The Greco-Persian Wars

THE

GRECO-PERSIAN

WARS

Peter Green

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley     Los Angeles     London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

First Paperback Printing 1998

© 1996 by

Peter Green

This is a reissue, with a new introduction and an update to the bibliography, of the original edition, published in 1970 as The Year of Salamis in England and as Xerxes at Salamis in the United States.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Green, Peter, 1924–

The Greco-Persian wars / Peter Green.

    p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: Xerxes at Salamis. 1970.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-520-20313-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

eISBN 978-0-520-91706-4

1. Salamis, Battle of, Greece, 480 B.C.     2. Xerxes I, King of Persia, 519–465 or 4 B.C. I. Green, Peter, 1934–     Xerxes at Salamis.     II. Title.

DF225.6.G7     1996

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Abbreviations

Introduction to the 1996 reprint

Preface and Acknowledgments

Part One: Darius and the West

Part Two: The Legacy of Marathon

Part Three: Waiting for the Barbarian

Part Four: The Corner-stone of Freedom

Part Five: The Wooden Wall

Part Six: The Doors of the Peloponnese

Part Seven: The Last Enemy

Notes

Bibliography

Supplementary Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Themistocles portrait-herm discovered near the theatre of Ostia in 1939 (Ostia Museum: photo James Austin)

The ‘Troezen Decree’ (American School in Athens: photo Alison Frantz)

Kallidromos, the pass over the mountains behind Thermopylae (photo R. Schoder, SJ)

The ‘Aristion stele’, an Attic burial marker (National Museum Athens: photo Hirmer)

Late-archaic torso of Greek hoplite (Sparta Museum: photo Mansell Collection)

The Marathon plain, from the summit of the Burial Mound (photo David Beal)

Salamis: the Megara Channel looking eastward (Archeological Institute of America)

Xerxes as Crown Prince: detail from the Treasury Frieze at Persepolis (Museum Teheran: photo Rene Percheron)

Persepolis: the east stairway of the Apadana (Museum Teheran: photo Rene Percheron)

The ‘Serpent Column’, a memorial dedicated at Delphi (photo R. Schoder, SJ)

The city-walls of ancient Plataea (photo R. Schoder, SJ)

Aerial view of the Tempe gorge from the south (photo R. Schoder, SJ)

Two ostraka bearing Themistocles’ name (American School in Athens)

Olympias under sail and oar, from Frank Welsh’s Building the Trireme (London: Constable, 1988), p. 214.

Reconstruction sketch of the ancient bridge of boats over the Hellespont, from C. M. Bowra’s Classical Greece (New York: Time-Life, 1965), P. 75.

Modern bridge of boats on the Kabul River, from Volume 4, Historia tou Hellenikou Ethnous [Δ, Ὁ Μεγαλέανδρος καὶ οἱ Ἑλληνιστικοὶ χρόνοι (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1973), p. 178.

MAPS

The Persian Satrapies

The Plain of Marathon

Xerxes’ route to Greece

Xerxes’ Campaign in Greece

Thermopylae: the Hot Gates

Thermopylae

Battle of Himera

Sea approaches to Salamis

The Salamis Channel

Plataea and Cithaeron

Samos and Mycale

Battle of Mycale

Maps drawn by Design Practitioners

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION TO

THE 1996 REPRINT

OF all the books I have written, this one is most closely and pleasurably linked in my mind with the physical and emotional experience of long-term residence in Greece. My biography of Alexander began in Macedonia but then took off for the East; my Sappho novel The Laughter of Aphrodite never really moved beyond the magical ambience of Lesbos. But the history of the Persian Wars will for ever be associated in my mind with exploration, mostly on foot, of Athens, Phaleron, Piraeus, Aigina, Salamis, Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, Delphi, Cithaeron, Corinth, the Tempe gorge, the hill-track over Kallidrómos, the Isthmus and the Peloponnese. I used to lecture on both Marathon and Salamis in situ, which was fun for me and (I hope) for my students; they certainly enjoyed the Marathon outing, on which the late (and by me sorely missed) Robin Burn and I (who had very different ideas about how the battle was fought) conducted — hopefully for the students’ benefit — a running debate of our own, arguing all the way from Schoinià beach to the Soros. Topographical expeditions into Attica, amid early spring flowers or in the golden ember days of late September — what Greeks call ‘the little summer of St Demetrios’ — were enhanced by the company of such knowledgable friends as Alan Boegehold, C. W.J. Eliot, and Gene Vanderpool. Kevin Andrews was always there in his big, shabby old house near the top of Loukianoù Street (long since demolished to make way for the inevitable high-rise) to talk Greek politics, ancient or modern (these being mostly indistinguishable). My reading of Aeschylus and Pindar, Homer and Herodotus, was interlaced with forays into modern Greek writers such as Cavafy, Seferis, Elytis, Sikelianòs. Past and present coalesced in a way that Ritsos (a poet I hadn’t then discovered) has so uniquely and potently evoked.

It was inevitable that, when I embarked on a study of the confrontation between a handful of Greek states and the Achaemenid empire of Persia, these influences would make themselves felt. Looking back over the quarter-century between now and then, I find The Year of Salamis (the title of the first edition) very much a hands-on book, full of sun and sea, limestone landscapes, sweat and physical exhaustion, with an intense consciousness throughout of Greece’s ever-present and all-important physical context. But there were other factors involved too. While I was doing my research and writing it up, we moved from the third to the fourth year of the Colonels’ dictatorship: the symbol of the risen phoenix was everywhere and most people found it hard to see any end in sight. I used to argue — presciently, as things turned out — that what we should pray for was an economic recession: nothing would cut the ground from under the feet of a tyrannos (who, after all, succeeded by delivering the goods) more rapidly or effectively. This argument was pooh-poohed by those classicists, still numerous, who found economic arguments either suspect (evidence of Marxism?) or irremediably vulgar; but of course it found its way into my treatment of the Peisistratids.

I think many of us, too, were — for obvious reasons — more receptive then than we might otherwise have been to the fundamental Herodotean concept of freedom-under-the-law (eleutheria, isonomia) making its great and impassioned stand against Oriental despotism. Indeed, the one major change in attitude to the subject since 1970 has been the emerging view of the Greek notion of ‘the Barbarian Other’ as a rhetorical and propagandistic device, the prime object of which was the achievement of self-definition.¹ We know now substantially more about the Achaemenid world than we did then (even if little of that knowledge has a direct bearing on the Persian Wars), and the insistent lessons of multiculturalism have forced us to take a long hard look at Greek ‘anti-barbarian’ propaganda, beginning with Aeschylus’s Persians and the whole thrust of Herodotus’ Histories. Yet even so Herodotus is as likely to praise Persian or Egyptian as Greek (a habit for which he was taken severely to task by Plutarch in a famously splenetic essay: see Bowen), and for much of Persia’s dealings with the West he remains almost our sole witness. What is more, on those comparatively few occasions when we can cross-check him against Achaemenid evidence (mostly epigraphical) he shows reassuring accuracy, sometimes indeed echoing the official record (Martorelli; Lewis ap. Burn 1984, 599; Dandamaev 1985).

It remains true that probably the most useful work done in the past twenty-five years for any would-be historian of the Persian Wars (or for anyone planning, as I am, to revise an earlier narrative) lies in two main areas: Achaemenid studies generally and Herodotean exegesis. Even if one’s narrative of events is largely unaffected by the vast outpouring of recent Iranian scholarship (e.g. the publications of the successive Achaemenid History workshops organised by Heleena Sancisi-Weerdenburg or of the Briant-Herrenschmidt conference on Le tribut dans l’empire perse)² the fresh light shed by that scholarship on Achaemenid society, religion, imperial administration, fiscal policies, and economics in general cannot but illuminate the underlying motives of much that before was uncertain or obscure. The Ionian Revolt provides an excellent example. The economic pressures exerted upon the Ionian Greeks by Darius’ fiscal policies and expansion into Europe, which as a result deprived them of profitable markets, are now much clearer (Murray, 477–80). So, even more intriguingly, are the complex links and sympathies between the Ionian and Persian aristocracies (Austin, 289–306; Murray, ibid.) that played so crucial, yet unstated, a role in Aegean history. The phenomenon of ‘medism’ (pro-Persian treachery) turns out to be as ambiguous and nuanced as any Cold War spy-catcher could predict (Arnush; Gillis; Graf 1979 and 1984; Holladay; Jouanna; Wolski 1971 and 1973).

The prime achievement in Herodotean scholarship has been the splendid Italian edition — revised text, parallel translation, full documentation and commentary, ample bibliography, one large volume to each Herodotean book — commissioned by Mondadori of Milan.³ Books VIII and IX, both by Agostino Masaracchia, came out first, in 1977 and 1978 respectively (VIII reached a second edition in 1990). After that David Asheri brought out Book I in 1988, and Books II–V have followed at irregular intervals (1989–94). (A handy modern Greek edition of Book V, by Christos Xydas, appeared in 1991.) Unfortunately for the historian of the Persian Wars, Book VI (Nenci) and Book VII (Lombardo), the two most important books, are still awaited. Nothing comparable exists in English, where the most recent complete commentary is still that of How and Wells (1912). It is also true, as A.W. Gomme pointed out long ago (Boedeker 1987, 5), that Herodotus ‘more than most writers is one to read, not to talk about’.⁴ Could this be why, as Waters complained a decade ago at the beginning of a not entirely successful attempt to remedy the situation (Waters 1985, Foreword), ‘no satisfactory book on Herodotos has been published in the last two generations’ (for a good deal longer than that, I would argue), in the sense of ‘one which the general reader can understand, which will aid comprehension and appreciation of the vast achievement represented by the History’?

It is certainly true that though the academic industry on Herodotus has never flagged, the results have been for the most part particularist. Details, details: though overviews are lacking, I have learned a great deal since I wrote this book, in mosaic fashion, not only about Herodotus but also about almost every aspect of the Persian Wars. I now (Boedeker, 185 ff.) keep a wary eye out for subtexts, not least when studying renegade Spartan kings. I have always suspected that much of the History had at least the secondary function of offering Athens an uncomfortable object-lesson in the perils of imperial expansionism: that belief has been reinforced (Raaflaub, 221 ff.). Yet when I finally produce a second edition I cannot see my basic conclusions changing all that much. More time to think, yes. Scope for more documentation, certainly. But on the big issues I haven’t come up against any new evidence or thesis that has induced a radical change of mind.

To take an obvious and large example: in 1970 it was clear to me, from many of the arguments advanced (Lewis 1961 was particularly cogent, not least on telltale archaisms) that the so-called Themistocles Decree, though a third-century text that had edited, omitted, revised and up-dated many incidentals, still presented the essential core of the Decree (or possibly extracts from more than one) promulgated in June of 480.⁵ Yet many scholars were prepared to argue that the Decree was an elaborate forgery devised to whip up patriotic fervor in the Social War of 357–355, or against Philip of Macedon or during the Lamian War of 323/2 against Antipater. The plain improbability of producing so oddly detailed an antiquarian document for propaganda purposes (not to mention making a naval appeal where the crying need was for a land-based defence) was compounded by general ignorance of how and why forgers go about their business. This ignorance was thrown into glaring prominence by those who triumphantly pointed to supposed discrepancies between Herodotus and the Decree as proof of inauthenticity. In fact, these were among the surest guarantees of precisely the opposite: the last thing forgers ever dream of doing (being inter alia unimaginative people — one reason for becoming addicted to forgery in the first place) is to arouse suspicion by going against their main source of information.⁶

The protracted early debate on authenticity made it clear that a point had very soon been reached where logic had been replaced by committed faith (a situation that occurs in scholarship rather more often than one likes to think). Perhaps this is the reason why so few articles have been devoted to the problem in recent years. After 1971 (which saw yet another argument in favor of fourth-century anti-Macedonian propaganda, this time by Prestianni) there was virtual silence for over a decade, except for a broadside by Robertson (1976), consigning to the alleged busy forgers of Athens’ Second Naval Confederacy, between 375 and 368, not only the Themistocles Decree, but also, for good measure, the Oath and Covenant of Plataea, the Festival Decree, the Peace of Callias, the Ephebic Oath, and Pericles’ Congress Decree. Just what effect this odd collection was supposed to have, and why the perpetrators would prefer to invent nonsense rather than evoke the actual past, were problems never squarely faced. By 1982 Robertson had at least (and at last) acknowledged the obvious fact (1982, 30) that ‘in c. 380 as at any other time in the fourth century it is impossible to conceive of a patient audience for all the antiquarian details with which the compendious decree embellishes the theme of Athenian sea-power’. But instead of abandoning his theory, he simply moved on to another century in search of an audience that would be patient of antiquarianism, and came up with Ptolemy Philadelphos, who, despite his own naval power, was unlikely, to say the least, as the son of one of Alexander’s veteran marshals, to be stirred to high emulation by wartime arrangements made in Athens over two hundred years earlier. J. F. Lazenby (of whom more in a moment), though conceding that the problem was unlikely ever to be settled, in 1993 wrote (102 n. 4) that ‘to my mind, this virtually proves that the decree is not authentic’. It does? Here (though we differ as to basic chronology) I find Hammond’s arguments for authenticity far more compelling and made with a genuine understanding of forgers’ psychology.⁷

I also figured it might be a useful and badly needed lesson in humility to search out the academic reviews of The Year of Salamis and see how they disposed of my younger, brasher, less professional self. It was an interesting experience, not always quite in the way I had expected.⁸ Edouard Will (a historian for whose work I have the utmost respect) advised the reader that, though he might find me an enjoyable read, he would be well advised ‘to abandon at the outset any sort of cuistrerie’, an admonition I had cause to remember since of course cuistrerie means not only ‘pedantry’ (which I am sure was what Will had in mind) but also ‘ungentlemanly behavior’, ‘caddishness’. Will, having disarmingly admitted to being bored stiff by strategy or tactics, went on — he was not alone in this — to invoke my fiction-writing alter ego as having improperly meddled in professional historiography, first, by romanticizing my characters (i.e., making them too real), and second, more importantly, by revealing a historical novelist’s distaste for lacunas. His main complaint, however, was that I had ‘over-isolated the episode of the Persian Wars from its deeper background: the great Why of the whole matter is not explored in depth’.

Since le grand pourquoi (the ‘great Why?’) was for me, as for Herodotus,⁹ one of the main reasons for writing my book, this hit hard. I thought I had brought out the dangers of an Achaemenid policy of westward expansionism into Europe (especially when linked to oppressive taxation); the levelling wind of democratic change blowing from mainland Greece to topple tyrannoi; the crippling of Anatolian Greek trade; the consequent disenchantment of many Ionian leaders (who had previously colluded very comfortably for thirty years and more with their Persian overlords) to the point of launching a concerted revolt; the escalation of hostilities after the burning of Sardis (face-saving and the territorial imperative were now involved); the impact of Marathon, bringing a sense of pride and stubbornness to Athens; Xerxes’ weak vulnerability to the ambitious plans of relatives and courtiers;¹⁰ and finally, the ability of just enough of the factious and quarrelsome Greek states to rise above medism, self-interest, social in-fighting, and the eternal round of beggar-my-neighbor for just long enough to stand off the assault of a juggernaut whose sheer size not only terrified but also produced acute logistical and command-structure problems. I can only promise to stress these and other factors even more emphatically next time.

Some critics, of course, will do anything for a good punch-line (in Frank Frost’s case, several of them). On page 26 I quote Plutarch’s graphic anecdote of Themistocles’ father Neocles on the beach of Phaleron with his young son, pointing to the rotting hull of an old trireme and saying: ‘That, my boy, is just how the Athenian people treat their leaders when they have no further use for them.’ Ben trovato if not necessarily true. Frank’s comment (we have since become good friends) was: ‘When the reader realizes that the democracy had only been in existence for ten years or so, he must surely credit Neocles with awesome foresight.’ But when was democracy ever an indispensable ingredient of perennially vicious Greek politics? This is on a par with the assumption that my take on these politics is based on ‘a conflation of Plutarch, Marx [!], and Toynbee [!!]’. The inclusion of Marx I suspect to have been occasioned by my analysis of the bitter conflict in Athens between the landed aristocracy (plus those more affluent farmers who served as hippeis) and the lower orders who rowed the triremes and formed the backbone of Athens’ emergent thalassocracy. Frank argued that this conflict did not exist. It is hard to read the passage in Plato’s Laws that I quote from briefly (p. 39) and still think so.¹¹

There are, inevitably, a number of slips and errors that I need to put right. Even though I knew very well that, before the development of Piraeus, Phaleron beach served as the Athenian naval base, I still absentmindedly made Themistocles frequent the waterfront taverns of the former at least a year (494) before he began building the port. Thessaly in 510 was not allied to Sparta (p. 16). It is misleading (p. 17) to talk of Hippias’ ‘government-in-exile’ (even though Persia regarded Hippias as the legitimate ruler of Athens). Xanthippus (p. 45) was strategos in 480/79; there is no solid evidence for his having served in this capacity in 489/8. Callixeinos, one of the mysterious characters known only from pottery shards, or ostraka (ostraka found on the Acropolis describe him as ‘traitor’, show him to have been an Alcmaeonid, and in quantity are second only to those attacking Themistocles),¹² cannot be shown to have been exiled in 483/2, or at any other point in the 480s, though the likelihood remains considerable. The Greek hoplite’s leather jerkin was probably not bronze-stripped. My scepticism about Themistocles’ tutor Mnesiphilus (p. 293 n. 4) has been overcome by new ostraka, which confirm his existence and residence in Themistocles’ deme (Lazenby, 157 with n. 12). I am less confident than I was about the ability of a trireme to shear off the oars of a ship as it passed it. Twenty-four, rather than twenty, states were brigaded together at Plataea (p. 262), and an unfortunate phrase on the following page led one scholar (and, thus, possibly other readers) to assume, wrongly, that I think Pausanias, Captain-General of the Hellenes, was a Spartan king rather than regent for his uncle Leonidas’ son Pleistarchus.

In general, I would agree with Frost and Briscoe that my treatment of the complex political scene in Athens, particularly between Marathon and Xerxes’ invasion, is oversimplified and too schematic, especially with regard to the ostracism victims during that decade. Though an interesting number of them were indeed Alcmaeonids, they were not necessarily all opponents of Themistocles (though I still think this highly probable).¹³ Like Lewis (ap. Burn 1984, 603–5; cf. Lewis 1974), I have to concede, regretfully, that ‘a historical reconstruction is not yet possible’ — or at least not secure — for the 9000-odd ostraka found (1965–68) in the Kerameikos. Of these about half (4647) were cast for Megacles son of Hippocrates, 1696 for Themistocles, and 490 for Cimon (only a boy in 489 B.C. when he paid his father Miltiades’ fine). These three are linked by joinable ostraka, and Lewis leaned towards dating them in the 470s (though he backed off his earlier belief that they formed a unified cache). It still seems very likely to me that the Megacles-Themistocles confrontation is that of 486, as was originally supposed (Cimon’s presence does not rule out this possibility). As Lewis says, this earlier dating, if true, would destroy Badian’s thesis that Themistocles was of little importance before 482; but I have never believed this anyway. Xanthippus’ ostracism in particular remains puzzling: Aristotle (AP 22.6) claims that he was the first victim to be exiled in those years, not as a ‘friend of the tyrants’, but simply as one who ‘seemed to be too great’: but surely his marriage into the Alcmaeonid clan had to have been a factor (Ostwald, 342)? The ambiguities here cannot but put one in mind of Vichy France and (as I suggested earlier) the looking-glass world of Cold War espionage.

This brings me to one of the more important general points raised by the reviewers not only of this book (Weiler, Will, Frost, and Meyer) but also of a more recent work such as Alexander to Actium, regarding my record of drawing parallels between the ancient and modern worlds: a practice condemned as historiographically unsound and in every sense misleading to the reader. Some (perfectly logical) reasons for so doing will not recommend themselves to academics, in particular, the fact that if one is writing for an audience that includes non-specialist readers, it becomes tedious (for author as well as audience) to have no recognizable points of reference. Thus known modern parallels, even if not precise, enable the uninformed reader to get an approximate picture of what is going on. No reasonable person would suppose for one moment that such parallels were advanced as exact (e.g. to anticipate a point discussed below, that the use of modern military nomenclature might somehow give the impression that hoplites at Plataea functioned like a WWII army brigade). On the other hand human nature — as historians from Herodotus on were all too well aware — has an uncomfortable habit of repeating itself (whether as tragedy or farce), and I no more regard it as historiographically unsound to search out such recurrences than did Thucydides when he wrote of ‘clearly examining [τὸ σαϕὲς σκοπεῖν] both past events and those that will, in all human likelihood, happen in much the same or similar manner’.¹⁴ As I learned from my Hellenistic researches, such parallels have a great deal to teach us.¹⁵

Of equal importance is the matter of source-criticism. As we saw, Will attributed to me (correctly, and I think the same is true of most historians, as of papyrologists) a distaste for lacunas — which is not to say that I always believe they can be filled. Frank Frost made the principles behind this kind of complaint very clear:

One of the details that we expect of the historian of the Persian Wars is an explanation of how he intends to treat the evidence. We may not agree with an Obst, or a Pritchett, or a Hignett, but at least we know what they are going to do with Herodotus, and with the testimony that supplements or contradicts Herodotus. Here there is not a word about sources.  .  .  .  At times, for instance, G. will tell an anecdote as though it were well-established fact [Plutarch’s anecdote of Themistocles, Neocles and the rotting triremes is cited].  .  .  .  When faced with a number of conflicting sources, G. will find a way to reconcile them and use them all, once again without annotation or explanation. (Frost, 264)

To take the simplest point first: the absence of detailed annotation was not a matter of choice, but an economy wished on me to avoid unnerving the hypothetical ‘common reader’. Had I insisted, as I did later for my revised biography of Alexander, I might well (I suspect now, looking back) have gotten my way. Here is one good reason for an eventual second edition, in which, I am confident, my documentation will, given the controversy surrounding the topic, be at least as massive as that for Alexander to Actium.

Basic to Frost’s case is the demand for a prior statement of principles governing the evaluation of sources. This, again, I omitted largely because I was supposed not to be writing an academic text, but also because my ideas about source-criticism were and still are, given current fashion, heterodox, and in 1970 I did not see this book as the proper forum for academic debate. Today, however, I am more than happy to make my position clear. It is not, I think, irrelevant that I was originally trained as a textual critic, and that when I turned to history I found what I had learned no less apposite for the evaluation of historical sources. The kernel of my thinking lies in a famous passage by A. E. Housman:

Open a modern recension of a classic, turn to the preface, and there you may almost count on finding, in Latin or German or English, some words like these: ‘I have made it my rule to follow a wherever possible, and only where its readings are patently erroneous have I had recourse to b or c or d.’ .  .  .  Either a is the source of b and c and d or it is not. If it is, then never in any case should recourse be had to b or c or d. If it is not, then the rule is irrational; for it involves the assumption that wherever a’s scribes made a mistake they produced an impossible reading.¹⁶

As Housman went on to make clear, the only occasion on which (‘in the same spirit of gloomy resignation with which a man lies down on a stretcher when he has broken both his legs’) we invoke the ‘better’ manuscript is to decide between a pair of equally possible readings: ‘We cherish no hope that it will always lead us right: we know that it will often lead us wrong; but we know that any other MS would lead us wrong still oftener’ (xv).

Applying these lessons to historiography can be most interesting, not least in the present case. Substitute ‘author’ for ‘manuscript’ and you do not have to look far to find Housman’s prime fallacy flourishing unchecked. In his opening chapter on the evidence, Lazenby writes: ‘It seems almost always legitimate to reject the secondary sources when they conflict with Herodotus’ (pp. 15–16). But the fact that Herodotus is the prime early source by no means sanctions this kind of rule-of-thumb treatment. Worse still, Lazenby argues that since the late testimonia often tell tall stories (quite true; but then so does Herodotus), we should therefore also discredit them when their testimony is plausible: ‘If Plutarch believes fifth-century Athenians capable of human sacrifice, why should we believe his story of the dawn wind at Salamis?’ He claims to be working according to ‘rational principles’, but this is to stand reason on its head. We know that other early material on the Persian Wars existed; we have virtually no notion of how the tradition was handed down or which authentic details managed to survive along with the imaginative dross. In other words, these much-despised ‘late sources’, like the Alexander-Romance, while they quite obviously are stuffed with every sort of rhetorical garbage, may also contain valuable material along with the rubbish, and we should not fall into the obvious fallacy (Housman again) of assuming that everything they recorded must inevitably be false. In every case we have to use our reason and historical judgment to sort the true from the false (or, more often, the plausible from the fatuous): there are no generic short cuts.

The problem is complicated by a familiar scholarly phenomenon: the common need to prove one’s critical ability through scepticism, which in some cases seems to exploit a deep and passionate affinity, well beyond reason, with the demolition of ‘myth’ per se. The Themistocles Decree has suffered several such assaults: so, by a nice paradox, has that ‘prime source’ Herodotus himself. Armayor¹⁷ has devoted a great deal of time and trouble in attempting to prove (for the most part through discrepancies with reality¹⁸) that this supposed great traveller never in fact went to Egypt or the Black Sea, but simply patched together his evidence from suspect literary sources; while Fehling goes even further, accusing Herodotus of systematic lying, of inventing his alleged ‘sources’ wholesale, and dismissing the matter they present as worthless fabrications.¹⁹ No one would argue that Herodotus did not contain errors and inconsistencies; but, as Murray remarked, in criticism of Fehling, ‘to postulate deliberate and wholesale deception  .  .  .  rather than faulty execution, requires an answer to the question, who invented the model which Herodotus is thought to have abused? It implies a proto-Herodotus before Herodotus’.²⁰

These are extreme, and in the case of Fehling almost pathological, examples. But the attitude they imply, even if only moderately expressed, is in part at least responsible for the doubts aroused by my suspect ability to reconcile apparently conflicting sources (the Themistocles Decree offers a fair instance of this). What critics want me to do is reject testimony, especially late testimony, on principle. But the evaluation of evidence strictly in the light of inherent probability (what Greek rhetoricians and courtroom lawyers described as ἀπὸ τοῦ εἰκότος), together with the abandoning of rule-of-thumb dismissal, will indeed tend to admit more material, and if witnesses at first sight discrepant can, on examination, be reconciled, so much the better for the difficult business of historical retrieval.

The objection to modern army terms mentioned earlier was made — and directed primarily, though not exclusively, at The Year of Salamis — by J. F. Lazenby, in what I have found, to my astonishment, to be the only book-length treatment of the Persian Wars (as far as I know) published since my own.²¹ Bearing in mind the fact that the Greek victory in the Persian Wars is routinely described as a fundamental turning point in European history (advocates of this view don’t quite argue that today, had things gone the other way, mosques and minarets would dominate Europe, but you can sense the unspoken thought in the air), this omission seems all the more inexplicable. Alexander’s conquests mark the other great Hellenic milestone, and think of the endless books devoted to him. What is more, The Defence of Greece 490–479 B.C. (1993), as its title makes clear, and its author’s other publications confirm,²² is very much a military history, with all the limitations that this implies. There is no serious attempt to deal with what Will called ‘the great Why?’. Economics seldom enter into Professor Lazenby’s scheme of things.²³ Instead, we get the highly debatable thesis, advanced in the first two chapters and exploited throughout, that both on land and at sea Greeks were tactical and strategic innocents with no military or naval sense beyond the very simplest manoeuvres or ‘square-bashing’, and that commanders were appointed on the basis of social prestige rather than military experience.²⁴ There is a nice pay-off here: the supposed naïveté of Herodotus is excused and explained by the argument that he simply reports what he heard and saw, that the naïveté is not his, but that of his characters (Lazenby, 14). To render this verdict even more incongruous, the Persians collect high praise (Lazenby, 29–32) for all those sophisticated functions the poor Greeks are regarded as too naive or inexperienced to master: intelligence-gathering, diplomatic warfare, meticulous planning, engineering expertise, siege-works, and land operations.

Thus it comes as an unexpected surprise when we read how successful the Persians had been — ‘until they came up against the mainland Greeks’ (Lazenby, 32: my emphasis). Lazenby’s lead-up emphasizes the paradox (for him, one feels, an intellectually annoying one²⁵) that these untrained ignoramuses somehow contrived to upset so well-organised a military machine, not to mention the safe predictions of Delphi. But Lazenby’s argument is simply not true: however rudimentary their preparation, the Greeks, for whom fighting one another was the prime occupation of life, were far more sophisticated and flexible in military as in naval affairs than Lazenby wants to believe. The victory at Marathon is one outstanding example; the Corinthian decoy movement at Salamis is another; and in both cases Lazenby either fudges the Greek or willfully ignores modern scholarship in an effort to avoid any admission of sophisticated strategical planning.²⁶ After all, the hoplite phalanx, which required very careful coordination, had been in existence at least since 700, while naval manoeuvres such as the diekplous (Hdt. 8.9) were already in use during the Persian Wars.²⁷

Thus on several counts I am very glad to see a reissue of The Tear of Salamis, not least since nothing comparable, apart from Lazenby’s strictly military survey, has been published in the interim. This is not to say that The Defence of Greece 490–479 B.C. is not in many ways a useful and stimulating book, primarily in its generally meticulous treatment of detail. On points of chronology, as on troop and fleet numbers, Lazenby has much to offer, which future writers (myself included) will ignore at their peril; and his flirtation (p. 169) with the idea that Themistocles may have been ready to medize in earnest I find both intriguing and seductive.²⁸ But there will also be innumerable points to argue: some simple (e.g. the timing of Xerxes’ mole: before or after the battle? surely both — begun in advance and reutilized later),²⁹ some decidedly complex (e.g. Lazenby’s assertion, which I would dispute, that the Persians could have afforded to bypass Salamis altogether).³⁰ I look forward to such discussions.³¹ Certainly this book has sharpened my resolve to produce a second edition of my own. But I suspect that the changes, apart from at last supplying my narrative with a full support-structure of documentation, will be almost entirely particularist on points of detail or newly discovered evidence.³²

There is, however, one omission which I must put right now. In an otherwise kindly review Willie Eliot pointed out (p. 87) that though I had acknowledged earlier scholars in the field, I had not paid proper tribute to my greatest benefactor: Herodotus himself. Such was certainly not my intention. For me Herodotus is one of the best-loved texts, most often read, most greatly admired, in the whole classical canon: a lifelong companion, a more congenial — and, I believe, a better — historian than Thucydides, like him a ‘possession for ever’, but not ashamed of giving pleasure too. Perhaps the best proof of my attitude is that a very large part of my retirement will be spent translating, editing, and writing a new commentary on this wise, shrewd, tolerant, cosmopolitan, and in many ways most modern of ancient writers, a task to which I look forward with zestful anticipation.

PETER GREEN

Austin, Texas

1 September 1995

PREFACE AND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHEN my publishers asked me to write a book on The Year of Salamis, perhaps neither they nor I quite realised that what would emerge was a full-scale history of the Persian Wars. Yet in a sense this was inevitable. It is impossible to understand Salamis or Plataea without having first studied Marathon, and impossible to understand Marathon except against a general background of sixth-century Greek and Persian history. The actual Athenian archon-year 480–79, during which the battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium and Salamis were fought, does, nevertheless, occupy the greater part of my narrative — though Xerxes’ invasion, we should remember, was well under way before it opened, while Plataea and Mycale both took place after it closed. If ever there was a true turning-point in European history (as I hope to have made clear) it was during those crowded and tumultuous months when all Greece, to borrow a memorable phrase publicised at the time, stood on the razor’s edge. No excuse is needed for yet another study of the Great King’s expedition, particularly since it continues to arouse a quite remarkable degree of controversy and disagreement among modern historians.

The list of great scholars who have worked in this field is an imposing one, and I am more than usually conscious of the debt I owe to them. The books and articles of such specialists as Goodwin, Grundy, Hauvette, How, Kromayer, Labarbe, Macan, Munro, Pritchett and Wells (to name but a few) have all, in their various ways, made the task of anyone who follows in their footsteps a great deal easier. Two recent full-scale accounts of the Persian Wars, A. R. Burn’s Persia and the Greeks and C. Hignett’s Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece, have travelled with me throughout my own investigations; without either of them this book would have been immeasurably the poorer, and far harder to write. Mr Burn’s lucid common sense and masterly grasp of strategy and topographical detail make a neat complementary balance to Mr Hignett’s acute (and often refreshingly contemptuous) critical insights — not to mention his enviable familiarity with all scholarly literature on the subject published during the last half-century. My debt to these two continually illuminating and provocative books is perhaps best measured by the number of occasions on which I disagree with their findings (almost as often, indeed, as they disagree with each other). A particularly important case in point concerns the authenticity of the Troezen Decree. When Burn and Hignett published their books (in 1962 and 1963 respectively), the controversy over this newly discovered inscription [see below, p. 98 ff.] was still at its height. By now, I hope, the dust has settled far enough to allow a reasonably balanced appraisal. My original intention was to write a special appendix on the historical problems arising from discrepancies between the Decree and Herodotus. However, the monstrously large literature which this inscription has already called forth demands a stringent application of Ockham’s Razor — essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem — and it now seems to me that anything useful I have to say on this vexed topic is best discussed in my main narrative. Otherwise I have little to add to the admirable articles (with which I am in substantial agreement) of Jameson, Berve, Meritt, Lewis, Schachermeyr, Treu, Cataudella, and Fornara.

Living permanently in Greece gives one very special advantages and insights for writing a book of this kind. It would be a bold man, today, who claimed that a knowledge of modern Greek politics did not help us to understand ancient Greek history. Above all, there is the ubiquitous feeling of physical immediacy, of the past obtruding into the present like those great rocky outcrops which here and there rise from the Athens asphalt, bleakly austere, to humble our human pretensions. Most of the places mentioned in this book, and all the major battlesites, I know well from frequent personal exploration at every season of the year. I have sailed round the bays and inlets of Salamis, and walked over lonely mountain goat-tracks above Thermopylae and Plataea. Marathon, for me, is not merely an abstract historical label or atlas diagram, but a favourite weekend retreat for swimming and picnics. When I write about such places, I can see them in my mind’s eye; familiarity may not breed contempt, but it does put a curb on the romantic (or scholarly) imagination. One still remembers, as a kind of awful warning, the cheerful way in which Munro and Bury, from their studies, beached the Greek fleet at Salamis on some highly uncomfortable rocks.¹

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Eugene Vanderpool for much help and advice, not least during several long topographical expeditions, on foot, through the hills of Attica. To the Directors of the American School of Classical Studies and the British School of Archaeology in Athens I must once again express my warmest thanks for making me free of their excellent libraries, which provide the most congenial conditions imaginable for research work. The Librarians of both Schools, Mrs Philippides and Mrs Rabnett, have, as always, given me advice and assistance far beyond the call of duty. Mr Joseph Shaw, of the American School of Classical Studies, most generously made available to me unpublished surveys of Plataea and Thermopylae, without which it would have been a much harder task to construct remotely adequate maps of either area, and in the case of Plataea virtually impossible (for Thermopylae I have also drawn freely on Pierre MacKay’s excellent survey, published in the American Journal of Archaeology). I owe a great deal to stimulating discussions, on Marathon and Salamis especially, with my pupils of College Year in Athens, and in particular to Miss Elizabeth Knebli, who went to much trouble to obtain photostats of rare articles on my behalf. My affectionate and grateful thanks go to George and Ismene Phylactopoulos for many things, not least for helping so signally to solve my transport problem. Professor C. W.J. Eliot read an earlier and very different draft of parts of this book; he is in no way responsible for the views expressed in the final version. Nor is Mr A. R. Burn, who read my entire typescript and saved me from many errors, thus placing me doubly in his debt. My greatest debt of gratitude, however, is to my publishers, whose farsighted