In the early spring of 479 BCE it is still not at all clear that the Greeks will succeed in expelling the Persians from Europe. Mardonius has wintered in Thessaly, and the Lacedaemonians are again showing themselves reluctant to venture north of the Isthmus. The narrative gathers speed and moves straightforwardly through Mardonius’ abortive attempt to pry Athens out of the Greek alliance, the second firing of Athens, the Peloponnesians’ rapid march northwards into central Greece, once they have decided it is in their interest to move, and then the two big moments: first the battle of Plataea and then the battle of Mycale—fought, H reports, on the same day in the late spring or early summer of 479. After the battles there is a brief portrait of Xerxes in Sardis, wreaking havoc on his family, and then a picture of the Athenians conducting siege operations in the region of the Hellespont during the autumn. The Athenians do not show the magnanimous generosity towards the conquered displayed by Pausanias at Plataea; instead they crucify Artayctes, the wicked governor of Sestus, overlooking the spot where Xerxes first brought his army into Europe. The very last episode is a pendant flashback to Cyrus, in which he gives gnomic advice to the Persians of the mid-sixth century: if the Persians wish to rule, they must remain in their rocky homeland and avoid the seductions of luxury: soft lands tend to breed soft men.
In this set of narratives, H resists a picture that unequivocally praises the Greeks or deprecates the Persians. Thus the portrait of Mardonius is complex. On the one hand, he succeeds in drawing the Peloponnesians north of their new fortifications at the Isthmus, and in forcing them to fight in the plains of Boeotia that favour the use of Persian cavalry. He is much less subtle, however, than his fellow general Artabazus; in the grip of a desire to prove Persian military superiority over the Spartans, he loses both his army and his life fighting valiantly at Plataea, when H thinks that he could probably have been successful using Persian persuasion and money to split the Greek alliance and win influential friends for Persia in the major cities. H makes it clear that Mardonius and his troops are a match for the Greeks in valour and strength; they are not equipped, however, to withstand trained and fully equipped Greek hoplites (9.62). Artabazus flees from the battlefield, taking his forty thousand men with him northwards back to Thrace and Asia, an action that H notes but does not judge. Nor are things presented in black and white on the Greek side: rivalries and tensions between the various cities considerably complicate the Greek defence. The Spartiates at Plataea are professional soldiers, not at all interested in the kind of contest for glory Mardonius has in mind, but only in winning the war with whatever is the most efficient means they have to hand. The battle itself, narrated from the Greek side, is a confused affair, with a good number of puzzling incidents, mixed or misunderstood messages, and contingents coming late to the fighting.
Across the sea with the small Greek fleet at Delos (9.90), it is hard not to suspect some irony in H’s picture of Ionians asking the Greek navy to come to liberate them; in his own day the Athenian presence in Ionia was bitterly resented by many. There is also irony in the way Athenians, Peloponnesians, and Ionians are depicted during and after the battle. Is the final picture of Pericles’ father crucifying the offending Persian, and stoning the son to death before his father’s eyes, intended to be read as an ominous portent for the future, or merely a punishment befitting the crimes Artayctes had committed? H does not say.
Burn’s comment (p. 489) about the winter preceding Plataea and Mycale is relevant to the whole of Book 9: ‘The brilliant fifth-century society of Greece bore within it, from its beginning, the seeds of its own decay; and in this season … may be seen already the jealousy and fear of Athens, felt, not without reason, by the smaller and older maritime states; and the tensions within Athens itself, and within Sparta itself, which were to weaken both, and to make each appear slippery and unreliable in the eyes of the other. Herodotos is never more revealing than in his choice of anecdotes to represent these tensions.’
9.1–8 Again it is clear that the boundaries of significant narrative units are not necessarily reflected in the book divisions, since ch. 1 is merely the end of Athens’ rejection of Mardonius’s offer narrated at the end of Book 8. Thorax is one of the Aleuadae, the ruling family of Larisa in Thessaly; his family has been exhorting Xerxes to the conquest of Greece from the beginning (7.6). The Thebans (2) understand that Mardonius must divide and conquer Greece, here echoing Demaratus (7.235) and Artemisia (8.68). Both Artabazus and the Thebans seem to understand the effectiveness money would have in this process (9.41).
The episode reported in 9.5 is also mentioned by Demosthenes (On the Crown 18.202, 204) and Lycurgus (Against Leocrates 122). Like the final episode involving Athenians (9.120), it has an ambivalent ring. On the one hand, the Athenians are indeed firmly committed to fighting the Persians, but on the other, a lynch-mob mentality seems to prevail, among the women (cf. 5.87) as well as among the councillors themselves. If we think of Aristagoras’ earlier success in Athens (5.97) and this episode as H’s two main portraits of Athenian democracy in action, it is hard to view H as its uncritical supporter; cf. the very different picture of Athenian deliberation given in Thucydides’ early books (e.g. 2.34, 40). But the episode certainly also shows the pressure the Athenians are under, twice now having to abandon their homes and farms and sit across the straits watching the Persians burn their city down. H is sympathetic to their general situation; the language he uses of the Lacedaemonians (7), that in the early summer of 479 BCE they are ‘on holiday’ and also getting on with the defensive wall across the Isthmus, makes it clear why he gives Athens significant credit for the final victory (7.139).
9.9–11 Chileus the Tegean (9) is said by Plutarch also to have helped Themistocles with his strategy (Life of Themistocles 6). Since the Lacedaemonians fear both helot revolt and problems with their Peloponnesian neighbours at home if they leave en masse for central Greece, having a Tegean’s assurances of support at this point is valuable for them. One indication of the tensions between Sparta and their neighbours is that the only Arcadian contingents at Plataea are from Tegea and Orchomenus (9.28). Notice that when the Lacedaemonians do march, they take a route that is very far from their traditional enemy Argos, and they leave in secret, taking a large number of helots with them (10–12). Demaratus numbers the whole Spartiate force at eight thousand (7.234), so the five thousand of ch. 10 represent a significant percentage of Sparta’s manpower. For the five thousand perioeci (perioikoi) of ch. 11, cf. n. 6.58–60; they are citizens, but lack the full hereditary rights of the Spartiates. Plutarch’s Life of Aristides 10 names either Aristides or Cimon, Xanthippus, and Myronides as the indignant Athenian ambassadors to Sparta (11); it is worth noting that H presents it as an action of the Athenian community, rather than an accomplishment of named individuals.
The eclipse mentioned in ch. 10 occurred on 2 October 480 BCE. It is extremely valuable in helping to date the whole of Xerxes’ campaign, and is a terminus ante quern for the battle of Salamis. After Leonidas’ death at Thermopylae, his nephew, Pausanias, asks Euryanax, another grandson of Anaxandridas (5.39–41), to help lead the campaign. Despite the flattery of the Coan courtesan (9.76), Pausanias remains not king but regent for Leonidas’ son Pleistarchus until his own disreputable death. Then (c.470) Pausanias was believed by many to be intriguing with the Persians to betray Greece in exchange for a royal Persian marriage alliance. He had earlier been removed from the allied command in Ionia and was ultimately recalled to Sparta, where he was suspected of fomenting a helot revolt. He took sanctuary in a temple, where he was starved to death (cf. Thucydides 1.94–5, 128–35; CAH v. 100–1).
9.12–18 The Persian offensive. For Argive–Spartan hostility, cf. n. 6.76, and references to it in 5.49, 9.35. Attica lacks the large, smooth plains that make the use of cavalry efficient (13). For Decelea (15), cf. the end of n. 9.58–75. (Technically H’s claim (14) that Megara is as far west as the Persian army goes, is wrong, since central Greece has a pronounced north-west to south-east slant and the invading Persian army has been farther west in its descent through Thermopylae and Delphi in the previous summer; perhaps he means this particular army under Mardonius. This is certainly as close as the Persian land army gets to the Isthmus.)
The Boeotarchs (15) are the eleven aristocratic federal magistrates who claimed supreme authority in Boeotia. There is evidence of a Boeotian confederation from as early as the sixth century (cf. CAH iv. 358 n. 11). In the Persian Wars, however, Thespiae and Plataea (both Boeotian cities) remain loyal to the Greeks. Burn (p. 511) calculates that the Persian fort, somewhat more than a mile long on each side, is about nine hundred acres in area; if one uses the figures for a Roman camp for one legion, such a fort would suffice for an army of sixty or seventy thousand men, ten thousand of them cavalry.
For more on Attaginus of Thebes (16), cf. 9.86. Thersander of Orchomenus is one of the few sources H names; see also n. 3.55. The unnamed Persian’s intuition (16) is not necessarily a mystical one; intelligent Persians in Mardonius’ ranks no doubt did feel gloomy contemplating pitched battle against large numbers of fully equipped Greek hoplites (9.62). For the long-standing enmity of Thessaly and Phocis that, to the Phocians at least, explains Mardonius’ odd behaviour in ch. 17, cf. 7.176, 8.30.
9.19–24 The basic strategy that prevails is for each side to lure the other from terrain favourable to it. The Persians hold good, flat cavalry ground north of the Asopus River. The Greek hoplite and light-armed forces hold the south bank of the Asopus, near the foothills of Mount Cithaeron. The battle line is unusually long and drawn-out. Perhaps H himself walked the battlefield, but it is difficult precisely to identify H’s carefully named locations because of changes both in landmarks and terrain through time. There is some implicit irony if we compare the way the battle of Plataea actually unfolds to Mardonius’ smug assessment of Greek military tendencies in 7.9: ‘They seek out the best, most level piece of land, and that’s where they go and fight.’
On the episode of the Persian cavalry commander Masistius (20), and the taunt of ‘women’ hurled at the Greeks, the Scotsman Burn asks, ‘Is this the first case recorded of badinage between trousered and kilted men?’ (p. 516 n. 16). But cf. also 8.88, 9.107. The Olympiodorus mentioned in ch. 21 may well be the father of Lampon, the seer and friend of Pericles whom H might have known at Thurii (Plutarch, Moralia 812d).
9.25–89 Those interested in studying the vexed questions of tactics and terrain at Plataea are encouraged to consult CAH iv. 599–609; Burn, 516–40; Lazenby 217–47; Pritchett, i. 103–21, and v. 92–137. H portrays Plataea as a series of fortuitous occurrences rather than as carefully thought-out and successfully implemented strategy and tactics on Pausanias’ part. This may be an attempt long afterwards on the part of H’s informants to deny Pausanias credit for the victory, or simply a result of the fact that those informants still alive in the 440s or 430s BCE would not have been high up in the chain of command in 479 and so would not have known the actual tactical decisions involved. Or it may reflect what really happened; Burn comments, ‘There are many indications that [Plataea] was well planned; but for a battle to be well planned, and for the plan to be frustrated by the enemy, and for the troops to win it nevertheless, is no rarity in the history of war’ (pp. 533–4). Both sides play a waiting game. Reinforcements continue to pour in for the Greeks (38), swelling their hoplite ranks from about 30,000 to 38,700, with 69,500 light-armed troops as well (29, 30); the Persian forces are probably of about the same strength. After eight days Mardonius succeeds in cutting the Greeks off from their supply lines and reinforcements coming over the Cithaeron pass and then later in fouling their major sources of water.
The sacrifices continue to be unfavourable, and on the night between the eleventh and twelfth day of waiting, Alexander of Macedonia comes with the news that Mardonius has decided to attack. There is some reorganization of the Greek battle lines, and on the twelfth night Pausanias withdraws his troops from their positions in the foothills (52); on the thirteenth day the battle is fought. The Greeks acquit themselves well; if Burn’s reconstruction is at all accurate (p. 536), it is not surprising that Artabazus turns and leads his forty thousand by forced marches back to the Hellespont.
The impression left in the Greek rank and file afterwards was one of disorganization: a recently formed allied army with twenty-one contingents might well experience difficulties in deciding on relative positions in line, alleged disobedience of orders, and a somewhat chaotic retreat to the final battle positions. Nevertheless, the allied Greek forces at Plataea, and above all the Lacedaemonians, fought well enough to win the battle.
9.25–7 Pausanias moves west from Erythrae to Plataea, positioning the army towards the plain, but remaining on land unsuitable for the Persian cavalry. The long speeches of the Tegeans and the Athenians (26–7) are perhaps designed to fill in the reader’s sense of many days of waiting while the sacrifices for battle are unfavourable; they are unlikely to have been delivered on the field, facing the enemy. They continue the heroic and even epic flavour that has already been conveyed in the narrative of the death of the Persian cavalry commander Masistius (9.22). The Tegeans mention the return of the Spartans’ ancestors, the Heraclidae or sons of Heracles, to the Peloponnese (cf. nn. 4.147, 8.133–44) about a hundred years after Heracles’ death, and they emphasize their own valour in opposing them; for the ancient rivalry between Sparta and Tegea, cf. n. 1.65–6. The Athenians are craftier. Their speaker mentions instead their support of the Heraclidae in the mythic past (cf. Euripides’ play of the same name) and then adds other mythic deeds that show magnanimity as well as valour. The examples adduced, the protection of the children of Heracles, the aftermath of the battle of the Seven against Thebes, and the victory over the Amazons, occur regularly, along with Marathon, in later Athenian encomiastic and funeral speeches and may reflect H’s own sense of favourite Athenian topics for self-congratulation.
Notice that at the crux of his argument is the battle of Marathon. The Athenian speaker draws a line of demarcation between the traditional, mythic past and the hard reality of a battle fought a decade before the present (the same lines of thought are found in the speech of the Athenians at Sparta in Thucydides 1.73). This persuades the Spartans to give the Athenians the left wing. In the present context Marathon is more relevant as an example than Salamis would have been because, like Plataea itself, it is a hoplite battle (6.107 ff.). (Through the fifth and fourth centuries Marathon continued to be the Athenians’ most often-mentioned victory, in part because Marathon was much more an Athenian (rather than Greek) victory, in part because Marathon was a victory of the propertied class, the hoplites, while Salamis, far more important for achieving the ultimate repulse of the Persian invaders, was a victory of the upstart Themistocles and the lower class thētes, many of whom manned the navy. In terms of traditional Greek aristocratic and military values, Marathon was the more conventionally impressive accomplishment.)
9.28–32 H has very detailed and apparently circumstantial figures here, for the numbers and positions of the Greek line and for the positions of the Persian contingents facing them. Small details (like the positioning of a small band of Potidaeans next to the Corinthians (28)) that do not look like constructions from general probability or as though they have been copied from a post-war monument lead many scholars to think that H here is using sources from those who fought at the battle. His figures, 38,700 for the Greek hoplite forces (29) and 69,500 Greek light-armed troops (30), for a total of 108,200, are perhaps more reasonable than many such numbers in the Histories. By the Thespian survivors (30) H means those who had not died at Thermopylae; Thespiae itself has been burnt down by the Persians (7.202, 222, 8.50). For Mardonius’ forces, see 8.113; cf. the original description of Xerxes’ contingents by nationality in 7.41–100. For the Phocians who had become guerrilla fighters in the mountains for the Greeks, see 8.32. Bactria (31) is roughly modern Afghanistan, and the Sacae are an eastern people (cf. n. 3.118–60 and the end of n. 7.60–83; 1.153, 3.93, 6.113; CAH iv. 170–1). For the Egyptian Hermotybies and Calasiries, see 2.164, 168. The number of 300,000 Persians here (32, cf. 8.113) is almost certainly overstated—most scholars assume a rough parity of Greek and Persian forces.
9.33–40 A Greek military campaign or individual battle customarily begins with sacrifice, and the commander waits until the signs from the innards of the sacrificial animal are auspicious before starting the undertaking (cf. 7.134, 219, 9.10 for other inauspicious signs, 9.19, 96 for favourable ones). Pausanias uses sacrifice here as an important way to hold his troops in check until he wishes to give battle; delay favours the Greeks more than the Persians. Given Spartan religiosity, it is unlikely, however, to have been a purely cynical manipulation of the ritual. (The Persians also use a Greek diviner for the occasion, and he does not receive auspicious signs either, so that Mardonius eventually loses patience with the whole process (41).)
The Iamidae (33) claimed descent from Apollo (cf. Pindar, Olympian Odes 6.71) and continued to be an important family of diviners at Olympia into the third century CE; cf. 5.44. The pentathlon consisted of jumping, the discus, the javelin, running, and wrestling, with the wrestling decided by the best of three falls; presumably Tisamenus won two events and missed winning a third, wrestling, only by one fall. Three of the five battles mentioned in ch. 33, those at Tegea, Dipaea, and Ithome, involved the Spartans in battles against their neighbours in the Peloponnese in the 470s and 460s BCE. Tanagra was fought in 457 (Thucydides 1.108).
The story of Melampus (34) is inserted as a pendant elaborating on the motivation of Tisamenus; cf. the insertion of the story of Cleisthenes of Sicyon in 5.67 ff. Melampus was the oldest and most famous mythic seer of the Greeks (cf. 2.49 and Odyssey 11.285 ff., 15.225 ff.), healer of the Argive daughters of Proetus. M. West has identified a badly tattered fragment of verse (Simonides, el. 14) as part of a long elegiac poem by Simonides on the battle of Plataea: it may describe the message that Tisamenus the seer gives the Spartans in ch. 36. For Simonides, cf. the end of n. 7.201–33.
On the Persian side, Hegesistratus (37) is also from a line of diviners of Elis (cf. 8.27). We do not know what Tegean-Lacedaemonian hostilities are in question in the years before Plataea (they are not mentioned among the Greek feuds resolved in 7.145), or why the Lacedaemonians are so irritated with Hegesistratus. For traditional tensions between Sparta and Tegea, cf. 1.66–8.
Timagenidas (38) along with Attaginus is handed over to the Greeks after the Theban surrender, and is summarily executed at Corinth by Pausanias (9.86–8). His advice to Mardonius (38) certainly leads to one of the most effective Persian tactical moves of the whole stay in Boeotia.
9.41–3 It would be interesting to know how H found out about the debate between Mardonius and Artabazus; for Artabazus’ later career, cf. n. 8.126–9. The move Artabazus advocates, of creating at least dissension in the Greek cities by paying influential citizens (cf. the advice of the Thebans, 9.2) is one followed with great success by Philip of Macedonia in the fourth century. Plutarch (Life of Aristides 13) mentions a plot during this time of waiting, fashioned by some of the richest and best-born Athenians to overthrow the democracy and betray Greece to the Persians. It is foiled by the judicious magnanimity of Aristides. (A fourth-century inscription exists claiming to be the ‘Oath of Plataea’ (Fornara, 57), taken by the Athenian forces at some point before the battle, pledging solidarity to the united cause. Its authenticity was denied by the fourth-century historian Theopompus (FGH 115, fr. 153) and has been debated by many others since then (Burn, 512–15).)
Mardonius’ comments about the oracles (42–3) seem rather behindhand, since his troops have already gone through Delphi (8.36–9), although his knowledge may have come about during the winter investigation of Greek oracles by Mys (8.133). The timidity of his entourage again reflects what H clearly thinks to be a major drawback of autocracy (cf. the end of n. 8.65–9). The tribal army of Encheleis (43) apparently accompanied the mythic Cadmus and Harmonia in their old age (5.61, and the middle of n. 1.56–7). H’s statement that he knows Mardonius’ oracle to be about the Illyrians and the Encheleis and not the Persians is unusually definite—cf. 1.5, where he states that he knows Croesus to be the first barbarian to perpetrate unjust acts against Greeks, or 4.15, where he knows what happened in Metapontum two hundred and forty years after Aristeas’ disappearance in Proconnesus. On the selective use of oracles, cf. 7.6; for Musaeus and Bacis, cf. 8.96 and nn. 7.6, 8.19–26.
9.44–9 Last-minute changes before the battle. Some scholars are inclined to believe that the story of Alexander’s secret midnight ride was invented, or at least its motives were changed after the fact, to palliate Alexander’s generally pro-Persian stance during the Persian Wars; cf. n. 5.17–22 for the equally tendentious story of his murder of the Persian envoys and the middle of n. 8.133–44 for the alleged Greekness of his family. The picture of the last-minute change in battle order that follows has elements of Keystone Kops comedy in it. It is not likely to have happened as it is narrated, in the first light of dawn with battle pending; ‘If the line was nearly three miles long (reckoning eight men to a yard) the operation of marching two divisions of 8,000 and 10,000 men, in column of eights, past each other in rear of the centre, would have taken an hour, and the moment when an attack was expected does not seem the right time at which to do it’ (Burn, 528). Nor does the motive reported seem probable, that at the last minute Pausanias was fearful of having Spartiates face Persians, although this part of the story does allow H to develop a highly ironic picture of Mardonius’ response, his unrealistic confidence, and his ignorance of Spartan strengths.
In the narrative of events from this point until the end of the episode of Plataea, many peculiar and unexpected things happen. It is possible to think of these happenings in at least two ways, depending on one’s predilections. Either they show H to be incapable of understanding or narrating a ‘normal’ battle (those who think so often mention the unlikelihood that H would himself have fought in a war as a citizen, given his exile at an early age) or, conversely, the very oddness of the way things unfold (narrated, after all, to a series of audiences who do understand war) is some testimony to the efforts H made to talk to people who had been close to events, and to narrate what they say, no matter how odd it looks. That is, arguments from probability cut both ways.
9.50–7 The removal of the Greek forces to Plataea. The path taken in this move, and the locations of the ‘island’ to which the Greeks were supposed to go and the temple of Hera to which they did go are discussed in detail in the works mentioned at the beginning of n. 9.25–89. The second watch (51) falls between our 11 p.m. and midnight; Plataea had been destroyed by the Persians (8.50), but foundations would have remained. Thucydides 1.20 denies that there was a ‘company from Pitana’, implicitly attacking H’s accuracy in 9.53. H had been in Pitana (3.55), and perhaps here he is reflecting an earlier organization of the Spartan army than the one Thucydides knew, or perhaps he heard that Amompharetus was from Pitana and incorrectly assumed that Amompharetus’ command was a local one. The detail about the rock/voting pebble (55) is worth noting, since it is not Spartans but Athenians who vote by casting small stones or potsherds into urns, and an Athenian observer seems to be part of the scene as H describes it.
9.58–75 The battle of Plataea. Mardonius gloats prematurely to the Aleuadae (cf. n. 9.1–8), and crosses the Asopus after the Greeks, who he thinks are fleeing (59; cf. the disorder of the Persian forces at Salamis, 8.86). Even among the probably tendentious and confused reports that go into the battle account that follows, it is possible to discern both intelligence and skill behind Pausanias’ actions (ch. 69 must be read in the light of the fact that Megarians were not friendly to Athens in the 440s and 430s BCE when H was writing). There may well have been, as at Thermopylae, a feigned retreat and counterattack (cf. Plato, Laches 191b–c); there was certainly great discipline behind the delay in sounding the call for battle until Pausanias deemed the moment suitable (61–2). For the cavalry a thousand strong around Mardonius (63) and for the oracle requiring compensation for the death of King Leonidas (64), cf. 8.113–14. Leonidas’ lineage is given in 7.204 and is referred to here because it is the same as that of his nephew Pausanias.
Notice that in ch. 65 H again reluctantly comments on religious matters (n. 3.38); cf. 9.101 for the coincidence that there was also a sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter at Mycale. This is the first we hear of the burning of the temple at Eleusis; cf. 9.13 for the burning of Athens.
For Artabazus’ retreat, family, and career, see n. 8.126–9. The prosperity of his later career shows that Xerxes did not hold him responsible for failing to support Mardonius at Plataea. The Thebans have a long-standing traditional hostility towards the Athenians that makes them enthusiastic fighters here (67–8; cf. 5.74, 77, 6.108).
The figures for the dead, both Greek and Persian, are particularly improbable (70); clearly more Greeks fell and fewer from the Persian ranks. Of the noteworthy Greek combatants, we have already met Aristodamus the Spartiate (71; 7.229) and Sophanes the Athenian (73–5; 6.92); here H repeats information mentioned in 6.92. Macan (p. 753) thinks that this is one sign among a number of others that Books 7 to 9 were composed before the other books of the Histories, although in a work involving this much detail and probably delivered orally over a number of years, it is extremely dangerous to draw inferences from what is or is not given an explicit cross-reference. H refers to Sophanes’ deme, Decelea, as spared by the Lacedaemonian invasions of Attica in the first years of the Peloponnesian War; almost certainly H would have mentioned the capture of Decelea by King Agis in 413 BCE if he had known about it at the time of writing (Thucydides 6.91, 7.19, 27). The battle at which Sophanes dies, probably c.465, is in the Thraceward region, near where the Athenians will later found Amphipolis. (For Helen of Troy (73) and her brothers the Tyndaridae (also known as the Dioscuri), cf. nn. 4.145–6, 5.75. Her brothers found and brought her back to Sparta, after Theseus had abducted her to Athens when she was very young. As heroes, their cult figures accompanied the Lacedaemonian army when it campaigned abroad.)
9.76–85 Aftermath of Plataea on the Greek side. The Coan concubine (76) has been in the entourage of Pharandates, a nephew of Darius and the brother of that Sataspes who attempted the circumnavigation of Africa (n. 4.37–45). She flatters Pausanias by calling him king, not regent. Several episodes have indicated what the Greeks might expect for their women if they lose this war—the aftermath of the Ionian revolt (6.32), the behaviour of Artayctes the satrap of Sestus (7.33), and the treatment of the inhabitants of central Greece (8.33), among others. The return of this one woman to her family on Cos is the first tangible sign of what Greece has gained by the victory at Plataea. (Cos is an island just off the coast of Halicarnassus, so H might have known the story from local report of it.)
Repeatedly in his account of the aftermath of the battle H emphasizes the moderation and good sense of the victorious general Pausanias. He alludes earlier (5.32) to the charges of Medism and worse that were made against Pausanias in the early 470s BCE, but also points out how conveniently such charges fit the Athenians’ plans for Ionia (8.3; cf. n. 9.9–11). Two ephors or elected magistrates later regularly accompanied the Spartan king on campaigns away from home (Xenophon, Spartan Constitution 13.5); it is not clear if their presence here (76) is part of the same practice. The theme of hardy simplicity and its contrast with luxury occurs here as a point of contrast between Greeks and Persians, but it runs throughout the Histories; cf. 1.155, 7.102, 9.122, and nn. 1.71 and 3.21.
The bronze serpent-column (81) was taken by the emperor Constantine to Constantinople (Istanbul) and placed in the hippodrome, CAH iv. 616–17 and 618 fig. 51. One can still read incised on its coils the names of thirty-one Greek cities that fought at Plataea (M-L 27; Fornara, 59). Thucydides (1.132) tells us that Pausanias had an ambiguously provocative epigram put somewhere on the original monument (consisting of base, serpent-column, and a tripod of solid gold resting on top of the column): ‘Pausanias, Captain-general of the Hellenes, dedicated this monument to Phoebus when he destroyed the army of the Medes.’ The couplet was erased at some point afterwards and replaced, Thucydides says, by the names of all the cities making the dedication.
A certain amount of anti-Aeginetan bias is found throughout this passage: Lampon (78) is an Aeginetan who thinks to flatter Pausanias; the wealth of Aegina is attributed solely to their cheating Lacedaemonian helots of the true value of the gold spoils gathered after the battle (80; cf. 2.178, 4.152, 7.142); they have an empty tomb put up ten years after the battle for show (85). For the huge skeleton of ch. 83, cf. n. 7.105–27.
9.86–8 For Timagenidas, cf. the end of n. 9.33–40, and for Attaginus, cf. 9.16. Thucydides 3.62 has a Theban speaker describe the Theban government in this period as a ‘rule of a few men’. Plutarch (Life of Aristides 21) suggests that a standing Greek army of 10,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry, and 100 ships was proposed by Aristides and voted on by the other Greek states. Whatever plans were made for a continued Greek league, however, were quickly abandoned in the political, economic, and social complexities of the immediate post-war period (CAH v. 27–33, 96–120). The Athenians set up their own Delian League instead, which soon became, at least in the eyes of the other Greeks, an Athenian empire (CAH v. 34–61).
9.89 For Artabazus among the Phocians, fleeing Plataea, cf. 9.66. For Artabazus’ later very successful career, cf. n. 8.126–9. Demosthenes, Against Aristocrates 23.200, claimed that the Macedonians caused much trouble to Artabazus on his retreat.
9.90–7 The focus here shifts to the Greek fleet in Ionia, taking up the narrative thread from 8.132, where an embassy from Chios had already asked for help from the Greeks. The narrative structure itself now portrays the war as virtually won, since H no longer presents Greek action only as a response to Persian aggression. Rather, the initial narrative focus in ch. 90 is on the Greeks themselves, and their desire to rid Ionia of the Persian presence. The name Hegesistratus (91) means ‘leader of the army’. The scene of persuasion again plays on the contrast between Spartan taciturnity and Ionian verbosity (cf. n. 1.152); H seems to find this topic amusing, since he has included it a number of times in the Histories. Another Spartan, King Cleomenes, also makes a pun on names (6.50).
Xerxes had made Theomestor despot of Samos for his performance at Salamis (8.85); the generous reward of competent and loyal non-Persian subjects was certainly one important way Persia built and controlled its empire (cf. nn. 1.134, 1.156).
In chs. 93–5 H adds a pendant on the background of the Greek seer at Mycale, just as he has done for the seers at Plataea (9.33–7). Apollonia (94) is a Corinthian colony in Illyria, in the north-western part of Greece. The ambivalences of this story (the bitter-sweet gift of the gods, the trick that lets Euenius’ countrymen off the hook, the possibility that Deïphonus is not Euenius’ son at all) reflect H’s refusal at the end of the Histories to sing a simple paean of praise to Greek unity or even virtue.
Mycale (96) is a mountainous promontory on the mainland opposite Samos, between Ephesus and Miletus. One would like to know whether the Phoenicians are sent away because they are now deemed ineffective in fighting Greeks at sea (8.90, 100), or because the Persian leadership is pessimistic about fighting in Ionia with untrustworthy Greeks in their force, and wants to spare the best part of their fleet for later. H finds time to comment on Tigranes’ looks (96) as part of his emphasis on firsts and bests (cf. n. 1.214), and his (very Greek) interest in good-looking people (cf. 3.20, 114, 5.47, 6.61, 7.180, 187, 9.25, 72).
9.97–101 The temple of the Holy Ones/Reverend Goddesses was probably dedicated to Demeter and Persephone. H comments on the coincidence that the battles of Plataea and of Mycale are both fought at sanctuaries of Demeter of Eleusis (101). Cf. 8.22 for the plot of Themistocles that Leotychidas imitates here. Many modern readers are sceptical of the rumour of victory at Plataea circulating at Mycale, but Mardonius had expected to signal his success at Athens to the king by means of relay beacons of fire (9.3), and it would not be implausible if the Greeks too had signals of some sort, CAH iv. 614.
9.102–5 The Athenian contingent has rejoined the Greek fleet by now (cf. the end of n. 8.130–2). The battle is a land one on a narrow strip of beaches and plain, around and in a hastily built Persian stockade (96). The Persian force is most improbably set at sixty thousand (96) but no number is given for the opposing Greeks, presumably because H did not know one. Both Samians and Milesians begin to fight on the Greek side, in the ‘second revolt of Ionia’ (103–4; cf. 5.30). The Athenians are eager to finish off the fight before the Lacedaemonians arrive (102), a sign of some competitiveness in the Greek camp and perhaps also of what lies ahead for Ionia (8.3, 9.106, 114). Hermolycus the Athenian (105), the best fighter at Mycale, practises the pancration, a mixture of boxing and wrestling; the war in which he later dies was fought in southern Euboea, probablyc.472, BCE (Thucydides 1.98; CAH v. 42, 45–6). For the battle of Mycale itself, see CAH iv. 613–15; Burn, 547–52. For H’s habit of marking importance by enumeration, see nn. 1.92, 3.56, 5.76.
9.106–7 The Lacedaemonians are probably following their usual policy of not wanting to be over-extended, arguing that the Ionians should move to mainland Greece (nn. 1.152, 3.148; cf. 9.8–9 for Spartan insularity). Later the Athenians will use their defence of Ionia and their connection with Ionians as their colonists as justification for their fifth-century empire. Breaking the Persian control of the Hellespont and the Thraceward regions is crucial for re-establishing Greek trade northwards and with the Black Sea region; the grain trade is particularly important for Athens with its large population (n. 7.145–7).
While the Greeks argue over their future course of action, the Persian high command falls to bickering (107); for the insult, cf. the end of n. 9.19–24. H says that Xenagoras of Halicarnassus becomes the ruler of Cilicia, but according to Xenophon (Education of Cyrus 7.4.2, cf. CAH iv. 226–7), Cilicia remains under the rule of a local Cilician prince until c.400 BCE. However, H could be expected to know of a Halicarnassian who had risen as far as Xenagoras apparently has. Thematically, the episode prepares us for the gruesome family drama that follows.
9.108–13 In the mean time Xerxes is imposing upon his brother Masistius’ female relatives in Sardis. There are thematic links between this episode and the first major story in the Histories, that of Gyges and Candaules’ wife (1.8–13). In each case, the ruler involved forgets the power an angry wife can wield, and forgets to keep his eye on the real business at hand. Candaules loses his rule and his life; Xerxes is not paying attention to events in Greece but to the attempted seduction of his own sister-in-law and daughter-in-law, and ends up destroying his brother’s family. (Amestris’ burial alive of fourteen Persian children has already been described in 7.114, although there it is described as a Persian custom rather than as private pathology.) Darius, Xerxes’ eldest son, will be put to death by his brother Artaxerxes after Xerxes’ own assassination in 465 BCE(Diodorus 11.69); no doubt H expects his readers to recognize that the palace intrigue of 479 narrated here is also a tacit allusion to later events in the Persian royal family. It is a crushing last picture of Xerxes himself, and a final restatement of the Persian tendency to subsume all power—personal, familial, governmental—under the fallible control of one man (cf. 7.8). For H’s connection of despotism with the transgression of normal sexual boundaries, cf. Otanes’ judgement of monarchy in 3.80, and Lateiner, 138–9.
9.114–22 Xerxes built his bridge to end very near Sestus (7.33–4; see Lateiner (p. 128) on the theme of the Persian violation of natural boundaries, and how the final restatement of this theme here provides closure for the Histories). Sestus is on the Greek side of the Hellespont and of strategic importance to Athens in securing the grain supply from the Euxine (Black) Sea (cf. 7.147 and Miltiades’ domination of the Chersonese, 6.34ff.). Cardia (115) is also on the Chersonese. Protesilaus (116) was the first Greek to fall at Troy, in the Trojan War (Iliad 2.701–2); he became a hero and his sanctuary was at Elaeus, at the tip of the Chersonese (n. 7.33–6). Presumably Artayctes was one of the governors of the new Persian province of ‘Skudra’ (Thrace and Macedonia), ruling from a well-fortified Sestus (CAH iv. 246–9). Xanthippus, the father of Pericles and connection by marriage of the Alcmaeonidae, is the general in charge of the Athenian forces at Sestus (cf. the middle of n. 6.121–4). He probably died within a few years of this campaign, since we find Pericles himself the choregus, or producer, for Aeschylus’ Persians in Athens in 472 BCE.
Vengeance for the violation of Protesilaus’ sanctuary provides temporal as well as geographical closure for the Persian Wars. Xerxes’ bridges are broken, his abusive governor punished, and with Protesilaus the reader is also reminded of one legendary beginning of military hostilities between Asia and Greece, at Troy, referred to at the beginning of H’s Histories (1.4). The ironies in the episode of Artayctes’ punishment are multiple. Artayctes himself attempts to point a moral, learn from his mistakes, and save his life, but his (unconvincing, even slightly comical) exegesis is rebuffed by Xanthippus, who intends to do as the Elaeusians want instead (120), and so crucifies Artayctes overlooking the spot where Xerxes’ army had bridged the strait. As Artayctes is dying the Athenians stone his son to death before his eyes. Xanthippus and the Athenians behave very differently from Pausanias after the battle of Plataea (9.76, 79); there is no magnanimity or moderation here. One final irony of history is not noted by H, presumably because it had not yet happened as he was finishing the Histories: Aegospotami, where Artayctes is captured fleeing Sestus, is also the scene of the final battle of the Peloponnesian War and Athenian defeat in 404 BCE (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.1.21–30).
9.122 A final pendant, reverting to the time of Cyrus the Great (557–530 BCE) and some good advice Cyrus is said to have given the Persians; it is a very different philosophy from the one Cyrus espouses in 1.125–6. In their prosecution of the war in Greece, the Persians have clearly abandoned the way of life encouraged here by Cyrus (9.82). For the notion that character is conditioned by the environment, cf. the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places 24. For the association of poverty with political and military success, cf. 1.71, 7.102, 8.26, and 9.82. H’s massive work ends by recalling the past greatness of Persia, but does so in a way that encourages us, his readers, to decide what meaning the episode has for the present or the future, in particular, the future of Athens’ fifth-century empire. At any rate, it is clear once more that for H change is in the order of things. Because small becomes big and big small, and ‘knowing that human happiness never remains long in the same place’ (1.5), he has given us a final cautionary tale for our contemplation and a generous measure of both big and small in his Histories.