Book 7 again shows that H did not plan his narrative around our book divisions, since the battle of Artemisium at the beginning of Book 8 is the natural continuation of the battle of Thermopylae in Book 7. Apart from that, however, Book 7 has some coherence as the narrative of the preparatory movements of the Persians and the Greeks, those taken prior to the great battles that will decide the war. The first half of the book is taken up with Persian preparations and transport of the huge Persian army and navy down into Greece during the spring and summer of 480 BCE. H emphasizes the care of Xerxes’ preparations and the numbers of his army and navy. The Greek efforts to come together are then recounted, with most of the emphasis laid on the various excuses and evasions of important Greek states who do not join the league against Persia. The Greeks abandon Thessaly, since it is clear they cannot defend it. Leonidas and his valiant band of about five thousand (300 Spartiates, 3,100 Peloponnesians, and additional helots, Thespians, and Thebans) hold the pass at Thermopylae for as long as possible, but they receive no reinforcements and those who remain all die when Xerxes is shown a way around the pass. The only consolation the Greeks can find at this point is that several days earlier the Persians have lost perhaps up to a third of their fleet in a huge storm off Cape Sepias in Magnesia.
7.1–19 Persian reactions to Marathon and decisions leading up to the campaign in Greece.
7.1 Darius dies in 486 BCE, and revolt in both Egypt and Babylon in the 480s complicates the Persian plan to punish Greece for Sardis and Marathon (CAH iv. 72–5). The revolt in Babylon was suppressed by Megabyzus. It is not mentioned by Greek authors, although Xerxes’ removal of the statue of Bel-Marduk (cf. 1.183) may well date to this time. The necessity of quenching revolts in these other important provinces probably bought the Greeks crucial time to begin settling their own differences; if Darius or Xerxes had been able to march on Greece in the mid-480s, the outcome might have been very different, especially given the bad relations between Athens and Aegina at the time. Notice that H essentially omits the complicated rivalries of the Greek states in the 480s as a main focus of his narrative.
7.2–4 Xerxes was born c.518 BCE and Darius probably made him crown prince even earlier than H thinks (CAH iv. 72), but the addition of Demaratus to the scene adds a piquant element for H’s Greek audience, particularly given Demaratus’ own problems of lineage in Sparta and the notorious difficulties of the Spartan dual kingship, 6.61–6, 52.
7.5 Gobryas was one of the original seven conspirators (3.70, 78). He was Darius’ father-in-law before Darius became king, and he also married Darius’ sister. His son by that sister, Mardonius, is therefore the nephew of Darius and cousin of Xerxes; he is also Darius’ son-in-law (6.43). Mardonius is ambitious to become the satrap of Greece, and so argues for conquest with a mixture of reasonable and silly arguments (cf. 9.82 for the poverty of Greece). For the Persian love of trees, cf. 7.31; ‘paradise’ is originally a Persian word for an enclosed garden or orchard.
7.6 Other proponents of a war against Greece. The rest of the Thessalians are not as enthusiastic about the prospect of Persian invasion as the Aleuadae are (7.172). For the susceptibility of the Pisistratidae and Hippias himself to dreams and oracles, cf. n. 5.56; for their collection of oracles, cf. 5.90, 93. Musaeus was a mythic singer connected to Orpheus; H refers to his oracles also at 8.96 and 9.43. Since their expulsion from Athens in 510 BCE the Pisistratidae have lived at Sigeum in the Troad, as clients of Persia (cf. 5.94).
7.7 Persian rule over Egypt becomes much harsher, possibly precipitating the revolt of Inaros c.463–2 BCE. Achaemenes the satrap dies in the battle of Papremis, 459 (n. 3.12).
7.8–11 As he has already done in the constitutional debate of 3.80ff., H uses the speeches of Xerxes and his courtiers here to elucidate the arguments that figure prominently in the Persian thinking to invade Greece; it also makes something of the temper of the principal actors clear. Cf. Atossa’s conversation with Darius in 3.134. It is a narrative technique that Thucydides after him will use to great effect.
Note in Xerxes’ speech his desire to equal his father; cf. Aeschylus’ Persians 753 f. and CAH iv. 76. Pelops was in myth the son of Tantalus of Lydia, the father of Atreus, and the grandfather of Agamemnon, victor at Troy. He gave his name to the Peloponnese. Mardonius in his flattering reply (9) exaggerates considerably; only some of the Indians, Sacae, and Ethiopians are subjects of Persia. For his previous expedition, see n. 6.43–5. The rest of those present fear to oppose him (10).
Artabanus (10) has already advised his brother, Darius, wisely in c.513 BCE (4.83), a fact of which he reminds his nephew, Xerxes, here. He will hold more conversation with Xerxes about the brevity of human life at Abydus, 7.46–52. Here he raises themes that remind us of Solon’s advice to Croesus; both elaborate on aspects of the Delphic motto, mēden agan, ‘nothing in excess’; the gods bring down those with pretensions. For the notion of the envy of the gods, see n. 1.32. The pathos of bodies torn apart by birds and dogs is more Greek than Persian (Iliad 1.4; cf.Histories 1.140, where it is presented as a normal Persian custom). The allusion to ‘staying with the women’ in Xerxes’ angry retort (11) will be developed later: 8.88, 9.20, 107, 108–13.
7.12–19 In ch. 13 Xerxes refers to his youth; if he was born about 518 BCE, he was still under 40 at the time of the Greek campaign. The point of the dream sequence is that the gods do intend the Persian invasion of Greece to happen, just as they intended the death of Croesus’ son, 1.34. The fact that the gods intend the invasion does not render Xerxes himself guiltless, cf. n. 1.13.
7.20–5 From the spring of 484 to the spring of 480 BCE Xerxes prepares for war. For Darius’ invasion of Scythia, see 4.83–144; for the Scythians’ invasion of Asia in the early seventh century, see n. 1.103. H believes the Trojan War to be about eight hundred years before his own time (2.145).
Acte (on which Mount Athos is located) is the easternmost of the three peninsulas of Chalcidice (22); excavation of the Persian canal began c.483 and was designed to avoid the dangerously stormy tip of the peninsula (6.44). The canal was 2,400 yards (2,200 m.) long and at least 65 feet (20m.) wide (CAH iv. 526). The charge levelled by H in ch. 24 does not hold, for the portage of a fleet as large as Xerxes’ (together with its support convoys) would have been practically impossible. Xerxes was aiming moreover at permanently attaching Greece to his empire, and the convenience of the canal would continue into the future. The moral issue is another matter (7.35; also, for making peninsulas into islands, cf. 1.174). See Lateiner, 126–35 for the importance of geographical boundaries and the notion of transgression in H.
7.26–32 The march from Critalla to Sardis. In myth Marsyas was a satyr who challenged Apollo to a musical contest with his Phrygian pipe and lost; Apollo skinned him alive. The end of the story of Pythius the Lydian, told at 7.39, may be compared to that of Oeobazus in 4.84, at the outset of Darius’ Scythian expedition. Such events, along with the ample mention of the Persian lash (e.g. 7.22, 35, 56, 103, 223), suggest to the reader what is expected to happen to Greece if Xerxes triumphs.
For Pythius’ enormous wealth (28): one (silver) talent was 6,000 drachmas and one drachma was a skilled Greek labourer’s daily wage. The gold daric stater was particularly pure, cf. 4.166. Cf. App. 2. For Xerxes’ Immortals (31), cf. 7.83. On the demand for earth and water: Xerxes does not send messengers to Athens and Sparta (32), because they had killed Darius’ earlier emissaries (6.48; cf. 7.133); earth and water are the normal tokens of submission to Persian rule (4.126, 5.17, 6.48, 7.131). Xerxes and the army spend the winter of 481–480 BCE in Sardis.
7.33–6 The reference to Artayctes, the Persian governor of Sestus, looks forward to events at the end of the war (9.116–21); Artayctes will be crucified overlooking the site where Xerxes’ army marches into Greece via the bridge, and the general who orders this will be the Athenian Xanthippus, father of Pericles, in the winter of 479/8 BCE. Xanthippus then takes the captured remnants of Xerxes’ bridge-cables home and dedicates them in sanctuaries that H does not specify, possibly on the ruined Acropolis and also in the Athenian stoa at Delphi (9.121). In referring briefly to the fate of Artayctes here, H anticipates the final undoing both of Xerxes’ literal bridge and of his more general attempt to bridge the separation of Europe and Asia and import Persian ways into Greece. Protesilaus was the first Greek who had leapt ashore at Troy (Iliad 2.695 ff.) and if one adds that to the presence of Pericles’ father at Artayctes’ death, the implicit ironies are multiple. They lend an ominous tone to the next narrative, the report of bridge-building in chs. 34–6; that narrative begins by emphasizing not the incredible feat of building the bridge itself, but rather Xerxes’ violence in punishing the Hellespont—again, a tacit reminder of what may happen in Greece if Xerxes triumphs.
For a detailed description of the construction of the pontoon bridge, see CAH iv. 527–32. The ships beneath are designed to support the weight of the bridge and reduce the strain on the cables. The distance across of seven stades (34) is some three-quarters of a mile, or 1.24 km. (The modern Hellespont is wider.)
7.37–43 Xerxes marches from Sardis in the spring of 480 BCE. His progress to the coast and down the European side from Thrace is deliberate; he will not reach the scene of serious fighting until late August or September. This will badly affect his campaign because the weather and the approach of winter will limit his choices. There was no solar eclipse at this time (37), although there had been one visible at Susa in the spring of 481 and there would be one visible at Sardis in February 478; local tradition perhaps conflated these to make an eclipse coincide with Xerxes’ departure. The connection of Apollo with the sun explains the thinking of the Magi, at least for a Greek audience. (The story is unlikely to come from a Persian source, since Mitra also is a god of light.)
Xerxes’ treatment of Pythius here suggests a certain instability in Xerxes himself (cf. 7.44–7 below). His act is the same as his father’s in 4.84, but the coupling of it with the earlier effusive praise and grand gesture is not. Again, the army’s departure through the two halves of the severed body of Pythius’ son strikes an ominous note.
The sacred chariot (40) will be given to the Thracians and the horses stolen (8.115) while Xerxes is campaigning down south in Greece. Xerxes’ charioteer is probably also his brother-in-law, since Otanes is the father of his wife Amestris and commander of the Persian forces of his army (7.61), and two other sons of Otanes are ranking officers (7.62, 82). Cf. the end of n. 5.117–21. Note Xerxes’ interest in tourism at Troy and elsewhere on his trip into Greece; a brisker timetable with a leaner army might have affected the outcome.
7.44–56 Just before Xerxes crosses the Hellespont into Europe, he gazes at his army and holds another conversation with his uncle Artabanus. Xerxes likes to look at his army (7.56, 59, 100), and he associates value with large numbers (7.103). Here (49) Artabanus tells Xerxes that the very massiveness of his force will also be his greatest weakness, since it will be difficult to find safe anchorage for the fleet and food for the land army. These strategic factors certainly play a part in the forthcoming campaign.
In ch. 51 Artabanus also worries about the loyalty of the Ionians; Xerxes reassures him, citing their loyalty during his father’s Scythian campaign, misunderstanding their motives as much as the Scythians did (4.142; cf. 4.137). Cf. n. 8.19–26. In chs. 53 and 54 Xerxes’ determination to conquer all of Europe is again emphasized. The image of his army being whipped across the Hellespont for seven continuous days and nights is a very vivid one, but the time is probably compressed, CAH iv. 537. This theme stands in ironic counterpoint to the sycophantic exclamation of the Hellespontine man addressing Xerxes as Zeus (56). Cf. the oracle in 7.220.
7.57–9 Xerxes travels from the Hellespont to Doriscus in Thrace. First he has to march north-east through the Chersonese (the Gallipoli peninsula) and then turn west. In mythology Helle was escaping from a wicked stepmother with her brother Phrixus and rode on the golden ram’s back over the Hellespont; she fell off and had the strait named after her in consequence, while the ram’s golden fleece ended up in Colchis to be taken by Jason (cf. 1.2). For Darius’ stay in Thrace, cf. 4.143; the fortress was probably set up by Megabyzus afterwards (5.2). The Cicones of ch. 59 occur in Homer: Iliad 2.846, Odyssey 9.39; Ciconian women murdered the legendary Thracian singer Orpheus.
7.60–83 The review of the infantry. The number is undoubtedly exaggerated; cf. for example CAH iv. 533–6, where the total is calculated as 220,000 men under arms on land, and another 22,000 for the supply service and so on; others put the total figure as low as 80,000–100,000. Note that the Greeks never encounter the full force of Xerxes’ land army, even at Thermopylae.
Like the account of the Persian tax rolls in 3.90 ff. and the description of the stages of the Roya† Road in 5.52 ff., this list of infantry units may be based on official Persian information. H arranges his material in a geographical order: the Medes and Persians, then those peoples to the east, those to the south, those of Asia Minor, and finally of the Levant.
The mythological material in chs. 61 and 62 is of course Greek in inspiration. Among other problems, the mythic genealogy of Perseus is inconsistent with that of 1.7, since here Belus is grandfather-in-law to Perseus while Perseus’ descendant Heracles is in 1.7 Belus’ grandfather. Cf. 6.54. For the fanciful etymology of the Medes from Medea (62), the best that can be said about it is that it is old; cf. Hesiod, Theogony 1000f. ‘Arian’ (62) is an Indo-European word found in Old Persian and Sanskrit as well, now vitiated by the murderous use to which it was put in the 1930s under its Sanskrit form, Aryan.
The Sacae of ch. 64 are not the (European) Scythians described in Book 4, but a similar nomadic people from farther east; cf. CAH iv. 171, 174. For the distinction between southern and eastern Ethiopians in ch. 70, cf. 3.17, 94. The Thracians of ch. 75 are from Asia. The name of the people in ch. 76 is missing; what is given is Stein’s conjecture. For the ‘Dispossessed’ of ch. 80, see 3.93.
7.84–88 Review of the cavalry. For the speed of camels (86) cf. 3.102, although in actuality they move at a rate of about 2½ miles (4 km.) per hour; only the modern dromedary approaches a speed of 10 miles per hour. Cf. 1.80 for their tendency to frighten horses.
7.89–99 Review of the fleet. Like other Persian figures, the number 1,207 is very high; some historians set it more probably at about 600 instead. Aeschylus’ Persians 341–3, produced in 472 BCE, only eight years after the battle (in which Aeschylus himself fought), also gives 1,207, but he uses it not for the initial size of the fleet but for the number of Persian ships at Salamis later in the summer (September 480). This discrepancy has not been satisfactorily explained. CAH iv. 532 says that the proportion of smaller ships to triremes, however, is about right (H says 3,000 ships ‘in total’ (97)). Note the presence in Xerxes’ fleet of those who had fought valiantly to free Ionia from Persian rule in the 490s (90–5).
In 7.99 H singles out Xerxes’ one woman naval commander, Artemisia, the queen regent of Halicarnassus. As another Herodotean wise adviser (n. 171), she advises Xerxes before and after the battle of Salamis (8.68 and 101), but she also saves herself by daring and unscrupulous tactics during the battle (8.87). She is the mother or grandmother of the tyrant Lygdamis, who in the ancient accounts was the enemy of H’s family in Halicarnassus; none the less, H gives her a role among Xerxes’ intelligent counsellors.
7.100–4 For Demaratus the exiled king of Sparta in Xerxes’ retinue, see nn. 6.61–72 and 7.2–4. Whereas Artemisia gives tactical advice (8.68), Demaratus is the most eloquent spokesperson for Greek values, and particularly the connections that link Greek poverty, courage, intelligence, and respect for the law. (He, however, talks of Spartans, not Greeks.) Xerxes will take Demaratus’ prescient opinions more seriously after Thermopylae, 7.234–7; here he laughs (103)—almost always a mistake in H (Lateiner, 28).
7.105–27 Xerxes travels from Doriscus to Therma. H violates chronological order in chs. 106–7, to describe the Persian loss of most of Thrace at the end of the war. The Persians were expelled from Sestus in early 478 BCE (9.118), and Thucydides tells of their loss of Byzantium that same year (Thucydides 1.94, 128) and of Eïon in c.476/5 (Thucydides 1.98). Eïon is just north-east of the three-pronged peninsula of Chalcidice.
H has referred to the conquest of Thrace by the Persians in 5.1, 5.26, and 6.44. In 7.111 he compares the oracle of the shrine of Dionysus in the mountains of Thrace to Delphi; evidently he had heard exotically misleading claims made for it. In keeping with the touristic nature of this portion of the campaign narrative, we may note that in ch. 115 Xerxes passes by Stagirus, birthplace of Aristotle ninety-six years later.
Artachaees, the overseer of the canal recently dug across Acte (117; cf. 7.22–4), was according to H’s calculations about eight feet (2.4 m.) tall. Other tall people in the Histories are the Orestes skeleton (1.68), measuring an improbable ten feet (3.1m.) tall, the skeleton of 9.83, over seven feet (2.2m.) tall, and the Athenian woman Phya (1.60), who was just under six feet (1.8 m.) tall. A cubit is some eighteen inches (44 cm.), or the length of a forearm; for H’s weights, measurements, and distances see App. 2. For the significance of Artachaees becoming a hero, cf. the end of n. 5.108–17.
For the four hundred talents spent on Xerxes’ dinner (118), cf. nn. 6.132–6 and 7.26–32. A talent is about fifty-seven pounds (26kg.) of silver. H records the witticism of one Megacreon of Abdera (120); cf. the end of n. 3.118–19. On the three routes that Xerxes’ land army took and the co-ordination of his fleet and his land army, see CAH iv. 537–9. By splitting up and taking three different routes, the army could take the local grain from a larger region, and the animals could graze, since it was summer. Therma (7.127) is in Macedonia, near the site of the later city of Thessalonike.
7.128–31 Here Xerxes is enjoying another spectacle, not now the grandeur of his army but the grandeur of nature; cf. 7.44–56. Just as he has dug a trench at Mount Athos and has whipped the Hellespont (7.22, 35), here he falls to thinking how he might subdue the geography of Thessaly to his purposes. Note H’s rationalizing in ch. 129; H does not disbelieve in Poseidon but points out that the person who takes the epithet ‘Earth Shaker’ seriously, by definition thinks Poseidon is responsible for earthquakes. Xerxes’ delays in this early part of his journey may be responsible for pushing the campaign into the dangerous late summer weather that imperils his fleet further on (cf. 7.188–91); CAH iv. 539–40, 546 gives Xerxes high marks, however, for the planning and practical organization underlying this stage of the invasion.
7.132–78 As Xerxes waits for Greek submission (cf. 7.32), the scene shifts to the Greeks themselves and their efforts at preparation. The notion of tithing the collaborators probably does not mean to fine them, but rather to destroy them utterly and give a tenth of the profits to Delphi. The Lacedaemonians later (9.106) make the proposal to evict from their lands all the states who have collaborated with Persia and to resettle the Ionians there, but the Athenians object. H makes it clear that most of the states who openly collaborate have had virtually no choice (cf. 172).
7.133–7 Darius had sent envoys in the late 490s to Greece (6.48). Pausanias, the later travel writer (3.12.7), knows a version of events that holds Miltiades responsible for the Athenian mistreatment of Darius’ messengers, but H would probably have included such a story in his account of Miltiades’ end, 6.132–6, if he had heard it. Hydarnes, the Persian satrap of ch. 135 (and son of Hydarnes the conspirator, 3.70), is in fact part of the Miltiades story also (6.133). For the Greek horror at proskunēsis, voluntary prostration before another person, cf. n. 1.134; it was a gesture a Greek would perform only before a god. The episode of ch. 137 is one of the latest events narrated in the Histories; it happened in 430 BCE, early in the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 2.67).
7.138–44 The survey of Greek activity begins with Xerxes’ demand for earth and water; not until after the battle of Salamis does the Greek narrative become something more than a response to Persian aggression (Immerwahr, 34). In ch. 139 H makes his famous defence of Athens. CAH iv. 543 points out that Sparta’s role was at least as crucial; they were the impetus behind the formation of the Greek league in the autumn of 481 BCE (7.145), and without their presence at the battle of Plataea in spring 479, the Athenian-led victory at sea at Salamis would have amounted to relatively little. The Athenians, however, had many temptations to become collaborators, but did not, and for that H gives them credit (cf. 8.140–4 and 9.4–5).
In chs. 140–3 H introduces two interrelated topics: Delphi’s extreme pessimism about Greek victory, and Themistocles, the man ‘just recently risen to prominence in Athens’, who turns Athens’ gloomy oracles into a mandate to develop the Athenian navy. The Spartans, Cretans, and Argives also receive depressing oracles from Delphi (7.220, 169, 148). Delphi has had ties to the East throughout the period narrated in the Histories (e.g. 1.13, 19, 47, 55, 85), and had seen the fate of Didyma and other sanctuaries after the Ionian revolt (6.19). Moreover, many of the states of northern and central Greece who comprise the majority of Delphi’s Amphictyony, or secular administrative body, are in the path of the invading Persian army; it is not surprising that Delphi has tacitly medized (CAH iv. 540, and more generally for Delphi, iii/3. 312, 318–19). Delphi’spessimism about Greek victory against Persia does not compromise H’s admiration for the oracle or his belief in its powers (8.36–9, although he knows it is not incorruptible: cf. 6.66).
Themistocles was born in the 520s, was eponymous archon in Athens in 494/3 BCE and in 483/2 persuaded the Athenians to use their profits from the silver-mines at Laurium to build their fleet and fortify their port, ostensibly against Aegina. H introduces him into the narrative just before his greatest accomplishment, rallying the Athenians to resist Persia with their new fleet; Themistocles will be the architect of the Greek victory at Salamis (8.56–63, 75, 79–80, 83, 123–5). H is grudging in his praise for Themistocles (here as a new man, and in 8.109–12 for his duplicity and avarice) but avoids describing in detail Themistocles’ supposed later escapades, in particular his implication in the crimes of Pausanias and subsequent flight to Asia (where he died c.459, the wealthy governor of Magnesia under Artaxerxes). Thucydides 1.135–8 is more enthusiastic than H about what must have been Themistocles’ remarkable intellectual gifts.
7.145–7 H is not specific about the timing of the Greek congresses that meet, perhaps this one in autumn 481 BCE and another in spring 480 (7.172), to organize against the Persian invasion. For details of how the Greek resistance might have been organized, see CAH iv. 540–5. Sparta was given control on land and sea (cf. 8.2), and there was an advisory council consisting of a commander from each contingent, but ultimately the Spartan commander-in-chief had control over strategy. The story of the spies whom Xerxes sends back to Greece (147) shows not just his magnanimity, but also the extent to which he expects the vastness of his resources to overwhelm the Greeks psychologically; cf. 7.56. Ch. 147 is also a particularly vivid piece of evidence for the existence of a grain route from the Euxine (Black) Sea to Greece in operation in the 480s. The grain is going to the Peloponnese and Aegina here; the grain route from the north was also of great importance to Athens, as Athens’ earlier foreign policy in the area of the Hellespont suggests (n. 6.34–8).
7.148–52 Argos medizes. H is sympathetic (152) to the plight of the Argives, only fourteen years after their disastrous defeat at the battle of Sepeia (n. 6.77–80). The right of command is not a trivial issue, as any observer of modern multinational military forces can attest; cf. Pausanias’ reported behaviour at Plataea, 9.46–7. The rivalry between Lacedaemon and Argos is long-standing; cf. n. 1.82.
The genealogy of Perseus has already figured in the Histories in a variety of connections, in 2.91, 6.53–4, 7.61. Whatever the details of their accord, H reports the Argives actively supporting the Persian cause by pre-arrangement in 9.12. The ‘other business’ referred to in ch. 151 is thought by some historians to be a reference to a ‘Peace of Callias’ formally ending the conflict between Persia and Athens perhaps c.450/49 BCE (mentioned by the fourth-century orators Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Lycurgus but with differing details about the boundaries to be established). Neither Thucydides in the pentecontaetia (Thucydides 1.89–117) nor Lysias in 2.56–7 mentions it. Cf. the different view of CAH v. 121–7.
H’s disclaimer in ch. 152 is helpful in clarifying his relationship to the text he narrates. He presents himself as an investigator who has taken the trouble to ferret out and test stories, and narrate them to us, but part of his task is to remind us that he cannot vouch for all he has been told; cf. 2.123, 125, 3.122, 4.96, 105, 195, and the large number of variant versions of stories, n. 1.70. See the Introduction, pp. xxix-xxx.
7.153–67 The Greek league and Sicily. In chs. 153–6 H usefully narrates as background the growth of the tyranny at Gela and the tyrants’ expansion into the control of Syracuse as well. Cleander became tyrant at Gela c.505 BCE and was succeeded by his brother Hippocrates in 498, who turned his rule into an empire in eastern Sicily. In 491 Hippocrates died, and his cavalry commander Gelon put down a revolt but made himself tyrant. Syracuse had been founded by Corinth c.734 and so Corinth had saved Syracuse from Hippocrates, but it was taken by Gelon working with its own ruling élite in 485. At that point Gelon moved to Syracuse and gave Gela to his brother Hiero. Gelon reigned in Syracuse until 478. See further, CAH iv. 757–70. H & W point out that Gelon’s creation of a ‘great Syracuse’, involving the ruthless shifting of populations, probably saved Sicily from conquest by Carthage. It was certainly ruthless: ‘more than two generations before the first Carthaginian army destroyed a Greek city in Sicily, three had already been annihilated by a true “panhellenic” Greek tyrant’ (CAH iv. 770). The detailed narrative of Sicilian conquest prepares us for Gelon’s jaundiced view of the role the Greeks want to assign him in the coming struggle; he controls more resources than any of them and has won them by his own efforts.
The debate between Gelon and the Greeks (157–62) is a vivid dramatization of the problems of disunity that will dog the Greek League. It is similar in function to Xerxes’ debate with Artabanus (7.46–52), which highlights Persian problems with land, sea, and Ionians. Gelon’s assessment, that there are lots of chiefs but no Indians in the Greek force, proves a difficulty that the Greeks barely overcome (8.2, 56, 61, 9.26, 53). It is why Demaratus’ or perhaps even Artemisia’s advice if acted upon might well have won the war for Xerxes (7.235, 8.68); it should have been easy to scatter the weakly united Greek force.
For Gelon’s reference to his war with the Carthaginians and the murder of Dorieus that he wanted avenged (158), see CAH iv. 767 and 5.42–6. It seems unlikely that Gelon ever seriously contemplated sending massive resources to mainland Greece, since war with Carthage was looming for him, especially after 482, when Theron of Acragas expelled the pro-Carthaginian tyrant Terillus from Himera (165).
Gelon’s simile in ch. 162 is said by Aristotle (Rhetoric 1365a and 1411a) to have been used by Pericles at Athens, probably in his funeral speech for the Athenians who died in the Samian war in 440 BCE. Syagrus’ first reply to Gelon (159) echoes Iliad 7.125; the Athenians’ Homeric allusion (161) is to Iliad 2.552–4.
7.163–4 The Scythes referred to in ch. 163 is perhaps the expelled ruler of Zancle (6.23; CAH iv. 760–3). If so, Cadmus has inherited his virtue from his father (6.24). See Macan, H & W, and Burn, 309–10 for the numerous questions raised by chs. 163–4. Macan concludes, ‘The total absence of any cross reference here [to 6.23–4] is astounding; it is perhaps the most frappant of all such cases of Hdt.’s insouciance.’ There is much about Cadmus and Zancle we are not told and would like to know—particularly if (and how!) Cadmus went from being a henchman of Anaxilaus of Rhegium to becoming the right-hand man of Gelon in the delicate negotiations to be held with Xerxes in the case of a Persian victory in Greece in 480 BCE. Nor is it clear when exactly the name change from Zancle to Messana took place; cf. Thucydides 6.4.
7.165–7 H remarks in passing (166) that the battle of Himera, in which Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Acragas won decisively against the Carthaginians in the north of Sicily, took place on the same day as the battle of Salamis (probably September of 480 BCE). (The later Greek historian Diodorus 11.24 puts it on the same day as Thermopylae.)
Aristotle in the Poetics (1459a) uses the synchronism of Himera and Salamis to demonstrate the superiority of poetry to history; he claims that poetry can deal with organic developments and their underlying unity, while history perforce has to deal with what happened in a given time, whether there is an underlying connection or not. Aristotle has used an unfortunate example, however, because H does not talk about the battle of Himera in its chronological order but places it here, much before the narration of Salamis or even Thermopylae, because of its logical connection with other, earlier events in Sicily. (However, some historians thinking over the coincidence in time find it reasonable to argue that there is in this instance an underlying logical connection: the Phoenicians may have encouraged their colonists, the Carthaginians, to mount a western offensive precisely to keep the great Greek cities of Sicily occupied during the time of the Persian invasion of Greece.) For a fuller account of events in Sicily leading up to and including the battle of Himera, see CAH iv. 766–75; Burn, 297–310, 477–87.
7.168 Corcyra is the modern Corfu. In his cynical reading of Corcyraean motives and actions, perhaps H was responding to their role in the early stages of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 1.25, 31–44). Greeks who hoped to avoid war in the 430s would have been exasperated by the traditionally isolationist and self-serving politics of Corcyra. Etesian winds do blow violently off Cape Malea in late summer.
7.169–71 An excursus back into the quasi-mythological history of Crete, to explain why the Delphic oracle counsels non-participation in the Greek League. King Minos of Crete, in his quest for Daedalus, had been treacherously boiled in his bath by the daughters of the king of Camicus.
The mutual slaughter of Tarentines and Rhegians (170) occurred after the Persian Wars, dated to 473 BCE by Diodorus 11.52; Iapygia is south of Brindisi, on the heel of Italy. H would not have called this the greatest slaughter of all if he had known of the Athenian disaster in Syracuse in 413 BCE (Thucydides 7.85, 87). The ‘third wave’ (171) consists of the Dorians, who, by tradition, arrived in Crete before they conquered the Peloponnese, CAH iii/3. 234. Crete in classical times was Dorian.
7.172–4 This is probably the second major meeting of the Greek League (see 7.145 for the first), and the meeting at which they determine their initial strategy for meeting the Persians. Euripus (173) is the strait between the island of Euboea and the mainland stretching north of Attica. For Alexander the Macedonian, see n. 5.17–22. CAH iv. 545 thinks that the Greek position at Tempe was certainly untenable, and that by June 480 BCE the Greeks had withdrawn back to the Isthmus. If so, the brief Greek expedition and retreat in chs. 173–4, though it is narrated after Xerxes’ entrance into Thessaly (7.128), took place about two months earlier, CAH iv. 546. For the political situation (especially of Alexander) see Burn, 341–5.
7.175–7 Thermopylae is chosen as a place to defend because it appears that there is only one route, not several, as in Thessaly; moreover, it is narrow and thus a small force can defend it against a large force. On Artemisium: the Greeks’ land and sea forces must stay in contact with each other. H & W (ad loc.) quote Munro: ‘Thermopylae could not have been held without Artemisium, for it would have been at once turned by the enemies’ fleet, but … Artemisium was [also] useless without Thermopylae, for the Persians would never have attacked the Greek fleet but simply sailed past it outside Euboea, if the land road to the Isthmus had been open. All they wanted was to get their army and fleet to the Peloponnese at the same time.’
H’s directions for the lie of Thermopylae are wrong (the pass goes east-west, not north-south), although his general description is good. H & W: ‘The pass between mountain and sea has at either end an extremely narrow gate; the western gate, however, near Anthela, could be easily turned by crossing a projecting spur of the mountain, the eastern near Alpeni is clearly behind the Greek position.’ In the three miles (4.8 km.) between them was the middle gate, the narrowest passage between mountain and sea and the crucial position to defend. This is where the ‘ancient wall’ was located, built by the Phocians for protection against the Thessalians (cf. 8.27–9). See 7.210–24 for the actual encounter. For a map and detailed description see CAH iv. 556 and Burn, 409–11.
7.178–95 The name ‘Thyia’ itself means ‘raging;’ thus H begins the narrative of the Persian navy’s descent into Greece with a detail that looks forward to the disastrous storm to come off the coast of Magnesia, which will cost the Persians as much as a third of their fleet (188–92). He begins the narrative of the descent, however, with an account of a preliminary skirmish that shows the clear superiority of the Persian fleet in speed (179)—in a few weeks the Greeks will win at Salamis (8.84–95) not because their fleet is absolutely better, but because of Themistocles’ brilliance in choosing conditions that favour the smaller number of slower, lower, more solid Greek ships. The name of the sacrificed Greek marine, Leon, means ‘lion’ in Greek (180). After the capture of the Greek ships, the rest of the Greeks take refuge in Chalcis on the inner coast of Euboea (183) and so are protected from the storm that will batter the Persians off Cape Sepias.
Before the account of the storm, however, H surveys the full might of the Persian naval force (184–7). His estimate both of the number of men per vessel and of the number of Europeans who joined Xerxes is probably exaggerated, but his arithmetic is correct except for the calculation of the amount of grain needed to feed the Persian troops. H & W explain where the error in division occurred.
On Boreas, the north wind, and Orithyia, his Athenian wife, cf. Plato’s reference to the myth in the Phaedrus (229b), and Simonides’ poetry on the battle of Artemisium, one fragment of which, if M. West’s restoration is correct, might name the sons of Boreas, Zetes and Calaïs. For discussion of the important new Simonides fragments and their relation to the Persian Wars, see Boedeker, ed. (1996), and for Simonides himself, the end of n. 7.201–33. (For the reference to Athos in ch. 189, cf. 6.44. Cf. 7.49 for Artabanus’ reference to the combined danger of wind and sea.)
Two themes prominent in Book 1 appear in this passage: big becomes small (1.5), and, with reference to the story of Ameinocles (190), no human life is without its share of grief and pain (cf. 1.32). Thetis (191) is the immortal Nereid mother of the Greek hero Achilles; a sēpia in Greek is a cuttlefish, a relative of the squid—hence the name of the headland and perhaps the myth of Thetis and her sisters living along this coast as well. (Sepia or dark-brown ink originally came from the cuttlefish.) Another mythic story, that of the voyage of the Argonauts, is referred to in ch. 193. In Apollonius’ later version (1.1207 ff.) Heracles is left behind instead in Mysia on the Propontis, while hunting for Hylas. For Darius’ judgement on the unfortunate Sandoces (194), cf. 1.137 and 5.25.
7.196–200 Xerxes’ land army. When last seen, Xerxes was in Thessaly, demanding earth and water from the Greeks (7.131–2); now he moves his land forces southwards from Thessaly into Malis and the coastal town of Trachis (near Mount Oeta, where Heracles died (198), and the setting of Sophocles’ Trachiniae). On the way Xerxes is interested in local beliefs and scrupulous about not violating local custom. Xerxes pays much more attention to these old myths and the rituals connected to them than he does to the good advice of his Greek advisers concerning the invasion at hand.
There are about 9.1 stades in a mile, so the places named here are very close together. There must be some mistake in the text in ch. 199, because 22,000 plethra (6 plethra in a stade) are about 405 miles (651 km.), and though the coastline has changed since antiquity, this has always been a narrow coastal plain. Some scholars think that H is actually calculating the area of the plain of Trachis, not its width, because that is relevant as the territory covered by Xerxes’ encampment.
Xerxes’ road, which has taken him south along the coast, here turns sharply east, since the rugged coastline juts eastwards. He is stopped at the west gate of the pass by the Greeks. To the south of the pass are the high mountains, to the north the sea and impassable marshland. As the Greeks saw it, stopping Xerxes from threading his troops east along the narrow coastal pass at Thermopylae would block his entry down into the southern parts of central Greece.
7.201–33 The battle of Thermopylae. Thermopylae means ‘warm gates’. The Solonian platitudes that persuade the Opuntian Locrians and Phocians to join the Greek force (203) have an odd ring, since they turn out not to be true, or at least not in the short term useful to the Greeks at Thermopylae.
On numbers: H’s cross-reference in ch. 205 refers back to the number given in ch. 202; there is some uncertainty about the number of Peloponnesians actually at the first two days of battle, since the epigram in ch. 228 mentions 4,000 Peloponnesians in total, while H’s count in ch. 202 is 3,100. (All the Greek dead are by H numbered at 4,000 in 8.25.) The Persian count in the epigram is 3,000,000; H’s count for the original infantry forces in 7.60 was 1,700,000, and it is by now swollen with 300,000 European additions (7.185). H says that 20,000 of the invaders died at Thermopylae (8.24). For more realistic numbers for the total Persian land force, cf. n. 7.60–83; there were certainly many more foreign invaders than there were Greeks at Thermopylae, and many fell, including two of Xerxes’ own brothers (224). For the battle itself, see CAH iv. 555–8; Burn, 407–20; Lazenby, 136–48.
Before describing the battle, H does honour to Leonidas, Cleomenes’ younger half-brother and now king of Lacedaemon, by retelling his whole genealogy (204; cf. 8.131, 139, 9.64). For the family and its problems, cf. 5.39–48. Men with sons would leave a family line behind them; they were also thought to care more deeply about their cities than those without families (Thucydides 2.44). The reference to the Carnea (206) helps to date Thermopylae to the full moon of either mid-August or mid-September 480 BCE. (There is much controversy, however: see CAH iv. 588–9; Burn, 403–5; Lazenby, 118–19.)
In the four days of waiting (207–9), Xerxes has trouble believing that Leonidas intends to contest his right to the pass, and has another conversation with Demaratus; cf. 7.101–4 and 234–7. The two-day battle that ensues (210–12) leads to a stalemate, until a Greek traitor from Malis betrays to Xerxes the fact that a route exists west of Thermopylae going south into the mountains and east along their ridge that can then bring Xerxes’ troops down to the coast road again east of the pass, so that Leonidas’ army can be attacked from two sides. Leonidas has set the Phocians to guard the mountain route (212) but either he has not instructed them well, or they betray their charge (218). In any case, when Leonidas discovers that the Persians have found the route around the pass, he sends most of his troops away except for the Thebans and Thespians, and on the third day of fighting at the pass dies valiantly with his whole remaining force (220, 223). For the career at Plataea of the unfortunate Spartan who missed the battle (232), see 9.71.
There is much scholarly debate about the wisdom of Leonidas’ strategy and tactics at Thermopylae, but no one disputes the heroism of the last stand. Leonidas’ decision to stay and fight may well have saved the Greek alliance, since Athens and the other cities of central Greece in the league would have been furious if he had retreated to the Isthmus and given up central Greece without a fight. Understandably enough, many states in the path of the Persian army (like Thessaly) had already medized and without Leonidas’ stand many more might have done so. By the 440s the war was being presented as Greeks versus barbarians; in 480 the individual cities were more interested in their own survival than in defending the abstractions involved in a ‘Greek way of life’.
The promise to tell about the death of Ephialtes the traitor (213) is one of three unfulfilled promises in H; cf. 1.106, 184; for the Amphictyons see the middle of n. 7.138–44. The negative portrait of the Thebans (222, 233) undoubtedly has been influenced by Thebes’ decision to medize; it seems unlikely that Leonidas would have chosen to retain in the pass a Theban force that was clearly untrustworthy from the start. (As one of the latest dates mentioned in the Histories, H notes the role of the Theban commander’s son in the Theban attack on Plataea that precipitates the Peloponnesian War almost fifty years later (7.233; cf. Thucydides 2.2–5).)
Simonides of Ceos (228; cf. 5.102, n. 7.178–95, the end of n. 9.33–40; CAH iv. 619–20) was a famous poet of dithyrambs, hymns, dirges, scolia, encomia, epinicians, elegies, and epigrams (c.556–468 BCE). It is possible that all of the poems quoted here are his, but that the poem for Megistias was the only one written for free, out of friendship; it is also true that many poems were later attributed to him that he did not write. He was the Greek poet par excellence of the Persian Wars; his epitaph on the fallen at Marathon was said to have been selected by the Athenians over that of Aeschylus. He had among his patrons the Pisistratidae of Athens, the Scopadae of Thessaly, and Hiero at Syracuse; he is also said to have been a friend of Themistocles. See Boedeker, ed. (1996).
7.234–8 Demaratus advises Xerxes again, this time to fortify Cythera, an island south of Laconia that was in fact taken by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War, in 424 BCE (Thucydides 4.53–4). Chilon (235) is the sixth-century Spartan ephor included in the group of Seven Sages; cf. n. 1.59. Demaratus’ thinking here is similar to Artemisia’s (8.68), although Demaratus’ advice is better because it relies on the navy drawing off the Spartans from the Greek force, rather than the Persian land army having initially to fight through all the Peloponnesians massed at the Isthmus.
Achaemenes (236), Xerxes’ brother, has been the satrap of Egypt since 486 and is commander of the Egyptian forces in the Persian navy against Greece (7.97); he will die at the battle of Papremis in Egypt in 459 (3.12). Xerxes’ wrong-headed but judiciously generous reply to Achaemenes (237), acknowledging Demaratus’ worth, stands in stark contrast to his ignominious treatment of Leonidas’ corpse. Cf. Pausanias’ treatment of Mardonius’ corpse after Plataea, 9.78–9.
7.239 Many scholars regard this as an interpolation, in part because it does not follow H’s normal practice of inserting pendants where they act as background explanation, in part because the whole transition between Books 7 and 8 is very unsatisfactory for its abruptness, and this anecdote does not improve matters. It is, however, an amusing story.