#Persian Wars

[mapsontheweb]

The Persian Wars, 5th century BC.

by LegendesCarto

[jeannereames]

What should we make of Alexander I and Perdiccas II both having long 40+ years long reigns, only for all of their successors having substantially shorter ones? And, if you are in the mood, who do you think was the better ruler between the two?

First, I thought I’d mention one of the cool things to come out of the recent ATG conference is a plan to produce an edited collection: Alexander I and the Making of Macedon. It’ll be a while, but if I can get us a publisher, I’ve got the contributors.

Also of note, Sabine Müller and Johannes Heinrichs are producing a monograph on Alexander I in English. She has a great one on Perdikkas but it’s in German, so I was very happy to hear this.

Finally, I've got a number of racked-up Asks. This answer will answer about three of them. I'll link it to the other questions. :-)

To the questions: it’s really hard to compare Alexander I and Perdikkas II simply because they were dealing with very different circumstances. Alexander I had Persian assistance holding the throne, while Perdikkas was tossed off his throne at least once.

The biggest difficulty is a source problem. ALL our info about these guys (outside archaeology) comes from Greeks, who were chiefly interested in them only when they intersected with the southern Greek world. There’s a fair bit about Alex I’s internal politicking that we just don’t know. What we call “Lower Macedon” probably only goes back a couple generations, despite the mythical king list. We find a MARKED change in burial practices c. 570 BCE, which is before Persians were mucking around up there. This suggests a change—or more likely consolidation—in the lowland Macedonian ruling elite, both west and a bit east of the Axios River.

If Alexander I took over c. 500-495 (coin above), and his father Amyntas (about whom we know nothing but a name) ruled for 20/30-ish years before, then Alexander’ grandfather (Alketas) or great-grandfather (Airopos) would have consolidated the area around Aigai. Yet ALL names before Amyntas I are essentially fictional. Certainly the “founder’s” name changed across time. It’s Perdikkas when we first hear of it in Herodotos, but may have shifted to Archelaos later (see Euripides’s play of that name). Later yet (under Philip), it seems to have become Karanos. If Bill Greenwalt’s theories are right. This is not a real person in any historical sense.

The problem with dating Alexander I is that we neither know for sure when he took the throne nor when he died. It was convenient for Alexander to blame his father for any concessions to the Persians, but he—not Amyntas—married his sister Gygaia to a Persian (Bubares, son of Magabazus and distantly royal).* More likely he was already on the throne in the 490s but may have been quite young. He seems to have used the Persian presence to further consolidate the (new) Macedonian kingdom—against Paionians and others—adding territory as far away as Amphipolis, at least temporarily, and thus, getting hold of both silver and gold mines to mint coins. The Echedoros River also held gold. All the gold in pre-Alexander Macedonia was pacer mining (panning), not from the gold mines of Mt. Pangaion. Yet gold, while present in the rivers, only became important in graves in Macedonia c. 570…it’s part of that startling shift in burials that we see.

We also don’t know exactly when Alexander I died and Perdikkas took over. He was still king at the end of the Persian Wars in 479/78, but dead by 450. His death may have been closer to 460, or even earlier. So his reign was probably more like 30-35 years. Perdikkas perhaps reigned longest of all—one reason he’s exceptional. I wonder if the Peloponnesian War itself may have contributed to his success: for all he had his challengers, if Macedon wanted to survive as an independent political entity, they needed to rally around him.

Yet he faced his share of opposition from other Argeads as well as the very powerful Upper Macedonian kingdoms of Lynkestis (Lynkis) and Elimeia, not to mention predatory Illyrians. That’s why Perdikkas sought an alliance with Brasidas of Sparta, but apparently couldn’t even control his own troops enough to keep them from deserting when facing Illyrians. That earned Brasidas’s wrath. As a result, Perdikkas (coin below) had to make nice with Athens.

That’s just one example of Perdikkas’s deal-making during the war. He had quite a job of diplomatic shuffling—no doubt learned from Daddy Alexander. Neither had a kingdom anywhere near strong enough to fend off Persia, or Athens and Sparta later. The fact Perdikkas didn’t end up a client king to either Sparta or Athens is a testament to his diplomatic skill.

Perdikkas’s eldest son Archelaos wasn’t the “illegitimate” son of a slave but of a lesser wife, which is why the younger (unnamed) son initially inherited. Archelaos quickly did away with him (plus an uncle and cousin), then proceeded to continue the modernizing work of his father and grandfather. Until he got run through in a hunting “accident.” After that, the kingdom dissolved into a mess.

The problem of a fast turn-over of rule owed to their inheritance system: any Argead had a claim on the throne. Kings also practiced royal polygamy, although two wives (at most three) seems to have been typical until Philip II. In some ways, it worked well, as it produced multiple heirs from which a strong king could emerge (by surviving).

That was also its problem: no clear method of succession, even if the sons of higher-status mothers apparently had a leg-up. Perdikkas himself was not Alexander’s eldest son. He had two older brothers and two younger ones. Yet either his mother was the most prominent or he showed the most promise (or both). Despite Archelaos’s age and apparent ability, he was initially passed over, although Plato (who tells the story) means to paint Archelaos poorly. That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill competing Argeads to take the throne. So had his father, and probably grandfather too (we just don’t hear about it).

Yet Archelaos’s unexpected death led to a continuing crisis until Amyntas III, Phil’s dad, took and kept the throne. He came from a collateral Argead line descended from Alexander I’s youngest son. The other lines killed each other off. For all Amyntas wasn’t a terribly prepossessing king, he managed not to die. But he, too, was run off his throne at least once, maybe twice. When he did die, it was in his bed of old age—not a common thing for Macedonian kings. His reign was the first tolerably long one after Archelaos, over 20 years.

By the time Philip came to the throne, there weren’t many Argeads left thanks to the catch-as-catch-can method of succession: Philip’s two older brothers were dead and all three of his half-brothers. It was down to just him and his brother Perdikkas III’s infant son: Amyntas.

This is the inevitable problem when lacking a clear succession. Yet a clear succession can create its own problems with incompetent heirs, who don’t always recognize they’re incompetent. The free-for-all gave a better shot at a strong king—ostensibly why it developed—but it also meant the kingdom ran out of “spares” after a couple generations. They went from more Argeads than you could shake a stick at following Alexander I’s death, down to just three at Philip’s death, and two at Alexander’s death** in a matter of 5-6 generations. Within those 5-6 generations, 12-14 kings reigned! And we have no idea how many brothers/cousins/uncles Alexander I had, and perhaps killed, before he became king. We hear only about the one sister.

Stability was not a hallmark of the Argead dynasty.

——

* The story of Alexander killing Persian emissaries is much later fictional propaganda. Didn’t happen.

* Alexander’s son Herakles by Barsine might count as a third, but the army doesn’t seem to have considered him viable for whatever reason.

[museofpangolins]

Florence Welch once said "hubris is a bitch" and I, Xerxes the great, really felt that

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Xerxes' Homer

Johannes Haubold "Xerxes' Homer" in Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millenium, Oxford University Press 2007.

"Abstract

This chapter argues that the reception of epic in wartime and post-war Greece was affected by an extended dialogue between both cultures. The Persian leadership used Homeric epic, especially the Iliad, in order to justify imperial expansion to the Greeks in their own cultural terms, just as they appropriated Babylonian and Judaic visions of history in order to validate their expansion elsewhere. Drawing on the Herodotean evidence for the Persians' use of Greek oracle-mongers, and especially his account of Xerxes' visit to Troy, which presented the king as the champion of Troy, seeking revenge for its downfall, the chapter suggests that Xerxes' Iliad consisted of a set of wholly new glosses on familiar topics, pro-Persian interpretations, and selective enactments."

According to the review of this chapter of the volume by Johanna Akujärvi (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007.12.36/ ):

"Herodotus’ Histories famously begins with an account of how learned Persians attributed the origins of the conflict between Greeks and Persians to a series of abductions of women starting with the Phoenicians taking Io and culminating with the Trojans seizing Helen which the Greeks avenged by capturing and destroying Troy (1.1-1.5). Are this and similar passages merely a “projection of Greek thinking on to non-Greeks” (p. 50) as is commonly assumed, or are such passages in the Histories a reflection of the actual existence of a Persian take on the Trojan War, and perhaps even a particular Persian interpretation of the Homeric epics? In the chapter “Xerxes’ Homer” Johannes Haubold argues — quite plausibly, with parallels to Persian rewriting of Babylonian and Judaic traditions — for the latter alternative, though one should keep in mind that the more he ventures into particulars the more uncertain the argument gets (as Haubold himself indicates). Haubold demonstrates that the Persians and their Greek expert advisors had every reason to attempt to control the shape and meaning of important local texts, so that the conflict could be explained and justified in terms familiar to the Greeks. Haubold reconstructs the Persian narrative of the conflict along these lines: “a Greek from the mainland (Peleus) rapes the goddess Thetis, setting in motion the fateful events that eventually lead to the clash between Achaeans and Trojans. In a second step, a Greek army sets out from the mainland, sacks an imperial city (Troy), and offends the local deity, Athena, in the process.” (p. 56)1 Both the deity and the unjustly sacked city of Troy finally find their champion in Xerxes. Further, Haubold argues that the Iliad — since no Ionians are mentioned among the Achaean contingents in Iliad 2 and what is more, Miletus is mentioned as fighting with the Trojans — may have been used to strengthen Ionian loyalty and as an argument for the idea of a Panasian army in a campaign against the Greeks in Europe. The Greek reaction, a creation of “Homer the Greek patriot” (p. 61) can most notably be observed in the re-enactment of the heroic epic tradition in Attic tragedy, and other traditions, such as the Athenian epitaphioi logoi in which the Trojan War is linked with the Persian Wars in a struggle of ‘us against them’.

[okaydrawboy]

Athenian Hoplite in the Persian Wars, twitter was curious about the cloth on the Aspis, so I will share that info here. The cloth is called an apron, sometimes curtain/skirt, and also referenced as "parablemata" it made an appearance in art and archeology around the time of the Persian Wars and fell out of use shortly after, suggested as an arrow catcher/deflector but I haven't finished reading up on it's full use.

[greecedlightningpod]

300: The Battle of Thermopylae and the Persian Wars

Sara, Luke, and Sam take their first dive into ancient history, rather than myth, this week with the 2007 violent, machismo-soaked 300! Learn all about the Persian Wars and Spartan life while enjoying topics of discussion such as: jock rock as a movie, fun ancient instruments, and the Greeks' aversion to pants

[xplore-the-unknwn]

My roman empire is that people should make more big budgeted musicals about the ancient civilizations. We can have an Epic of Gilgamesh musical, the Trojan War, and any ancient story that was passed down through song for generations.

I wanna hear our ancestors come alive again and hear the beautiful words and stories that they’ve so passionately sang and written about-for us not to forget about them.

[staring-at-my-keyboard]

When you wind up putting a bunch of research into a random side character you created for comedy reasons because you need to justify why he's in London in the first place

[trustymikh]

Queen give us more of your Rocket admins agenda I love to see it

oh boy, I do have a lot to say regarding these four, so here are a few hcs

Petrel and Proton started off as an agent duo similar to Jesse and James before being promoted to admins

Every day Petrel wakes up and chooses to be as annoying to other executives as possible

Do not mess with Proton, he is not above bypassing a pokemon battle to throw fists directly

Archer is unreasonably jealous of Giovanni’s Persian. Hates that thing (the feeling is mutual)

[boyrobott]

best thing about the pluto anime is that my friend and i now refer to ptsd exclusively as "persian war syndrome"

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Clay bulla with impression of a stamp seal depicting the Persian king spearing a Greek hoplite.

Place of origin: Near Eastern, Iranian

Culture: Persian

Period: Achaemenid

Date: 550–331 B.C.

Medium: Clay

[jeannereames]

Hello Dr. Reames! Why do you think Alexander never set his sights on the conquest of Sicily - a rich island with longstanding Greek presence? Is it because when he came to the throne the plan to invade Persia was already on its way? I understand that Rome was a backwater town at this point and that Persia was the bigger prize, but Sicily always remained rich and hotly disputed

Inertia had a lot to do with Alexander’s choice, plus SIZE of the conquest, plus a plausible reason for the attack. I’m going to address these backwards.

Sicily, at least in the east, was—as you note—Greek, it’s largest city, Syracuse, Corinth’s most famous (and successful) colony. If conquest was still a valid reason for war in his world, increasingly parameters were put on it. We may understand these as window dressing concealing motives often economic (“follow the money,” ancient version). Yet by the 4th century, attacks on “fellow Greek” city-states needed some sort of rationale beyond naked ambition—often a current or historical beef.

Hence, Philip’s reason for attacking Persia (all about the money) was vengeance for the Greco-Persian Wars of over a century prior.

Another example, with Sicily in particular: Athens attacked Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War because she wanted Sicilian timber (for naval construction), after Brasidas of Sparta had convinced Perdikkas II of Macedon to cut off Macedonian timber—which had been Athens’ supply since the Greco-Persian Wars. Yet Athens justified the attack because Syracuse was a daughter-city of Corinth and Corinth was a member of the Peloponnesian league. Not to mention the war began due to Athenian-Corinthian aggression. So, by extension, Syracuse was tagged as an enemy of the Delian League (e.g., Athens’ not-so-covert empire), and ripe for hostilities.

Alexander didn’t have a ready-made excuse to attack Sicily. He probably could have found one, if he’d really wanted to, but this brings me to my second point.

Sicily is just not that big. And if some of her cities were wealthy enough, they didn’t begin to compare to Persia. When it comes to Alexander, “Think small” was never his modus operandi. LOL. Sicily would have been regarded like the Greek city-states of Anatolia (Asia Minor): a worthy acquisition…on the way to Bigger and Better. Yet Sicily lay west…not on the way to Bigger and Better. Just then. (more below)

Last, and the real reason: simple inertia.

Persia was the campaign his father had planned for probably a decade, and had fought south Greece to line up support for, culminating in the Battle of Chaironeia and the League of Corinth. Alexander did have to spend his first two years re-pacifying the Thracian and Illyrian north, not to mention re-fight Thebes to keep the south quiet … but PERSIA was what he’d been hearing about for years—what all Philip’s alliances were formed to pounce on.

To suddenly change and set his sights west on Sicily wouldn’t have made much sense, not to mention it would have alienated some of the city-states he needed (particularly his naval allies). He couldn’t have sold it as a “Panhellenic” crusade in revenge for the Greco-Persian War.

So, basically, I doubt it would ever have occurred to Alexander to sail west to attack Sicily when Persia was the bigger—and long planned upon—prize.

Now, let me add that—if academic speculation is correct and Alexander was setting up a campaign against Carthage near the end of his life—it’s quite likely that Sicily, and especially Syracuse, would have figured into that…but as allies, just as later with Rome. Carthage had long held the western part of Sicily, and struggled with the Greeks in the east for control of the whole. Conflicts with Carthage are why Syracuse invited in Rome for what became the First Punic War.

By the end of his life, and after Agis’s Revolt was crushed, Alexander was such a power, the Greek city-states had mostly given up opposing him. They contented themselves with snarky remarks and symbolic gestures—until after ATG’s death, when they rose up to try and oppose Antipatros in the Lamian War…which failed.

Yet if we could suppose Alexander had recovered from his last illness and did attack Carthage, Syracuse (et al.) would have been all over that. They’d have stood to benefit handsomely in territorial acquisitions. And at that point in time, Alexander probably was the only power that could have beaten Carthage on the water.

Hope this helps to explain why Alexander’s focus was always Persia.

A last thing: the nature of the Greek landscape, with the formidable Pindus Mountains down the center, had divided the peninsula east and west for centuries. The city-states on the east fronted the Aegean Sea, while those on the west fronted the Corinthian and Adriatic Seas. This affected both colonization and conquest ambitions. So eastern city-states tended to look east and western (including the Peloponnesos) tended to look west.

Macedon looked east. By contrast, Epiros looked west. That’s why Alexander of Epiros went to Italy while his nephew went to Persia. Never underestimate the impact of simple geography on history in the ancient world.

[museofpangolins]

the time has come to settle this argument once and for all

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Dreams in Homer and Herodotus

"Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to compare the dreams of Xerxes and Artabanus from Herodotus' Histories VII to the dream of Agamemnon in Iliad II. The structural similarities between the dream sequences are established through a consideration of the Homeric dream type scene, which is replicated in the dreams of Histories VII. A specific comparison between Xerxes' and Agamemnon's dreams is established through an analysis of the deceptive nature of both dreams. Further analogies are considered through an investigation into similarities evident in the characterization of Agamemnon and Xerxes with respect to the concept of hybris, which is prevalent in council scenes that precede the dreams. This paper demonstrates that the opening council and dream scenes in Histories VII evoke the opening books of the Iliad, and effects the reading of the latter books of Herodotus' text. The prevalence of epic resonance here and elsewhere in the Histories VII-IX illustrates the degree to which Herodotus' rendering of the Second Persian War was influenced by Homer. Moreover, the similarities of these dream episodes serve to define Xerxes' characterization as a king possessed by hybris and plagued by delusion."

Andrew Fulham, BA From the Gates of Ivory: the Dreams of Agamemnon, Xerxes and Artabanus in Homer and Herodotus, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Classics, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, 2014.

The whole paper can be found on the link given above.

Andrew Fulham, Brock University

This is a very interesting paper. I believe of course that obviously Homer's influence on Herodotus is huge. On the other hand, we should not forget that Herodotus is not just a "Homer in prose", because with Herodotus we have the foundation of a new discipline, historiography, a development with very important intellectual consequences. Moreover, and more specifically concerning Xerxes' and Artabanus' dreams and their role in Xerxes' decision for the invasion of Greece, it is probable that these dreams are not just reworkings by Herodotus of a Homeric theme (more about this in the next post of mine).

[whimsimarion]

Themistocles before he deflected to Persia vs after...

So yeah, basically one of the most prominent Greek general from the Greco-persian wars was accused of being a traitor (till this day it's unclear if the accusations were accurate or not) and deflected to Persia to save his ass. He also became friends with the Persian King and a ruler in one of his satrap.

I imagine that the food must have been amazing in Persia.