world history

The Failure of the Ionian Revolt

Author(s): Donald Lateiner

Source: Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte , 2nd Qtr., 1982, Bd. 31, H. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1982), pp. 129-160

Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4435798

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ABHANDL UNGEN

THE FAILURE OF THE IONIAN REVOLT

I. State of the Problem; the Ionian League

Herodotus' account of the Ionian Rebellion is unsatisfactory in the following respects: his narrative of facts is skimpy and fragmented;' his attribution of trivial motives to the Ionians, especially to individuals, seems to have been biased by hostile sources, hostile especially to Histiaeus and Aristagoras ;2 the absolute chronology of the revolt is the despair of commen- tators and historians;3 even the relative chronology poses problems;4 the biographical elements are full of the romantic, the fabulous, and the melodramatic ;5 Herodotus' own condemnatory stance towards the lonians as

a group (1.143; 5.28, 69) and towards the revolt as a hopeless gesture (5.35,

97.3, 105.1; 6.3.1) colors the entire narrative;6 and Herodotus' notorious, if exaggerated, weakness in strategic questions, military and political, makes the modern historian's task all the more difficult.7 Can a historically sound and

' G. B. Grundy, The Great Persian War(London 1901) 559. Given the reasonable assumption of Herodotus' extensive dependence on Samian and Athenian sources, he offers remarkably little on the domestic and foreign policy of these two important states in the crucial period 505-483 B.C.

2 G. A. Chapman, "Herodotus and Histiaeus' Role in the Ionian Revolt," Historia 21 (1972) 546-568, esp. 550-553. One might expect Ionian public opinion to be ill disposed towards two men who in the end caused untold suffering (6.3: xax6v To0ooTov), and the oral tradition devalued both the leaders and the cause. For a political history of Ionia in the late archaic age, see George Harris, Ionia Under Persia: 547-477 B.C. (diss., Evanston, Illinois 1971).

3 A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks (London 1962) 198, 206; R. van Compernolle, "La date de la bataille navale de Lade . . .," AC27 (1958) 383-389. I admire the ingenuity with which N. G. L. Hammond dates or redates every event of the rebellion. He does not justify at length major divergences, such as redating Lade to October 495, in his article "Studies in Greek Chronology of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries B.C.," Historia 4 (1955) 386-387.

4 van Compernolle, ibid.

5 R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972) 24. Recall, for instance, the messenger with the shaven head and his "nick of time" arrival at the coast.

6 Burn (above, note 3) 197-198. See Hdt. 1.142-143; 7.102.1; 9.122, a theory of climatic determinism more fully developed in Hippocr. de aere 12. J. A. S. Evans, "Herodotus and the Ionian Revolt," Historia 25 (1976) 31-37; Carl Roebuck, Ionian Trade and Colonization (New York 1959) 2-3. Even when the historian acknowledges Ionian courage, he emphasizes the disastrousness of Ionian particularism (1.169.1): &v6sS tyevovTo &yacoLi 3CEQ Tj; C'MTOf, Exaoto; 4axotLEvoL and the entire chapter.

' How and Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford 1912) I, 45-46.

9

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130 DONALD LATEINER

convincing narrative and explanation be recovered from his narrative? I believe so, if one takes enough care in reading it. Sections V and VI below offer an example of what might be done both to improve our knowledge of Ionian

history and to understand better Herodotus' technique, so different from that of modern historians.

However inconsistent or incredible it may be, Herodotus' account of the revolt is the only one extant,8 and scholars are now reasonably unanimous in thinking that Herodotus' mistakes are just that, not intentional perversions of the truth, propaganda, foolishness, or laziness. In brief, here more than elsewhere, Herodotus may have been uninformed concerning the motives of leaders, and inexperienced in matters that might have enabled him to reason out policy, but he was (as usual) painstakingly careful in gathering information (facts) and in rejecting many foolish tales.9 His almost contemporary evidence can be the basis of a sound historical reconstruction. If this view be rejected, we know almost nothing about this important chapter in Helleno-Persian

relations.

Scholars have recently focused attention on several important questions: the motives and plans of Aristagoras and the mysterious Histiaeus, whom Herodotus debits with producing the revolt;10 the feasibility of the Ionians' undertaking and the appropriateness of the Mainland Greeks' reactions to it;` and the identity and biases of Herodotus' sources, which have led to the shortcomings of his interpretation.'2 This paper directs attention to other less

' Chapman (above, note 2) 546; later (p. 568) he states the essential problem: Herodotus' account, of the motives for the revolt is not borne out by his own narrative. B. Mitchell, "Herodotus and Samos," JHS 95 (1975) 90, notes the inconsistency of the anti-Persian tone of the whole work with the condemnation of the Ionian revolt.

' Grundy (above, note 1) 558-559.

10 Patriot: M. Lang, "Herodotus and the Ionian Revolt," Historia 17 (1968) 35; also de Sanctis (below, note 11) 48, with comparison to Washington and Mazzini; Grundy (above, note 1) 87-91, 96-97, 135-140. Pro-Persian agent: J. A. S. Evans, "Histiaeus and Aristagoras," AJP 84 (1963)

126; but why was he not at Lade serving on the Persian side? A. Blamire, "Herodotus and Histiaeus," CQ 53 (1959) 142-154, argues that Histiaeus was Darius' minister as long as possible, but perforce joined the Greeks at the end, as an independent "Ally" (pp. 149-151). Chapman (above, note 2) refutes this last suggestion and argues for no consistent policy after 496, an indication of the present scholarly impasse. See below, note 65.

" G. de Sanctis, "Aristagora di Mileto," RF59 (1931) 48-72; J. A. 0. Larsen, "Sparta and the Ionian Revolt," CP 37 (1932) 136-150. Euphemus at Syracuse, whoever he may be, presents the later tendentious and exculpatory Athenian view (Thuc. 6.82'*, esp. 82.4), that the Ionians were too weak and cowardly to fight the Persians, and in fact basely joined the enemy's attack against

Athens and Greece. (An asterisk indicates throughout that the statement occurs in a passage of oratio recta.)

12 His generous affection for Samos is well known, and his sources there (cf. How and Wells, 6.13 nn.; Mitchell [above, note 8] 75-91, esp. 87-90) were not likely to be well disposed to a revolt planned and begun by the hated Milesians (cf. L. H. Jeffery, Archaic Greece [London 1976] 220),

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 131

studied, although no less significant, historical problems. It reexamines certain questions about the nature of the Ionian Revolt, specifically the following: its

origin; the nature of the Ionian League and the rivalries that rendered it ineffectual; the meager part played in the revolt by the states of Mainland

Greece; and the lonians' war effort and achieved results. Finally, the paper offers a new interpretation of the Revolt's decisive engagement, the battle of Lade and Herodotus' presentation of it.

One approach to the outbreak of the revolt sees its origin in the decline of Milesian commercial dominance, in itself a product partly of Athenian and Phoenician commercial expansion and partly of Darius' interference with his vassal Miletus' ambitious leaders and their policies. Histiaeus was recalled from Thracian Myrcinus, then forced to leave his native Miletus when "kicked upstairs" to advise Darius at Susa, put in jeopardy by his nephew Aristagoras' failure to capture Naxos as he had promised to Darius, and finally, openly threatened by Darius' brother and lieutenant Artaphrenes when he came to Sardis in order to talk sense into his compatriot Greeks (5.24, 25.1, 30.2,

and betrayed by their own fathers. Polycrates' expedient desertion of Amasis has been outrageously exonerated by Herodotus' friends (Mitchell, pp. 78-79).

His prejudice, of Athenian origin, against the lonians, however, is clearly voiced in the remarks given to the Scythians concerning the "base, cowardly, philo-despotic, lazy slaves" of Persia, namely the Ionians (4.142; cf. 6.12; 8.22 1-2:-). The defeat of the Ionians at Lade meshed well with Herodotus' Athenian hypothesis of their inability to keep free of Persia without an Athenian presence. Persian sources (Chapman [above, note 2] note 80) would also denigrate the revolt.

Perhaps also a certain embarrassment that no Dorians at all chose to join the cause of Greek liberty encouraged Herodotus to view the rebellion as a certain mistake. Cos, Cnidos, Rhodes, and

Halicarnassus are neither blamed nor praised; they are passed over in silence. Some can imagine a siege at Rhodes that Herodotus forbears to mention: A. R. Burn (above, note 3) 210-211 and 218, citing Die Lindische Tempelchronik (Bonn 1915), ed. Blinkenberg, 34-38. Grundy (above, note 1) 103-104 attributed Herodotus' jaundiced attitude towards the revolt to Halicarnassus' "pacifism." H. Bengtson, "Skylax von Karyanda und Herakleides von Mylasa," Historia 3 (1955) 301-307, asserts the importance of Herodotus' Carian sources. G. Grote, A History of Greece (New York 18712) IV, 302, followed by G. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte II (Gotha 18952) 452, traced the origin of Herodotus' attitude back to Hecataeus who clearly disapproved of the venture (5.36), but (a) no extant fragment of Hecataeus supports a Hecataean source for Herodotus' account of the Ionian revolt, and (b) G. Nenci, "Le fonti di Erodoto sull' insurrezione ionica," RAL 5 (1950) 106, prefers with reasons to detect other Milesian sources. G. L. Cawkwell, "The Fall of Themisto- cles," Essays ... E. M. Blaiklock (Dunedin 1970) 46, 55 n. 12, suggests an Alcmaeonid source, for that family may well have opposed Athenian intervention in Ionia. Evans (above, note 6) defends

Herodotus' caustic approach as not biased by particular ethnic sources, but justifiable historical judgment. This analysis seems to be a possible, if surprising, point of view. It endorses and extends F. Jacoby's view on the sources of Herodotus (R. E. Suppl. II [1913] cols. 438-442): a variety of oral traditions from many communities (439, vv. 66-68).

9):.

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132 DONALD LATEINER

34.2-35.2; 6.1-2). Darius' own Scythian, or at least Thracian,'3 offensive would have promoted the interests of his Greek vassals, whatever his

conscious motive. By 500 B. C., however, Darius had determined to curtail Ionian independent policy-making. His decision to double the Ionian expeditionary force aimed first at Naxos and his "gift" of a Persian

commander and Persian troops were meant to indicate who was in control. The great, useless, irrecoverable expense shook the influence of Histiaeus and his henchman, Aristagoras,'4 and, to this extent, personal motives, one can believe, were involved in the outbreak of the revolt. It seems probable that Darius' plans for European conquest were an open secret to the Greeks (3.135-138; 5.2.2., 105; 6.94.1). Unlike the years during which the Greeks had been under Lydian hegemony, the Persians demanded soldiers of them (cf. 1.171.1; 2.1.2; 3.1.1, 11.1; 4.83.1, 89.1; 6.48.2) as well as money for subduing their fellow countrymen. The tribute in money alone amounted to an astonishing 400 silver talents each year from the Ionian and Aeolic Greeks and

from the immediately neighboring coastal peoples (3.90.1 ; the Hellespontines, Thracians, etc. are not herein counted). The Athenian Empire's total yearly income from tribute (phoros) in the fifth century probably never exceeded 400

silver talents before 433 and later would rarely exceed 460 silver talents (cf. Meiggs-Lewis, SGHI, pp. 87-88). In addition to the large tribute, "contribu- tions" for the local Persian garrisons, governors, and agents were expected (cf. 1.192.4; 3.90.3) as well as occasional "gifts" for King or Satrap (cf. 3.117; Meiggs-Lewis, SGHI, No. 12).

The lonians managed to produce and maintain a certain fragile sense of community, fostered by the ease and shortness of their lines of communica- tion, and most clearly expressed in the religious and ethnic festival of the

13 For the date and purpose (513 B.C., for gold), see J. B. Bury, "The European Expedition of Darius," CR 11 (1897) 277-82. More recently, J. Balcer, "The Date of Herodotus 4.1: Darius'

Scythian Expedition," HSCP 76 (1972) 99-132 (519 B.C., in order to obtain gold; this date is now abandoned by Prof. Balcer in favor of the traditional year).

14 D. Hegyi, "The Historical Background of the Ionian Revolt," AA 14 (1966) 289, 291, 300, and passim, a fine analysis, for this paragraph. From Darius' decent treatment of Ionia on the one hand, and on the other, Artaphrenes' treatment of Aristagoras after Naxos, of Histiaeus at Sardis,

of Histiaeus' dead body, and of Miletus' captured citizenry (5.35, 1-2; 6.1, 30.1; 9.4- and 19.3), Hegyi well argues that Ionia revolted not against Darius and the Persian empire, but against his harsh hyparch at Sardis, Artaphrenes.

" Hdt. 1.143.3, 148.1; C. Roebuck, "The Early Ionian League," CP50 (1955) 26-40, for the following. The promontory of Mycale between Samos and Miletus was represented as the landfall of the Ionian immigrants. Here they worshipped Poseidon Helikonios. Max Caspari (= Cary), "The Ionian Confederacy," JHS 35 (1915) 177, thought that the origin of the league was political, to gain territory from the Aeolic cities. This idea seems unlikely, given the early date of the League's formation, the lack of political organs, and any attested political cohesion.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 133

Panionia."5 Probably religious matters, the original motive of the federation, were regularly attended to there by a council of probouloi or delegates.

The political aspect of the federation was a logical, but unnecessary and non- binding, consequence of the sentiment of religious, racial, and cultural unity of Greeks in alien parts. This unity was mostly honored in the breach. In fact diligence uncovers only very few political conclaves, each at a time of crisis. Herodotus credits the lonians' earlier defense against Asiatic powers with great courage, but he emphasizes their lack of union (1.169.1). After Cyrus captured Sardis sometime between 547 and 541 B.C., an envoy was sent to Sparta by all the lonians (except the Milesians) in the vain hope of securing trans-Aegean support (1.141.1, 152). Thales, at some indeterminate date before the Persian conquest of the Aegean littoral, had proposed a radical solution to the problem of Ionian weakness in the face of the "superpowers" of the East: the formation of a single Ionic council with plenipotentiary powers for the twelve cities, in fact a synoecism much like that of the "mother city" Athens, in which the autonomous cities would be reduced to demes with the capital at geographically central Teos. The proposal failed and the lonians did not then unite their considerable forces against Cyrus' generals (1.170.3). After this meeting and after the occupation of Ionia, Bias produced his more radical, indeed drastic and impractical, scheme for packing everyone up and founding one great citv in Sardinia that would rule a new Western empire (1.170.2). Herodotus' attribution to him of the words "But if they remained in Ionia, he did not foresee freedom to be their lot any longer," suggests that the proposal may have been offered as a hopeless alternative, as a plea for accommodation to the Persians. That is, there was no real choice. All these attempts to produce Ionian cooperation were ultimately failures. There are two other known occasions of political deliberation. Once the

Ionian rebellion had begun, the League (To XOLVOV TGw)V'Ihvwv) decided to aid Onesilus of Cyprus with a fleet that did not have any one supreme commander (5.108.2, 109.3). These Ionians fought and conquered (112.1). The representa- tives met in 494 for a last time in order to decide on a strategy against the Persian forces advancing on Miletus (6.7). These last two sessions in crisis were, so far as one can tell, amicably conducted and brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The League after the defeat at Lade has no further discernible existence, although the settlement arranged in 493 by Artaphrenes (6.42.1) recognizes the benefits of common courts and courtesies, and such Greek organizations certainly could serve their conquerors' purposes.16 The appeal of the Ionians to Athens in 480/79 (9.106, esp. 106.4; Thuc. 1.75.2, 95.7-96.1) for liberation from Persian suzerainty indicates, not surprisingly, a common desire

16 Cary (ibid.) 181, infers ex silentio that the Persians disbanded the League after the conquest of 493 B.C. The argument is weak.

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134 DONALD LA7EINER

for liberation and a hope for common military defense. All political meetings

of the League seem to have been extraordinary, called ad hoc to deal with military threats and treating only military cooperation.'7 Unity was a fugitive product of momentary fear, no state was ever official hegemon, no man was

ever chosen commander of the coalition except on an ad hoc basis (Dionysius

of Phocaea, Hdt. 6.11-12.1). As in aH periods and in all parts of the Greek world, grass-roots political movements towards unification were responses to

immediate aggression and brittle at that. When Croesus attacked, the League

accomplished nothing in defense of the lonians. Cyrus, too, therefore allowed

it to continue, and indeed one does not hear of its dissolution in 493 B.C., even

after its role in the Ionian Revolt."8 Although to assume a disbanding of the League is reasonable, one notes that the kind treatment of Ionia by Mardonius and of the displaced Milesians by Darius, and the new, reasonable tax assessment produced by Artaphrenes argue a Persian willingness to "let

bygones be bygones" and to encourage loyalty for the planned European conquest (6.43.3, 20, 42). The benign intent of Darius towards his subjects - provided they paid their taxes on time (cf. 3.89.3, 117.6) - is well attested.'9

The centrifugal forces among the lonians, however, in the 490's over- powered their efforts to combine. Their quarrels and conflicts stemming from economic and strategic considerations prevented political cooperation throughout the period between 700 and 500 B.C.

Rather than lump together, as Herodotus does, the hapless lonians as ineffectual (1.143.2; 5.105.1 [Darius]), cowardly ne'er-do-wells (6.11.2"-, 13.2,

but v. infra), and short-sighted and selfish failures (5.28, 97.3), and then hasten on to the bold, united, and successful Greeks of the mainland, we shall most briefly consider the situation and past policy of the four leading members of the Ionian coalition (if it is allowable to include Aeolic Lesbos for this purpose under that rubric).20 In ancient and modern times, the Ionians of the islands and the Asiatic mainland have been too quickly analyzed as undifferentiated in motives and policies (1.143.2; Thuc. 6.82-83'; 8.25.3, but neither passage represents Thucydides' own view; Arist. Pol. 1284 a 39-41). We shall then

17 Thales' and Bias' suggestions for constitutional reform, if formally made, were rejected. 18 Roebuck (above, note 15) 30-31, 38 n. 34. On Persian imperial administration, see D. M.

Lewis, Sparta and Persia (Leiden 1977). '9 See Meiggs-Lewis, SGHI, No. 12; Tac. Annales 3.63.6. 20 Herodotus protests against the loose extension of the name (1.142.1,4; 147), but he used

"Ionians" to refer to (a) League members as a whole (1.141.4, 143.3, 148, 170; 6.7; 8.1); (b) lonians in the widest ethnic sense (1.141-143; 5.37.2, 66.2; 6.13.1; 9.106.3); (c) Ionia as a Persian satrapy (3.89-90.1; 6.42). See Roebuck (above, note 15) 37 n. 7. Aesch. Pers. 882-883, Arist. Pol. 1284 a38, Ath.P. 24.2, Plut. Arist. 23.4, treat the three main islands as a single geopolitical unit.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 135

review the reactions and responses of the leading states of old Greece to events in the eastern Aegean.

II. Summary of Interstate Relations in the East Aegean, 700-500 B. C.

The four principal centers of the revolt, Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Miletus, were all situated on East-West and North-South trade-routes and each enjoyed an extensive commerce. Each possessed a large population, a large merchant marine and navy. But political hostility often outweighed ethnic and ecological similarities. The Lesbians, because their towns were never effectively united,

did not play a major role in shaping East Aegean policy, but generally followed a pro-Milesian, therefore anti-Samian policy (Hdt. 3.39.4). Chios was the most serious island rival of Samos for the status of trans-Aegean commercial terminus. The Chians were consequently frequent victims of Samian maraud- ers. The Chians had struck military alliances with the Milesians (1.18.2-3). Miletus, the most prosperous of all the Ionian cities (5.28), sent the only major contingent from the mainland to the combined fleet at Lade. The Milesians had carefully cooperated with Croesus and Cyrus to their own great advantage, including freedom from royal tribute and levies. In addition to Lydian and Persian connections, Herodotus attests friendly contact and commerce with Egypt, Italian Sybaris, Eretria, and Athens. Maritime trade was supplemented by the opening up of Anatolian overland trade-routes, made possible and profitable by the new Asiatic empires (5.52-54; Str. 14, 663C).

The Milesians' bitter rivals for Egyptian and Greek trade, and for the Anatolian agricultural territory that lay nearby, had long been the Samians, only fifteen miles distant. The Samians, foiled by Miletus' long successful control of Black Sea trade and by her success with the powers of Anatolia, responded with piracy on a private and public scale (3.39). Milesian wealth was

limited principally by the Samian fleet which ruled the waves (ca. 570-522). Samos, pivot of East Aegean routes for navigation, long pursued a maverick

and aggressive policy against a/lits Greek competitors. The Milesians and their clients the Lesbians were defeated in battle ca. 530 B.C. (3.39.4); Chios, Priene, and other maritime states were terrorized by privateers (3.47; Inschr. Priene, No. 37). Samians founded the colony of infertile Perinthus in the Propontis ca. 600, probably with a view to preying on the trade of Miletus, Megara, Byzantium, and Mytilene, all of which shared a common hostility to

Samians. When the strong and clever Samians fell to Persia ca. 517 B.C., the rest of the East Greek states, especially Miletus, could only be relieved to see

their rival brought under the control of a protecting power. The mainland Greeks similarly ignored the Samians' pleas for help (3.148). Afterwards and perhaps consequently, the men of Samos served Darius' campaigns loyally

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136 DONALD LATEINER

until the revolt. They had few interests in common with their fellow Greeks of the Eastern Aegean.

The influence of commerce on the policies of the archaic polis is still debated. The briefest justification must suffice now for allotting the class

engaged in such commerce a significant political role. The Hasebroekian "primitivist" approach to the ancient economy has been raised to orthodoxy by Finley and then refined by Humphreys. Among the inadequacies of the model, some of them recognized by the sympathetic research of Bravo, is an unwillingness to consider connections between international commerce of the

archaic period, which certainly existed, and political power and policy. A proper reaction to the modernist, "mercantilist" hypothesis originally moti- vated this reluctance, and no one will return to the anachronistic approach of Meyer, Beloch, and Burn. Yet, the literary evidence and improved understand- ing of the archaeological material, including the lead letter from Berezan, suggest that the commerce of this period engaged the lives and interests of powerful individuals, and modified the political equilibrium of the ancient city, at home and abroad.

Humphreys recognizes that maritime trade intensified rapidly, especially ca. 550-500 B.C. A class of nobles with capital and knowledge of trading opportunities, another class of nobles deprived of their land and constrained to seek new or renewed fortunes abroad as trading agents (or colonists), larger cargo ships, new markets in colonies and foreign lands, indicate that maritime trade had become an established way of increasing one's fortune. The extent and quantity of trade was considerable, but its actual intensity - how great a share of a Greek city's economy depended on overseas ventures - cannot be determined on the available evidence. It seems prudent, however, to hypothesize that the importers and exporters, their suppliers and customers, in agricultural and manufactured goods, influenced the political decisions of the polis. Silver-lending speculators, shipowners, insuring guarantors, travelling agents, could all be - and mostly were - noble, as Bravo argues from the Odyssey, Hesiod, Theognis, the Homeric Hymns, Herodotus, and epigraphic evidence.2' Therefore, it seems legitimate to assume that the political events that Herodotus records had economic causes, at least in part, and that these

21 M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley 1973); S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London 1978) esp. ch. 6 and 7: "Economy and Society in Classical Athens," 136-58, and "Homo politicus and homo economicus. ..," 159-74, esp. 167-69 on archaic Greece; B. Bravo, "Une lettre sur plomb de Beresan . . .," DHA 1 (1974) 111-87, and "Remarques sur les assises sociales . . .," DHA 3 (1977) 1-59, esp. 2, 19-21, 25. For the controversy about the ancient economy, the latter article of Humphreys offers introduction with bibliography. Burn's article, "The so-called 'Trade-Leagues'.. .," JHS 49 (1929) 14-37, does not refer to J. Hasebroek's polemic against ancient commercial policy, Staat und Handel im alten Griechenland (Tubingen 1928; English ed., London 1933). The issue will be argued in my study of economy and society in archaic lonia.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 137

causes are deducible from the known facts of city-state history. Having briefly examined economic and political conditions in the Eastern Aegean, one now turns to the western shore, old Greece.

III. The Ionian Revolt: The Reaction of the Mainland States

When the Ionians, that is, the Milesians, sent Aristagoras to Greece for help (winter, 499/8 B.C.), he naturally turned first to the most powerful Greek

state, Sparta (5.49.2). He achieved nothing, despite his masterful rhetoric and crude bribery, with king Cleomenes. Larsen has well accounted for this

failure.22 The Spartans might anticipate now a Persian invasion against Greece in light of the Persian expeditions against Thrace and Naxos. Furthermore, earlier (ca. 525) they had themselves attacked Samos in order to dislodge Polycrates (3.44-56), perhaps because he had shifted the role of Samos from naval bulwark of the Greek world against Persian aggression to that of cooperative Persian vassal and naval ally. Nevertheless, adventurous Spartan action was impossible in 499 B.C. for at least three reasons other than the perennial danger of Helot revolt: (a) past Spartan marine ventures had failed: against Samos and against Athens (3.56.1; 5.75, 93.2; cf. the fiction of 6.84.2). Lines of communication would be impossibly extended, as Aristagoras inadvertently admitted (5.50.2-3), and the sole previous overseas expedition to

Ionia was bad precedent.23 (b) Argos was actively hostile and could not be trusted while a large Spartan-Peloponnesian army travelled overseas. Arcadia and Elis were also estranged. Only after the Spartan victory at Sepeia (494 [?]; 6.76-83) could that Argive danger be ignored.24 (c) Aegina and Corinth, the states possessing the leading Peloponnesian fleets, had each its own reasons to abstain from helping the lonians - apart from lack of good reason to risk blood and money for distant Greeks - and, without their full cooperation, nothing could be done, however much an aggressive Sparta might wish to assert Hellenic hegemony.

22 See "Sparta and the Ionian Revolt," CP 37 (1932) 136-50; also A. Andrewes, The Greek Tyrants (London 1956) 122. Lewis (above, note 18) virtually ignores the Ionian revolt. R. Sealey, "The Pit and the Well: the Persian Heralds of 491 B.C.," CJ 72 (1976) 13-20, argues that, after 525, Sparta abandoned all interest in trans-Aegean ventures; mainland Greece posed enough problems for her military power.

23 Sparta, friend and ally of Croesus, had better excuses than usual for failing to aid the Lydian when Cyrus attacked (1.69.3, 82.1, 83). Ca. 546 B.C., also, the Spartans may have responded to the lonians' frantic appeal with bold words and no action (1.141.4, 152). For Spartan marine campaigns, see 5.63.3, Ath. P. 19.5; Hdt. 6.76.2, 92.1; perhaps Plut. Lac. Apoph. 67.

24 W. P. Wallace, "Kleomenes, Marathon, the Helots, and Arkadia," JHS 74 (1954) 32-35, adduces additional reasons, with numismatic evidence, for the tardy Spartan appearance in 490 on the Marathon plain. Aristagoras himself (5.49.8") is made to refer to Spartan troubles with the Argives, Arcadians, and Messenians.

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138 DONALD LATEINER

Cleomenes encountered ignominy both after his forced retreat from Athens (507 [?]; 5.72.2), and later, after the withdrawal of the Corinthians and Demaratus, his fellow king, during his inadequately justified invasion of Attica (5.74-75). Sparta's failure to persuade the Peloponnesian League25 to agree to invade and bring to heel hostile and refractory Attica, ca. 505 (5.93.2, if one reasonably connects the hegemonical policy of Cleomenes with the anxious first Athenian embassy to Sardis) constituted a serious setback. Cleomenes'

prestige, and thereby Sparta's, was now diminished to a point at which the severely shaken leadership could not contemplate vast designs. In particular, the predictably slim chance for the success of an expeditionary force sent to the aid of lonia held little allure. The Spartans, however, had enjoyed contacts with Naxos and with Ionia, especially with Samos, and were reluctant to pass

up opportunities of increasing their prestige. One recalls the embassy to Cyrus

of ca. 545 and the grand alliances with Lydia and Egypt even earlier (1.152-53; 1.69). Sparta, however, was hesitant enough to help Athens even later, in 490, when the handwriting on the wall about the coming invasion was clearer. Why now help distant Ionians when near-by Eretria was to be ignored, when near- by Athens, insufficiently respectful of Spartan hegemony, was to be sent a considerable but insufficient force of two thousand soldiers (not Spartans but Lacedaemonians) to meet the Persians, and those troops were to come too late for the battle (6.120), and perhaps too late to save the city, had that been necessary? Spartans would risk their precious and limited resources only when considerable gain for their hegemony was certain.26 In truth, aid to Ionia appeared to be a poor investment.

The Aeginetans had perennial problems with nearby, powerful, and commercially active Athens (5.81, 89; 6.87-93). Furthermore, Aeginetans fiercely competed with Samians, Chians, and Milesians, at least for Eastern trade at Egyptian Naucratis, where each of these cities (except Chios, perhaps the leading state of the common Greek sanctuary) had its own sanctuary

25 Larsen (above, note 22) 140-43, argues that Corinth and other states successfully demanded that the League constitution henceforth formally require prior consultation and vote, before

Sparta could take military action. Thus, the Spartans had to settle for a symmachy, not a Roman- style series of subordinate allies.

26 Cf. J. Wolski, "Les Grecs et les loniens au temps des guerres mediques," Eos 58 (1969) 38-39, 43, 48. "The remarkably wide but thin distribution of Laconian wares" suggests a convenient Laconian port on the route westwards rather than a serious export industry in Sparta.

The number of Laconian sherds in Samos testifies to both extensive penetration of Western and

African markets by Samians stopping in Laconia and (I believe) to a cordial relationship between Sparta and Samos. Cf. R. M. Cook, JHS 99 (1979) 154. Spartan dependability: Spartans were willing to sacrifice their allies on the battlefield without hesitation (Thuc. 3.109). For Spartan

military manpower and Herodotus' careful distinctions, see 9.28.2, where at Plataea he has a

muster of 10,000 Lacedaemonians, of which 5,000 were Spartans, and 35,000 helot light-armed troops to support the latter only.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 139

(2.178.2-3). The rich men of these trading states frequently competed in the East and North.2" The plangent call for succor of fellow-Greeks, not even Dorians at that, could not outweigh preponderant commercial interests and, more immediately, personal security of the safe side of the Aegean. In 491, Aegina quickly jettisoned her traditional allies and Greek freedom. The

islanders hoped to escape potential but unlikely destruction, hoped to help lay Athens low, and hoped to gain the considerable commercial privileges implied by Persian suzerainty (6.49; cf. 8.92.2). Other states acted likewise at that time (6.48-49).

Corinthians also competed for Eastern markets and had quite recently failed to see any advantage in furthering Sparta's political designs. What the Spartans themselves later voiced in 479 - that Ionia could not be perpetually defended except at an unacceptable cost, and that therefore Greeks who craved freedom should forthwith emigrate (9.106.2) - might well have been common wisdom in the minds of many non-Spartans in 499. For Corinth to risk her men (as she

did seventy years later), her Western markets, much more vital to her interests and security, had to be at stake. Cleomenes' policy, one has seen, was consistently directed to keeping Persia out of a Spartan-dominated Greece. This is shown by his activity against Greek tyrants "soft on Persia," including the Peisistratidae, and by his actions concerning Aegina and Athens when those cities showed themselves ready to consider a friendly attitude towards the Great King. Cleomenes, nevertheless, could not have sufficiently scared the Peloponnesian League with the Persian bogey so as to establish the need to protect distant Ionia, assuming for the moment that he had cared to. For most of the Peloponnesians, who were agricultural, Samos was as far away as the Straits of Gibraltar (8.132.2-3).28 Furthermore, the need for a forward defense against an unproven future invasion - indeed almost twenty years off - and the efficacy of the Ionians, if aided now, to prevent that attack then, were both obscure matters.

When Aristagoras, consequent to his Spartan failure, came to Athens, his misleading propaganda (5.97) obtained an Athenian force of twenty ships for the rebels. Whether this Athenian flotilla represents pan-Hellenic patriotism,29

27 For some stimulating speculations on the economy and policies of Aegina in this period, see Th. Figueira, Aegina and Athens in the Archaic and Classical Periods (diss., Pennsylvania; Philadelphia 1977). For Aegina as a state subsisting on trade and profiting by Ionia's demise, see Roebuck (above, note 6) 129-130; also Burn (above, note 3) 232. Thirteen per cent of Greek coins found in ten Egyptian hoards of the period 500-470 B.C. were Aeginetan (although not necessarily brought by Aeginetans): M. Thompson, Expedition 21 (1979) 42.

28 "A dramatic exaggeration" (How and Wells ad loc.) indeed, but with a sardonic point. Corinth's commercial interests are sufficiently evident from her prosperity, from her export of pottery and coinage, and from the building of the diolkos. See also How and Wells, ad 5.93.1.

29 N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Greece (Oxford 19672) 205: "This brave decision"; or ethnic solidarity (cf. 9.106.3; Thuc. 1.95.1).

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140 DONALD LATEINER

cowardly or canny Medism,30 a little of both,3' a yen for easy booty,32 or a sound, strategic move based on prognostic33 has been interestingly but inconclusively debated. We owe the uncertainty to Herodotus' suspicious reticence about Athens' participation in the revolt. Certainly the situation of Athens was different. Newly independent Athens, less than a decade earlier, in her fear of retaliation from the alliance of Sparta, had already asked the Persians for a (temporary?) alliance to protect her independence. The Athenians then repudiated the usual and not surprising terms that their

ambassadors had hastily accepted (5.73).34 The Ionians, furthermore, were kin

(a popular and potent idea, however irrelevant to Machtpolitik), and the loss of the newly established strategic shield that the Ionian fleet now formed for the

mainland Greeks was foreseeable and worth preventing. Furthermore, the unemployed tyrant Hippias had ceaselessly implored Artaphrenes to bully Athens into accepting him back (5.96). The satrap had tried to oblige. The Athenians, some years later (505-499?, six years), sent a second embassy that was rebuffed when the ambassadors refused to surrender Athenian autonomy.

They had wisely rejected the terms of submission "and made up their minds to accept the consequence - open hostility to the Persians."35 The events of 491 (Persian heralds killed; 7.133.1), 490, and 480 B.C. support Gomme S36 contention that both the Alcmeonid Cleisthenes and later the anti-Alcmeonid

30 A. W. Gomme, "Athenian Notes. 1: Athenian Politics, 510-483 B.C.," AJP65 (1944) 321, remarks that friendliness to Persia, when one's state was at peace with Persia, was no crime, especially before 491.

31 Gomme (ibid.) 326: "A compromise;" cf. Burn (above, note 3) 199: "opinion. . . by no means undivided."

32 Cf. 5.49.4-9; W. K. Pritchett, The Greek State at WarI (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1971) 60. R. Sealey, A History of the Greek City States (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1976) 175, 183-184, dismisses all ideological claims.

3 Grote (above, note 12) IV, 289-91: A Persian attack on Athens was already inevitable. V. Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (London 1968) 122. E. Meyer, G.d.A. IV.1 (Stuttgart 19393) 284, argues (from Herodotus' silence on names) for Alcmeonid responsibility, citing the similar silence at 5.97.3 and 71.2 (wrongly; one might as well compare 6.124.2).

34 Sealey, (above, note 32) 175, argues that the severe blame that met the diplomats on their return does not indicate disavowal of the treaty. He believes that the Persian provisos were foreseeable. Athens' subsequent behavior does not favor the view that Athens submitted, but the hypothesis cannot be disproved. L. Orlin, "Athens and Persia, ca. 507 B.C.: A Neglected Perspective," Essays. . . G. G. Cameron (Ann Arbor 1976) 256, 264-265, believes that Herodotus, as an Athenian apologist, has suppressed the clear implication of the treaty that had been accepted, namely that Athens was to be a permanent Persian vassal. He follows A. E. Raubitschek, "The Treaties between Persia and Athens," GRBS 5 (1964) 151-159, who argued that the treaty did in fact come into force. Sealey adopts this interpretation.

35 The words W60bOXTO, X..X, could equally well bear the translation: "They voted in assembly that a state of war with the Persians now existed."

36 Gomme (above, note 30) 325-327. On the heralds of 491, see Sealey (above, note 22).

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 141

Themistocles,3' in turn attracted the rank and file supporters of the defunct faction of the Peisistratidae,38 and then needed to deal with only one other major political faction, that of the other aristocrats. No faction in Athens was interested in reducing the city to Persia's vassal. Neither leading group wanted Persian suzerainty; they were all loyal Athenians struggling with one another for their own advancement within the state. Therefore the pro-Persian "party" of E. M. Walker39 is a mirage. "Medism" is a partisan allegation, convenient in the years after the Persian Wars, as the ostraca suggest. On this interpretation of the meagre data, the Athenian fleet of twenty ships

was a significant effort in good faith to aid acknowledged brethren (5.97.2; 9.106.3). Earlier, Hippias' continued control of strategic Sigeion for Athens, and now Miltiades' efforts, around 495 under the cover of the Revolt, to

3 Why did Phanias (F 23 Wehrli) and Neanthes (F. Gr. Hist. 84, F 2b) call Themistocles'

mother a Carian? It may be a reflection of his support for the Ionic-Carian revolt of 499-494,

specifically for Miletus, whose population was part Carian in any case (Roebuck [above, note 6]

118). Similarly, Cleon's interests in foreign policy, perhaps the result of a specific administrative

association with Sinope (an imaginative guess of J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families

[Oxford 1971] 318), may explain the name "Paphlagonian." See also R. Connor, The New

Politicans of Fifth-Century Athens (Princeton 1971) 169-171. One may conjecture that Themisto-

cles, choregus of Phrynichus' Phoenissae in 476 (Plut. Them. 5.5), was choregus for Phrynichus'

Capture of Miletus, but one cannot confidently date that startling production; see E. Badian,

"Archons and Stratego4" Antichthon 5 (1971) 15-16, n. 44. As part of his policy of resistance to

Persia at sea, Themistocles began to fortify the Peiraeus (Thuc. 1.93.3; Paus. 1.1.2), but this start is

not certainly dated to his archonship, just to some arche, which may have been held later than 493/

2, when he was archon; cf. Gomme, HCT, I, p. 262. What little one knows of Themistocles'

policies before 483 B.C. (and later, including the expedition to Tempe and the naval strategy at

Artemisium), suggests a forward policy, facing the Persians as early and as far away as possible.

His support for the Ionic-Carian effort, then, is probable and not without ancient evidence. For

Caria's eager participation in the revolt, see 5.33.2-4, 37.1, 103.2, 117-121; 6.25.2. The ethnic of

Themistocles' mother is reported elsewhere as Thracian (Athen. 13.576C) and Acharnanian

(Nepos, Them. 1.2).

3 M. McGregor, "The Pro-Persian Party at Athens from 510 to 480 B.C.," Studies ... W. S.

Ferguson, HSCP Suppl. I (1940) 71-95. He stresses well the absence of ancient evidence for a pro-

Persian faction in Athens after 510 B.C. (93-94). Even when one follows F. J. Frost,

"Themistocles' Place in Athenian Politics," CSCA 1 (1968) 105-124, and argues that political

struggles in Athens at this time were "personal, rather than partisan-political" (124), one must still

motivate the clashes that are attested. The relevant Roman model suggests that, however much

amicitia influenced ancient voters, critical political issues ruptured old alliances and led men to

vote their economic interest, conscience, or sometimes even ideology. Aid to Ionia and building a

large fleet were two such issues at Athens. P. Karavites, "Realities and Appearances, 490-480

B.C.," Historia 26 (1977) 129-147, presents a closer, if more conjectural, reconstruction of

Athenian political camps. He credits (pp. 146-147) Themistocles with forging an effective alliance

of the rich (naval bill, ostracism of Xanthippus) and the poor (sortition of archons, other

ostracisms). 39 In C.A.H. IV (1926) 157-158. In peacetime, neither Sparta, Persia, nor tyranny posed the

decisive political issue. On the politics of the archon Hipparchus, see the analysis of Badian

(above, note 37) 11.

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142 DONALD LATEINER

reconquer for Athens the Chersonese, Lemnos, and Imbros increased (or were

caused by) Athenian vital and imperial interests in the Aegean (5.94.1; 6.41.2, 140.1).40 Before the fleet that was constructed in 482 from the Laureion silver was built, twenty ships represented nearly half the Athenian flotilla of 50

(5.97.3, 6.89). Before the Laureion silver came to light, Athens had neither the equipment nor the capital to venture more. Given the lively enmity of Aegina and the smouldering hostility of Boeotia, Euboea (5.77), and now even Megara (as a new member of Sparta's Peloponnesian League), twenty triremes were all that could be spared.4'

The problem, as Grote42 observed, is to explain the Athenians' quick withdrawal, not their initial support. Victory at Sardis and defeat at Ephesus were both indecisive (5.100-102). Close encounters with Ionian undependabil-

ity have been asserted, but without evidence.43 Retreat now, however wise, was less wise than having kept their hands clean from the beginning would

have been. Perhaps after Ephesus the Athenians advised the Ionians, and themselves chose, to fall back on a naval strategy, "wooden walls" as in 480. Perhaps the image of an easy victory sketched by Aristagoras was too obviously ludicrous once the Athenians arrived in Asia Minor and met the

enemy in battle. Darius, at least in Herodotus' account, was never going to forgive, forget or forgo revenge (5.105.1-2, 6.94.1). The Athenians themselves, gladly and without embarrassment, mentioned their earlier support, when they thought there was advantage in it (8.22.2:). The Ionians, too, aggressively employed the ethnic argument again in 479 (Thuc. 1.95.1). Yet, after the return of these Athenian vessels, further direct44 help from Athens was denied the

40 K. J. Beloch, Gr.G. II, 1 (Strassburg 19142) 9-10; M. Stavrinidou-Koussiouris, The Ionian Revolt (M. A. thesis, Manchester 1977) 104. For a recent study of strategic thought in an ancient

context, see E. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore 1976). Although the Athenians as yet had no real empire, they could already ponder some of the factors which Luttwak discusses.

41 Cf. Thuc. 1.41.2; McGregor (above, note 38) 93, 91, 80, 83. I cannot, however, endorse McGregor's picture of the factions at Athens, nor of a cessation of all party strife, at the time of the

revolt (91-93). Certainly the suit against Phrynichus for "breach of the peace" and that against Miltiades for "tyranny" suggest that those generally opposed to intervention in Ionia were again confident after the debacle at Lade (493). Yet Miltiades' acquittal and election show the activist and anti-Persian nature of Athenian sentiment, as Herodotus noted (6.104.2). Phrynichus' conviction demands explanation, but that scandal may well need a date over a decade later.

42 Grote (above, note 12) IV, 291.

43 Ibid., followed by McGregor (above, note 38) 84, although How and Wells, at 5.103, rightly call it a "mere conjecture." Herodotus, we may imagine, would have dearly liked to present such a story of Ionian untrustworthiness, had one existed.

44 One says "direct," because Miltiades' contemporary military activities (by 495, at any rate) in the Chersonese, Lemnos, and Imbros may be understood as an extension of Athenian interests

in the North Aegean and as willingness to face Persian hostility in Persia's own sphere of influence. Cf. on Athenian policy, A. J. Graham, Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 143

lonians. The eastern Greeks, however, did not slacken their enthusiasm (5.103.1). Why did the Athenians depart?

The archaeological record reveals that Athenian wares increasingly displaced those of the Eastern Ionians, especially the Milesians, in Ionia itself after 560 B.C. and in the Eastern Mediterranean, at Tarsus, Al Mina, and Naucratis.45 Athenian self-interest as well as fears concerning Aegina nearer home most adequately explain the divided sentiment on the sudden choice, or better, the change in a suddenly developed policy, the right hand first giving and then the left taking away. In fact, the failure of the Ionian Revolt seems to have significantly stimulated Athenian commerce with the Near East.46

If one examines the policy of Athens in the next one hundred years, her motives in 499 seem less puzzling. By 479 B.C., Athenian strategic interests had become clear to all. A counterweight to Spartan influence in mainland Greece would be useful for preserving the liberty asserted and promoted by the rebuilding of Athens' walls. An overseas league would contribute to Athens' political independence, and the lonians for their own good reasons, including Pausanias' arrogance and oppressiveness and their immediate fear of Persian retaliation, encouraged an Attic maritime hegemony (Thuc. 1.95.1). Desire for material compensation and booty certainly played a part (Thuc. 1.96.1). Sparta's earlier activism, which had been promoted by king Cleomenes, yielded to a passive isolationism endorsed by anti-monarchical (= ephoral) elements. These men never wished to stick their heads beyond the Isthmus. Pausanias' disgrace facilitated, and perhaps contributed to, the change in foreign policy once the present danger was crushed. After his suspicious demise, Sparta in the fifth and fourth century again founded her policy solely on her Peloponnesian situation, which was determined by the need to keep quiet the Helots and to keep weak Arcadia and Argos. She was ready to hand over the lonians to Persia as soon as any threat near home appeared. Athens, however, saw military power and economic profit in extending "protection" to the lonians, her kindred. From the first, Thucydides emphasizes that Athens kept her own best interests clearly in mind (1.95.2 fin., 1.96.1 fin.). From 498 to 468 B.C. Athens' aggressively pro-Ionian policy was popular on both sides of the Aegean. The consequences can be traced, despite occasional lapses, through the fifth century, and, despite occasional campaigns, past the peace of the Spartan Antalcidas and the formation of the Second Athenian

(Manchester 19712) 32-33, 175; Burn (above, note 3) 218-220. For a graphic confirmation of Athenian-Milesian "solidarity," see the coin attributed to Miltiades' stay in the Chersonese, with Athena and the Milesian lion pictured; C. Kraay, Greek Coins (New York 1966) No. 432.

45 Roebuck (above, note 6) 48, 70, 81; Hegyi (above, note 14) 292. The Athenian percentage in archaic coin hordes found in Egypt increased dramatically as the fifth century progressed; see M. Thompson (above, note 27) 43.

46 Roebuck (above, note 6) 81 and 126.

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144 DONALD LATEINER

League.47 At Delphi the Athenians proudly advertised their Aegean victories and connections: the treasury (ca. 506 or 485), the portico with its early mainland "Ionic" columns (ca. 479), a bronze palm tree (homage to Delian Apollo) with a golden Athena. In short, all the Greeks were to be reminded of Athenian courage and power at Marathon, Salamis or the Hellespont, and at Eurymedon.48 In 498, however, the Athenians realized that they were unprepared to take on Darius' military. The foolishness of the rash gesture would not be compounded by suicidal encounters with the King's overwhelm- ing forces. The Persians could be defeated, but the Athenians now wanted to meet them elsewhere. Melanthius led the ships back to Phaleron.

Deprived of further trans-Aegean aid in 498, the Ionian forces did not collapse or surrender. The magnitude of their effort deserves consideration and will lead to the decisive battle of Lade.

IV. The Ionian Revolt: Successes and Failures

The failure of the Ionian revolt, followed by the settlement imposed by the Persian overlords, induced first the participants, then Herodotus, and finally most of his successors up to the present time to denigrate the accomplishments of the Ionian forces.49 However one conceives the motives which produced armed opposition to the mighty Persian Empire, certain facts stand undis- puted. The Greek cities of the Anatolian mainland and the islands, led by restive Miletus, rid themselves of tyrants, imposed by Persia, in 499 B.C. despite internal differences and external threat (5.36.4-38.2). They then elected strategoi (5.38.2). Representatives (probouloi, 6.7) met at their common sanctuary, the Panionion, deliberated there on policy, and devised a strategic plan which was predicated on uniting their naval forces. Allies were sought,

4' Thus Wolski (above, note 26) 48-49; cf. Sealey (above, note 32) 197. Eretria, which contributed the five other ships to the fleet that aided Ionia in 498 (5.99), had strong commercial contacts with Ionia and the Near East (Jeffery [above, note 12] 63, 67), and may have contributed ships for another battle of the war off the Pamphylian coast, if the historian Lysanias can be trusted (F. Gr. Hist. 262, F10). Cf. Burn (above, note 3) 199 n. 8. For Eretrian acquiescence in Athenian policy ca. 510-490, cf. E. S. Robinson, JHS 66 (1946) 14 n. 6: "Unlike Chalkis, Eretria throughout follows Athens in its [monetary] standard." See above, p. 136 and note 21 on the interplay of political and commercial interests.

48 Treasury: the (more probable) early date, W. B. Dinsmoor, AJA 50 (1946) 86-121, reinforced by G. Richter, Korai (London 1968) 64-65; later date, Paus. 10.11.5, followed by Ch. Picard, Fouilles de Delphes IV.4 (Paris 1957) 57ff. Portico: P. Amandry, Fouilles de Delphes II (Paris 1933) 37-121; cf. Meiggs-Lewis, SGHI, No. 25, whose doubts, when phrased as rhetorical

questions, seem decidedly weak. There are also at Delphi thirteen statues of Athenian heroes, probably to be dated ca. 465-60 (Paus. 10.10).

49 Honorable exceptions: de Sanctis (above, note 11) 68-69, 72; A. Andrewes (above, note 22) 125; Meiggs (above, note 5) 26; Evans (above, note 6) 34-35; Harris (above, note 2) 226-229.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 145

compelled (5.103.2), and persuaded to join the cause in all the reaches of the Aegean: Athens, Eretria, distant Cyprus (5.104.1), the Hellespontine cities, mainland Caria (5.103.2). These states were convinced that revolt was desirable, possible, and worth fighting for.

Successes at first were notable: Sardis was all but taken by a brilliant commando raid at the beginning (498), the soldiers of Caria joined the rebels

for the victory at Pedasus, the entire Hellespont fell to rebel control (5.103.2), Cyprus wholeheartedly joined the revolt (5.104.1 ; all 497). The limited Persian forces were forced onto the defensive. Persia's long lines of communication, the weakness of the local garrisons (5.100, 102.1), the extended period of time it always took to mobilize Persian armies, all contributed to the early success of the Greeks. Plutarch, in his essay On Herodotus' Viciousness (Mor. 861 C-D), reports that Lysanias and Charon gave the lonians' efforts much higher praise than Herodotus does.50 That is to say, Herodotus, or his informants, in retrospect may have underplayed the accomplishments of the Greek and Carian alliance. The united Greeks issued a uniform electrum coinage, perhaps in order to pay their soldiers and sailors, of which the standard fabric, weight, color, and reverse, and the varied obverses symbolize independence in federation, federalist cooperation, and freedom from the tyranny of Persian gold. The standard was the old Milesian stater; there were probably issuing mints in each city, as recent evidence indicates.5"

By 496 B.C., however, at sea the Persians regained their position on strategically crucial Cyprus (5.115), and on land a group of Persian command- ers scored successes in the Hellespont and northwestern Asia Minor, then in

Caria to the south (5.116-122). After the Persian commanders Daurises and Hymaies died, Otanes took over operations to confine the Ionian rebels to their original area and presumably to isolate the "bitter-enders" (5.123). By 495 B.C., the Greeks were being pushed into the sea. The failure in Cyprus weakened the Greeks' general morale and strategic initiative was lost. Between the time of the battles of Cyprus and Lade one hears of no concerted federal

50 F. Gr. Hist. 426 Fl; F. Gr. Hist. 262 FIO. We do not know whether the early Greek defeat at Ephesus was serious, but it seems not to have disheartened the lonians.

51 P. Gardner, JHS 31 (1911) 151-160 = History of Ancient Coinage (Oxford 1918) ch. 3,

91-103, argued for separate mints; Ch. Seltman, Greek Coins (London 19552) 87-89, for one

federal mint. The date and cause of this series cannot definitely be established, but the explanation

in the text seems most likely. J. Barron, The Silver Coins of Samos (London 1966) 36, n. 57, wished

to assign all the coins to Miletus. In support of the argument in the text, see now Meiggs (above,

note 5) 27-28, 441-442, who produces new evidence for a number of local, but coordinate mints.

Each electrum coin, worth twenty silver Milesian drachms at a ratio of 13-1/3:1, gold to silver,

may represent one month's pay for a sailor. J. A. Dengate, AJA 72 (1968) 164 and cf. DAI28/12A (1968) 4976, on the basis of the same evidence, the fact that two obverse dies of this same series were later used at Clazomenae, argues that that polis was the sole site of the federal mint, but

Meiggs, p. 442, adequately disposes of this hypothesis.

10

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146 DONALD LATEINER

action. No specific event between 498/7 and 494 B.C. seems to receive either

report or anecdote in Herodotus, and one does not even know whether

Miletus stood siege for months or years, although the latter is less likely.52

Aristagoras, for one, decided that victory was impossible (5.124.1).

Both sides realized that the naval campaign would be decisive. Miletus,

because of its access to the sea (1.17.3), had not fallen to the Lydian Alyattes'

twelve-year siege, and Croesus and Cyrus (1.141.4 = SVdA 115) both deemed

it wiser to renew Alyattes' (1.22.4) alliance with the city than to attempt

conquest. Persian military superiority on land was already proved and more

pronounced than Phoenician and Egyptian naval superiority (a fact that gave

the Persian high command little confidence; 6.9.1). Artaphrenes and his

amphibious forces, nevertheless, concluded that smashing or, better yet,

suborning the Ionian fleet would satisfactorily decide the dangerous part of the

campaign to end the rebellion. Treachery by rebels against the King was always

cheaper and rarely hard to produce (e.g., 5.113.1; 6.101.2; 8.128). From the

Greek point of view, a decisive defeat of the Persian army with its unlimited supplies and large cavalry support was impossible, but a successful crippling of the King's large Phoenician fleet seemed no idle dream. Not long before (499),

Naxos alone had held out successfully against an Ionic-Persian, four-month amphibious siege (5.34.3), and (more to the point) the lonians themselves had successfully aided the Cypriot rebel navy against the Phoenician fleet off

Cypriot Salamis (5.112.1). The Greek fleet had defeated the Persian. There too

the strategy had been to dominate the sea (5.109.3). The Ionian Greeks' determination, and the mainland Greeks' subsequent faintheartedness, can be emphasized by observing that the Ionians risked their entire navy in Cyprus, over 400 miles from home bases, considerably further than the distance from

mainland Athens or Corinth to Samos or Miletus (200-300 miles; cf. 8.132.3),

a three-day journey at most for a trireme (cf. 4.86; Thuc. 3.49 for a "record"

time). The Ionians had to bring matters to a decision quickly, since their naval base at Lade was cramped, unhealthy (6.12.3), and hard to supply.53 Furthermore, the Persian march to the sea had left, by now, few mainland cities unscathed. Phocaea, Erythrae, Myus, and Priene would not be able to muster defenders for their walls in the numbers that Miletus commanded. The fleet's protection of Miletus could not long be secure, unless and until control of the sea had been effectively asserted, and the revolt, now in its sixth year, badly needed a rousing success. The Persians' Phoenician fleet, in spring 494 B.C., sailed up to and around the coast of Asia Minor through the docile

52 van Compernolle (above, note 3) 384-387. The fact that Herodotus finds noteworthy the five-month duration of the sieges of Naxos and Soli suggests that Miletus was captured more quickly (5.34.2-3, 115.2), or one would have heard of its epic endurance. For a simple, thorough account of all phases of the Ionian revolt, see Stavrinidou-Koussiouris (above, note 40).

5 Burn (above, note 3) 210, 212.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 147

Dorian dependencies, enjoying the use of many good harbors and showing the flag to promote the cooperation of doubters. It was in the Greeks' interest to engage decisively at sea. On land the natural

lines of communication run east-west along the river valleys, a fact that favored

the Persian levies rather than the Greeks' need for north-south supply lines on an indented coastline.54 By 494 the Greeks controlled only four mainland peninsulas, those on which Phocaea, Erythrae, Priene, and Miletus stand. Lebedos, unenthusiastic Ephesus and Colophon, and the various peoples of Caria either had settled peacefully while they could or fell to the Persian army.55 Only at sea, therefore, could the lonians possibly prevail. A victory at sea would secure the island states, prevent the blockade of the mainland states,

and secure grain supplies from the Black Sea. This strategic approach was promoted even before the outbreak of rebellion.

Before the revolt commenced (5.36), Herodotus assigns a remarkable speech to the statesman and geographer-ethnographer Hecataeus of Miletus. The scene is a clandestine meeting of Aristagoras and his fellow Ionian con- spirators. Hecataeus had first urged that the lonians not revolt at all, ticking off the numerous peoples and frightening, repressive power of Darius. When this

approach had failed, he insisted secondly that their only safety lay in controlling the sea, and that the requisite cash could come only from plundering the sacred dedications at Branchidae. This remarkable anticipation of Thucydides' perceptions, both of the value of converting neglected financial resources into working capital for a naval arm, and of the critical role of a navy in defending Ionia, may be wisdom after the fact.56 Certainly his words lay before the reader two plans, both of which gain Herodotus' approval. And eventually, after serious defeats, the naval strategy did prevail.

The fighting fleet of the lonians, even with some cities already lost, was eminently respectable. Thucydides admits that there had been a temporary Ionian dominance at sea in their immediate vicinity in the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses, and he recognizes the thalassocracy of the Samian Polycrates (ca. 550-522; Thuc. 1.13.6, 16). This naval power did not suddenly vanish; it was

Jeffery (above, note 12) 220. Some may argue that any rebellion was doomed to fail because of Ionian vulnerability to the power controlling Mesopotamia and Anatolia, but even pessimistic Hecataeus was more sanguine than this (5.36.2-3), and the success of the Athenian Empire belies this assumption.

55 Burn (above, note 3) 209. Ephesus, more integrated socially, economically, and politically with Anatolian natives than her sister cities, never cared to fight against the rulers of Asia. Cf. Hdt.

6.16, where the Ephesians' feigned ignorance surpasses belief, and Meiggs-Lewis, SGHI, No. 77, v. 79 (414 B.C.), Athens engaged in guerilla warfare near Ephesus. Prof. Balcer is preparing a study

of Helleno-Anatolian relationships. Ionian history in the fifth century was not significantly different from that of the previous fifty years - the experience of a valuable pawn.

56 If one believes that Hecataeus wrote an apologetic history for himself after the revolt collapsed; cf. reff. in n. 12, above, to Grote and Busolt.

lo.:

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148 DONALD LATEINER

employed by Darius for his Scythian expedition and against him at this juncture. The Ionians faced no serious competition in naval strength from any Mediterranean neighbor, even if one allows for the possibility of mercenaries

and slaves in this one-time, inclusive levy. For the Naxos campaign, 200 ships had been levied from Ionia (5.31.4). The 353 Ionian triremes at Lade

outnumber the 325 Greek ships present at Artemisium, and fall not far short of

the 380 present at Salamis. Furthermore, in 480 B.C. not all the ships would be triremes. Neither imperial Athens nor Syracuse ever produced a fleet of 353

ships.5' In 494, Chios, Miletus, Lesbos, and Samos contributed 100, 80, 70, and 60 ships respectively. Compare with this, a few years later, Aegina (80), Athens before the ship-building program (70 or 50), Corinth (40 at Salamis), Corcyra (60; 7.168.2). Thus the lonians, at least in the period 560-494 B.C., constituted the greatest sea-powers, probably the greatest trading fleets, and perhaps the

largest populations in the Greek world. These thriving states must have been fed by a prosperous bulk-trade with Egypt and the Black Sea communities,58 since the local agricultural resources were insufficient to feed such large populations.

In numbers, courage, and even initial unity, one acknowledges that the lonians at Lade compare well to the Greek fleet assembled at Salamis in 480.59

They too did not hesitate to assault a larger fleet. Persian offers for treasonous capitulation on enticing terms were at first rejected. Dionysius' advanced tactics may have envisaged a sequence of events little different from that successfully employed by the Greeks fourteen years later. But the Ionians failed to follow a single commander long enough and failed to hold together.

The battle fought in late spring, 494 B.C.,60 near Miletus at Lade was decisive. Defeat could have led the Persians to reevaluate the cost of controlling the coast and the islands. The lonians, although battle-ready, did not maintain, because they had not created a loyalty and sense of common interest which would transcend the well-known centrifugal tendencies of the Greeks. One recalls that, at Marathon a few years later, no Greek city but tiny Plataea thought Athens' security and integrity so worth defending that its army mobilized in time for the battle, despite the patently obvious threat that a Persian base in mainland Greece would pose to every other community. Aegina (and many of the mainland cities and all the other islanders) professed their willingness, even while the enemy was still a distant threat, to submit to

5 C. Roebuck, "The Economic Development of Ionia," CP48 (1953) 10; Beloch (above, note 40) 15, n. 1.

58 Roebuck (ibid.) 11-13; idem, (above, note 6) 21; idem, "Comment" on E. Will's paper in Trade and Politics in the Ancient World, ed. M. Finley (Paris & the Hague 1965) 98.

'9 Grote (above, note 12) IV, 300, develops the comparison.

60 This paper follows van Compernolle's arguments (above, note 3) for the chronology of the revolt. The mention of the Thesmophoria (16.2), an autumn festival at least in Athens, presents a

difficulty.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 149

Persian authority for revenge on local enemies, and presumably for a share of the Egyptian, Lydian, and Ionian pottage (6.49). That the battle of Salamis was not another Lade, lost by treachery, was worthy of ascription to divine providence (8.109.3").

V. Lade: The Defeat of the Greeks

Why did the lonians lose the battle of Lade? As at Salamis fourteen years later, the Greeks chose a protected position between a perfervidly loyal city (Miletus) and a well defended island camp (Lade).6' Their position and disposition would be hidden from the Persian fleet, until it came into the bay, and at that time the Greeks might use their faster ships to attack the Persian flank. This seems to have been Dionysius' intended strategy, training his

contingents as he did in coordinated offensive formations, manoeuvres, and

tactics such as "moving in line ahead," tn' xe;ag (6.12.1), and teaching them to punch holes in the enemy line with their squadrons, the LEXJnkXov; or "break through, turn, and ram" manoeuvre (not to be regarded here as anachronistic).62 Or perhaps Dionysius hoped to catch the Persians unawares. Miletus had the right wing for three reasons: she began and led the revolt; the fight was in her home waters; the command wanted to avoid the crossing of

lines of communication (in a fleet facing north and protecting Miletus) while

61 Hecataeus, now ready to fight until the end, suggested that a base and refuge be established at the Milesian-controlled island of Leros (5.125). The idea is treated as an absurdity (e. g., How and Wells, n. ad loc.), but perhaps Hecataeus thought that, from that island with its fine harbors thirty miles to the south, potential traitors would not so easily consult their fellow (Samian) citizens.

62 J. L. Myres, "The Battle of Lade, 494 B.C.," G & R 1 (1954) 53, translated tni xcLag as "moving to the flank" as well. He has confused a tactical manoeuvre with a strategy for the battle.

See, however, his map with the phases of the battle (p. 52, not entirely justified or believable) and the entire article. The phrase epi keras is rightly rendered "leading them out in line ahead." So Burn (above, note 3) 212, who also suggests Dionysius' strategy of surprise.

For diekplous, see 6.12.1, 15.2; 8.9; and 7.36.2, where it is the gap left in the Hellespontine bridge. Sosylus (F. Gr. Hist. 176, Fl, II. 20ff.) attributes its use to a Carian general of the Ionian revolt, Heracleides of Mylasa. (For Heracleides' date, see H. Bengtson [above, note 12].) The manoeuvre can be offensive or defensive, to clear a line of retreat. J. Morrison and R. Williams, Greek Oared Ships (Cambridge 1968) 137-139, have a lucid account. Most recently, see the study of J. Morrison, "Greek Naval Tactics in the 5th Century B.C.," IJNA 3 (1974) 21-26, correcting the common misconception of the diekplous as the manoeuvre of single vessels. Rather, it is a tactic

for a coordinated squadron. Dionysius seems to have envisioned his best ships breaking up the Persian line, at the head of their respective squadrons "in line ahead," not "in line abreast." Only

the full-time sailors could do this, but Herodotus emphatically states both that they trained for this, and then that they did it (6.12.1, 15.2). The remaining Greek ships would fight in the more conventional manner, grappling and boarding. This amounts to a respectable strategy and good evidence for Ionian cooperation in the recent past and the present.

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150 DONALD LATEINER

waiting for the Persians. Thus the Samians were on the far left, fifteen miles

from home and nearest the Persians and their messengers of treason. Chios with the largest fleet held the center. The Ionians had agreed to muster all

ships, and they further agreed to yield command to Dionysius the Phocaean.63 In the enemy fleet, the Phoenicians were most numerous, loyal, and most

hostile to Ionia (6.6; 8.90), but Cypriots, Cilicians, and Egyptians also had been pressed into service. Persia had ordered a total naval mobilization to meet a major threat to her empire. The enemy outnumbered the Greeks, Herodotus says, 600 to 353 ships, yet the Persian generals - commander unknown, Datis perhaps64 - had no confidence in the advantage implied by these figures, in part because their fleet was of neither uniform quality nor experience, and the Ionians, to judge by their tactical plans, had faster triremes (cf. Phormio, Thuc.

2.89.8-). Perhaps 600 is an exaggeration, the usual figure for the full paper strength of the King's Navy. Perhaps many of these 600 ships are support and supply vessels.64a

The Persians, in any case, turned to political warfare in order to break up the fragile Ionian alliance.65 In 480 B.C. the sterling qualities of these same Ionian

63 Phocaea's contingent was the smallest of all, and herein lies at least one reason for the Ionians' choice of commander: it avoided the usual internecine jealousies of the "big four."

64 Burn (above, note 3) 210. Cf. D. M. Lewis, JHS 100 (1980) 195.

64a W. W. Tarn, "The Fleet of Xerxes," JHS 28 (1908) 202-233 argues, inter alia, that the Greeks regularly exaggerated the unknown numbers of Persian fleets, that very few fleets of 300

ships ever existed in Greece, and that the Persians may even have been outnumbered at Lade (228). 65 As for Histiaeus, like Hecataeus (5.36), he did not expect a victory for the insurgents. As

minister of Darius' "Greek Desk" at Susa, he naturally attracted the malice and envy of Persian

govern6rs in the field, such as Megabazus, Artaphrenes, and the Mede Harpagus. Herodotus, unlike most of his readers ancient and modern, personally knew Persians and thus he realized full well this uncomfortable "fact of life" for Greeks in Persian service (5.23-24; 6.1, 29-30). For a

respectable prosopography, see J. Hofstetter, Die Griechen in Persien (Berlin 1978). To the Persian functionaries, Histiaeus in Susa was a successful voice for gentleness where stern measures were

needed, and in Ionia he was a potential rebel agent and a spy for their master Darius. These Persians did not wish him success when he came to Sardis (Blamire [above, note 10] 145, 152). He failed as an "arbitrator" when he banked on his influence; he failed as a "reborn" patriot at Chios and Miletus. His marauding, if one can judge from Herodotus' silence (and one would expect him to show his hostility to the rascal here, if his evidence allowed), was equally directed against Ionians and Persians (sic Blamire, p. 150). As an enemy agent and a discredited and anachronistic autocrat to the Greeks, and as a runaway slave-bureaucrat to the Persians, distrusted and disliked by all except his profit-minded privateers, he ceased to play a significant role in the war. Herodotus has perhaps rationalized his account of Histiaeus' opportunism to achieve consistency (Chapman [above, note 2] 553), that is, to motivate it in one set way from the start.

After Lade, at Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, Histiaeus may have sought allies, or slaves to sell and captives to ransom at his freebooters' insistence (Chapman, p. 567), but a safe refuge such as his nephew Aristagoras had sought (5.124.2) seems more likely. One cannot, however, easily believe that he envisioned a Persian "client-tyranny" or an independent empire, a new sphere of influence,

in Thrace or on Thasos, as does Chapman (ibid.).

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 151

sailors worried Themistocles (8.22.2:). At first the Persians failed to shake apart the Greeks, but, after a week or ten days of naval (and, one may suppose, diplomatic) manoeuvres, the situation changed. Dionysius himself, "a tactician

of genius," had suspected that the enemy would shun battle (6.11.3:). Certainly the recorded actions of the Persian fleet suggest no overwhelming superiority. Dionysius, like Themistocles, faced defeatism, stupidity, disunity, and the short-sightedness of other commanders. Unlike Themistocles, he did not command the Greek fleet's largest contingent, but rather the Ionians'

smallest. He should have been a Chian. Samian treachery was to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. We now turn to their actions and explanation.

VI. Herodotus' Account of the Samians' Behavior

Herodotus' apologia for the Samians, be it intentional exculpation or merely the report of one island's version, is remarkably elaborate and does not begin only with their explicit excuses. Dionysius, well before the battle, in dramatic

direct speech, offers the Ionians pain and hard work (taXaLMQiLaL) only, and cajoles them with the threat of future insults. They will be regarded as "runaway slaves" and "cowards," if they fall prey to "disorderliness" ( t&ctL"). They consequently endure the pain, hard work (talaiporiaz), and heat encountered in practising advanced and complicated naval tactics, until Herodotus has some anonymous sailors complain in another direct speech of the Phocaean's endless drilling. With soldierly jocularity, they suggest that their unbearable suffering and sickness must have been brought on by their having offended some "daemon." Their suffering is so terrible that slavery to the Persians would be preferable. This fictionally vivid complaint, composed to represent low Ionian morale in general, may have originated in a well-placed Samian's mouth. If this guess be wrong, few would deny that Herodotus heard the gist of this grumbling from Samians many years later.66 Soon after the mere

complaining, Herodotus reports from his sources, all the contingents shirked training, lying in the shade of their tents, refusing to board their triremes or otherwise prepare for battle (6.11-12).67

It is difficult to determine what truth the tale contains about the Ionian sailors' mutiny. It fits well with Samian treachery; the account, including the synecdochic speech reported of the exhausted mariners (6.12.3"), purposely

"The end of the speech, "Well then, from here on let's not obey him," is openly treasonous. The irrelevant point that Phocaea contributed only three ships encourages one to suggest that the leading mutineers came from one of the "big four" poleis. Harris (above, note 2) dismisses this insulting expose and explanation of Ionian laziness as another example of Herodotus' bias.

67 For a fine numismatic rendering of a Samian warship, built in this very year perhaps, see Kraay (above, note 44) No. 613. Barron, (above, note 51) 40, asserts without argument that this warship is the Samaina.

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152 DONALD LATEINER

exaggerates Dionysius' demands and the Ionians' reaction. Of course sailors

complain, but the difficulties experienced in training, however tiring, were not

unbearable (& 'xwrot), any illnesses suffered were not the commander's fault, and slavery was not a preferable prospect - except for traitors. The tale includes allegations of an unanimous meeting and a subsequent mutinous

atmosphere among lazy ne'er-do-wells (6.12.4). Cui bono ?Why did the angry Ionian recalcitrants not pack up their tents and go home? The Samians, of

course, asserted that they sold out their fellow Greeks only after they had seen

their colleagues' unwillingness to train. We need only look at what the Chians and others did in the battle fought at Lade to refute these blanket allegations. If there is any truth to the Samian assertion, fault lies principally with the

Ionians' failure in the previous half-century to sink fully their mutual

jealousies for the common defense and security of the Greeks in Asia Minor.

Thereupon, only when they had perceived this supposedly Ionian and not Samian disarray (ataxie polle), the Samian generals determined to betray the Greeks. They said to each other, Herodotus reports in indirect speech, that the Greeks had no chance of victory (= 5.124.1 verbatim), for, even if this Persian fleet were to be defeated, Darius could quickly produce another five times its size (6.13.1). This assertion can only be termed a preposterous exaggeration. Its falsity and impossibility are made evident by the doubled number for the

largest figure anyone has ever accepted for Xerxes' fleet at Salamis. This is true whether one includes the Greek and Carian contingents (1207 ships; 7.184.1)

or excludes them (830 ships). The Samian exaggeration and rationalization attempts to promote the legitimacy and cogency of the Samians' betrayal. Rather, Herodotus' report of it helps to expose an intolerable excuse. The

alleged insubordination and lax discipline of the Ionians find contradiction in Herodotus' text: (1) by their earlier victory against the King's fleet off Cyprus and their defense of that distant island; (2) by their notable success in gaining

allies; and (3) by the unquestioned determination of the majority of the fleet, of the Chians and Milesians in particular, and some others at least (including eleven Samian triremes) in the battle itself. This pertinacity survived, even after 49 other Samian ships, the Lesbians, and "most of the other Ionians"68 had turned to flight. The Chians fought as long as they could, then broke through the enemy line to make their escape (information from Ion of Chios? 6.15).

68 6.14.3: a false statement, if "most" means a "majority of the ships," for more than 191 ships

(by Herodotus' account) remained: 100 Chian, 80 Milesian, 11 Samian, and "some few allies;" that is, more than 54% of the ships. If by "most," however, he means only a "majority of the cities' contingents," it may be right, but this is not the reasonable way to read the Greek. For a few

other examples of exaggerations of Samian provenience, consider: "no one was willing to obey" (6.12.4), "slavery is preferable to Phocaean training" (6.12.3:), and the absurd allegation that Otanes killed every Samian male (3.149).

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 153

The Milesians were destroyed, perhaps to the last trireme. These facts provided by Herodotus enable one to confute the Samians' self-exculpation.

Was Herodotus duped at all by his Samian informants.? Is his account pro- Samian, as critics almost unanimously believe? It is true to say (1) that he "thrusts the bare fact of their treachery between two attempts to excuse it," and (2) that the account as a whole superficially "whitewashes the Samians," and (3) that in 440-420 B.C. Ionian feebleness was proverbial in imperial Athens.69 At least six more items in the relation, however, in addition to the facts above and to its lively, rhetorical, dramatic,70 and therefore somewhat fictional air, suggest that Herodotus here too kept his wits about him in

reporting events, although his determined, explicit judgment of the entire rebellion as a mistake colors this incident as well as the rest of the section that

comprises books V and VI. 1-43. (1) Ironic 6il (6.13.1, OCTv. 14). Herodotus relates that only after they had

seen Ionian undependability did the Samians contract with the Persians, but his use of tv&tQiTa b6i introduces a note of scepticism, reserve, or ironic

supposition: "hereupon, we are asked to believe." The particle could be merely emphatic, to point out that treachery was not long planned, "then and only then," but this interpretation raises more problems for the Samians' logos

than it solves. How exactly was their defection decided upon, planned, communicated to each other, etc.? The particle could be resumptive, to pull the clause together at one point (as at 1.102.2), but here the clause is too brief to need such articulation.7' At 6.13.2, emphatic 18iU LOTcL Eiov ("as soon as they saw") also calls into suspicion the causes of Samian alacrity and their previous patriotism. They had been looking for an excuse, as the beginning and

the end of this sentence clearly state. Herodotus' particle distances him from his faithful report. The Persians came into the harbor to fight only when their compact with the Samians was sealed (6.14.1). The phrase ME&xovto TOi; k6yov;, repeated (6.13.1 and 2), underlines the historian's conviction that there

69 See 1.143.2, 4.142. How and Wells, ad L.143.2 and 6.13.1, allude to Herodotus' contempt for the lonians. Macan, ad loc., rightly condemns the Samian source, but fails to perceive Herodotus'

criticism of it. Grundy, (above, note 1) 127-129, realized that Herodotus was not convinced by the Samian story. See also Gomme, H.C.T., I. p. 127 ad 1.16, who recognizes that Herodotus

anachronistically applies current Athenian views to the different realities of lonian power in the sixth century. Athens was an inconsistent champion of the lonians, ready to criticize (8.22.2's), to champion (9.106.3), or to subject them (8.3.2; cf. Thuc. 1.75.1l; 6.76.4 -, 82-83') as circumstances suggested.

70 Grote (above, note 12) IV, 302, thinks the drama "realistic" and credits the participant Hecataeus with originating the story. One doubts that the Samians smelled so clean in his account.

See also note 77, below. By "dramatic" and "fictional," I mean to suggest that Herodotus had no contemporary reports of the sailors' gossip and postures and no trustworthy account of the plotting going on among the Samian commanders.

71 . D. Denniston, The Greek Particles (Oxford 19542) 234, 204 and 207, 226, 229-236.

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154 DONALD LATEINER

had been a bargain (Ta cuyxE4tEva also, 6.14.2). This is no part of the confused

and contradictory XEy6oRevva. The bargain antedated the battle. By separating his account of the Samians' decision to defect (13.1-2) from his admission of historiographical uncertainty about heroes and cowards in the actual battle

(14.1-2), Herodotus indicates his belief in the Samians' decisive and meditated betrayal. Their position at the extreme west end of the Ionian line, useful for

desertion, also may point to premeditated flight. (2) Sarcastic, exclamatory y' (6.13.1, OCT v. 20) with (3) ni(oaIat of

"mistaken supposition." In Herodotus, this verb can mean "to know," or - as here - "to think wrongly that one knows." With b;, this second, not uncommon meaning is indisputably found at 1.122.2; 7.218.3; 8.10.2, 97.2; cf. 8.5.3, 25.1, 88.2 (true and false juxtaposed), 132.2. Now, even if the Samians had known no better, and were making an "honest mistake," Herodotus certainly was aware that there would never be a fleet of 3,000 sail, so "knowledge" here at most can mean asseveration. But the Samians "knew" no such thing, and indeed admit the possibility of an Ionian victory at Lade, in

what was originally a "more vivid" conditional clause. In the phrase ev yF JtotczFatEVoL, the particle expresses his sarcastic denial of a patent falsehood.72 This statement is the most obviously false in a tangle of weak excuses. It may have sounded convincing to Samian sailors eager to believe it.

(4) Herodotus himself terms his alleged "whitewash" to be a "grasped-at excuse" of the Samians: nQocpdatog ntLkaXiO XEVOL (6.13.2, OCT v. 22). Elsewhere (3.36.3", 6.49.2), this phrase indicates the justifying of a hostile act by a handy excuse, irrelevant or even untrue. In Herodotus, the word prophasis almost always means "pretext." He understood that the fearful Samians had had much to gain and nothing to lose by timely defection. They grabbed at an arrangement with Persia, based on terms previously offered

(tobg JnQotTEoV koyoug); the matter was settled (Ta' GUyxEL[teva, 6.14.2). Defeatism and advantage were nicely joined together. That the pretext was seized "at the first opportunity" (tnELE QLOXtca) emphasizes the opportun- ism of Samian policy. Even had this stated reason been a true cause, Herodotus makes explicit that it was not the main cause of the Samian defection at Lade.

(5) Herodotus tells the reader that he could acquire no reliable information about the combatants in the actual battle because the citizens of each state still blame the others (6.14.1-2). Herodotus rarely offers such a caveat (but cf. 8.87.1) about events in recent times, buf he here acknowledges that the true

72 Ibid. 126-28; Powell's Lexicon erroneously lists the verb under "know" (le) rather than under "suppose" (3c). "Convinced, as they were" (de Selincount) marks progress, implying an honest mistake, but error nevertheless. One may prefer, overtranslating to bring out the sense of self-serving rationalization, "having deluded themselves into believing." Herodotus has many ways to free himself from responsibility for statements incorporated into his history; cf. D.

Lateiner, CQ 30 (1980) 30-32. Harris (above, note 2) calls the excuse "fatuous."

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 155

history of the battle of Lade is lost in biased, self-serving explanations and mutual recrimination, and that he made use of a wide variety of sources, some of them surely hostile to the defecting Samians.73 The most remarkable and

perhaps least true of his collected accounts was that of the self-serving Samians who later memorialized (6.14.3)74 their few sons who died defending Ionian freedom while the community as a whole saved its skin. Samians had much to

explain from 479 B.C. onwards, including their participation in, and defection from, the Ionian anti-Persian alliance. One inscribed stone was a cheap supplement to the excuse that Herodotus and many others were privileged to hear. By mentioning this one memorial and no other city's, the author ironically underlines Samian treachery, the documented paucity of loyal trierarchs, and the eventual revision of the official record. Given Herodotus' caveat about his sources, what he is willing to say and imply deserves attention.

(6) Last and most explicit, Herodotus records his judgment: the Samians "considered it a profitable occasion to save their holy places and their private property" (xaiL tta '6bLa, 6.13.2, OCTv. 24; see 2.121d2, the only other use of the phrase tv xFQ6t -notLathaL, which phrase connotes an unexpected and unearned opportunity). One can understand that the Samians wanted to turn the liability of their participation in the rebellion to date to their advantage, but the account is not to be glossed therefore as the report of a gullible apologist. The Samians again in 479 knew how to buy their way into the conquerors' graces (9.99.2, ransomed Athenian prisoners-of-war). Herodotus has stripped the whole story of its rationalization and presented a plain truth.

One may infer from the above that the critical historian has controlled to a remarkable extent the Samian version, although he has chosen to publish what

73 Cf. F. Jacoby, "Herodot," (above, note 12) col. 440, vv. 23ff. It is true that the arranged defection of the Samians is once reported as "alleged" only (Iegontai, 6.14.2), but the Samians never denied the defection or the eventually notorious arrangement. They only disputed the wisdom of fighting any longer against such odds in 494 B.C. R. Tolle-Kastenbein, Herodot und Samos (Bochum 1976) 46-47, recognizes irony in Herodotus' account but nevertheless sees the historian as the islanders' apologist. This is illogical. Herodotus' artistry and irony are especially evident in this passage. The remarkable anacoluthon at 6.13.1 (esp. OCTvv. 14-16) is meant to portray the confusion, desperation, and nervousness of the Samians when "explaining" to the careful inquirer. See also the exceptional naQapavTEg with personal object (6.12.3'", noted by Macan, who calls the tortuous sentence at 6.13.1 "incoherent"). One senses the recorder's smile, when the Samians described their allies' refusal to betray the Greek cause as "obstinacy" dzyvo>aocOvq, 6.10).

7 They did this only after the battle of Mycale, one may be sure. The inscription has not yet been recovered. The entire account of the battle of Lade and of the Samian role in bringing on the

battle of Mycale may be Samian justification and invention - discounted properly by the historian who certainly perceived that the campaign of 479 was the most likely consequence to the events of 480, Samians or no. Herodotus' motive for concentrating on the Samian version constitutes an unanswerable question. Their account was accessible (the most survivors !), and one now sees that they do not emerge from the story covered with honor.

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156 DONALD LATEINER

eye-witnesses and their credulous progeny believed or wished to believe (cf. 2.123.1, 4.195.2, 7.152.3). He keeps his distance from the versions of

apologists, as his information and presentation make clear, and he undermines his Samian informants' version. Nevertheless, that version successfully con- taminates Herodotus' account of the Ionian Rebellion as a whole, because it meshes well with later Athenian imperialist ideology and propaganda about the feeble Ionians which the writer heard in Athens.

That Herodotus' knowledge of Samos is unusually thorough, that he was

partial to this island as to Athens and Delphi, and that he was well received there by men actuated by personal or locally patriotic motives, before or while

he contemplated an historical account, all this seems indisputable75 The emphasis on the former greatness of Samos (3.39, 60, 122), the courage and rewards of Samian trierarchs at Salamis albeit fighting for the Persian cause

(8.85.2-3), the key role given by the historian to the Samian diplomats in the offensive of 479 (9.90-92), the concern for the memory of those Samians who

stayed at Lade, all point to Herodotus' patient recording (belief suspended) of their version of the past.

One may perhaps go further and say something of Herodotus' own conflicting attitudes towards Persia76 - admiration for the ruling race, for their efficient administrative and communications system, for their awesome historical accomplishments in a brief span of years. All this, however, is counterbalanced for him by the potential and sometimes all-too-real brutality of the Persian King and his minions, and by the lack of freedom and the absence of an impersonal and impartial law so often illustrated by his narrative

and by all that one knows about the history of this land. Herodotus' ambivalent account of Persia's entry into Greek, specifically Ionian, affairs may reflect the Samians' inconsistent record of resistance and cooperation. Certain inconvenient facts about Samos' past could not be denied or ignored by the Samians, but such material could be explained away, if not impudently justified. Perhaps the Samians now believed their own myths. Men less diligent and perceptive than Herodotus know this, and his account assures us that one cannot trust the Samian version.77 Because his judgment is incorporated into

7 Mitchell (above, note 8) passim; Tolle-Kastenbein (above, note 73) 9-12, 105-107. She

speaks of Parteilichkeit, although she acknowledges that Samos' oligarchical government and the island's more than occasional Medism would not win Herodotus' approbation.

76 Cf. ibid., p. 105. The modern historian of ancient Greece shares this ambivalent attitude towards the vast but often rapacious Achaemenid kingdom.

77 The purveyors of this version did not blush to remind Herodotus that the Samian ships held

a post of honor on the extreme left at Lade (6.8.2). That his source here is Samian (or at least not Milesian) finds confirmation in the unnecessary specification of Aristagoras as "the Milesian." See

the recent, brief evaluation of the war by Oswyn Murray, Early Greece (Glasgow 1980) 244.

Badian, (above, note 37) 6, 23-24, recognizes that Herodotus is not as credulous as some of those who criticize him for credulity.

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 157

the narrative, rather than presented as a first-person evaluation of his sources, subsequent historians, who have often anachronistically misconstrued his methods, have failed to disengage the author and critic from the exculpatory account of the Samians.

Herodotus' real failure as an historian, however, lies in his not having disentangled a truer evaluation of the chance for independence that the Ionians had originally grasped, perhaps a good one, from the differently motivated, negative evaluation of both the Samians and the Athenians. A true history of a defeated cause is never easy to write. They reached the same conclusion, namely that the revolt had been insufficiently planned, organized, and executed, i. e., that it had been doomed from its start. This unfavorable view, promulgated by men justifying their abandonment of a cause, may be the correct one, but the reasons given by Herodotus do not sufficiently prove it.

Herodotus' historiographical achievement in the present instance consists of having believed that a reasoned historical account, however true, which

ignored the experience and perception of the participants, would be worthless.

The perceptions and versions of historical informants, presented through the historian's own perspective and judgment, provide the most meaningful

history of which Herodotus could conceive.

VII. Conclusions

The compact with Samos determined the time of battle. Once their unsuspected departure on the left flank was secured, no further Greek resistance was anticipated by the Persians. The Samian exit would be surgically neat and clean. The Samians, for their part, worried that perhaps other states - particularly hard-pressed Miletus - might act in the same way, if they did not act first. The Samians now knew that of which in 546 B.C. the lonians had

been ignorant - until Cyrus taught them otherwise (1.141.1-2): If you want the piper's gratitude, you must dance when he plays. Why support further another Milesian venture for Milesian profit? So the Ionian cause was betrayed and the first city of Greece, Miletus, was levelled after the battle, a tragic loss for all Hellenes, and the remaining insurgents were shortly thereafter subdued (Thuc. 1.16).

Samos never did lead the revolt, and the fact that some Samians stayed through the battle showed a real division in Samian public sentiment. This has been explained as a split between pro-Persian, tyrant supporters and anti- Persian, anti-tyrant aristocrats, probably on a (false) Athenian model.78

78 How and Wells ad 6.14.3; Hegyi (above, note 14) 295, thinks that the financial magnates and landowners were bound by personal interest at all costs and at all times to favor the Persians. This

is a logical, if incorrect, result of a crude Marxian analysis. See note 80, below.

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158 DONALD LATEINER

Another explanation is possible. Samos had been the Aegean's leading naval power, until both Persian preferential treatment for Miletus (ca. 546-499 B.C.) and then a Persian massacre on Samos made possible by Samian stasis reduced the power of the island. Less than twenty years before the Ionian revolt began, Samos had felt the full force of Persian severity (3.146-149). Brave men could tremble at what might seem a foolish venture to wise men, at least to a Hecataeus. The mainland, in particular Miletus, the initiator of the revolt, could not be easily secured from any adjacent, aggressive Asiatic power (cf. Bias ad 1.170. 1-2; Hecataeus, 5.36.2-3; the Greeks, 9.106.2).

Miletus was not only beyond saving, she was also a bitter foe of Samos. Their constant enmity can be traced back to the Lelantine War (5.99.1) and to more than 200 years of subsequent rivalry. Chios and Lesbos were also unfriendly. There is a conspicuous lacuna in Herodotus' narrative regarding the behaviour of Samos in the period between the tyranny of Aeaces and the incident at the Danube bridge, ca. 514, and the treachery of Samos in 494.79 Perhaps the enemies of the Samian tyrant could not refuse their strange Ionian

bedfellows, once they had employed the enthusiasm and momentum generated by the revolt from Persia and had deposed Aeaces, and so they joined the revolt. Or perhaps subsequent fear and prospective profit combined to show the Samian leadership a way to find comfort in their enemies' sorrow. Not

only in dialect was it true that 2YZ[tLOC be tn' wVIyTOV IoiWo, "The Samians are a class unto themselves" (1.142.4). Once the slender hope of support from mainland Greece evaporated, and once the Persians won battles against Greeks at Ephesus and against the Carians repeatedly (5.117-124), the Samians lost any earlier enthusiasm (5.112.1). Why aid Miletus, and Lesbos and Chios, when none of these states had interfered with Cyrus' conquest of the Greeks or had come to the Samians' aid when Darius appeared and they pleaded for help (3.148-149)? It is Samian participation, not apostasy, that demands explanation.

Now Samos could enjoy the "most favored Greek polis" status that Miletus had used to multiply its wealth. The hasty error of revolt was redeemed by a timely adherence to the Persian conqueror's cause. The double-cross, whether long-planned or improvised but a few days before, was acceptable enough to the government and people of Samos. So far as we know, no tears were shed, no reprisals taken against traitors, no poet in Samos town was ever fined for exhibiting The Sack of Miletus (6.18, 21.2).80 While Chios and Lesbos (whose

79 Events in Cyprus and Caria are told with greater detail than those of the proper theme, Ionian history (Jacoby [above, note 12] col. 441). This may be construed as the result of several sorts of prejudice.

80 Yet some wealthy Samians, to whom Aeaces and his masters were unacceptable, had prepared an escape in 494, and, as soon as (avtV6xa) the Samian generals' treachery at Lade was accomplished, they put into motion a scheme to quit Ionia and sail for Sicily. Their hostility to the

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The Failure of the Ionian Revolt 159

ships' desertion at Lade did not represent a compact, but pure surprise and fear) were "netted," sacked, and burned, and otherwise paid immediately for their acts (6.25, 31), Samos had only to accept once more old Aeaces, the Great King's benefactor, and his prerogatives may now have been limited by the treasonous compact.8" Darius' new and gentler agent, Mardonius, extended a generous policy to the defeated, even to the displaced Milesians. One hears of no patriotic reprisals, no rebellion, only one successor in Samos. The island

became the Persian headquarters for controlling Ionia (6.95.2; 8.130). In this way, the Greek populations of Ionia were successfully secured for the planned

offensive against mainland Greece, until in 479 the momentum of the Hellenic cause in the Aegean and the power of the newly built Athenian fleet once more aroused a credible hope for liberty. The stigmatized Samians then were not far

behind the Chians in seeking Athenian good-will (8.132.2; 9.90). Their allegations were then again preposterous exaggerations, as Herodotus hints (9.90.2-3), but their earnest protestations of loyalty and allegiance were accepted (9.106.4).82 Their next volte-face, in the different circumstances of 441/0, but again with the city of Miletus as precipitating cause, had a grimmer ending, when Pericles led in the Athenian Empire's troops. True it was (6.86.4k) OTL tnltxLvvvo;o :ot aLEiL xoTE i 'Iowvb: "Ionia is without respite always in danger and insecure." The Samian double-cross, in the first place, not Ionian naval weakness, produced the Greek defeat at Lade and the second conquest of East Greece. A unified fleet might well have achieved a different

now ascendant pro-Persian generals was such that even a few Milesian survivors of the last days of Miletus were welcomed aboard (6.13.2, 22). The commanders and crews of the survivors of the eleven "loyalist" triremes were probably the leaders of the new Samian exiles. Departure was quick, before the Persians landed their puppet. Quick departure perhaps argues foreknowledge. Cf., on Ionian attitudes towards Miletus, Hegyi (above, note 14) 297-298.

81 The nature of Persia's loose control through her quislings may be illuminated by H. F. Tozer's description (The Islands of the Aegean [Oxford 1890] 161) of Samos' position in the Ottoman empire from 1832 until his day. "This island has been virtually independent. . ., for it enjoys a constitution of its own and regulates its own affairs, and its governor, who bears the title

of Prince, though he is appointed by the Sultan, . . . is not removable at pleasure, like the ordinary Turkish governors. A small Turkish garrison resides in the place, but it is merely nominal. The island is allowed to have a flag of its own, . . . It pays a fixed annual tribute to the Ottoman government.... Being freed from Turkish misrule the inhabitants are contented and pros- perous."

For what can be made of it, Ionia had remained quiet after Cambyses' death in 522/1, when much of the rest of the Persian empire rebelled. Oroetes, it is true, may have had other plans (3.126-128), but his attitudes reflect Persian dissatisfaction with the usurper Darius, not Greek preparations for a war of independence.

82 The Samians in exile (at Zancle and elsewhere) may have joined the Greek offensive in 479 in hopes of recovering power in their island. They would have seconded the extravagant protestations of the Samians who had remained at home, men who were similarly eager to be rid of Theomestor, the Persian puppet so recently installed. The upshot was oligarchic control of Sanos for 40 years.

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160 DONALD LATEINER, The Failure of the Ionian Revolt

result. The patriotic revolt, nevertheless, despite its collapse, led in due course

to Xerxes' invasion of Greece, and ultimately to the Athenian liberation of Ionia from barbarian control.

Ohio Wesleyan University Donald Lateiner

ADDENDUM

D. Gillis, Collaboration with the Persians, Historia Einzelschr. 34 (Wiesbaden 1979, 81 pp.), has recently reconsidered from a special focus "Herodotus and the lonians" and "The Ionian Revolt"

(1-25). The monograph carefully surveys passages in Herodotus that report cooperation with the Persian authorities, chiefly from 500 to 478 B.C. Gillis leaves aside the history of East Greek

relations with each other and with the Greeks of the mainland. He does not discuss the causes,

course, or results of the revolt but follows Lang's interpretation (above, note 10). He explains

Greek collaboration as a result of political caution, material advantage, and the military inferiority of the Ionians always, and of the mainland Greeks in 480 (16, 36, 61). Gillis believes the historian

to be: anti-Ionian and especially anti-Milesian (4, 22, 24; 21 and note 19), pro-Athenian and

especially pro-Alcmaeonid (58: "house historian"), and pro-Spartan (64-67). He analyzes one incident in detail, "Marathon and the Alcmaeonids" (45-58).

D. F. Graf, Medism: Greek Collaboration with Achaemenid Persia (diss., Ann Arbor 1979, 374

pp.; DAI 40 [1980] 5541A-42A), covers the same material more thoroughly and continues the study into earlier and later periods (56-140, and 258-365 for the later fifth century). He analyzes

the word "Medism" and its derivatives, and their use in Greek law and politics. He shows that

MlbL&ogi6 was an appropriate term for collaboration first with Cyrus, who emphasized Median

titulature, ceremonial, and his own genealogy, and employed Median generals in the West who helped him to secure his throne as a legitimate successor (30, 34, 38). The "Median War"

established itself as an unambiguous term for the conflict of 500-479 among later generations, for whom conflict with the Persian empire continued. Graf believes that the lonians adhered

enthusiastically to their Persian rulers (72, 101, 118) because of personal rivalries and factionalism within cities and long-standing hostilities between and among cities (368-71). He argues less convincingly that Herodotus was an apologist for the lonians (118 and note 95) who discreetly underplayed Ionian cooperation with the once popular Persians, largely by omitting available evidence (113-118, citing Hdt. 8.85). Graf does not explain the origins of the rebellion or examine the failure of the coalition at Lade.

The interpretation offered above and my forthcoming book on Herodotus' manner of historical interpretation argue that the ancient author was more independent, less gullible, and better equipped as an historian than these two authors allow. The Ionian revolt was both the most important antecedent of, and motive for, the Persian Wars, and an analogue to the theme of his entire History. In his account, inevitably flawed by the nature of the sources available, Herodotus

succeeded in revealing the chief events and the importance of those events for the future history of

the entire eastern Mediterranean world.

P. Tozzi, La rivolta ionica (Pisa 1978, 230 pp.), provides the most thorough account of the events of the revolt, of the authorities, and of the numismatic and epigraphic sources (75-99). With extensive reference to modern studies and careful historical argument, Tozzi has produced the standard account for many years. He recognizes the integrity and value of Herodotus' testimony and judgments (e. g., 41, 49-52, 73-75). He does not, however, much discuss the economic background of the Eastern Greeks and their revolt, nor does he penetrate the causes of the Samian defection and Herodotus' cautious but decisive narrative of the battle fought at Lade (see 198-207).

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