V Singeing the King of Persia’s Beard
1 Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 8.2.11–12.
Return to text.
2 Darius, inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam (DNb 8a).
Return to text.
3 Such, at any rate, is what the archaeology suggests. See Dusinberre, p. 142.
Return to text.
4 Isaiah, 45.1. “Christ”—“christos”—is the Greek translation.
Return to text.
5 Ibid., 45.2–3.
Return to text.
6 Xenophanes, 3d.
Return to text.
7 Heraclitus. From Diogenes Laertius, 9.6.
Return to text.
8 Diogenes Laertius, 1.21. The saying was also attributed to Socrates.
Return to text.
9 Hipponax, 92.
Return to text.
10 The dating is not absolutely certain.
Return to text.
11 Herodotus, 4.137.
Return to text.
12 Ibid., 5.28.
Return to text.
13 For this interpretation of Herodotus, 5.36, see Wallinga (1984).
Return to text.
14 Herodotus, 5.49.
Return to text.
15 Ibid., 5.51.
Return to text.
16 Ibid., 5.97.
Return to text.
17 Ibid.
Return to text.
18 Aelian, 2.12.
Return to text.
19 Plutarch, Themistocles, 22. Plutarch does not otherwise describe Themistocles, but his assertion that lifelike portrait busts of the great man could still be seen under the Roman Empire makes the survival of exactly such a portrait bust at the Roman port of Ostia all the more intriguing. Conventionally dated to the second century AD, the bust is judged by most—though by no means all—scholars to derive from an original sculpted between 480 and 450 BC, and therefore almost certainly drawn from life.
Return to text.
20 Thucydides, 1.138.
Return to text.
21 Herodotus, 6.11.
Return to text.
22 Precisely when is unclear.
Return to text.
23 Herodotus, 6.76.
Return to text.
24 Ibid., 6.21.
Return to text.
25 Ibid., 6.104.
Return to text.
26 Ibid., 5.105.
Return to text.
27 Strabo, 15.3.18.
Return to text.
28 Herodotus, 5.35.
Return to text.
29 Ibid., 6.1.
Return to text.
30 Ibid., 6.42.
Return to text.
31 Yasna, 30.6.
Return to text.
32 Ibid., 32.3.
Return to text.
33 Herodotus, 7.133.
Return to text.
34 Ibid., 6.61.
Return to text.
35 Ibid., 6.95. Six hundred triremes were marshaled for the expedition, but Herodotus does not tell us how many troops were sent. Six thousand four hundred Persians were killed at Marathon, mostly from the center. Since the center of an army was conventionally a third of its total, and since not all of the troops sent on the expedition were present for the battle, a total of 25,000 seems a reasonable estimate.
Return to text.
36 Ibid., 6.94.
Return to text.
37 Ibid., 6.97.
Return to text.
38 The chronology has to be worked out from assorted scattered clues. The key question is whether the Battle of Marathon was fought in August or September—nowhere are we specifically told. The balance of probability is overwhelmingly in favor of August: if the battle was fought in September, as some scholars argue, then Datis must have spent an unfeasibly long time in crossing the Aegean.
Return to text.
39 Pausanias, 7.10.1.
Return to text.
40 Plutarch, Spartan Sayings. The aphorism is attributed to Demaratus.
Return to text.
41 Aristotle, Rhetoric, 3.10.
Return to text.
42 Herodotus, 6. 106.
Return to text.
43 The tradition that Philippides hurried back to Athens from Sparta was recorded by the second-century AD essayist Lucian in his article “On Mistakes in Greeting” (3). Rationalist that he generally was, Lucian showed himself merciless toward the more far-fetched claims made about Marathon, scoffing, for instance, in another essay, at the very notion that Pan might have taken part in the battle. This surely suggests that Philippides’ return to Athens was taken for granted by the ancients, and although it has been doubted by Lazenby (1993, p. 52), it is hard to see why. The news of Spartan plans was of pressing importance to the Athenians (as it was to the Persians, too, of course), and Philippides would hardly have been in any mood to hang around in Sparta and enjoy the fun of the Carneia. Of course, that the run back to Athens would have been gruelling for the already exhausted runner is not doubted—that he may have pushed himself to the point of hallucinating wildly surely implies that he had his vision of Pan on the return, rather than the outward, leg of his journey.
Return to text.
44 A phrase so celebrated that it ultimately came to serve the Greeks as a proverb. It was quoted as such in a Byzantine encyclopedia, the so-called Suda, together with an explanation of its origin in the Marathon campaign. Although the Suda was compiled in the tenth century AD, almost 1500 years after Marathon, the fact that it transcribes a saying so obviously traditional and widely known has led most historians to accept its accuracy (although by no means alclass="underline" see, for instance, Shrimpton). A further clincher—albeit an argument from omission—is the failure of Herodotus to make any mention of cavalry in his account of the famous battle. Clearly, although some horsemen must have been left behind by Datis, there were not enough to influence the result.
Return to text.
45 An alternative theory, that the cavalry were away on a foraging expedition or being watered, makes little sense. Why would all the cavalry have been sent away on such a mission in the middle of the night?
Return to text.
46 Herodotus, 6.112.
Return to text.
47 That Themistocles was one of the ten generals is nowhere directly stated, but it is strongly implied by a passage in Plutarch’s life of Aristeides (5), in which the two men are described as fighting as equals at Marathon—and Aristeides, we know for certain, was the general of his tribe. Since Themistocles was a recent archon, and a man strongly associated with an anti-Persian policy, it is hard to know whom his tribe might have voted for in preference to him.
Return to text.
48 Aristides, 3.566.
Return to text.
49 Plutarch, Aristeides, 18. The phrase quoted is a description of the Spartan phalanx at the later Battle of Plataea.