timandrus.) In the attack itself, they killed 600 of them; riding headlong after the others, they pursued them to Cithaeron. 70. So these men died without achieving anything memorable. Meanwhile the Persians and the throng with them, who fled to their wooden palisade, managed to scale the towers before the Lacedemonians got there, and immediately did all they could to strengthen their defenses. When the Lacedemonians arrived, a fierce struggle took place at the palisade. For until the Athenians reached them, the barbarians warded off their attackers and had the better of them, since the Lacedemonians were unfamiliar with siege warfare. But when the Athenians joined them, the fight for the palisade was desperate and protracted. Finally, by their bravery and perseverance, the Athenians made it over the wall and breached it, whereupon the Greeks poured in. The Tegeans entered first; it was they who 65. Evidently there were other Thebans who did not favor medizing; the dispute at Thebes is also discussed at 7.205. 66. Herodotus here assigns the Persian cavalry a significant role, as he also does prior to the battle, but he omits mention of them during the battle proper, just as he earlier omitted the Persian cavalry from his description of the battle of Marathon. 67. The troops who had fled to Plataea at 9.52.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

497

plundered Mardonius’ tent and made off with many valuables, including the horses’ feeding-trough, a remarkable object made entirely of bronze. The Tegeans dedicated the trough at the shrine of Athena Alea, though everything else they took was brought into the common stock of the Greeks. Once the palisade was down, the barbarians no longer kept in formation, nor did anyone think of resisting further. Crowded together, many thousands of men in a small space, they were overwhelmed by panic and distress. So vulnerable were they to the Greeks that out of an army of 300,000, not counting the 40,000 who had fled with Artabazus, not even 3,000 survived. Of the Lacedemonians from Sparta, 91 perished in the engagement; of the Tegeans, 16; and of the Athenians, 52.68 71. Of the barbarian infantry, the Persian contingent won the prize for valor; of the cavalry, the Sacae; the prize for individual valor went to Mardonius. Among the Greeks, though the Tegeans and Athenians proved brave, the Lacedemonians surpassed them in valor. Since each of these contingents considered itself unsurpassed, the only proof I can point to in support of my view is that the Lacedemonians engaged and vanquished the most formidable enemy contingent. By far the bravest Greek, in my opinion, was Aristodemus, the man who had incurred the disgrace of being the sole survivor of the 300 at Thermopylae.69 After Aristodemus, the bravest Spartans were Posidonius, Philocyon, and Amompharetus. When the question of who had most distinguished himself came to be discussed, the Spartans recognized that Aristodemus had indeed performed great deeds, but that in consequence of his disgrace he had rushed forward like a madman, courting death; Posidonius, on the other hand, though he did not wish to die, had fought just as bravely, and was on that account the braver man. But they may have said this out of envy. In any event, all the Spartans I listed, except Aristodemus, received honors; he alone got nothing, because he deliberately courted death for the reason that I have mentioned. 72. These, then, were the most celebrated of the men who fought at Plataea. For Callicrates—the most beautiful man, not only among the Spartans, but in the whole Greek camp—died away from the battlefield. Sitting at his post when Pausanias was performing sacrifices, he was hit in the side by an arrow. While his comrades marched into battle, he was carried from the ranks. Reluctant to die, he told Arimnestus, a Plataean, that he did not mind dying for Greece, but regretted that he had not lifted his hand against the enemy, or done any deed worthy of himself, as he had so longed to do. 73. Among the Athenians, renown was won by Sophanes, son of Eutychides, from the village of Decelea. The men of this village, once upon a time, did a deed 68. These casualty figures probably refer only to the assault on the fort; they are extremely low as totals for the entire battle. 69. See 7.229–31, where Herodotus looked ahead to the above passage.

498

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

that, as the Athenians themselves say, has been serviceable to them ever since. For in ancient times, when the Tyndarids invaded Attica with a vast army to recover Helen,70 and were ravaging the villages, as they had no idea where she was hiding, the Deceleans71 (or some say Decelus himself ), resenting Theseus’ insolence, and fearing for the whole Athenian territory, revealed everything to the invaders and led them to Aphidna, which Titacus, a native of the place, betrayed into their hands. As a reward for this service, Sparta has ever since exempted the Deceleans from all dues, and given them seats of honor at their public festivals; hence, even in the war that took place many years later between the Athenians and Peloponnesians, the Lacedemonians, though they ravaged all the rest of Attica, left Decelea untouched.72 74. From this village came Sophanes, who gained the prize for valor at Plataea. Two stories are told of him. According to one, he wore an iron anchor fastened to the belt of his breastplate by a bronze chain, and this he would cast out wherever he approached the enemy, to prevent them from driving him from his post; then, when the enemy fled, he would weigh anchor and pursue them. The other story, which conflicts with the first, has it that he did not have an actual iron anchor fastened to his breastplate, but bore the emblem of an anchor on his shield, which was never at rest, as he was always spinning it round and round. 75. Another glorious deed was also performed by Sophanes during the Athenian siege of Aegina, when he accepted the challenge of Eurybates the Argive, a victor in the pentathlon, and slew him in single combat.73 Later on he met his death in a battle with the Edonians for the gold mines at Datum, where he served with distinction as joint commander of the Athenians with Leagrus, son of Glaucon.74 76. When the barbarians had been overthrown by the Greeks at Plataea, a woman deserted from the Persians and came to the Greek camp. She was a concubine of Pherandates, son of Teaspis, a Persian; and on learning that the Persians were vanquished and the Greeks victorious, she dressed herself and her servants in the finest clothes she possessed, and decked herself with gold ornaments. Descending from her carriage, she went to the Lacedemonians, who were still engaged in the slaughter. When she saw Pausanias directing everything (she 70. According to myth, Theseus, king of Athens, abducted Helen as a young girl, forcing her brothers Castor and Pollux (the Tyndarids) to invade Attica in order to recover her. 71. Inhabitants of Decelea, a village in northern Attica. 72. Herodotus refers here to the Spartan invasions of Attica during the years 431 to 425 B.C., among the latest events mentioned in the Histories. Decelea was in fact occupied by the Spartans starting in 413 B.C., so Herodotus clearly did not revise the above passage after that date. 73. See 6.92. 74. The conflict referred to can be dated to 465 B.C., a time when Athens, under Cimon, was expanding its influence into mineral-rich areas of Thrace.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

499

was already acquainted with his name and country, as she had often heard them mentioned), she recognized him. Clasping him by the knees, she said, “King of Sparta, shield me, your suppliant, from captive servitude. For you have helped me already, by slaying these men, who reverence neither gods nor divinities. I am by birth a Coan, the daughter of Hegetorides, son of Antagoras. The Persian took me by force from Cos, and kept me against my will.” Pausanias replied, “Take heart, woman; as a suppliant you are safe—and especially so, if you are indeed the daughter of Hegetorides of Cos, who is bound to me by closer ties of guestfriendship than any other man in those parts.” So saying, he entrusted her for the time being to the ephors who were traveling with the army, and later sent her, at her own wish, to Aegina. 77. Immediately after this woman’s arrival, the Mantineans reached Plataea and found that all was over. On learning that it was too late to take part in the battle, they expressed great dismay and declared they deserved to be punished. And then, when they heard that the Medes with Artabazus were fleeing, they were eager to pursue them as far as Thessaly; but the Lacedemonians would not allow them. So they returned to their own country, where they banished their generals. Soon after the Mantineans, the Eleans arrived, and expressed the same dismay; then they, too, returned home and banished their generals. 78. Serving at Plataea with the Aeginetans was a man named Lampon, son of Pytheas, a distinguished citizen of Aegina. This man went to Pausanias, and urged him to do an unholy deed. “Son of Cleombrotus,” he said, “you have performed a service of surpassing greatness and nobility. A god has granted you the distinction of saving Greece and gaining the greatest renown of all the Greeks we know of. So do what remains to be done, both to increase your own fame, and to make barbarians think twice in future before launching reckless attacks on the Greeks. When Leonidas was slain at Thermopylae, Mardonius and Xerxes ordered his head cut off and fixed on a stake.75 If you now pay them back in kind, you will win praise, first and foremost, from the Spartans, and then from every man in Greece. By impaling Mardonius, you will avenge your uncle Leonidas.” Lampon imagined that his suggestion would please Pausanias; but Pausanias relied, 79. “I appreciate your good will and foresight, my friend, but in offering this counsel you have missed the mark. After exalting me to the skies—together with my country and my achievement—you dash me to the ground when you advise me to outrage a corpse, and say that by doing so I will be better spoken of. Such things befit barbarians rather than Greeks; and even in barbarians we despise them. That being so, I would not seek to gratify the Aeginetans or anyone who approves of such things. It is enough for me to please the Spartans, by acting and speaking decently. As for Leonidas, whom you urge me to avenge, I declare he has 75. See 7.238.

500

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

been greatly avenged already. He and the others who died at Thermopylae have been avenged by the countless lives here taken. Never come to me again with such a proposal; and be thankful that you are not punished.” On hearing this reply, Lampon departed. 80. Having issued a proclamation forbidding anyone to touch the spoils, Pausanias ordered the helots to collect all the valuables together in one place. They scattered through the camp, and found tents adorned with gold and silver, silver- and gold-plated couches, golden mixing bowls, goblets, and other drinking vessels. They found sacks on wagons that plainly contained gold and silver basins. From the corpses they stripped bracelets, necklaces, and golden daggers, not to mention richly embroidered clothing, to which no one paid any attention. Whatever the helots could not conceal, which was a great deal, they brought to their superiors; but there was also a great deal that they managed to steal, and which they later sold to the Aeginetans. This became the source of the Aeginetans’ wealth; for the helots from whom they bought the gold were given to understand that it was bronze. 81. When all the spoils had been collected, a tenth was set aside for the god at Delphi, a tenth for the god at Olympia, and a tenth for the god at the Isthmus.76 At Delphi the Greeks dedicated the golden tripod that stands on the three-headed bronze serpent,77 next to the altar; at Olympia they dedicated a bronze statue of Zeus, ten cubits high; at the Isthmus they dedicated a bronze statue of Poseidon, seven cubits high.78 The remaining valuables, including the Persians’ concubines, the gold, the silver, pack animals, and so on, were divided up among the troops, each of whom received his proper share. What was awarded to those who had excelled at Plataea has not been reported, though I suppose that they, too, must have received special gifts. Pausanias himself was given ten of everything— women, horses, talents, camels, and everything else. 82. The following incident is said to have occurred. When Xerxes fled Greece, he left his tent with Mardonius. When Pausanias saw it, with its gold and silver ornaments, and its embroidered draperies, he commanded the bakers and cooks to prepare a supper of the kind they had been accustomed to prepare for Mardonius. When they obeyed, and Pausanias saw well-spread gold and silver couches, and gold and silver tables, and a magnificent meal prepared, he was astonished at 76. The gods prominently worshiped at these three locales were Apollo, Zeus, and Poseidon, respectively. 77. The so-called serpent column, a bronze pillar made up of the coils of a huge snake, can be seen today at Istanbul, where it was moved in the 4th century A.D. The three heads of the snake and the gold tripod that they presumably held are now missing. On the coils of the snake an inscription reads “These fought the war,” followed by a list of thirty-one Greek cities headed by the Lacedemonians and Athenians. 78. A cubit was about a foot and a half. No trace remains of either statue, though at Olympia a huge pedestal has been found that may have supported the statue of Zeus.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

The remains of the commemorative column described by Herodotus, today found in Istanbul, where it was moved in Roman times. The serpent’s three heads have become detached and the cauldron they held has been lost, but the inscription recording the thirty-one cities that fought the Persians is still barely legible. Photo © Vanni Archive/Art Resource, NY.

501

502

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

the luxurious fare set before him, and, by way of a joke, ordered his own servants to prepare a Spartan supper.79 When both suppers were served, and the great difference between them was noted, Pausanias laughed, and sent for the Greek commanders. When they had assembled, Pausanias pointed from one supper to the other and said, “Men of Greece, I brought you here to show you the folly of the Mede, who, though he lives in this style, came to rob us of our poverty.” 83. For many years afterward, the people of Plataea often found chests full of gold, silver, and other valuables. And more recently they also made the following discovery: once the flesh had fallen away from the bodies of the dead, and their bones had been collected in one place, the Plataeans found a skull without any suture; it was made of a single bone. A jaw also came to light in which all the teeth, front and back, were joined together and made of one bone; also the skeleton of a man five cubits in height. 84. The body of Mardonius disappeared the day after the battle; but who it was that made off with it I cannot say with certainty. I have heard of many people of all sorts who are said to have buried him; and I know that many have received large sums from Artontes, Mardonius’ son, for doing so. But I have been unable to discover which of them it really was who stole away his body and buried it. Rumor has it that it was a man from Ephesus named Dionysophanes. In any event, it appears that he met with a burial of some sort. 85. The Greeks, meanwhile, after they had divided the spoils, buried their own dead, each nation apart from the rest. The Lacedemonians made three graves. In the first they buried their priests, including Posidonius, Amompharetus, Philocyon, and Callicrates; in another, the rest of the Spartans; and in the third, the helots. The Tegeans buried all their dead in a common grave; the Athenians did likewise. The Megarians and Phliasians buried those who had been slain by the cavalry. These nations’ sepulchers were full of bodies. As for all the other sepulchers on view at Plataea, I have learned that they are empty, and were erected to impress posterity by the nations who were ashamed of their absence from the battle.There is even a tomb there, bearing the name of the Aeginetans, which I am told was erected ten years after the battle, at the Aeginetans’ request, by Cleadres, son of Autodicus, a Plataean and the Aeginetans’ public host. 86. As soon as the Greeks had buried their dead at Plataea, they decided in council to march against Thebes and demand the surrender of the Thebans who had sided with the Medes, including their principal leaders, Timagenidas and Attaginus. If the Thebans refused to give these men up, the Greeks had resolved to lay siege to their city until it surrendered. Accordingly, the Greeks approached Thebes on the eleventh day after the battle, began the siege, and demanded the 79. The Spartans were famous for disdaining fine foods and taking their nourishment primarily from an unappealing kind of soup. Soldiers on the march ate mostly barley meal.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

503

surrender of the men. The Thebans refused, whereupon the besieging army set about ravaging the Thebans’ land and assaulting their wall. 87. Twenty days later, when the attack showed no sign of abating, Timagenidas addressed the Thebans thus: “Men of Thebes, since the Greeks have decided not to withdraw until either they have destroyed Thebes or you hand us over to them, let the land of Boeotia suffer nothing more on our account. Instead, if their demand for our surrender is only a pretext, and they would in fact be satisfied with money, let us give them money from the treasury. (For the community, and not we alone, embraced the cause of the Medes.)80 But if they must have us, we will offer ourselves to argue the point.” The Thebans found Timagenidas’ offer appropriate and timely, and immediately informed Pausanias through a herald that they were willing to surrender the men. 88. As soon as the terms were agreed upon, Attaginus made his escape from the town; his sons, however, were taken and brought before Pausanias, who refused to condemn them, declaring that children could not have taken part in their father’s treachery. The others who were surrendered supposed they would be given a chance to defend themselves, and hoped, in that case, to be acquitted in return for a sum of money. But when Pausanias had obtained custody of them, and guessed what they had in mind, he dismissed the entire allied army, conducted the Theban captives to Corinth,81 and put them to death. So much for the events at Plataea and Thebes. 89. Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, who had fled from Plataea,82 was soon well on his way. When he reached Thessaly, the inhabitants offered him hospitality. Unaware of what had occurred at Plataea, they inquired about the rest of the army. Artabazus knew very well that if he told them the truth, he and the army with him would be in danger; for he imagined that they would all attack them if they learned what had happened. With this in mind, as he had divulged nothing to the Phocians, he replied to the Thessalians as follows: “As you can see, men of Thessaly, I am driving with all speed to Thrace, having been dispatched with these men on some business from the army. Expect to see Mardonius and his army following close on my heels. You would do well to show him hospitality; you will have no cause to regret it hereafter.” So saying, he marched his army through Thessaly and Macedonia and headed straight for Thrace, following the inland route, as he was, in point of fact, in a terrible hurry. By the time he reached Byzantium, he had left a great part of his army behind; many had been slain on the way by 80. See note to 9.67. The speaker evidently distorts the facts so as to lessen his own responsibility for the medizing policy. 81. That is, to the Isthmus, where representatives of the allied Greek states formed a kind of council. Perhaps some sort of trial was held there. 82. Resuming the thread of 9.66.

504

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

Thracians, while others had succumbed to famine and exhaustion. From Byzantium he set sail, crossed the strait, and thus returned to Asia. 90. On the same day as the disaster at Plataea, the Persians suffered another defeat at Mycale.83 While the Greek fleet under Leotychides the Lacedemonian was still lying at Delos, three messengers arrived from Samos:84 Lampon, son of Thrasycles, Athenagoras, son of Archestratides, and Hegesistratus, son of Aristagoras. These men had been sent by the Samians without the knowledge of the Persians or of Theomestor, son of Androdamas, whom the Persians had installed as tyrant of Samos. When the messengers came to the Greek commanders, Hegesistratus appealed to them with all sorts of arguments, declaring that the Ionians only needed to set eyes on the Greeks and they would instantly revolt from the Persians: and that the barbarians would not stand their ground; or, if they did, it would be to provide them with the finest booty the Greeks could ever hope to gain. Invoking their common gods, he urged them to rescue their fellow Greeks from servitude, and to drive back the barbarian. This, he said, could be done very easily, since the Persian ships were not seaworthy, and would be no match for theirs. He added that if anyone suspected the Samians of treachery, the messengers themselves were prepared to become hostages, and to sail on board the ships of their allies. 91. In the middle of the Samian’s urgent appeal, Leotychides put a question to him, either by chance, or because he desired an omen: “Samian stranger, what is your name?” The man replied, “Hegesistratus,”85 and might have said more, but Leotychides cut him short by exclaiming, “I accept the omen, my Samian friend. And now, before you and your colleagues sail away, give us your word that the Samians will be our loyal allies.” 92. No sooner had he spoken than he proceeded to business. The ambassadors immediately pledged their faith, and exchanged oaths of alliance with the Greeks. Two of them then sailed away; as for Hegesistratus, Leotychides ordered him to sail with the fleet, thinking his name would be a good omen. The Greeks stayed where they were that day, and on the following offered sacrifice and obtained favorable omens. Their seer was Deiphonus, son of Euenius, of Apollonia— the Apollonia that lies on the Ionic Gulf. A strange thing happened to Euenius, Deiphonus’ father. 93. In Apollonia there is a flock of sheep sacred to Helios. By day these sheep graze along the banks of the river that flows from Mount Lacmon through Apollonian territory and empties into the sea by the harbor of Oricus; by night they 83. Mycale is a naval station off Miletus. Herodotus abruptly moves back to the activities of the Greek fleet, last seen arriving at Delos (8.132). 84. Samos and the other islands of the eastern Aegean were still under Persian occupation. 85. The name means “leader of the army.”

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

505

are guarded by men selected from the richest and most distinguished families, each man serving for a year. The Apollonians value these sheep highly because of an oracle they once received about them. The place where they are kept for the night is a cave far from the city. It was here that Euenius, when he had been chosen to serve, was keeping guard. One night he fell asleep on duty, and some wolves entered the cave and killed about sixty of the flock. When he awoke and saw what had happened, Euenius kept silent about it and told no one, intending to buy other sheep to replace the slain. But word of the calamity reached the townspeople, who brought Euenius to trial, and condemned him to be deprived of his sight for sleeping at his post. As soon as Euenius was blinded, the sacred ewes immediately had no more young, and the land ceased to bear its usual harvests. When the Apollonians consulted the oracles at Dodona and Delphi about the cause of their misfortune, they were told that they had unjustly blinded Euenius, the guardian of the sacred sheep. For the gods themselves had set the wolves on them, and would not cease taking vengeance on Euenius’ behalf until the Apollonians made him whatever recompense he might choose.When this was done, they, too, would give him a gift that would make many men call him blessed. 94. Such was the response of the oracles. The Apollonians kept it secret, but charged some of their citizens to arrange matters with Euenius. These men proceeded as follows.They came upon Euenius sitting on a bench; sitting down beside him, they engaged him in conversation on various subjects, but eventually came round to expressing sympathy for his misfortune. Leading him on, they asked him what he would choose by way of recompense, if the Apollonians should offer it. As Euenius knew nothing of the oracle, he said that if he were given the estate of this person, or that (here he named the two men whom he knew owned the finest land in Apollonia), and a particular house (which he knew to be the best in the town), he would no longer be angry; such a recompense would content him. That was his answer, and the men sitting beside him replied, “Euenius, the Apollonians will give you the recompense you request, in obedience to the oracles.” When he learned the whole story, Euenius was enraged that they had deceived him in this way; but the Apollonians bought the estates from their owners, and gave Euenius what he had chosen. Immediately thereafter Euenius received the gift of prophecy,86 and consequently became a famous man. 95. Deiphonus, the son of this Euenius, had been brought by the Corinthians to act as soothsayer for the expedition. Another story has it that Deiphonus was not really Euenius’ son but merely assumed the name, and then went about Greece and obtained work on the strength of it. 96. When their sacrifices yielded favorable omens, the Greek fleet sailed from Delos to Samos. Arriving off Calami, they anchored near the temple of Hera and 86. The recompense given by the gods, as the oracle had promised.

506

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

prepared for a sea battle. The Persians, however, on learning that the Greeks were approaching, dismissed the Phoenician ships87 and sailed with the remainder to the mainland. For they had taken counsel and decided not to engage in a sea battle, thinking that their fleet would be no match for that of the enemy. They sailed, therefore, to the mainland, to be under the protection of their land army at Mycale. This force had been left behind by Xerxes to guard Ionia. It consisted of 60,000 men, under the command of Tigranes, the tallest and handsomest man in the Persian army. They decided to take shelter with these troops, and to draw their ships ashore and build a palisade around them, which would at once protect the fleet and serve as a place of refuge for themselves. 97. Having so decided, they put out to sea; and after passing the temple of the Eumenides arrived at Gaeson and Scolopeis in Mycale, where there is a temple of Eleusinian Demeter. The temple was built by Philistus, son of Pasicles, when he accompanied Neleus, son of Codrus, for the founding of Miletus. Drawing their ships ashore, they built a wall of stones and timber around them, cutting down cultivated trees that grew nearby, and adding a palisade of stakes, so that they would be prepared either to withstand a siege or prevail in battle; for they took both possibilities into account. 98.When the Greeks learned that the barbarians had fled to the mainland, they were vexed at their escape, and could not decide whether they should sail home or proceed to the Hellespont. In the end they decided to do neither, but to head for the coast of Asia. Preparing gangways88 and all the other equipment necessary for a sea battle, they set sail for Mycale. When they drew near the enemy camp, and no one put to sea against them, they saw ships hauled ashore within the palisade and a large land army drawn up along the beach. Leotychides now sailed past, bringing his ship as close to shore as possible, and addressed the Ionians through a herald: “Listen to what I say, men of Ionia—all of you who are within earshot—for the Persians will not understand a word I say. When we join battle, let each of you first remember freedom, and next the password, Hera.89 Let those of you who hear me pass the word to all the others.” In this Leotychides used the same tactic as Themistocles had at Artemisium. Either the Persians would not know what he said, and the Ionians would be persuaded to revolt from them; or, if his words were reported to the Persians, they would distrust their Greek subjects. 99. After Leotychides had issued these instructions, the Greeks brought their ships to shore, disembarked, and arrayed themselves for battle.When the Persians saw that the Greeks, after making an appeal to the Ionians, were marshaling their 87. It is unclear why the Persians thus dismissed the best contingent in their navy, unless, as Herodotus says below, they foresaw defeat. 88. Planks used in boarding enemy vessels. 89. Such passwords were used by Greek armies to distinguish friend from foe.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

507

troops, they confiscated the weapons of the Samians, whom they suspected of siding with the enemy. For recently a number of Athenians, captured in Attica by Xerxes’ men, had been brought to Asia by the barbarian fleet; and the Samians had ransomed them all and sent them back to Athens, furnishing them with provisions for the journey. It was chiefly on this account, namely the ransoming of 500 of Xerxes’ enemies, that the Samians were suspected. After disarming these men, the Persians sent the Milesians90 to guard the heights of Mycale, purportedly because they knew the region better than anyone else, but actually to keep them away from their camp. In this way the Persians took precautions against those Ionians who they thought likely, if the opportunity arose, to instigate a revolt. Then they brought their own shields together to form a defensive wall. 100.When the Greeks had completed their preparations, they advanced against the barbarians. And as they marched forth, a rumor flew through the entire army, and a herald’s wand was seen lying on the beach. The rumor had it that the Greeks fighting in Boeotia had prevailed over Mardonius’ army. There are many signs that the gods take a hand in human affairs. For how else could it be, when the battles of Mycale and Plataea were about to take place on the same day, that such a rumor should reach the Greeks at Mycale, cheering all the troops, and making them more determined than ever to risk their lives? 101. It was also a coincidence that both battles were fought near a precinct of Eleusinian Demeter; for the fighting at Plataea took place, as I mentioned, quite close to Demeter’s temple, and the same would happen at Mycale.The rumor that the Greeks under Pausanias had won a victory turned out to be correct; for the battle at Plataea took place early in the day, the battle at Mycale toward evening. It later became clear, when an inquiry was made, that the two battles had occurred on the same day. Before the rumor reached them, the Greeks at Mycale were full of fear, not so much on their own account as for their countrymen, lest Greece stumble in her encounter with Mardonius. But when the news spread through their camp, they advanced against the enemy with greater speed and strength. Both sides at Mycale were eager to engage, as the islands and the Hellespont would be awarded to the victor. 102. The Athenians, with the troops posted with them, who formed one half of the army, advanced along the beach and plain, while the route taken by the Lacedemonians and the troops with them lay across hills and a ravine. Hence, while the Lacedemonians were still marching round, the troops on the other wing had already joined battle. As long as their shield-wall remained standing, the Persians defended themselves and held their own. But when the Athenians and the allies with them, wanting to make the victory their own, rather than 90. It is curious to find “Milesians” still on the scene here, since Herodotus reported the total destruction of Miletus in 494 B.C. and the enslavement of its inhabitants (see 6.19–20).

508

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

share credit with the Lacedemonians, urged one another on and attacked them with the utmost zeal, the battle took a turn. Bursting through the wall of shields, the Greeks rushed in a mass against the Persians. Though the latter stood their ground for a considerable time, they were finally forced to retreat within their barricade. The Athenians, Corinthians, Sicyonians, and Troezenians (this was their order in line) followed close on their heels and forced their way in together. And once the barricade was breached, the barbarians no longer ventured to defend themselves; they all rushed to escape, except the Persians. The latter continued to fight in small parties against the Greeks who kept pouring through the breach. Two Persian commanders fled; two were slain. Artayntes and Ithramitres, who were commanders of the fleet, escaped; Mardontes and the army commander Tigranes died fighting. 103.While the Persians were still holding out, the Lacedemonians arrived with the rest of their division, and joined in what remained of the battle. A great many Greeks fell at Mycale, including many Sicyonians and their commander Perilaus. The Samians who were serving with the Medes, and who, though they had been disarmed, remained in their camp, seeing from the start that the outcome of the battle was in doubt, did all they could to help the Greeks; and the other Ionians, following the Samians’ lead, revolted from the Persians and attacked them. 104. The Milesians had been ordered, for the greater safety of the Persians, to guard the passes, so that if any accident befell them such as had now occurred, they would have guides to conduct them to the heights of Mycale. They had also been assigned to this task to prevent them from inciting a revolt in the Persian camp. But at every opportunity the Milesians disobeyed their orders: they guided the Persians along the wrong roads, namely the ones that led to their enemies; and finally, attacking them with their own hands, proved to be their deadliest enemies. In this way, for the second time, Ionia revolted from the Persians.91 105. In this battle the Greeks who gained the highest distinction were the Athenians; and among them the prize went to Hermolycus, son of Euthoenus, a man trained in the pancratium.92 Hermolycus was later killed in the war between the Athenians and Carystians. He died in the action at Cyrnus in Carystian territory, and was buried on Geraestus. After the Athenians, the most distinguished were the Corinthians, the Troezenians, and the Sicyonians. 106. When the Greeks had slaughtered most of the barbarians, either in the battle or in the rout, they set fire to their ships and palisade, having first removed the spoils, including several chests of money, and carried them down to the beach. When they had burned the palisade and ships, they sailed away to Samos. There they conferred about removing the Ionians from Asia, settling them in a part of 91. The first Ionian revolt was that of 499 B.C., described in Book 5. 92. An athletic event combining elements of boxing, wrestling, and kick fighting.

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

509

Greece that was under their control, and leaving Ionia to the barbarians.93 For they thought it would be impossible to be perpetually protecting the Ionians; and yet there was little hope, without such protection, that the Ionians would escape the vengeance of the Persians. The Peloponnesians therefore decided to expel the Greeks who had sided with the Medes, and settle the Ionians in their trading centers. The Athenians, however, were opposed to any removal, and felt that the Peloponnesians had no right to deliberate about Athenian colonists. Faced with their vehement disapproval, the Peloponnesians gave way. Thus the Greeks admitted into their alliance the Samians, Chians, Lesbians, and other islanders who had been their comrades-in-arms, and bound them with pledges and oaths to be faithful, and not desert the common cause. Then they sailed for the Hellespont to destroy the bridges, which they supposed were still intact. 107. The few barbarians who had escaped destruction and taken refuge in the heights of Mycale now made their way to Sardis. During the march, Masistes, son of Darius, who had been present at the recent defeat, addressed many cutting remarks to the commander Artayntes. Among other things, he called him “worse than a woman” for the way he had commanded the troops, and said there was no punishment too severe for the harm he had done to the king’s house. (Among the Persians, to be called “worse than a woman” is the greatest insult.) After listening for a while, Artayntes became so enraged that he drew his scimitar on Masistes, as if he meant to kill him. But a certain Halicarnassian, Xenagoras, son of Praxilaus, who was standing behind Artayntes at the time, and saw him about to rush forward, seized him around the waist, lifted him up, and dashed him to the ground, thus giving time for the men who guarded Masistes to come to his aid. By this action Xenagoras won the favor not only of Masistes, but also of Xerxes, whose brother he had rescued; and the king rewarded his conduct by granting him the sovereignty of Cilicia. Nothing more occurred on the march. The men finally reached Sardis, where the King had been staying ever since he had lost the sea battle and fled from Athens. 108. In Sardis, Xerxes fell in love with the wife of Masistes, who was also staying there. He sent her messages, but failed to gain his object, and would not use force out of respect for his brother Masistes. (The same consideration held also for the woman; for she knew very well that she would not meet with force.) So Xerxes, barred from other alternatives, arranged a marriage between his own son Darius and a daughter of this woman and Masistes, thinking that by this means he would be more likely to win her. After betrothing the pair and performing all the customary rites, he departed for Susa. When he had arrived there and received 93. A similar suggestion had been made long before by Bias of Priene, according to Herodotus (see 1.170).

510

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

the girl into his palace as his son’s bride, he fell out of love with Masistes’ wife, and transferred his passion to her daughter, his son’s bride, and soon succeeded in seducing her. This woman’s name was Artaynte. 109. In the course of time, the affair came to light in the following way. Amestris, Xerxes’ wife, after weaving a wonderful embroidered robe, gave it to Xerxes. Pleased with it, Xerxes put it on and went to visit Artaynte. Pleased also with her, he told her to ask for anything she desired as a reward for her favors: her every wish would be granted. In reply—since it had to turn out badly for Artaynte and her whole family—she asked, “Will you truly give me whatever I ask?” Never suspecting what she would request, Xerxes promised and swore an oath. Once he had sworn, Artaynte fearlessly asked for the robe. Xerxes now did all he could to avoid giving it to her, merely because he dreaded the consequences if Amestris, who had previously suspected what was going on, should now detect him. In its place he offered her cities, abundant gold, and an army under her sole command, the latter being a characteristically Persian gift. But as nothing else would satisfy her, he handed over the robe. Delighted with her present, Artaynte wore it often, and gloried in it. 110. Now when Amestris found out that Artaynte had the robe, she bore no grudge against the girl; instead, she thought that her mother, the wife of Masistes, was responsible for the whole business, and consequently plotted her death. She waited until her husband gave the royal banquet, a feast that takes place once a year, on the king’s birthday. The Persian name for the banquet is tycta, a word that in Greek may be translated “perfect.” This is the only occasion in the year when the king anoints his head and distributes gifts to the Persians. Amestris, waiting for this day, asked Xerxes to give her, as her present, the wife of Masistes. Xerxes, however, thought it would be shocking and monstrous to deliver up to her a woman who was his brother’s wife, and whom he knew was innocent in this affair. For he understood why Amestris had made this request. 111. Finally, however, as she persisted, and he was constrained by law—since at the royal feast no person’s request may be denied—he yielded, though very reluctantly. Then, when he had told Amestris to do as she liked with the woman, he sent for his brother and said, “Masistes, you are my brother and the son of Darius; and, what is more, you are a good man. Live no longer, I pray you, with your present wife. In place of her I offer you my daughter. Marry her. As for your present wife, I prefer that you not keep her.” Greatly astonished, Masistes replied, “What a strange proposal, master! Do you really tell me to divorce my wife, the mother of my sons and daughters, one of whom you gave in marriage to your own son? What, put away this wife, who suits me very well, to marry your daughter? Do not, I pray you, resort to force. Your daughter will surely find a husband as worthy as myself. So let me live with my wife.” Such was Masistes’ reply; and Xerxes, taking offense, said, “I will tell

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

511

you, Masistes, what you have accomplished. Now I would not give you my daughter to marry, nor will you live much longer with your wife. Thus may you learn to take what you are offered.” Saying only, “Master, you have not yet taken my life,” Masistes withdrew. 112. While Xerxes was talking to his brother, Amestris sent for the spearmen of the royal bodyguard and had the wife of Masistes horribly mutilated. Her breasts, nose, ears, and lips were cut off and thrown to the dogs, and then her tongue was torn out. In this ghastly condition she was sent home. 113. Though Masistes had not yet heard what had happened, he feared that some calamity had befallen him, and ran home. When he had seen his mutilated wife, he immediately consulted his sons, and proceeded with them (and others, presumably) to Bactria, having in mind to incite the Bactrians to revolt, and hoping to do Xerxes great harm; all of which, it seems to me, he might have accomplished had he been able to reach the Bactrians and Sacae; for those peoples were devoted to Masistes, and he was the governor of Bactria. But Xerxes, learning of his plan, sent an army in pursuit, and killed him on the road, together with his sons and his army. Such is the story of Xerxes’ passion and the death of Masistes. 114. Meanwhile the Greeks, having sailed from Mycale to the Hellespont, were forced by contrary winds to anchor off Lectum; from there they sailed to Abydus and discovered that the bridges, which they had expected to find intact, and which had been their principal object in coming to the Hellespont, had already been broken up.94 Under the circumstances, Leotychides and the Peloponnesians under his command thought it best to sail back to Greece, whereas the Athenians, and their general Xanthippus, decided to stay where they were and make an attempt upon the Chersonese.95 So when the Peloponnesians sailed away, the Athenians crossed from Abydus to the Chersonese and laid siege to Sestus. 115. This town was the strongest fortress in the region, and as soon as the rumor got about that the Greeks had reached the Hellespont, a great many people from neighboring towns congregated there. Among them was Oeobazus, a Persian from Cardia, where he had stored the cables that had been used in the construction of the bridges. The town was held by its Aeolian inhabitants, but there were some Persians there also, and a large number of their allies. 116. This province was under the rule of Artayctes, a Persian whom Xerxes had appointed as governor. A fearsome and reckless man, Artayctes had deceived the king when Xerxes marched against Athens; for he had stolen the treasures of Protesilaus, son of Iphiclus. At Elaeus on the Chersonese there stands a tomb of

94. See 8.117. 95. Xanthippus was the father of Pericles, the future leader of Athens. The Chersonese had already become an Athenian protectorate before the Persians seized it (see 6.35–41).

512

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

Protesilaus,96 surrounded by a sacred precinct, where there was abundant treasure, gold and silver goblets, bronze, raiment, and other offerings. Artayctes had plundered the precinct, the king having bestowed it as a gift. For Artayctes had tricked Xerxes into giving it to him, by saying, “Master, there is in this region the house of a Greek, who, when he made war on your land, paid the penalty, and perished. Give me his house, so that one and all may know better than to do as he did.” So saying, Artayctes was bound to persuade the king to give him the man’s house, as Xerxes had no suspicion of his intention. And Artayctes could in a sense claim that Protesilaus had made war on the King’s land, since the Persians believe that all of Asia belongs to the Persians and their king. When his request was granted, Artayctes brought the treasures from Elaeus to Sestus. He sowed crops in the sacred precinct and pastured cattle there; and whenever he visited Elaeus, he had intercourse with women in the sanctuary.97 It was this Artayctes who was now besieged by the Athenians; he had made no preparations, as he had not expected the Greeks. They had caught him off guard. 117. When the siege dragged on until late autumn, the Athenians began to lose patience at being abroad so long; frustrated at their failure to take the place, they urged their generals to lead them back to their own country. But the generals refused to leave until either the city had fallen, or the Athenians had ordered them home. So the soldiers put up with their hardships. 118. Those inside the town had by now been reduced to the direst misery; they even boiled and ate the leather straps of their beds. When there was nothing more to sustain them, the Persians, with Artayctes and Oeobazus, fled by night, having let themselves down from the wall at the back of the town, where the guard was weakest. When day came, the Chersonites signaled to the Athenians from the walls to tell them what had happened, and opened the gates. Most of the Athenians pursued the enemy, while the remainder occupied the town. 119. Oeobazus fled to Thrace; but there the Apsinthian Thracians seized him, and offered him, in their traditional manner, as a sacrifice to Pleistorus, one of their local gods. They also slaughtered his companions, but in another way. Artayctes and his men, who had left the town later, were overtaken not far from Aegospotami. They defended themselves stoutly for a time, but in the end were either killed or taken prisoner. The captives were bound in chains and brought back to Sestus, Artayctes and his son among them. 120. The people of the Chersonese say that a portent befell one of the prisoners’ guards. He was roasting some salted fish when the fish began to leap and quiver on the coals, as if they had just been caught. The men who crowded around 96. Protesilaus was a mythic hero who was supposedly the first Greek to perish in the legendary assault on Troy. 97. Sexual activity in a sacred precinct was considered a sacrilege by the Greeks (see 2.64).

Herodotus, Histories  •  Book 9

513

were astonished, but when Artayctes saw the portent he summoned the man who was roasting the fish and said, “Have no fear of this portent, my Athenian friend; it is not meant for you. Protesilaus of Elaeus is showing me that though dead and salted, he has power from the gods to punish the man who injures him. Now, therefore, I will make him the following amends. In compensation for the treasures I took from his temple, I will fix my fine at 100 talents; and I will give the Athenians 200 talents, on condition that they spare my life and that of my son.” Though he made these promises, Artayctes did not persuade Xanthippus, the Athenian commander. For the people of Elaeus wished to avenge Protesilaus, and urged that Artayctes be put to death; and Xanthippus himself shared their feeling. So they led him out to the promontory where Xerxes had bridged the strait—or, according to others, to the hill above the town of Madytus—and there they nailed him to a plank and left him hanging on it,98 and stoned his son to death before his eyes. 121. This done, they sailed back to Greece, taking with them, among other treasures, the cables from the bridges,99 which they wished to dedicate in their temples. And that was all that happened that year. 122. It was the ancestor of this Artayctes, a man named Artembares, who made the Persians a proposal that they readily accepted and brought to Cyrus.100 “Since Zeus grants sovereignty to the Persians,” they said, “and among men to you, Cyrus, for having deposed Astyages, let us leave this small and rugged land of ours and choose ourselves some other better one. Near and far there are many lands to choose from; if we take one of them, we will be admired more than we are now. Men who rule do right to take such a step. And when will we have a better opportunity than now, when we hold sway over many nations and all of Asia?” Then Cyrus, who thought little of the proposal, told them to do as they pleased, but warned them not to expect, if they did so, to continue as rulers, but to prepare to be ruled by others. Soft countries, he said, tend to breed soft men; nor was it the lot of one and the same land to produce fine fruits and great warriors. The Persians admitted that this was true, and that Cyrus was wiser than they; so they departed, and chose to live in a poor land and rule, rather than cultivate plains and be slaves to others.

98. That is, they crucified him. 99. See 7.36. 100. The time frame of this closing anecdote is the mid-6th century B.C. Herodotus thus returns in his ending to the point at which the main narrative of the Histories began, the founding of the Persian empire.

M a i n C h a r a c t e r s , P l a c e s , a n d Te r m s

Achaemenids:  The royal dynasty of Persia founded by Cyrus. Aegina:  An island off the coast of Attica, frequently at war with Sparta, Athens, or both. Aeschylus:  Athenian playwright who wrote Persians, a drama based on Xerxes’ defeat, in 472 B.C. Alcmeonids:  “Descendants of Alcmeon”; a wealthy family whose members (including Cleisthenes) exerted great political influence in Athens. Alexander:  (1) Son and successor of Amyntas; prince of Macedon at the time of Darius; and (2) his son, king of Macedon at the time of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Amasis:  Became king of Egypt in 570 B.C. after a rebellion against Apries; ruled successfully until 525 B.C. Amazons:  Semi-legendary race of warrior women bordering the Scythians. Ammon:  Egyptian deity, identified by Herodotus with Greek Zeus. Amyntas:  King of Macedon in the time of Darius’ invasion of Scythia; became subject of the Persians. Anacharsis:  Legendary Scythian sage of the 6th century B.C. Apis:  An Egyptian deity appearing on earth in the form of a cow. Apries:  King of Egypt in the mid-6th century B.C.; overthrown by Amasis. Araxes:  River flowing eastward into the Caspian Sea, thought by Herodotus to divide Europe from Asia. Arcadia:  Famously ancient region of the central Peloponnese. Aristagoras:  Son-in-law to Histiaeus of Miletus and ruler in his stead at the time of the Ionian revolt (499 B.C.); leader of rebel forces in the initial phase of the revolt. Artabanus:  Persian noble, brother to Darius and uncle to Xerxes; depicted by Herodotus as an elder sage. Artaphernes:  (1) Persian noble and governor of Sardis, brother to Darius; and (2) his son of the same name, a general who (with Datis) co-led the naval invasion of Greece in 490 B.C. Artaxerxes:  King of Persia after the death of Darius in 465 B.C. 514

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

515

Artemisia:  A Carian queen who ruled Halicarnassus for the Persians and accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. Assyria:  Mesopotamian region and center of a powerful empire in the 7th century B.C. Astyages:  Last king of the Medes, overthrown by Cyrus of Persia in 549 B.C. Athens:  Most populous and wealthiest of the Greek cities of Europe; ruled by the Pisistratid tyrants from 560 to 510 B.C.; a limited democracy beginning in 508 B.C., under which regime it contributed ships to the Ionian revolt of 499 B.C. and thereafter became the principal target of the Persian invasions. Athos:  Headland jutting into the northern Aegean at the tip of the Acte peninsula; site of a Persian shipwreck in 492 B.C.; cut by Xerxes’ canal in the 480s. Atossa:  Daughter of Cyrus who became wife of Darius and mother of Xerxes. Attica:  Region of Greece in which Athens is located. Atys:  Son of Croesus of Lydia. Babylon:  Seat of a powerful and ancient Mesopotamian empire, conquered by Cyrus in 539 B.C. and again by Darius after a revolt. Battus:  The name of several successive kings of the Greek city of Cyrene, starting with the city’s founder. Black Sea:  The sea north of the Anatolian peninsula, generally called Pontus by Herodotus. Boeotia:  Region of Greece north-west of Attica, with Thebes at its center; base of operations for Mardonius’ army in 480 and 479 B.C. Bosporus:  Straits that form the entrance to the Black Sea; bridged by Darius at the outset of his invasion of Scythia (c. 517 B.C.). Cambyses:  (1) Persian nobleman, chosen by Astyages to marry his daughter, later the father of Cyrus the Great; (2) his grandson of the same name, son of Cyrus, who ruled Persia briefly (530–522 B.C.); conqueror of Egypt. Candaules:  Last king of the Heraclid dynasty in Lydia; overthrown by Gyges. Caria:  Partly Hellenized region of southwest Anatolia. Chersonese:  Long peninsula in the eastern Aegean today known as Gallipoli; largely dominated by Athens starting in the mid-6th century B.C.; ruled by Miltiades (the younger) before his escape to Athens. Cheops:  Ancient king of Egypt who built the Great Pyramid. Chios:  Large island of eastern Aegean. Cimon:  (1) Wealthy Athenian and father of the Miltiades who led at the battle of Marathon; killed by the Pisistratids; (2) son of Miltiades who rose to prominence in Athens after the Persian wars.

516

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

Cleisthenes:  (1) Wealthy Athenian, an Alcmeonid, who became tyrant at Sicyon in the 6th century B.C., and (2) his grandson of the same name, a political leader who spearheaded a democratic reform of the Athenian constitution in 508 B.C., following the end of the Pisistratid tyranny. Cleomenes:  Powerful Spartan king who dominated Spartan affairs, including its interventions into Athenian politics, during the period 520–490 B.C.; refused aid to the Ionian revolt. Colchis:  City and region at eastern end of the Black Sea. Corinth:  Greek city located near the isthmus where the Peloponnese joins Greece proper. Croesus:  King of Lydia c. 560–546 B.C., who extended his rule over the Greek cities of Ionia; brother-in-law of Astyages the Mede; defeated by Cyrus and (according to Herodotus) made into a Persian royal counselor. Cypselus:  Tyrant at Corinth c. 655–625 B.C., and father of the more famous tyrant Periander. Cyrene:  Greek city founded by Battus on the North African coast west of Egypt. Cyrus:  Dubbed “the Great”; Persian nobleman who overthrew the Medes and established the Persian empire c. 550 B.C.; conqueror of Lydia (546 B.C.) and Babylon (539 B.C.); killed (according to Herodotus) in a failed attack on the Massagetae. Danube:  River of northern Europe, called Ister by Herodotus. Darius:  Persian noble who joined with six others to overthrow the Magi usurpers in 522 B.C. and thereafter became king himself until his death in 486 B.C.; invaded Europe by way of the Bosporus c. 517 B.C., where he was repulsed from Scythia but conquered Thrace; dispatched invasions of Greece in 492 (under Mardonius) and 490 B.C. (under Datis and Artaphernes) to punish Athens and Eretria for their part in the Ionian revolt. Datis:  Persian general who (with Artaphernes) co-led the invasion of Greece in 490 B.C. Deioces:  Mede who founded the Median monarchy. Delos:  Sacred Greek island at the center of the Aegean, supposedly Apollo’s birthplace. Delphi:  Greek oracular shrine where the Priestess of Apollo, known as the Pythia, answered questions about the future; repository of vast wealth. Demaratus:  Spartan king exiled in 491 B.C. after a protracted power struggle with Cleomenes; fled to Persia and later (according to Herodotus) accompanied Xerxes on his invasion of Greece. Democedes:  Greek physician from Croton who fell into Persian hands and became doctor to Darius and his family.

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

517

Dorians:  According to Herodotus, the Greek subgroup descended from the children of Heracles. Egypt:  The North African land defined by the Nile River; made subject to Persia by Cambyses. Elephantine:  The “Ivory City,” a trading post on the Nile at the southern limit of Egypt. Ephialtes:  Greek traitor who informed the Persians of a path that led to the rear of the Greek position at Thermopylae. Eretria:  Greek city in western Euboea that joined Athens in contributing ships to the Ionian rebellion in 499 B.C.; subsequently destroyed by Persia. Ethiopians:  (1) A historical people dwelling south of Egypt; and (2) a legendary race on the southern coast of Africa, called “long-lived” by Herodotus. Euboea:  Long, narrow island stretching along the east coast of Attica and Thessaly. Europe:  For Herodotus, the northern half of the known world, separated from Asia by the Araxes River and the straits of Bosporus and Hellespont. Getae:  A primitive, non-Greek people living in Thrace. Gelon:  Greek ruler of Syracuse in Sicily at the time of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. Gobryas:  Persian nobleman, one of the seven conspirators against the Magi. Gyges:  First Lydian king of the Mermnad dynasty; usurper of Candaules. Halicarnassus:  Greek and Carian city on the coast of Asia Minor; home city of Herodotus. Halys:  River crossed by Croesus in his invasion of Persian territory, 546 B.C. Harpagus:  Median noble; general serving first under Astyages, later under Cyrus. Hellas:  The Greeks’ name for their own territory, referring principally to mainland Greece or the Balkan peninsula. Hellespont:  Straits at the western entrance of the Sea of Marmora, today known as the Dardanelles; bridged by Xerxes in his invasion of Greece. Helot:  A state-owned slave serving the Spartan citizenry, usually of Messenian (Greek) extraction. Hippias:  Son of Pisistratus who inherited his father’s tyranny at Athens in 528 B.C.; driven out of the city by a Spartan army in 510, took refuge in Persia, and (according to Herodotus) guided the Persians to Marathon in 490 B.C. Histiaeus:  Persian-sponsored puppet ruler of Miletus in the late 6th century; helped to foment the revolt of the Ionians from Persia; according to Herodotus, safeguarded the Persian retreat from Scythia.

518

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

Homer:  Greek epic poet, supposed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey and known to Herodotus as author of the cyclic epics. Hoplite:  Greek infantry soldier equipped with heavy shield and thrusting spear, often also with metal breastplate and greaves. Immortals:  Elite corps of 10,000 specially trained Persian infantry. India:  Region of southern Asia defined by the Indus River and its tributaries. Ionia:  A term usually used by Herodotus to refer to the Greek-populated coast of Asia Minor, but sometimes only the middle portion of that coast is meant (i.e., the portion settled by Ionic-speaking Greeks). “The Ionians” sometimes refers to the predecessors of Herodotus in the fields of geography and natural science. Isthmus:  The narrow bridge of land near Corinth connecting the Peloponnese to mainland Greece. Lacedaemon:  The south-central region of the Peloponnese, centered around and politically dominated by Sparta. “Lacedemonians” is a term sometimes used by Herodotus to mean the Spartans, but sometimes to refer to the inhabitants of the larger region around Sparta. Leonidas:  Spartan king 489–480 B.C., who led the Greek forces at Thermopylae and died there. Leotychides:  Spartan king who replaced Demaratus on the throne after conspiring with Cleomenes to oust him (in 491 B.C.). Lesbos:  Large Greek island of the eastern Aegean. Libya:  Northern Africa west of Egypt, or Africa generally. Lycophron:  Son of Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Lydia:  Non-Greek kingdom in western Anatolia; imperial master of various Ionian Greek cities starting in the early 6th century. Macedonia:  Partly Hellenized kingdom situated north of mainland Greece; at first resistant to, but later a collaborator with, Persian rule. Magi:  Priestly caste of Persia, some of whom led a regime that took power briefly after the death of Cambyses, using an impostor as their figurehead. Marathon:  Coastal plain lying about twenty-five miles northeast of the city of Athens. Mardonius:  Persian noble who commanded the land army of Darius in the first invasion of Greece (492 B.C.) and then again in the invasion of Xerxes (480–479 B.C.). Massagetae:  Nomadic people dwelling north of Araxes River. Medes:  An Asian people who became powerful starting in the 7th century, participating in the defeat of the Assyrians at Nineveh in 612 B.C., thereafter masters of the northern and eastern segments of the Assyrian empire; subjugated

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

519

by the Persians in 550 B.C., they became integrated into Persian society, such that Herodotus often calls the Persians “Medes.” Megabazus:  Persian general under Darius. Memphis:  Egyptian city visited by Herodotus. Miletus:  Ionian Greek city located on the coast of Asia Minor; intellectual and economic capital of the Asian Greeks prior to its destruction by Persia in 494 B.C. Miltiades:  (1) Prominent Athenian who became ruler of the Chersonese in late 6th century B.C.; and (2) his nephew, who escaped from the Chersonese under Persian pursuit and served as one of ten generals at the battle of Marathon; died after failed assault on Lemnos. Mycale:  Naval station near Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor. Mycerinus:  Early king of Egypt. Naxos:  Large Greek island of the eastern Aegean, target of Persian attack in late 6th century. Necos:  Egyptian king, son of Psammetichus. Nile:  River of Egypt famous for its mysterious summertime floods. Nineveh:  Principal city of Assyria. Nitocris:  (1) Legendary queen of Egypt; and (2) legendary queen of Babylon. Ocean:  Legendary body of water thought by most Greeks to surround the known world. Olympia:  Peloponnesian Greek city, site of the quadrennial Olympic games. Oroetes:  Western Persian satrap in late 6th century. Otanes:  (1) Persian noblemen, one of the seven conspirators against the Magi; and (2) Persian general under Darius. Paeonia:  Non-Greek region of Europe north of Macedonia. Pausanias:  Spartan regent after death of Leonidas at Thermopylae; leader of joint Greek forces in 479 B.C. Pelasgians:  Term used by Herodotus to refer to the pre-Greek population of the European lands later settled by the Greeks. Peloponnese:  Peninsula comprising the southern half of mainland Greece, dominated militarily and politically by Sparta. Peneus:  River of Thessaly that forms the vale of Tempe. Penteconter:  A fifty-oared warship, smaller and less powerful than a trireme. Periander:  Ruler of Corinth, c. 625–585 B.C. Persia:  Originally a province of the Median empire; home to the race who overthrew the Medes to establish the Persian empire. Phasis:  River flowing into the Black Sea near Colchis.

520

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

Phoenicians:  A Semitic people famous for seafaring and trade, based in the cities of the Levant but spread widely throughout the Mediterranean; provided the principal naval forces of the Persian empire. Piraeus:  A port on the west coast of Attica; after 493 B.C., the harbor serving Athens. Pisistratus:  Ruler of Athens starting around 560 B.C.; ejected and returned to power numerous times; died in 527 B.C., leaving power to his sons. Plataea:  Greek city on the border between Attica and Boeotia; site of GrecoPersian land battle in 479 B.C. Polycrates:  Ruler of Samos c. 546–522 B.C.; imperial ruler who built a navy that dominated much of the Aegean; killed by Oroetes, a Persian governor. Prexaspes:  Persian nobleman serving as right-hand man of Cambyses and the Magi. Psammetichus:  King of Egypt in mid-6th century B.C.; father of Necos. Psammis:  Egyptian king, son of Necos. Pythia:  Greek term for the priestess through whose mouth the oracular responses were given at Delphi. Pythius:  Wealthy Lydian who received Xerxes’ army on its march into Greece. Salamis:  (1) Non-Greek city on the island of Cyprus; and (2) Greek island in the Saronic Gulf off Attica, the site of the principal naval battle of the Persian wars in 480 B.C. Samos:  Large Greek island of the eastern Aegean, ruled by Polycrates in the 6th century, and later conquered by Persia. Sardis:  Capital city of Lydia, taken by Persians in the mid-6th century B.C. and thereafter made an important western base of their empire. Scyles:  Legendary Scythian king. Scythia:  Territory east and north of the Danube River and north of the Black Sea; invaded by the Persians under Darius c. 517 B.C. Semiramis:  Legendary early queen of Babylon. Sesostris:  Legendary early king of Egypt. Smerdis:  (1) Brother of Cambyses, secretly murdered by him; and (2) according to Herodotus, a pretender to the Persian throne, of the same name and appearance as (1). Solon:  Athenian sage and lawgiver, whose famously moderate political leadership commenced in 594 B.C.; died perhaps 560 B.C. Sparta:  Dorian Greek city in south-central Peloponnese; superpower of Greece throughout the archaic period. Susa:  Main capital city of the Persian empire.

Main Characters, Places, and Terms

521

Syloson:  Brother of Polycrates and puppet ruler of Samos under Darius. Syracuse:  Powerful Greek city in Sicily, ruled by Gelon in the early 5th century. Thales:  Greek sage and scientist of the mid-6th century B.C. Thebes:  (1) Egyptian city; and (2) Greek city in Boeotia, supportive of the Persians after the fall of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Themistocles:  Athenian political leader and naval commander; leader of the Athenian contingent of the Greek fleet at the battle of Salamis. Thermopylae:  Narrow pass leading into Greece from the north, site of first major Greco-Persian clash in 480 B.C. Thessaly:  Region of Greece south of Macedonia, supportive of Persian invasion of Greece. Thrace:  Non-Greek land situated north of the Aegean. Tomyris:  Legendary queen of the Massagetae; slayer of Cyrus. Trireme:  Standard Greek and Phoenician warship of the classical age, powered by three banks of rowers. Xerxes:  Son of Darius by Atossa, and king of Persia starting in 486 B.C.; leader of the great invasion of Greece in 480 B.C.; died in 465. Zopyrus:  Persian nobleman who aided Darius in the reconquest of Babylon.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Cartledge, Paul. Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World. Woodstock, NY, and New York: Overlook Press, 2006. Cawkwell, George. The Greek Wars: The Failure of Persia. Woodstock, NY, and New York: Overlook Press, 2006. Dewald, Carolyn, and John Marincola, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Herodotus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Gould, John. Herodotus. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Green, Peter. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. Holland, Tom. Persian Fire:The FirstWorld Empire and the Battle for the West. London: Little, Brown, 2005. Munson, Rosaria Vignolo, ed. Herodotus. (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies). 2 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Romm, James. Herodotus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Strassler, Robert B., ed. The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. New York: Pantheon, 2007. Waters, K. H. Herodotos the Historian: His Problems, Method and Originality. London: Croom Helm, 1984.

522

Index of Proper Nouns

Abae, 1.46, 8.27, 8.33, 8.134 Abantians, 1.146 Abaris, 4.36 Abdera and Abderites, 1.168, 6.46, 6.48, 7.109, 7.120, 7.126, 8.120 Abydus and Abydenes, 5.117, 6.26, 7.33, 7.34, 7.37, 7.43, 7.44, 7.95, 7.147, 7.174, 8.117, 8.130, 9.114 Acanthus and Acanthians, 6.44, 7.22, 7.115– 117, 7.121, 7.124 Acarnania, 2.10, 7.126 Achaea and Achaeans, 1.145–46, 2.120, 5.72, 7.94, 7.173, 7.196–98, 8.47, 9.26 Achaemenes, father of Teispes, 3.75, 7.11 Achaemenes, son of Darius, 3.12, 7.7, 7.97, 7.236–37 Achaemenid(s), royal line of Persia, 1.125, 1.209, 3.65, 4.43, 5.32, 7.17, 7.62 Achelous, 2.10, 7.126 Acheron, 5.92, 8.47 Achilles, Racecourse of, 4.55, 4.76 Achilleum, 5.94 Acrisius, 6.53–54 Acropolis at Athens, 5.71–72, 5.74, 5.77, 5.90 Adeimantus, 7.137, 8.5, 8.59, 8.61, 8.94 Adrastus, 1.35–36, 1.41–43, 1.45 Adrastus (hero), 5.67–68 Adriatic, 1.163, 4.33, 5.9 Aeaces, son of Syloson, 4.138, 6.13, 6.14, 6.22, 6.25 Aeacidae, 5.80–81, 8.64, 8.83–84 Aeacus, 5.89, 6.35, 8.64 Aegean, 2.113, 4.85, 7.36, 7.55; islands of, 2.97 Aegilia, 6.101, 6.107

Aegina and Aeginetan(s), 3.59, 3.131, 4.152, 5.80–84, 5.84–85, 5.86–89, 6.35, 6.49–50, 6.61, 6.64–65, 6.85, 6.87–94, 7.144–47, 7.203, 8.1, 8.41, 8.46, 8.60, 8.64, 8.79, 8.81–84, 8.91–93, 8.122, 8.131–32, 9.28, 9.31, 9.75–76, 9.78–80, 9.85 Aenienes, 7.132, 7.185, 7.198 Aeolis and Aeolian(s), 1.6, 1.26, 1.28, 1.141, 1.149–52, 1.157, 1.171, 2.1, 3.1, 3.90–91, 4.138, 5.94, 5.122–23, 6.8, 6.28, 6.98, 7.9, 7.95, 9.115 Aeschylus, 2.156 Aesop, 2.134 Aetion, 1.14, 5.92 Aetolia and Aetolians, 6.127, 8.73 Agamemnon, 1.67, 4.103, 7.159 Agariste, 6.126, 6.130 Agariste, mother of Pericles, 6.131 Agathyrsus(i), 4.10, 4.48, 4.78, 4.100, 4.102, 4.104, 4.119, 4.125 Agetus, 6.61–62 Ajax, 5.66, 6.35, 8.64, 8.121 Alalia, 1.165–66 Alazir, 4.164, 4.200–205 Alazones, 4.17, 4.52 Alcaeus, 1.7, 5.95 Alcibiades, 8.17 Alcmene, 2.43 Alcmeon, 1.59, 6.125, 6.127, 6.130 Alcmeonid(s), 1.61, 1.64, 5.62, 5.63, 5.66, 5.70, 5.71, 5.90, 6.115, 6.121, 6.123–25, 6.131 Alexander I, 5.17, 5.19, 5.20, 5.21–22, 7.173, 7.175, 8.34, 8.121, 8.136, 8.137, 8.139–44, 9.1, 9.4, 9.8, 9.44–46

523

524

Index of Proper Nouns

Alyattes, 1.6, 1.16, 1.18–22, 1.25–26, 1.47, 1.73–74, 1.92–93, 3.48, 8.35 Amasis, 1.30, 1.77, 2.43, 2.154–56, 2.162, 2.169, 2.172–78, 2.181–82, 3.1–4, 3.10, 3.14–16, 3.19, 3.40–41, 3.43, 3.47, 3.125, 4.167, 4.201 Amathus, 5.104–105, 5.108, 5.114 Amathusians, 5.104, 5.114–15 Amazons, 4.110, 4.112–15, 4.117, 9.27 Ambraciots, 8.45, 8.47, 9.28, 9.31 Amestris, 7.61, 7.114, 9.109–112 Ammon, 1.46, 2.18, 2.32, 2.42, 2.55 Ammonians, 2.32–33, 2.42, 3.17, 3.25–26, 4.181–82 Amompharetus, 9.53–57, 9.71, 9.85 Amphiaraus, 1.46, 1.49, 1.52, 1.92, 3.91, 9.134 Amphictyon and Amphictyons, 2.180, 5.62, 7.200, 7.213, 7.228 Amphilytus, 1.62–63 Amphitryon, 2.43–44, 5.59, 6.53 Amyntas, 5.17, 5.18–20, 5.94, 7.173, 8.136, 8.139, 8.140, 9.44 Anacharsis, 4.46, 4.76–78 Anacreon of Teos, 3.121 Anaxandridas, father of Cleomenes, 1.67, 3.148, 5.39, 5.40, 5.42, 5.64, 6.50, 6.108, 7.148, 7.158, 7.204, 7.205, 8.71, 9.10, 9.64 Anaxilaus, 6.23, 7.165, 7.170 Andromeda, 7.61, 7.170 Andros and Andrians, 4.33, 5.31, 8.66, 8.108, 8.111, 8.112, 8.121 Anysis, 2.137, 2.140 Aphetae, 7.193, 7.196, 8.4, 8.6–8, 8.11, 8.12, 8.14 Aphrodite, 1.131, 1.199, 2.41, 2.181, 4.59, 4.67 Apis, 2.18, 2.153, 3.27–29, 3.33, Apollo, 1.69, 1.87, 1.91, 1.159, 2.83, 2.144, 2.155, 2.156, 2.159, 2.178, 3.52, 4.15, 4.32, 4.59, 4.155, 4.158; offerings to, 5.60–61; 6.57; temple of, 6.61, 6.80; statue of, 6.118, 7.26, 8.33; Apollo Ismenius, 1.52, 1.92, 5.59–61, 8.13; Apollo Loxias, 1.91, 4.163; Apollo Ptoius, 8.135; Apollo Triopius, 1.144

Apries, 2.161–63, 2.169, 2.172–74, 3.1, 4.159 Apsinthians, 6.34, 6.36–37, 9.119 Arabia and Arabian(s), 1.131, 1.198, 2.8, 2.11–12, 2.15, 2.30, 2.73, 2.75, 2.102, 3.5, 3.9, 3.88, 3.90–95, 7.69, 7.86, 7.87, 7.184; vipers of, 3.109; 3.110, 4.39 Araxes River, 1.201–202, 1.205, 1.209–211, 1.216, 3.36 Arcadia and Arcadians, 1.66–67, 1.146, 4.161, 5.49, 6.74, 6.83, 6.127, 7.90, 7.170, 7.202, 8.26, , 8.72, 8.73, 9.27, 9.28, 9.35 Arcesilaus, 4.160, 4.163–65, 4.200 Archandropolis, 2.97–98 Archidamus, 6.71 Archilochus, 1.12 Ardericca, 1.185, 6.119 Ardys, 1.14–16, 1.18 Ares, 2.59, 2.63, 2.83, 4.59, 4.62, 5.7, 7.75, 7.76, 7.140, 8.77 Arganthonius, 1.163, 1.165 Argo, 4.145, 4.179, 7.193 Argolid, 1.82 Argonaut(s), 4.145 Argos, and Argives, 1.1, 1.5, 1.31, 1.61, 1.82, 2.116, 3.134, 5.22, 5,57, 5.61, 5.67, 5.86– 88, 5.94, 5.113, 6.19, 6.75–80, 6.79–80, 6.82–83, 6.92, 6.127, 7.145, 7.148–53, 8.73, 8.137, 8.138, 9.12, 9.27, 9.34–35 Arimaspian(s), 3.115, 4.27 Arion, 1.23–24 Ariphron, 4.131, 4.136, 7.33, 8.131 Aristagoras of Cyme, 4.138, 5.37 Aristagoras of Miletus, Book 5 passim, 6.1, 6.3, 6.5, 6.9, 6.13, 6.18, 7.8 Aristeas of Proconnesus, 4.13–16 Aristides, 8.79, 8.81, 8.95, 9.28 Aristodemus, 4.147, 6.52, 7.204, 8.131 Aristodicus, 1.158–59 Aristogeiton, 5.55, 6.109, 6.123 Aristomachus, 6.52, 7.204, 8.131 Ariston, 1.67, 5.75, 6.51, 6.61–69, 7.3, 7.101, 7.209, 7.239 Aristophilides (King of the Tarentines), 3.136

Index of Proper Nouns Armenia and Armenians, 1.72, 1.180, 1.194, 3.93, 5.49, 5.52, 7.73 Arsames, 1.209, 7.11, 7.224 Artabanus, 4.83, 4.143, 7.10–12, 7.15–18, 7.46, 7.47, 7.50–53, 7.66, 7.75, 7.82, 8.26, 8.54 Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, 7.66, 8.126–29, 9.41, 9.42, 9.58, 9.66, 9.70, 9.77, 9.89 Artaphernes (father), 6.94, 6.119, 7.8, 7.10, 7.74 Artaphernes (son), 5.25, 5.30–33, 5.35, 5.73, 5.96, 5.100, 5.123, 6.1, 6.2, 6.4, 6.30, 6.42 Artaxerxes 6.98, 7.106, 7.151, 7.152 Artayctes, 7.33, 7.78, 9.116, 9.118–20, 9.122 Artayntes, 8.130, 9.102, 9.107 Artembares, 1.114–16 Artemis, 1.26, 2.59, 2.83; Egyptian name is Bubastis, 2.137–38, 2.154–56, 4.35, 4.87, 5.7, 6.138, 7.176, 8.177 Artemisia, 7.99, 8.68, 8.69, 8.87, 8.88, 8.93, 8.101, 8.103, 8.107 Artemisium, 7.175–77, 7.183, 7.192, 8.2, 8.4–6, 8.8, 8.11, 8.14, 8.16, 8.21–23, 8.40, 8.42–46, 8.66, 8.76, 8.82, 9.98 Artybius, 5.108, 5.110–12 Artystone (wife of Darius), 3.88, 7.69, 7.72 Aryandes, 4.165–67, 4.200, 4.203 Asia, 1.4, 1.6, 1.15, 1.16, 1.27, 1.36, 1.79, 1.95, 1.102–104, 1.106–108, 1.130, 1.146, 1.173, 1.177, 1.192, 1.209, 2.16–17, 2.19, 2.103, 3.56, 3.66, 3.88, 3.95, 3.115; Mardonius in, 6.43, 6.45, 6.70, 6.116, 6.118–19, 7.1, 7.9, 7.11, 7.20, 7.21, 7.23, 7.25, 7.33, 7.70, 7.73, 7.75, 7.93, 7.107, 7.126, 7.130, 7.135, 7.137, 7.145, 7.146, 7.157, 7.174, 7.184, 7.185, 8.109, 8.118, 8.119, 8.126, 8.130, 8.136, 9.90, 9.116, 9.122; Persians set sail for, 3.37, 4.1, 4.3, 4.37, 4.44, 4.143, 4.198, 5.12, 5.15, 5.17, 5.30; resources of, 5.96–97, 5.119; Spartans intending to cross into, 5.49–50 Asia Minor, 1.72, 1.143, 1.152 Asopus River, 5.80, 6.108, 7.199, 7.200, 7.216, 7.217, 9.15, 9.19, 9.31, 9.36, 9.38, 9.40, 9.43, 9.49, 9.51, 9.59 Aspathines, 3.70, 3.78, 7.97

525

Assesus, 1.19, 1.22 Assyria and Assyrian(s), 1.1, 1.95, 1.102–103, 1.106, 1.131, 1.178, 1.184–85, 1.188, 1.192–94, 1.199, 2.17, 3.92–99, 4.39; city of Nineveh, 2.150; 6.54, 7.9, 7.63 Astyages, 1.46, 1.73–75, 1.91, 1.107–111, 1.114–30, 1.162, 3.62, 7.8 Atarneus, 1.160, 6.4, 6.28, 7.42, 8.106 Athena, 1.19, 1.22, 1.60, 1.160, 1.175, 2.28, 2.59, 2.83, 2.170, 2.175, 2.182, 3.47, 4.188, 5.95, 8.55, 8.104; Athena Alea, 1.66, 9.70; Athena Crathias, 5.44; Athena Erechtheus, 5.82; Athena Ilias, 7.43; Athena Pallas, 5.77, 7.141; Athena Pallenis, 1.62; Athena Polias, 5.82; Athena Pronaia, 8.37, 8.39; Athena Sciras, 8.94; Athena Tritogenes, 7.141 Athens and Athenian(s), 1.29–30, 1.32, 1.56–57, 1.59–60, 1.62–65, 1.86, 1.143, 1.146–47, 1.173, 2.7–2.51, 2.177, 3.160, 4.99, 4.145; against Persia, 6.49–50, 6.73, 6.75, 6.86–90, 6.92–97, 6.100–106, 6.108–109, 6.111–117, 6.120–24, 6.127–28, 6.131–32, 6.135–40; Ionian revolt and, 5.97, 5.99, 5.103, 5.105, 5.113, 6.21, 6.35–36; suffering Pisistratid oppression, 5.55, 5.57, 5.62, 5.64, 5.65; transition from tyranny, 5.66, 5.70–74, 5.76–79, 5.81–82, 5.84–90; war with Mytilenaeans, 5.93–95; Books 7–9 passim Athos, 6.44, 6.45, 6.95, 7.22, 7.37, 7.122, 7.189 Atlantes, 4.184–85 Atlantic, 1.203 Atlas, 4.184 Atossa (wife of Darius), 3.68, 3.88, 3.133, 3.134, 7.2, 7.3, 7.64, 7.82 Atreidae, 7.20 Attaginus, 9.15, 9.16, 9.86, 9.88 Attica, 1.62, 2.51, 4.99, 5.63, 5.65, 5.74, 5.76, 5.81, 5.87–89, 6.73, 6.102, 6.120, 6.137–40 Atys, 1.7, 1.34, 1.94 Ausees, 4.180, 4.191 Auxesia, 5.82–83 Aziris, 4.157, 4.169 Azotus (Ashdod), large Syrian city, 2.157

526

Index of Proper Nouns

Babylon and Babylonian(s), 1.74, 1.77, 1.179, 1.186, 1.93, 1.106, 1.153, 1.155, 1.178, 1.179, 1.182–85, 1.187, 1.189–96, 1.198–201, 3.92, 3.95, 3.150 Bacchus, 2.81. See also Dionysus. Bacis, 8.20, 8.77, 8.96, 9.43 Bactra, 6.9, 9.113 Bactria and Bactrians, 1.153, 3.92, 3.102, 4.204, 9.113 Barca and Barcaean(s), 3.13, 4.186, 4.200–205; King Alazir of, 4.164; 4.200–205 Battus II, 2.181, 4.150, 4.155; son Arcesilaus, 4.160 Battus III (son of Arcesilaus), 4.161 Bel, 1.181 Bias, 1.27, 1.170 Bithynians, 1.28 Biton, 1.31 Black-cloaks, 4.20, 4.100–102, 4.107, 4.119, 4.125 Black Sea, 1.6, 1.72, 1.76, 1.110, 2.33–34, 3.93, 4.8, 4.10, 4.38, 4.46, 4.85–87, 4.89, 4.90, 4.95, 4.99, 6.5, 6.26, 6.33, 7.36, 7.55, 7.95, 7.147 Boeotia and Boeotian(s), 1.92, 1.195, 2.49, 5.57, 5.61, 5.74, 5.77, 5.81, 5.89, 5.91, 6.34, 6.108, 7.132, 7.202, 8.34, 8.38, 8.40, 8.44, 8.50, 8.66, 8.113, 8.144, 9.6, 9.7, 9.17, 9.19, 9.24, 9.31, 9.46, 9.47, 9.67, 9.68, 9.87, 9.100 Borysthenes, 4.5, 4.17–18, 4.53, 4.72; rivers Gerrhus, 4.56, Hypacyris, 4.55, Pantacapes, 4.54, Tanais, 4.57, 4.71, 4.100, 4.115–16 Borysthenites, 4.17, 4.18, 4.53, 4.78, 4.79 Bosporus (Cimmerian), 4.12, 4.28, 4.100 Bosporus (Thracian), 4.83, 4.85–89, 4.118, 7.10, 7.20 Bottiaea and Bottiaeans, 7.123, 7.127, 7.185, 8.127 Branchidae, 1.46, 1.92, 1.157, 1.159, 5.36 Bubares, 5.21, 7.22, 8.136 Bubastis, 2.59, 2.60, 2.67, 2.137, 2.154–56, 2.158, 2.166 Budini, 4.22, 4.105, 4.108–109, 4.120, 4.122–23, 4.136

Busiris, 2.59, 2.61, Buto, 2.59, 2.63, 2.67, 2.75, 2.83, 2.111, 2.152, 3.64 Byzantium and Byzantines, 4.87, 4.144, 5.26, 5.103, 6.5, 6.26, 6.33, 9.89 Cabiri, 2.51, 3.37 Cadmeian(s), 1.56, 1.146, 1.166, 5.57, 5.59, 5.61, 9.27 Cadmus, 2.49, 2.145, 4.147, 5.57–59 Caecus, 6.28, 7.42 Calasiries, 2.164, 2.166, 2.168, 9.32 Calchas, 7.91 Cale Acte, 6.22–23 Callias of Elea, 5.44–45 Callimachus of Aphidna, 6.109–111, 6.114 Calynda, 1.172 Cambyses, son of Cyrus, 1.107, 1.111, 1.122, 1.124, 1.207, 2.1, 3.44, 3.61, 3.64–66, 3.73, 3.88–89, 3.120, 3.139, 4.165, 5.25, 7.1, 7.8, 7.18, 7.51; invasions of Egypt and neighbors, 3.1–2, 3.7, 3.10, 3.13, 3.16–17, 3.19, 3.25, 3.27, 3.29–38 Cambyses, son of Teispes, 1.46, 1.73, 1.107, 1.108, 1.111, 1.122, 1.124, 1.207, 3.69, 7.11 Candaules, 1.7–13 Canopic Mouth of Nile, 2.17, 2.113, 2.179, Cape Soloeis, 2.32, 4.43 Cappadocia and Cappadocians, 1.71–73, 1.76, 5.49, 5.52, 7.26, 7.72 Cardia, 6.33, 6.36, 6.41, 7.58, 9.115 Caria and Carians, 1.28, 1.92, 1.142, 1.146, 1.171–75, 2.61, 2.152, 2.154, 2.163, 3.11, 3.90, 5.88, 5.103, 5.117–21, 5.122, 6.20, 6.25, 7.31, 7.93, 7.97, 7.98, 7.195, 8.19, 8.22, 8.135 Carian Zeus, 5.66 Carthage and Carthaginians, 1.166, 1.167, 3.17, 3.19, 4.43, 4.195, 4.196, 5.42, 6.17, 7.158, 7.165–67 Carystus and Carystians, 4.33, 6.99, 8.66, 8.112, 8.121, 9.105 Casius, 2.6

Index of Proper Nouns Caspians, 3.92, 3.93, 7.67, 7.86 Caspian Sea, 1.202–204, 4.40 Castor and Pollux, see Dioscuri. Caucasus, 1.104, 1.203–204, 3.97, 4.12 Caunian(s), 1.171–72, 1.176 Caunus, 1.176, 5.103 Cecrops and Cecropidae, 7.141, 8.44, 8.53 Ceians, 4.35, 5.102, 8.1, 8.46 Celeas, 5.46 Celestial Aphrodite, 1.105 Celestial Zeus, 6.56 Celts, 2.33, 4.49 Cercasorus, 2.15, 2.17, 2.97 Chalcedon and Chalcedonians, 4.85, 4.144, 5.26, 6.33 Chalcis and Chalcidians, 5.74, 5.77, 5.91, 5.99, 6.100, 6.118, 7.183, 7.185, 7.189, 8.1, 8.4, 8.46, 8.127, 9.28, 9.31 Chaldaeans, 1.181, 1.183 Charileos, 3.145–46 Chemmis, 2.91, 2.156 Cheops (Egyptian Khufu), 2.124, 2.126–27 Chephren, 2.127 Chersis, 5.104, 5.113, 7.98, 8.11 Chersonese, 4.137, 4.143, 6.33–34, 6.36, 6.38– 41, 6.103–104, 6.140, 7.22, 7.33, 7.58, 8.130, 9.114, 9.116, 9.118, 9.120 Chilon, 1.59, 6.65, 7.235 Chios and Chians, 1.18, 1.25, 1.142, 1.160–61, 1.165, 2.135, 5.33–34, 5.98, 6.2, 6.5, 6.8, 6.15–16, 6.26–27, 6.31, 8.106, 8.132, 9.106 Choaspes, 1.188, 5.49, 5.52 Choireatae, 5.68 Chorasmians, 3.117, 7.66 Chromius, 1.82 Cicones, 7.59, 7.108, 7.110 Cilicia and Cilicians, 1.28, 1.72, 1.74, 2.17, 2.34, 3.90, 3.91, 5.49, 5.52, 5.108, 5.118, 6.6, 6.43, 6.95, 7.77, 7.90, 7.91, 7.98, 8.14, 8.68, 8.100, 9.107 Cimmeria and Cimmerians, 1.6, 1.15–16, 1.103, 4.1, 4.11–13, 4.45, 7.20

527

Cimon, son of Stesagoras, 4.34, 4.38–40, 4.103, 4.137, 4.140 Cinyps, 4.175, 4.198–99, 5.42 Cissia and Cissians, 3.91, 3.155, 3.158, 5.49, 5.52, 6.119, 7.62, 7.86, 7.210 Cithaeron, 7.141, 9.19, 9.25, 9.38, 9.39, 9.51, 9.56, 9.69 Clazomenae and Clazomenaeans, 1.16, 1.52, 1.142, 2.178, 5.123 Cleisthenes of Athens, 5.67–69, 5.72, 5.73, 6.126, 6.128–31 Cleisthenes of Sicyon, 5.67, 5.69 Cleobis, 1.31 Cleodaeus, 6.52, 7.204, 8.131 Cleombrotus, 4.81, 5.32, 5.41, 7.205, 8.71, 9.10, 9.64, 9.78 Cleomenes, 3.148, 5.39–42, 5.48, 5.49, 5.50, 5.51, 5.54, 5.64, 5.70, 5.72–74, 5.75, 5.76, 5.90, 5.97, 6.50, 6.51 6.61; against the Argives, 6.78, 6.79, 6.80, 6.81, 6.82, 6.84, 6.85, 6.92, 6.108, 7.148, 7.205, 7.239; deals with the Aeginetans 6.73, 6.74; madness and death of, 6.75, 6.76; plots against Demaratus 6.64, 6.65, 6.66 Cnidus and Cnidians, 1.144, 1.174, 2.178, 3.138, 4.164 Codrus, 1.147, 5.65, 5.76, 9.97 Coes, son of Erxandrus, 4.97, 5.11, 5.37–38 Colaxais, 4.6–7 Colchian(s), 1.104, 2.104, 3.97, 4.37 Colchian Aea, 1.2, 7.193, 7.197 Colchis and Colchians, 1.2, 1.104, 2.104, 2.105, 3.97, 4.37, 4.40, 7.79 Colophon and Colophonians, 1.14, 1.16, 1.142, 1.147, 1.150 Corcyra and Corcyraeans, 3.48–49, 3.52, 3.53, 7.145, 7.154, 7.168 Coresus, 5.100 Corinth and Corinthians, 1.14, 1.23–24, 1.5051, 2.167, 3.48–50, 3.52–53, 3.134, 4.162, 4.180, 5.75, 5.87, 5.92, 5.93, 6.89, 6.108, 6.128, 7.154, 7.195, 7.202, 8.1, 8.21, 8.43, 8.45, 8.61, 8.72, 8.79, 8.94, 9.28, 9.31, 9.69, 9.88, 9.95, 9.102, 9.105

528

Index of Proper Nouns

Corsica, 1.165–67 Cos and Coans, 1.144, 7.99, 7.163, 7.164, 9.76 Crathis, 1.145, 5.45 Creston and Crestonians, 1.57, 5.3, 5.5, 7.124, 7.127, 8.116 Crete and Cretans, 1.2, 1.65, 1.171–73, 3.44, 3.59, 4.45, 4.151, 4.161, 7.92, 7.145, 7.169–71 Crius, 6.50, 6.73, 8.92 Croesus, 1.6–7, 1.26–38, 1.40–41, 1.43–56, 1.59, 1.65, 1.67, 1.70–71, 1.73, 1.75–93, 1.95, 1.130, 1.141, 1.153, 1.155–56, 1.207–208, 1.211, 3.14, 3.34, 3.40, 3.47, 5.36, 6.37, 6.38, 6.125, 6.127, 7.30, 8.35, 8.122 Croton and Crotoniates, 3.131, 3.136–38, 5.44– 45, 5.47, 6.21, 8.47 Cyaxares, 1.16, 1.46, 1.73–74, 1.103, 1.106–107 Cybele, 5.102 Cyclades, 5.30–31 Cylon, 5.71 Cyme and Cymaeans, 1.149, 1.157–58, 1.159– 60, 5.38, 5.123, 7.194, 8.130 Cynesians, 2.33 Cyno, 1.110, 1.122 Cypria, 2.117 Cyprus and Cyprians, 1.72, 1.105, 1.199, 2.79, 2.182; 3.19, 3.21, 3.91, 4.162, 4.164, 5.9, 5.31, 5.49, 5.104, 5.108–110, 5.113, 5.115–16, 6.6, 7.90, 7.98, 8.68, 8.100 Cypselus, 1.14, 1.20, 1.23, 5.92, 6.128 Cyrene and Cyrenaeans, 1.181, 1.182, 2.32, 2.33, 2.96; west of Egypt, 2.161, 2.180, 2.181, 3.13–14, 3.91, 3.131, 4.152, 4.153, 4.154, 4.155, 4.156, 4.159, 4.160, 4.161– 65, 4.169; Asbystae territory, 4.170, 4.171, 4.186, 4.199, 4.203, 5.47 Cyrus, 1.46, 1.54, 1.71–73, 1.75–77, 1.79–80, 1.84, 1.86–91, 1.95, 1.108, 1.111, 1.113– 16, 1.120–26, 1.127–30, 1.141, 1.143, 1.152–57, 1.160, 1.162, 1.169, 1.176–78, 1.183, 1.188–91, 1.201–202, 1.204–214, 2.1, 3.1–3, 3.14, 3.32, 3.34–35, 3.44, 3.61, 3.63–69, 3.71, 3.74, 3.75, 3.88–89, 3.120,

3.133, 3.139, 3.152, 3.159, 3.160, 4.165, 5.52, 7.2, 7.8, 7.11, 7.18, 7.51, 7.64, 7.69, 7.78, 9.122 Cythera, 1.82, 1.105, 7.235 Cythnus and Cythnians, 7.90, 8.46, 8.67 Cyzicus and Cyzicans, 4.14, 4.76, 6.33 Daedalus, 7.170 Danae, 2.91, 6.53, 6.61, 6.150 Danaus, 2.91, 2.98, 2.171, 2.182, 7.94 Danube (Ister), 1.202, 2.26, 2.33, 2.34, 4.49, 4.53, 4.80, 4.89, 4.100, 4.118, 4.122, 4.136, 5.9–10 Daphnae, 2.30, 2.107 Dardanus, 5.117, 7.143 Darius, 1.130, 1.183, 1.187, 1.209–210, 2.110– 111, 3.12, 3.38, 3.72, 3.76, 3.78, 3.82–89; against European Greece, 6.43, 6.46–47, 6.70, 6.84, 6.94–95, 6.98, 6.101, 6.119, 7.1–5, 7.7–8, 7.10, 7.11, 7.14, 7.18, 7.20, 7.27, 7.32, 7.52, 7.59, 7.64, 7.68, 7.69, 7.72, 7.73, 7.78, 7.82, 7.97, 7.105, 7.106, 7.133, 7.134, 7.186, 7.194, 7.224, 8.89, 9.107, 9.108, 9.111; against Scythia, 4.1; 4.7, 4.39, 4.43–44, 4.46, 4.83–85, 4.89, 4.91–92, 4.96–98, 4.121, 4.131, 4.134, 4.141–43, 4.166–67; alliance with Athens, 5.73; annual revenue, 3.95, 3.101, 3.119, 3.127–35, 3.137, 3.139–41, 3.147, 3.151– 52; conquering the Hellespont, 5.1–2, 5.11, 5.12–14, 5.17–18, 5.23–25, 5.27, 5.30, 5.32, 5.37; Ionian revolt, 5.65, 5.98, 5.105, 5.106, 5.107–108, 5.116, 5.124, 6.1–3, 6.9, 6.20, 6.24, 6.29–30, 6.40–41; wives of, 3.88, 3.89 Dascylium (province), 3.120, 6.33 Datis, 6.94, 6.97, 6.118–19, 7.8, 7.10, 7.74, 7.88 Daurises, 5.116–18, 5.121–22 Deioces, 1.16, 1.73, 1.96–101 Delos and Delians, 1.64, 2.170, 4.33–35, 6.94, 6.97–99, 6.118, 8.132, 8.133, 9.90, 9.96 Delphi and Delphians, 1.13–14, 1.19–21, 1.25, 1.31, 1.46–52, 1.54, 1.65–67, 1.85, 1.90– 92, 1.167, 1.174, 2.134, 2.135, 2.180, 3.57,

Index of Proper Nouns 4.15, 4.150, 4.155–57, 4.161–63, 4.179, 5.42–43, 5.62, 5.63, 5.67, 5.79, 5.82, 5.89, 5.92, 6.19, 6.27, 6.34–35, 6.52, 6.57, 6.66, 6.70, 6.76, 6.86, 6.125, 6.135, 6.139, 7.111, 7.132, 7.139, 7.140, 7.141, 7.148, 7.163, 7.165, 7.169, 7.178, 7.239, 8.27, 8.35, 8.36–39, 8.82, 8.114, 8.121, 8.122, 9.33, 9.42, 9.81, 9.93 Delphians, 1.14, 1.20, 1.51, 1.54–55, 2.134 Delphic, 1.48, 4.155 Delta, 2.13, 2.15–16, 2.18–19, 2.41, 2.59, 2.97 Demaratus, 5.75, 6.50–51, 6.61, 6.63–75, 6.84, 7.3, 7.101–104, 7.209, 7.234, 7.237, 7.239, 8.65 Demeter, 1.193, 2.59, 2.122–23; Achaean, 5.61; mother of Artemis, 2.156; rites of (Thesmophoria), 2.171; 4.53, 4.198; the Lawgiver, 6.91, 6.134, 7.141, 7.142, 7.200, 8.65, 9.57, 9.65, 9.69, 9.97, 9.101 Democedes, 3.130–33, 3.135, 3.137–38 Democritus, 8.46 Deserters, 2.30–31 Deucalion, 1.56 Didyma, 6.19. See also Branchidae. Dike, 8.77 Diomedes, 2.116 Dionysius (Phocaean commander), 6.11–12, 6.17 Dionysus, 1.150, 2.29, 2.42, 2.47–49, 2.52, 2.123, 2.144–46, 3.8, 3.111, 4.79, 5.7, 5.67, 7.111 Dioscuri, 2.43, 2.50, 6.127 Doberes, 5.16, 7.113 Dodona and Dodonians, 1.46, 2.52, 2.53, 2.55, 2.57, 9.93 Dolonci, 6.34–36, 6.40 Dorieus, 5.41–48, 7.158, 7.205 Doris and Dorians, 1.6, 1.28, 1.56–57, 1.139, 1.144, 1.146, 1.149, 1.171, 2.171, 2.178, 5.68, 5.72, 5.76, 5.87–88; 6.53, 6.55, 7.9, 7.93, 7.95, 7.99, 8.31, 8.32, 8.43, 8.45, 8.46, 8.66, 8.73, 8.141 Doriscus, 5.98, 7.25, 7.58, 7.59, 7.105, 7.106, 7.108, 7.121

529

Dorus, 1.56 Dropici, 1.125 Dryopes and Dryopians, 1.56, 1.146, 8.31, 8.43, 8.46, 8.73 Dymanatae, 5.68 Dyme, 1.145 Dysorum, 5.17 Ecbatana, 1.98, 1.110, 1.153, 3.62, 3.64, 3.92 Edonia, 5.11, 5.124, 7.110, 7.114, 9.75 Egestaeans (Segestaeans), 5.46, 5.47, 7.158 Egypt and Egyptians, 1.1–2, 1.5, 1.30, 1.93, 1.105, 1.192, Book 2 passim, 3.11, 3.31, 3.44, 3.61–63, 3.88, 3.91–96, 3.107, 3.160, 4.43, 4.47, 4.159, 4.166–68, 4.186, 4.203–205, 6.60, 7.4, 7.5, 7.7, 7.8, 7.20, 7.69, 7.89, 7.97, 8.17, 8.68, 8.100, 9.32 Eion, 7.25, 7.107, 7.113, 8.118, 8.120 Elea and Elean(s), 1.167, 2.160, 4.30 Elephantine, 2.9, 2.17–18, 2.28–31, 2.69, 2.175, 3.19–20 Eleusis, 1.30, 5.74–76, 6.64, 6.75, 8.65, 8.85, 9.19, 9.27, 9.65 Elis and Eleans, 2.160, 3.132, 4.30, 4.148, 6.70, 6.127, 8.72, 8.73, 9.77 “Enarees,” 1.105, 4.67 Eneti, 1.196, 5.9 Epaphus, 2.38, 2.153, 3.27 Ephesus and Ephesians, 1.26, 1.92, 1.142, 1.147, 2.10, 2.106, 2.148, 5.54, 5.100, 5.102, 6.16, 6.84, 8.103, 8.105, 8.107 Ephialtes, 7.213–15, 7.218, 7.223, 7.225 Epidaurus and Epidaurians, 1.146, 3.50–51, 3.52, 5.82, 5.83, 5.84, 5.86, 7.99, 8.1, 8.43, 8.46, 8.72, 9.28, 9.31 Erechtheus, 5.82, 7.189, 8.44, 8.55 Eretria and Eretrians, 1.61–62, 5.57, 5.99, 5.102, 6.43, 6.94, 6.98, 6.99, 6.101–102, 6.106, 6.107, 6.115, 6.119, 6.127, 8.1, 8.46, 9.28, 9.31 Eridanus (river), 3.115 Erythrae (city of Boeotia), 9.15, 9.19, 9.22, 9.25

530

Index of Proper Nouns

Erythrae (city of Ionia) and Erythraeans, 1.18, 1.142, 6.8 Eryx, 5.43, 5.45 Etearchus, 2.32–33, 4.154 Ethiopia and Ethiopians, 2.11–12, 2.22, 2.28– 30, 2.42, 2.86, 2.100, 2.103, 2.106–107, 2.110, 2.127, 2.134, 2.137, 2.139, 2.146, 2.160–61, 2.176, 3.17, 3.94, 3.97, 3.101, 3.114, 4.183, 4.197, 7.18, 7.69, 7.70, 7.90, 9.32; “Long-lived” Ethiopians, 3.19–25, 3.26, 3.30, 7.9 Eualcides, 5.102 Euboea and Euboeans, 1.146, 3.89, 3.95, 4.33, 5.31, 5.77, 6.100, 6.127, 7.156, 7.176, 7.183, 7.189, 7.192, 8.4–6, 8.8, 8.13, 8.14, 8.19, 8.20, 8.68, 8.69, 8.86, Euelthon, 5.104 Euphrates, 1.179–80, 1.185, 1.186, 1.191, 1.193–94, 5.52 Euripus, 5.77, 7.173, 7.183, 8.7, 8.15, 8.66 Europa, 1.2, 1.173, 2.44, 4.45; 4.147 Europe and Europeans, 1.4, 1.103, 1.209, 2.16, 2.26, 2.33, 2.44, 2.50, 2.103, 3.95, 3.96, 3.115, 3.116, 4.37, 4.42, 4.45, 4.49, 4.89, 4.118, 4.143, 4.147, 4.198, 5.1, 5.12, 6.33, 6.43, 7.5, 7.8–10, 7.20, 7.33, 7.50, 7.54, 7.56, 7.73, 7.126, 7.148, 7.172, 7.174, 7.185, 8.51, 8.97, 8.108, 8.109, 9.14 Euryanax, 9.10, 9.53, 9.55 Eurybiades, 8.2, 8.4, 8.5, 8.42, 8.49, 8.57–64, 8.74, 8.79, 8.108, 8.124 Eurysthenes, 4.147, 5.39, 6.51, 6.52, 7.204 Eurystheus, 9.26, 9.27 Exampaeus, 4.81 Fates, 1.91 Gades, 4.8 Garamantes, 4.183–84 Gargaphian spring, 9.25, 9.49, 9.51, 9.52 Gela and Geloans, 6.23, 7.153, 7.154, 7.155, 7.156 Gelon, 7.145, 7.153–56, 7.158–66, 7.168 Geloni, 4.102, 4.108–109, 4.119–20, 4.136

Gephyraeans, 5.55, 5.57–58, 5.61–62 Gergithians, 5.122, 7.43 Gerrhus (land) and Gerrhi, 4.53, 4.56, 4.71 Gerrhus river, 4.19–20, 4.47, 4.56 Geryon, 4.8 Getae, 4.93–96, 4.118, 5.3–4 Gindanes, 4.176–77 Gobryas, 3.70, 3.73, 3.78, 4.132, 4.134, 6.43, 7.2, 7.5, 7.10, 7.82, 7.97, 9.41 Gordias, 1.35, 1.45 Gorgon, head of (Medusa), 2.91 Gorgo, 5.48, 5.51, 7.239 Gorgus, 5.104, 5.115, 7.98, 8.11 Graces, 2.50 Greco-Scythian tribe, 4.17 Greece and Greeks, 1.1–2, 1.3, 1.4–6, 1.7, 1.26–27, 1.29, 1.32, 1.46, 1.53, 1.56–58, 1.60, 1.65, 1.69–70, 1.72, 1.74–75, 1.87, 1.90, 1.92, 1.94, 1.110, 1.130, 1.133, 1.135, 1.143, 1.148, 1.152–53, 1.163, 1.165, 1.170–71, 1.174, 1.193, 1.202, 1.216, 2.2, 2.4–5, 2.13, 2.16–17, 2.20, 2.28, 2.32, 2.36, 2.38, 2.41, 2.43–45, 2.46, 2.48, 2.49, 2.50, 2.51, 2.52, 2.53, 2.54, 2.56, 2.57–59, 2.64, 2.69, 2.79–80, 2.94, 2.104, 2.109–110, 2.112; against the Persians, 6.29, 6.43–44, 6.48; 6.49; events at Troy and, 2.118, 2.123, 2.137, 2.143, 2.144, 2.145, 2.146, 2.154, 2.178, 2.180, 3.6, 3.11, 3.25–26, 3.32, 3.39, 3.60, 3.80, 3.102, 3.104–107, 3.111, 3.115, 3.134, 3.135, 3.136–38, 4.12, 4.14, 4.45; fighting at Troy, 5.94, 5.97, 5.102; gods of, 5.92; hoplite, 5.111, 6.24; Phoenician influence on, 5.58; slaves from Messenia, 6.58, 6.98, 7.28, 7.139, 7.145, 8.135, 8.144, 9.16, 9.106; Tyritae, 4.51, 4.52, 4.74, 4.77–78, 4.85, 4.95, 4.103, 4.108, 4.110, 4.139, 4.155, 4.179, 4.189, 4.192, 5.20, 5.22–23, 5.28, 5.32, 5.47, 5.49, 5.54; view of Spartan kings, 6.53–54; women, 5.88 Gyges, 1.8–14; son Myrsus, 3.122, 5.121 Gyndes river, 1.189–90, 1.202, 5.52 Gyzantes, 4.194

Index of Proper Nouns Halicarnassus and Halicarnassians, 1.144, 1.175, 2.178, 7.99, 8.104 Halys, 1.6, 1.28, 1.72, 1.75, 1.103, 1.130, 5.52, 5.102, 7.26 Harmodius, 5.55 Harpagus (general under Cyrus), 1.80, 1.108– 109, 1.110–113, 1.117–20, 1.123, 1.127, 1.129, 1.162, 1.164–65, 1.168–69, 1.171, 1.174–77, Harpagus (general under Darius), 6.28, 6.30 Hebrus, 4.90, 7.59 Hecataeus, 2.143, 5.35, 5.36, 5.125, 5.126, 6.137 Hegesander, 5.125, 6.137 Hegesistratus, son of Aristagoras, 9.90–92 Hegesistratus of Elis, 9.37, 9.38, 9.41 Helen, 1.3, 1.56, 2.112–13, 2.115–16, 2.118, 2.120, 5.94, 6.61, 9.73 Heliopolis, 2.3, 2.7–9, 2.59, 2.63, 2.73 Helios, 2.59, 2.111 Hellespont and Hellespontians, 1.57, 3.90, 4.38, 4.76, 4.84, 4.85, 4.86, 4.89, 4.95, 4.137, 4.138, 4.144, 5.1, 5.11, 5.13–14, 5.23, 5.33, 5.91, 5.103, 5.117, 5.122, 6.5, 6.26, 6.33, 6.43, 6.95, 6.140, 7.6, 7.8, 7.10, 7.33, 7.35, 7.36, 7.45, 7.54, 7.56, 7.58, 7.78, 7.95, 7.106, 7.137, 7.147, 7.163, 8.51, 8.87, 8.97, 8.107–111, 8.115, 8.117, 8.118, 8.120, 9.66, 9.98, 9.101, 9.106, 9.114, 9.115 Hephaestus, 2.2–3, 2.99, 2.101, 2.108, 2.110, 2.112, 2.121, 2.136; 2.141, 2.142, 2.146, 2.147, 2.150, 2.151, 2.153, 2.176, 3.37, 8.98 Hera, 1.31, 1.70, 2.50, 2.178, 2.182, 3.61, 3.123, 4.88, 4.152, 5.92, 5.98, 6.82, 9.52, 9.53, 9.61, 9.69, 9.96 Heraclea, 5.43 Heracles, 1.7, 2.42–45, 2.83, 2.113, 2.145–46, 4.8-9; Scythes, son of, 4.10, 4.59, 4.82, 5.43, 5.63; 5.204, 5.220, 6.53, 6.108, 6.116, 7.176, 7.193, 7.198, 7.204, 8.43, 8.131 Heraclids, 1.7, 1.13–14, 1.91, 5.43, 7.208, 8.114, 9.26, 9.27, 9.33

531

Hermes, 2.51, 2.138, 2.145, 5.7 Hermione and Hermiones, 3.59, 8.43, 8.72, 8.73, 9.28, 9.31 Hermotybias, 2.164, 2.165, 2.168, 9.32 Hermus, 1.55, 1.80, 5.101 Hesiod, 2.53, 4.32 Hestia, 2.50, 4.59, 4.127 Hexapolis, 1.144 Himera, 6.24, 7.165 Hipparchus, 5.55–57, 5.62, 6.123, 7.6 Hippias, 1.61, 5.55, 5.62, 5.91–94, 5.96, 6.102, 6.107–109, 6.121 Hippocrates (father of Pisistratus), 1.59, 5.65, 6.103 Hippocrates (of Pantares), 6.23, 7.154, 7.155 Histiaea and Histiaeans, 7.175, 8.23–25, 8.66 Histiaeotis, 1.56 Histiaeus, 4.138–39, 4.141, 5.11, 5.23–25, 5.30, 5.35, 5.36, 5.106, 5.107–108, 5.124, 6.1, 6.2–4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.26–27, 6.28, 6.29, 6.30, 6.46, 7.10 Histiaeus of Termera, son of Tymnes, 5.37, 7.98 Homer, 2.23, 2.53, 2.116–17, 4.28, 4.29, 4.32, 5.67, 7.161 Hydarnes (father), 3.70, 7.66, 7.83 Hydarnes (son), 6.133, 7.83, 7.135, 7.211, 7.215, 7.218, 8.113, 8.118 Hylaea, 4.8, 4.18–19, 4.54, 4.55, 4.76 Hyllus, 1.80, 6.52, 7.204, 8.131, 9.26 Hymaees, 5.116, 5.122 Hypanis, 4.17, 4.52, Hyperboreans, 4.13, 4.32–36 Hypernotians, 4.36 Hysiae, 5.74, 6.108, 9.15, 9.25 Hystaspes, 1.183, 1.209–210, 3.71, 3.88, 5.30, 5.73, 6.98, 7.1, 7.10, 7.11, 7.224 Iapygia and Iapygians, 3.138, 4.99, 7.170 Iardanus, 1.7 Iberians, 1.163, 7.165 Icarus, 4.95 Ida, 1.151, 7.42

532

Index of Proper Nouns

Idanthyrsus, 4.76, 4.120, 4.126, 4.127 Iliad, 2.116, 2.117 Ilion (Troy), 1.5, 2.10, 2.117, 2.118, 2.120, 5.94, 5.122, 7.20, 7.42, 7.161 Illyria and Illyrians, 1.196, 4.49, 8.137, 9.43 Imbros, 5.26, 6.41, 6.104 Inaros, 3.12, 3.15, 7.7 India and Indians, 3.38; 3.92.20; 3.94, 3.97, 3.98, 3.99, 3.101–106, 4.40, 4.44, 5.2, 5.3, 7.9, 7.65, 7.70, 7.86, 8.113, 9.31 Intaphernes, 3.70, 3.78, 3.118–19 Inyx, 6.23–24 Io, 1.1–2, 1.5, 2.41 Ion, 5.66, 7.94, 8.44 Ionia and Ionians, 1.6, 1.18, 1.26–28, 1.56, 1.74, 1.76, 1.92, 1.139, 1.141–43, 1.145–53, 1.157, 1.162, 1.167, 1.169–71, 2.1, 2.15–17, 2.69, 2.152, 2.154, 2.163, 2.178, 3.1, 3.90, 3.127, 4.35, 4.89, 4.97, 4.98, 4.128, 4.133, 4.134, 4.136, 4.137, 4.140, 4.142, 5.28, 5.31, 5.33, 5.49–50, 5.58–59, 5.69, 5.88; receiving help from Persians, 6.42; 6.43, 6.98, 7.9, 7.10, 7.94, 7.95, 7.191, 8.10, 8.19, 8.22, 8.44, 8.46, 8.48, 8.73, 8.85, 8.90, 8.97, 8.132, 9.26, 9.90, 9.98, 9.99, 9.103, 9.106; revolt against Persians, 5.97–98, 5.100–106, 5.108, 5.109, 5.110, 5.112, 5.115–17, 5.122, 6.1–3, 6.7–15, 6.17, 6.18, 6.22, 6.26, 6.28, 6.31–33, 6.41 Ionian Gulf and Ionian Sea, 6.127, 7.20, 9.92 Iphigenia, 4.103 Isagoras, 5.66, 5.70, 5.72, 5.74 Isis, 2.41–42, 2.59, 2.61, 2.156, 2.176, 4.186 Ismenian Apollo, 1.52, 1.92, 5.59 Issedones, 1.201, 4.13, 4.16, 4.25, 4.32 Ister, see Danube. Isthmus (of Corinth), 7.139, 7.172, 7.173, 7.175, 7.177, 7.207, 8.40, 8.49, 8.56, 8.57, 8.60, 8.63, 8.71, 8.72, 8.74, 8.79, 8.121, 8.123, 9.7–10, 9.12, 9.13, 9.15, 9.19, 9.26, 9.27, 9.81 Italy, 1.24, 1.145, 3.136, 3.138, 4.15, 5.43, 6.127, 8.62 Jason, 4.179, 7.193

Labynetus, 1.74, 1.77, 1.188 Lacedaemon and Lacedemonians, 1.6, 1.67, 1.69, 1.82, 1.174, 3.134, 3.148, 4.145, 4.147, 5.38, 5.48, 5.49, 5.63, 5.72, 5.92, 5.96, 5.97, 6.57, 6.58, 7.234, 7.235, 9.11. See also Sparta and Spartans. Laconia, 1.69, 6.58 Lade, 6.7, 6.11 Laius, 4.149, 5.43, 5.59–60 Lake Maeotis, 1.104, 4.3, 4.20–21, 4.57, 4.86, 4.99–100, 4.101, 4.110, 4.116, 4.120, 4.123, 4.133 Lake Moeris, 2.4, 2.13, 2.69, 2.148, 2.149–50, 3.91 Lake Prasias, 5.15, 5.17 Lake Serbonis, 2.6, 3.5 Lake Tritonis, 4.186 Lampsacene(s), 6.37–38 Lampsacus, 5.117, 6.37 Lemnos and Lemnians, 4.145, 4.146, 5.26–27, 6.136–40, 7.6, 8.11, 8.73 Leobotes, 1.65 Leon, 1.65, 5.39, 7.204 Leonidas, 5.41, 7.204–208, 7.217, 7.219–25, 7.228, 7.229, 7.233, 7.238, 7.239, 8.15, 8.21, 8.71, 8.114, 9.10, 9.64, 9.78, 9.79 Leotychides, 6.65, 6.67–69, 6.71, 6.73, 6.85, 6.86, 8.131, 9.90, 9.91, 9.98, 9.99, 9.114 Lesbos and Lesbians, 1.23–24, 1.149, 1.151, 1.160, 1.202, 3.39, 4.61, 4.97, 5.26, 5.98, 6.5, 6.8, 6.14, 6.26–28, 6.31, 9.106 Leto, 2.59, 2.83, 2.155, 2.156 Leucadians, 8.45, 8.47, 9.28, 9.31 Libya and Libyans, 1.46, 2.8, 2.12, 2.15–20, 2.22, 2.24–26, 2.30, 2.32–34, 2.54–56, 2.65, 2.91, 2.99, 2.119, 2.150, 2.161, 3.12–13, 3.17, 3.95, 3.96, 3.115, 4.28, 4.29, 4.41, 4.42–45, 4.139, 4.145, 4.150, 4.151, 4.153, 4.155–57, 4.159–60, 4.175; 4.179, 4.181, 4.185–92, 4.195, 4.196, 4.197, 4.198, 4.199, 4.204, 4.205, 5.42, 5.43, 7.70, 7.86, 7.165, 7.184

Index of Proper Nouns Lichas, 1.67–68 Ligurians, Ligxans, 5.9, 7.72, 7.165 Lindus, 1.144, 2.182, 3.47, 7.153 Lipoxais, 4.5–6 Locrians, 6.23, 7.132, 7.203, 7.207, 7.216, 8.1, 8.32, 8.66, 9.31 Lotus-eaters, 4.177–79 Lycia and Lycians, 1.28, 1.147, 1.171, 1.173, 1.174, 1.176, 1.182, 3.4, 3.90, 4.35, 4.45, 7.92 Lycophron, 3.50–51 Lycurgus, 1.59–60, 1.65–66 Lycus, 1.173, 7.92, 1.11, 1.71, 1.79, 1.85, 1.93–94, 1.142, 3.127, 5.52, 7.31, 7.42 Lydia and Lydian(s), 1.6–7, 1.10–11, 1.13, 1.17–19, 1.22, 1.25, 1.27–29, 1.34, 1.35, 1.36, 1.45–50, 1.53–55, 1.69, 1.71–72, 1.74, 1.76, 1.79–80, 1.83–85, 1.86–88, 1.90–94, 1.103, 1.130, 1.141–42, 1.153– 57, 1.159, 1.171, 1.207, 2.167, 3.36, 3.90, 3.122, 3.127, 4.45, 5.12, 5.36, 5.49, 5.100, 5.101, 5.102, 6.31, 6.32, 6.125, 7.30, 7.31, 7.42, 7.74 Lydus, 1.7, 1.171, 7.74 Lygdamis, 1.61, 1.64 Lysimachus, 8.79, 8.95, 9.28 Macae, 4.176, 5.42 Macedonia and Macedonians, 5.17, 5.18, 5.20, 5.94, 6.44, 6.45, 7.9, 7.25, 7.73, 7.127, 7.128, 7.131, 7.173, 7.185, 8.34, 8.115, 8.126, 8.127, 8.137, 8.138, 9.31, 9.44, 9.89 Macrones, 2.104, 3.92, 7.78 Maeander, 1.18, 1.161, 2.10, 2.29, 3.122, 5.118, 5.119, 7.26, 7.30, 7.31 Maeandrius, 3.142–45, 3.148, 5.27 Maeonians, 1.7, 1.56 Magi, 1.101, 1.107–108, 1.120, 1.128, 1.132, 1.140, 3.61, 3.65, 3.74, 3.78, 3.80, 7.113, 7.191 Magnesia and Magnesians, 7.132, 7.176, 7.183, 7.185, 7.188, 7.193 Magnesia and Magnesians in Asia, 1.161, 3.90, 3.122, 3.125

533

Magophonia (Slaughter of the Magi), 3.79 Magus, 3.88, 3.118, Malea, 1.82, 4.179, 7.168 Malene, 6.29 Mandane, 1.107-8, 1.111–13 Man-eaters, 4.18, 4.100, 4.102, 4.106, 4.119, 4.125 Maneros, 2.79, Manes, 1.94 Mantinaea and Mantinaeans, 4.161, 7.202, 9.35, 9.77 Maraphii, 1.125 Marathon, 1.62, 6.102, 6.103, 6.107, 6.108, 6.111, 6.113, 6.116, 6.117, 6.120, 6.132, 6.133, 6.136, 7.1, 7.74, 9.27, 9.46 Mardi, 1.125 Mardian, 1.84 Mardonius, 6.43, 6.45, 6.94, 7.5, 7.9, 7.10, 7.82, 7.108, 7.121, 8.26, 8.67–69, 8.97, 8.99–102, 8.107, 8.113–15, 8.126, 8.129– 131, 8.133, 8.136, 8.140, 8.143, 9.1–5, 9.12–18, 9.20, 9.23, 9.24, 9.31, 9.32, 9. 37–45, 9.47–49, 9.58, 9.61, 9.63, 9.66, 9.70, 9.71, 9.78, 9.82, 9.84, 9.89, 9.100, 9.101 Mardontes, 7.80, 8.130, 9.102 Marea, 2.18, 2.30 Mariandynians, 1.28, 3.90, 7.72 Marsyas, 5.118–19 Masistes, 7.82, 7.121, 9.107, 9.108, 9.110–113 Masistius, 7.79, 9.20, 9.22, 9.24, 9.25, 9.31 Maspii, 1.125 Massagetae, 1.201, 1.204–207, 1.208, 1.209, 1.211–12, 1.214–16, 3.36, 4.11, 4.172, 7.18 Massalia, 5.9 Matieni, 1.72, 1.189, 1.202, 3.94, 5.49, 5.52, 7.72 Mazares, 1.156–57, 1.160–61 Mecistes, 5.67 Mede, 5.77 Medea, 1.2–3, 7.62

534

Index of Proper Nouns

Media and Medes, 1.16, 1.55–56, 1.72–74, 1.80, 1.91, 1.95–98, 1.101, 1.102, 1.103, 1.104, 1.106–107, 1.108, 1.110, 1.114, 1.120, 1.123, 1.124, 1.126–30, 1.134, 1.156–57, 1.162–63, 1.185, 1.206, 3.62, 3.65, 3.73, 3.92, 3.106, 3.126, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 4.12, 4.37, 4.40, 4.197, 5.9, 5.77; Cyprian revolt from, 5.104, 5.109, 6.9 6.22, 6.24, 6.67, 6.84, 6.109, 6.112, 6.120, 7.20, 7.40, 7.62, 7.86, 7.134, 7.136, 7.184, 7.207, 7.210, 7.211, 7.226, 7.228, 7.239, 8.5, 8.34, 8.46, 8.65, 8.80, 8.89, 8.113, 8.114, 8.130, 8.141, 9.7, 9.17, 9.31, 9.40, 9.43, 9.44, 9.46, 9.77 Median, 1.72, 1.103, 1.110, 1.123, 1.135, 1.162 Mediterranean, 1.72, 1.185, 2.6, 4.39, 4.42 Megabates, 5.32–33, 5.35, 5.97 Megabazus of Megabates, 6.33, 7.22, 7.67, 7.97, 7.108 Megabazus the Persian, 4.143–44, 5.1–2, 5.10, 5.12, 5.14–17, 5.23–24, 5.26, 5.98 Megabyzus, father of Zopyrus, 3.160, 7.82, 7.121 Megabyzus of Zopyrus, 3.153, 3.160, 4.43 Megabyzus the Persian, 3.70, 3.81, 3.82 Megacles, 1.59–61, 6.127, 6.130, 6.131 Megara, 1.59, 5.76, 8.1, 8.45, 8.60, 8.74, 9.7, 9.14, 9.21, 9.28, 9.31, 9.69, 9.85 Megistias, 7.219, 7.221, 7.228 Melampus, 2.49, 7.221, 9.34 Melanippus, 5.67, 5.95 Melanthus, 1.147, 5.65 Malians, 7.132, 7.196, 7.198, 7.201, 8.31, 8.43, 8.66, 9.31 Melissa, 3.50, 5.92 Memnon, 2.106; Palace of, 5.53, 5.54, 7.151 Memphis, 2.2–3, 2.8, 2.10, 2.12–14, 2.97, 2.99, 2.112, 2.115, 2.119, 2.150, 2.153, 2.175; temple of Hephaestus, of Isis, 2.176, 3.6, 3.13–15, 3.25, 3.27, 3.36, 3.91–96 Menares, 6.65, 6.71, 8.131 Mendesian, 2.17, 2.42, 2.46, 2.166 Menelaus, 2.113, 2.116, 2.118, 4.169, 5.94, 7.169, 7.171

Mermnads, 1.7, 1.14 Meroe, 2.29–30 Messenian(s), 3.47, 5.49, 6.52, 9.35, 9.64 Midas, 1.14, 1.35, 1.45, 8.138 Milesia, 1.17–18, 1.19, 1.46, 1.92, 1.157, 5.29, 6.9 Miletus and Milesians, 1.14–5, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21–22, 1.25, 1.46, 1.74–75, 1.92, 1.141, 1.142, 1.143, 1.146, 1.157, 1.169, 1.170, 2.33, 2.159, 2.178, 3.39, 4.78, 4.137, 5.11, 5.23–24, 5.28–30, 5.32–33, 5.35, 5.36, 5.37, 5.38, 5.49, 5.50, 5.92, 5.97–99, 5.105, 5.106, 5.120, 5.124–26, 6.1, 6.5–10, 6.18–20, 6.21, 6.22, 6.25–26, 6.28–30, 6.31, 6.77, 6.86, 7.10, 9.97, 9.99, 9.104 Miltiades, son of Cimon, 4.137, 4.138, 6.34, 6.39–41, 6.103, 6.104, 6.109, 6.110, 6.132–37, 6.140, 7.107 Miltiades, son of Cypselus, 6.34, 6.35–38, 6.103 Milyas and Milyans, 1.173, 3.90, 7.77 Min, 2.4; first king of Egypt, 2.99; successor(s) of, 2.100 Minos, 1.171, 1.173, 3.122, 7.169–71 Minyae, 1.146, 4.145–46, 4.148, 4.150 Mitradates, 1.110–111, 1.113, 1.121 Mitrobates, 3.120, 3.126–27, Moeris, 2.4, 2.13, 2.100 Mount Athos, 6.44, 6.45, 6.95 Mount Casius, 2.6, 2.158, 3.5, Mount Ida, 1.151 Mount Olympus, 1.43 Mount Orbelus, 5.16 Mount Pangaeum, 5.16, 7.112, 7.113, 7.115 Mount Pelion, 4.179, 7.129, 7.188, 8.8, 8.12 Mount Pindus, 1.56 Mount Taygetus, 4.146, Mount Tmolus, 1.84, 5.101 Musaeus, 7.6, 8.96, 9.43 Mycale, 1.148, 6.16, 7.80, 9.90, 9.96–101, 9.104, 9.107, 9.114 Mycenaeans, 7.202, 9.27, 9.28, 9.31 Mycerinus (King of Egypt), 2.129; concubines of, 2.130; 2.132–33

Index of Proper Nouns Mygdonia, 7.123, 7.124, 7.127 Mylasa, 1.171, 5.121 Mylitta, 1.131, 1.199 Myrcinus, 5.11, 5.23–24, 5.124, 5.126 Myrsus, 1.7, 5.121 Mys, 8.133–35 Mysia and Mysians, 1.28, 1.36–37, 1.160, 1.171, 3.90, 5.122, 6.28, 7.20, 7.42, 7.74, 7.75, 8.106, 9.32 Mytilene and Mytilenaeans, 1.27, 1.160, 2.135, 2.178, 3.13, 3.14, 4.97, 5.11, 5.37, 5.38, 5.94, 5.95, 6.5, 6.6 Myus, 1.142, 1.171, 5.36, 6.8 Nasamonians, 2.32–33, 4.172, 4.173, 4.175, 4.182, 4.190 Naucratis, 2.97, 2.135, 2.178-179 Naxos and Naxians, 1.61, 1.64, 5.28, 5.30–31, 5.33, 5.34, 5.36, 5.37, 6.95, 6.96, 7.154, 8.46 Necos (Necho II), 2.158, 4.42, Neocles, 7.143, 7.173, 8.110 Nereids, 2.50, 7.191 Nestor, 5.65 Neurians, 4.17, 4.51, 4.100, 4.102, 4.105, 4.119, 4.125 Nicandra, 2.55 Nike, 8.77 Nile, 2.10–11, 2.13, 2.15–22, 2.24–29, 2.31–34, 2.72, 2.90, 2.93, 2.97, 2.99, 2.113, 2.124, 2.127, 2.138, 2.149, 2.150, 2.153–54, 2.155, 2.158, 2.179, 3.10, 4.39, 4.42, 4.45, 4.50, 4.53 Nineveh, 1.102–103, 1.106, 1.178, 1.185, 1.193, 2.150 Nisaean horses, 3.106, 7.40, 9.20 Nitetis (daughter of Apries), 3.1–2 Nitocris, 1.185, 1.186, 1.191, 2.100 Ocean, 2.21, 2.23, 4.8, 4.36 Octamasades, 4.80, Odontians, 5.16 Odyssey, 2.116, 4.29

535

Oebares, 3.85–87, 6.33 Oedipus, 4.149, 5.60 Oeobazus, 4.84, 9.115, 9.119 Olympia, 1.59, 2.160, 5.22, 5.47, 5.71, 6.36, 6.70, 6.103, 6.122, 6.125, 6.126, 6.127, 7.170, 7.206, 8.26, 8.72, 8.134, 9.33, 9.81 Olympian Zeus, 2.7 Olympus (Mysian mountain), 1.36, 1.43, 7.74 Olympus (Thessalian mountain), 1.56, 1.65, 7.128, 7.129, 7.172, 7.173 Olynthus and Olynthians, 7.122, 8.127 Onesilus, 5.104–105, 5.108, 5.110–115 Opis, 1.189, 4.35 Orchomenus, 1.146, 7.202, 8.34, 9.16, 9.28, 9.31 Orestes, 1.67–68 Oroetes, 3.120–22, 3.126–28, Orpheus, Orphic rites, 2.81ff. Osiris, 2.42, 2.144; son of, 2.156 Ossa, 1.56, 7.128, 7.129, 7.173 Otanes, father of Amestris, 7.40, 7.61, 7.62, 7.82 Otanes, son of Pharnaspes, 3.68–69, 3.71, 3.76, 3.80–81, 3.83–84, 3.144, 3.147, 3.149, 6.43; daughter of, 3.88 Otanes of Sisamnes, 5.25–28, 5.116, 5.123 Pactyes and Pactyica, 1.153–61, 3.93, 3.102, 4.44, 7.67, 7.68, 7.85 Paeonia and Paeonian(s), 4.33, 4.49, 5.1, 5.2, 5.12-15, 5.17, 5.23, 5.62, 5.98, 7.113, 7.124, 7.185, 8.115, 9.32 Paeoplae, 5.15, 7.113 Palestine, 2.104, 2.106 Palestinian Syria, 1.105, 3.91, 4.39 Pallene, 7.123, 8.126, 8.128, 8.129, 9.28 Pamphylians, 1.28, 3.90, 5.68, 7.91, 8.68 Pan, 2.46, 2.145–46, 6.105, 6.106 Panionium, 1.141–43, 1.148, 1.170, 6.7 Panticapes, 4.18, 4.19, 4.47, 4.54 Paphlagonia and Paphlagonians, 1.6, 1.28, 1.72, 3.90, 7.72

536

Index of Proper Nouns

Papremis, 2.59, 2.63, 2.71, 2.165, 3.12 Paricanians, 3.92, 3.94, 7.68, 7.86 Paris (Alexander), 1.3, 2.113, 2.115–18, 2.120 Parnassus, 8.27, 8.32, 8.35–37, 8.39, 9.31 Paros and Parians, 1.12, 3.57, 5.28–30, 5.31, 5.62, 6.133–36, 8.67, 8.112 Parthians, 3.93, 3.117, 7.66 Pasargadae, 1.125, 4.167 Pausanias (Spartan leader), 4.81, 5.32, 8.3, 9.10, 9.12, 9.13, 9.21, 9.28, 9.45–47, 9.50, 9.53–57, 9.60–62, 9.64, 9.69, 9.72, 9.76, 9.78, 9.80–82, 9.87, 9.88, 9.101 Pedasus and Pedasians, 1.175, 1.176, 5.121, 6.20, 8.104, 8.105 Pelasgia and Pelasgians, 1.56, 1.57–58, 1.146, 2.50–52, 2.56, 2.171, 4.145, 5.26, 6.136– 40, 7.94, 7.95, 8.44 Peloponnese and Peloponnesians, 1.23, 1.56, 1.61, 1.68, 1.145, 2.171, 3.56, 3.59, 3.148, 4.77, 4.161, 4.179, 5.42, 5.74, 5.76, 6.79, 6.86, 6.127, 7.93, 7.94, 7.137, 7.139, 7.147, 7.163, 7.168, 7.202, 7.207, 7.228, 7.235, 8.31, 8.40, 8.43, 8.44, 8.49, 8.50, 8.57, 8.60, 8.65–75, 8.79, 8.100, 8.101, 8.141, 9.6, 9.8, 9.9, 9.19, 9.26, 9.27, 9.39, 9.50, 9.73, 9.106, 9.114 Pelops, 7.8, 7.11, 7.159 Pelusian mouth of Nile, 2.15, 2.17, 2.154, 3.10 Pelusium, 2.15, 2.107 Penelope, 2.145, 2.146 Peneus, 7.20, 7.128–30, 7.173, 7.182 Perdiccas, 5.22 8.137, 8.139 Periander, 1.20, 1.23–24, 3.48–53, 5.92, 5.95 Pericles, 6.131 Perinthus and Perinthians, 4.90, 5.1, 5.2, 6.33, 7.25 Perrhaebia, 7.128, 7.131, 7.132, 7.173, 7.185 Perseid, 1.125 Perses, 7.61, 7.150 Perseus, 2.91, 6.53-54, 7.61, 7.150 Persia and Persians, passim Persian Gulf, 1.180 Phaedymia, 3.68–69

Phalerum, 5.63, 5.81, 5.85, 6.116, 8.66, 8.67, 8.91–93, 8.107, 8.108, 9.32 Phanes, 3.4, 3.11 Pharnaces, 7.66, 8.126, 9.41, 9.66, 9.89 Phasis, 1.2, 1.104, 2.103, 4.37, 4.45, 4.86, 6.84 Pheretima, 4.162, 4.165, 4.167, 4.200–205 Pheros, 2.111–12 Phlius, 7.202, 8.72, 9.28, 9.31, 9.69, 9.85 Phocaea and Phocaean(s), 1.80, 1.142, 1.146, 1.152, 1.162, 1.165, 1.167, 2.106, 6.8, 6.11–12, 6.17 Phocis and Phocians, 1.46, 1.146, 6.34, 7.176, 7.203, 7.207, 7.212, 7.215, 7.217, 7.218, 8.27–33, 8.35, 8.134, 9.17, 9.18, 9.31, 9.66, 9.89 Phoenicia and Phoenicians, 1.1, 1.5, 1.143, 1.170, 2.32, 2.44, 2.49, 2.54, 2.56, 2.79, 2.104, 2.112, 2.116, 3.5, 3.6, 3.19, 3.27, 3.37, 3.91, 3.107, 3.111, 3.136, 4.38, 4.39, 4.42, 4.44, 4.45, 4.147, 4.192, 4.197, 5.46, 5.57–58, 5.108–109, 5.112, 6.3, 6.6, 6.14, 6.25, 6.28, 6.33, 6.41, 6.47, 6.104, 7.23, 7.25, 7.34, 7.44, 7.89, 7.90, 7.96, 7.167, 8.85, 8.90, 8.91, 8.100, 8.119, 9.96 Phraortes, 1.73, 1.96, 1.102–103 Phrygia and Phrygians, 1.14, 1.28, 1.35, 1.41, 1.72, 2.2, 3.90, 3.127, 5.49, 5.52, 5.98, 7.26, 7.30, 7.31, 7.73, 8.136, 9.32 Phrynicus, 6.21 Pieria and Pierians, 4.195, 7.112, 7.131, 7.177, 7.185 Pillars of Heracles, 1.203, 2.33, 4.8, 4.42, 4.152, 4.181, 4.185, 4.196, 8.132 Pindar, 3.38 Piraeus, 8.85 Pisistratids, 5.62, 5.63, 5.65, 5.70, 5.76, 5.90, 5.93, 6.39, 6.94, 6.123, 7.6, 8.52 Pisistratus, 1.59–64, 5.55, 5.65, 5.71, 5.91, 5.94, 6.35, 6.102, 6.103, 6.107, 6.121, 7.6 Pitane, 1.149, 3.55, 9.53 Pittacus, 1.27, 1.29 Platea and Plateans, 4.156–58, 4.169, 6.108, 6.111, 6.113, 7.132, 7.231, 7.233, 8.1,

Index of Proper Nouns 8.44, 8.50, 8.66, 8.126, 9.7, 9.15, 9.16, 9.25, 9.28, 9.30, 9.31, 9.35, 9.36, 9.38, 9.39, 9.41, 9.51, 9.52, 9.61, 9.65, 9.72, 9.76, 9.78, 9.81, 9.83, 9.85, 9.86, 9.89, 9.90, 9.100, 9.101 Polichne and Polichnites, 6.26, 7.170 Polybus, 5.67 Polycrates, 2.182, 3.39–46, 3.54, 3.56–57, 3.120–26, 3.128, 3.131–32, 3.139–42 Polycritus, father of Crius, 6.50, 6.73 Polycritus, son of Crius, 8.92, 8.93 Polynices, 4.147, 6.52, 9.27 Poseidon, 2.43, 2.50, 4.59, 4.180, 4.188, 7.129, 7.192, 8.55, 8.123, 8.129, 9.81 Potidaea and Potidaeans, 7.123, 8.126, 8.127, 8.128, 8.129, 9.28, 9.31 Prexaspes, 3.30, 3.34–35, 3.62, 3.63, 3.65–66, 3.74–76, 3.78 Priam, 1.3, 1.4, 2.120, 7.43 Priene, 1.15, 1.27, 1.142, 1.161, 1.170, 6.8 Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, 3.50–52 Procles of Aristodemus, 4.147, 6.52 Proconnesus, 4.14, 4.15, 6.33 Propontis, 4.87, 5.122 Protesilaus, 7.33, 9.116, 9.120 Proteus, 2.112, 2.114–16, 2.118, 2.121 Psammenitus, 3.10, 3.14 Psammetichus, 1.105, 2.2, 2.28, 2.30, 2.151–52, 2.157–58 Psammis (son of Necos), 2.159–61 Pteria, 1.76, 1.79 Pylaea and Pylagori, 7.201, 7.213, 7.214 Pylos, 1.147, 5.65 Pythagoras, 4.95, 5.126 Pythia, 1.13, 1.19, 1.47, 1.55, 1.65–67, 1.85, 1.91, 1.167, 1.174, 3.57, 3.58, 4.15, 4.150, 4.151, 4.155–57, 4.159, 4.161, 4.163, 4.164, 5.43, 5.63, 5.66, 5.67, 5.79, 5.82, 5.90, 5.92, 6.34, 6.36, 6.52, 6.57, 6.66, 6.75, 6.77, 6.86, 6.123, 6.135, 6.139, 7.140, 7.142, 7.148, 7.169, 7.171, 7.220, 8.51, 9.33 Pythius, 7.27, 7.28, 7.38, 7.39

537

Red Sea, 1.1, 1.180, 1.189, 1.202, 2.8, 2.11, 2.102, 2.157–58, 2.159, 3.9, 3.30, 3.93, 4.37, 4.38–39, 4.40–42, 6.20, 7.80, 7.89 Rhampsinitus, 2.121–22, 2.124 Rhegium and Rhegians, 1.166–67, 6.23, 7.165, 7.170, 7.171 Rhodes, 1.174, 2.178, 7.153 Rhodope, 4.49, 8.116 Rhodopis, 2.134–35 Royal Road, 5.52, 5.53 Sabacos (Ethiopian king), 2.137, 2.139, 2.152 Sacae, 1.153, 3.93, 6.113, 7.9, 7.64, 7.184, 8.113, 9.31, 9.71, 9.113 Sacred Road (Delphi and Eleusis to Thebes), 6.34 Sadyattes, 1.16, 1.18, 1.73 Sagartii, 1.125, 3.93, 7.85 Sais, 2.28, 2.59, 2.62, 2.130, 2.152, 2.163, 2.165, 2.169, 2.170; temple of Athena, 2.175; temple of Hephaestus, 2.176, 3.16 Salamis, city on Cyprus, 4.162, 5.104, 5.108, 5.110, 5.113, 5.115 Salamis, island, 7.90, 7.141–43, 7.166, 7.168, Book 8 passim Samos and Samians, 1.51, 1.70, 1.142, 1.148, 2.148, 2.168, 2.178, 2.182, 3.26, 3.39–41, 3.43–45, 3.46–47, 3.48–49, 3.54–56, 3.57, 3.58, 3.59, 3.60, 3.120–122, 3.125, 3.131, 3.139, 3.140, 3.142–44, 3.146, 3.147–48, 3.149–50, 4.43, 4.44, 4.88, 4.95, 4.152, 4.162, 4.164, 5.27, 5.99, 5.112, 6.8, 6.13–14, 6.22, 6.23–25, 6.95, 7.164, 8.85, 8.130, 8.132, 9.90, 9.91, 9.92, 9.96, 9.99, 9.103, 9.106 Samothrace and Samothracians, 2.51, 6.47, 7.108, 8.90 Sandanis, 1.71 Sane, 7.22, 7.23, 7.123 Sappho, 2.135 Sarangians, 3.93, 3.117, 7.67 Sardinia, 1.166, 1.170, 2.105, 5.106, 5.123, 5.124, 6.2, 7.165

538

Index of Proper Nouns

Sardis, 1.7, 1.15, 1.19, 1.22, 1.27, 1.29–30, 1.35, 1.43, 1.47–48, 1.69–70, 1.73, 1.77–81, 1.84, 1.86, 1.91, 1.141, 1.153–57, 2.106, 3.48, 3.129, 4.45, 5.11–13, 5.23–25, 5.31–32, 5.52, 5.53, 5.54, 5.73, 5.99–103, 5.105–106, 5.108, 5.116, 5.122, 5.123, 6.1, 6.4, 6.5, 6.30, 6.42, 6.101, 6.125, 7.1, 7.8, 7.11, 7.26, 7.31, 7.32, 7.37, 7.41, 7.43, 7.57, 7.88, 7.145, 7.146, 8.105, 8.106, 8.117, 9.3, 9.107, 9.108 Sardonian, 2.105, 2.107 Saspires, 1.104, 1.110, 3.94, 4.37, 4.40, 7.79 Satrae, 7.110–112 Sauromatae, 4.21, 4.57, 4.110, 4.116, 4.117, 4.119, 4.120, 4.122, 4.123, 4.128, 4.136 Scamander, 5.65, 7.43 Sciathus, 7.176, 7.179, 7.183, 8.7, 8.92 Scopasis, 4.120, 4.128, Scylax, 4.44, 5.33 Scyles, 4.78–80 Scythes, 6.23, 6.24, 7.163 Scythia and Scythians, 1.15, 1.73–74, 1.103– 106, 1.130, 1.201, 1.215–16, 2.22, 2.103, 2.110, 2.167, 3.134, Book 4 passim, 5.24, 5.27, 6.40–41, 6.84, 7.10, 7.20, 7.52, 7.59, 7.64 Sea of Marmora, see Propontis. Segestaeans, see Egestaeans. Semele, 2.145–46 Semiramis, 1.184–85 Sepias, 7.183, 7.186, 7.188, 7.190, 7.191, 7.195, 8.66 Sesostris, 2.102–104, 2.106–107, 2.110–111, 2.137 Sestus, 4.143, 7.33, 7.78, 9.114–16, 9.119 Sicily and Sicilians, 1.24, 5.43, 5.46, 6.17, 6.22, 6.23, 6.24, 7.145, 7.153, 7.155, 7.156, 7.157, 7.163–68, 7.170, 7.205, 8.3 Sicyon and Sicyonians, 1.145, 5.67–69, 6.92, 6.126, 6.129, 8.1, 8.43, 8.72, 9.28, 9.31, 9.102, 9.103, 9.105 Sidon and Sidonians, 2.116, 2.161, 3.136, 7.44, 7.96, 7.99, 8.67, 8.68 Sigeum, 5.65, 5.91, 5.94, 5.95

Silenus, 7.26, 8.138 Simonides of Ceos, 5.102, 7.228 Sinope, 1.76, 2.34, 4.12 Siphnos and Siphnians, 3.57–58, 8.46, 8.48 Smerdis, 3.30, 3.32, 3.61–63, 3.64, 3.65–66, 3.68–69, 3.74, 3.88, 7.78 Smyrna, 1.15–16, 1.94, 1.143, 1.150, 2.106 Soli, 5.110, 5.113, 5.115 Solon, 1.29–34, 1.59, 1.86, 2.177, 5.113 Sophanes, 6.92, 9.73–75 Sosicles of Corinth (Socleas), 5.92–93 Spargapises, 1.211, 1.213 Sparta and Spartan(s), 1.4, 1.6, 1.51, 1.56, 1.59, 1.65–70, 1.77, 1.82-83, 1.152–53, 2.80, 3.39, 3.54–56, 3.148, 4.145, 4.178, 5.39, 5.40–42, 5.46, 5.50, 5.63–65, 5.72–75, 5.90–93, 6.50–59, 6.60, 6.66, 6.70–71, 6.74–78, 6.82, 6.84–86, 6.92, 6.106, 6.108, 6.120, 6.123, Books 7–9 passim Stesagoras, 6.34, 6.38–39, 6.103 Straits of Gibraltar, see Pillars of Heracles. Strymon river, 1.64, 5.13, 5.23, 5.98, 7.24, 7.25, 7.75, 7.107, 7.113–15, 8.115, 8.118, 8.120 Styraeans, 6.107, 8.1, 8.46, 9.28, 9.31 Sun, 1.212, 1.216, 2.73. See also Helios. Sunium, 4.99, 6.87, 6.90, 6.115, 6.116, 8.121 Susa, 1.188, 3.31, 3.65, 3.70, 3.91, 4.85, 5.24–25, 5.30, 5.35, 5.49, 5.51–52, 5.54, 5.107, 6.1, 6.20, 6.30, 6.119, 7.3, 7.6, 7.53, 7.135, 7.136, 7.151, 7.152, 7.239, 8.54, 8.99, 9.108 Syagrus, 7.153, 7.159, 7.160 Sybaris, 5.44–45, 5.47, 6.21, 6.127 Syennesis, 1.74, 5.118, 7.98 Syloson, 3.140, 3.146–47, 6.13, 6.25 Syracuse and Syracusans, 3.125, 7.154–57, 7.159, 7.161 Syria and Syrians, 1.6, 1.72, 1.76, 1.105, 2.11, 2.12, 2.20, 2.30, 2.103, 2.106, 2.116, 2.152, 2.157–59, 2.159; 3.5, 3.6, 3.62, 3.64, 3.90, 3.91, 4.39, 5.49, 7.63, 7.72, 7.89, 7.140

Index of Proper Nouns Syrian Cappadocians, 1.72, 5.49 Syrtis, 2.32, 2.150, 4.169, 4.173 Tabalus, 1.153–54, 1.161 Taenarum, 1.23–24, 7.168 Talthybius and Talthybians, 7.134, 7.137 Tanagra, 5.57, 5.79, 9.15, 9.35, 9.43 Tanais River, 4.20, 4.21, 4.45, 4.47, 4.57, 4.100, 4.115, 4.116, 4.120, 4.122, 4.123 Tarentum, 1.24, 3.136, 3.138, 4.99, 7.170 Targitaus, 4.5, 4.7 Tartessus, 1.163, 4.152, 4.192 Taurica and Tauri, 4.3, 4.20, 4.99–100, 4.102, 4.103, 4.119 Tearus, 4.90–91 Teaspis, 4.43, 7.79, 9.76 Tegea and Tegeans, 1.65–68, 6.72, 6.105, 7.170, 7.202, 8.124, 9.26, 9.28, 9.31, 9.35, 9.37, 9.54, 9.60–62, 9.70, 9.71, 9.85 Teians, 1.168–69 Telemachus, 2.116 Tellus, 1.30–31 Telmessian, 1.78, 1.84 Telys, 5.44, 5.47 Tenedos, 1.151, 6.31, 6.41 Tenos, 4.33, 6.97, 8.66, 8.82, 8.83 Teos, 1.142, 1.168, 1.170, 6.8 Teres, 4.80, 7.137 Termilae, 1.173, 7.92 Teucer, 2.114 Teucrians, 2.114, 2.118, 5.13, 5.122, 7.20, 7.43, 7.75. See also Troy and Trojan(s). Thales, 1.74–75, 1.170 Thasos and Thasians, 2.44, 6.28, 6.44, 6.46–48, 7.108, 7.118 Theban Zeus, 1.182, 2.42, 2.54 Thebes and Thebans, 1.52, 1.61, 1.59, 1.92, 1.182, 2.3, 2.4, 2.9, 2.15, 2.28, 2.42, 2.54– 57, 2.69, 2.74, 2.91, 2.143, 2.166, 3.10, 3.25, 3.26, 4.181, 5.59, 5.67, 5.79–81, 5.89, 6.87, 6.108, 6.118, 7.132, 7.202, 7.205, 7.222, 7.233, 8.50, 8.134, 8.135, 9.2, 9.13, 9.15, 9.16, 9.17, 9.27, 9.31, 9.40,

539

9.41, 9.58, 9.65, 9.66, 9.67, 9.69, 9.86, 9.87, 9.88 Themistocles, 7.143, 7.144, 7.173, 8.4, 8.5, 8.19, 8.22, 8.23, 8.57–59, 8.61, 8.63, 8.75, 8.79, 8.83, 8.92, 8.108–112, 8.123–25, 9.98 Theodorus, 1.51, 3.41 Thera and Theraeans, 4.147, 4.148, 4.149–51, 4.152, 4.153–56, 4.161, 4.164, 5.42 Theras, 4.147–50 Therma, 7.121, 7.123, 7.124, 7.127, 7.128, 7.130, 7.179, 7.183 Thermodon, 2.103, 2.104, 4.86, 4.110, 9.27 Thermopylae, 7.175–77, 7.184, 7.186, 7.200, 7.201, 7.205–207, 7.213, 7.219, 7.233, 7.234, 8.15, 8.21, 8.24, 8.27, 8.66, 8.71, 9.71, 9.78, 9.79 Theseus, 9.73 Thesmophoria, 2.171, 6.16 Thespiae and Thespians, 5.79, 7.132, 7.202, 7.221, 7.222, 7.226, 7.227, 8.25, 8.50, 8.66, 8.75, 9.30 Thesprotians, 2.56, 5.92, 7.176, 8.47 Thessaly and Thessalians, 3.96, 5.63, 5.64, 5.94, 6.72, 6.74, 6.127, 7.6, 7.108, 7.128, 7.129, 7.130, 7.132, 7.172–74, 7.175, 7.176, 7.182, 7.191, 7.196, 7.198, 7.208, 7.213, 7.215, 7.232, 7.233, 8.27–32, 8.113–15, 8.126, 8.129, 8.131, 8.133, 8.135, 9.1, 9.17, 9.18, 9.31, 9.46, 9.77, 9.89 Thetis, 7.191 Thonis, 2.113–15 Thrace and Thracian(s), 1.28, 1.168, 2.103, 2.134, 2.167, 3.90, 4.49, 4.74, 4.80, 4.89, 4.93–95, 4.99, 4.104, 4.118, 4.143, 5.2, 5.3–4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.8, 5.10, 5.14, 5.23, 5.24, 5.126, 6.33–34, 6.39, 6.41, 6.45, 6.95, 7.20, 7.25, 7.59, 7.75, 7.105, 7.106, 7.110, 7.115, 7.137, 7.176, 7.185, 8.113, 8.117, 9.32, 9.89, 9.119 Thrasybulus, 1.20–23, 5.92 Thyrea, 1.82, 6.76 Tigranes, 7.62, 8.26, 9.96, 9.102 Tigris, 1.189, 1.193, 2.150, 5.52, 6.20

540

Index of Proper Nouns

Timagenidas, 9.38, 9.86, 9.87 Tiryns, 6.76, 6.77, 6.83, 7.137, 9.28, 9.31 Tmolus, 1.84, 1.93, 5.100 Tomyris, 1.205–208, 1.211, 1.214 Trachis, Trachinia, and Trachinians, 7.175, 7.176, 7.198, 7.199, 7.201, 7.203, 7.217, 7.226, 8.31 Trausi, 5.3–4 Triopium, 1.144, 1.174, 4.38, 7.153 Tritantaechmes, 1.192, 7.82, 7.121, 8.26 Triton, 4.178, 4.188, 4.191, Troad, 5.26, 5.122 Troezen and Troezenians, 3.59, 7.99, 8.1, 8.41, 8.42, 8.43, 8.72, 9.28, 9.31, 9.102, 9.105 Trophonius, 1.46, 8.134 Troy and Trojans, 1.5, 2.10, 2.118, 2.120, 2.145, 4.190, 4.191, 5.13, 5.26, 5.94, 5.122, 7.20, 7.91, 7.171, 9.27 Tyndareus, father of Helen, 2.112, 4.145 Tyndarids, 4.145, 5.75, 9.73 Tyras, 4.11, 4.47, 4.51, 4.82 Tyre, 1.2, 2.44, 2.49, 2.112, 2.161, 8.67

Tyrrhenia and Tyrrhenian(s), 1.57, 1.94, 1.163, 1.166–67, 6.17, 6.22 Umbria, 1.94 Urania, 1.131, 3.8 Xanthippus, 6.131, 6.136, 7.33, 8.131, 9.114, 9.120 Xerxes, 1.183, 4.43, 6.98, Books 7–9 passim Xuthus, 7.94, 8.44 Zacynthus and Zacynthians, 3.59, 4.195, 6.70, 9.37 Zancle and Zanclaeans, 6.22–23, 6.24, 6.25, 7.154, 7.164 Zeus, 1.44, 1.65, 1.89, 1.131, 1.171, 1.174, 1.181, 1.182, 1.183, 1.207, 2.7, 2.13, 2.29, 2.42, 2.44, 2.45, 2.54, 2.55–56, 2.74, 2.83, 2.116, 2.146, 2.178, 3.25, 3.124, 3.125, 3.142, 4.5, 4.59, 4.127, 4.180, 4.181 4.203, 5.46, 5.49, 5.66, 5.105, 5.119, 6.53, 6.56, 6.67, 7.8, 7.40, 7.56, 7.61, 7.141, 7.197, 7.220, 8.77, 8.115, 8.116, 9.7, 9.81, 9.122 Zopyrus, 3.153–58, 3.160, 4.43, 7.82

“This edition reproduces the fluent pace and readability of Herodotus’ world-encompassing work. Mensch has produced a close translation of Herodotus’ Greek that is also an engrossing read in English. As an old-time Herodotean, I found myself drawn into Herodotus’ universe of history and story all over again. Combined with Romm’s elegant introduction, which conveys the lure of Herodotus’ work, the lucid maps and tables, and the pertinent, uncluttered notes, this is an edition to read for pleasure and for education. I recommend it to future students of Herodotus and their instructors, and to any reader who wants to discover and rediscover Herodotus in a vibrant new translation.” —Emily Greenwood, Yale University

Pamela Mensch and James Romm have collaborated as translator and editor since 2003, when they began work on The Landmark Arrian (Pantheon 2010). Their work includes the following Hackett volumes: Plutarch: Lives that Made Greek History and Alexander the Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius. Mensch’s translation of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Doctrines of Eminent Philosophers is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and the author of Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown and Empire and Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, both from Knopf.

Cover photo: Félix Bonfils, The Sphinx at Giza, ca. 1867.

ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-113-6

90000

9 781624 661136 FnL1 00 0000

Plutarch’s Greek and Roman Lives, edited by James Romm and featuring the translations of Pamela Mensch, is forthcoming from Random House.