Major
Greece in its world
Let’s start with an important representation of Greek and Persian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurymedon_vase#/media/File:Eurymedon_vase_B_side.jpg
What does this indicate about how the Greeks viewed the Persians?
We do know how ordinary Persians dressed because of a mummy preserved in salt:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZeqXDN
They dress quite differently from the Greeks largely because they were originally nomadic herders. Hence they wore trousers.
The Greeks thought that trousers were effeminate.
The Persians are related to the peoples who settled in India. They spoke an Indo-European language.
The development of the Greek polises or city states took place in a world in which ‘civilisations’ had been in existence for about 2,500 years.
What do we mean by civilisation?
Urban concentration of population, political centralisation, developed religion that distinguishes between the ‘up there’ and the ‘down here’, systematic warfare, hierarchy and inequality, monumental architecture, production of a surplus sufficient to support the above.
All of this followed from the development of agriculture that transformed not just food production but the way in which people viewed the world.
Maissels: development of four major agrarian civilisations from about 3,000 BCE. These were Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus valley, China: they all developed in different ways.
Two civilisations are of significance for Greece: Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Egypt
Egypt: unified about 3100 BC along the Nile River.
- Based on irrigation using water from the river.
- Centralised bureaucratic empire run by a divine king, and for a long time largely insulated from the outside world.
- Only with the New Kingdom after 1550 BC did the Egyptians become an aggressive military power that they conquered an empire in Palestine and Syria.
Mesopotamia
Southern Iraq, Sumer, saw the rise of collection of some 35 city states around 2800 BC.
- Based on irrigation from the Euphrates.
- City states based on one particular God or Goddess and his or her temple. Temple collected and redistributed goods.
- Emergence of bureaucracy and writing.
- But also these cities states initially had two assemblies: elders and a popular assembly—both were limited to arms bearing males. War leader or king became increasingly important as cities battled for supremacy.
- Emergence of empire: Sargon of Akkad who asserted his authority over Babylonia from 2334 BC onwards through military means. He pursued a policy of control and centralisation. Although the empire he founded eventually collapsed it set a pattern for subsequent Mesopotamian states.
- New power configuration emerges: rise of the Assyrian Empire: organised, militaristic. 745 to 612 Assyria extended its military dominance over the whole Middle East and sometimes Egypt.
- 642 Assyria was at the height of its power. 30 years later its empire was finished.
- Assyria was a highly militarised empire
http://heavenawaits.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/800px-map_of_assyria1.png
Late 7th century: fall of Assyria to the Persians and the Babylonians. 612: sack of Ninevah.
6th century: fall of Babylonia to the Medes and Persians, and the destruction of Lydia and the submission of the Ionian cities to the Persians.
The Persians were a pastoral people who were able to conquer what might be described as the ‘civilised world’. They resemble later conquerors such as the Arabs and the Turks. They had a strong sense of social solidarity (asabiya) which gave them a considerable advantage over agrarian empires.
We don’t know how many Persians there were but one suspects that they were an elite sitting on top of the empire.
The language of the empire was not Persian but Iranian.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Median_Empire.jpg
http://www.theancientweb.com/images/explore/Persia_Map_Empire.jpg
What had been a multi-state system had become a single empire.
Romm: Persian Empire was a new entity ‘a centralized state on a global scale’. He believes that it constituted a ‘new world order’. The Persians adapted the bureaucratic structures that they found there.
- have a Greek view of this world to the east through Herodotus. Important to recognise that we look at Persia through a Greek perspective and in terms of how the Persians affected the Greeks.
- have Persian inscriptions but no Persian historians. There is another Greek historian who lived in Persia Ctesias. Persian traditions were probably oral.
The great epic of Iran, the Shahnameh written in the 10th century CE includes Alexander but non of the Archaemenids
Herodotus begins Histories by stating that he wants to record the achievements of both the Greek and the Asiatic peoples and to show how the two peoples came into conflict:
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds.
For Asia, with all the various tribes of barbarians that inhabit it, is regarded by the Persians as their own; but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate.
Croesus, son of Alyattes, by birth a Lydian, was lord of all the nations to the west of the river Halys. This stream, which separates Syria from Paphlagonia, runs with a course from south to north, and finally falls into the Euxine. So far as our knowledge goes, he was the first of the barbarians who had dealings with the Greeks, forcing some of them to become his tributaries, and entering into alliance with others. He conquered the Aeolians, Ionians, and Dorians of Asia, and made a treaty with the Lacedaemonians. Up to that time all Greeks had been free. For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.
http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.1.i.html
This account puts the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians at the centre of history, which it was for the Greeks but not for the Persians. For the Persians it was more to do with maintaining their borders and being recognised as overlords.
- is worth noting that the various Greek groups only really began to think of themselves as Hellenes in the 6th century.
- is worth noting that Herodotus makes a clear distinction between Europe and ‘Asia’ but the word ‘race’ above is misleading. The Greek word is ethnos which means people.
Ionian Greeks were part of the wider world. Attached to Anatolian coastline they both privileged in their access to Asia and ultimately bound up in the imperial expansions of the period.
http://fineartfixer.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/lydia-map.png
Croesus allies himself with Egypt and Babylonia as well as Sparta and attacks Persia and is defeated. Note that at this stage Babylonia and Egypt are still independent. Babylonia falls to Cyrus in 539 BCE and then Egypt is conquered by Cambyses in 525 BCE.
Note how Herodotus states that Cambyses then wanted to conquer Carthage and Ethiopia but could not conquer Carthage because the Phoenicians would not sail there and failed in his attempt to conquer Ethiopia.
Hence Persia has completed a massive expansion by 520 BCE. It has also expanded in the East into India. The rich centre of the Empire is Babylonia.
The population of this empire was between 15 and 35 million. Some features:
- It made use of some Assyrian techniques in moving individuals and peoples around. It was based on military dominance.
- It was heterogeneous. From Egypt to Ionia to Bactria and India.
- It did not attempt to impose Persian customs, Gods or practices on its subject people. The common language of the empire was Aramaic.
- Persians were in control. Foreigners were rarely given major positions of command.
- Local customs and religions were largely left untouched and simply made part of the system of dominance. This was not necessarily because the Persians were ‘tolerant’. That is to be anachronistic.
- To become part of the empire was probably not all that burdensome.
Persian Empire should not be seen in terms of an ‘oriental despotism’ that became ‘decadent’. That would be to engage in stereotypes such as caused such displeasure in when the 300 came out.
As discussed above the Persian empire fits in with many similar empires, including China under the Mongols, the Ottomans, the early Islamic empre.
Persian Sources:
The Persians did not write histories but her rulers did leave some inscriptions behind.
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cyrus-cylinder/cyrus-cylinder-translation/
https://www.livius.org/articles/place/behistun/behistun-3/
It has been noted that the Behistun inscription seems to bear out Herodotus’ view of how Darius came to power although how much of the detail is correct is difficult to know.
Note this strange passage regarding Otanes
III.80: And now when five days were gone, and the hubbub had settled down, the conspirators met together to consult about the situation of affairs. At this meeting speeches were made, to which many of the Hellenes give no credence, but they were made nevertheless. Otanes recommended that the management of public affairs should be entrusted to the whole nation. "To me," he said, "it seems advisable, that we should no longer have a single man to rule over us---the rule of one is neither good nor pleasant. You cannot have forgotten to what lengths Cambyses went in his haughty tyranny, and the haughtiness of the Magi you have yourselves experienced. How indeed is it possible that monarchy should be a well-adjusted thing, when it allows a man to do as he likes without being answerable? Such licence is enough to stir strange and unwonted thoughts in the heart of the worthiest of men. Give a person this power, and straightway his manifold good things puff him up with pride, while envy is so natural to human kind that it cannot but arise in him. But pride and envy together include all wickedness---both of them leading on to deeds of savage violence.
True it is that kings, possessing as they do all that heart can desire, ought to be void of envy; but the contrary is seen in their conduct towards the citizens. They are jealous of the most virtuous among their subjects, and wish their death; while they take delight in the meanest and basest, being ever ready to listen to the tales of slanderers. A king, besides, is beyond all other men inconsistent with himself. Pay him court in moderation, and he is angry because you do not show him more profound respect--- show him profound respect, and he is offended again, because (as he says) you fawn on him. But the worst of all is, that he sets aside the laws of the land, puts men to death without trial, and subjects women to violence. The rule of the many, on the other hand, has, in the first place, the fairest of names, to wit, isonomy; and further it is free from all those outrages which a king is wont to commit. There, places are given by lot, the magistrate is answerable for what he does, and measures rest with the commonalty. I vote, therefore, that we do away with monarchy, and raise the people to power. For the people are all in all."
III.81: Such were the sentiments of Otanes. Megabyzus spoke next, and advised the setting up of an oligarchy: "In all that Otanes has said to persuade you to put down monarchy," he observed, "I fully concur; but his recommendation that we should call the people to power seems to me not the best advice. For there is nothing so void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled
mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what is he about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; but let us choose out from the citizens a certain number of the worthiest, and put the government into their hands. For thus both we ourselves shall be among the governors, and power being entrusted to the best men, it is likely that the best counsels will prevail in the state."
III.82: This was the advice which Megabyzus gave, and after him Darius came forward, and spoke as follows: "All that Megabyzus said against democracy was well said, I think; but about oligarchy he did not speak advisedly; for take these three forms of government---democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy---and let them each be at their best, I maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two. What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state? The counsels of such a man are like himself, and so he governs the mass of the people to their heart's content; while at the same time his measures against evil-doers are kept more secret than in other states. Contrariwise, in oligarchies, where men vie with each other in the service of the commonwealth, fierce enmities are apt to arise between man and man, each wishing to be leader, and to carry his own measures; whence violent quarrels come, which lead to open strife, often ending in bloodshed. Then monarchy is sure to follow; and this too shows how far that rule surpasses all others.
Again, in a democracy, it is impossible but that there will be malpractices: these malpractices, however, do not lead to enmities, but to close friendships, which are formed among those engaged in them, who must hold well together to carry on their villainies. And so things go on until a man stands forth as champion of the commonalty, and puts down the evil-doers. Straightway the author of so great a service is admired by all, and from being admired soon comes to be appointed king; so that here too it is plain that monarchy is the best government. Lastly, to sum up all in a word, whence, I ask, was it that we got the freedom which we enjoy? Did democracy give it us, or oligarchy, or a monarch? As a single man recovered our freedom for us, my sentence is that we keep to the rule of one. Even apart from this, we ought not to change the laws of our forefathers when they work fairly; for to do so is not well."
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/herodotus-persdemo.asp
Herodotus
We don’t know a lot about the biography of Herodotus. He is known as either Herodotus of Halicarnassus, where he was born, or Herodotus of Thurii (in Italy), where he died. He was part Greek and part Carian. He was reputed to have spent time in Athens in the 430s and to have been friendly with the playwright Sophocles. There are a number of interesting issues:
- Were the books on the actual wars written first and the earlier sections added later?
- Do the Histories have a structure that is like a tragedy: the story of how an empire comes to grief? Is it a story of hubris?
- Was this written, in part, as a warning to the Athenians in their pursuit of empire?
- This is as much a history of Persia as it is of Greece. Herodotus is not necessarily anti-Persian nor when describes them as barbarians is the term derogatory. I don’t think that he sees them as inferior and he admires what they have done. However, he sees Xerxes as a problematic leader.
- But, and to emphasise, Herodotus is looking at what for the Greeks is a major ‘clash of civilisations’ but does not have the same significance for the Persians.
The point is that Herodotus sees the crucial event for the Greeks being the foolish attempt by Croesus to challenge the Persians but then he has to go back and explain how the Persians came to be powerful and how they came to dominate the Middle East.
- he seeks to explain the origins of the war so he also explains the customs of the various peoples with who the Persians conquered.
- is worth noting that Herodotus does not go back earlier than the Persians although he says that he is going to write a history of Assyria.
Herodotus on Persia:
There is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs as the Persians. Thus, they have taken the dress of the Medes, considering it superior to their own; and in war they wear the Egyptian breastplate. As soon as they hear of any luxury, they instantly make it their own: and hence, among other novelties, they have learnt unnatural lust from the Greeks. Each of them has several wives, and a still larger number of concubines. Next to prowess in arms, it is regarded as the greatest proof of manly excellence to be the father of many sons. Every year the king sends rich gifts to the man who can show the largest number: for they hold that number is strength. Their sons are carefully instructed from their fifth to their twentieth year, in three things alone---to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth. Until their fifth year they are not allowed to come into the sight of their father, but pass their lives with the women. This is done that, if the child die young, the father may not be afflicted by its loss.
They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies. If a Persian has the leprosy he is not allowed to enter into a city, or to have any dealings with the other Persians; he must, they say, have sinned against the sun. Foreigners attacked by this disorder, are forced to leave the country: even white pigeons are often driven away, as guilty of the same offence. They never defile a river with the secretions of their bodies, nor even wash their hands in one; nor will they allow others to do so, as they have a great reverence for rivers. There is another peculiarity, which the Persians themselves have never noticed, but which has not escaped my observation. Their names, which are expressive of some bodily or mental excellence, all end with the same letter---the letter which is called San by the Dorians, and Sigma by the Ionians. Any one who examines will find that the Persian names, one and all without exception, end with this letter.
Thus much I can declare of the Persians with entire certainty, from my own actual knowledge. There is another custom which is spoken of with reserve, and not openly, concerning their dead. It is said that the body of a male Persian is never buried, until it has been torn either by a dog or a bird of prey. That the Magi have this custom is beyond a doubt, for they practice it without any concealment. The dead bodies are covered with wax, and then buried in the ground.
The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it. Buying and selling in a marketplace is a custom unknown to the Persians, who never make purchases in open marts, and indeed have not in their whole country a single market-place.
http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/reference/herodotus.htm
Herodotus on Egypt
Chapter 16
[1] If, then, our judgment of this is right, the Ionians are in error concerning Egypt; but if their opinion is right, then it is plain that they and the rest of the Greeks cannot reckon truly, when they divide the whole earth into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya; [2] they must add to these a fourth part, the Delta of Egypt, if it belongs neither to Asia nor to Libya; for by their showing the Nile is not the river that separates Asia and Libya; the Nile divides at the apex of this Delta, so that this land must be between Asia and Libya.
Chapter 17
[1] We leave the Ionians' opinion aside, and our own judgment about the matter is this: Egypt is all that country which is inhabited by Egyptians, just as Cilicia and Assyria are the countries inhabited by Cilicians and Assyrians, and we know of no boundary line (rightly so called) below Asia and Libya except the borders of the Egyptians.
Chapter 36
[1] Everywhere else, priests of the gods wear their hair long; in Egypt, they are shaven. For all other men, the rule in mourning for the dead is that those most nearly concerned have their heads shaven; Egyptians are shaven at other times, but after a death they let their hair and beard grow. [2] The Egyptians are the only people who keep their animals with them in the house. Whereas all others live on wheat and barley, it is the greatest disgrace for an Egyptian to live so; they make food from a coarse grain which some call spelt. [3] They knead dough with their feet, and gather mud and dung with their hands. The Egyptians and those who have learned it from them are the only people who practise circumcision. Every man has two garments, every woman only one. [4] The rings and sheets of sails are made fast outside the boat elsewhere, but inside it in Egypt. The Greeks write and calculate from left to right; the Egyptians do the opposite; yet they say that their way of writing is towards the right, and the Greek way towards the left. They employ two kinds of writing; one is called sacred, the other demotic.
Chapter 37
[1] They are religious beyond measure, more than any other people; and the following are among their customs. They drink from cups of bronze, which they clean out daily; this is done not by some but by all. [2] They are especially careful always to wear newly-washed linen. They practise circumcision for cleanliness' sake; for they would rather be clean than more becoming. Their priests shave the whole body every other day, so that no lice or anything else foul may infest them as they attend upon the gods. [3] The priests wear a single linen garment and sandals of papyrus: they may have no other kind of clothing or footwear. Twice a day and twice every night they wash in cold water. Their religious observances are, one may say, innumerable. [4] But also they receive many benefits: they do not consume or spend anything of their own; sacred food is cooked for them, beef and goose are brought in great abundance to each man every day, and wine of grapes is given to them, too. They may not eat fish. [5] The Egyptians sow no beans in their country; if any grow, they will not eat them either raw or cooked; the priests cannot endure even to see them, considering beans an unclean kind of legume. Many (not only one) are dedicated to the service of each god. One of these is the high priest; and when a high priest dies, his son succeeds to his office.
Herodotus on Babylonia:
I.199: The Babylonians have one most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus [Ishtar], and there consort with a stranger. Many of the wealthier sort, who are too proud to mix with the others, drive in covered carriages to the precinct, followed by a goodly train of attendants, and there take their station. But the larger number seat themselves within the holy enclosure with wreaths of string about their heads---and here there is always a great crowd, some coming and others going; lines of cord mark out paths in all directions the women, and the strangers pass along them to make their choice. A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he throws the coin he says these words: "The goddess Mylitta prosper you" (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians.) The silver coin may be of any size; it cannot be refused, for that is forbidden by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The woman goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no one. When she has gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, she returns home, and from that time forth no gift however great will prevail with her. Such of the women as are tall and beautiful are soon released, but others who are ugly have to stay a long time before they can fulfil the law. Some have waited three or four years in the precinct. A custom very much like this is found also in certain parts of the island of Cyprus.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/greek-babylon.html#Herodotus
Some of these accounts sound like travellers’ tales but the point is that Herodotus is presenting his audience with a world that has only really come into existence in the last 100 years. Whether he travelled or relied on the accounts of informants, the point is that such knowledge can be diffused because there is this unified political entity the Persian Empire.
Ideas and people and goods can move from India to the Mediterranean. Thomas McEvilley in The Shape of Ancient thought claims that ‘the early schools of Greek and Indian philosophy seem to have had more or less the same contents, though presented in different styles and combinations, like different branches of a single tradition.’ [143]
Not everyone had the same view of the Persians:
For the Jews Cyrus is great person because he releases them from Babylonian captivity:
Isaiah 45
1 This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+45&version=NIV
Cyrus is an imperfect vessel doing the work of the Lord.
The Persians want to encompass as much of the world as they can. They attempt unsuccessfully to conquer Abyssinia and the Scythians and they would also like to take on Carthage. Herodotus sees this as excessive ambition. But there is a limit to which any agrarian empire can go.
Mainland Greece is very much in their line of fire. They are related to, and are known to help, their fellow Greeks in Asia. They are difficult and fractious. They would benefit by becoming part of the empire and enjoying protection.
But looking at the empire as a whole one can hardly imagine that the Greeks played a major part in Persian thinking. A parallel might be the north-west frontier and British India. Greece is not rich when compared with other parts of the Persian Empire.
They would need to be dealt with at some stage and the catalyst was the Ionian Revolt.