Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus 9781780936130, 9781472593092, 9781780935348

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
0.1 Greek and Other
0.2 Summary overview
0.3 Note on abbreviations, dates and translations
1 Herodotus and the Histories
1.1 Herodotus
1.2 Historical narrative of the Histories
1.3 Rhetorical purpose of the Histories
1.4 Argument of the Histories
1.5 Persia as the sophistic Other of Greece
1.6 Rhetorical purpose of representing the Persians as sophistic Other
2 Herodotus and the Sophists
2.1 Sophists and their teachings
2.2 Sophist teachings in Herodotus
2.3 Introducing Persians as sophists
2.4 Conclusion
3 Herodotus and the Persians
3.1 Persian ethnos
3.2 Religion in Persia
3.3 Achaemenid religion: Ahuramazdaism
3.4 Persian kingship and empire
3.5 Achaemenid model of kingship
4 Persians as Other in Herodotus
4.1 Herodotus’ map of the world
4.2 Herodotus’ cultural grid
4.3 Egyptian–Scythian axis: Nomos hieros vs nomos phusikos
4.4 Greek–Persian axis: Nomos basileus vs nomos phuseōs
5 Sophist Kings
5.1 Persosophists in Herodotus
5.2 Archetype of the sophist king
5.3 Median sophist kings
5.4 Persian sophist kings
5.5 Achaemenid sophist kings
5.6 Persosophist Greeks
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Expanded Table of Contents
Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories
Index of Persons

Citation preview

Sophist Kings

Also available from Bloomsbury Aesthetic Themes in Pagan and Christian Neoplatonism, Daniele Iozzia Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy as a Product of Late Antiquity, Antonio Donato Solon the Thinker, John David Lewis

Sophist Kings Persians as Other in Herodotus Vernon L. Provencal

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Vernon L. Provencal, 2015 Vernon L. Provencal has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-78093-613-0 PB: 978-1-3500-2254-6 ePDF: 978-1-78093-534-8 ePub: 978-1-78093-816-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Provencal, Vernon. Sophist kings : Persians as other in Herodotus / Vernon L. Provencal. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78093-613-0 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-78093-534-8 (ePDF) – ISBN 978-1-78093-816-5 (ePub) 1. Herodotus. History. 2. Herodotus–Criticism and interpretation. 3. Sophists (Greek philosophy) 4. Other (Philosophy) 5. Iran–Civilization–To 640–Historiography. 6. Achaemenid dynasty, 559 B.C.-330 B.C.–Historiography. 7. Greece–History– Persian Wars, 500-449 B.C.–Historiography. 8. Greece–Relations–Iran–Historiography. 9. Iran–Relations–Greece–Historiography. 10. Imperialism–Historiography. I. Title. PA4004.P76 2015 938’.03–dc23 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

To my wife, Tammy-Lynn, our children, Rachel, Roland, Spencer, Taylor and Vanessa, our grandchildren, Caden, Chloe and Sophia and our extended families of Tiberts and Dawsons.

In Memoriam Grandmother Caroline Matilda Dawson (1909–1981) ‘Mom’

Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction 1 2 0.1  Greek and Other 0.2  Summary overview 9 0.3  Note on abbreviations, dates and translations 12 1

2

3

4

Herodotus and the Histories 1.1 Herodotus 1.2  Historical narrative of the Histories 1.3  Rhetorical purpose of the Histories 1.4  Argument of the Histories 1.5  Persia as the sophistic Other of Greece 1.6  Rhetorical purpose of representing the Persians as sophistic Other

13

Herodotus and the Sophists 2.1  Sophists and their teachings 2.2  Sophist teachings in Herodotus 2.3  Introducing Persians as sophists 2.4 Conclusion

29

Herodotus and the Persians 3.1 Persian ethnos 3.2  Religion in Persia 3.3  Achaemenid religion: Ahuramazdaism 3.4  Persian kingship and empire 3.5  Achaemenid model of kingship

95

Persians as Other in Herodotus 4.1  Herodotus’ map of the world 4.2  Herodotus’ cultural grid 4.3  Egyptian–Scythian axis: Nomos hieros vs nomos phusikos 4.4  Greek–Persian axis: Nomos basileus vs nomos phuseōs

14 16 17 18 23 25

29 36 71 93

95 118 130 144 152 161 162 165 171 177

viii Contents

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Sophist Kings 5.1  Persosophists in Herodotus 5.2  Archetype of the sophist king 5.3  Median sophist kings 5.4  Persian sophist kings 5.5  Achaemenid sophist kings 5.6  Persosophist Greeks

215 215 223 225 228 235 243

Conclusion

251

Notes Bibliography Expanded Table of Contents Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories Index of Persons

259 291 316 321 327

Acknowledgements This work has been enabled by research grants, sabbatical leaves and collegial support at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and is indebted to teachers, present and past, of the University of King’s College and the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Special thanks to those friends and colleagues of the Atlantic Classical Association and the Classical Association of Canada, who have shown a supportive interest in my work on Herodotus over the years, and in particular to the sustained encouragement of friend and fellow classicist Beert Verstraete (Professor Emeritus, Acadia). Finally, a word of sincere thanks to past and present editorial staff tasked with seeing this work through to publication and to the readers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Introduction

What justification did Xerxes have for invading Greece, or his father for invading Scythia? … Only, I suppose, that they were following … the law of nature. Plato, Gorgias 483d, my translation

Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus arose from pondering the possibility that the view expressed above by the sophist Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias might owe as much to Herodotus’ representation of the Persians as to Plato’s representation of the sophists. The feasibility of that hypothesis requires challenging the scholarly status quo on two fronts. First, by demonstrating that Herodotus has more in common with the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus than the sophist Protagoras, such that in the Histories he positions himself as standing apart from and in dialogue with the sophists as his intellectual contemporaries: not so far apart on the sophists’ more moderate teachings (e.g. nomos is a necessary human convention), but utterly opposed to more radical views (e.g. might is right), and always apart in his professed belief that human affairs are, in some manner, subject to divine governance. Above all, it must be explained how Herodotus is not a ‘cultural relativist’ in the same sense as Protagoras.1 Second, that Herodotus’ dialogical relationship to the sophists takes the form of attributing the teachings and methods of the sophists to the Persians (rather than to himself or to the Greeks, except those who ascribe to the ‘Persosophist’ ideology), such that he consistently represents the Persians as espousing and practising the teachings of the sophists in their specific role as the ideological ‘Other’ of the Greeks. Challenging the status quo on these two fronts, the further aim of Sophist Kings is to advance Herodotean scholarship by demonstrating how the argument of the Histories is constructed on the premise that the cause of war between Greece and Persia lies in the cultural antagonism

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rooted in the conflicting ideologies of the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘law of nature’. By ‘rule of law’ is meant the principle handed down in the archaic nomoi of Greece rooted in the epic vision of the justice of Zeus in Homer and Hesiod; by ‘law of nature’ is meant the principle espoused by such radical sophists as Callicles in the nomo-phusis debate prominent in fifth-century Athens (e.g. Thucydides 5.105, where the Athenians invoke the ‘law of nature’ to justify their subjection of Melos). That argument, of course, explicitly overthrows the arkhaios nomos that established the justice of Zeus – rather than the natural justice of predator and prey – as the ruling principle of the Greek polis (Hesiod, Works and Days ll. 276–85).

0.1  Greek and Other My interest in researching Herodotus was sparked in the mid-1990s by Hornblower, Greek Historiography (1994a), and fanned by the influence of the ‘cultural turn’ on Classical studies in the late 1980s and 1990s, which was partly the result of widespread response in the academy to E. Said, Orientalism (1978). Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus (1988), E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian (1989), Cartledge, The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (1993) and Georges, Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience (1994) formed the starting point of my study of the Persians as Other in Herodotus. J. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (1997) and Hellenicity (2002) heralded a new debate (Malkin, ed., Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (2001)) on how the Greeks self-identified as Hellenes that would both advance the historiographical focus on the Other in Herodotus and contribute to an emerging critique. Another source of this emerging critique came from an aggressive preference for material culture over literary sources as providing a more objective basis for the study of antiquity, which occurred, naturally enough, among such Ancient Near East archaeologists as Sancisi-Weerdenburg and Kuhrt, who led the ‘Achaemenid Workshops’ of the 1980s that practically excised Herodotus from Ancient Near East studies. New archaeological studies of ancient Greek art and architecture also appeared that represented a growing divide within Classical studies: Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (1997) reflected a move away from focusing on the oppositional relationship of Greek and Other, while Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art (2000a) furthered it. The cultural debt of the Greeks to Near

Introduction

3

Eastern influence had already been recognized by Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (1992) and West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (1997). The new emphasis on cultural receptivity re-contextualized the so-called ‘Greek miracle’ as a distinctive branch of Mediterranean culture, whose development was indebted to the pre-existing culture of the Ancient Near East. Cohen (2000b) registered ‘the latest scholarly clarion call [to] move beyond the binary thought and consideration of the opposition of the Greek Self and the Other’ (11), signalled early on by Pelling, ‘East is east and west is west – or are they? National stereotypes in Herodotus’ (1997), which called for a ‘nuancing’ rather than ‘rejection’ of the categories (65). When Gruen introduced Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity (2005a), he did so by firing a warning shot across the bow of ‘Self and Other’ (7): Much has been written, especially in recent years, about stereotypes of the ‘other,’ negative images and distortions employed to enhance reflections in the mirror of a nation’s own self-perception. Scholars have applied the analysis widely for both the ancient and the modern worlds. This has tended to oversimplify what is, in fact, a complex, subtle, and diverse set of processes. It obscures the multifarious ways in which nations fashioned representatives of one another, borrowed and revamped different traditions in order to articulate their identities in a broader community of peoples.

In 2011, Gruen edited another volume, Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean (2011a), and published a monograph, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, which single out Hartog, E. Hall, Cartledge and J. Hall as formative of the ‘scholarly consensus’ that the Persian wars formed ‘the pivotal turning point in the conception of Greek identity’ (2011c: 2), which ‘prompted Greeks to reconsider the values that gave them distinctiveness and to shape those values by contrast with a constructed “barbarian” who would set them in high relief ’’ (2011c: 9). Citing Momigilano, Alien Wisdom (1975), and Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2004), for support, Gruen targets specific pages in Hartog (1988), E. Hall (1989), Cartledge (1993), J. Hall (1997, 2002), as well as Georges (1994), Hornblower (1991), Wiesehöfer (2005), Tuplin (1999) and Mitchell (2007) as constituting ‘the overwhelming communis opinio’, which he then invites the reader to question (2011a: 67; 2011c: 9nn. 1, 2): The ‘Orientalizing’ of the Persian … drove Greeks to distinguish their special characteristics from the despised ‘Other’ who lived contentedly under despotism,

4

Sophist Kings scorned freedom, and preferred servility to rationality and self-determination. Such is the overwhelming communis opinio. Should we buy it?

Gruen (2011c: 9)2 Gruen’s contention imputes to the school of Greek and Other the view that Herodotus did ‘compose a manifesto to advocate the superiority of a constitutional system, to celebrate Hellenic values’ and ‘to suggest essentialist characteristics that entailed an irremediable separation between the peoples’ (80). But where does one find an essentialist view of Herodotus explicitly advocated by the school of Greek and Other? The view expressed early on by Cartledge (in which he quotes a crucial statement made by Hartog) speaks of cultural and ideological difference, without hint of essentialism: Yet however tolerant Herodotus was prepared to be of the social and religious ‘customs’ of the non-Greeks, including the Persians, he was not at all prepared to be tolerant of the ‘Law’ or ‘laws’ of the Great King of Persia. On the contrary, in Herodotus’ book the latter personage emblematized all that was wrong with oriental despotism, and ‘the question of power, barbarian – hence, royal – power, set in opposition to the world of the Greek city-republics, runs right through the Histories, constituting an important element in its organization’ [Hartog 1988: 322] … This difference, this ‘otherness’ was not just an important organizational element but the crucial explanatory datum for Herodotus. Cartledge (1990: 37–8)

The closest one comes to a scholar espousing an essentialist view of Greeks and barbarians on Herodotus’ behalf is in some rather unguarded statements made in Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience (1994) by Georges: ‘the congenital inability of Asiatic barbarians to understand the divine will’ (128); ‘the real causes of the enmity between the Greeks and the barbarians of Asia do not lie in the consequences of specific crimes and retributions but flow out of the underlying, “organic” differences between Greeks and barbarians’ (129). Georges comes dangerously close to imputing proto-racist stereotyping3 and essentialism to Herodotus and his contemporaries when he introduces Herodotus as promulgating a current stereotype of the barbarian as ‘atrocious and perverse, given to human butchery, cannibalism, incest, the feminization of men, and the masculine empowerment of women’ (123). On the other hand, Georges sees the kind of cultural fluidity in Herodotus that argues against an essentialist opposition of Greek and Other:

Introduction

5

His work as a whole is a grand meditation on the nature of [t]he world of humans and gods in its inexhaustible variety. From this meditation arises, however, not the strict and linear opposition between barbarian and Hellene canonized by Aeschylus and caricatured by comedians, but a taxonomy of human behaviour that threatens to span the received distance between the two human poles of barbarism and Hellenism, or even to erase it. Georges (1994: 124)

Gruen concludes his own essay on Herodotus (which appears in both Cultural Identity (2011a) and, combined with an essay on Aeschylus, Rethinking the Other (2011c)) with a loud blast of the ‘scholarly clarion call’ to banish the ‘Other’ from Classical studies: The chronicler of the great wars between Greece and Persia finds numerous reason for bitter enmity between the nations. But a cultural divide does not take precedence among them. Herodotus presents a motley canvas, no black and white images. (…) Value systems overlapped rather than clashed. Customs and practices could be distinguished but not necessarily to the advantage of one or the other. And the two peoples shared a legendary and genealogical heritage. Herodotus did not compose a manifesto to advocate the superiority of a constitutional system, to celebrate Hellenic values, or to suggest essentialist characteristics that entailed an irremediable separation between the peoples. Cultural identities are ambiguous and fluid phenomena, as the ‘father of history’ knew, not to be defined by artificial antinomies. Gruen (2011b: 80; 2011c: 39)

Most points covered in Gruen’s sharply pointed essay can be readily accepted (save his suppression of the celebratory and commemorative aspect of the Histories) in spite of the thesis they defend: his denial of the ‘cultural divide’ between Greeks and Persians in the Histories, which amounts to denying that the Greeks perceived the Persians as the ‘Other’. There is a cultural divide in Herodotus by which the Persians are specifically represented as the Greek Other, but it is not constructed on an orientalist, essentialist or otherwise absolute basis. To be fair to Gruen, it may be allowed that the scholarly exploration of Self and Other – or even of ‘selves’ and ‘others’ – in Aeschylus and Herodotus could easily be appropriated to an essentialist (and proto-racist) interpretation, as tends to happen when fifth-century historiographical and dramatic representations of the Greeks and Persians are lumped together with fourth-century rhetorical and philosophical representations, some of which appear to be overtly essentialist or proto-racist, going so far as to declare non-Greeks slavish

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by nature (most famously by Aristotle). But this tendency does not legitimize Gruen’s attack on the scholarship of Greek and Other. Indeed, it is worth noting that Siapkas (‘Ancient Ethnicity and Modern Identity’, 2014) finds ‘Gruen’s dismissal of the “Other” to be based on a misunderstanding of this foundational notion for identity studies’. Sophist Kings argues that the basis of the cultural polarity of Greeks and Persians in Herodotus is the clash of ideologies rooted in the polarity of nomos and phusis in fifth-century Greek thought (Lloyd: 1966). What I have taken from Hartog and Cartledge, and most others involved in the scholarship of Greek and Other, is that the real basis of the cultural polarity of Greeks and Persians in Herodotus is neither essentialist nor proto-racist, but, as often and emphatically stated by nearly all, essentially ideological rather than ideologically essentialist. Cultural polarity is based on opposed cultural assumptions, ideas not blood; where ‘race’ (or even genealogy) does come into it, it is as an element rather than basis of cultural – Herodotus would say ‘ethnic’ – identity. Sophist Kings finds that Herodotus’ representation of Greeks and Persians supports the view that Greek self-definition became oppositional vis-à-vis the Persians as a result of the Persian wars (the focus in Herodotus is on how it generates a common cultural identity – to Hellenikon – among the Greeks, capable of uniting the politically autonomous and historically factious poleis), and that it fits the pattern perceived in fifth-century Greek (especially and sometimes only Athenian) drama, art and architecture, and historiography as being infused with a dialogical representation of the (often Athenocentric) ‘othering’ of the Persian in opposition to Greek self-identification: despotic as opposed to democratic, slavish as opposed to freedom-loving, hierarchic as opposed to egalitarian, emotional as opposed to rational, effeminate as opposed to manly, and so on. ‘Dialogical’ here means a more complex representation than mere propaganda, whereby the representations are often nuanced with contradictory aspects of Greeks acting or looking like barbarians and barbarians acting or looking like Greeks. What Sophist Kings adds to the communis opinio regarding the Persians as Greek Other is the perception that the cultural grid constructed by Herodotus is more complex and systematic, and thus both more fluid and more rigid, than has been recognized. Herodotus begins the Histories by envisioning a common humanity divided by the binary opposition of Greek and barbarian or non-Greek. In his account of Lydian, Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Scythian customs that define their ethnic identity, we discover that there is a tendency to represent the non-Greeks as the other of the Greek self: Egyptian

Introduction

7

customs are said to be the inverse of all others, but it is their inversion of Greek customs that he cites, and this is true in all cases; all non-Greek peoples are viewed through a Hellenocentric lens, by which we sometimes learn more about Greek custom (as in his account of Persian sacrifice, where we learn they don’t do what the Greeks do, much like Odysseus’ account of the uncultivated land and uncivilized life of the Cyclopes). On the other hand, as Redfield had demonstrated, Egyptians and Scythians are also represented as polar opposites to one another, and there are obvious differences in the relationship of Greeks to Egyptians and Ethiopians on the one hand and the Scythians and northern tribes on the other. Often we learn about commonalities between Greeks and non-Greeks: for instance, Greeks and Persians are most open to adopting foreign customs, unlike the closed cultures of Egypt and Scythia. Greeks and Scythians both prize their freedom and equality, whereas Egyptians and Persians embrace hierarchy and slavishness. Yet, the Scythians regard the Ionians as the most slavish of free peoples, and the rigid hierarchy of Spartan society is likened to that of Egypt and Persia. With respect to the lands inhabited by the peoples, there seems to be the same Hellenocentric bias: the temperate climate of Greece (specifically, Ionian Greece) appears to be the normative centre of Herodotus’ map of the world, which is also the centre of civilization, from which one moves out to the less inhabitable and inhabited uncivilized frontiers – Egypt and Ethiopia to the south, Thrace and Scythia to the north, Persia to the east. (Yet Herodotus attributes ethnocentrism to the Persians, which suggests that he is not bound by the Hellenocentric conventions he employs – as he says explicitly about his use of continental nomenclature, 4.45.) Geographical polarities have diachronic aspects: as one travels south, one goes back in time to the oldest and most civilized of peoples; as one moves north, we come to the youngest and least civilized of peoples (evincing an epic rather than sophistic view of human ‘evolution’). Diachronically, the narrative of the Histories follows the rise of the Persian Empire under Cyrus, who basically conquers the peoples formerly under Assyrian rule, to which Cambyses adds Egypt, and Darius and Xerxes attempt to add Europe. The result is that the complexity of relationships among the peoples of the world is reduced to the simple polarity of Greeks and Persians at war. But so far all we have done is look at aspects of the overall cultural grid without grasping the logic of the grid itself. In fact, underlying the complexity of relationships is a cultural grid composed of north–south and east–west axes orientated to Herodotus’ ethnographic map of the world, which is based on the most fundamental polarity that governed fifth-century Greek thought: the contrariety of nomos and phusis.

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The north–south axis of the grid is composed of the fundamental contrariety of Scythia and Egypt; the east–west axis is composed of the more sophisticated contrariety of Greece and Persia. The nomadic Scythians, who have adapted their way of life to the land, are the youngest, most natural, most lawless and least religious of civilized peoples, beyond whom are cannibals and monsters; the Egyptians, who have adapted their land to their theocratic way of life are the oldest, least natural, most lawful and most religious of peoples, next to whom are the Ethiopians, people of a golden age, blessed by the gods. Their ethnic contrariety can be expressed as the contrariety between a culture based on living in accord with nature, the nomadic culture of nomos phusikos, and a culture based on living in accordance with divine law, the hieratic culture of nomos hieros. Between these extremes of the human adapting itself to natural necessity or to divine law lies the more sophisticated contrariety of self-constructed ideologies rooted in the competition of logos and erōs as ruling principles within human or rational nature. Whereas Egypt and Scythia are cultural contraries having nothing to do with another, Greece and Persia are destined to be at war with one another. The cultural antagonism of Greece in the West and Persia in the East can be expressed as the ideological hostility between the culture of nomos basileus, the ‘rule of law’ in which phusis is subject to the limitation of nomos, and the culture of nomos phuseōs, the ‘law of nature’ in which nomos serves an illimitable phusis. With respect to Gruen’s critique of Cartledge on the significance of the ‘Other’ to understanding Herodotus, we can look at his critique of Demaratus’ response to Xerxes in book seven. The celebrated scene has long served as centerpiece for those who see Herodotus’ pitting of Greek against Persian, of liberty against servitude, of free choice against tyrannical compulsion as a linchpin for Hellenic identity in contrast to eastern barbarism. In fact, it cannot carry such a burden. Demaratus claims to speak only for Sparta, not for the rest of Greece – indeed Spartans are contrasted with other Greeks on this score. More importantly, the speech that Herodotus sets in his mouth praises a system of discipline, not a constitutional order. Xerxes, to be sure, draws a distinction between men who fight on the orders of an absolute ruler and those who do so (or rather would decline to do so) of their own volition. Demaratus, however, asserts that Spartans, though free, are far from entirely free. Law is their despot, a striking phrase. The system may have been deliberately chosen, but it is no less authoritarian than that of Xerxes. Herodotus places emphasis not on political liberty, let alone on democracy (Sparta was hardly democratic), but on undeviating obedience to Spartan

Introduction

9

nomos, their despotes, which they hold in much greater awe than Persians do their king. The famous exchange does nothing to suggest that the Greeks fought to preserve a free system against the imposition of Persian tyranny. Gruen (2011c: 22)

Gruen’s attempt to parse the distinctions that Herodotus observes among Hellenes leads to overstatement. For Herodotus, it is not Athenian democracy per se that is the ‘other’ of Persian despotism, but the principle of the rule of law, isonomia, in the sense of all being equally subject to the rule of law. Surely we must allow Cartledge’s view that the Spartans stand proxy here for the Greeks generally, for freedom by way of the polis as a community of citizens self-governed by its own laws, as the most obvious point made in the scene in context of the work as a whole. The objection to be made to current scholarship on Herodotus is not that too much is made of the Persians as the Greek Other, but not enough. The reply we are making here is that, if anything, not all scholars have sufficiently recognized that Herodotus’ ‘othering’ of the Persians is fundamentally ideological, and that it is an ideology that he supplies to the Persians from fifth-century sophists whose arguments served to justify Athenian imperialism. The ideology ascribed to Persian culture has little to do with the Persians as we know them from Persian evidence. Herodotus’ portrait of the Persians is, to a much greater extent than scholars (including Gruen) have been willing to allow, an ideological construct based almost entirely on alterity to the culture Herodotus ideologic­ally identifies as ‘Greek’. The Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is precisely the ideological Other of the Greek culture of nomos basileus. If there is not (as Gruen and others rightly aver) a great deal of difference between the Persians and Greeks, it is because, to a greater extent than realized, the Herodotean portrait of the Persians is modelled on the Greeks as their ideological Other. The obvious explanation for this is that while Herodotus was reflecting on ‘the aitia on account of which they went to war with one another’, the ideological conflict between Panhellenism and Athenian imperialism in his own time became representative of a universal paradigm by which he grasped and represented the past conflict between Greek freedom and Persian imperialism.

0.2  Summary overview Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus makes a number of contributions to our understanding of Herodotus and the Histories: that Herodotus is

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in a dialogical relationship with the sophists, embodied and expressed in the ideological antagonism of Greece and Persia; that the addition of the cultural polarity of the Greeks and Persians to Herodotus’ cultural grid renders it a multidimensional grid based on the bipolarity of nomos and phusis; that he understands and represents the unfamiliar Achaemenid Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire as a sophistic ideology of power; that he understands and represents the court of Persia as royal intelligentsia equal to the aristocratic intelligentsia of Athens; that he consistently represents the Persians as sophists, and it is precisely as Persosophists that that they represent the cultural ‘Other’ to the Greeks, especially the Athenians; that his representation of the Medo-Persian monarchs as sophist kings serves the immediate rhetorical purpose of the Histories to hold up a mirror to the Athenians as the new ‘Persians’ of Greece. Chapter 1, ‘Herodotus and the Histories’, looks at how the life of Herodotus and the narrative of the Histories are connected by the centrality to both of the rise and fall of Greek fraternity at the hands of the Athenians in the first half of the fifth century. The Histories is very much the story of the birth of Panhellenism in Athens’ declaration of allegiance to the Greek ideal of to Hellenikon as related from the standpoint of Athens’ subsequent betrayal of that ideal in the conversion of the Delian league into an empire. In part, Herodotus’ representation of the Persians as the ideological Other of the Greeks can be understood to result from the immediate rhetorical purpose of holding up a mirror to Athenian imperialism; in part, it is the result of Herodotus’ comprehension of history in terms of the tragic relationship of human hubris to divine tisis. Chapter 2, ‘Herodotus and the Sophists’, examines passages that resemble the teachings and methods of the sophists, demonstrating that in most cases we should attribute these resemblances not to Herodotus himself but to his representation of the Persians, whom he introduces at the very beginning of his narrative as adept in the theories and argumentative methods of the sophists. It also becomes clear that rather than regarding Herodotus as sophist or protosophist, we should see him as engaged in a dialogical relationship with the sophists, which we find most clearly represented in the opposition of Otanes and Darius in the constitutional debate in book three, as well as the debate between Demaratus and Xerxes in book seven, and which generally takes the form of cultural antagonism between Greeks and the Persians as their sophistic Other. Chapter 3, ‘Herodotus and the Persians’, brings before the reader essential aspects of the history and culture of Persia, and its relation to the history and

Introduction

11

culture of other nations, which are absent in Herodotus’ narrative, knowledge of which is a prerequisite to an assessment of Herodotus’ representation of the Persians as the Greek Other. It especially sets forth the Mesopotamian origins of Persian kingship and the Ahuramazdan theology of salvific kingship and imperialism adopted by the Achaemenid kings Darius and Xerxes, which scholars have read in their royal inscriptions and reliefs. Chapter 4, ‘Persians as Other in Herodotus’, examines how Herodotus’ ethnographic map of the world refutes the Ionian theories of environmental determinism and proposes that the cultural polarity of Egypt and Scythia forms the lower axis of a multidimensional cultural grid based on the contrariety of nomos and phusis, the upper axis of which is composed of the cultural polarity of Greece and Persia based on antagonistic ideologies constituting the relationship of the human to the divine and the natural. Herodotus’ representation of Persia on the cultural grid as the Greek Other is seen to be infused with a sophistic ideology permeating every aspect of Persian culture: religion, society, morality, education and government. In lieu of the salvific Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire embraced by the Achaemenids, Herodotus attributes to Deioces, Darius and Xerxes a sophistic theory of law and government as origin­ ating in the erōs turannidos of the sophos anēr. Chapter 5, ‘Sophist Kings’, uses the profile of the ‘Persosophist’ established by the Persian logioi (1.1–5) to identify a number of Persosophists attached to the royal court: ambassadors, judges and counsellors. Turning to the Iranian kings, the chief characteristics of Deioces, Median founder of the ancestral constitution of Persia, are identified as constituting the archetype of the Sophist King as sophos anēr and erastēs turannidos. To this archetype, Astyages, last of the Median kings, adds despotēs doulōn, exemplified by Cambyses, son of Cyrus, who founded the Persian monarchy on Astyages’ throne. Cyrus stands out as the greatest practitioner of the Persian nomos of imperialism, established by his Median predecessors Phraortes and Cyaxares, a nomos that found its limit under his Achaemenid successors Darius and Xerxes. Measured by these archetypal characteristics, Darius, a master Persosophist, proves the most able of sophist kings; by contrast, his son, Xerxes, exemplifies the tragic role of an heir who proves inadequate to the hubris of dynastic ambition (preceded in Astyages’ relation to Deioces and Cambyses’ relation to Cyrus) and suffers the nemesis of divine tisis, fitting the tragic paradigm set by the fall of Croesus as ‘payback’ for the transgression of his ancestor, Gyges, as founder of the Mermnad dynasty in Lydia. Finally, we look at the Greek tyrants and generals who medized after the Persian wars, betraying the Greek ideology of isonomia

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for the Persosophist ideology of power, finding among these Darius’ Greek counterpart, Themistocles. The Conclusion sums up by the argument of Sophist Kings by way of considering the implications of allowing that Herodotus was familiar with the Achaemenid employment of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire, and that he deliberately rejected it as royal propaganda meant to conceal the sophistic ideology that he ascribes to the Persian constitution of despotism and imperialism as its true basis.

0.3  Note on abbreviations, dates and translations All dates are bce (except references to scholarship). SK is an abbreviation for Sophist Kings: Persians as Other in Herodotus, employed as a means of self-crossreferencing. SK refers the reader to the expanded table of contents at the end of Sophist Kings (pp. 316–20). Hdt. is the standard abbreviation for Herodotus’ Histories; Th. is the standard abbreviation for Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War; Pl. is the standard abbreviation for Plato. LSJ is the standard abbreviation of the Greek–English Lexicon compiled by Liddell and Scott, revised and augmented by Jones, et al., the 9th edition (1968) which is used here. DK is standard reference to sophistic fragments as collected in Diels and Kranz (1952). Standard Persian inscription abbreviations are cited as used by Kuhrt et al. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of Herodotus are taken from the Penguin translation by Marincola and de Selincourt (2003), for which permission has kindly been granted. Other translations of Herodotus are employed, including my own, where needed to convey a sense not articulated by the Penguin translation. My translations of Herodotus are based on the Oxford Classical Text prepared by Hude.

1

Herodotus and the Histories

The life of Herodotus and the historical narrative of The Histories1 are both centred upon the crisis that gave birth in Greece to the Panhellenic cultural identity of to Hellenikon.2 The historical narrative of The Histories begins and ends with the loss and recovery of Greek freedom in Ionia, where Herodotus was born and grew up, and its thematic climax is a speech in which Athens declares her allegiance to the Greek fraternity based on to Hellenikon, what it means to be ‘Greek’ (8.144). The Histories attributes the Greek victory to democratic Athens (5.78, 7.139), where Herodotus is said to have publically presented his work, for which he was awarded handsomely (SK 1.1). By the time he did so, however, Pericles had already removed the Delian treasury to Athens, effectively completing the conversion of the Athenian-led alliance of freedom-fighters into an Athenian Empire, and the earliest signs of impending internecine warfare throughout Greece were beginning to appear.3 The Histories was completed several years after war between Sparta and Athens and their allies had been declared, a war that Herodotus’ younger contemporary Thucydides blamed on the growth of Athenian imperialism (Th. 1.23). It is really from this perspective of having witnessed the destruction of the Greek fraternity at the hands of those who were most responsible for its realization that The Histories is composed.4 As such, like the plays of Athenian contemporaries, The Histories has the immediate rhetorical purpose of addressing the contemporary political situation by way of its representation of the past.5 It does so chiefly by representing the Persians as embracing, embodying and espousing the sophistic doctrines by which the Athenians justified imperialism (SK 4.4.5). This is not to say that Herodotus is intentionally misrepresenting the Persians as sophists to teach Athens a lesson, since he understands Asian tyranny on the basis of Greek tyranny, and Persian imperialism on the basis of Athenian imperialism.6

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Just as it is the wont of Herodotus to understand Egyptian religion on the basis of Greek religion yet to explain Greek religion as originating in Egypt, so does he understand the Persian ideology of imperialism on the basis of the Athenian ideology of imperialism yet represents the sophistic ideology of the Athenians as originating in Persia. And just as the attribution of Homer’s and Hesiod’s knowledge of the gods to the Egyptians (2.50, 53) serves the rhetorical purpose of establishing an account of the past based on historia,7 so does the attribution of Athenian ideology to Persia serve the rhetorical purpose of criticising Athens as betraying the Greek cause of freedom in its pursuit of empire. That the cultural polarity of Greece and Persia in Herodotus is that of conflicting ideologies rooted in contrary views of the relationship of nomos and phusis has important implications for how we regard the Greek view of the ‘Other’ more generally (SK 0.1). In Herodotus, at least, there is not an essentialist notion of a Greek ‘nature’ as opposed to a Persian ‘nature’; there is an ideological notion of otherness of such an order that, while Persians and Greeks have adopted diametrically opposed ideologies and evolved diametrically opposed cultures, Herodotus can insist that the Persians entertained the possibility of instituting democracy in Persia as it did in Ionia (3.80, 6.43), and that the Greek tyrants and medized generals had adopted the Persian ideology of despotism (SK 5.6).

1.1 Herodotus Herodotus: son of Lyxes and Dryo, of Halicarnassus, from a prominent family, brother of Theodorus.8 He moved to Samos on account of Lygdamis, the third tyrant of Halicarnassus, grandson of Artemisia … In Samos he became fluent in the Ionic dialect and wrote a history in nine books, starting from Cyrus the Persian and Candaules the Lydian.9 After returning to Halicarnassus and driving out the tyranny, he later saw that he was unpopular with his fellow citizens, and went voluntarily to Thurii, which was being settled by the Athenians. He died there and was buried in the market place; but some say that he died at Pella. ‘Herodotus’, Suda10

Aside from the Histories, our principal source for the life of Herodotus is whatever is preserved of ancient tradition in the Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia, under entries for ‘Herodotus’ (above), ‘Lydagmis’ and ‘Panyassis’. Additional evidence is found in Aristotle, Plutarch, Cicero, Eusebius,



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lesser-known authors and anonymous works.11 The Histories begin by declaring that it is the work of ‘Herodotus of Halicarnassus’, but Aristotle and others cite a variant reading, ‘Herodotus of Thurii’. The Suda resolves the discrepancy by placing Herodotus’ birth in Halicarnassus and his death in Thurii. Herodotus’ birth is generally dated to 484, accepting the ancient convention of dating the acme of a person’s life at the age of 40, which would have been the age of Herodotus at the time he is reported to have been publically honoured by the Athenians in 444, which agrees also with the ancient dating of his age as 53 at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431. Although the Histories only assure us that Herodotus could not have died before 431, his death is generally dated to 424, with some scholars extending it to 421 or even 414.12 By the time of his birth, Halicarnassus had been under Persian rule for more than a halfcentury. By the time Halicarnassus joined the league in 454, the Athenians had gained an empire, ruling over the cities of Ionian Greece they had initially helped liberate from Persian rule. About this time, Herodotus left Halicarnassus ‘for good … when he was about 30’13 and he spent the remainder of his life travelling, composing and lecturing from the Histories. His travels included central Greece, as far north as Thrace, Macedonia, the Black Sea and Scythia; to the west, Magna Graecia and Sicily; as far south as Elephantine in Egypt; in the Near East, Asia Minor as far as Babylon, but not Persia proper.14 Despite his travels, it is ‘probable that Herodotus could not speak any language other than Greek’.15 Neither the Suda nor the Histories claim Herodotus visited Athens16 but his use of local information about Athenian history and topography assures us that he did.17 Scholars accept anecdotal evidence that places him there sometime between emigrating from Halicarnassus in 454/3 and settling in 444/3 in Thurii, a Panhellenic colony founded by Athens in southern Italy, whose constitution was drafted by Protagoras as commissioned by Pericles.18 It is said that he gave public readings in Athens in 445/4, for which it was proposed that the Council award him the astonishing fee of ten talents.19 About 442, he is said to have been honoured with an ode composed by Sophocles,20 whose extant tragedies evince familiarity with the Histories.21 The ‘tragic’ aspect of Herodotus’ Histories also evinces familiarity with the Greek tragedians, certainly Aeschylus, most likely Sophocles, and perhaps Euripides as well.22 Anecdotal evidence and apparent familiarity with passages in the Histories in Antigone (late 440s) and Acharnians (425/4) date the Histories as familiar to Athenians as a work in progress as early as 445/4 and as a published work as early as 425/4.23 Thus,

16

Sophist Kings it is not to be denied that Herodotus’ public readings were renowned in intellectual circles at Athens and that Sophocles in particular was impressed by his views on the barbarians as well as by his ethical and religious ideas. Ancient sources do not mention any contact with Pericles … It remains true, however, that Herodotus’ Athens was also Pericles’ Athens, as well as the Athens of Sophocles, Euripides and Protagoras. Asheri (2007a: 4)24

1.2  Historical narrative of the Histories Herodotus’ life spanned the rise and fall of Greek fraternity in the early fifth century and the historical narrative of The Histories recounts the origins of the fraternity from the perspective of its collapse. Centred upon the Greek crisis of Persian conquest, the narrative proper of the Histories begins with the Lydian subjection of Ionian Greece around 560, and makes reference to events that occurred shortly after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war in 431. By the mid-sixth century, Greek poleis populated the Mediterranean coasts of Europe, Africa and the Levant. The centre of the Greek world remained the Aegean Sea. Ionian Greece remained subject to Lydia until Croesus led an ill-fated campaign against the greatest and last of the Near Eastern empires, Persia. By 530, Ionian Greece and the whole of the Near East were under Persian rule. The rise of Achaemenid Persia occurred in the aftermath of the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at the end of the seventh century. Under Cyrus the Great, the Persians arose in 550 to take control of the territory once under Assyrian rule, to which Cambyses added Egypt. Darius gained the throne in 521 amid rebellions throughout the empire that he successfully quelled before attempting to expand the north-western frontier of the empire. Failing to subject the Scythians in the far north, he crossed the Hellespont into Greece and ended his campaign after subduing parts of Thrace and obliging Macedonia by way of a treaty. The fifth century began with the Ionian revolt against Persian rule in 499, which Darius quelled by 494, and followed up by sending a fleet across the Aegean to punish Athens for assisting the revolt. The Persians answered their unforeseeable defeat by Athens at Marathon in 490 by launching a major invasion of Greece ten years later. Xerxes, who had inherited the throne after his father’s death in 486, marched his army across the Hellespont and down along the Aegean coast of Greece only to be defeated in Attica by the Greek alliance led by Athens and Sparta, which ended the Persian offensive. In 478, Athens



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allied with the Aegean and Ionian poleis to form a naval league whose mandate was to carry on an offensive against Persia, in which Sparta had no interest. By the mid-fifth century, a formal peace was negotiated with Persia, by which time the treasury of the alliance was transferred from Delos to Athens, marking the completion of a process by which free allies were forcibly constrained by Athens to continue as tribute-paying members of the league. Athenian imperialism so alarmed Sparta and her allies that the inevitable war was formally declared in 431, providing the most immediate context within which Herodotus gave final form to his Histories. By 424, the traditional year of his death at the age of 60, the war would have raged for seven years; according to Thucydides, it was a period marked by the bloodshed not only of war between the city-states, but of factional civil strife – stasis – within them. The irony of the turn of events would not have been lost on Herodotus: once leaders of an alliance in the ‘Great War’ of the defence of Greece against non-Greeks, Athens and Sparta now divided the Greek world in a war of Greek against Greek, citizen against citizen, father against son. In Athens, the demagogue Cleon had replaced the autocrat Pericles, and persuaded the Athenians to wreak savage vengeance on Mytilene; if Herodotus lived another ten years, as some have argued, Alcibiades would have been advancing the cause of the fated Sicilian expedition by arguing that it was a law of nature that those states that did not continually increase their empire would perish (Th. 6.18.6).

1.3  Rhetorical purpose of the Histories As historians, we can approach the Histories as a narrative that follows the career of Persian imperialism and regard it chiefly as a history of the Persian wars that contains a great deal of supplemental information that enables us to understand this ‘Great Event’ in Greek history as a clash between the European culture of political freedom and independence and the Asian culture of despotism and imperialism. As historiographers, we pay more attention to the rhetorical aim of the Histories as a narrative commemorating the birth of a national consciousness among the Greeks themselves, what Herodotus has the Athenians declare as to Hellenikon.25 The Histories is a Greek-speaking work that presents itself to a Greekspeaking audience as a record of the heroic achievements of both Greeks and non-Greeks, with a particular interest in the cause of cultural conflict between them. By ‘non-Greek’, barbaros, Herodotus often means ‘Persian’, but in the

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opening sentence or Proem, which moves from the most universal field of enquiry – ta genomena ex anthrōpōn, human events – to the most particular event within that field – the aitia or exact cause of warfare between Hellenes and barbaroi – the comprehensiveness of the Hellenocentric bipolarity of Greek and non-Greek seems intended. What makes the Histories a Hellenocentric work, however, is not that it is a Greek (-speaking) work obviously intended for a Greek (-speaking) audience, which is not entirely true anyway. If we consider the first six chapters of book one as a ‘preface’ to the narrative proper, which gets underway with the Croesus logos, the preface frames the narrative proper in the universal context of human history occurring within the repetitive pattern of the rise of peoples like the Persians from obscurity to become great empires and the decline of great empires like the Assyrians into oblivion. The Hellenocentrism of Greek and non-Greek thus falls within a universal humanism that looks beyond a contemporary Greek-speaking audience to a potential future audience of all humankind, Greek and non-Greek. For just as the Athenians became Greek by speaking Greek (1.57), so could others; some, like the Persians at the Theban banquet, were already Greek-speaking (9.16). What makes the Histories Hellenocentric is that the narrative as a whole is structured around the theme of how the Greeks came to know themselves as Greek. In this sense, the Histories is a mirror in which the Greeks are to learn, and never forget, who they are. What makes it a humanist work intended for a universal audience is that to find out that what it means to be ‘Greek’ is to learn what it means to be human. If the Histories was principally an empirical account of the Persian wars with its narrative structure based on the rise of the Persian Empire, then it would obviously begin with Cyrus the Great. Instead it begins with Croesus, because Croesus was the first to subject the Greeks; or, as Herodotus puts it, even more precisely: ‘before the rule of Croesus, all Greeks were free’ (pro\ de\ th~j Kroi/sou a0rxh~j pa/ntej #Ellhnej h]san e0leu/qeroi, 1.6.3, my translation).

1.4  Argument of the Histories The narrative proper of the Histories begins with the historic loss of Greek freedom in Ionia; it reaches its thematic climax with the Athenian declaration of to Hellenikon on the eve of the battle that would decide the fate of Greece (for which we are thematically prepared by a series of debates prompted by Xerxes’ proclamation that he intended to subject the whole of Europe to Persian rule); it ends with the vindication of to Hellenikon in the historic recovery of Greek



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freedom in Ionia and the flight of Xerxes back to Persia. Within this narrative arc occurs the argument of the Histories, the thesis of which is that the war between Greeks and Persians was not, fundamentally, about the ethnic or even cultural clash of Greeks and non-Greeks, but the inherent conflict of opposed ideologies, that of political freedom based on the sovereign ‘rule of law’ (nomos basileus) and that of the despotic rule of force justified by the ‘law of nature’ (nomos phuseōs). (Translations of nomos basileus as ‘rule of law’ and nomos phuseōs as ‘law of nature’ are used throughout this work as shorthand expressions for the fundamental opposition of nomos and phusis in relation to human affairs, especially with respect to the natural limitlessness of the erōs turannidos on the one hand and the divinely sanctioned limits that would contain it in subjection to a providential cosmic order on the other.)26 The ideological conflict of nomos basileus and nomos phuseōs takes the political form of rivalry between the millennia of monarchic despotism in theocratic Egypt and imperial Asia and the more recent appearance of the fundamentally democratic institution of the Greek polis as a political community self-governed by its own nomoi, centered upon a common assembly of free, enfranchised politai in the agora, originating in the early Greek monarchic and aristocratic constitutions. Nomos basileus as ‘rule of law’ attains its most complete expression politically in democracy, as most fully embodying the principle of isonomia (3.80), best understood in Herodotus to mean ‘equally subject to the rule of law’ (rather than ‘equally enfranchised by law’). Herodotean isonomia, the political principle of both democratic Athens and regimental Sparta, is regarded as displaced by Greek tyranny as a despotic form of one-man rule (unlike the earlier monarchic constitution idealized in Homer), supported by the rival constitution of Persian monarchy that is the most complete political expression of nomos phuseōs, the ‘law of nature’, in Asia (5.92a.1–2). Thus, whereas on the international level this rivalry took the ethnic form of the conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks, it existed also within the Greek world, in the civil strife in Greek cities where tyrants usurped constitutional governments and were supported by Asian despots, as well as in the form of internecine strife among Greek states. Herodotus insists the conflict took place within Persia as well, as evidenced by the constitutional debate in which Otanes proposed the Persians adopt a democratic constitution (3.80), and by Mardonius later replacing Ionian tyrants with democratic governments – protesting in both cases against the Greeks’ refusal to believe that such things had occurred (6.42). Herodotus argues that so long as the Greek communities were willing to abide the rule of tyrants, Greece was unable to free itself of Persian rule. It was

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only with the establishment of democracy in Athens (by which Athens was clearly empowered, in Herodotus’ view, 5.66, 5.78) that the Greeks began to be made aware of the principle on which the polis itself, whose political centre was the agora for which Cyrus had nothing but contempt (1.153), was truly based: isonomia, that all were equally subject to the sovereign rule of law (nomos basileus) and none – especially a sole ruler, Greek tyrant or Asian king – were above it (3.80; 5.78, 5.91–2; 7.104).27 Only then did it become possible for the Greeks to make the choice that would liberate themselves from the imminent threat of total subjection to Persian rule.28 The conflict of principles that appears in the conflict of nations and city-states in Herodotus is clearly shown to have its source within human nature itself, as the conflict of reason and passion: within human nature lies our innate capacity for logos, which recognizes the limitations imposed by divine nomos on human ambition, and erōs turannidos, the source of illimitable ambition that would know no limit, human, natural or divine. Thus Greek tyrants and Asian despots alike are shown to be irrational, capable of atrocities that can only be explained, as in the exemplary cases of Cambyses and Periander, as acts of madness, of a mind in which reason is corrupted by an insatiable lust for godlike power (3.80; 5.92), to suffer a surfeit of hubris owing to their intellectual prowess, realized especially in the careers of Darius and Themistocles, and thus to incur divine tisis, as most notably befalls the Asian kings Croesus, Cyrus and Xerxes, but also to be observed in the humiliating fall of such Greek leaders as Polycrates (3.125),29 Aristagoras (5.124), Cleomenes (6.84)30 and Hippias (6.107).31 The argument of the Histories begins by establishing the complete lack of political unity in the Greek world at a time when tyrants ruled nearly all the cities of Greece, even Athens, and the Spartans remained isolated within the Peloponnesus. The lack of self-consciousness among the Greeks of the way of life they had developed in their institutions of oikos (family) and polis (citystate) in which Solon instructs Croesus (by the examples of Tellus, Cleobis and Biton) is signalled in the narrative by the externality of having Cyrus express contempt for the agora as the centre of the life of the polis (1.153).32 What truly lies within the activity of the agora, the political life of the community, is eclipsed by an emphasis on commerce, but this failure on Cyrus’ part seems fitting enough as the Ionians themselves seem hardly aware of it as well. Usually when power changes hands among rulers, subject states take the opportunity to seek their independence. Instead, the Ionians only ask of Cyrus that the terms of their subjection remain as they had been under Croesus (1.141).33 Cyrus’ angry refusal provokes fear of reprisal in the Ionians, ‘who began to erect defences …



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except the Milesians, who were the only ones to have obtained the same terms from Cyrus as from Croesus. The others came to a common agreement to apply for help to Sparta’ (1.141). Instead of aid, Sparta sent a message to Cyrus warning him not to subject the Ionians or Sparta would declare war – which he answered with his contempt for the culture of the agora. Facing Persia on their own, some of the Ionians forsook their cities rather than suffer subjection; most stayed, lost their cities to the Persians after a brave fight, and accepted the yoke of Persian rule (1.169). Sparta’s failure actually to lend aid to Ionia (5.50) makes clear the problem that while the Greeks may have shared a common way of life based on the public sphere of the agora, they were not united by it. Isonomia is embodied in Sparta’s constitution of ‘equals’ and ephors in a limited form, expressed by Demaratus’ declaration that the Spartans are free but not entirely free since among them nomos is despotēs, which they fear more than the Persian soldiers fear their commanders, or the Persians fear their king (7.104). In Sparta, all citizens are subject to the law and all are free, but only collectively, not individually. There is a ‘foreign’ aspect to Spartan culture, an ‘otherness’ that it shares with Egypt in the rigidity of its customs (6.60), and with Persia in the power and privilege granted to the kings (6.58–9), and in their slavish obedience to their constitution, whereby their ephors stand over them with a despotic power not unlike those who drive the Persian armies into battle with whips (1.65; 7.104). By Spartans and non-Spartans alike, Sparta’s constitution is viewed as peculiar to Sparta, which no other city is inspired to adopt as their own, as something set apart from rather than as representing the Greek culture of nomos basileus. With regard to the individual, Sparta is not so different from Athens under the tyrants. Of his fellow-Spartan hoplites, Demaratus had declared that ‘fighting singly, they are as good as any, but fighting together they are the best soldiers in the world’ (7.104). Of the Athenians, Herodotus himself observes: ‘while they were oppressed under tyrants, they had no better success in war than any of their neighbours, yet, once the yoke was flung off, they proved the finest fighters in the world’ (5.78). It is only when isonomia is united with isegoria (5.78), ‘equal say in the assembly’, and takes the form of the democratic constitution of Athens, that it enters into Greek consciousness as what is fundamental to the Greek way of life: Sosicles of Corinth is moved to say that the whole order of things in the Greek world would be overthrown if Sparta were to aid in the return of tyranny to Athens (5.92).34 The failure of the Ionian revolt against Darius is that it is actually inspired less by the Hellenic idealism of isonomia than the individualist erōs turannidos

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of the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras (5.30, 35). It was only after his plan to enlist Persian aid to subject Naxos fell through, and he found himself in the position of possibly losing his control of Miletus as well, that Aristagoras instigated the revolt against Darius and, nominally (logōi, ‘in word’, ‘professedly’35), replaced his tyranny in Miletus with isonomia (lo/gw| metei\j th\n turanni/da i0sonomi/ hn e0poi/ee th|~ Milh/tw|, 5.37.2). Furthermore, it was with mixed purpose that Athens lent its aid to the Greek cause (or, at least, Ionian cause) of political freedom, diluted, as it were, by Aristagoras’ promise of gain (5.97). Thus Athens withdrew support and sailed home when it saw that the revolt was a lost cause (5.103). The true cause of the continued subjection of Ionia under Persian rule is revealed in the slavish and self-serving decision of the Ionian tyrants to hold the bridge for Darius (4.137): like the Persians (4.138), they rule and are ruled by nomos phuseōs, the law of nature, which in human nature takes the form of erōs turannidos. Athens certainly did not intend to provoke the Persian invasion of Attica (5.105, 7.1), but their successful repulsion of Darius’ army at Marathon unaided by Sparta gave birth to a whole new sense of themselves as leaders in the Greek world, a role they assumed more ably than Sparta when Xerxes mounted his campaign against all of Greece a decade later (7.138). Still, it was only the imminent threat of the total subjection of every polis in the Greek world that provided the requisite element of absolute necessity sufficient to unite the small number of poleis who did manage to come together in common cause against Persia’s invasion of Greece (7.145). Leadership fell to the Greek states where isonomia had first taken hold, Athens and Sparta, which found allies for the Greek cause hard to find (7.138). Their greatest hope was that Gelon of Syracuse would add his enormous resources to the cause, but he rebuffed them with his contempt for the naked self-interest of their request (7.158). It was not Greece they wanted to save, but themselves; nor were they able to give up what he wanted in return, either Athens’ command of the navy, or Sparta’s command of the army (7.159–62). Herodotus makes it clear that in the end the fate of all of Greece rested upon whether the Athenians would accept the Persian terms of surrender for the sake of their own city, or sacrifice everything to the common cause (7.139). The source of Athens’ declaration of absolute commitment to the latter course of action is announced in the Athenian response first to Persia, then to Sparta: there was no making peace with those who had burned their temples and destroyed their statues to the gods (8.143–4). Ironically, it was the Persian destruction of Athens that made the Athenians feel they had nothing left to lose by fighting to the death in the name of freedom under the rule of law.



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In a famous instance of Herodotean irony,36 he chooses to sum up his argument by way of a self-serving declaration on the Greek achievement made by Themistocles:37 Indeed it was not we who performed this exploit; it was the gods and the heroes, who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be king of Asia and of Europe too – a man who does not know the difference between sacred and profane, who burns and destroys the statues of the gods, and dared to lash the sea with whips and bind it with fetters. 8.109

The difference between the culture of nomos basileus based on isonomia which establishes itself in Greece and the culture of nomos phuseōs based on erōs turannidos which establishes itself in Asia is that the former is grounded in a pious recognition of the subjection of human affairs to divine retribution (tisis), whereas the latter is grounded in a human hubris that takes its own human nature to be, as the sophist Protagoras would say, ‘the measure of all things’. Herodotus’ view of history as the endless cycle of the rise and fall of the small and great over the course of time expresses his belief of divine intervention in human affairs.38 In the same way that lightning strikes the tallest trees, or divine providence contrives a balance between the conflict of natural powers among creatures, so does the divine, Pindar’s nomos basileus, limit the natural growth of human ambition to – as the Athenians declare in Thucydides – ‘rule wherever they can’.

1.5  Persia as the sophistic Other of Greece While Persia occupies most of Herodotus’ narrative, it plays an ancillary role in the argument of the Histories. While the Greeks undergo a qualitative change from a lesser to a greater state of political unity and cultural self-awareness, accompanied by a substantial change in governments from tyrannies to democracies, the Persians undergo a quantitative change in the growth of their power after the initial substantive change from a subject nation to the ruler of all Asia. The Persians as a whole are not involved in a struggle with who they are as Persian as the Greeks are with who they are as Greek, though there is a tragic arc to be discerned in the course of the Persian kings from Cyrus to Xerxes that we can measure by their individual capacity for the sophistic principle of homo mensura, whereby Darius stands out as the greatest, Cambyses the least, sophist

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king of all, bookended by the unsheathed ambition and tragic hubris of Cyrus and Xerxes. The argument of the Histories is not about the Persians per se, but the Persians vis-à-vis the Greeks. The role played by the Persians is that of the Greek Other. Generally, all the non-Greek peoples who appear in the Histories are characterized by Herodotus in terms of their alterity to the Greeks, which belongs to the basic Hellenocentricity of the Histories as a work written by, for and chiefly about Greeks. But the Persians are the specific Other to the Greeks on Herodotus’ cultural grid, as the Scythians are to the Egyptians. More than any other ethnos to appear in the Histories, the Persians are specifically represented as both Greek-like and un-Greek-like. In his account of Persian customs, Herodotus begins with Persian religion, about which we learn mainly that they did not conceive of, or worship, their gods as did the Greeks. The cultural polarity of the Persians to the Greeks is so strong that we have to wonder how much Herodotus’ description of the Persians as non-Greeks tells us about who the Persians are in their own right. With respect to their ideology of kingship and imperialism, we know that it is constructed completely by Herodotus, arguably out of sophistic theories of the origin of law and government. His emphasis on the naturalism of Persian religion and social customs owe something to sophistic ideas of culture as well. Persian hierarchism is not understood as an expression of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship; it is represented as the cultural antithesis of Greek egalitarianism. The portrayal of Persian logioi, counsellors, judges and monarchs as adept practitioners of the sophistic art of argumentation, fully at home with the agōn logōn peculiar to the Greek symposium, is clearly modelled on Greek practice. Their speeches and debates are as highly improbable for Persian kings in royal courts as they are highly probable for Greek sophists in Athenian symposia. Thus, Herodotus’ insistence against Greek disbelief that Otanes argued for democracy in a debate hosted by Darius, that Mardonius replaced tyrants with democracies in Ionia (6.43), or that Xerxes attempted to entice the Argives with an appeal to Perseus as their common ancestor (7.150), can be taken to suggest that he may not be as devoted to representing the Persians in their own right as in their role as Greek Other.



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1.6  Rhetorical purpose of representing the Persians as sophistic Other If the rhetorical purpose of the Histories is to ensure that all Greeks never forget what it means to be Greek, and all humanity learn what it is to be human, its immediate purpose is to remind the Athenians, in particular, of what they once were, the leading defender of Greek freedom and autonomy against Persian imperialism and despotism, and to point out what they had become, the ‘Persians’ of Greece. Herodotus intends for imperial Athens (and the Greek tyrants) to see the culture of their ambitions reflected in the culture of the Persian Empire.39 The sophistic culture of nomos phuseōs, which Herodotus attributes to the Persians as Other, is not to be found on the royal inscriptions and reliefs of Achaemenid Persia, of which Herodotus may (even must) have been aware but which he interpreted through the more familiar Hellenocentric lens of Greek tyranny and Athenian imperialism. Indeed, the progression of ethnic contingents in his catalogue of Xerxes’ army, beginning with Persians, Medes and Elamites and ending with Ionian Greeks, matches that of procession reliefs at Apadana and the order in which the subject nations appear in the royal inscriptions. Like the Persian custom of proskynesis, however, the hierarchy of the Persian tribute reliefs is misrepresented as the expression of despotism, a one-way valuation based on power, rather than a mutual reciprocity based on honour. In Herodotus, Greek tyrants are represented as having acculturated to the Persian model of kingship through medizing; basically, they model their rule of the polis after the Persian king’s rule of the empire, as based on the rule of force rather than the rule of law. To some considerable extent, however, the imperial despotism of foreign Persian kings is already modelled on the domestic despotism of native Greek tyrants, and in the end medized Greeks and Hellenized Persians both become Persosophists. In the narrative of the Histories, the Persians generally support the Ionian tyrannies as conducive to their rule of Ionia. In the argument of the Histories, the rise of democracy and tyranny as opposed forms of government within Greece, one based on common consent to the rule of law over all equally, the other based on the unconstitutional rule of force by one over the many, is played out within the larger context of the clash of Greek and Persian cultures. By identifying tyranny with Persia as the Greek Other, Herodotus redefines the rivalry of democracy and tyranny within Greece as belonging to the conflict between the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian (non-Greek) culture of nomos

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phuseōs. Rather than a rival form of government native to Greece, tyranny is represented as the cultural antithesis of isonomia that most aptly expresses the common way of life in Greece based on the polis centred upon the discourse of the agora. Herodotus’ insistence that in the age of Darius the Persians seriously debated forsaking their ancestral constitution of despotism for democracy and later replaced the Ionian tyrannies with democracies (6.43) – he complains that his contemporary audience found these reports incredible – makes clear that the cultural polarity of Greece and Persia is rooted in nomos rather than phusis, its basis ideological rather than essential. Isonomia is achieved in Greece largely through the constitutional reforms of Lycurgus, Solon and Clisthenes; Persian despotism originates in the subjection of sophia to erōs turannidos in Deioces, Cyrus and Darius, and maintained by their descendants. If the Persian ethnos is represented as more receptive of despotism and the Greek ethnos as more receptive of isonomia, the explanation is not to be found in the relationship of culture to natural environment or ethnic essentialism, but in their different cultural histories constituted of the acts of historical individuals, against a background of divine providence. Persia’s culture of nomos phuseōs finds expression in its ideology of imperialism as well. The perception of the shadow of Athenian imperialism cast by the Persian Empire has so advanced in Herodotean studies as to become commonplace. In this respect, the specific role of Persia in the argument of the Histories is to provide a mirror to Athens in which to catch a reflection of its betrayal of the principles of freedom and autonomy, isonomia and isegoria, in its ruthless pursuit of power in the subjection of fellow-Greeks. But more generally and more importantly, what needs to be recognized is how the whole of the Histories is written from a perspective gained not from the result of the Persian wars with the triumph of Greek independence over Persian imperialism but from the consequent rise of Athenian imperialism and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The ideology of despotism and imperialism that Herodotus attributes to Persia in the Histories is not that of the Ahuramazdan ideology crafted by Darius as the foundation of the Achaemenid empire; it is the Athenian ideology that found justification in sophistic arguments that championed the right of the strong to rule over the weak, based on a sophistic concept of ‘natural’ justice. These arguments, implicit in the constructed ideology of the Persians in Herodotus and explicitly rehearsed by the Athenians in Thucydides, completely overthrew the traditional Hellenic view as received from Homer and taught in Hesiod that the law of nature by which the hawk preyed upon the nightingale



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was for the animal kingdom, the sovereign rule of law based on divine justice had been ordained by the gods for humankind. Both historians saw that the consequence would be ruinous to Athens and the whole of Greece, and history proved them right.

2

Herodotus and the Sophists

No known sophist appears in Herodotus. Though Herodotus uses the word ‘sophist’ (sofisth/j),1 his sophistai are thought to be something quite different from the sophists of the fifth century,2 none of whom are named or otherwise alluded to by Herodotus. Yet scholars have long recognized the presence of sophistic teachings in certain passages of the Histories, and there has been much debate on whether and to what degree Herodotus himself should be thought of as a sophist.3 Scholars have not yet gone so far as to call Herodotus a sophist, but he has been placed firmly in their company, and is often taken not only to have presented their teachings in his narrative but also to have adopted their views. In particular, the impact of Thomas (2000) as the first full-length (though not comprehensive) study (in English) since Nestle, set within the larger context of the intellectual milieu of the mid-fifth century, has largely been to confirm Herodotus’ inclusion among the sophists, along with the Hippocratic medical writers and Ionian ethnographers, especially as sharing a common humanistic interest in the relationship of nomos and phusis in society and culture.4 Our aim is to ascertain more precisely whether the appearance of certain sophistic teachings and methods in Herodotus ought to be ascribed to the author himself, which has largely become communis opinio since Thomas (2000), or to his representation of a person, nation, or event in the narrative.

2.1  Sophists and their teachings Of reputed ‘sophists’, those whose teachings or methods scholars have identified as bearing a resemblance to teachings and methods that appear in Herodotus’

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narrative are: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, Critias, Thrasymachus, Callicles and the unknown authors of the Anonymous Iamblichi and Dissoi Logoi.5 All flourished in the second half of the fifth century, and they came from all over the Greek world. They shared a new focus on the human as an object of intellectual interest, especially as manifest in the life of the polis, which naturally gave rise to debates on nomos and phusis. Of actual teachings, what survives is largely anecdotal and fragmentary; Plato, our greatest source for the sophists’ teachings, is considered hostile.6 From a near-contemporary philosophical standpoint such as Plato’s or Aristotle’s, the sophists shared a great deal of common ground; yet, some teachings of the sophists were more radical than others. Most sophists challenged the customary authority associated with the arkhaioi nomoi, which sustained the moral and political order of oikos and polis – e.g. gods should be revered, parents should be honoured, laws should be obeyed. All reputed sophists viewed nomos as human convention; the more moderate sophists, however, believed nomoi to be necessary and even beneficial to the polis, while the more radical sophists sought to overthrow the nomoi of the polis altogether as serving the self-interests of those who asserted their validity. There was common ground also with respect to the religion of the polis and oikos: generally, the sophists regarded religious practice a matter of human convention, and were sceptics or agnostics with respect to the gods that were worshipped. The more moderate sophists thought religion was necessary to sustain the moral and political order of the polis; the more radical sophists would replace or infuse religion with a sophistic ideology of naturalism. These views were not entirely new; the Presocratic philosophers Anaximander, Heraclitus and Xenophanes had expressed views about matters human and divine that had already anticipated the sophists. The difference between the Presocratics and the sophists is that the former measured the human by the divine, whereas the latter measured the divine by the human. Thus, for instance, both Heraclitus and Protagoras would say that nomos is relative, but whereas for Protagoras nomos is relative to the human as the ‘measure of all things’ (whether individually or collectively as a polis), for Heraclitus it is relative to a universal divine nomos.7 Generally, Herodotus is closer in his (more traditional) views on religion, law and morality to the so-called archaic sages, such as Solon,8 and Presocratic philosophers, such as Heraclitus, than his sophistic contemporaries, although there are numerous passages in which one finds a resemblance to the teachings or methods of the moderate sophists, especially Protagoras, that are attributable to Herodotus himself. The more radical



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teachings of the sophists which can be found in Herodotus, however, are never his own, but are characteristic first and foremost of the Persians, and then of those Greeks who medize and are represented as Greek ‘Persosophists’. The principal argument made in this work is that, by attributing certain teachings and methods of the sophists to the Persians and medized Greeks, Herodotus involves himself in a dialogical relationship with the sophistic teachings of his day, especially those that justified despotism and imperialism, whether Persian or Athenian.

2.1.1  Protagoras (DK80) Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490–420), the earliest known and most renowned sophist, was an exact contemporary of Herodotus, a fellow xenios (non-citizen) in Athens and famed member of the Periclean intelligentsia. Herodotus’ public reading in Athens occurred about the same time as Protagoras was commissioned by Pericles to compose a constitution for the Panhellenic colony of Thurii, which Herodotus is reported to have joined, and where he finished his work and life.9 Of all the sophists, Herodotus is most likely to have had personal acquaintance with Protagoras. Generally, they share with other fifth-century intellectuals a common rationalism inherited from the earlier Ionian tradition of scientific enquiry and a common humanism that belongs to their own time. Though a xenios deprived of the rights of citizenship, Protagoras embraced Athens’ democratic way of life, at least until the death of Pericles, shortly after which he and other members of the autocrat’s aristocratic circle were sent into exile by a demos disenchanted with the sophists’ influence on their law courts and assembly. Although Protagoras never headed a school of thought in the manner of Plato and Aristotle, his teachings, especially his famed dictum ‘man is the measure of all things’, laid the ground, philosophically as well as historically, for the sophistic movement.10 The principal sources for Protagoras’ teachings are the Platonic dialogues, Protagoras and Theaetetus. The subjectivism of Protagoras’ most famous teaching, ‘man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are and of things that are not that they are not’,11 cited first in Plato’s Theaetetus (152a), is coupled there with the relativism of his dictum ‘whatever things a particular polis regards as good and just, are so for that polis, for so long as it supposes them to be so’ (Theaetetus 167c4–5).12 For Protagoras, nomos is a human convention whose validity is relative to the self-perceived good of the individual or polis. A third teaching attributed to

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Protagoras is agnosticism: ‘Concerning the gods, I am not in a position to know either that they exist, or that they do not exist’ (Diogenes Laertius 9.51 (DK80b4), trans. Dillon and Gergel 2003: 21). Aside from these principal doctrines, Protagoras is also credited with the sophistic arts of argumentation, especially eristic and antilogic, as well as of the sophistic epideixis (as exemplified by his Great Speech in Protagoras), all of which Thomas (2000, 2006a) has shown Herodotus to make considerable use of in his composition of the Histories. Protagoras’ Great Speech in Plato’s Protagoras (320c–22d) contains a muthos which offers a theoretical explanation for the origin of law and government in human society. It is basically a reworking of Hesiod’s myths of how Prometheus provided humankind with fire as the means of survival, and how Zeus ordained that humankind should live in accord with the rule of law rather than the law of nature, whereby the strong rule the weak (as the hawk preys on the nightingale). In Protagoras’ muthos, Zeus intervenes in the self-destruction of humanity, resulting from the Promethean gift of technē, to establish the rule of law in human society by granting to humankind the gifts of dikē and aidōs, which here suggest the ability to make laws and to be governed by them, to rule and be ruled. Taken literally, the muthos of the Great Speech grants the origin of nomos to the sovereignty of the divine justice of Zeus, just as the logos of the Great Speech (322d–28d) grants to Athenian nomoi the sovereignty of the polis. In both accounts, nomos is sovereign and the human is subject to it. In light of Protagoras’ subjectivism, relativism and agnosticism, however, the muthos has been taken to ascribe the sovereignty of Zeus and the rational powers of dikē and aidōs to human nature as having an innate capacity for creating laws and abiding by them. The sovereignty of Zeus represents the power of our rational human nature for self-determination, the sovereignty of human reason itself as ‘the measure of all things’. Most importantly, in the myth Zeus grants to humans their own capacity for dikē and aidōs – divine gifts handed over to humankind. All that remains of his divine rule is the law that all those who prove incapable of justice, shall perish – but that is no more than the law of our own nature: either we live together harmoniously in accordance with reason, or else we perish for lack of it – the distinction between a civilized and uncivilized existence. In effect, Protagoras’ muthos teaches the doctrine of humanism: the transference of the powers of Olympus to the minds of men. As such, it is perfectly consonant with his humanism, subjectivism, relativism and agnosticism.13



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2.1.2  Gorgias (DK82) Gorgias of Leontini (485–380), Sicily, is the most celebrated sophist after Protagoras and another contemporary of Herodotus, but whose late arrival in Athens in 427 lessens the chance of personal acquaintance. He is best known as the great master of rhetoric, the power of which he praises in his epideixis, On Helen. But he is also well known for the sophistic teaching of his work On Not-Being (or On Nature), in which he argues ‘firstly, that nothing exists; secondly, that even if anything exists it is inapprehensible … by man; thirdly, that even if anything is apprehensible, yet certainly it is inexpressible and incommunicable … to one’s neighbour’ (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, VII 65, in Dillon and Gergel 2003: 67). Of particular interest is how Gorgias’ On Helen constructs an argument based on the law of nature by which the strong rule over the weak, a principle Herodotus makes central to the Persian ideology of despotism and imperialism. Gorgias makes forensic use of it in arguing the innocence of his ‘client’, Helen: For it is the nature of things, not for the stronger to be hindered by the weaker, but for the weaker to be ruled and drawn by the stronger, and for the stronger to lead and the weaker to follow. God is a stronger force than man in might and wit and in other ways. If then on Fate and on God one must place blame (anatheteon) Helen from disgrace one must free (apolyteon). Helen 6, trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 78–9)

Gorgias’ defence of Helen is that if she is the victim of divine violence, by the law of nature she is not to blame (nor does he blame injustice on the gods). But Gorgias then proceeds to argue (quite brilliantly, one must admit) on grounds of human justice (nomos) that as the weaker, lawful woman violated by a stronger, lawless man (characterized as the unjust act of a barbaros), Helen is unjustly subjected to the law of nature. In effect, Gorgias applies the law of nature as explained by Hesiod’s fable of the hawk and nightingale (where it applies to the natural relationship of predator and prey) to the relations of gods and mortals, and the divine justice of Zeus (by which humans live by nomos dikaios and not nomos phuseōs) only to human relations, in effect translating divine justice into human (i.e. conventional) justice. Gorgias’ argument effectively undermines the traditional assumption of divine

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justice one finds in Homer and Hesiod in favour of the sophistic view of human justice one finds in Protagoras. It also looks forward, as it were, to the argument put forth by the Athenians in Thucydides’ ‘Melian Dialogue’ (5.105), where by applying the law of nature equally to gods and humans, the Athenians advance the argument for the law of nature yet further towards the radical position taken by Callicles in the Gorgias, where the gods are a fiction by which the weak control the strong until the strong obey the law of nature and rise up to rule over the weak (SK 2.1.5). On the assumption made by Thucydides’ Athenians that justice applies only to those equal in power, Gorgias’ argument contrasts divine violence justified by a law of nature (phusis) that transcends the reach of human justice (nomos) with human violence (phusis) as subject to the rule of law in human justice (nomos). Unlike Gorgias, Thucydides’ Athenians apply the law of nature to gods and humans equally as a way of justifying human violence as according with the law of nature by which the strong rule the weak. The sophistic logic of identifying justice with violence (injustice) leads inevitably to the position of Callicles, which attempts to eliminate the contradiction by the removal of the gods as the fictive foundation of the lawful justice (nomos) held to by Protagoras and Gorgias, so that one has only the law of nature (phusis) by which the weak rule the strong as the only true form of justice, which is to say, justice is violence, might is right.

2.1.3  Prodicus (DK84) and Hippias (DK86) Prodicus of Keos (465–395) and Hippias of Elis (c. 460–390?) appear together in Plato’s Protagoras as popular teachers.14 Prodicus demonstrates his expertise in semantics, for which he is best known (e.g. Protagoras 337a–c). Hippias, a renowned polymath, makes a key declaration on the contrariety of nomos and phusis: ‘For like is related to like by nature [phusis], while convention [nomos], being a tyrant over men, forces many things on us which go beyond our nature’ (Pl. Protagoras 337d, trans. Dillon and Gergel 2003: 121).15 Hippias’ declaration is somewhat ambiguous: if we can entertain an ancient prototype of Nietzsche’s Übermensch in Callicles’ strong man, then we might find in Hippias’ teaching an ancient prototype of a Marxist revolt against the tyranny of the (capitalist) state of social alienation in favour of living in an egalitarian collective in harmony with nature.



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2.1.4  Antiphon (DK87) and Critias (DK88) Both Antiphon (479–411) and Critias (460–403) were Athenian aristocrats who played leading roles in Athenian political life during the Peloponnesian War. Antiphon masterminded the oligarchic coup of 411 and was executed when democracy was restored that year. Critias took a leading role in the reign of terror carried out by the Thirty oligarchs whom Sparta put in charge upon Athens’ surrender in 404. Both held moderate views of the relationship of nomos and phusis with respect to the balance of a social order based on law and the freedom of the natural individual. Our interest in Critias extends only to his reputed authorship of the ‘Sisyphus fragment’, which presents a sophistic theory of the origins of law and government out of natural necessity and religion as a necessary social convention to ensure obedience to the law. Such a theory Herodotus has Deioces put into practice when he founds the Medo-Persian monarchy in Ecbatana. Our interest in Antiphon, author of numerous forensic speeches, is focused on his reputed authorship of the treatise On Truth, which proposes a moderate sophistic view of law and justice that sets the necessity of nature against the contingency of law.16 Like Hippias, Antiphon saw humankind as united by phusis, divided by nomos.

2.1.5  Thrasymachus (DK85) and Callicles17 Thrasymachus of Chalcedon (460–400?) and Callicles of Athens (484–404?) are the most radical sophists. Thrasymachus is best known from his ferocious appearance in the first book of Plato’s Republic where he makes the radical argument that laws are human conventions and justice nothing other than the interest of the stronger, which has been interpreted as holding to a moral view similar to Callicles’ theory of natural right.18 Callicles appears in Plato’s Gorgias as a host and probable client, if not actual student, of Gorgias.19 He gives the most radical attack of all the sophists on conventional law and morality, advocating that the strong should rule the weak by a natural law of justice, that is, the law of nature (nomos phuseōs). In support of his argument, he cites the examples of Darius’ invasion of Scythia and Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, and concludes by citing Pindar’s poem ‘Nomos is king of all’, all of which strongly suggests that Plato had Herodotus in mind in constructing Callicles’ argument. At any rate, as we shall see in SK 4, it is the radical sophistic doctrine of nomos phuseōs that best suits Herodotus’ representation of Persian culture, especially the Persian ideology of despotism and imperialism.

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2.1.6  Anonymous Iamblichi (DK89) and Dissoi Logoi (DK90) Anonymous Iamblichi and Dissoi Logoi are anonymous treatises of the late fifth to early fourth centuries, representing the extremes of what is least and most characteristically sophistic. Anonymous Iamblichi 4.7 makes a positive argument for nomos against phusis, arguing against the radical views of Thrasymachus and Callicles that ‘the observance of law would be best for the state and the individual, and the failure to observe law would be worst’. Dissoi Logoi offers what the title suggests: double arguments on every topic. On the good and bad, it repeats what Protagoras says about such things as olive oil (Pl. Protagoras 334), good for some uses, bad for others. A strong resemblance to Herodotus’ account of Darius’ experiment in cultural relativism (3.38) is evident in the comparison of various ethnic customs, showing that what is seemly in one culture is disgraceful in another.

2.2  Sophistic teachings in Herodotus The influence of these [sophistic] types of thought and expression are palpable on almost every page in Herodotus. He shows a marked interest in antilogic, in eristic speeches and debates which bristle with concise gnomai and general truths, and in the meaning of names and other linguistic phenomena … The sophists … were interested in political problems such as the nature and organization of power, constitutional theory, the contrast between nomos (convention, law) and phusis (nature), the mechanisms unleashed by pleonexia (greed, desire for more) or ophelia (self-interest, advantage), and various aspects of ‘right based on might’. Echoes in Herodotus abound … Raaflaub (2002: 160–1)

There are a considerable number of passages in the Histories that bear some resemblance to sophistic teachings or methods, for which the classic collection remains Nestle (1908, 1942). Our concern is to clarify the precise character of resemblance in a key selection of passages that best serve to establish how Herodotus stands in relation to the sophists.

2.2.1.1  Argumentation: Eristic (7.50.2) ei0 de\ e0ri/zwn pro\j pa~n to\ lego/menon mh\ to\ be/baion a0pode/ceij, sfa/llesqai o0fei/leij e0n au0toi~si o9moi/wj kai\ o( u(penanti/a tou/toisi le/caj. 7.50.2



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At 7.50.2, Xerxes describes the eristic method of arguing every point (e0ri/zwn pro\j pa~n to\ lego/menon) in order to trip up (sfa/llesqai) one’s opponent (o( u(penanti/a tou/toisi le/caj) in a debate. His description matches that of Prodicus: Now I myself, Protagoras and Socrates, think that you should agree to debate (amphisbêtein) with each other about your arguments, but not to wrangle (erizein) – for friends debate with friends, even through good will, whereas it’s those who disagree with and are hostile to each other who wrangle. Pl. Protagoras 337a–c (DK 84A13), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 105)

Eristic was allegedly invented by Prodicus’ teacher, Protagoras, author of The Art of Controversy (Te/xnh e0ristikw~n, Diogenes Laertius 9.52, 55 (DK 80A1), trans. Dillon and Gergel 2003: 3–4). The distinctive technique practised in eristic is conducting an argument ‘on the basis of purely verbal distinctions (tou1noma)’ (Diogenes Laertius 9.52; cf. ka\t 0au0to\ to\ o1noma, Pl. Republic 454a), thereby tripping up one’s opponent through wordplay (prospai/zein … toi~j a0nqrw/poij dia\ th\n tw~n o0noma/twn diafora\n, Pl. Euthydemus 278b). Eristic was also defined by its aim: to win an argument; its proponents were erists in the root sense of ‘warriors in words’.20 Clearly, Herodotus is acquainted with eristic as a sophistic style of argumentation, but he never uses eristic to advance an argument of his own. By his account, the use of eristic was practised in the debates that took place in the Persian royal court, but it is more likely that the Persians’ familiarity with eristic is the invention of Herodotus. Depicting the Persians as practising the sophistic art of eristic is consistent with the overall pattern of characterizing the Persians as sophists.21

2.2.1.2  Argumentation: Antilogic [Protagoras] was the first to declare that there are two possible positions on every question, opposed to each other [prw~toj e1fh du/o lo/gouj a0ntikeimenouj ei]nai peri\ panto\j pra/gmatoj a0llh/loij]; and indeed was

the first to present arguments along these lines … He was the first … to establish debating contests [logw~n a0gwnaj], and to provide sophistic tricks [sofi/smata] for those presenting arguments … The books of his that are preserved are the following: … Opposing Arguments ['Antilogiw~n] Diogenes Laertius 9.51–2, 55 (DK 80A1), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 3–4)22

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Antilogic is different from eristic. The eristic art of making the weaker argument appear the stronger is one form of antilogic; but whereas eristic is arguing in any manner to secure victory, antilogic is the formal technique of composing opposed arguments (antilogiai) on the same position. Antilogic can take the form of antithetical arguments in a debate, advancing positions (gnomai) that oppose (antilegein) one another. Herodotus is, as Nestle points out,23 our earliest source for the word a0ntile/gein and its cognate forms; the title of one of Protagoras’ works is 'Antilogi/ai (DK 80B5) and the method of argumentation with which he is most specifically associated is antilogic.24 Its most popular form was the agōn logōn, ‘contest of speeches’, which Protagoras is said to have instituted (Diogenes Laertius 9.52 (DK 80 A1)), and where he claims to have made his reputation (Pl. Protagoras 335a). A number of Herodotean passages in which antilegein appears as referencing antilogic makes a strong case for Herodotus’ familiarity with the art of argument most closely identified with Protagoras. (A resemblance to antilogic in Hippocratic literature is probably a resemblance to Protagoras as well, where antilogic was the technē for which he was most famous.)25 Herodotus repeatedly uses the antilogical format in the composition of his narrative to construct a number of Persian debates. The narrative begins at 1.1 with the logos of the Persian logioi (1.1–5) which sets forth the opposed accounts of Greeks and Persians on what and who was responsible for their war with one another. Cyrus becomes the leader of the Persians by setting before them a choice between opposed possible futures as slaves or rulers of the Medes (1.126–7). The Persian constitutional debate (3.80–2) won by Darius is a formal round of arguments in which antithetical arguments are made both for and against monarchy, oligarchy and democracy, on which Herodotus makes no explicit judgement. Although he protests against the scepticism of his contemporaries that such a debate ever took place among the Persians, the constitutional debate is his own invention, modelled on the antilogical structure of the sophistic agōn logōn. (The resemblance of the arguments made in the debate to sophistic political theory is discussed below, SK 2.2.10.3.) The anti­logical argument between Artabanus and Mardonius on military strategy makes explicit reference to the use of antilogic (9.41–2). Mardonius defeats Artabanus because his argument was ‘stronger, more ruthless and utterly single-minded’ (i0sxurote/rh te kai\ a0gnwmoneste/rh kai\ ou0damw~j sugginwskome/n), and no one produced a counter-argument (a0nte/lege ou0dei/j). In the antilogical argument between Xerxes and Artabanus, Artabanus explicitly cites antilogic as necessary to making wise policy decisions: ‘unless opposing views (gnwme/wn



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a0ntie/wn a0llh/lh|si) are heard, it is impossible to pick and choose between various plans and decide which one is best’ (7.10a). The view taken here by Artabanus seems more in keeping with the practice of a democratic assembly than a royal advisory council, but this is consistent with Herodotus’ use of antilogic and debate to characterize how the Persians arrive at decisions in the royal court: it mirrors the democratic assembly of fifth-century Athens. Yet, although Herodotus employs antilogic to construct the Persian debates, he refuses to use opposed arguments (a0ntilogi/ai) to refute (a0ntileg/ein) the oracle (8.77), perhaps because the sophistic art of antilogic has the relativist implication that there are only arguments to be made, no truth to be found. At any rate, it seems that his use of antilogic belongs to his representation of the Persians as sophists, and not to himself as practising the antilogical art of the sophists. On the other hand, Themistocles appears to be practised in the Protagorean art of antilogic. At 8.83, Themistocles sends forth his men into the battle of Salamis by way of a rhetorical speech setting forth an antithesis (a0ntitiqe/mena) between ‘the better and lesser elements in human nature and the human condition’, which he concludes by asking his men ‘to choose the better’ (ta\ kre/ssw ai(re/esqai), meaning, presumably, that they should choose to act on their better nature rather than their worse. His argument thus makes rhetorical use of the Protagorean art of constructing two sides to every argument (antilogic).26 Herodotus also reports that Themistocles’ speech was the best given, which likely means it was the most effective in motivating the men to do battle. Of all the characters who appear in the Histories, those who most resemble the sophists’ teachings in their intellectualism, ambition and argumentation are Themistocles and Darius; as Darius is a master sophist among the Persians, so is Themistocles a master sophist among the Greeks. Herodotus’ characterization of Themistocles is thoroughly informed by his medizing. Thus, it is as a future Greek Persosophist that Themistocles demonstrates his command of the sophistic arts of rhetoric and antilogic.

2.2.2  Language (2.2, 2.32, 2.50) References to the mostly Egyptian origin of the Greek names of the gods resembles Protagoras’ and Prodicus’ interest in the ‘correctness of names’ and ‘right use of words’. The distinction made in Plato’s Cratylus, with reference to Protagoras’ agnosticism, between the unknowable names the gods give themselves and the known conventional names given them by humans,

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establishes a common theoretical ground between Protagoras’ and Herodotus’ interest in names. I am not anxious to repeat what I was told about the Egyptian religion, apart from the mere names [ta\ ou0no/mata] of their deities, for I do not think that any one nation knows much more about such things than any other [nomi/zwn pa/ntaj a0nqrw/pouj i1son peri\ au0tw~n e0pi/stasqai]. 2.3.2 The names [ta\ ou0no/mata] of nearly all the gods also came to Greece from Egypt … I think that the gods of whom they profess no knowledge were named [o0no/masqh~nai] by the Pelasgians – with the exception of Poseidon, of whom they learned from the Libyans; for the Libyans are the only people who have always known Poseidon’s name [ou1noma]. 2.50

The argumentative technique involving the correct use of names and meanings of words was associated with the sophists in general,27 but more particularly with Protagoras (Pl. Cratylus 391b–c (DK 80A24)) and Prodicus (Pl. Euthydemus 277e),28 for whom language exists by convention (nomos).29 Protagoras’ view is espoused by Hermogenes in Cratylus.30 Hermogenes cannot believe that ‘there is any principle of correctness in names other than convention and agreement’ (a1llh tij o0rqo/thj o0no/matoj h2 sunqh/kh kai\ o9mologi/a, Cratylus 384d1, trans. Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns 1961: 383). Hermogenes asserts the Protagorean view against the Heraclitean view of Cratylus,31 that names are ‘natural and not conventional [o0no/matoj o0rqo/thta ei]nai e9ka/stw| tw~n o1ntwn fu/sei pefukui~an, kai\ ou0 tou~to ei]nai o1noma o3 a1n tinej sunqe/ menoi kalei~n kalw~si] … that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians’ (Cratylus 383a 4–6, trans. Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns 1961: 422). In an extensive study of Herodotus’ view of language, Munson finds that Herodotus comes closest to the moderate view taken by Socrates in Plato’s Cratylus, whereby it is ‘desirable for a word to bear a natural relation to the thing named’.32 In this view, the relationship between names and natures is neither purely arbitrary on the side of nomos, nor fixed on the side of phusis; rather, language is a medium of experience and exchange between ourselves and nature. There is an objective nature by which language may be measured, although language itself remains a convention or medium of human, rather than natural, origin. Of particular interest is the view held by Socrates on human knowledge of divine names: ‘of the gods we know nothing, either of their natures or of the



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names which they give themselves, but we are sure that the names by which they call themselves, whatever they may be, are true’ (Cratylus 400d, trans. Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns 1961: 438). Socrates agrees with Cratylus/Heraclitus that we do not possess the divine knowledge that the gods have of themselves, their true natures and names, but this knowledge of ignorance also assures us of the existence of a divine knowledge and a divine reality. In this view, language, especially as the medium of poetic theology or myth, becomes not mere human convention, but a form of mediation between the human and the divine: ‘we will call them by any sort or kind of names or patronymics which they like, because we do not know of any other’ (Cratylus 400e, trans. Jowett, in Hamilton and Cairns 1961: 438). There is, then, also some sort of knowledge about the gods in the names given to them by the poets, not the complete self-knowledge of the gods utterly unknowable to humans, but a human knowledge of the divine in the names by which the gods have chosen to be known by humans. The view of names and of language generally as a medium in which the divine expresses itself in human terms, in which human language bears a resemblance to reality, seems nearer to Herodotus’ account of the Egyptian origin of divine names than the purely conventional view of Protagoras. This view is confirmed by a related passage, where Herodotus reports that the Pelasgians originally did not know the proper names of the gods (by which Herodotus means the distinct identities of the gods – e.g. to be able to distinguish Zeus from Poseidon): They called the gods by the Greek word theoi – disposers – because they had ‘disposed’ and arranged everything in due order, and assigned each thing to its proper division. Long afterwards the names of the gods were brought into Greece from Egypt and the Pelasgians learned them … and from the Pelasgians the names passed to Greece. 2.53.2

Herodotus here assumes that there is at least a common cultural body of knowledge about the gods that has been handed down from one civilization to the next, from the oldest to the youngest. The source of this knowledge is not stated, and it may be that Herodotus believes that it was a knowledge passed on to humankind by the gods themselves through the oracles. But it is clear that one culture can be ignorant, another knowledgeable, and that knowledge is a matter of cultural influence and borrowing, whatever its source. It would seem more in keeping with Herodotus’ religious outlook generally that the source of this body of human knowledge about the divine that is handed down in the form of myth and ritual, from Egypt to Greece, is the divine itself. If, on the one

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hand, Herodotus nowhere makes Socrates’ claim that the gods keep their true names to themselves, on the other hand, he nowhere makes Protagoras’ claim that of the gods we have no knowledge at all. With respect to Herodotus’ view of language, it seems clear that he recognizes language to be not only a matter of convention, varying from one culture to another, but also a medium of a common body of knowledge. Language is neither arbitrary nor natural; rather, it is a historical and cultural medium, itself partaking of the cultural history that it embodies, such that it is quite often for Herodotus the starting point for an objective historical enquiry into the origins of cultures and traditions. As such, it bears a resemblance both to the conventional view of Protagoras and to the natural view of Cratylus, but does so by occupying a mediational view of language nearer that of Plato’s Socrates in Cratylus.

2.2.3  Humanism and rationalism (Proem) (1.0) 9Hrodo/tou 9Alikarnhse/oj i9stori/hj a0podecij h3de, w9j mh/te ta\ geno/mena e0c a0nqrw/pwn tw~| xro/nw? e0cithla ge/nhtai, mh/te e1rga mega/la te kai\ qwmasta\ ta\ me\n #Ellhsi ta\ de\ barba/roisi a0podexqe/nta, a0klea~ ge/nhtai, ta\ te a1lla kai\ di’ h4n ai0ti/hn e0pole/mhsan a0llh/loisi. 1.0

The Proem declares the human scope, aim, and method of Herodotean enquiry; it bears resemblance to the humanism and rationalism of Protagoras’ dictum that ‘man is the measure of all things’ (DK 1). The Proem explicitly defines Herodotus’ work as a human enquiry (i9stori/h) into human causes (ai0ti/h) of human events (ta\ geno/mena e0c a0nqrw/pwn). As such, Herodotus stands with Protagoras in announcing that the human (a1nqrwpoj) has become the focus of human enquiry. By limiting the scope, aim and method of his enquiry to what can be known of human affairs by human reason, Herodotus embraces the same basic humanism and rationalism that characterize the sophists. Indeed, if these are the principal criteria by which we are to define the category of sophist, then Herodotus fits the description perfectly. But the same criteria also provide a clear basis for discriminating between Herodotus and the sophists as possessing these attributes in profoundly different ways. The most important difference is that Herodotus’ rationalism does not exclude acknowledgement of divine involvement in human affairs,33 unlike all sophists, who comment on the divine. Herodotus unreservedly includes various forms of divine intervention



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in his account of reversals of human fortune, miracles, divine retribution and divination.34 Herodotus’ study of ‘the human achievement’ (ta\ geno/mena e0c a0nqrw/pwn) is inclusive of all peoples and cultures of the known world, which he divides into Hellenes and barbaroi, basically Greek-speaking and non-Greek speaking nations. His balanced inclusion of barbaroi alongside Hellenes resembles the teaching of Hippias (Pl. Protagoras 337d, SK 2.1.3) and Antiphon (DK 44, SK 2.1.4) that political, cultural and ethnic distinctions are conventions imposed on a common humanity: We recognize and respect [the laws of nearby communities], whereas those of communities far away we neither respect nor revere. In this, however, we have become barbarized toward one other, whereas in fact, as far as nature [phusis] is concerned, we are all equally adapted at birth to being either barbarians or Greeks. Antiphon, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 9.1364 (DK 44), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 150)

But Herodotus would not agree that the recognition of a common human nature should be taken as evidence that cultural distinctions are discriminatory conventions. Unlike Hippias and Antiphon, he does not view phusis in opposition to nomos (SK 2.2.6, 2.2.7). Phusis and nomos both have a role to play in the structure of different societies, but the chief role is played by nomos (SK 2.2.8). Nomoi are the primary object of Herodotean enquiry, and they are also the principal source of historical causation. The Persian wars are presented as the clash of opposed cultures, the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs and the Greek culture of nomos basileus: the law of nature vs the rule of law (SK 4.4).

2.2.4  Agnosticism and scepticism But it was only – if I may so put it – the day before yesterday that the Greeks came to know the origin and form of the various gods [o9koi~oi/ te tinej ta\ ei2dean], and whether or not all of them had always existed; for Homer and Hesiod are the poets who composed theogonies and described the gods for the Greeks, giving them all their appropriate titles, offices, and powers, and they lived, as I believe, not more than four hundred years ago. 2.53 Those parts of what I heard them [the Egyptian logioi] relate which concern the divine (ta\ qhei~a) I am not eager to relate, with the exception only of

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Sophist Kings their names, considering that all men know equally about such things (nomi/zwn pa/ntaj a0nqrw/pouj i1son peri\ au0tw~n e0pi/stasqai). 2.3.2, trans. Harrison (2000a: 182)35 Concerning the gods, I am not in a position to know either that they exist, or that they do not, nor can I know what they look like [o9poi~oi/ tinej i0de/an], for many things prevent our knowing – the subject is obscure and human life is short. Protagoras (DK 4), trans. Gagarin and Woodruff (1995: 186–187)

Herodotus’ reticence to delve into or disclose ta theia bears some resemblance to Protagoras’ agnosticism (DK 4). The strongest argument for a link between Herodotus’ reticence to discuss divine matters and Protagoras’ agnosticism is made by Burkert (1981: 313):36 Even Herodotus essentially agrees with Protagoras: ‘all men know equally much about the gods,’ that is to say, all know nothing for certain, and for this reason Herodotus prefers not to discuss Egyptian theologia. How the gods are constituted in shape has been determined for the Greeks by Homer and Hesiod; but this is a fabrication of the poets. For so much is certain, that gods cannot be of human shape.

In support of the similarity of Herodotean and Protagorean scepticism, Burkert cites the similarity in language between o9poi~oi/ tinej i0de/an (‘what they look like’, Protagoras, DK 4) and o9koi~oi/ te tinej ta\ ei2dean (‘form of the various gods,’ Herodotus, 2.53.1). But Harrison (2000a) also makes a full study of these and other passages (mostly in book two on Egypt)37 where Herodotus expresses reticence to delve into what he has learned about ta\ qhei~a (2.3.2, 2.65.2), especially where he deliberately omits ‘sacred stories’ (i9eroi\ lo/goi), and arrives at the ‘clear conclusion’ that ‘his reticence is motivated by piety’ (188). In this respect, Herodotus stands apart from the sophists. The agnosticism, relativism and scepticism of the sophists confine human ‘knowing’ to a human reality that prohibits the assumption of a divine reality that is the object of both poetic inspiration and, through a study of nature, philosophic reason. But this difference between Herodotus and the sophists is not really a matter of religious belief – Herodotus the believer vs Protagoras the agnostic, Gorgias the sceptic and even Critias the atheist.38 Herodotus shares with the sophists a clear recognition of the limits of human knowledge, especially about the divine; he also shares their scepticism, along with the Presocratics, concerning the knowledge of the divine which has been inherited from the



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poets, though not to the same degree. The difference between Herodotus and the sophists is really a matter of knowing, which is why the inclusion of divine intervention in Herodotus does not contradict his humanism and rationalism, or his scepticism about the poetic tradition. The basis of Protagoras’ agnosticism is purely epistemological: about the gods one cannot know. Gorgias takes this epistemological stance even further: not just divinity, but humanity and the natural are all, strictly speaking, beyond the limits of true knowledge of what is. The speaker in the Sisyphus fragment attributed to Critias, on the other hand, simply posits what seems to him a more rational explanation for the supposed existence of gods and religion: ‘some shrewd, intelligent man invented fear of the gods for mortals’. In Herodotus’ view, however, ‘the divine nature of affairs is clear by many proofs’ (dh~la dh\ polloi~si tekmhri/oisi/ e0sti ta\ tw~n prhgma/twn, 9.100.2, trans. Harrison 2000a: 33). One such proof is the oracles: ‘concerning oracles (xrhsmw~n), I myself am not so bold as to criticise (a0ntilogi/hj) them, nor do I allow others to do it’ (8.77.1, my translation). What Herodotus does not believe is that speculation about the divine, especially acts of divine intervention, can result in certain knowledge.39 Herodotus also observes how the same tragic pattern repeats itself in the rise and fall of oriental despots – even the most benevolent, like Croesus – who sometimes arrive at an epiphany in which the role of divine intervention is made clear to them. If the historian is moved to affirm an epiphany, oracle or dream in an authorial comment, however, it is not on grounds of mere piety; rather, ‘the conclusion that a god is angry or that he is jealous constitutes for Herodotus a deduction from the course of events’ (Harrison 2000a: 33). It simply makes more sense to Herodotus, from a largely empirical study of the record of human events, that divinity has had a role to play; without it, how things have fallen out as they did – clearly as the result of divine jealousy (phthonos) or divine retribution (tisis) or both – would not make sense. His argument with the sophists for admission of the divine into the record of human affairs would not be based on personal religious conviction, but on the principles of humanism, rationalism and scepticism which they share in common with such Presocratic philosophers as Xenophanes and Heraclitus.40

2.2.5  Anthropology of religion It was the Egyptians too who originated, and taught the Greeks to use ceremonial meetings, processions, and processional offerings: a fact which can

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Sophist Kings be inferred from the obvious antiquity of such ceremonies in Egypt, compared with Greece, where they have been only recently introduced. 2.58

Herodotus’ attribution of the origin of most aspects of Greek religion to Egyptian antiquity historicizes the poetic tradition by supplying to it an anthropological history of religion.41 His anthropology bears resemblance to the (agnostic) anthropology of religion in the muthos of Protagoras’ Great Speech (Protagoras 320–2), as well as the atheist anthropology of religion in the Sisyphus fragment attributed to Critias (DK 25): because of his divine kinship, man was the only creature to worship the gods, and he endeavoured to set up altars and statues of the gods. Protagoras, Protagoras 320c–21, trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 22–3) some shrewd, intelligent man [sophos anēr] invented fear of the gods for mortals, so that the wicked would have something to fear even if their deeds or words or thoughts were secret. Critias, Sisyphus 19 (DK 25), trans. Gagarin and Woodruff (1995: 261–2)

The principle difference between the anthropology of religion in Herodotus and that of the sophists is that the sophists believe that religion, like all other social customs and institutions, are of human origin, whereas Herodotus believes religion, social customs and institutions (arkhaioi nomoi) are of divine origin, after which they have a history of tradition, of being handed down from earlier to later generations and nations, a tradition in which the divine continues to be actively present, primarily through miracles, oracles and interventions. Thus we find in Herodotus’ anthropology of religion (2.53) that Homer and Hesiod ‘seem both to “create” the theogony and honours of the Greek gods, and also to “show” what their forms are (implying some kind of revelation of the truth): thus there is a distinct human input into religious knowledge’ (Thomas 2000: 281). Where Herodotus focuses on the further human development of religion after its divine origin, the sophists focus on the human origin of religion, although there is some suggestion of development in Protagoras’ account. In Protagoras’ muthos (SK 2.1.1) religion is the first, immediate consequence of acquiring reason in the form of technē, and is the natural expression of human nature possessing reason. As in Critias’ account, religion appears as a necessary pre­requisite to the establishment of civilized society. For Protagoras, the religious tradition is really an intellectual tradition: the religious authorities of archaic Greece – Homer,



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Hesiod, Simonides, Orpheus and Musaeus – were really sophists in disguise (Pl. Protagoras 316d). Herodotus employs a certain pious scepticism when he sets Homer and Hesiod in a larger, historical perspective that diminishes their authority as religious educators, and makes them subject to rational criticism. Like the Presocratic philosophers, his is a more sophisticated, reasoned view of the divine against which the poetic mythology of Hesiod and Homer is sometimes found wanting. Yet, unlike Xenophanes and Heraclitus, Herodotus never goes so far as to challenge the poets’ anthropomorphism in favour of a more abstract, intellectually satisfying concept of the divine. (Likewise, in his syncretic identification of Zeus with Amun, he piously rationalizes the theriomorphic custom of the Egyptians of depicting the god as a ram as originating in Zeus’ use of a ram’s head as a disguise (2.42)) The anthropological aspect of his history of religion does not replace the theology of the Greek poets, but rather contextualizes it within a universal history of humankind that reaches back to its Egyptian beginnings and comprehends the religious traditions of all nations as distinct threads within its common weave. In his history, Herodotus chooses to preserve the many gods of many names of many peoples, rather than pull them down to erect either the universal, nameless divinity of the Presocratics, or the ‘human’ that is the origin and measure of nomoi for the sophists.

2.2.6  Phusis divine providence [tou~ qei/ou h( pronoi/h], in the wisdom one would expect of it [w3sper kai\ oi0ko/j e0sti, e0ou~sa sofh/], has made prolific every kind of creature which is timid and preyed upon by others, in order to ensure its continuance, while savage and noxious species are comparatively unproductive. 3.108.2

Herodotus’ description of the natural balance of the strong and weak as evidence of divine providence is nearly identical to the account in Protagoras’ muthos (Pl. Protagoras 320c–22d), which uses the Promethean myth to give an anthropological account of the origin of human civilization: [The god] conferred on some [mortal creatures] strength without speed, while he arranged for others to be weaker, but with speed. And some he armed, while others, to whom he had given a nature lacking arms, he equipped with some capacity for preservation. So to those whom he had invested with smallness he allocated winged flight or underground dwellings; whereas those whom he made strong through their size, it was this that provided their protection. In this

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way he also gave equal allocations to the others, taking care to equip them so that no kind should be destroyed … For each of them he then devised particular foods: for some … he resolved that their food should be from other animals. Upon these animals he conferred limited progeny, while he conferred a large progeny upon those whom they would devour, thereby providing a means of preservation for the species. However, Epimetheus, being somewhat lacking in intelligence, did not realize that he had used up the capacities on the brute animals. There was still the race of men which he had not equipped, and he was perplexed as to what he should do. Protagoras 320–1, trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 23)

Though the accounts of a balance of powers constituting an order in nature are similar, the lessons drawn from that observation are different. For Herodotus, the harmony of the natural balance of powers gives rise to reflection on the relationship of the natural to the divine; for Protagoras, the relationship of predator and prey within this natural order gives rise to reflection on the difference between the natural and the human.42 For Herodotus, the harmonious order of nature is evidence of the divine operation of nomos basileus; for Protagoras, the relationship of predator and prey, the hostility between the human and the natural, and the necessity of reason to overcome nature, is evidence of the operation of nomos phuseōs.43

2.2.7  Nomos The most commonly held opinion about Herodotus, by which he is most firmly linked to the sophists, is that he is a cultural relativist, for which the strongest evidence is similarity of the view of nomos expressed in 3.38 to that expressed by Protagoras and other sophists (Anonymous Iamblichi, Hippias (Protagoras 337d) and Antiphon (DK 44)). For if anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations of the world the beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose those of his own country. 3.38.1 Whatever each city judges to be just and fine, these things in fact are just and fine for it, so long as it holds those opinions. Protagoras, Theaetetus 167c4–5, trans. Gagarin and Woodruff (1995: 186)44

In support of his view that every ethnos prefers its own nomoi to those of others,



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Herodotus cites the ‘culture experiment’ performed by Darius (3.38.3–4). Summoning Greeks and Indians to his court, he asked how much it would cost for the Greeks to eat their dead according to Indian custom, and for the Indians to cremate their dead according to Greek custom. The Greeks refuse at any price; the Indians are horrified at the very mention of it. Herodotus concludes the anecdote by making his own famous declaration: ‘One can see by this what custom can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it ‘king of all’ (no/mon pa/ntwn basile/a) (3.38.4). As Humphreys (1987: 212) notes, ‘if the passage is taken out of context, Herodotus appears as a cultural relativist’ in a sophistic sense. The problem in 3.38 is that the cultural relativism of Darius’ experiment is often cited as the principal evidence that the cultural relativism of Herodotus is akin to that of Protagoras.45 Thomas (2000: 126–7) describes the Darius anecdote as ‘one of the best concrete illustrations of “sophistic relativism” that we have’ and identifies it with ‘ Protagoras’ dictum that anything which is held right and good for a particular state is right and good for it’. Of itself, however, the cultural relativism evinced by the experiment of Darius46 more clearly expresses the utter disregard for nomos advocated by the radical sophists, Thrasymachus and Callicles, than it does the customary regard for nomos advocated by the moderate sophists, Protagoras and Critias. Darius exhibits precisely the same indifference to nomos as had his predecessor, Cambyses, whose outrageous disregard for nomos, Persian and foreign, compels Herodotus to express his own view that nomos normally means everything to everyone.47 If common ground is to be found between the cultural relativism of Herodotus and that of Protagoras, it must be sorted out from the more radical relativism demonstrated by Darius’ cultural experiment at 3.38, which is consonant with the ‘natural right’ theory of Thrasymachus and Callicles (Kerferd 1947: 546 n. 2). We can begin with Christ’s (1994) demonstration of how Herodotus distances himself from Darius and Cambyses in 3.38 and elsewhere as fellow ‘enquirers’, whom he consistently portrays as demonstrating the self-interest of ‘kingly investigators [who] employ despotic and coercive methods, and seek knowledge for corrupt ends, in particular, self-aggrandizement and conquest’ (168). Setting the Darius’ anecdote in its proper context, it is not Darius the kingly enquirer with whom Herodotus identifies,48 but the tortured subjects of his experiment, whose expression of shock and horror clearly echo the cry of Gyges against the outrage demanded by Candaules: ‘Master, what you command is unclean … I beg of you, don’t make me transgress nomos’ (1.8, my translation).49 As is true of other instances of Darius’ regal enquiries, his enquiry at 3.38 is not without

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self-interest.50 Had Darius succeeded in bribing the Greeks and Indians to betray their respective nomoi, what would he have proven to himself and others? Surely it would be that the various nomoi by which the ethnically diverse subjects of his empire were morally bound had no inherent value of their own and thus were justifiably subject to the wealth and power of the imperial ruler. But did Darius already anticipate their refusal? If so, what was the point to be made? That Herodotus does not report Darius’ reaction to the refusal to be bribed suggests that he at least accepted the result, rather than insisting, as Cambyses might, by means of torture and threat of death, that his subjects accept his offer as one they cannot refuse. It may be, as Christ (1994: 188) suggests, that the fear and horror expressed by his subjects served to demonstrate that they knew he could compel them by other means to accept his offer. At any rate, his acceptance of the result would suggest that the failure to bribe his subjects was only taken by him to demonstrate how the weak are bound by nomoi from which the strong are free, where there is only one truly strong individual in Persia, the king himself (and here we look ahead to Herodotus’ account of the origin of the Persian monarch as a ‘sophist king’ in the Deioces logos (1.95 ff.) and its theoretical justification by Darius in 3.83). The real point that Herodotus is making about Darius, Christ elucidates with respect to the citation of Pindar by which Herodotus’ completes the logos on nomos and Cambyses: Once we appreciate that while Herodotus is ready to use the results of Darius’s inquiry, he is critical of the form of the king’s experiment, the gnomic conclusion he attaches to the episode – ‘nomos is king of all’ – takes on a new dimension. Most conspicuously, this conclusion brings us back to the principle of the power of nomos, which prompted the historian to relate Darius’s experiment in the first place. At the same time, however, it can be taken as an ironic and punning comment on the intervening tale of regal inquiry: Darius’s kingly play with others’ nomoi suggests that he, like so many other Herodotean kings, does not fully appreciate that nomos is king. Christ 1994: 188–9

The Protagorean relativism that Thomas attributes to Darius ought to be attributed to Herodotus’s use of the Darius anecdote. Proof of the universality of respect for the inherent value of nomos for Herodotus clearly lies in Darius’ failure to bribe his subjects. Had he succeeded in bribing his subjects, the experiment would have failed to support Herodotus’ judgement on the madness of Cambyses as measured by the universal respect for nomos evinced by everyone everywhere. In light of Otanes’ diagnosis (3.80) that the source of



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Cambyses’ madness is the erōs turannidos of the absolute despot, the judgement on Cambyses is really a judgement on Darius and the Persian kings generally: the ‘madness’ of disrespecting nomos is a consequence of the hubris endemic to erōs turannidos, proof of which is that hubris and mania simultaneously cease to afflict Cambyses the moment he recognizes that his impending death is due to his assault on Egyptian nomos. Indeed, we are best informed on how to interpret evidence of Protagorean relativism in this passage by looking at how Herodotus has embedded the anecdote of Darius’ experiment in cultural relativism within his summation of the character of Cambyses. Like Croesus, Cambyses reaches the tragic arc of his career in the recognition that his death has been the result of divine tisis for having committed an act of (agnostic) sacrilege against a cow that the Egyptians regard as the incarnation of their god Apis, which Herodotus regards as a sign of madness: I have no doubt whatever that Cambyses was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made sacred [ i(roi~si/ te kai\ nomai/oisi] in Egypt … Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock such things. 3.38

For Herodotus, the idiosyncratic irrationality of Cambyses’ mockery of custom only serves to highlight the universal respect for nomos as sacrosanct, the universality of cultural absolutism signifying that nomos itself is divine. Whereas Darius’ experiment speaks of cultural relativism, Herodotus’ own statement speaks of cultural universality.51 Lateiner (1989: 141), citing identical acts of outrage committed by Candaules and Xerxes, argues that at least some nomoi in Herodotus are universal. As Evans (1961: 147) notes, ‘if a no/moj attains some measure of universality, it can become right not only for one city or one people but for a great number, and Herodotus may regard universal nomoi as in some degree divine’.52 This reading of cultural universalism and of possible divine absolutism in Herodotus’ concept of nomos challenges the view that Herodotus subscribes to the cultural relativism of Protagoras in 3.38. Immerwahr (1980: 320) cautioned that ‘Herodotus, in stressing the arbitrary diversity of individual customs, does not thereby deny the objective validity of Custom as such’ (emphasis added). A concept of nomos similar to that of Herodotus is to be found, not among the sophists, but in Heraclitus (DK 22B114), for whom ‘all human nomoi are nourished by the one divine nomos’ (tre/fontai ga\r pa/ntej oi( a0nqrw/peioi

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no/moi u(po\ e(no\j tou~ qei/ou, my translation).53 In Heraclitus, the authority and validity of human nomoi are defended as grounded in the one divine nomos which sustains them all. They are relative not merely to one another, but to the divine nomos which is the source of their strength: ‘for the one divine law has as much power as it wishes, is an unfailing defence for all laws, and prevails over all laws’ (trans. Waterfield 2000: 39, F11). Heraclitus not only refers human laws and customs back to the divine nomos as their source or ground, but also as their end or good: by living in accord with the nomos that is common to the city, the city lives also in accord with the divine nomos that nourishes their nomos. The universal nomos of defending the nomos of one’s city draws one into the universality of the divine nomos itself, as that which prescribes it. Therefore, when Herodotus says that Pindar is right in declaring nomos ‘king of all’, it is not to say, as would Protagoras, that nomos is a human convention and customs are relative to one other, but, as Heraclitus would say, that human nomoi are relative to and dependent upon nomos as a universal and divine principle.54 Rather than evincing his subscription to the sophistic doctrine of relativism, 3.38 in its complete context clearly shows Herodotus defending the traditional sovereignty of nomos against the sophistic view that it is relative and conventional. That Herodotus regards nomos as a universal divine principle is further demonstrated by the pattern of historical causation seen in the fall of Candaules, Croesus and Cyrus and now Cambyses as a result of divine tisis incurred through their hubristic transgression of nomos. Humphreys’ alignment of Herodotus and the much debated Pindar fragment 169 with fragments of Anaximander and Heraclitus, ‘in which the cosmic process is seen as a succession of aggressive acts out of which an overall balance of justice emerges’ (1987: 213), supports our contention that when Herodotus cites Pindar’s verse declaring ‘nomos is king of all’ he stands nearer to the Presocratic nomos grounded in a divine order than the sophistic nomos of human origin:55 For Herodotus the point would perhaps be, then, that keeping within the bounds of nomos is what matters, regardless of the variation of the nomoi from one society to the next. Cambyses’ violations of nomos would eventually catch up with him. On this view Herodotus is considerably closer to the Presocratics than to the sophistic view that since nomos is merely man-made law there is no reason to obey it except for fear of punishment. Humphreys (1987: 214)



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Where the sophists’ presence is felt in 3.38 as a whole, it should be read as an instance in which Herodotus is directly engaged in a dialogue with sophistic views of nomos as relative, responding that human customs are relative, not to the human but to the divine. Herodotus’ use of Darius’ sophistic experiment in cultural relativism as proof of cultural universalism is one of the best illustrations of his dialogical relationship with the sophists in the Histories, and a good example as well of how he is misread as subscribing to the sophistic views he is refuting.

2.2.8  Nomos and phusis At 7.102–4, Herodotus constructs an antilogical argument based on the antithesis of nomos and phusis in the form of a debate between Xerxes, who presents the stronger (apparently more likely) case that the Greeks will not stand and face the far greater force of Persians, and Demaratus, who presents the weaker (apparently less likely) case that they will.56 When Aristotle credits Protagoras with the rhetorical art of how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger, he adds that people who received his training objected that it was a fraud, since the weaker argument was only made to appear the stronger by the misuse of probability (Rhet. 1402a5–28). Herodotus does not declare a winner to the debate (Xerxes graciously allows for a difference of opinion), but history, of course, already had, in light of which the strength of Demaratus’ argument proved not to be based on appearance but reality. As such, the debate is more aptly viewed as a refutation of the sophistic art of making the weaker argument appear the stronger by way of an argument that proves the apparently weaker to be the stronger, than as a simple application of the art in constructing the debate. Dihle had argued, somewhat ingeniously, that the debate was between the moderate sophistic view of nomos held by Demaratus and the environmental determinism of Ionian ethnography held by Xerxes.57 There is resemblance to the sophistic view of nomos in Demaratus’ argument, and a resemblance to the Ionian ethnographers in Xerxes’ argument, but those are not the positions held by either.58 Xerxes represents the radical view of sophists such as Callicles who view nomos as nothing, phusis as everything, while Demaratus represents the traditional view of nomos as sovereign and absolute (nomos basileus, 3.38.4, echoed by nomos despotēs, 7.104.4) and of phusis as naturally subject to nomos (3.108). In its basic form, the debate is between nomos and phusis as cultural principles: Xerxes represents the culture of nomos phuseōs embraced by Persia

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and Demaratus represents the culture of nomos basileus embraced by Greece (see SK 4.4).59 As such, the debate serves to explain the war as a conflict of cultures: the despotism of the Persian culture based on the law of nature, and the freedom of the Greek culture based on the sovereign rule of law. Xerxes’ argument is based on his characterization of the Persian and Greek forces as equally ruled by phusis: Suppose them [the Greeks] to have five thousand men: in that case, we should still be more than a thousand to one! If, like ours, their troops were subject to the control of a single man, then possibly for fear of him, in spite of the disparity in numbers, they might show some sort of factitious courage, or let themselves be whipped into battle; but, as every man is free to follow his fancy, it is not conceivable that they should do either. Indeed, my own opinion is that even on equal terms the Greeks could hardly face the Persians alone. 7.103.3–4

The Persians will defeat the Greeks because (1) they are naturally superior in number; (2) they are motivated by the natural force of fear; (3) they are united by the despotic constitution of the rule of one over the many, the tyrannical rule of force. The army reflects a culture organized on the basis of the law of nature, composed of servile natural individuals subject to the rule of force exercised by the master they serve. The Greeks will lose to the Persians because (1) they are naturally inferior in number; (2) they are motivated by self-interest to protect their lives and freedom as natural individuals; (3) they are not bound by the rule of the one over the many. Xerxes makes no distinction between the character of Greeks and Persians; he views both simply as natural individuals. The only difference is that the Persian army is made up of natural individuals who have already been subjected to Persian rule, while the Greek army is made up of natural individuals who have not yet been subjected to Persian rule. By the law of nature, by which the strong will rule the weak and the one will rule the many, the Persians will inevitably rule the Greeks. Demaratus makes no response to Xerxes’ characterization of the Persians as an ethnos ruled by nomos phuseōs; instead, he offers a counter-argument to Xerxes’ account of the Greeks as bound by the same principle as the Persians, nomos phuseōs, with an opposed account of the Greeks as an ethnos ruled by nomos basileus. Demaratus characterizes the Greeks generally (and Spartans especially) as (1) an ethnos in which phusis is subject to nomos; (2) an ethnos subject to nomos rather than phusis; (3) an ethnos united by nomos rather than phusis. Demaratus’ confidence in the ability of the Greeks to withstand the



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Persians is based on the subjection of phusis to the sovereign rule of nomos in Greek culture. Demaratus counters Xerxes’ argument first by explaining how in Greek culture phusis is subject to nomos: Poverty has always been the natural condition of life (su/ntrofoj) in Greece, whereas virtue (a0reth/) is something that we achieve for ourselves, the fruit of combining wisdom with the ‘strength of nomos’ (a0po/ te sofi/hj katergasmo/nh kai/ no/mou i0sxurou~). By practising this way of life, Greece has fended off both poverty and despotism. 7.102.3, my translation

When Demaratus explains that the Greeks have overcome the poverty of their natural environment by a rational virtue in which their strength of spirit (aretē) is combined with the strength of law and wisdom, Xerxes assumes that the virtue of the Spartans is that of natural individuals (perhaps, as Cyrus teaches, the product of their natural environment, 9.122). As natural individuals, they are bound to protect their lives and, since they are free to do as they please, there is no reason for them to fight and lose their lives. Demaratus corrects him with a more elaborate description of how nomos relates to phusis in the Greek culture of Sparta as a societal force that contrives to render a group of individuals stronger than they would be as a mere collection of individuals, the whole stronger than its parts (hence a(le/ev at 7.104.4): fighting singly they are as brave as any man living, and together they are the best soldiers in the world. They are free – yes – but not entirely free; for they have a master [despotēs] and that master is Law [nomos], which they fear much more than your subjects fear you. Whatever this master commands, they do; and his command never varies: it is never to retreat in battle, however great the odds, but always to remain in formation, and to conquer or die. 7.104.4–5

The virtue of the Spartans is not that of natural individuals, but of citizens in a lawful community whose strength lies in their obedience to the law which binds them together. In context of Herodotus’ obvious glorification of Leonidas’ sacrifice at Thermopylae, which the debate anticipates and informs, it seems unlikely that Herodotus intends his reader to view Demaratus’ account of the willingness of the Spartans to sacrifice their individual lives in obedience to nomos as their despotēs as ascribing merely to the positive view of nomos as human convention one finds in Anonymous Iamblichi and Protagoras. Like the

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devotion of Sophocles’ Antigone to the unwritten laws that last forever, it finds a more adequate expression in Heraclitus’ teaching that human nomoi have their ground in the one divine nomos governing all things – the same sense in which Herodotus declares that Pindar is right to declare nomos ‘king of all’ (SK 2.2.7).

2.2.9.1  Moral relativism: Moral responsibility (1.35–45) You are not the cause of my misfortune (tou~ kakou~ ai1tioj), except insofar as you were its involuntary agent (ei0 mh\ o3son a0e/kwn ecerga/sao\), but one of the gods, who foretold its occurrence. 1.45.2–3, my translation

The topos of whether a man who throws a spear and unintentionally kills someone is morally responsible is common to Protagoras, Gorgias and Antiphon.60 Croesus’ reasoning that the involuntary character of Adrastus’ act acquits him of blame agrees with Antiphon’s argument that an involuntary act renders it blameless.61 Croesus’ belief that Adrastus was only the agent of divine tisis agrees with Gorgias’ defence of Helen – that a person who acts under constraint of a higher power cannot be held responsible; rather, it is the primary agent, rather than a secondary agent, who is responsible. In the case of both Helen and Adrastus, since the gods are believed to be responsible for the action, the human agents are held blameless.62 Protagoras may have used like reasoning in his argument with Pericles – in that case, the organizers of the event rather than the contestant being held responsible – i.e. just as you would not blame the javelin, but the man throwing it, so could you likewise not blame the man throwing, but those ultimately responsible for his action.63 In all these respects, then, Herodotus’ logos of Adrastus bears a close resemblance to a topos associated with the sophists. But again we need to distinguish between what Herodotus says in his own person, and that which he presents as the words and actions of others, in this case, of Croesus and Adrastus. Also, we need to consider the greater context in which the logos of Adrastus takes place, for it provides an important transition between the unheeded warning of Solon and Croesus’ fateful decision to attack Cyrus. Croesus learns from Solon that human ambition is subject to divine phthonos and tisis – that the human is responsible not merely to itself but also to the divine, the truth of which he now admits to Adrastus. By his own account, the fact that Apollo had predicted the event before Adrastus ever showed up is seen as proof that the god is the voluntary cause, the man his involuntary agent, of his son’s death. The recognition of divine agency, however, further implies, in



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the archaic (tragic) view Croesus learns from Solon (as a Herodotean persona), human responsibility: that his son’s death is an act of divine tisis punishing the hubris of Croesus, which he clearly demonstrated in his interview with Solon. It is Croesus’ own exalted view of himself (characteristic of Asian kings and Greek tyrants), that in his limitless acquisition of wealth and power he has attained a timē that would rival the gods, that is to blame. The reader is meant to grasp how Croesus fails to see his son’s death as a divine warning that he should limit his quest for wealth and power; instead, Croesus does precisely the opposite in his decision to attack Cyrus – an outcome the god would also have known. In the end, Croesus himself recognizes that his suffering has come at the hands of Apollo, who here represents the principle of divine nomos, the cosmic principle of limit. The fall of Croesus is the direct result of his limitless ambition as ruler of Lydia (under whom the Greeks first fell subject). We also know from the outset that Croesus is the fifth and final descendant of the Mermnad Gyges, destined to pay the penalty of his murder of the last of the Heraclid kings, Candaules. The epilogue to the Lydian logos of Croesus slavishly advising Cyrus to emasculate his Lydian rebels (1.155) strongly suggests that, on the one hand, Apollo is punishing the Lydian way of life based on limitless ambition (erōs turannidos), symbolized in the imperial rule of Croesus and clearly expressed in his expectation that Solon should recognize him as the happiest man; and that, on the other, Apollo acts in favour of recognizing the way of life established by the Greeks, the life of polis and oikos, symbolized by the example of Solon himself, as well as his examples of Tellus, Cleobis and Biton, a way of life that finds happiness in submission to a common good, which embodies the principle of the rule of nomos. It is also worth noting that Croesus’ absolution brings no relief to Adrastus, whose suicide (1.46) is an act which comprehends his life as fatally subject to what the gods contrive. The basis on which Croesus and Adrastus ultimately assume moral responsibility for their fates is that what matters is not what was intended on the human side, but what resulted from the divine side. If we ascribe a sophistic reasoning to Croesus in his absolution of Adrastus, we must ascribe an archaic fatalism to Adrastus’ suicide as its implied refutation. Adrastus clearly perceives himself as nothing more than the passive involuntary agent of divine vengeance or cruelty. Croesus learns the same. To alleviate his sorrow, Croesus decides to invade Persia, whereupon he experiences fully the punishment for his hubris and the hamartia of his regicidal ancestor, Gyges, at the hands of Apollo. Like Oedipus, he lays his ruin at Apollo’s feet, but also, after some remonstrance (his vindictive

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desire to dedicate his chains to Apollo), accepts his subjection to Cyrus as the just penalty for the offense of his hubris to the timē of the gods. So it would appear that, basically, Croesus repents of his sophistic reasoning that would absolve human responsibility before divine governance. If Croesus’ absolution of Adrastus bears a resemblance to sophistic arguments absolving moral responsibility for involuntary homicide, we first should locate the resemblance in the hubristic, despotic and imperialistic character of Croesus that provides a model for the Persian kings. Furthermore, once we place Croesus’ absolution of Adrastus in the context of the remorseful demise of Adrastus, and that as falling within the larger context of the ruin of Croesus, Herodotus is seen to refute the sophistic or humanistic view of human responsibility advanced by the argument of Antiphon, as overruled by the archaic belief that moral responsibility ultimately falls within mortals’ subjection to the gods.

2.2.9.2  Moral relativism: Truth and deception (3.72.4–5) If a lie is necessary, why not speak it? We are all after the same thing, whether we lie or speak the truth: our own advantage. Men lie when they think to profit by deception, and tell the truth for the same reason – to get something they want, and to be the better trusted for their honesty. It is only two different roads to the same goal. Were there no question of advantage, the honest man would be as likely to lie as the liar is, and the liar would tell the truth as readily as the honest man. 3.72.4–5 All who have and do persuade people of things do so by moulding a false argument. Gorgias, On Helen 11, trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 80)

Darius’ discourse on the value of truth and deception as a means relative to a desired end resembles Gorgias’ discourse on the power of speech to deceive. In light of its transgression of the Persian custom of truth-telling (1.138), Darius’ argument suggests the moral relativism of the sophists generally and espouses the radical teaching of Thrasymachus and Antiphon that the only true basis for social morality – of adhering to nearly universal social customs that one should be honest and just in dealings with others – is self-interest. The general sentiment is common, with epic origins: as the Muses declare to the poet, ‘we know how to tell many lies that sound like truth / but we know to sing reality, when we will’ (Hesiod, Theogony ll. 27–8, trans. West 1988: 3). In the Odyssey, Athena, Odysseus and Penelope all practice the art of deception, but



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their manipulation of truth is to punish deceit and restore justice. Herodotus does not supply Darius with the same justification, though it could be easily obtained from the situation at hand: that deception is required to remove the Median pretender to the throne, as Cambyses had commanded on his deathbed. Instead, Herodotus has Darius justify his action with the sophistic view that true morality arises from self-interest. This is because Darius’ use of deception to depose the pretender is to gain access to the throne himself. Once king, the moral position taken by Darius will agree with the ruling of the royal Persian judges that their kings are above the laws and customs by which their subjects are absolutely bound (3.31). Among the sophists, a popular topos was to set natural self-interest against the conventional morality of obeying societal laws and customs, as Darius does here with respect to telling the truth. Rather than attributing the sophistic morality of Darius to Herodotus as a sophist, however, we should attribute it to his portrait of Darius as a future sophist king (SK 5.5.1). The episode is an excellent example of how Herodotus is engaged in a dialogical relationship with the sophists in his representation of the Persians; in Darius’ take on the truth we find not only Gorgias’ logos, but Callicles’ sophistic theory of the morality of masters and slaves, where the Persian despot is free to transgress the nomoi by which his subjects are slavishly bound.

2.2.10  Political theory (1.95–101, 3.80–4) It is crucial in evaluating the Deioces’ logos and the constitutional debate to bear in mind that Herodotus evinces no knowledge of the Anshan origins of the Persian kingship or of its refounding by Darius on Ahuramazdaism (SK 3.5). For Herodotus, the Persians simply took over the model of kingship established by the Medians, which Median oral tradition attributed to Deioces as legendary founder of the Median kingdom. His knowledge of Achaemenid kingship is limited to the model established by Darius, and his knowledge extends only to its external trappings without penetrating to its theological core. In place of the Achaemenid theology of kingship based on Ahuramazdaism, Herodotus represents the Iranian monarchy, from its founding by Deioces to its restoration by Darius (wherein the model of kingship attributed to Deioces is most likely modelled upon the model of kingship instituted by Darius), as founded upon the political theories of the sophists. He does so for epistemological and rhetorical reasons: epistemically, this is how he understands the nature of imperial despotic institutions, whether Greek or Persian; rhetorically,

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it serves the purpose of exposing the self-contradiction of the Athenians, whose democratic constitution most fully embodies the principle of isonomia, championing sophistic political theories that enable and justify despotism and imperialism.

2.2.10.1  Sophistic political theory In contrast to the archaic view of human justice, law and government as origin­ ating in, embodying and sustained by the divine justice of Zeus, common to the sophists is the view that nomos and dikē are of human rather than divine origin; political community originates from a natural condition of economic hardship, social inequity and lawless violence, and takes the form of an established social order which serves the greater advantage either of the strong who exploit the weak, or of the weak who subdue the strong. The political theories of the sophists basically fall into two camps, depending on which side they take in the nomos–phusis debate. On the side of nomos are the conservative theories of Protagoras, Gorgias, Critias and the Anonymous Iamblichi, for whom justice, law and government are validated as necessary to human survival and even a fundamental expression of human nature as rational. On the side of phusis are the radical theories of Antiphon, (possibly) Hippias, Thrasymachus and Callicles, for whom the societal conventions of justice, law and government are invalidated as contrary to the real self-interest of the natural individual. For Thrasymachus, they conceal the natural self-interests of the ruling class; for Callicles, the most radical of all sophists, they oppress the good of the natural individual. Although Antiphon, like Protagoras, defines justice in the conventional terms of ‘not violating the nomima of the city in which one is a citizen’, he argues that ‘the [so-called] “advantages” which are prescribed by the laws are shackles upon nature, whereas the advantages prescribed by nature make for freedom’, and teaches that, where the demands of nature conflict with those of nomos, one should obey nature. Like Thrasymachus and Callicles, then, Antiphon advocates following the law of nature which sets the self-interest of the individual above the conventional authority of the laws of the polis. The political thought of the sophists, if it begins with Protagoras, draws on Hesiod and his telling of the myth of Prometheus, which relates how man’s fall from an original state of harmony with nature, where a day’s labour would provide a year’s living, was the result of accepting the Promethean gift of technē. Zeus’ punishment for accepting Prometheus’ gift was to hide the means of livelihood, so that one must work for a living. Life in Hesiod’s Iron



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Age is characterized by the social inequity of wealthy nobles and impoverished peasants, of the strong exploiting the weak, ruling with a view to their own advantage, rather than the common good. For Hesiod, it is the age of injustice, which shall answer to Zeus. The unjust ruler and his city shall be destroyed. For it was ordained by a law of Zeus that humanity should not live like other creatures who devour one another according to the natural law of self-preservation, but by justice, the gift of Zeus. The just will prosper, nature shall yield abundance. If men mistakenly prefer nature’s law of self-preservation to Zeus’ law of justice, they will suffer the fate of the pathetic nightingale clutched in the talons of the predatory hawk. Hesiod was interpreted by Protagoras as providing an account of human progress from the state of nature to civilization. As such, it provided a mythic basis for sophistic political theory. In Protagoras’ account, Promethean technē is unable to save humanity, the weakest of natural species, from near extinction in the natural state wherein the strong devour the weak. While Prometheus provides the tools by which we might survive, our lack of civic virtue prevents us from working together and leaves us prey to the natural law of self-preservation. We are only saved from destruction by Zeus’ gifts of aidōs and dikē, respect and justice, which enable us to organize into a polis and work together to elevate ourselves above nature’s law. Protagoras is a conservative sophist insofar as he agrees with Homer and Hesiod that justice, identified mythically with the law of Zeus in opposition to the law of nature, is the principle of political life, a justice that requires the subordination of self-interest and even self-preservation to the greater good of a common life. Although Protagoras was an agnostic and relativist, his account of the Promethean myth does not overtly challenge the traditional view of justice, law and government. As a relativist, Protagoras argues that even ‘a person you think is very unjust: if he has been brought up among laws and men he is actually just … if he’s to be judged against people who’ve had no education, no law-courts, no laws’ (Protagoras 327c–d; trans. Guthrie). The real difference between Hesiod and Protagoras is that for Protagoras there really is no divine foundation for human laws; whatever is lawful and just for a community is lawful and just, although a sophist might persuade them to legislate more beneficial laws. The radical sophists such as Thrasymachus and Callicles advocate for phusis over and against nomos as the basis of political life. For Thrasymachus, who defines justice as the natural advantage of the strong over the weak, this explains the advantage of the ruler over the ruled, and the pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others. What Hesiod describes as injustice according to the law of

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Zeus, Thrasymachus defines as justice, according to the law of nature. Taking the opposite view of laws and government as favouring the weak rather than the strong, but still in favour of defining justice as the advantage of the strong, Callicles argues that laws and traditional morality are the contrivance of the weak to subdue the strong, and that true justice is the law of nature, by which the strong rule the weak.

2.2.10.2  Political theory: Deioces logos (1.95–101) Among the Medes arose a sophos anēr by the name of Deioces, son of Phraortes. To gratify his erōs for absolute power (e0rasqei\j turanni/doj), this man Deioces did what follows. Already renowned in his own village (among those inhabiting Media) for practising justice (dikaiosu/nhn e0piqe/menoj), he began to devote himself to it all the more and with greater zeal. He did this, moreover, when there was much lawlessness (a0nomi/hj) throughout all of Media, understanding that injustice is at war with justice (e0pista/menoj o3ti tw~| dikai/w| to\ a1dikon pole/mio/n e0sti/). 1.96.1–2; my translation

How and Wells (1912: 104) describe Deioces’ career as that of ‘the ordinary Greek “Tyrant’s progress” ’; Evans (1982: 26) calls it ‘a model study of how to win absolute power’; for Flory (1987: 124), it is a Herodotean ‘folktale about the origins of monarchy’, despite the fact that the Deioces logos is characterized by an absence of folklore (Frye 1962: 79–80; Evans 1982: 27). Thomas (2012: 249), however, acutely observes that it ‘bears the mark not simply of Greek stories or theories about tyrants … but also of Greek political theorizing about justice’, and characterizes it most aptly as ‘a set-piece perfect for illustrating a theory of state-formation, and the growth of power of an individual’. 64 The Median struggle for independence that sets the stage for the rise of Deioces is generalized as the overthrow of slavishness (doulosune) for freedom (eleutheria), which in some way (kōs) transforms barbaroi into andres agathoi capable of self-government (autonomoi), who lose their freedom to the rise of tyranny from within, which is then shown to have its source in the erōs turannidos that motivates Deioces (1.95.2–96.1).65 Herodotus’ account of the establishment of the Medo-Persian monarchy in the aftermath of the fall of the Assyrian empire clearly resembles sophistic theories of the origin of law and government found in Protagoras, Anonymous Iamblichi and Antiphon, especially in the precise manner in which he locates the rise of Deioces at the time ‘when there was much lawlessness (a0nomi/hj) throughout all of Media’.66 In



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detail, however, the Deioces’ logos is closest to the Sisyphus fragment attributed to the sophist Critias: in both accounts, primitive lawlessness (anomia) yields to the establishment of lawful society by way of the deceptive machinations of a sophos anēr:67 There was a time when anarchy did grip the life of men, which then was bestial, enslaved to force; nor was there then reward for good men, nor for the wicked punishment. Critias, Sisyphus 1–4 (DK 88 B 25), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 251)

Like Protagoras and the Anonymous Iamblichi, Critias attributes the origin of laws, justice and government to the common need of humanity to overcome the natural state of lawless violence: Next, as I see it, did men establish laws for punishment, that justice might be lord [tu/rannoj] of all mankind, and hold insolence enslaved; and anyone who sinned [e0camarta/noi] was penalized. Critias, Sisyphus 5–8 (DK 88 B 25), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 251)

Likewise, in Herodotus, the Medes trade in their lawless violence for the lawful judgements exercised by Deioces, who earns a reputation for justice throughout Media (1.96), and gains the status of Hesiod’s just basileus among unjust basilei. Unlike Hesiod’s just basileus, however, the justice exercised by Deioces is not the gift of Zeus. Rather, the concept of justice attributed to Deioces would seem to be that common to the sophists: that justice and injustice originate and operate as principles in human society. As such, laws and government have, as Antiphon pointed out, no inherent authority of their own, and there is no real justification for not reverting to the lawless violence of the natural state, where it serves one’s own interests, as occurs in Critias’ account: the laws inhibited men from acts of open violence, but still such acts were done in secret Critias, Sisyphus 9–11 (DK 88 B 25), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 251)

In Herodotus, a similar pattern occurs, where society reverts back to the natural state of pursuing self-interests, but this is the contrived result of Deioces’ exercise of his understanding of the contrariety of justice and injustice. Having become the sole source of justice in the land, he then withdrew his service with

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the result that there was even greater lawlessness and robbery (a(rpagh~j kai\ a0nomi/hj e1ti pollw~|) than before (1.97), which produced the desired result: the Medes made Deioces their king. The first step taken by Deioces as king is to demand that the Medes furnish him with a palace and a bodyguard, whereupon he then establishes a protocol that exalts his status to that of a quasi-divine ruler: It was Deioces who first established the royal protocol (ko/smon) that no one gains entrance to the king, all business is transacted through messengers, and the king is seen by no one; additionally, that it is taboo (ai0sxro/n) for anyone to spit or even to laugh in his presence. Within these trappings of majesty he exalted himself, so that his peers, those with whom he grew up and were in no way his inferior in birth or character, should not be moved by the painfulness of seeing him in power to plot his overthrow, and that not seeing him should induce them to regard him as different from themselves. Once he had established this protocol and strengthened himself with absolute power, he was a tough guardian of justice … and those who were his eyes and ears were everywhere in the land now under his rule. 1.99–100; my translation

In effect, Deioces occupies among the Medes the traditionally position occupied by Zeus among the Greeks – in place of the watchful eye of Zeus as the ultimate source of law and justice in the land, the Medes bow before the watchful eye and absolute power of the sophos anēr as their quasi-divine ruler. Deioces’ protocol accords with the teaching of Critias that the need to invest human laws with an absolute authority gives rise to religion as the contrivance of a sophos anēr: then, I would maintain, some clever fellow first, a man in counsel wise [sofo\j … a0nh/r], discovered unto men the fear of the gods, that sinners might be frightened should they sin e’en secretly in deed, or word, or thought. Hence it was he introduced the Deity, telling of a God who enjoys unfailing life, hears with his mind, sees and perpends, taking note, with a nature that is divine, so that he is aware of man’s every word and is capable of seeing man’s every act. And so, if you plot in silence some foul deed, this will not evade the gods; for in them wisdom resides. So, with reasonings like these,



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a most clever doctrine did he introduce, hiding the truth beneath a speech untrue. Critias, Sisyphus 11–26 (DK 88 B 25), trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 251–2)

As the very embodiment of the teachings of the sophists regarding law, government and religion, Deioces is best viewed as the Herodotean archetype of the sophist king. Among the sophists, there is a consensus that law, government and religion are social conventions of human origin. For Critias and other moderate sophists, religion arises from the same social necessity as law and government. It is a necessary deception imposed by those of superior intelligence upon the weaker minds of the majority for the greater good of themselves and society as a whole, a view that agrees with Protagoras’ claim that poets like Hesiod who warned of the watchful eye of Zeus as the god of justice were sophists in disguise. For the radical sophists, like Thrasymachus and Callicles, there is no social good that justifies the restraint of religion, law and government; there is only the good of the natural individual based on the law of nature, of the hawk over the nightingale. The claim that laws, government and religion serve a common interest that belongs to society as a whole is a fraudulent deception foisted upon the strong by the weak. Remarkably, Deioces, sophos anēr erastheis turannidos, combines both views in his use of the social good of justice as a means to gratify his lust for power as a natural individual. Herodotus’ account of Deioces actually provides a better sophistic model for the origin of justice, law and government than either the moderate or radical sophists, in that Deioces successfully grounds the rule of law in the law of nature. As absolute despot, he represents the triumph of the strong over the weak; but as a source of justice throughout the land, he also represents the establishment of the rule of law that is the basis of civilization. Taken out of context, the Deioces logos could be submitted as evidence that Herodotus holds sophistic views of the origin of law and government. Taken in context, however, it is clear that we ought to attribute the sophistic political theory of the Deioces logos not to Herodotus himself but to his account of the Median origins of the Persian monarchy as constitutional despotism. Needless to say, constitutional despotism does not represent the ideal form of government in Herodotus. Against this sophistic model based on the natural law of selfinterest, Herodotus praises the principle of isonomia, which he identifies in the constitutional debate as contrary to the constitution founded by Deioces and defended by Darius.

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2.2.10.3  Political theory: Constitutional debate (3.80–4) The monarchy that Herodotus’ Darius defends in the constitutional debate is not the Achaemenid model of kingship that the historical Darius based on Ahuramazdan theology, but the constitutional despotism founded by Herodotus’ Deioces. Deioces’ founding of the Iranian constitution is Herodotus’ ontogenetic explanation of the Achaemenid monarchy that had been established by Darius; as such, it replaces the unknown or at least unfamiliar Ahuramazdan theology of kingship with a known sophistic theory of the origins of law and government.68 Resembling (and possibly modelled upon) the relationship of muthos and logos of Protagoras’ Great Speech,69 the Deioces logos can be regarded as providing a muthos to Darius’ logos in the constitutional debate which mounts a highly theoretical defence of the ancestral constitution of monarchy established by Deioces. But the apparent agreement between these accounts serves to conceal their real agreement. In both accounts, a semi-divine champion of justice overcomes the law of nature to establish law in a lawless land, wherein lies their apparent agreement. But beneath this appearance lies their real agreement: that the heroic guise of the champion of justice both conceals and serves to fulfil the despotic ambition of the sophist king as sophos anēr erastheis turannidos. In other words, Darius logos serves as royal propaganda required to win and restore the despotic regime established by Deioces.70

2.2.10.3.1  Sophistic construction of the constitutional debate The constitutional debate (3.80–2) is the ‘most often cited case of sophistic influence … which some scholars think Herodotus lifted wholesale out of a sophistic treatise, perhaps of Protagoras’.71 The sophistic character of the debate as a whole is evident in Herodotus’ use of the Protagorean art of antilogic in his construction of the debate,72 his use of which to construct intellectual debates among the Persians elsewhere in the Histories has already been noted (SK 2.2.1.2). Yet, Herodotus’ use of sophistic methods and arguments to construct a sophistic agōn logōn need not be taken as evidence that he subscribes to sophistic principles. In the absence of authorial comment, the antilogical construction of the debate, wherein each speaker critiques the other, has been taken to suggest that Herodotus holds to a relativist view of political constitutions.73 But Herodotus’ praise for isonomia and repeated criticism of tyranny elsewhere in the Histories directs the reader to regard isonomia as the true measure of the debate.74 From this perspective it seems best to regard the constitutional debate not as primary evidence that Herodotus was a sophist, but



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as primary evidence of his dialogical relationship with the sophists, in which the Herodotean view based on experience represented by Otanes is set against the sophisticated theory espoused by Darius. To grasp the true import of the debate, we must regard it, not from the vantage point of Darius’ victory, but that of Otanes’ retirement to the truth of his own position. From that standpoint, we can look back upon the debate and see how the speech of Darius is really intended by Herodotus to expose the hypocrisy hiding behind the royal propaganda justifying the Persian monarchy.

2.2.10.3.2  Sophistic character of the argument of Darius Take the three forms of government we are considering – democracy, oligarchy and monarchy – and suppose each of them to be the best of its kind; I maintain the third is greatly preferable to the other two. One ruler: it is impossible to improve upon that—provided he is the best. His judgement will be in keeping with his character; his control of the people will be beyond reproach; his measures against common enemies and traitors will be kept secret more easily than under other forms of government. In an oligarchy, the fact that a number of men are competing for distinction in public service cannot but lead to violent personal feuds; each of them wants to get to the top, and to see his own proposals carried; so they quarrel. Personal quarrels lead to civil wars, and then to bloodshed; and from that state of affairs the only way out is a return to monarchy – a clear proof that monarchy is best. Again, in a democracy, malpractices are bound to occur; in this case, however, corrupt dealings in government services lead not to private feuds, but to closed personal associations, the men responsible for them putting their heads together and mutually supporting one another. And so it goes on, until somebody or other comes forward as the people’s champion and breaks up the cliques which are out for their own interests. This wins him the admiration of the mob, and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power – all of which is another proof that the best form of government is monarchy. 3.82.1–4; emphasis added

The theoretical argument made by Darius is sophistic in its use of hypothetical reasoning and its founding of political theory on human nature.75 Anecdotal evidence suggests Protagoras as a likely source.76 Darius’ argument for one-man rule provides a theoretical explanation and justification for the Persian monarchy that is, in part, consistent with Herodotus’ account of the founding of the monarchy under Deioces in which a natural state of freedom is viewed as a state of anomia characterized by lawless violence. Law and order arises

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not from within the people collectively as sharing a common capacity for self-government, but in a man of unique ability, the sophos anēr. Such a type we find in the young Cyrus, who, in a single act of revolution against Median rule, unites the Persian tribes, organizes them into a kingdom under his rule, and establishes the Persian Empire upon its Median foundation. The natural qualities that befits Cyrus to be the founder of the Persian Empire are first exemplified in Deioces as founder of the Median kingdom which Cyrus inherits by right of conquest. The type established in Deioces is that of a sophos anēr who stands above the rest in his intellectual grasp of the inherent contrariety of justice and injustice, and of course in Darius himself, as proven by his capacity to formulate the winning argument. Eventually enthroned as the one best suited to rule over the rest, the monarch becomes the sole source of law and order in a state whose constitution sets the ruler above the law of which he is the source. In one crucial respect, however, does Darius’ account of the monarch differ from that of Herodotus’ account of the rise of Deioces: in both accounts the monarch is a sophos anēr, who understands how ‘injustice is at war with justice’ in human society, but whereas Deioces is motivated by erōs turannidos, Darius’ ideal monarch is the enemy of erōs turannidos. He is seen to arise as a victorious champion of justice, the destroyer of violence into which oligarchy and democracy inevitably collapse owing to the corrosive influence of erōs turannidos. In this respect, unlike Deioces’ sophist king, Darius’ ideal monarch is the prototype of Plato’s philosopher-king, and, more significantly, a match for the idealized self-portrait of the historical Darius as the champion of Ahuramazda and an enemy of the Lie – except that there is no reference to the divine in Darius’ speech. Like the sophists, Darius’ political theory is grounded in human nature, reason and passion, reason embodied in the one natural ruler, passion in the many over whom he is ideally suited, by nature, to rule. In that respect, it is a theory based on natural law, a law of nature. Insofar as he is by nature suited to rule, Darius’ ideal ruler is like Callicles’ strong man, but he is unlike him insofar as he is not motivated by a natural self-interest – erōs turannidos – but by the common political good of establishing justice, law and order, nomos. Regarded as an Herodotean interpretation of royal propaganda published abroad by means of various media (e.g. verbal accounts of royal protocol and royal inscriptions by travellers and ambassadors), in the same manner as we might regard his account of Deioces’ institution of royal protocol, Darius’ theoretical justification of monarchy on the basis of an idealized monarch is discovered to be one-sided, self-serving ideology. The light by which the truth of Darius’ argument can be seen is thrown by the account of Otanes which



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precedes it, of how, human nature being what it is in reality (citing the nefarious record of Darius’ predecessor, Cambyses), even the most just monarch will inevitably be seduced and overthrown by the mania that arises from erōs turannidos (3.80). The problem with Darius’ ideal ruler is that he hypothetically transcends human nature. For Otanes, the remedy for the erōs turannidos innate to human nature is not the rule of one, but the rule of the many, not because the many are better than the one, but because the one is no better than the many, and because under the rule of the many, all the many are equally under the rule of the law: Contrast with this the rule of the people: first, it has the finest of all names to describe it – equality under law [isonomia]; and, secondly, the people in power do none of the things that monarchs do. Under a government of the people a magistrate is appointed by lot and is held responsible for his conduct in office, and all questions are put up for open debate. 3.80.6

In light of Otanes’ argument, Darius’ speech appears as the sophisticated argument of a clever man, a sophisticated sophismata fully in the tradition of the royal protocol established by Deioces, another guise whereby the monarch is elevated above his subjects, and his erōs turannidos is secured, ironically, in his administration of royal justice. Herodotus intends his reader to gaze back upon the debate from the perspective of Otanes’ withdrawal, and to see through the veil of deceit that Darius pulled over the eyes of his peers (practising his theory on the expeditious use of deceit in politics). Surely we are meant to see (from the Greek perspective, at least) that Darius’ sophisticated theoretical justification of the monarchy founded by Deioces, taken over by Cyrus, fumbled by Cambyses and restored by Darius, is the height of royal propaganda disseminated by Persia’s sophist kings.

2.2.10.3.3  Sophistic structure of the constitutional debate For Herodotus’ Greek, and especially Athenian, audience, the linear narrative movement through the sophistic antilogical structure of the constitutional debate would also have the familiar sophistic arrangement of beginning with the ostensibly ‘stronger’ argument of Otanes that freedom and democracy is better than despotism and tyranny and concluding with its defeat by the ostensibly ‘weaker’ argument of Darius that despotic order is better than democratic anarchy. A crucial feature of the constitutional debate, however, is that, like a Greek drama or Platonic dialogue, it has an internal audience: the Persian

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co-conspirators who represent a view culturally antagonistic to the Greek audience of the Histories. The patriotic crescendo of Darius’ winning argument suggests that the Persians were predisposed to their ancestral constitution of monarchy, and that, for them, the debate would not have a sophistic structure: the stronger argument for monarchy logically overthrew the weaker argument for democracy. The cultural bias of the Greek audience, however, should dispose them to regard the sophistic structure (for them) of the debate as a challenge to the credibility of its outcome: while Darius may have persuaded his fellowPersians that the weaker argument was the stronger, it should not persuade the Greeks, and especially the Athenians, whose constitution was represented by the argument of Otanes. The epilogue to the debate, Otanes’ successive retirement into personal autonomy and Darius’ ascension to absolute power, can be taken to invite a synoptic view of the debate which would bring the opposed arguments, dissoi logoi, together into one measured view. Regarding the debate as a whole, we find that it exceeds its sophistic structure. Expressed in it is a Herodotean theory of politics and history based on his own view of the tragic conflict of nomos and phusis in human affairs, especially the conflict of divine nomos and human phusis, as exemplified in the careers of Croesus and Cambyses. There is also expressed, in Otanes’ paean to isonomia, the possibility of escaping this tragic cycle, of the human being able to subject its natural lust for wealth, power and godlike timē to divinely imposed limits by its acceptance of nomos, basileus pantōn. This non-sophistic aspect of the debate viewed as a whole reflects its rhetorical purpose, the immediate effect it sought to have upon its contemporary audience.

2.2.10.3.4  Rhetorical purpose and narrative function of the constitutional debate The rhetorical purpose of the constitutional debate belongs to that of the Histories overall: to represent the Persians as subscribing to sophistic arguments justifying despotism and imperialism as a warning to the Athenians; here, specifically to accuse the Athenians of betraying the principle of isonomia as the basis of Athenian democracy. Regarding the work as having this immediate rhetorical purpose, Herodotus is taken to have assigned to himself the familiar role of the warner – the role assigned first and foremost to Solon, who plays it to Croesus, and which is in turn played by Croesus to Cyrus, and later by Artabanus to Xerxes – the warner of impending doom to fall upon those who tread the well-worn path of hubris and phthonos, slaves to insatiable erōs turannidos, incurring divine tisis for their transgression against nomos, basileus pantōn.



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In this reading can also be found a reasonable explanation for Herodotus’ insistence that the constitutional debate actually took place among the Persians, despite the disbelief of his contemporaries: the constitutional debate simply ascribes to the Persians, whom Herodotus consistently represents as an ethnos defined by the intellectual sophistication of its rulers equal to (and modelled upon) the Athenians, the same debates that took place in Athens. An even more compelling reason for Herodotus’ insistence that the constitutional debate took place among the Persians is provided by the explanatory function of the debate within the narrative of the Histories overall. The constitutional debate embeds Herodotus’ own cyclical theory of history as that of the rise and fall of individuals, cities and empires within the tragic paradigm of human hubris originating in erōs turannidos and its subjection to divine tisis as enforcing the cosmic sovereignty of nomos basileus.77 By the debate we are meant to grasp the meaning of history generally, and in particular the cause of war between Greeks and Persians, and the cause of war between Athens and Sparta, as arising from erōs turannidos. The constitutional debate sets before the reader the universal principles of (divine) nomos and (human) phusis that underlie, structure and explain human history and political change, which are applicable to all individuals, cities and cultures, Greek and non-Greek, at all times and in all places. By emphatically ascribing the constitutional debate to the Persians, Herodotus insists on the universality of his paradigm and its ability both to explain the sophistic basis of Persian culture and to condemn it as contrary to a cosmic order based on the sovereign rule of nomos.

2.3  Introducing Persians as sophists (1.1–5) We have seen that the majority of passages in the Histories that resemble the teachings or methods of the sophists can be accounted for as belonging to Herodotus’ portrayal of the Persians, particularly Deioces, Darius and Xerxes, as sophisticated intellectuals who embrace, embody and espouse the teachings and of methods of the sophists. Indeed, the very first Persians who we encounter in the Histories are particularly adept in sophistic methods of argumentation, which they employ to present a sophistic argument justifying the Persian invasion of Greece as an act of retaliation for the Greek invasion of Troy.

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2.3.1  Perse/wn oi9 lo/gioi (1.1.1) So who are these Perse/wn oi9 lo/gioi to whom Herodotus gives first place in his narrative (1.1.1)? Are they logioi in a professional sense? What exactly does ‘logioi’ mean here? In LSJ9 logios is an adjective based on the noun logos, with the basic meaning ‘of or belonging to lo/goi’. Three principal senses of this meaning are cited: I[.1] ‘versed in tales or stories (cf. lo/goj V)’ and I.2 (citing Demosthenes and Aristotle) ‘generally, learned, erudite’. II. ‘skilled in words, eloquent’. III. ‘oracular’, based on to\ lo/gion, oracle, Hdt. 4.178 et al., which is clearly not the sense employed in 1.1.1. I[.1] first cites Pindar’s Pythian Ode 1.94, lo/gioi kai\ aoidoi; the second citation is Herodotus in the sense of prose ‘chroniclers’ as opposed to ‘poets’, citing all three usages as applied to the Persians (Perse/wn oi9 lo/gioi 1.1.1), Egyptians (oi9 logiw/tatoi 2.3.1) and Scythians (a1ndra lo/goion 4.46.1). The meaning for lo/goj V that is cited as the substantive basis for the meaning of the adjective is ‘continuous statement, narrative (whether fact or fiction), oration … 1. fable … 2. legend … 3. tale, story … pl., histories … Hdt. 1.184 cf. 106, 2.99; so in sg. a historical work … Id. 2.38, 6.39 [et. al.] … 4. speech, delivered in court, assembly, etc.’ Jacoby (1949: 389, n. 5) would distribute these different meanings of I[.1] and I.2 to different passages: ‘versed in tales or stories’ is given to 1.1.1, 2.3.1 and 2.77.1; ‘learned, erudite’ is given to 4.46 as ‘the more general meaning’ supplied by the ‘the contrast a0maqh/j and the qualification sofi/hj pe/ri’. Luraghi (2009: 449), n. 51, seems to disagree with Jacoby in pointing out that ‘in LSJ “versed in tales or stories,” with reference to Herodotus, is the first meaning, while “learned, erudite” appears as a subentry of this main meaning, and Democritus is the first authority quoted’. Translations of logioi as used at 1.1.1 reflect the variety of possible meanings lent by context. Using the simple sense of ‘chroniclers’: Grene (1987: 33), Thompson (1996: 31) and Bakker (2002: 17); of ‘versed in tales or stories’: ‘Persian storytellers’, Blanco and Roberts (1992: 4); ‘masters of tales’, Goldhill (2002: 14). Nagy (1990: 224), emphasizing Pindar’s precedent of the distinction between logios and aoidos, renders logioi as ‘masters of speech’ as opposed to the aoidoi as ‘masters of song’, an interpretative translation that places greater emphasis on the aspect of skill in performance in the oral tradition than on the possession of knowledge. Powell’s Lexicon to Herodotus (1966: 209) gives ‘versed in history’ for all four passages, although ‘history’ would be anachronistic in Herodotus.78 ‘Versed in history’ predates Powell as one of the oldest and most common of the older English translations: ‘the Persians best informed



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in history’ (Rawlinson 1890), ‘the Persians who have knowledge of history’ (Macaulay 1890), ‘skilled in history’, ‘the Persians best informed in history’ (How and Wells 1912). With a similar sense but perhaps identifying the Persian logioi as Jacoby’s logioi andres (SK 2.3.2): ‘Asian informants’, Fehling (1989: 50); ‘the talkers’, Fowler (2006: 37); ‘the Persians most familiar with their own history and traditions’, West (2002: 9), cited by Saïd (2012: 95); ‘Persian authorities of the past’ (Purvis 2009: 3). Some scholars have instead preferred II.2 ‘generally, learned, erudite’: ‘Persian learned men’, Godley (1920: 3), Dewald (1999: 224) and Flower (2006: 280); ‘learned Persians’, Waterfield and Dewald (1998: 3), Marincola and de Selincourt (1996: 3) and Węcowski (2004: 150); ‘wise men of the East’, Drews (1973: 88); ‘wise men’, Baragwanath and de Bakker (2012: 29); ‘Persian scholars’, Griffiths (2006: 131).

2.3.2  Sophistic character of the Persian logioi Jacoby (1949: 389), n. 5, identified the Persian logioi as the only logioi andres whom Herodotus had explicitly labelled by the ‘full term’ logioi, noting that ‘as early as in 1.5.1 it is replaced by Pe/rsai’.79 The logioi andres are Herodotus’ oral sources or ‘informants’ who supply the raw data of local stories (logoi epichoriōn) which Herodotus wove into this history.80 Scholars generally accept Jacoby’s identification of the logioi andres as local nobles sought out by Herodotus, whose class and family background enabled them to have acquired the requisite expertise to make them authoritative in local history.81 Fowler (2006: 37) best sums up the attributes by which individuals, such as the Persian and Phoenician logioi of 1.1.1, would have recommended themselves to Herodotus as possible sources: ‘These logioi andres, the talkers, are those ready to provide information and opinions on important topics wherever one happens to end up in one’s travels … These logioi have status; they are expert, informed, meaningful talkers, sociologically apparent, though one would not go so far as to call them an institution.’ Murray (2007a: 26) clarifies that, ‘although they do not normally constitute a professional class, one of whose chief duties is the preservation of tradition, the narrative of Herodotus shows that in each case they are chosen by him because they seem likely to possess an authoritative version of the past’.82 Ironically, in the only instance where Herodotus actually uses the phrase logios anēr (4.46.1), Jacoby himself acknowledges that its referent cannot be an oral source. In fact, none of the four passages in which Herodotus uses the term logios has ‘oral source’ as its immediate referent. In every case, while the logios would or did make an excellent local oral source, the proper referent for

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logios is not ‘oral source’ but ‘learned’ in the sense of possessing intelligence and knowledge. A learned man would obviously make a good source, but a good source need not be always be the ideal learned man Jacoby supposes. Indeed, it seems fairly obvious that Herodotus employs the term logios not to designate a man as an oral source but as learned. Of all the possible translations of logios in 1.1.1, only the more general meaning of ‘learned’ easily fits all four passages in which it is used, such as we find in Waterfield’s translation of the Histories: According to the learned Persians [Perse/wn me/n nun oi9 lo/gioi], it was the Phoenicians who caused the conflict. 1.1.1, trans. Waterfield (1998: 3) This is what I heard about the children and their upbringing, and I heard other things as well in Memphis during my conversations [lo/gouj] with the priests of Hephaestus. The information I gained there led me to travel to Thebes and to Heliopolis, to try to find whether their accounts [toi~si lo/goisi] would agree with what I heard in Memphis; for there are said to be no Egyptians more learned than the Heliopolitans [oi9 ga\r 9Hliopoli~tai le/gontai Ai0guptti/wn ei]nai logiw/tatoi]. 2.3.1, trans. Waterfield (1998: 96) As for the actual people of Egypt, those who live in the cultivated part of the country make a particular practice of recording the history of all the peoples [mnh/mhn a0nqrw/pwn pa/ntwn], and are consequently by far the most learned people [logiw/tatoi/ ei0si makrw|~] I have ever come across and questioned. 2.77, trans. Waterfield (1998: 124) The Euxine Sea – the region Darius invaded – is home to the most ignorant [a0maqe/stata] peoples in the world (I exclude the Scythians from this judgement). I mean, there is no tribe living on the sea to whom we could plausibly attribute cleverness [sofi/hj] (except the Scythians) nor, as far as anyone knows, has a single man of learning [a1ndra lo/gion] been born there (except Anacharsis). 4.46.1, trans. Waterfield (1998: 250)

As Jacoby points out, at 4.46.1 logios is opposed to ignorance, literally, utter unlearnedness (a0maqe/stata), completely lacking in sophia. The nature of the sophia, which the logioi possess and the utterly unlearned lack, is defined by two examples. The first example of ‘learnedness’ belongs to the Scythian ethnos as a whole, who, by contrast with the other peoples in the region, had ‘discovered the cleverest of all ways (sofw/tata pa/ntwn) known to



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humankind with respect to the single greatest concern in human affairs’ (4.46.2. my translation). This sophōtata was for a nation to defend its freedom and way of life against enslavement or subjection by invaders, which the Scythians accomplished by their nomadic lifestyle. Herodotus obviously does not praise the Scythian nomads for their ‘erudition’ in the sense of possessing a formal education (they may be the most learned of the utterly ignorant, but they are still the least civilized of civilized peoples), but neither is it merely for their ‘skill’ in a technical sense, such as their ability to shoot while riding (i9ppotoco/ tai). Rather, the Scythians are praised for their practical wisdom in human affairs – their outstanding sophia as it pertains to human praxis: not simply the pragmatic business of staying alive, but the ‘liberal’ practice of ensuring their freedom. In this respect, despite their lack of houses (oikos) and city walls (polis), the Scythians share a common bond with the ‘civilized’ peoples of the world whose oikoi are protected by the walls of their poleis. The second example is actually the only man whom Herodotus explicitly praises as a logios anēr: Anacharsis the Scythian. Anacharsis is a man who, like the Greek sophistai who came to Sardis at the height of its prosperity under Croesus (1.29), ‘saw (qewrh/saj) much of the world (gh~n pollh\n) and publically displayed (a0podeca/menoj) his great wisdom (kat’ au0th\n sofi/hn pollh\n) wherever he went’ (4.76.2, my translation). In a crucial detail of personal motivation, Herodotus’ account of Anacharsis matches his account of Solon as one of the sophistai who, like Anacharsis, was motivated by theoreia (1.29–30) ‘to travel [the world] with the objective of acquiring knowledge’.83 Unfortunately, Anacharsis’ worldly wisdom set him apart from his Scythian peers, who killed him for adopting the Greek ritual to pay thanks to the Mother of the Gods for his safe homecoming, a story Herodotus relates as evidence that the Scythians were ‘dead-set against foreign ways, especially against Greek ways’ (4.76.1). In a way, Anacharsis was killed by the Scythians for adopting the ‘theoretical’ ways of sophistai like Solon (and Herodotus), the cultural outlook of itinerant sophists like Protagoras, and the habits of Persians, who exceed all other peoples, even the Greeks, in adopting their subjects’ customs as their own (1.135). While Anacharsis would obviously have made a good oral source for Herodotus on the Scythians, that is not the reason he is called a logios anēr. His example makes a good point: a logios anēr would doubtless make an excellent local source, but local oral sources could hardly be expected to be logioi andres of Anacharsis’ stature. Combining the Scythian examples, we can say that what characterizes the logios among the Scythians is intelligence, experience and worldliness. In Egypt, Herodotus seeks out the Heliopolitans not because they are the best

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storytellers or most versed in tales, but because they are most knowledgeable about the nomoi of the Egyptian ethnos. Like the Scythians, they are experts in the preservation of their ethnos, not of its freedom – for the caste society of the Egyptians ruled by their pharaoh is by contrast with Greeks and Scythians, least versed in ‘freedom’ (2.164) – rather, they are experts in preserving (the truth of) their ethnic traditions. ‘Men of outstanding intellect’ (Lloyd 2007: 243, note on 2.3.1), the Egyptians are ‘erudite’ in a manner that is opposite to Scythian practical knowledge, or even the worldly knowledge of Anacharsis. The Heliopolitans (priests of Helios) are neither world-travellers nor nomadic warriors. The reason Herodotus considers the Egyptians ‘much the most learned [logiw/tatoi/ makrw|]~ of any nation of which I have had experience’ is their ‘practice of keeping records of the past’ (2.77). Most often Herodotus reports an Egyptian logos which he says the Egyptians told him, but he also reports their reading written documents to him, such as king lists (2.100, 142) and pyramid inscriptions (2.125 ), as well as the monumental mnemonic record of the statues recording the generations of priests shown to Hecataeus and Herodotus (2.143). The Egyptians are the most prized of all Herodotus’ sources, then, not as local oral sources such as the Athenians who supply the logoi Athenaioi, but as a primary source of written records and for preserving a universal memory of the past pertaining to all of humankind. What the Scythian and Egyptian logioi have in common, the quality in virtue of which they are regarded logioi and even logiōtatoi, is their intelligence; what the Egyptian logioi share with logioi andres such as Anacharsis and itinerant sophistai like Solon (and Herodotus) is the worldly knowledge they possess by virtue of their intelligence; what sophistai share in common is the ‘theoretical’ origins of their knowledge (as opposed to the archival knowledge of the Egyptian logioi as ‘guardians of a written tradition’ (Murray 2007a: 36)) in that it was acquired by travelling the world for the sake of seeing, for the sake of learning. In respect of what, then, and in what respect, are the Persians logioi? To begin with, scholars have recognized that even among the (foreign) few specifically designated as logioi, not all logioi are the same. There is a measurable difference in number and quality between the exemplary logioi of the Egyptian priesthood and the lonely figure of Anacharsis of Scythia: One should stress the close connection between the excellence of an informer, i.e. his being particularly lo/gioj, and his mastery of traditions concerning the most distant past: the Egyptians, the most ancient among all peoples (2. 15. 2), have the logiw/tatoi, while the Scythians, the youngest of all nations (4. 5. 1), count only one a0nh\r lo/gioj: Anacharsis (4. 46. 1). For Herodotus, the fact that



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a people has men who are lo/gioi is somehow both a precondition and a sign of the historical depth of its traditions; their mention therefore seems to have a kind of exemplary value. Vannicelli (2007: 214)

The distinctive character of the Persian logioi is that ‘they do not agree with each other. No other human group is credited with such a high number of variant versions of its own past: the multiplicity of Persian traditions is repeatedly emphasized by Herodotus’ (Luraghi 2007c: 155). Being the most argumentative of logioi appears to be characteristic of the Persian ethnos: The contrast between Persians, Egyptians, and Scythians, in terms of being lo/gioi appears to reflect a more general contrast between the level of competence and quality of information characteristic of these three peoples, and also, more broadly, their level of civilization. If we compare Egypt and the Black Sea, the contrast is particularly obvious in the enormous depth of the Egyptian past as opposed to the nonexistence of an ancient history of the Scythians. As for the Persians, they turn out to be more loquacious than reliable, as shown by Herodotus’ repeated references to multiple Persian versions of key episodes of Achaemenid history. Luraghi (2009: 445)

Thompson (1996) notes how the ‘Persian chroniclers demonstrate ‘a marked Persian tendency to simplify and distort the course of events for their own enhancement’ (35), in light of which their logos exemplifies ‘the manner in which a people will put a stamp on its own recollections’ (36). As Węcowski (2004) points out, these and other characteristics exhibited by the Persian logioi make them ‘a very peculiar and unusually vague group’ (149) of logioi andres: Above all, they are not e0pixw/rioi, and no local tradition or any other source of their knowledge is referred to; hence they are by no means a privileged source of information. Instead, they present the most partisan versions of tales about ‘abductions of women’; moreover, they deeply disagree among themselves about what really happened … what these ‘learned Persians’ say is a case apart; their status is to be carefully distinguished from that of reliable informants mentioned throughout the Histories. This impression is further supported by his ostentatious (and obviously ironic) agnosticism about those tales in 1.5.3. Węcowski (2004: 149–50)

As logioi andres, the Persian logioi make a poor showing owing to their argumentativeness, partisanship and loquaciousness – all qualities that better suit them to be sophistic logioi, ‘masters of arguments’. In terms of the definitions for

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logioi provided by the LSJ, then, we should consider whether logios in 1.1.1 has the sense of II, ‘skilled in words, eloquent’, as related to the III meaning of logos, ‘explanation’, and its specific senses: ‘III.1. plea, pretext, ground … b. plea, case, in Law or argument’, as when used in the sense of making the weaker argument the stronger (citing Aristotle’s Rhetoric and as personified in Aristophanes’ Clouds); also, III. 2, ‘statement of theory or argument’, as used by the Presocratic philosophers, sophists, Plato and Aristotle. There is no reason to rule out logios II, ‘skilled in words, eloquent’, based on logos III ‘argument’ as a reasonable alternative to logios I.1 ‘versed in stories’ based on logos V story. The reason for considering this possibility is simply that the logos of the Persian logioi is not so much a ‘source’ or ‘story’ as an argument based on sources that are well-known Greek myths, and that the skill that the Persian logioi display is not so much that of ones ‘versed in history’ or ‘versed in stories’ as it of those ‘versed in arguments’. Defined by its own specific context of 1.1–5, then, it seems more probable that the meaning of logios here is ‘master of argument’ and that the Persians are being characterized as sophists learned in the art of argument.

2.3.3  Sophistic character of the Persian logos The sophistic character of the argument of the Persian logioi is most evident in their use of the sophistic technique of self-contradiction. Protagoras employs this technique when he transitions a debate on the teachability of virtue to a debate on whether the poet Simonides contradicts himself when he censures the poet Pittacus (Pl. Protagoras 339). Likewise, by basing their argument on the oral tradition of Greek myth, the Persian logioi implicitly accuse the Greeks of contradicting themselves in blaming the Persians since, as the mythic history of the Greek oral tradition shows, the Greeks are to blame for originating hostilities. A more general hallmark of sophistic arguments is simply the use of propositional logic. The Persian logioi argue their case on the basis of several propositions: that abduction implies consent; that abduction is not justification for waging war; that natural boundaries define national borders. The antilogical structure of ‘claim and counterclaim’ demonstrates that the Persian logioi are ‘learned’ in the Protagorean art of antilogike (Goldhill 2002: 48–59). Indeed, all four ‘signs of sophistic thought’ identified by Goldhill and successfully applied by him to Gorgias’ Helen and works of other sophists are to be found also in the Persian logos: the use of nomos and phusis as explanatory categories is present in the Persian view on what amounts to international law that national borders are determined by natural boundaries; the argument from probability (eikos) is



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present in their argument that the women must have been willing participants in their abduction or else it could have never happened; the use of reversal and paradox is present in the manner in which Herodotus has the Persian logioi present what is obviously the weaker argument as the stronger insofar as they are made to argue before a Greek audience (the Greek-speaking reader;84 or even the ambassadors present at the implied international tribunal of Greek poleis) and on the authority of the Greek oral tradition that the Greeks rather than the Persians are aitia; the subject of teaching virtue is present in the proposition that underlies the argument from probability, that a woman’s virtue requires that she not submit herself to abduction (i.e. she should fight and flee or die trying); it is also present in the argument based on the proposition that private abductions do not provide lawful grounds for public invasions, which censures men like Menelaus for lacking the virtue of self-restraint required of a man whose wife has been abducted, that he not let his personal feelings so override his public judgement that he should seek to right a private wrong by way of waging war against the whole nation of his enemy. The striking resemblance of the Persian logos to Gorgias’ Helen might suggest that we categorize it as an epideixis, a rhetorical display piece, ‘most often associated with the sophists, and perhaps in particular with the firework display of a rhetorical mock-defence such as Gorgias’ Helen’ (Thomas 2000: 250–1).85 Two aspects of the epideixis found in Helen that are not present in the Persian logos, however, are the ‘fireworks’ of Gorgias’ brilliant use of assonance, which attracts our ear to its verbal style in a manner that distracts our mind from its logical substance, and the epilogue in which Gorgias confesses that it was not to be taken seriously. The most suitable forum for an oral performance of the encomium would have been the private symposium. The language of the Persian logioi does not engage in the verbal pyrotechnics of Helen. It is characteristically ‘Herodotean’; nor does it give itself away as an ‘amusement’, despite the popularity of reading it as a parody of one kind or another. Indeed, a common complaint about the Persian and Phoenician logioi is that they reduce ‘the heroic, mythic, and epic versions of the four abduction stories familiar to Greeks’ to ‘a banal sequence of stories about trade and marital commerce’.86 On the other hand, the same attributes that the Persian logos of 1.1–5 does share with Helen – the use of propositional logic, the rationalization of Greek myth, the antilogy of claims and counterclaims, the strategy of reversal and paradox, arguing from probability and banging the drum of virtue – are also features of what Aristotle calls ‘dicanic’ (addressing a jury of dikasts) or forensic rhetoric. Gorgias’ epideixis has these forensic features partly because it

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is a ‘mock-defence’ of Helen; the Persian logos has these features, however, as a ‘serious’ defence of Persia on the Greek charge that the Persians are to blame (aitia) for the war with the Greeks (which they brilliantly ‘reverse’ into a prosecution of the Greeks on the same charge). Actually, insofar as Gorgias mounts a forensic defence of Helen (which only confesses to be a mock-defence at the end), it shares with the Persian logos two characteristics by which Aristotle sets forensic rhetoric apart from rhetoric’s other two branches, epideictic and deliberative rhetoric: first, in its concern with the past (rather than the future which is the concern of deliberative rhetoric, the art of political oratory used in the assembly, in which Pericles was the acknowledged champion); second, in its concern with the assignment of blame and responsibility (aitia) (rather than the assignment of praise for virtue and blame for vice, which is the epideictic purpose of the encomium).87 In this regard, the Persian logos resembles the legal speeches composed by logographoi for oral delivery by their clients in the Athenian law courts, as exemplified by the sophist Antiphon’s Tetralogies. All the elements in this series of events are drawn from Greek mythology; but whereas in the original versions of the myths the responsibility ultimately rests with the gods, this version is rationalized and politicized, and could serve as the narrative or probatory part of a Greek ‘sophistic’ apologetic speech composed in favour of Asia and based on the legal criteria of Greek international law or customs of retribution. Asheri (2007b: 74)

Likewise, while there is something of the sophists’ agonistic style of debate here, the implied setting is not so much that of the epideixis prepared for a agōn logōn at a private symposium, or that of the deliberative speech prepared for a public debate before the assembly in the agora, but that of a forensic argument prepared for delivery at an international tribunal held in an Athenian law court on the matter of who was responsible for the war between Greeks and Persians:88 We can imagine what the Persian logioi ‘say’ (phasin) as a response to a question of the histōr: ‘Who according to your national tradition are aitioi of the ‘difference’ between the Greeks and the Persians?’ Or even, in an imagined courtroom: ‘The Greeks consider you guilty of the diaphorē. What do you have to say in defence?’ The very state of being aitios, in fact, is the obligation to ‘respond’, as in English ‘responsible’. (…) [T]he Persian logioi apparently speak in defence, claiming that in having launched a wholesale attack on Troy the Greeks are the real aitioi tēs diaphorēs. The end of this imaginary ‘trial’ is well known. Bakker (2002: 17–18)



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2.3.4  Sophistic argument of the Persian logioi The Persian logioi – ‘masters of logoi’ – rest their case on two major propositions: (1) the Greeks were not justified in their invasion of Asia as an initial act of military aggression; (2) the Persians were justified in their invasion of Greece as a retaliatory act of military aggression. The principle of customary ‘international’ law that these propositions address is tisis as providing lawful ground for one nation declaring war on another. The validity of the second proposition rests upon proving the validity of the first: (1) if the Greeks were not justified in the initial act of aggression, then the Persians were justified in their retaliatory action as a lawful act of tisis; (2) if the Greeks were justified in in the initial act of aggression, then the tisis of the Persians was not lawful. These propositions are set forward in the last part of the logos, the first part of which recounts the history of the abductions of Io, Europa, Medea and Helen. The connections between the two parts is not that the first part simply provides the evidential basis on which the forensic argument of the second part is set forth; rather, the first part uses the evidence it sets forth to advance minor propositions that legitimize the major propositions. The main purpose of the first part of the Persian logos is to use the history of abductions – all of which are deemed transgressive acts in their own right – to establish the legal precedent for tisis as lawful – and unlawful – ground for military aggression. The logical prerequisite of the Persian argument to close the loop on an ad infinitum series of retaliations is an initial act of transgression that is not an act of tisis. This prerequisite is supplied to the argument by the Phoenician abduction of Argive Io (1.1) and thus the Persians blame the Phoenicians for committing the initial act of unjustified transgression that would lead to the unjustified act of military aggression. But the Phoenicians are only the first to blame because the Greeks are the last to blame. The Argives did not go to war with the Phoenicians over Io. Next, some Greeks abducted Phoenician Europa (since Europa ended up in Crete her abductors were likely Cretan). In Greek myth, the two abductions are not connected, nor do the Persians claim that there was any mythic connection between them; specifically, the Greek abduction of the Phoenician princess is not reported as an act of retaliation for the Phoenician abduction of the Greek princess. Yet, if there is no connection between these two incidents, then how are the Phoenicians to blame for starting something that allegedly led to war in the end? The connection that the Persians draw between the two abductions is not causal, but legal, as pertaining to retributive justice: tau~ta me\n dh\ i1sa pro\j

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i1sa sfi gene/sqai, ‘So far, then, the account between them was balanced’ [isa pros isa, ‘tit for tat’ (LSJ9 and Powell); literally, ‘equal things to equal things’] (1.2.1, trans. Godley 1920, adapted). It is a display of their forensic expertise that the Persian logioi tie the incidents together as evidential precedents in the legal history of the application of tisis to international law. At this stage of the argument, the two parties (Greeks and Phoenicians) are only connected to one another by the forensic argument of the Persians; at the end of their argument, the Persians will establish a political connection between all the incidents and involved parties to Persia: the relationships between Greeks and non-Greeks will be subsumed under the relationship of European Greeks and Persian Asians based on the Persian claim that Asia (lawfully) belongs to Persia. But even here, at the beginning of the argument, it is from the standpoint of Persian interests that the Persian logioi establish the retributive relationship between the abductions as ‘isa pros isa’. It no longer matters who started it or that they were causally unrelated – as legal precedents brought before the ‘tribunal’ by the logioi, they are equally acts of transgression of one ethnos against another. In the legal perspective of retributive justice, the abductions are equalized as acts of tisis; that is, if either side were to bring the other to court, either side could argue that their act of transgression should be regarded as payback (tisis) for the transgression of the other. It would not matter which came first or that one had nothing to do with the other; from the legal standpoint of retributive justice – tisis– they would be ‘isa pros isa’. The legal precedent that has been established between tisis (retaliation) and isos (equality) in the first two cases – that payback in equal measure is just – is now applied to the next set of cases, Jason’s abduction of Medea and Paris’ abduction of Helen: ‘meta\ de\ tau~ta3 Ellhnaj ai0ti/ouj th~j deute/rhj a0diki/hj gene/sqai’ (1.2.1), ‘But after this (they say), it was the Greeks who were guilty [ai0ti/ouj] of the second wrong [th~j deute/rhj a0diki/hj]’ (trans. Godley 1920, adapted). The first crime (adikē, ‘act of injustice’) was the (Asian) Phoenician abduction of (Greek) Argive Io, ‘paid back’, as it were, by the (Greek) Cretan abduction of Phoenician (Asian) Europa and establishing the legal balance of isa pros isa. The Argive (Greek) abduction of (Asian) Colchian Medea begins a new cycle of transgression and retribution, for which the (Asian) Trojan abduction of (Greek) Spartan Helen is the payback (tisis). The result is the same as before: ‘Thus far there had been nothing worse than women stealing on both sides’ – that is, the acts of transgression and tisis resulted in the balance of isa pros isa. The result may be the same – in the Persian view, at least – but the cycles are significantly different.



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In the first cycle, the abductions simply took place; their legality and legal relationship to one another existed only in the forensic argument of the Persian logioi. In the second cycle, the injured parties seek redress by customary law, whereby they explicitly lay claim to a legal relationship with the transgressors that is the basis of a causal relationship between them as well. The second cycle begins by establishing a legal and causal connection with the first cycle. In the self-serving spirit of Jason’s ‘sophistic’ apology to Medea (an apologia defending his actions against her charge of culpability) in Euripides’ Medea,89 the Argive Greeks refuse the customarily lawful demand of the non-Greek Medea’s father that they return his daughter and compensate them for her abduction, on the basis that, ‘as they had been refused reparation for the abduction of the Argive Io, they would not make any to the Colchians’ (trans. Godley 1920, adapted). The Greeks justify their refusal to comply with the law by citing as ‘legal’ precedent the case of Io, in which no compensation had been paid to the Argives by the non-Greek Phoenicians – despite the fact that none had been demanded. The last abduction, of Helen by Paris a generation later, is directly inspired by the illegal precedent of the Greek violation of the rule of law made explicit in the case of Medea: Paris, the son of Priam, was inspired by these stories to steal [di’ a9rpagh~j] a wife for himself out of Greece, being confident [e0pista/menon pa/ntwj, ‘knowing full well’] that he would not have to pay recompense [ou0 dw/sei di/kaj] for the venture any more than the Greeks had done. And that was how he came to carry off Helen. The first idea of the Greeks after the rape was to send a demand for satisfaction and for Helen’s return. The demand was met by a reference to the seizure of Medea and the injustice of expecting satisfaction from people to whom they themselves had refused it, not to mention the fact that they had kept the girl. 1.3

The casuistry of the Greek apologia in the case of Medea is repeated in the apologia of Paris. Based on the precedent established by Jason, Paris set out to transgress the nomos against abduction knowing full well that he would not have to pay the penalty for committing an act of injustice. In their statements of self-defence, Jason and Paris both acknowledge the existence and legitimacy of a customary nomos prohibiting their actions as binding upon the relationship between Greeks and non-Greeks; both admit to the injustice of transgressing the nomos prohibiting the abduction of women (between states not already at war, at least). Yet, both claim that their refusal to comply with the nomos of

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return and compensation is justified by tisis: their refusal to pay the penalty (dikē) for the transgression should be regarded as payback for a previous refusal to pay the penalty. The only difference between Jason and Paris is that Paris is said to act with a ‘complete understanding’ (epistamenos pantōs), in which is to be found a complete contempt for nomos altogether. The mythic nomos transgressed in all four cases of abduction is the nomos of Zeus Xenios, the law of hospitality, of which Homer’s account of Paris’ abduction of Helen is the great exemplar. Only, the Persian logioi leave out the nomos xenios as the implied basis of the demands of the injured parties for redress and never characterize the abductors as xenioi. Nor is there is any mention of Zeus, for the gods are stripped out of the Persian logos: Phoenician merchants and Cretan sailors take the place of Zeus in the abductions of Io and Europa (as takes place in the logos that Agave’s sisters give of her abduction by Zeus, for which Dionysus punishes Thebes in Euripides’ Bacchae). In the Persian logos, the legal term nomos xenios (with its Homeric connotation connecting it to Zeus Xenios as the divine patron of the law of hospitality) is never actually used. Yet, since all these abductions occur during peacetime (otherwise women could be taken fairly as the spoils of war), the law is clearly in effect as the basis of complaint and demand for redress, but only as a human convention. No plea is made with reference to the gods.90 Herodotus would have been well aware that the consequences of the rationalization of arkhaioi nomoi was often the subject of Athenian drama. At stake were the great taboos and imperatives constituting popular Greek ethics, the boundaries defining unacceptable behaviour which Sophocles’ Antigone calls the ‘unwritten and unshakeable laws of the gods’ (Antigone 454–5), and which Euripidean characters are more likely to call ‘the laws common to the Greeks’ … These regulated human relationships at every level. In the family they proscribed incest, kin-killing, and failure to bury the dead … At the level of relationships between members of different households and cities, these ‘common laws’ ascribed to Zeus the protection of three vulnerable groups: suppliants, recipients of oaths, and parties engaged in the compact of reciprocal trust required by the guest–host relationship.91

Nomos in the Persian logos has the conventional status of ‘the laws common to the Greeks’ rather than that of arkhaioi nomoi established by the gods. According to the logos that follows Hesiod’s fable of the hawk and nightingale (Works and Days ll.202–12), the first arkhaios nomos established by Zeus for all humankind was the nomos of the sovereignty of the rule of law itself, of justice



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as opposed to the law of nature (by which the powerful hawk abducts the weak nightingale, where ‘Right’ has nothing to do with it): For this was the nomos for men that Kronos’ son laid down: whereas fish and beasts and flying birds would eat one another, because Right [dikē] is not among them, to men he gave Right, which is much the best in practice.92 For if a man is willing to say [a0goreu~sai, to speak in the agora] what he knows to be just [dikaios], to him wide-seeing Zeus gives prosperity; but whoever deliberately lies in his sworn testimony, therein, by injuring Right, he is blighted past healing; his family remains more obscure thereafter, while the true-sworn man’s line gains in worth. Works and Days ll.276–85, trans. West (1988: 45)

Paris’ abduction of Helen is made on the basis of his ‘absolute knowledge’ (epistamenos pantōs) that the international convention of nomos xenios has no teeth – right has no might; it is, therefore, on the basis also of his total understanding that only might makes right that he carries out his abduction. There is an obvious progression in the series of abductions: a descent from the lawless violence of the abductions of Io and Europa to the casuistic violation of the rule of law in Jason’s abduction of Medea, to a calculated contempt for the rule of law in Paris’ abduction of Helen. As such, the argument passes from the more moderate to the more radical sophistic teachings on nomos: we move from a natural state of lawlessness to the establishment of conventional law in the earliest cases of Io and Europa (the moderate teachings on the origin of nomos out of natural necessity (phusis) of Protagoras, Critias and Antiphon), disregard for which results first in the collapse of the rule of law in the case of Medea and finally in contempt for the rule of law altogether in the case of Helen (Thrasymachus and Callicles on the rule of self-interest and the subjection of the rule of law (nomos) to the law of nature, might is right (phusis)). The result is that the first part of the Persian logos effect­ ively defines tisis as truly operable only as the law of nature (phusis) (hawk and nightingale) and not as the rule of law (nomos). Tisis has no effect as a penalty for the transgression of nomos: the women are not returned and compensation is not paid in any case. Tisis appears rather as the basis for not complying with the law: both Jason and Paris justify their refusals to comply with the law as acts of tisis for previous refusals. Paris does so knowing full well that the rule of law established by Zeus is not (or no longer) sovereign; nomos is a matter of human convention; the law of nature is the real basis of human behaviour: he abducts Helen knowing full well that nothing can be done about it. On what basis, then, do the Persians object that the Greeks were to blame for hostilities in going to war over Helen?

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The transition from the first part to the second part of the Persian logos is by way of a statement that summarizes perfectly what has been established in recounting the series of abductions. The second cycle of abductions results in the same balance of transgression and tisis as the first, where all four parties (two Greek, two non-Greek) stand in the relationship of isa pros isa, establishing the legal precedent of tisis as justifying retaliatory acts of aggression/ transgression. Only the legalese of isa pros isa is not repeated; instead, the series is summed up as simply involving abductions from one another, as if nomos really doesn’t come into it, any more than it comes into the relationship of the hawk and nightingale. Tisis appears here not by way of nomos, but by way of the transgression of nomos on the basis of the law of nature, phusis. The Persians begin the second part of their logos by characterizing the next act of aggression on the part of Greeks as constituting a new beginning (me/xri me\n w]n tou/tou …, to\ de\ a0po\ tou/tou) that upset the balance that had been established thus far. Certainly it cannot be the balance of the scales of justice, since what is rehearsed in the first part of the logos is not a series of acts of justice, but acts of injustice; not the exercise of the rule of law, but a history of transgressions of the law. In other words, the precedent set by tisis is that nomos simply does not come into it: no one claims innocence, everybody admits to wrongdoing; demands for legal retribution are made, but no one pays a penalty; transgressions are justified as acts of retribution for previous transgressions justified as acts of retribution, going all the way back to the abduction of Io. The balance attained by tisis at the end of the abductions is like the balance of nature attained by tisis between predator and prey in Protagoras’ Hesiodic account of the distribution of means of survival, whereby one species is made equal (e0panisw~n) to one another (Protagoras 321a). Herodotus presents the same balance of nature attained by tisis, but in his account tisis is seen as evidence of divine providence (tou~ qei/ ou h9 pronoi/h, 3.108). The balance in nature attained by tisis as the agent of divine providence accords with how Herodotus views divine tisis as operating in human affairs (SK 2.2.6). We see this when he vehemently declares his belief that the Greeks’ refusal to believe that Helen was not in Troy when they came to demand her return ‘came of divine volition in order that their [the Trojans’] utter destruction might plainly prove to mankind that great offences meet with great punishments at the hands of God’ (2.120). In Herodotus’ account, the fall



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of Troy is the result of divine tisis punishing Paris’ transgression against nomos xenios, which is made clear in his account of what the Egyptian logioi had told him about the arrival of Paris with Helen in Egypt, his subsequent betrayal into the hands of the Egyptians as one who had transgressed the nomos xenios (although even the Egyptians, the most pious of peoples, make no reference to Zeus as the divine patron of nomos xenios),93 and, finally, his being brought before Proteus to stand for his crime, as it were, in a court of law – filling a mighty gap, as it were, in the Persian account. In contrast to the Persian logioi, the Egyptian logioi hammer home their reverence for nomos xenios at every turn in their logos. In Proteus’ judgement of Paris, it is the pious observance of nomos xenios by Proteus as Paris’ host (xenios) that prevents him from avenging the impious transgression of the same by Paris as Menelaus’ guest (xenios) (2.115). In the Egyptian account, justice is served to Paris, the sanctity, as it were, of nomos xenios is maintained, and the Trojans are made by the gods to pay the greatest penalty for the greatest offence – what the Persian logioi regard as the minor offence of ‘abducting women from one another’. An important detail in the Egyptian account is that Paris, cursed by Proteus as ‘the most wicked of guests’, is to blame for arousing the passion by which Helen was moved to betray her husband: ‘You seduced your friend’s wife, and, as if that were not enough, persuaded her to escape with you on the wings of passion you roused’ (2.115).94 It cannot be used in his and the Trojans’ defence that Helen went willingly after she was seduced; the seduction was his doing. This is exactly the basis of the charge – a moral proposition regarding women and virtue – that the Persian logioi begin with in the second part of the logos, in which they set out to prove their first major proposition that the Greeks were not justified in their invasion of Asia as an initial act of military aggression: for what happened next the Greeks, they say, were seriously to blame; for it was the Greeks who were, in a military sense, the aggressors. Abducting young women, in their opinion, is not, indeed a lawful act; but it is stupid after the event to make a fuss about avenging it. The only sensible thing to do is to take no notice; for it is obvious that no young woman allows herself to be abducted if she does not wish to be. The Asiatics, according to the Persians, took the seizure of the women lightly enough, but not so the Greeks: the Greeks, merely on account of a girl from Sparta, raised a big army, invaded Asia and destroyed the empire of Priam. From that root sprang their belief in the perpetual enmity of the Grecian world towards them. 1.4

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According to the Persians, non-Greeks have a different view of women than Greeks; in particular, they have a different view of a woman’s virtue – or lack thereof. Non-Greeks also have a different view of the family or oikos than Greeks, and of the relationship of private affairs of the oikos to the public affairs of the polis, such as going to war. In short, the Greeks are to blame because they went to war over a woman, which does not constitute a lawful act of tisis. This is presented as proof of the first major proposition in their argument. We have already looked ahead to see how the Persian proposition is refuted by the Egyptians, or at least Proteus (a likely Herodotean persona, like Solon), who shares the Greek view of women, family and war, and rules against the Trojans and for the Greeks on that basis. Women are not to blame for their abduction, even if they are seduced, since men are the seducers; furthermore, the transgression against the law of hospitality is not simply a private affair, for the law of hospitality does not apply either to relationships within an oikos or between oikoi, but between the oikoi of different poleis and ethnea. The law of Zeus Xenios is precisely the nomos that governs relations between civilized poleis and ethnea, and holds these relationships accountable to the justice of Zeus, that is, to the sovereign rule of nomos. The Persian view that the virtue of women is suspect and the value of women less than the cost of waging war is reflected in and refuted by the Lydian logos of Candaules and Gyges with which Herodotus chooses to begin his narrative proper, after dismissing the Persian logos as a false start. If the logos has a ‘Lydian’ source, Herodotus does not mention it; no Lydian logioi appear in Herodotus, and the Candaules logos is not reported as what ‘the Lydians say’. Herodotus simply begins, ‘Now, this Candaules became enamoured of his own wife’, and goes on to tell of how he stole his wife’s virtue by exposing her to Gyges, their bodyguard, and how the queen recovered her virtue by having Gyges kill the king as an act of tisis, and take the throne in his place, thereby betraying the Heraclid kingdom of Lydia to the Mermnads. Thus, a private transgression within the royal household has political consequences. Consequently, the Delphic oracle upheld Candaules’ murder as a lawful act of tisis for basically treating the queen, his wife, as though she were a slave, valuing her beauty as his property, failing to have proper regard for her own person in having no regard for her virtue (aidōs). It also sanctions the rule of Gyges as a lawful political consequence of the private transgression of a ruler, and the Heraclid ethnos suffers the penalty of retribution for their king’s transgression of a nomos protecting the sanctity of a woman’s virtue, selfhood, and the oikos as constituting a lawful and ethical relationship of men and women. Only, just



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as Protetus’ respect for the law of hospitality limits his punishment of Paris to fall short of the death penalty (instead he is deported to Troy, bereft of Helen and stolen wealth), so does the oracle limit the rule of the Mermnads to the fifth generation when Croesus would take and lose the throne to Cyrus, as an act of tisis on behalf of the Heraclids (for the unlawful manner in which Gyges usurped the throne via regicide). The same elements are basically in play in the Candaules’ logos as in the Persian logos – women, virtue, war and tisis – and one sees there an account of how tisis arising from transgression within the oikos can exact justice at the political level in the relationship of ruler and ruled and at the international level of relationships between ethnea, where the (non-Greek) Mermnads, former subjects of the (Greek?) Heraclids, become their rulers. The absolute value that the Greeks place upon women and the sanctity of the oikos is taught to Croesus by Solon in the story of Cleobis and Biton, whose kleos rests upon their aristeia in hitching themselves to a cart like oxen to take their mother to the festival of Hera, goddess of the family. Given the view of women held by the Persian logioi, they doubtless would have dismissed the boys as fools once they learned that the reward granted by the goddess in answer to their mother’s pleas was to fall asleep in her temple and never awaken. Such is the Greek view of women, marriage and war that the Persians dismiss as senseless (a0noh/twn, 1.4.2). The universal principle for which the non-Greeks have no real regard in their disregard for the law of hospitality is that which Herodotus declares in Gyges’ response to Candaules’ demand that he watch his wife undress for bed: pa/lai de\ kala\ a0nqrw/poisi e0ceu/rhtai e0k tw~n manqa/nein dei~: e0n toi~si e4n to/de e0sti’, skope/ein tina\ ta\ e9wutou~. Long ago noble truths [ta kala] were found out by humankind, from which we must learn; among those is this one here: ‘look to one’s own’. 1.8.4, my translation

‘Look to one’s own’ is the principle of the Greek institutions of oikos and polis, of the right to private property required by the oikos and political autonomy that is the good of the polis, of respect for a person’s virtue and a people’s freedom. The principle of ‘look to one’s own’ respects the right of another to one’s own, the lawful distinction between mine and thine that is the basis of civil society and the laws by which it is governed, protecting citizens against theft (taking another’s property as one’s own), adultery (taking another’s wife as one’s own), and murder (taking another’s life as one’s own). ‘Look to one’s own’ is a maxim

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expressing the principle on which the rule of law is based: the principle of limit that constitutes moral boundaries and national borders, the transgression of which is bred of hubris, the violence of violation, which in turn incurs divine retribution, tisis. The right to one’s own is precisely the principle addressed by the final premise that the Persian logioi set forth in support of their second major proposition, that if the Greeks were not justified in their invasion of Persia as an act of (human) tisis, then the Persians are justified in their invasion of Greece as an act of (human) tisis. What gave them the right to avenge the destruction of Troy was that the Persians claim Asia and the barbarian races dwelling in it as their own, Europe and the Greek states being, in their opinion, quite separate and distinct from them. 1.4.4

Whereas the basis of the right to one’s own for the Greeks is nomos, the basis of the Persian claim to Asia and all the peoples of Asia as their own is phusis. In the Persian view, natural boundaries (phusis) determine national borders (nomos); in the Greek view, cultural boundaries (nomos) determine the national borders marked by natural boundaries invested with nomos. In the Persian view, the physical geography of the place determines the people – all the peoples in Asia are subject to the rulers of Asia, the Persians; in the Greek view, it is the people who determine the place: the Ionian Greeks who live on the coast of Asia do not belong to Persia because they live in Asia. Even though they live in Asia, they are Greek, and wherever Greeks live, that becomes part of Hellas, the nation of Greece. The so-called Asian Greeks live in Ionian Greece. The Greek view is established in Herodotus’ argument with the Ionian geographers over what constitutes the boundaries of Egypt: ‘Egypt, I consider, is the whole extent of the territory inhabited by Egyptians’ (2.17). For Herodotus, it is not the natural boundary even of the Nile Delta that constitutes Egypt, but the Egyptian people, whose unity is not principally geographical, but cultural. It is the culture of the people who inhabit a place that determines its natural boundaries as national boundaries, nomos which determines the significance of the environment, phusis. In the Persian view, where phusis is the basis of nomos and tisis, the Greeks are to blame for the war with Persia, because they invaded Asia in retaliation for the Trojan refusal to return and compensate Menelaus for the abduction of Helen by Paris, who did so because Jason got away with abducting Medea



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without having to pay a penalty, which he refused to pay since the Phoenicians never compensated the Greeks for the abduction of Io. The Phoenicians, however, claim that they weren’t guilty either – just as the Persians say, women cannot be abducted but willingly, and Io eloped with the Phoenicians after she slept with the captain, became pregnant and wanted to avoid facing her parents. Thus, in the end, the Greeks alone are responsible for both the first act of transgression (their abduction of Europa) and the first act of military aggression. The Greek side of the argument, which we have had to gather from elsewhere in the Histories, would undoubtedly be that the Phoenicians lie about Io, and that the Greeks were justified in going to war over Helen, the argument made on their behalf in Egypt by Proteus.

2.3.5  Rhetorical purpose of the preface (1.1–5) Uncertainty regarding the status of the Persian logos, given Herodotus own apparent ‘rejection’ of it at 1.5, was fanned into controversy by Fehling (1971; trans. 1989), who argued that the Persian logos was (like all of Herodotus’ sources) the invention of Herodotus himself, on the basis that in form, matter and purpose the Persian logos was obviously not Persian but Greek (1989: 52–3). Despite controversy regarding Fehling’s view that Herodotus invented his sources, scholars generally accept that Herodotus in some sense had ‘invented’ the logos and logioi of 1.1.1.95 Asheri (2007b) (citing Fehling both times) is emphatic that the ‘supposed Persian and Phoenician ‘sources’ that Herodotus quotes in these chapters are thus pure invention and a literary convention’; ‘a pure narrative invention of Herodotus himself or his source’.96 With the fictive character of the Persian logos established, its historiographical and rhetorical purposes become even more controversial, some seeing this material as rejected in favour of something else, others thinking it is a parody of earlier method, which Herodotus’ superior method will now supersede, still others viewing it as an example of the kind of material to be rejected by Herodotus, the kind that cannot be ‘known’ because of its place in the distant past, and yet others proposing that it is an incorporation of poetic and epic material, not so much a replacement as a necessary prelude, the fulfilment of which will be found in the work that is to follow. Marincola (2001: 35)

A favoured view is that the Persian logos is ‘a parody of the type of history purveyed by Hecataeus and other early prose writers, which focused upon the

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genealogical and heroic subject matter of Greek myth, and saw the myths and legends as offering sufficient explanations for later events’ (Thomas 2000: 267).97 Regarding the Persian logioi as ‘masters of tales’, Goldhill (2002: 14–15) takes the ‘tales of the Persian experts and the Phoenicians’ to be ‘a foil to the authoritative knowledge of the Greek historian. Instead of the claim and counterclaim of the simplistic logioi, Herodotus promises that he will start from a firm basis of declaring the name of the man who can be known certainly to have committed crimes against the Greeks.’ In part, the ‘parody’ reading of the Persian logos of 1.1–5 seeks to explain Herodotus’ response to it at 1.5.3 as a logos on which he prefers not to express judgement: ‘Concerning these claims, I venture not to say how things happened, either one way or another’ (e0gw\ de\ peri\ me\n tou/twn ou0k e1rxomai e0re/wn w9j ou3twj h2 a1llwj kwj tau~ta e0ge/neto). Generally accepted has been Pelliccia’s (1992: 64) suggestion that Herodotus’ response at 1.5.3 uses the rhetorical device of ‘recusatio’ (also employed by the fifth-century sophist Gorgias in his Helen), indicating that the Persian logos was a ‘false start’,98 ‘a clever way of starting out on the usual mythical, Homeric and genealogical route, only to set it aside overtly and deliberately, as something that cannot be known’ (Thomas 2000: 274).99 The recusatio allows Herodotus to excuse himself from the debate, which effectively shuts it down, on the grounds that the Persians have based the debate on ‘the interpretation of certain legends’ which ‘cannot be verified or falsified’ (Fowler 1996: 83, emphasis added). But are any of these answers satisfactory in addressing the question of why Herodotus begins with the Persian logioi weaving a justification for the Persian invasion of Greece out of Greek myth? The answer that he wishes to parody his predecessors, Hecataeus and Hellanicus, does an injustice to Herodotus; he may be polemical, but he is not disrespectful. Nor, really, does Herodotus use recusatio simply to set Homer aside to make way for his own historia. For in fact, all four myths (Io, Europa, Medea and Helen) reappear in his account elsewhere, above all the myth of Helen, which Herodotus obviously does not consider a lie. The historical status of the Trojan war in the Histories is equal to that of the Persian war; the ‘Persian’ argument that the Trojan war is the origin of the hostilities that resulted in the Persian war is never challenged by Herodotus.100 He does not deny that the Greeks invaded Asia on account of a woman, only that it was illegitimate to do so. If Herodotus simply wished to set aside the Persian view (and with it the authority of Homer as custodian of the Greek past), he would have done better to begin straight away with Croesus’ subjection of Greece, or even with the invasion of Darius as an act of retaliation for the Athenian involvement in the Ionian revolt and proceed to the invasion



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of Xerxes as an act of retaliation for the defeat of Darius’ army at Marathon. The real answer for his beginning with the recusatio is that it sets forth an ideological view of the origin of the clash of cultures grounded in a sophistic view of the justification of war that he wishes to identify as Persian, and that he wishes to do so by introducing the Persians as sophists. For the logioi are not the only Persians to argue on the basis of Greek myth: according to Herodotus, all the Greeks except the Argives claim that Xerxes attempted to neutralize the Argives by appealing to a Persian version of the myth of Perseus as the ancestral founder of the Persians. Although it is a story that Herodotus, believing the Argive denial of it, reports under protest, the Greeks are reported as willing to accept that Persians would try to persuade Greeks with the same rhetorical use of Greek myth as employed here by the Persian logioi, masters of argument, Persian sophists.101

2.4 Conclusion Of those passages in the Histories resembling the teachings or methods of the sophists, we have found that either the resemblance is limited by a significant difference between them, or else it belongs to Herodotus’ portrayal of the Persians as sophists, both of which suggest that Herodotus composed his work in a dialogical relationship with the sophists. We should not regard Herodotus himself as a sophist but as holding to traditional views of religion, law and government that were challenged by the sophists of his day, whose views he opposed as responsible for the justification of tyranny and imperialism in Greece.

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Essential aspects of Persian history and culture are largely unknown to Herodotus: the historical origins of the Persian ethnos in ancient Iran and their political evolution from tribes to kingdom to empire; their cultural debt to Elam and Assyria and their relationship to the Medes; the origin and nature of Iranian religion and its relation to the cult of Ahuramazda adopted or founded by Darius; the Achaemenid custom of religious tolerance; the evolution of the Persian model of exalted non-divine kingship from its Mesopotamian origins, through Babylonian and neo-Assyrian influence, and finally its reformation by the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire crafted by Darius, and the mutual reciprocity that characterizes the hierarchal relationship of god, king and peoples in that theology. To assess the nature of Herodotus’ representation of the Persians as Other, we need to measure it against what scholars have determined about the Persians on the basis of their own, largely archaeological, evidence.

3.1 Persian ethnos In Herodotus, the Persians first appear in the Cyrus logos as the subjects of the Medes (1.102), a group of tribes united by Cyrus in a single act of revolution that deposed Astyages as king of the Medes and established Cyrus as the first Great King of Persia as both kingdom and empire (1.123–30). Since Cyrus is taken to be the grandson of Astyages, the earlier history of the Persians belongs to that of the Medes in Herodotus (1.134). (Herodotus is commonly thought to have taken the view of the Greeks generally in making no real distinction between the two peoples, customarily referring to Persians as ‘the Mede’; in

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fact, Herodotus always maintains a clear ethnic distinction between Persian and Mede, despite their cultural assimilation.) With the very existence of a Median kingdom, let alone an empire, now seriously challenged by Ancient Near East scholars, not much of Herodotus’ account of the rise of Persia remains in the revised historical record of Persian origins (Root 2013: 23–6); instead of Media, scholars look to the Elamite Empire as providing the historical context for the rise of Persia (Root 2013: 26–7).

3.1.1  Iranian origins The Persians were an Iranian-speaking people who migrated to the Iranian plateau at the beginning of the first millennium and settled in among the Elamites in north-western Iran, moving into the Zagros mountains, and eventually making Persis (modern day Fars) their home in south-western Iran.1 Linguistically, the modern word ‘Iranian’ derives from the Old Persian word ‘ariya’,2 of which the earliest known example is its use by Darius to designate the Persian script he created for use in royal inscriptions: ‘Darius the king says: By the favour of Ahura Mazda this (is) the inscription which I have made besides in Aryan.’3 Darius also uses the word to designate his ethnic lineage as ‘Aryan’: ‘I am Darius … an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage.’4 In royal inscriptions, the Aryans are the Persians and Medes, who form ‘a distinct cultural, religious, and linguistic entity’.5 The Greek for the Persian word ‘Aryan’ (‘Iranian’) is ‘Arian’, the earliest uses of which are in Herodotus (3.93, 7.62, 7.66). At 3.93, Herodotus identifies a particular people in the tribute lists as the Arians, who are most likely the Kissoi, identified by their distinct headgear and weaponry in the catalogue of Xerxes’ army at 7.63 and 7.66, perhaps a remnant of the early Iranians not acculturated by the Elamites (unlike the Persians, who were, SK 3.1.3.4), and who are, at any rate, a distinct ethnos from that of the Persians and Medes. When the Median contingent is identified at 7.63, he reports that the Medes were once known by all as Arians as well, before they changed their name. Nowhere does Herodotus speak of the Persians as Arian, of the Persians and Medes together as Arian, or of the Persian Empire as Arian. This is in keeping with Herodotus’ view that the Persians and Medes are distinct ethnea, at different times the one people being ruled by the other. It is also in keeping with Herodotus’ astonishing neglect, perhaps too readily explained by his apparent ignorance, of the Achaemenid inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes.



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The modern use of ‘Iranian’ in the English-speaking world to refer to the Persian ancestors of modern day Iranians has its origin in the ancient Greek use of ‘Mede’ to refer to the Persians, and their common practice of making no distinction between the two peoples and cultures – a practice Herodotus never adopted. Today, Ancient Near Eastern, Greek, Iranian and Herodotean scholars all use ‘Iranian’ to denote a common ethnicity shared by Persians and Medes, a usage supported by the Achaemenid use of ‘Aryan’. But we need to bear in mind that ‘Iranian’ in this sense is precisely not the meaning of ‘Arian’ in Herodotus. The Herodotean ‘Arian’ specifically denotes an ancestry and ethnicity common to Medes and Kissians but not Persians. For Herodotus, the Persians are always called Persians; they are never, as in ancient Greek usage, referred to as Medes, nor, as in modern usage, referred to as Iranians (Arians). For Herodotus, the Persians are neither Arian nor Iranian; but he was wrong, since the Achaemenids clearly identified themselves as Aryan, that is, as Iranian.

3.1.1.1  Iranian origins in Greek myth In Herodotus, the names of the Persians and Medes are explained by etiological versions of the myths of Perseus and Medea (7.61–2), obviously facilitated by the Greek transliterations of the Iranian names Mada and Parsa as Medoi and Persai (from which we derive ‘Medes’ and ‘Persians’),6 which inspired the Greeks to incorporate Media and Persia into their own mythic history.7 Herodotus also reports Greek and Persian versions of the Perseus myth in which Greeks and Persians share a common ancestry in Perseus (6.53–4, 7.62, 7.150),8 but makes no mention of the mythic connection with the Greeks in his ethnography of the Persians, although he reports an Egyptian version of the myth that connects Greeks and Egyptians in his ethnography of Egypt (2.91). His neglect of the Perseus myth in his Persian ethnography is even more surprising given his report of the identification of Persians as the ‘men descended from Perseus’ prophesied by the Delphic oracle (7.220), which suggests that the mythic connection had been firmly established in the Greek tradition by Herodotus’ time. At 6.53, Herodotus corrects the limited knowledge of Perseus’ ancestry among the Greeks, by which Sparta’s kings trace their ancestry back to Perseus, with the Egyptian version which traces Perseus’ ancestry back to Egypt; then, at 6.54, he supports his argument with an independent Persian version of the myth which traces Perseus back even further to Assyrian origins (6.54). The combination of a prior Assyrian and Egyptian ancestry for Perseus allows

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the eponymous hero to be the common ancestor of both Greeks and Persians without one ethnos being the ancestor of the other, which could be taken as an indication of the universal perspective of Herodotus’ humanism.9

3.1.2  Persia and Assyria There is no record of the Persians before 1000 and ‘we hear nothing certain about them or the development of their state … before the seventh century’.10 The earliest record11 is of an event occurring about 647 involving a certain ‘Kurash, king of Parsuwash’, who appears in an Assyrian text in which Ashurbanipal recounts his destruction of Elam c. 650–648 (Nassouhi Prism, Kuhrt 1997a: 53). Scholars had once accepted that ‘Kurash, king of Parsuwash’ was ‘Cyrus, king of Anshan’ (i.e. Cyrus I, father of Cyrus the Great).12 This assumption has since been challenged, but it has also been defended, so it can be neither safely ruled in nor safely ruled out of the historical record.13 If accepted, it would indicate that as early as 700 the Persian tribes in the territory of Anshan had organized themselves into a kingdom by elevating one of their chieftains to the royal seat in Anshan, which they made over into the capital of the independent kingdom of Persia. If we rule it out, Persia’s formation of a kingdom would be connected instead with the fall of Assyria to Babylonia and Media in 612, no later than 600. Whatever the actual chronology, Persia’s formation as a kingdom owes something to Assyria’s destruction of Elam, just as its expansion into an empire owes something to Assyria’s fall to an alliance of Babylonia and Media. The earliest influence on Persia, then, was that of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the ruling power during the era of the Iranian migration into Iran and their settlement alongside the Elamites, who stood between them and the Assyrians. Neo-Assyrian influence may have been less intimate than that of the neighbouring Elamites, but possibly more pervasive, especially as Persia came to inherit, by right of conquest, the empire that had once belonged to the Assyrians. The Neo-Assyrian empire also served as a cultural medium for older Mesopotamian influence.14 As with the ambient radiation emanating from the ‘Big Bang’ by which scientists detect our cosmic origins, we should not fail to detect in the Near East of the first millennium the ambient radiation emanating from ancient Mesopotamia in the form of the traditional organizational model of ‘a hierarchical society with the king as the center of political power’ (Brosius 2006: 178–9) as the common cultural inheritance of Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, Medes and Persians alike.15



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3.1.3  Persia and Elam 3.1.3.1  Persian origins in Anshan (700–600) The Persians likely migrated into Elamite territory as separate tribes ruled by chieftains who, upon settling alongside the Elamites, formed a loose tribal confederacy in the vicinity of Anshan.16 Anshan was one of Elam’s two capitals (the other was Susa), which they had occupied in the second millennium, abandoned, then revived in the first millennium. Between the pressure of Iranians settling in on one side and Assyrian dominance growing on the other, Elam finally abandoned Anshan to the Persians and retired to Susa and Susiana, perhaps earlier but certainly no later than 648 when Ashurbanipal ‘had overwhelmed the whole of Elam like a flood’ (Nassouhi Prism, trans. Kuhrt 1997a: 53). Following the Elamite exodus, the Persian tribes organized themselves into an independent state in what once had been Elamite territory, and made Anshan the capital of what was now the local kingdom of Persia. The motivation for doing so may have been to better position themselves with regard to the Neo-Assyrian empire (in the manner, if not the person, of Kurash of Parsuwash).17 The evidence strongly suggests that the occupation of Anshan was not by conquest; rather, after centuries of peaceful coexistence with neighbouring Elamites, the formation of the Persian kingdom with its capital at Anshan had simply been a matter of filling the ‘political vacuum’ left behind by the evacuation of the Elamites to Susiana.18 The man first named ‘king of Anshan’ was Teispes. His immediate successor, Cyrus I (possibly Kurash, King of Parsumash), refers to himself on his royal seal as ‘Cyrus the Anshanite, son of Teispes’. The Cyrus cylinder of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II) names Teispes as the first of his line of royal ancestors, each of whom he refers to by the royal title ‘King of Anshan’.19 The Persian title ‘King of Anshan’ was an adaptation of the Elamite royal title ‘King of Susa and Anshan’, and has been interpreted as paying homage to the Elamite royal line which had preceded them at Anshan, as well as ‘an act of political symbolism with which the Persians gave weight to their role as successors of the Elamite kings’.20

3.1.3.2  Persian ethnogenesis If the Persian title ‘king of Anshan’ is taken ethnically as making a ‘claim of Anshanite ancestry’, we encounter evidence of ‘the ethnogenesis of the Persians via Elamite acculturation’.21 Possessing their own ‘ethnic and linguistic identity’, the Persians presumably would have arrived in Iran like the Achaeans in Bronze

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Age Greece, a distinct race with its own language which had not yet need for writing, and when the need arose found it at hand among the Minoans, along with the arts of artisans and artists. Just so did the early Persian kings adapt the Elamite script to suit their new royal purposes (the inscription on the cylinder seal of Cyrus I is in Elamite) and continued to use it even after Darius had introduced an Aryan script for their native Old Persian on the Bisitun monument. But whereas the Greek-speaking Achaean warrior-kings developed their own culture distinct from the non-Greek-speaking more placid Minoans, and eventually took over Minoan Crete by way of conquest, centuries of presumably peaceful coexistence of Persians and Elamites in Anshan territory gave rise to a ‘symbiotic process’ of acculturation which ‘effected a fusion of Elamite and Persian ethnic elements’ resulting in the genesis of the Persian ethnos. Such a view almost exactly replaces what is commonly inferred from Herodotus about the Persians with respect to the Medes – that by the time Cyrus defeated Astyages, Medes and Persians were virtually indistinguishable (which was only partially true for Herodotus, SK 3.1.4). The ‘permanence of Elamite borrowings in every aspect of social and political life’ leads Briant (2002: 27) to conclude that ‘the organization of the kingdom of Cyrus and his successors owes more to the Elamite legacy, which can be identified precisely, than to Median borrowings, which are very difficult to isolate’. From this ethnogenetic standpoint, which regards seventh-century Anshan as an established site of cultural symbiosis among Persian and Elamites, the accession of the Persians to the old Elamite throne ‘was more comparable to a change in political leadership via an ethno-classe dominante … in an area long accustomed to the institutions of kingship and statehood, than it was to the ascendancy of a “new” tribal group over an “exhausted” civilization’.22 The consensus among Near East historians is that the material evidence suggests that ‘the early Persian kings saw themselves as reviving and/or continuing a local Elamite kingdom, although they themselves were Iranian. As they had been living for several hundred years in close symbiosis with the Elamites of Fars, it is possible that they no longer considered themselves as markedly distinct.’23

3.1.3.3  Elamite influence Material evidence of Elamite influence on Anshanite Persia suggests that Persians had acquired their model of kingship and administration from Elamites, likely by way of acculturation and symbiosis. The adoption of city of Anshan and its surrounding territory by the early Persian kings as

the the the the



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capital and country of Persis, and their adaptation of the Elamite royal title for their own title, ‘king of Anshan’, indicate their early adoption or adaptation of the Elamite model of (local) kingship. Likewise, their early adaptation of the Elamite language and script for use in royal propaganda and administration indicates their early adaptation of the Elamite model of administration. There is ample evidence of the use of Elamite in Achaemenid propaganda. The Elamite inscription on the cylinder seal of Cyrus I is the earliest evidence; the Elamite inscription on the Bisitun monument its most famous use. Of the three languages that make up the Bisitun inscriptions, Old Persian, Akkadian and Elamite, ‘the earliest version of the text was the Elamite one’.24 Darius would have dictated the original text in Old Persian ‘for translation into Elamite by bilingual Elamite scribes in the royal chancellery, where the text was to be preserved as the model for all later versions’.25 The Elamite text would have been the one most accessible to literate Persians.26 The use of Elamite by the Persians for administrative purposes is well attested in the Persepolis texts.27 The earliest evidence that the early Persian kings adapted Elamite art and culture is the image that appears alongside the Elamite inscription on the personal cylinder seal of Cyrus II. Showing ‘the king on horseback pursuing his enemies, some of whom are already lying slain on the ground’, it reflects ‘the adaptation of the artistic style of the Neo-Elamite period’.28 Later, we have Cambyses wearing an Elamite robe on the famous winged genii at Pasargadae. It is difficult to gauge how much Achaemenid kingship and administration, art and culture owes to its Elamite origins, or to what extent the Persians are indebted to the Elamites for their hierarchical social structure (which Herodotus attributes to Median influence). The problem is that we know little in specific terms about Elamite political and social institutions. Unfortunately, Herodotus does not provide a logos of pre-Achaemenid Elam (even if he did we would be wary of its historical value) and the evidence that has survived is not like that of the Assyrian annals or Babylonian chronicles which would enable the reconstruction of Elamite history. In the end, we know little more than that, via Elamite acculturation, the Persians inherited the Mesopotamian model of ‘a hierarchical society with the king as the centre of political power’ common also to the Assyrians and Babylonians. Persian ethnogenesis via Elamite acculturation was limited in time and space to the early period of the Anshanite kings, before Cyrus II the Great, and to the area of Anshan. The result of the ethnogenesis of the Persians in Anshan appears to have been the assimilation of the Elamites in Anshan. The continuation of Elam under imperial rule as an ethnos distinct from that of the Persians was in Susa.

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3.1.3.4  Elam under Persian rule The Elamites at Susa had not been involved in the early process of Persian ethnogenesis at Anshan, and remained a distinct ethnos culturally from the Persians even after they were conquered by Cyrus and became a subject people of the empire, about the same time as the Medes, 550. In Herodotus, the eighth province of the Achaemenid Empire is described as consisting of ‘Susa and the rest of Kissia’ (Sou/swn de\ kai\ th~j a2llhj Kissi/wn xw/rhj, 3.91.4, my translation). The territory of Kissia overlapped, but was not identical with, the traditional Elamite homeland of Susiana with its capital at Susa. The Kissoi of Kissia were the Elamites around Susa. Elam, the Elamites’ name for themselves, had been replaced among the Persians and Greeks by their own names for them (not unlike the Romans calling Hellenes Greeks). The Persians came to refer to Elam as Susiana; the Greeks spoke of the Kissoi at Kissia, which was simply a local toponym. The earliest reference to the Kissoi in Greek literature appears in Aeschylus’ Persians. In Herodotus, they are referred to on numerous occasions (3.91, 5.49, 5.52, 6.119, 7.62, 7.86, 7.210). A crisis in the rulership of the empire occurred when Cambyses died without a successor, and there were attempts to claim the throne, to which Darius finally acceded on 29 September 522, proclaiming that he was the descendant of Achaemenes, a common ancestor to his father and Cambyses’ father, Cyrus the Great. The temporary interregnum and uncertain legitimacy of Darius’ accession inspired many peoples, including Persians and Medes, to break away from the empire and regain their ethnic autonomy, none more so than the Elamites, who rebelled three times. The Elamite rebellions may have arisen from an unassimilated sense of ethnic identity that had survived in Susiana, apart from the acculturation process in Anshan.29 Darius was miraculously successful in quelling the revolts. The Bisitun inscription depicts nine rebel leaders, hands behind their backs chained together at the neck’,30 coming before the great king ‘in the order in which they rebelled. The first region to revolt was, in fact, Elam.’31 Even after the rebellions Elam continued as a distinct ethnos administered as its own province but gradually assimilating into the culture of the Achaemenid empire. In 520 (the same year he commissioned the Bisitun monument) Darius took over the diminished site of Susa that centuries before had been the glorious capital of the Elamite kingdom and began to rebuild the entire city. ‘Susa remained culturally an “Elamite” city until the reign of Darius, when it was transformed into an Achaemenid centre.’32 The survival of Elam as a distinct ethnos under Persian rule is mirrored in the survival of distinct Elamite



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architectural elements in their contribution to the rebirth of Susa as the new capital of Persia’s multinational empire. A major indication of the continuation of Elam as a distinct ethnos under Persian rule is the continued and extensive use of Elamite in Achaemenid administration even after Darius had introduced Old Persian on the Bisitun monument. A minor indication is the evidence at Susa of the continued use of Elamite style in domestic pottery, metallurgy and glyptic. The most significant area in which Elam survives culturally is religion, evidenced in the Persepolis texts which record financial grants made by Darius to support ‘Elamite religious personnel and cults’.33 Also, we have found records of theophoric Elamite names, including the names of four Elamite deities, a surprising find, perhaps, since Darius emphasized in the Bisitun inscription that the Elamites were punished for their disloyalty to the crown and because ‘Ahura Mazda was not worshipped by them’ (DB Col. V 73, Brosius 2007: 537). Also, unlike Cyrus and Cambyses, ‘Darius never speaks of restoring or building any temples, a clear break with tradition’.34 On the one hand, therefore, we are advised not to underestimate ‘the degree to which Elamites must have been assimilated into an increasingly Persian cultural milieu’35; on the other hand, we should be aware that the Elamite identity is, if anything, even clearer in the subsequent Seleucid and Parthian periods’, which is ‘surely a sign that it was not completely overtaken by the forces of assimilation during the Achaemenid period.’36 Emblematic of the complexity of the cultural survival of the Elamites among the Persians is the ‘Elamite dagger’, a weapon whose distinctive features set it apart from similar weaponry of the Persians. The Elamite dagger worn by Elamite warriors in Neo-Assyrian reliefs and by the Elamite gift-bearers on the Apadana reliefs attest to its survival in the Achaemenid period as a distinctively Elamite artefact. That it is also worn ‘by the Persian guards and the “royal hero” killing a lion at Persepolis’ as well as ‘by Darius himself on a statue from Susa’, attests to its adoption by the Persians, which makes it emblematic of Elamite influence on Achaemenid Persia (Potts 1999: 342). The apparent evolution in function of the dagger, however, also makes it emblematic of the assimilation of Elamite culture in Achaemenid Persia. The Neo-Assyrian relief documents its origin as a military weapon of Elamite warriors; the context of its appearance on the Persepolis reliefs, where it is worn by Elamite gift-bearers and used by the royal hero to kill a lion, however, suggests that it had become more of a ceremonial ‘cult dagger’ (Potts 1999: 342). Its adoption by the Persian guards and by Darius indicates that it came to be employed by the Persians as a ‘sign of rank for bearers of high state office’ (Potts 1999: 342, 345). The Persian adoption

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of the Elamite dagger as a status symbol shows not only the extent of Elamite influence on the Persians, but also, through its ceremonial use, how it became emblematic of their distinct ethnic identity as the people of Elam. The retention of its ethnic identity as an Elamite dagger and its continued use by the Elamites even after it has been adopted by the Persian elite is emblematic of the limit of Elamite assimilation – that it does not cease to be a distinctively ‘Elamite’ artefact, which the Elamites would regard as belonging first and foremost to their ethnos.

3.1.4  Persia and Media Though Persians and Medes shared a common heritage, they were distinct peoples. It is a common assumption that for the Greeks ‘Persian’ and ‘Mede’ were virtually interchangeable.37 This has been shown not to be the case universally.38 Herodotus does not know of an Iranian heritage common to Medes and Persians; they are known and most often referred to as distinct ethnea (ou0k o9moeqne/wn), which is generally in keeping with Greek practice before and after the Persians wars.39 According to Herodotus (1.125), Persians and Medes each constituted their own ethnos (the ethnic designation of a single race of people, or nation) made up of their own genea (tribes).40 Of six genea that belong to the Median ethnos, the most significant are the Magi (1.101). A larger number of genea make up the Persian ethnos, though not all joined in the rebellion against the Medes, which converted the several tribes that did join together in rebellion into a single Persian kingdom under Cyrus. It’s not clear whether, upon overthrowing the Medes, it is only these tribes that constitute the ruling ethnos in the Persian Empire (as distinct from the subjected Medes, Elamites, Lydians, Babylonians, Carians, Ionians, etc.). At any rate, Herodotus names three agrarian tribes, three nomadic tribes and three tribes of Persian nobility, of which the noblest are the Pasargadae, to which the royal clan of the Achaemenids belongs (1.125). Scholars who have tried to make historical sense of these tribal lists (which do not agree with later lists by Xenophon and Strabo) are of the opinion that it is not really worthwhile.41 In modern scholarship, Medes and Persians originate as separate groups of migratory tribes, who knew themselves to be of a common Iranian ancestry.42 Herodotus’ ignorance of this common ‘Iranian’ ancestry is indicative of the boundaries of his research on Persians, whose land he did not reach in his travels and whose language he did not learn, and which consists mainly, therefore, of what he was able to learn from others.



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3.1.4.1  Persian and Median history Like the Persians, the Medes migrated from the east into Elam c.1000, settling apart from the Persians ‘in the northwest of Iran, around the city of Ecbatana, modern Hamadan, and further north, in the area of Iranian Azerbaijan’.43 The record of the Medes in the seventh century is much stronger than that of the Persians, but still sparse. According to Babylonian records, Media aided Babylonia in the taking of Nineveh that ended the Assyrian empire in 612, and then fell to Persia when Astyages was defeated by Cyrus in 539, which suggests that Media had at least become a kingdom by that time.44 Herodotus’ account of a Median empire stretching from the Iranian plateau to the River Halys with its capital at Ecbatana, however, is not adequately supported by the archaeological record as we have it. Ecbatana awaits excavation and the three seventh-century sites excavated in Median territory fail to support Herodotus’ account of Media’s growth from a kingdom to an empire c.700. ‘All seem to have been centers under local rulers, as no settlement hierarchy is detectable; none is particularly large or luxurious in its appointments.’45 The evidence such as we do have has been argued to support the view that a Median state of some kind existed between 615 and 550.46 But in a minimalist view, the sites can even be taken to demonstrate that Media never evolved beyond a loose tribal confederacy.47 This reading of the evidence not only rules out Herodotus but largely reduces the magnitude of Media’s role in ending Assyrian rule and of the war waged against Cyrus which are referenced in Babylonian records independently of Herodotus. But so long as the key archaeological evidence of the Median capital at Ecbatana under modern Hamadan remains unexcavated, assessments of Media remain inconclusive. Combining what evidence we have with Herodotus, we can at least construct a chronology of Median kings:48 Deioces 700–647 = Daiaukku – Uksatar (Kyaxares I) Phraortes 647–625 = Khsathritra Cyaxares 625–585 = Kyaxares Astyages 585–550 = Astyages

Cyaxares and Astyages are ‘well attested in the cuneiform records’ by name and deed.49 Deioces and Phraortes, however, are ‘figures whose actions are known to us only through Herodotus’.50 Without Herodotus, it is not really possible to construct a narrative of Median history around this chronology (especially if we hold to the minimalist position that the Medes never evolved beyond a

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tribal confederacy), even if we accept that kingship was attained by the age of Kyaxares. But we are not bound by the minimalist position and it is not unreasonable to use Herodotus to help reconstruct the historical relationship between Media and Persia as neighbouring local kingdoms.51

3.1.4.2  Medes and Persians in the Median logos (1.95–130) With Herodotus, we have a narrative that we cannot verify is truly historical. Thus, among historians, there is ongoing controversy between scholars who would preserve Herodotus’ history of Media by rationalizing its variance with what little archaeological evidence we have (e.g. Cook and Asheri) and those who would strike the Median logos and Media itself from the historical record on the basis that the archaeological record does not support the existence of a Median kingdom, let alone an empire (e.g. Sancisi-Weerdenburg and Kuhrt). Our interest as historiographers falls between these two camps. We would like to know how far Herodotus’ account of the Medes is at variance with the archaeological record, not with a historian’s interest in the Medes, but with a historiographical interest in how it contributes to Herodotus’ account of the Persians. Persia first enters Herodotus’ historical record in his account of their subjection to Media (1.102); Media first enters his record in his account of their liberation from Assyria (1.95). These accounts imply that the Persians and Medians had coexisted at the tribal level for the first half of the first millennium among the subject states of the Assyrian empire (1.95–6). After their liberation from Assyrian rule, the Medes experienced an anarchic period which resulted in the formal organization of the tribes into a local kingdom under Deioces (1.96–100), who ruled as the first king of Media for fifty-three years (1.102). It was his successor, Phraortes, who subjected Persia, the first step in the growth of Media from kingdom to empire (1.102). Phraortes’ expansion of Media was halted by the Babylonians (who Herodotus often refers to as Assyrians)52 (1.102). Phraortes was succeeded by his son Cyaxares, an aggressive warriorking who Herodotus credits as Median founder of the Persian custom of organizing their multinational army into its ethnic contingents (kata\ te/lea, 1.103.1, 7.87). Cyaxares completed the westward expansion of the empire to the River Halys (1.103), which bordered Lydia. By this time Lydia had grown from a local kingdom into an emergent empire now ruled by Alyattes. Cyaxares waged a six-year war with Lydia (instigated by the Scythians) (1.73) whose end was prompted by the eclipse predicted by Thales and secured by a formal peace guaranteed by the marriage of Alyattes’ daughter to Cyaxares’ son, Astyages



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(1.74). Phraortes then sought to avenge his father’s death by marching on the Assyrians and laying siege to Nineveh (Ninus), waging a successful campaign that was interrupted by a major invasion of the Scythians into Asia (1.103). Defeated in battle by the Scythians, the Medes lost their empire (1.104). Scythian domination of Asia lasted twenty-eight years, whereupon Cyaxares was able to re-establish Median rule, except over Babylon. Cyaxares was succeeded by Astyages, who dreamt that his daughter would give birth to his usurper (1.106–7). Married off to a lowly Persian of noble lineage, Cambyses, Mandane gave birth to Cyrus, who grew up, despite the machinations of his royal Median grandfather, to lead a Persian revolt against the Medes, by which the Persian tribes became a kingdom, and the kingdom an empire. In the beginning, Medes rule over Persians; in the end, Persians rule over Medes (1.128–30). What, then, becomes of the relation between Persians and Medes in Herodotus? To begin with, they are never assimilated into a single people, but ever remain ‘duw~n ou0k o9moeqne/wn’, two peoples not of the same ethnos (1.91.5) – as expressed in the dying wish and final command of Cambyses to the Persians (1.65). What the relationship of Medes and Persians comes to in the end in Herodotus is configured in the relationship of Cyrus and Astyages. Cyrus comes to the throne by right of conquest rather than by way of rightful royal succession – Astyages saw to that. Cyrus’ lowly Persian birth on his father’s side annulled any right he had to the throne through his mother. Indeed, the first bit of background information we gain about Cyrus, obtained from a cryptic reply of the Delphic oracle to Croesus, is of the lowly status resulting from his mixed parentage (1.55). Only later – too late for Croesus – does he learn from the Pythian priestess that the oracle’s cryptic allusion to Cyrus as a mule was a reference to his mixed lineage, his parents being of different ethnea (e0k duw~n ou0k o9moeqne/wn e0gego/nee), his Median mother of noble birth as a member of the royal household, his father of ignoble birth since, as a Persian, ‘he was subject to the Medes and inferior to them in every way’ (a0rxo/menoj u(p’ e0kei~noisi kai\ e1nerqe e0w\n toi~si a#pas’, 1.91.5–6, my translation). Cyrus does not come to the throne to breed a race of ‘mules’ by arranging ‘mixed marriages’ between Persians and Medes on the model of his own father and mother – a model that results only in debasing Median status to that of a Persian. He does not choose a woman among the Median nobility to be his queen, but a Persian, Cassandane, the daughter of the Achaemenid Pharnaspes’ (3.3). When Cyrus puts away his Median origins and assumes the throne in the old Median capital of Ecbatana, not as king of Medes (nor certainly as king of Anshan, the Elamite title unknown to Herodotus) but as king of the new Persian Empire, the Medes

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are forever debased in their subjection to the Persians. Perhaps because he is grandfather of the new king, Astyages survives and is treated well by Cyrus, albeit confined to the Persian court, deprived of royal status, the dethroned king of a subjected people (1.130). Indeed, Astyages survives even beyond the grave, to reappear as the haunting symbol of unremitting Median resentment of the Persian yoke when Prexaspes protests to Cambyses (3.62), is recalled once more at the very end of the Histories, where reference is made to Cyrus’ liberation of the Persians from Median rule (9.122). We must look beyond the Median logos, to the ethnography of the Persians that follows as the second part of the Persian logos to learn that there are limits to the debasement of the Medes, and an exceptional case. The limit is that, in the reversal of roles, the Medes now assume the same social status as the Persians had enjoyed under Median rule. Though now standing as a subject people far below the Persians as their social inferiors, they are among the subject peoples of the empire nearest to their rulers in social status. For in the social hierarchy that the Persians adopt from the Medes, the greatest respect the Persians hold for a people after themselves is their immediate neighbours, the Medes (1.134). The exceptional case is the Magi, whose exceptional relationship with the Medo-Persian throne we shall consider below (SK 3.1.4.4).

3.1.4.3  Medo-Persian ethnography in the Persian logos (1.95–140) Ethnically, Persians and Medes remain distinct; culturally, they assimilate.53 The historical result (reflected in Herodotus) of the Persians first being subject to the Medes and then rising up to rule over them is a Medo-Persian culture54 in which we can distinguish but not entirely disentangle a weave of Median and Persian, Elamite, Assyrian and Babylonian elements.55 From an Iranocentric perspective, this Medo-Persian culture could be regarded as first having a Median-dominant period followed by a Persian-dominant period. During the period of Median dominance, the Persians are passive participants in the culture of the Medes; in the period of Persian dominance, the Persians become the active agents of a Medo-Persian culture in which the Medes participate passively. With that understood, we can simply refer to the Median culture of the Median period as ‘Median’ and to the Medo-Persian culture of the Persian period as ‘Persian’, and to the two periods together as ‘Iranian’. In the Median logos (1.95–130), Herodotus attributes the Median model of kingship, court ceremony and bureaucracy to the invention of Deioces (1.99), the Median mandate for imperialism to the avarice of Phraortes (1.102) and



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the Median military ethnic hierarchy to the militarism of Cyaxares (1.103).56 In the Persian ethnography (1.131–40), we learn that the Medes had employed an ethnic hierarchy of rulerships in the rule of their empire (1.134.3). All of these Median nomoi (customs, practices, laws, traditions and institutions) continue under Persian rule as the Medo-Persian basis of Persian culture. The foundation laid by Deioces’ model of kingship, court ceremony and bureaucracy is never modified by his successors and thus becomes the Medo-Persian foundation of Persian political life. Cyrus (1.153) and Cambyses (3.64) maintain Ecbatana as their capital (Darius and Xerxes later prefer Susa; Herodotus knows nothing of Pasargadae, the new capital built by Cyrus, or of Persepolis, the new capital built by Darius). Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes all champion the Median mandate of imperialism established by Phraortes. When Xerxes arranges his army in ethnic contingents (7.60, 81) it is on the military model invented by Phraortes, and when he launches his Greek campaign to avenge the defeat of Darius at Marathon, he follows the example set by Cyaxares’ attack on Ninus (Nineveh) to avenge the death of Phraortes, who died in his campaign against the Assyrians (Neo-Babylonians). The Persian royal judges’ ruling that as king Cambyses was not subject to the Persian law prohibiting marrying one’s sister (3.31) and Xerxes’ punitive dismemberment of the son of Pythius of Lydia whom Xerxes regards as his slave (7.39) adhere to the Median model of royal despotism set by Astyages. Harpagus himself admits that, as his king, Astyages can do no wrong, even in feeding him his own son (1.119). The lack of historical evidence independent of Herodotus can neither affirm nor deny that these are authentic sixth-century Median institutions, customs and practices. Much of what Herodotus describes fits contemporary fifthcentury Achaemenid kingship, government, military organization and social hierarchy, which he may have ascribed retroactively to an assumed Median origin as was the wont of Greek historians,57 or to fit either with what he learned from an Iranian oral source58 or from his own research.59 Certainly, it is a generous estimation of the Median logos to maintain that in it, ‘Herodotus attempted to write a true history, with personal evaluation of the political, judicial, social, and military activities of the kings, and with reflections on the origins and vicissitudes of despotism.’60 Additional Medo-Persian customs appear in the Persian ethnography (1.130–40) that follows the Median logos. The most significant of these is the Persian adoption of the Median hierarchy of imperial governance (1.134.3). Emblematic of Herodotus’ conception of a Medo-Persian culture that contains distinct elements is the custom he erroneously ascribes to the Persians of

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adopting Median dress, as an example of their tendency to adopt foreign customs (ceinika de\ no/maia) (1.135). Serving as an example of unassimilated customs of Medes and Persians within the Medo-Persian culture are distinct Persian and Median burial customs. Correcting a false report, Herodotus points out that it is the Median Magi who expose their dead to birds and dogs of prey prior to burial, not the Persians, who embalm their dead in wax before burial (1.140).

3.1.4.4  Relation of the Median Magi to the Iranian throne The Magi are introduced early in the Median logos as one of the six tribes of Media united under Deioces (1.101); when they identify themselves to Astyages it is as Medes in opposition to the boy Cyrus as a Persian (1.120.5), and when they are slaughtered by Darius it is as Medes in opposition to Persians (3.79).61 Two passages in Herodotus inform us of the function and status of the Magi. In 1.120.5, we learn from the Magi themselves that they belong to the ruling class, not as members of the ruling family descended from Deioces (whose membership in one of the six tribes he united under his rule is not identified and so is unlikely to be Magian), but by way of holding high political office. In 1.132.3, we learn of their priestly office whereby a magos must be present whenever a sacrifice is made. It must be then as a (hereditary?) priestly caste that the Magi hold high political office (and social status) among the Medes, an office and status that appears to continue under Persian rule, despite their rebellion against Cambyses.62 Three major episodes involve the Magi: as royal dream-interpreters and advisors held responsible by Astyages for his fall to Cyrus (and thus of subjection of the Medes to Persian rule) (1.107–28); as royal stewards and usurpers in the account of the usurpation of Cambyses (and thus of Median usurpation of Persian rule), whose slaughter initiates Darius’ accession to the throne (and the establishment of the ‘Achaemenid’ line) (3.61–79); and as royal dream-interpreters, omen-interpreters, and as sacrificial priests in the account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (7.19–191), in which they play a significant role in persuading the Persian nobles of the validity of Xerxes’ decision to invade Greece, and thereafter as contributing to the advancement of his campaign, for which, though it would end in disaster, they were not held responsible. The only Magi named by Herodotus are the usurpers, Smerdis and his brother, Patizeithes; the others are anonymous members of a group or subgroup of the Magian tribe who form a priestly caste. The fate of the Magi in the first two episodes is fatal: they are impaled by Astyages for having advised him that



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Cyrus could be left to grow up; the Magian usurpers are killed by Darius and the co-conspirators, which initiates a day-long slaughter of the Magi by the Persians in Ecbatana– whether the Magi as members of the tribe or as a priestly caste is not specified. The Magi under Xerxes are not identified as Medes and do not meet a fatal end, but neither are they identified as Persians, as certainly they would be if Herodotus thought of them as such. Nor are we told that their role or status changed in society under Darius, although the annual festival of the Magophonia which celebrates the day of their slaughter would suggest as much, as would their absence from the account of Darius’ reign. But their reappearance in their traditional roles as royal interpreters and advisors under Xerxes suggest either that they regained their royal station and status if it had been suspended under Darius, or else, as seems more likely, that we are to infer, since Herodotus does not say otherwise, that it had continued even under Darius. But it would seem that the continuation of their political office and social status would be conditional upon the assurance of their utter loyalty to Achaemenid rule, so their ethnic threat to Persian rule as Median seditionists had been effectively eradicated by the Magophonia celebrated by the annual festival.63 The first group of Magi that we meet are those consulted by Astyages on the meaning of his dreams about Mandane that prophesied the birth of Cyrus (1.107). Astyages acts on their advice and takes steps to ensure that Cyrus would not grow up to fulfil the prophecy of usurping the throne. When he learns Cyrus has survived and shows signs of a royal nature, he consults the same group of Magi and asks their advice again, which he once more follows by letting Cyrus grow up as no longer a threat (1.120). When Cyrus defeats Astyages, he has the Magi dream-interpreters who advised his release as a boy impaled (1.128). At 1.120.5, these Magi explicitly identify ethnically with their king, Astyages, as Mede as opposed to Persian, and, on that basis, free as opposed to slave, socially, and as politai as opposed to xenoi politically. But likely it is as Magi that they go on to claim that as long as a Median king rules, they too have ‘some part in ruling’ and hold ‘high offices of state’ (kai\ a0rxomen to\ me/roj kai\ tima/j pro/j se/o mega/laj e1xomen, 1.120.5, my translation). It is even likely that it is the Magi who constitute the highest office in the land directly under the king, that of the ‘royal judges’ (oi9 basilh/ioi dikastai\, 3.31), although Herodotus never refers to the royal judges as Magi. In all likelihood, then, it is as a Median tribe that had traditionally supplied a caste of priests, seers, royal advisors and possibly even royal judges that the Magi form an exceptional case in the relationship of Medes and Persians in Herodotus. The Magi are exceptional in the opposite way as well, as the most vilified

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tribe or caste of the Medes. Because it was Magi who had usurped Cambyses in his absence, and Magi were Medes, Cambyses had enjoined the Persians ever to be on guard against the Medes resuming power (in addition to which his loyal servant, Prexaspes, who had exposed the Magi, threw himself off a tower after ‘invoking a terrible curse on the Persians if they did not win back the throne and take vengeance on the Magi’, 3.75 (trans. Godley 1920, adapted). Thus it is upon the Magi in particular, not the Medes as a whole, that Darius and the co-conspirators incite the Persians to vent their blood-thirst for vengeance in a day-long massacre, forever memorialized in the major annual festival of the Magophonia, ‘Slaughter of the Magi’ (3.79). Even so, the Magian imposter, Smerdis, was held in high regard by all peoples except the Persians as having been a beneficent ruler during his brief tenure as king (3.67–8). The Magi survive their holocaust under Darius to appear under Xerxes once again as dream-interpreters whose word had greater power over the Persian nobles than had that of the king alone (7.19). It is worth noting that here and elsewhere with Xerxes, as in their dream-interpretations for Astyages, the Magi please the king by telling him what he wants to hear.64 At any rate, it is only under Xerxes that the Magi are observed performing their sacrificial office as priests.

3.1.5  Persian sovereignty and the elite status of Media and Elam Says Darius the king: By the favour of Ahuramazda these are the countries which I seized outside Persia; I ruled over them; they bore me ‘tribute’; what was said to them by me, that they did; my law (data-) – that held them firm; Media, Elam, Parthia … Darius I tomb inscription at Naqsh-I Raustam (Kent 1953 DNa 38); Kuhrt (1997b: 676–7) The nations of which the army was composed were as follows. First the Persians themselves: the dress of these troops consisted of the tiara, or soft felt cap, embroidered tunic with sleeves, a coat of mail looking like the scales of a fish, and trousers … They were commanded by Otanes … The Median contingent, commanded by Tigranes the Achaemenid, was equipped in the same way as the Persian – in point of fact this mode of dress was originally Median and not Persian at all … The dress of the Cissian [Elamite] contingent was like the Persian, except that instead of caps they wore turbans. They were commanded by Anaphes the son of Otanes. Hdt. 7.61–2

In Herodotus, Medes and Elamites (Kissians) rank highest after the Persians



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in the ethnic hierarchy maintained by the Achaemenid kings. The traditional Elamite homeland centred about Susa (which had been rebuilt by Darius as the Persian capital of their multinational empire) was ‘where the Great King usually lives’ (5.49). Susa is the apex of the geographic hierarchy of the empire. The status of its location is enhanced by serving as the terminus of the Royal Road running from Susa to Sardis, as Herodotus points out at 5.52. The Elamites (as Kissians) appear third in order after Persians and Medes in the catalogue of ethnic contingents in Xerxes’ army drawn up at Dorsicus (7.62). At the battle of Thermopylae (7.210), after others have failed to dislodge the betrayed Spartans, Xerxes sends in Elamites and Medes; after heavy losses, the Medes withdraw and Xerxes sends in the Persian Immortals. We are not told what happens to the Elamites, but it is likely that first the Elamites entered and withdrew from the fight, then the Medes, then the Persian Immortals, thus maintaining the same ranking in battle as in military organization: Persia first, Media second, Elam third.65 Applying this ranking to the political hierarchy of rulerships, it is likely that as the Persians ruled the Medes, the Medes would rule the Elamites; socially, just as the Medes would stand directly below the Persians, so would the Elamites stand beneath the Medes – of course, the height of the step between the Persians and Medes was likely as great as all the rest of the steps put together. Herodotus’ portrait of the prominent status of Elamites as ranking third behind Persia and Media is generally supported by tributary lists on Achaemenid reliefs and the Persepolis tablets.66 In his Homeric catalogue of the contingents that constitute Xerxes’ multi­ national army, Herodotus identifies the ethnos of each contingent by their dress. The order of the catalogue corresponds to what we are told of the Persian hierarchy at 1.134: it begins with the Persians at the geo-ethnographic centre of the empire and at the top of the political–social hierarchy and moves downward through the ranks and outward towards the periphery. After the Persians come the Medes and after the Medes come the Elamites. Persians, Medes and Elamites are all but identical in their dress (7.62). The identity in combatant dress at 7.62 singles out the Persians, Medes and Elamites from the other peoples that make up the remainder of the catalogue in the same way they are singled out as the elite forces of the Persian army by Xerxes in the battle at Thermopylae (7.210). When we add to the literary evidence of Herodotus the material evidence of their identity of dress in their depiction in the Achaemenid reliefs, it is clear that Persians, Medes and Elamites constituted among themselves an elite echelon in the hierarchy of Persian society. It matters less that the material evidence of the Achaemenid reliefs corrects

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Herodotus’ attribution of Persian dress to the Medes (7.62 and 1.135)67 than that he supports reading the material evidence as ascribing Elamite dress to the Persians, a view that we shall follow here.68 (In fact, for our purposes we can consider the Elamites to represent the Medes by proxy, as we are drawing upon an argument concerning the similar dress of Elamites and Persians – the Medes appear in different dress on the reliefs, but it is worth noting that the order is usually Persian, Mede, Elamite. But generally what we discover about the relationship of Persians and Elamites can be extended to the full relationship of Persians, Medes and Elamites.) The near identity of Persians and Elamites in appearance and dress in all three roles (throne-supporters, podium-supporters and gift-bearers) in the reliefs, and the fact that Persians and Elamites appear alongside one another on two of them, fits with the Herodotean evidence of the elite status of Elam in Persia. The distinctive headgear on the gift-bearing relief fits with Herodotus’ account of the ethnic hierarchy that exists even among the elite and places the Elamites below the Persians. On what basis do the Elamites stand on par with the Persians in Herodotus and the Achaemenid reliefs commissioned by Darius and on what basis do they stand apart from them? On the throne- and podium-supporting reliefs the Elamite headgear is as conspicuously absent as it is present on the gift-bearing relief. Persians and Elamites only dress identically when they literally stand on par with one another in the role of upholding the elevation of their king above the peoples of the empire. From this perspective, there is no distinction to be made between Persian and Elamite – and is this the perspective from which the reliefs were commissioned by the Great King? (We must not forget that the reliefs are as much invested with the authorial bias of Darius as the Histories are with the authorial bias of Herodotus.) Measured by the immeasurable difference between the king and the people, a distance maximized by the proximity of king and his god, Ahuramazda (Kuhrt 2010: 92; Root 2013: 60), they appear identically subject to their ruler. We might note how this interpretation of the royal perspective fits with Herodotus’ presentation of the (Medo) Persian line of kings as despots who not only stand at the apex of the (Medo) Persian hierarchy, but also above it. From that perspective, the elite status of Elam hardly matters, since even the Persians stand in servitude to the king of kings.69 Turning back to the gift-bearing relief where the Elamites wear their distinctive headgear, it seems to have greater significance than we gave it in looking at Herodotus. We might begin by noting the one detail that is so obvious as not to be conspicuous: the presence of Elamites alongside other subject



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peoples. Indeed both Elamites and other subject peoples are present on all three reliefs. Conspicuously absent are the Persians, but what is really conspicuous is that it is only in the Persians’ absence that the Elamites wear the distinctive headgear which sets them apart from the Persians. Where Persians and Elamites differ is precisely on the ethnic level: they are ‘duw~n ou0k o9moeqne/wn’ of two ethnea not the same. The conspicuous absence of the Persians amongst the gift-bearers sets them apart as an ethnos possessing political privileges to which no other ethnos, even the Elamites (and Herodotus’ Medes), has access. Cambyses dies commanding the Persians to ensure only a Persian succeeds the throne; after Darius, future kings must be Achaemenian. Since the Persians are ethnically related to the royal ethnos, they do not pay tribute to the king. The conspicuous presence of the headgear of the Elamites on the gift-bearing relief clearly demarcates their political–social inequality with the Persians – it sets them firmly among the other ethnea of the empire as a subject people. The royal administration, for example, is restricted to the royal family and those of noble Persian birth, with few exceptions, although these may prove significant.70 Our reading of the headgear on the gift-bearing relief of the Apadana at Persepolis seems now to differ considerably from our reading of its appearance in the descriptive catalogue of Xerxes’ army in Herodotus. On our reading of the gift-bearing relief thus far, the ethnic headgear of the Elamites represents what they are not as the result of their subjection – how as non-Persian, they are not on par with the Persians; instead they appear among the non-Persian peoples, who, unlike the Persians, have twice lost their ethnic autonomy to Persian sovereignty, originally to the conquest to Cyrus and again to Darius quelling their rebellious bid for independence. This reading of the significance of the Elamite headgear as an ethnic designator now stands at odds with what it clearly represents in Herodotus. In fact, it is a reading that practices ‘Orientalism’, representing to ourselves what we see from our ‘Western’ perspective. Ironically, it is Herodotus, much blamed as the main source of ‘Orientalism’ in the Western tradition among the Near Eastern scholars that we have sourced for our study of Persians and Medes in history, who can best enable our effort to come to an ‘inside’ perspective on the status of the Elamites depicted on the reliefs. Herodotus enables us to gain insight into the ethnic perspective of the Elamites as they see themselves as a subject people of the empire. In Herodotus they stand before us alongside the Persians, dressed nearly identically as they do in the Persepolis reliefs as throne- and podium-supporters, and they do so for the same reason: Persian and Elamite are equally servants or bondsmen of the Great King. The difference is that we are now taking into consideration what

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it means to the Elamites to be in this position. Dressed for battle, the headgear they wear is their own, and they wear it as such, that is, as distinguishing themselves from the Persians, who wear a different headgear of their own. Obviously Herodotus’ catalogue of Xerxes’ army is modelled upon and meant to recall Homer’s catalogue of ships. It is not simply a roll call; it is an honour call – the modern equivalent is the display of regimental colours. (On this score it is worth noting that in Herodotus it is the barbaroi who are arranged in good order for battle, while the Hellenes are largely represented in a dangerous state of disunity and disarray – the clamour of their arguments echoing the cacophonous array of the Asian contingents mustered by Priam of Troy.) In Herodotus, the distinctive headgear of the Elamites represents who they are to themselves – as if to proclaim ‘We are the Elamites.’ This is how they see themselves and how they desire to be seen by others among the peoples of the empire, as ranked among the foremost warriors in the army of the king, as the king’s elite. Wearing their distinctive headdress into battle, the Elamites’ dress allows us to identify them as an elite ethnos of warriors of the Great King. Viewing the relation of the Elamites to Persian rule from the ethnic perspective of Elamites themselves as not merely subject to but as actively participating in and supporting the sovereignty of the Persian king brings us round to another side to the relationship of the ruler and ruled in the empire that we simply did not allow to appear before us earlier – and affords us a much better perspective on what we are to make of the Mesopotamian ideology of kingship that informs the royal perspective of Darius I in commissioning the reliefs, which we did not recognize earlier. For what we have not recognized is the mutual benefit derived from the relationship of ruler and ruled: in lifting the king up to their god, the people are lifted by their king and by their god as well. In the Mesopotamian model of kingship and its ideology of sovereignty, which the Persians had adopted in Anshan and Darius had adapted to his worship of Ahuramazda (SK 3.4), the king rules on behalf of his god(s) as the shepherd and protector of his people. The king is entrusted by the god with the responsibility and privilege of maintaining justice in the land just as the god maintains order in the cosmos. In turn, the king requires the support of the people. This idea is expressed in the symbolic act of having the people holding up the throne of a king on the reliefs – without the support of the people, the king cannot rule and justice will be denied on earth and in the heavens. Thus on the tomb inscription Darius commands his people, ‘O man, that which is the command of Ahuramazda, let this not seem repugnant to



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you; do not leave the right path; do not rise in rebellion!’ (DNa 1–38, Kuhrt 1997b: 676–7). Supporting the king on his throne may be the duty owed by the bondsman to his lord, but it is also the highest honour that the king can confer on his servant. Bearing up the king on his throne or podium represents the same ideal or ideology or ethical principle on behalf of which the elite ethnea of warriors lay down their lives in battle or step up to replace the Immortals as they fall. To them is granted the office of highest service, an office that confers the highest status upon those to whom it is entrusted – for these are in fact the people on whom the king relies the most to carry out his duty of fulfilling the will of the gods by maintaining justice and order on earth as the gods do in the heavens.71 From this perspective, we can even regard the Elamite gift-bearers in another light, by comparing them with the Elamite rebels – who are not wearing the distinctive headgear – shackled on the Bisitun relief, following the Near Eastern tradition going back to Sargon of representing the king as prevailing over his foes by the agency of the gods. These are the enemies of the king, the god, and the people – for Darius, those who have been corrupted by the ‘Lie’. These are those who cannot be assimilated, who resist acculturation. These are the abject slaves of god, king and people. By comparison, the gift-bearers appear dignified in fulfilling their responsibility – paying tribute is not a matter of taxation, or if it is it is not simply so. It is also (and for the peoples of the Ancient Near East primarily) an honour system that is mutually beneficial to both sides. For the principle is the same in bearing gifts as it is in upholding the throne – the service rendered to the king bestows honour. The relation between king and people is actually modelled on the relation of the king to the god, where service is its own reward. It is not the reciprocal model of the Greek polis, where citizens rule and are ruled in turn. The people serve or honour the king and the king and people serve or honour the god; it is not the case that ‘the way up and the way down is the same’. The god does not serve the king and his people, nor the king his people. Rather, the god ‘blesses’ the king as does the king his people: what is a matter of obligation on the side of the inferior is a matter of grace on the side of the superior. The lower can expect to be punished by the higher for refusing to render what is due; they can only hope that the higher will freely confer a benefit upon them in return. But again, the true benefit lies in the honour and privilege of serving those who are superior to oneself. This is the ideology that we must understand to permeate the Achaemenid Empire if we are to grasp it in its own terms. The question that we

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will have before us then is how Herodotus understands it – or, more specific­ally, how he represents the Persian kings as understanding and employing it.

3.1.6  Achaemenid Persia under Darius The empire that Herodotus knows of and represents in the Histories is principally the work of Darius, but his knowledge is limited by his sources, as he did not travel in Persia to see things for himself. Of Persia’s ethnogenesis, he basically attributes to Median acculturation by way of conquest what scholars now attribute to Elamite acculturation by way of peaceful coexistence at Anshan. He knows that Darius built a palace at Susa that served as the capital of the empire, but not that he actually rebuilt Susa from what it had formerly been as the capital of the Elamite Empire. He knows of Ecbatana as the capital of the Median Empire overtaken by Cyrus and later by Cambyses, but nothing of Pasargadae or Persepolis, the new capitals that Cyrus and Darius had commissioned. In fact, all four cities were employed by Darius and his successors, who seemed to have travelled from one city to another in seasonal tours of the empire. Darius I refounded the Persian Empire under the sovereignty of the Achaemenids. Under Darius, Achaemenid Persia reached maturity and set itself on its own foundation (Kuhrt 2010: 88). Its origins as a local kingdom at Elamite Anshan and as a new imperial power that bowed to accept the honorific titles that Babylon and Egypt bestowed upon its rulers were no longer visible – or rather they appeared as elements contributing to a new form that was recognizably and distinctly Achaemenid.72 On the Bisitun monument, Darius enrobed king and empire in an ideology of its own, based on a new ancestral founder, Achaemenes, and a personal new god, Ahuramazda. Emblematic of this new ideology was the reinvention of Old Persian as a written language for royal communications by way of a new script he invented for that purpose. The rebellions had been squashed, the peoples of the empire pacified, its governance reorganized on the basis of a hierarchical system Herodotus attributes to the Medes but which may well have been refashioned or even created by Darius.

3.2  Religion in Persia Darius the king proclaims: This that I did, by the favour of Auramazda, in one and the same year I did. Auramazda helped me, and the other gods who are. DB IV.62; (Kuhrt 2007a: 148)



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Approaching the gods of the Persian Empire from the Persocentric perspective of Darius there is Ahuramazda and ‘the other gods who are’. Who are the ‘other gods’? Darius names only Ahuramazda; Artaxerxes II names Mitras and Anahita as forming an exclusive Achaemenid triad. Most generally, the other gods are all the gods who are worshipped in the empire, some Persian, most not; some by Persians, most not.73 There were as many distinct religions in the Persian empire as there were distinct peoples. Nearly every ethnic logos in Herodotus includes an account of their religion, the main ones being Greece, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia and, bordering the empire, the Scythians. Herodotus knows that the Persians worshipped the natural elements of earth, water, air and fire; he identifies Ahuramazda as the Persian Zeus and Anahita as the Persian Aphrodite, whose Persian name he mistakenly takes to be Mitra.74 Our main sources for Persian religion are the narratives provided by Herodotus (1.131–2) and Darius (Bisitun inscription and others); we can add to other royal inscriptions of Xerxes and Artaxerxes II, bits found in the Persepolis fortification tablets75 and a sub-section of the Avesta76 that linguists have dated to the Achaemenid period. This much tells us something about the gods worshipped by the Persians (and Medes) and a little about how they regarded the gods worshipped by the Elamites. The Cyrus Cylinder informs us of how the Persians regarded the worship of Marduk and the Babylonian gods generally in Babylonia as a province of the empire; there is similar evidence regarding Cambyses and the gods of Egypt, especially the worship of the pharaoh as a god, which tells us how the Persians regarded the practice of Egyptian religion in Egypt. Herodotus, of course, tells us about the gods worshipped by most of the other peoples in the empire, in which our interest generally is limited to how they fared under Persian rule. There was never an attempt to incorporate these many religions into one religion, or to impose one religion upon the many.77 If anything, the diversity of religious practice was celebrated as enhancing the status of Achaemenid rule.78 On the other hand, as Darius makes clear in the Bisitun inscription, ‘the Great Kings at times asserted their control of religious affairs through the destruction of the shrines of rebellious people, through the reinforcement of the cohesion of the Persian communities in the provinces with the help of Iranian cults, or through minor but meaningful changes within rituals or ceremonies’.79

3.2.1  Mesopotamian milieu Chronologically, the oldest religion of the Near East that was introduced into Persian Fars as early as the third millennium is the anthropomorphic polytheism

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of ancient Mesopotamia, which found its fullest expression in the SumeroAkkadian Epic of Creation and the Sumero-Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. These are the gods of the Assyrians, Babylonians and, by way of conquest, the Elamites at Susa. The religion of these epics is not only representative of urban Near Eastern religion, but provides the cultural milieu of its various adaptations at the ethnic level by Babylonians, Assyrians and Elamites. In fact, we could extend that statement to Greece as well, as evidenced by comparison of Greek epic with Mesopotamian epic. Herodotus locates the origin of Greek religion in Egypt, but the therio-anthropomorphic gods of Egypt appear only as monstrous creatures in Mesopotamian and Greek religion. As in much else, Egypt stands apart from the rest of the Near East in its own religious, political and social traditions.

3.2.2  Elamite religion More than 200 divinities appear in Mesopotamian documents relating to Elam, many of whom were worshipped in one period and not another, such as the Sumero-Akkadian gods Inanna, Ea, Enlil, Sin and Adad, some of whom had temples in Susa.80 Among the Suso-Mesopotamian gods who were honoured throughout the history of Elam were Humban and Inšušinak, the patron god of Susa. The Elamite pantheon also includes non-Mesopotamian deities of the Iranian plateau, such as the Anshanite goddesses Kiririša and Upurkupak. In the Middle Elamite period when Anshan predominated over Susiana, King Untaš-Napiriša undertook the ‘elamization’ of Suso-Mesopotamian religion, introducing new Elamite gods to the pantheon and building temples for them.81 The major work of the period was the construction of the ziggurat complex at Čoḡā Zanbīl. The ziggurat is itself evidence of the Mesopotamian foundation of Elamite religion,82 central to which was the building of temples to their gods. The building of the ziggurat at Čoḡā Zanbīl also reflects the result of the elamization of the Suso-Mesopotamian pantheon.83 One of the oldest and most popular gods of the Elamite pantheon was Humban,84 whose cult continued into the Achaemenid period. His name appears alongside that of Ahuramazda in the Persepolis fortification tablet PF339, which records an instance in which a priest receives three times as much wine for use at his cult as that for the cult of Ahuramazda.85 Humban is also the only god on record to have received the Lan, a popular Elamite ritual ceremony of unknown purpose,86 which the Persians had adapted as well, though they did not use it to worship their own gods.87 That Ahuramazda appears alongside



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the Elamite gods in the aftermath of the rebellions that Darius associated with failure to give due respect to Ahuramazda (DB IV.63) ‘shows the flexible nature of religion in the Achaemenid period and suggests that there was religious freedom during this period’.88 The Persian goddess Anahita owes something of her syncretic divinity to Elamite assimilation of Mesopotamian Ishtar.89 Though her cult may have begun earlier, her earliest mention in the Achaemenid record is by Artaxerxes II, who set her at the top of the Persian pantheon alongside Ahuramazda and Mithra as the great triad: ‘By the favour of Auramazda, Anahita and Mithra, I built this apadana. Me may Auramazda, Anahita and Mithra protect from all evil’ (Aha).90 Herodotus identifies Anahita as the ‘heavenly Aphrodite’ (though he mistakenly believed the Persians called her Mithra, 1.131.3), but she seems to have been worshipped by the Persians as the goddess of water and fertility, alongside Mithra, the sun-god.91 Artaxerxes II is said to have set up cult statues in her honour at Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, Bactra, Damascus and Sardis.92 ‘Anāhitā also figures prominently in Zoroastrian literature and was quite clearly venerated at various times in connection with both water and fire.’93

3.2.3  Religions of the empire: Media, Babylonia, Judea, Egypt and Greece And King Darius proclaims: May Auramazda – all the gods (being) with him – protect me as well as this fortress, and also what has been put together for/on this structure! May that which a disloyal man may think not happen. DPf #3; Kuhrt (2007b: 488)

‘Cyrus appears to have initiated a general policy of permitting religious freedom throughout his domains.’94 Cyrus went further than permitting religious freedom: he invented the Achaemenid royal role of patrons of foreign cults, adopting the roles and messianic titles bequeathed upon the Achaemenid kings by their foreign subjects. Cyrus set the example by accepting the role of Marduk’s redeemer among the Babylonians, which Cambyses followed among the Egyptians in accepting his deification as the son of Apis-Osiris and Ra. Darius faced the task of suppressing the rebellions of the peoples of the empire, which he sometimes blamed on their failure to recognize Ahuramazda (as with the Elamites and Scythians), but this did not prevent him from continuing to support their gods once the people had been pacified. What no Achaemenid king did, however, was to import a foreign cult into the Iranian pantheon in Persia (Artaxerxes II’s importation of Mithra and Anahita were

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originally Indo-Iranian deities). Even though we have already seen evidence of their support of foreign cults in Persepolis, these were non-Achaemenid cults permitted and supported by the Achaemenids on behalf of their non-Persian subjects. In Babylon and Egypt, the Achaemenid king would worship the gods of Babylonia and Egypt as the king of Babylonia and as the pharaoh of Egypt.

3.2.3.1 Media ‘Our information about the religion of the Medes is very scanty.’95 To what extent it was the case, as Strabo (following Herodotus) believed, that in religious matters the customs of Persians and Medes were (or had become) the same is still unknown. It was previously believed that the Medes did not worship the natural elements or the cult of Mithra, as did the Persians. But a fire altar belonging to a temple built around 750 and located at Tepe Nush-i Jan, about 60 kilometres south of Ecbatana, provides material evidence that the Medes at least practised the Indo-Iranian cult of fire;96 some scholars have argued that Mithras was the major god of Media. Median personal names found in Assyrian texts from the ninth and eighth centuries contain ‘theophoric names with Maždakku and even the name of the god Ahura Mazdā’,97 which makes it probable that ‘as early as the 8th century, a kind of Mazdaism with common Indo-Iranian traditions prevailed in Media’ that was not yet Zoroastrianism, ‘the religion reformed by Zarathustra [which] started to spread in western Iran only in the first half of the 6th century bce, under the last Median kings’.98 Generally, evidence is lacking to be certain what forms of religion may have been indigenous to the Medes, who likely had been acculturated to the Mesopotamian pantheon as were Elam and Persia. Some have thought that the Magi priesthood, which Herodotus tells us was of Median origin, practised this pre-Zoroastrian form of Mazdaism; others, that it practised Zoroastrianism.99 It is argued that while the Magi ‘are never introduced as partisans of Zoroaster, nor indeed is the prophet mentioned at all by Herodotus [nonetheless] … they observe typically Zoroastrian practices, such as the exposure of dead bodies, the killing of xrafstras [noxious creatures] and the reverence for the dog’.100 Therefore, since the ‘customs Herodotus ascribes to the Magi [at 1.140] are typical of Zoroastrianism’, at least the Magi in 1.140 are ‘best regarded as Zoroastrian priests’; in the other passages, however, which document the Magi acting as dream-interpreters and omen-interpreters, ‘there may be references to non-Zoroastrian Magi’.101 It would appear that the sacrifices in which the Magi participate by singing the ‘theogony’ (Hdt. 1.132) – perhaps



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a hymn to the deity – also agrees with later Zoroastrian practice.102 It may be the case historically that there are distinctions to be made within the Magi as a tribe, as a priestly caste, as adherents to different religions and perhaps even as western and eastern Magi (the eastern Iranians are taken to be Zoroastrian, the western Iranians to be more under the influence of Mesopotamian religion), and even Median and Persian Magi. But it is all speculation since our only source is Herodotus and in Herodotus there is only the Magi as a Median tribe and as a Median priestly caste who continue their office under Persian rule, even after having rebelled and endured a holocaust of retribution. These Magi perform both the rites that appear in Zoroastrian writings and conform to Zoroastrian ideology,103 as well as non-Zoroastrian acts.

3.2.3.2 Babylonia When [Cyrus?] came, in Elamite attire, he [took] the hands of Nabu […] lances and quivers he picked [up, and (?)] with the crown-prince {Cambyses} [he came down (?) into the courtyard. He [or: they] went back [from the temple (?)] of Nabu to Esangil. [He/they libated] ale before Bel and the Son of […] Nabonidus Chronicle III.26–28; Kuhrt (2007a: 51) I, Cyrus … whose reign was loved by Bel and Nabu and whose kingship they wanted to please their hearts – when I had entered Babylon peacefully, I set up, with acclamation and rejoicing, the seat of lordship in the palace of the ruler. Marduk, the great lord, […] of Babylon, daily I cared for his worship … Marduk, the great lord, rejoiced at my [good] deeds. Cyrus Cylinder; Kuhrt (1997b: 60)

Cyrus appears not only to have restored the cult of Marduk in Babylonia, and those of other ‘city-gods in other Babylonian cities during the Babylonian conquest’,104 he seems also to have established the role of royal patronage, assuring their continuation in his name. The same principle seems to be applied to the restor­ ation of temples in Babylonia, Elam and ‘what had been Assyria’ (Dandamayev 1993: EI). But the influence of Mesopotamian religion upon Persian religion is restricted to the early Anshan period of Elamite acculturation. Cyrus did not build temples to those gods in Persia, nor did he install their cults there, nor did his successors. The Mesopotamian pantheon of Assyro-Babylonia were celebrated in their native kingdoms in the guise of titles and roles bequeathed upon the Persian kings in those kingdoms. One explanation for this policy of patronage without adoption may be that, before Darius, Cyrus had practised a form of pre-Zoroastrian Mazdaism that precluded the worship of other deities.

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3.2.3.3 Judah This is the word of Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he himself has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah. To every man of his people now among you I say, God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the LORD the God of Israel, the God whose city is Jerusalem. And every remaining Jew, wherever he may be living, may claim aid from his neighbours in that place, silver and gold, goods and cattle, in addition to the voluntary offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem. Ezra 1.2–4, The New English Bible; Ebor (1970: 519–20)

Cyrus was cast in the same ‘messianic’ role vis-à-vis the Jews as he appears in certain of the Babylonian writings and his own. Zoroastrianism is seen by some as having a monotheistic tendency that approximates that of Judaism (which has led some to seek historical associations). In fact, such a tendency might be nearer to the Hellenistic tendencies in that direction. For Judaism, monotheism is not a tendency; it is the first tenet of the religion, as exemplified by the iconoclasm of Hezekiah, King of Judah in the early seventh century. The Hebrews, Judah and Judaism do not appear in Herodotus.

3.2.3.4 Egypt The Horus Smatowy [Cambyses’ Horus name, ‘Uniter of the Two Lands (= Upper and Lower Egypt)’] King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuitre, son of Re, Cambyses – may he live forever! He has made a fine monument for his father Apis-Osiris with a great granite sarcophagus, dedicated by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuitre, son of Re, Cambyses – may he live forever, in perpetuity and prosperity, full of health and joy, appearing as King of Upper and Lower Egypt eternally! Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription on sarcophagus105

Despite Herodotus’ account of Cambyses’ outrageous religious sacrilege especially against Apis (which may be Egyptian folklore) (3.38.1), material evidence indicates that he followed in Egypt the example Cyrus set in Babylonia, and which Darius would uphold, of accepting the title and deified status of the pharaoh in Egypt, and extending royal patronage to the Egyptian cult as pharaoh.106 A statue of Darius found at Susa, however, bears an Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription calling Darius ‘the offspring of the god Atum; ‘the name under which Re, the sun, was worshipped’.107 In terms of statuary, common elements suggest that ‘at Persepolis and in Egypt a style had developed in the



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last decade of the reign of Darius in which Greek and Egyptian elements were harmoniously combined’.108 But when Darius rebuilt Susa it seems by design to have been intended as a multicultural capital of the empire, his inscriptions celebrating the grand cultural diversity that went into its very fabrication. By subtle contrast, the architecture and art of Persepolis, in the heart of Persia, proclaims the sovereignty of the Achaemenids as rulers of (nearly) all the peoples of the world. In Herodotus, the profound and obvious differences between Greek and Egyptian religion, especially in visual depictions of the gods, are wholly suppressed.109 Herodotus holds to a universal view of religion in which the gods were responsible for the establishment of their worship by humans, first among the Egyptians, the oldest of peoples, from whom it disseminated to the rest of the world (SK 2.2.5). His religious universalism is not self-consciously Hellenocentric – the gods of Egypt, like those of Babylonia, Scythia and Persia, are thought of as the same gods known to the Greeks; although the religion that is shared by the world is really the Greek religion, Herodotus understands that Egyptian religion was translated into the Greek religion by Homer and Hesiod. From this perspective, Herodotus regards Egyptian theriomorphism not as a substantial characteristic of their unique concept of the divine, but as the common feature in Greek religion of the gods adopting animal – or for that matter, human and inanimate – forms. In the Greek myths, Zeus often assumed animal form to consort with human females, and Dionysus could appear as a bull. Pan, as Herodotus points out, was depicted by both Egyptians and Greeks as half-goat, half-man: ‘Not that they think he is, in fact, like that – on the contrary they do not believe he differs in form from the rest of the gods’ (2.46). As the gods have divine names known only to themselves, which identify their divine nature, so do they have a divine form known only to themselves as well: theriomorphism and anthropomorphism might equally belong to the human knowledge of the gods, which varies from culture to culture, and is but the appearance of the gods – the gods as they wish to appear – among mortals.

3.2.3.5  Greece: Ionia and Athens According to Herodotus, Persia’s policy of respecting foreign gods extended to Ionia and Athens even after the Ionian revolt.110 Even in his invasion of Greece, Xerxes pauses to make a sacrifice to Athena at Troy, no doubt to propitiate the goddess of Greek victory (7.43), and then to Thetis, mother of Achilles, to

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propitiate her as a sea-goddess in an effort to calm the stormy seas at Cape Seisa (7.91). The key episode, however, by which to judge Herodotus’ account of the Persian attitude towards Greek gods is Xerxes’ destruction of the statues and temples of the Athenian Acropolis (8.53). Regarding Herodotus as a historical source, the desecration of the Acropolis could be seen as in keeping with Persia’s foreign policy regarding the gods of others. Xerxes’ avowed justification for invading Greece was to take vengeance upon the Athenians who first committed religious sacrilege against Persia (7.8.b). Thus, the destruction of the statues and temples of Athens was not principally an act of sacrilege against the Greek gods, but an act of piety towards those of Persia to punish the enemy (Darius and Xerxes would have said those who followed ‘the Lie’).111 The sense that it was the Athenians, not their gods, that were being punished is strengthened by Herodotus’ report that Xerxes was later prompted (allegedly by another dream but perhaps it was only his conscience) to bid the Athenians to make sacrifices of their own – presumably to their own gods – in the very place he had visited destruction (8.53–4). This seems to be an act of atonement on Xerxes’ part towards the Greek gods for having destroyed their sanctuaries as the requisite act of war.112 But Herodotus also enables the reader to view Xerxes’ desecration of the Acropolis and his atonement to the gods afterwards within the context of a cultural antithesis between Greek and Persian religion. In book one, Herodotus ascribes to the Persians a ‘Persocentric’ (and ‘Persosophist’) view of religion that counts the Greeks as fools for anthropomorphizing their gods (Hdt. 1.131.1), worshipping their idols in statuary and the temples they build to house them. (This Persocentric view is, of course, contradicted by our review of other evidence of Persian policy regarding foreign religion.) Xerxes’ act of desecrating the Acropolis can be seen as a Persocentric act of utter disregard for and disbelief in the anthropomorphic gods of the ‘foolish’ (i.e. superstitious) Greeks. Against the Persocentric view of Greek religion, we have the Athenocentric view that finds in the Persian destruction of the Acropolis common ground for Greek unity. It is this perspective that appears to be legitimized by Xerxes’ act of having Athenians perform sacrifices to their gods on the very site where he had desecrated their statues and temple, especially if we regard it as an act of atonement wrought from him by Apollo appearing in a dream and threatening him with tisis. From the Hellenocentric standpoint, the Persians were fools for underestimating the gods of Athens. From this standpoint, Xerxes is cast in the tragic role of a man whose acts of hubris against the gods ensured his ruin (8.109).



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3.2.4  Indo-Iranian religion The prehistoric Indo-Iranian origins of the Achaemenid religion appear in the indigenous worship of the natural elements common to Scythia (presumably Media) and Persia,113 especially the element of fire, which became associated with the sun as celestial fire, and the cult of Mitra (Mithra) as a god of contracts verified by fire trials. The Iranian worship of the natural elements is not merely a primitive stage in Iranian religious development, but a permanent characteristic of their religion. Presumably the worship of fire predates civilization and goes back to the Palaeolithic age, but the worship of fire in Indo-Iranian religion is not primitive animism. In Herodotus, neither Scythians nor Persians use temples or altars to worship their gods, but it is only Persians who disdain Greek anthropomorphism.

3.2.4.1  Iranian worship of natural elements Their worship of Zeus consists in going up to the highest mountain peaks and performing sacrifices; they call the whole vault of heaven Zeus. They also sacrifice to the sun and the moon, and to earth, fire, water and the winds. Originally these were the only deities to whom they offered sacrifices … Hdt. 1.131.2 5 marris 7 QA[= 1litre] wine, supplied by Ushaya, Turkama the ‘priest’ received: … 1 marris for/at the river Huputish, 1 marris for/at the reiver Rannakarra, 1 marris for/at the river Shaushanaush. He has used it for the gods [‘for’=act of worship of rivers as divinities; ‘at’= rivers as places of cult worship]. PF339, Elamite tablet, Persepolis; Kuhrt (2007b: 557, incorporating notes)114

The material evidence of the Persepolis tablets, which ‘attests to the frequency of sacrifices in honor of the forces of nature’ and the literary evidence of Herodotus, agree upon the importance of the worship of the natural elements in Persian religion.115 The lack of temples and statues has been explained as a consequence of the early Indo-Iranian origins of Persians in the steppes.116 The worship of water is an ancient Indo-Iranian cult predating the entry of the Iranians into Iran.117 Herodotus tells us that ‘rivers are objects of particular reverence’ for the Persians and that ‘they do not urinate or spit into them, nor do they wash their hands there or allow anyone else to either’ (1.138.2).118 Xenophon attests to the Persian sacrifice to the earth (Cyropaedia 8.3.12). According to Herodotus, gifts of earth and water were required as signs of submission to Persia, yet this practice is undocumented elsewhere and even

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their significance in Herodotus is uncertain. (It may be that the significance is of Lydian origin.)119 Other literary sources attest to the importance of water and fire in Persian religion.120 The worship of fire is well documented as a ‘brand’ of Indo-Iranian religion.121 Persian fire altars are well attested by images on cylinder seal impressions122 and are carried in a religious procession organized by Cyrus, according to Xenophon (Cyropaedia 8.3.12). The worship of the sun as celestial fire is attested in Herodotus and Greek literary sources later than Herodotus.123 The sun is the only god worshipped by the Iranian Massagetai, whose dress and way of life resemble that of the Scythians (Hdt. 1.215). Herodotus says that the Massagate sacrifice horses to the sun and Xenophon says the Persians do the same (Cyropaedia 8.3.12, 24), which thus appears to be another Iranian custom. It is worth noting that Herodotus portrays Xerxes as displaying the same ambivalent behaviour of reverence, transgression and repentance towards the natural elements as Persian deities as he does towards the Greek gods in his destruction of the Athenian Acropolis. Transgressive of the Persian worship of water, the Persian army drinks all bodies of water dry but for the largest rivers (7.21). Transgressive of the Persian reverence for earth and mountains, Xerxes digs a canal through the mountain Athos, turning part of the mainland into an island (7.22). It is an act Herodotus describes as originating in hubris (7.24). Herodotus notes the same men are used to bridge the River Strymon (7.24), a transgression against rivers as natural boundaries invested with the cultural significance of national borders. The hubris of his transgression against the earth in digging the canal pales by comparison with his transgression against water in his bridging of the sea at the Hellespont, which he infamously whips, shackles and rebukes for daring to defy him – clearly a transgressive inversion of the relationship of king and gods in the Persian ideology of kingship (7.35). As he shall do the day after assaulting the Acropolis, it is possible that Xerxes repented his transgressive behaviour, as Herodotus judges by his delaying crossing of the Hellespont in order to worship the sun at sunrise (7.54).

3.2.4.2 Scythia In Herodotus, Scythian religion is close to that of the Persians, perhaps owing to a common Iranian background: they have a relatively small pantheon of principally nature divinities, which include Zeus and Aphrodite, for whom they make neither statues nor altars (except Scythian Ares) (Persian, 1.131; Scythian, 4.59); in sacrifices, neither use altars, light fires or pour libations



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(1.132; 4.60). The Scythian Zeus Papaeus ‘can be interpreted as a divinity of the sky, cosmogon­ically united to the divinity of the earth’,124 which is similar to Herodotus’ account of the Persian worship of Zeus as ‘the whole vault of the sky’ (to\n ku/klon pa/nta tou~ ou0ranou~, 1.131, trans. LSJ9 ). Scythia and Persia seem to practice extremes of the original (Indo-)Iranian religion: the Scythians practice the most natural state of the Iranian religion, where Ares is supreme; the Persians practice its most sophisticated form, where Ahuramazda is supreme. Herodotus’ account of Scythian religion is not discounted by scholars as disagreeing with other evidence. In particular, Sulmirski (1985: 158–9) notes that: ‘Purely nomadic and Iranian was the Scythian worship of the war-god, Ares, in the form of a sword cult’ (Hdt. 4.62).

3.2.4.3  Indo-Iranian cult of Mithra By the favour of Auramazda, Anahita and Mithra, I built this apadana. Me may Auramazda, Anahita and Mithra protect from all evil … Artaxerxes II, Aha; Kuhrt (2007b: 554) The name of the Indo-Iranian god Mitra (Vedic Mitra, Avestan Miθra, Old Persian Mitra, Miθra instead of the genuine OP form *Miça) is based on the common noun mitrá ‘contract’ with the connotations of ‘covenant, agreement, treaty, alliance, promise’ … the abstract meaning of the common noun largely agrees with the character and functions of the god. Mitra is thus the personification and deification of the concept ‘contract.’ Schmidt (2006: EI)

It has been suggested that Cyrus worshipped Mithra as ‘the great god of the Medes’ but it is not known even whether the Medes worshipped Mithra.125 Mithra does not appear in the Persepolis fortification tablets and is not mentioned among the Achaemenid kings until Artaxerxes II,126 whose reign comes after Herodotus. Herodotus only mentions Mithra once, in error, as the Persian name for Aphrodite, not knowing it is Anahita (the source of confusion may have been the Indo-Iranian association of both Mithra and Anahita with the planet Venus, coupled with the low profile of Mithra before Artaxerxes II). The elevation of Mithra by Artaxerxes II may have incorporated him into the Zoroastrian religion of the Avesta, where he figures prominently.

3.2.4.4  Persian sacrificial ritual in Herodotus The way the Persians sacrifice to these deities is as follows.127 They do not construct altars or light fires when they are going to perform a sacrifice, nor do

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they use libations, reed-pipes, garlands, or barley. Whenever anyone decides to perform a sacrifice to one of the gods, he takes the animal to a purified place and invokes the deity, wreathing his tiara (usually with myrtle).128 He is not allowed to exclude others and pray for benefits for himself alone; he prays for the prosperity of the king and the whole Persian race, since he is, after all, a member of the Persian race himself. Once he has chopped up the limbs of the sacrificial victim into pieces and boiled the meat, he spreads out the freshest grass he can find – usually clover – and places all the meat on it.129 When this arrangement is in place, a Magus comes up and chants a theogony – at least, that is what they say the song is about.130 There always has to be a Magus present in order for a sacrifice to take place. After a short pause, the person who has performed the sacrifice takes the meat away and does whatever he wants with it. 1.132

Herodotus begins his description of Persian sacrifice with ‘a veritable catalogue of the Greek sacrificial essentialia’,131 the purpose of which may be to provide ‘a clear picture for Greek readers what not to expect, in order to open their minds for the different customs among the Persians’.132 Even so, it reflects the Hellenocentricity of his account of Persian customs that he would begin describing what they are by what they are not, viz. not Greek. What he does tell us generally matches what we know from ‘Zoroastrian literature and from contemporary practices. Thus, the worship at high places, the lay sacrifice, the absence of fire in a sacrificial ritual, can all be interpreted in comparison with a disparate mass of data from Iranian and related religions.’133

3.3  Achaemenid religion: Ahuramazdaism Royal inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes (evidence of the Iranian religion practiced by Cyrus and Cambyses is lacking)134 assure us that the Achaemenids practised the religion of the cult of Ahuramazda (Auramazda),135 the ‘Wise Lord’ or ‘Lord Wisdom’ (Ahura – lord; Mazda, wise or wisdom), which we shall call Ahuramazdaism.136 The cult of Ahuramazda belongs to the Indo-Iranian origins of Iranian religion which predate the rise of Zoroastrianism (no matter how early we date Zoroaster (Zarathustra)).137 The study of Achaemenid Ahuramazdaism is often glossed over by comparison with the Old Avestan Gathas of the Zoroastrian Avesta, which are dated to the second millennium. To do so unreservedly might implicate the Achaemenids in the practice of Zoroastrianism, that is, as followers of the teachings of Zoroaster on the



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worship of Ahuramazda and other gods.138 As there is no mention of Zoroaster in the Achaemenid evidence before Artaxerxes II, we cannot presume that the Achaemenids subscribed to Zoroastrianism before his reign (405–359).139 With this caveat in mind, however, we can still use the old Avestan texts as a gloss on the Achaemenid evidence for Ahuramazdaism.140 Thankfully, the vexed question as to what extent Ahuramazdaism corresponded with Zoroastrianism is not crucial to our review of Achaemenid religion.141 Ahuramazda stood at the head of the old Iranian pantheon of gods, yet Ahuramazda is the only god named in the inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. The other gods who appear in the Persepolis tablets, some of which are Iranian, go unnamed in the royal inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. It is not until Artaxerxes II that the royal cult of Ahuramazda is expanded into the triad of Ahuramazda, Anahita and Mithra, but at that point there is also mention of Zoroaster, and the first evidence of the Achaemenid practice of Zoroastrianism.142 It is the exclusivity of the cult of Ahuramazda that defines Ahuramazdaism as the religion of Darius and Xerxes. Not only is Ahuramazda the only god to whom they address their prayers and sacrifices,143 Ahuramazdaism appears to have been the religion of the Achaemenid kings; there is no evidence that it was practised by the Persian nobles or the Persian people,144 as was likely the case in the old Iranian religion.145

3.3.1  Ahuramazda the creator: Creation, happiness and paradise Ahuramazda is a great god, who created this earth, who created the sky, who created man, who created happiness for men, who made Darius king, one king among many, one lord among many. DSf §1, Brosius (2006: 66) A great god is Ahuramazda, the greatest of the gods, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, created happiness for man, who made Xerxes king, one king of many, one lord of many. XE §1, Kuhrt (1997a: 301)

For Darius and Xerxes, Ahuramazda is the creator god (also a central tenet of Zoroastrianism),146 the god who creates the natural order within which humankind will dwell, humankind to dwell in it, happiness in that the natural order provides for humanity’s natural needs,147 and a king to provide the rational order of law and justice that will provide for humanity’s spiritual needs. Happiness is the nature of the original relationship between the divine,

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human and natural as created and governed by Ahuramazda in heaven and his king on earth. A great insight obtained by Lincoln has been to recognize that the culturally specific icon of the order created by Ahuramazda is the Persian concept of paradise – analogous to the biblical garden of Eden – which is recreated in the Persian paradeisoi (royal gardens of re-creation) built by the Achaemenid kings in the royal capitals of the empire: The Persian paradise was a complex image: simultaneously a memory (better, a re-collection) of the world as originally intended by the Creator and a promise that its perfection would be restored. The labor of restoration is being accomplished – so the argument implicitly follows – by a line of kings whose founder was chosen by the Wise Lord [Ahuramazda] to complete this undertaking by suppressing all rebels, all lies, and all corrupting forces. Within this ideological program, the construction of a paradise appears as the prefiguration of the world’s ultimate salvation. Lincoln (2012: 19)

It is this doctrine of creation by Ahuramazda, corruption by the Lie, and restor­ ation by the kings that underlies the ideology of Achaemenid Ahuramazdaism as expressed in the religious language of myth in the royal inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes and the iconography of the Achaemenid reliefs, royal seals and coinage.

3.3.2  Ahuramazdan cosmic history and the Lie Darius the king proclaims: These (are) the countries which became rebellious. The Lie made them rebellious, because these (men) lied to the people. After that Ahuramazda gave them into my hand; as was my desire, so I did unto them. Darius the king proclaims: You, who shall be king hereafter, be firmly on your guard against the Lie; the man who shall be a follower of the Lie – punish him well if you think: ‘May my country be secure!’ DB §54–5; Kuhrt (2007a: 148)

In the Bisitun inscription, it is the Lie that has (mis)led the peoples of the empire, including Persians, Medes and Elamites, to rebel. The leaders of the rebellions are the 9 Liars, the nine men who lied to the people by claiming to be what they were not. As Darius accounts for each of the 9 Liars in the Bisitun inscription, a pattern appears: … trouble was always described as beginning with an isolated individual (aiva martiya, “one man”) who “rose up” (ud-pat-), an ominous verb reserved to



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describe overreaching individuals who seek to elevate themselves far beyond their rightful station. Toward that end, each rebel lied … assuming a name and identity that would make him heir to an old royal lineage and addressing his claims to the people/army (kara) of the nation in question. As this falsehood penetrated their consciousness and gained hold, these people became openly rebellious … Lincoln (2012: 240–1)

The sense of corruption in the form of rebellion is that of disorder, of displacement – the displacement of the rightful order of things. Everything has its natural place in the order created by Ahuramazda and the Lie deceives things into seeking a place of their own that is not their natural place. The 9 Liars make false claims to a place, a position, that is not rightfully theirs – kingship; by means of their lies, they inspire their peoples to rebel against their rightful place as subjects within the order of the empire and to seek sovereignty for themselves. The rebels would destroy the true political order of the empire as a community unified by the rule of the king of Ahuramazda by breaking it up into false kingdoms ruled by false kings. Darius, by the favour of Ahuramazda, quells the rebellions and restrains them in their proper place. Implicit is the notion that the empire – the world as subject to the law of the king created by Ahuramazda – is the natural order within which all the peoples of the world exist. Setting the narrative of the Bisitun inscription within the context of the Ahuramazdan creation myth, Lincoln discerns the larger pattern of a ‘cosmic history’, which has four distinct periods: The first of these was the [primordial] period of creation, when the Wise Lord brought a perfect world into existence. Second was a time of assault, when that creation was corrupted by powers of evil … understood to coincide with the reign of Cambyses (530–522 B.C.E), son and heir of Cyrus the Great. Third was the period that commenced when the Wise Lord made Darius king (September 522 …). It is characterized by the salvific counterattack Darius led, involving violent struggle against the forces of deception, disorder, rebellion and – more positively – the restoration of truth, righteousness, and proper cosmic/imperial order. While the third phase continued to the moment the system was articulated, its authors anticipated the arrival of a fourth age in the emergent future, when the Lie would be destroyed and worldly bliss recreated, as per the Wise Lord’s intention when he made ‘happiness for mankind’ … the crown of his creation. This last, eagerly anticipated period amounts to nothing less than salvation of the cosmos, the end of history, and accomplishment of the divine will, also

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the fulfillment of imperial ambitions at their most euphemized and audacious. As I see it, those ambitions were fueled by a sense of soteriological mission that … mystified, encompassed, transcended, or simply recoded a more mundane set of geopolitical and socioeconomic ambitions. Lincoln (2012: 41)

The logic of this cosmic history is the logic of explaining the way things are by way of the Lie. As creator, Ahuramazda is the original (and eternal) source of order in creation, and of the principal qualities that constitute that order: being, life, wellbeing, community, justice, goodness and truth. Within the order the god creates, he creates the king to maintain that order. The natural order requires a king because there is also present within the order a demonic source of destruction, which is the Lie (drauga). The Lie requires no account of its origin, for what matters about the Lie is not from whence it came (for obviously it exists), but what it is: that it exists as a lie (drauga) as opposed to truth (arta);148 and what it does: the Lie corrupts and destroys order in the cosmos, justice in the kingdom and happiness in life. The implicit logical necessity of the Lie as a part of the creation myth is that it is needed to explain the origin of the contrariety inherent to the created order, and the belief that though it is so in fact, ideally it ought not to be. The Lie is the source of corruption as destroyer of being, of death as destroyer of life, of illness as destroyer of well-being, of enmity as destroyer of community, of injustice as destroyer of justice, of evil as destroyer of goodness, and of falseness as destroyer of truth. Corruption, death, illness, enmity, evil and falseness cannot sustain themselves – they are not the elements by which an order is constructed, they have no existence of their own; they are states of not-being, the parasites of being. The elements of what is, of reality and existence, are being, life, well-being, community, justice, goodness and truth: these can and should stand on their own. It cannot be that the world as corrupted by the Lie is the true state of things; the true state of things cannot be the parasitical existence of the Lie, but the paradis­ iacal state of the truth. It thus belongs to the very logic of a world corrupted by the Lie that it inevitably strives towards its true state of being, and it is this logic that constitutes the Achaemenid ideology of kingship and empire.

3.3.3  Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire Darius the king proclaims: These are the peoples who obeyed me; by the favour of Auramazda, they were faithful subjects [bandaka]149, they brought me tribute; what was said to them by me, whether by night or by day, that they did. DB §7; Kuhrt (2007a: 143)



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Darius the king proclaims: For this reason Auramazda helped me, and the other gods who are: because I was not disloyal, I was not a follower of the Lie, or an evil-doer – neither I nor my family. I acted according to righteousness [arsta].150 Neither to the powerless nor to the powerful did I do wrong. Him who strove for my house, him I treated well; him who did harm, I punished well. Darius the king proclaims: You, who shall be king hereafter – the man who shall be a follower of the Lie, or an evil-doer – to those, be not friendly, punish them well.151 DB §63–4; Kuhrt (2007a: 148–9)

The implications of the Ahuramazdan creation myth for the Achaemenid ideology of kingship and empire are expressed in the iconography of the Achaemenid reliefs. The ideology of kingship is represented in the relationship of Darius as king and the ‘figure within the winged disc who faces Darius on his tomb relief (and on his relief at Behistun) [who] most probably represents Ahuramazda’.152 Recognizing that the Achaemenid image of Ahuramazda ‘stems directly from neo-Assyrian iconography, where the god represented within the winged disc is apparently Assur’,153 enables us to locate its Achaemenid significance by a study of its iconographical history, as in the Achaemenid king’s use of ‘the Assyrian greeting/blessing gesture rather than the prayer gesture when depicted as facing Ahuramazda’: 154 It may be, then, that the tomb relief, with its depiction of the king and Ahuramazda apparently blessing each other – relating to one another as peers at least in terms of the visual language of Assyrian prototypes – reflects a difference in the actual conception of the relationship of king and god.155

The difference in the relationship of god and king between the Assyrian model and the Achaemenid model is that the transformation of the one-way hierarch­ical relationship of the lower serving the higher – as would be suggested if the Achaemenid king were depicted as praying to Ahuramazda – to the reciprocal relationship going both ways, as suggested by the depiction of the king and the god blessing one another. This change appears as well in the difference between the Mesopotamian (Babylonian and Assyrian) iconography of the king lording it over his subjects and the Achaemenid reliefs depicting subject peoples supporting their enthroned king. The Ahuramazdan creation myth that prefaces many of the royal inscriptions and the iconography of the reliefs that accompany them express a profound paradigmatic shift in the relationship of god, king and people from that of a one-way hierarchy of servitude in the previous history of Mesopotamian kingship and empire to a two-way hierarchy of reciprocity.

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The investiture of Darius on the Bisitun relief makes the ideological basis of Achaemenid kingship clear enough: he receives power by way of the blessing of Ahuramazda, and acknowledges its proper use by way of blessing Ahuramazda in return. The investiture of kingly power does not confer the despotic right to exercise power indiscriminately, as Herodotus insists in his account of kingship as founded by Deioces and exercised by all his successors including the Achaemenids. In the Achaemenid ideology of kingship grounded in Ahuramazdaism, the arbitrary exercise of power is attributed to the Lie; the true ground for the exercise of power is arsta, the righteousness of the faithful demanded of kings by Ahuramazda: ‘Auramazda helped me’, declares Darius, ‘because I was not disloyal, I was not a follower of the Lie … I acted according to righteousness [arsta]. Neither to the powerless nor to the powerful did I do wrong’ (DB §63–64). The relation of the king to his people is modelled upon the reciprocal relation between the king and Ahuramazda: they are to bless one another with the gifts accorded them by Ahuramazda. This notion is most clearly represented in the ideological significance of the manner in which the Achaemenid sculptors depart from Egyptian and Assyrian models in their unique adaptation of the iconographic ‘atlas pose’ on nearly all the Achaemenid reliefs: 156 [T]he Achaemenids clearly adapted a pose previously found almost exclusively in ritual/cosmic contexts for a decidedly political representation … [T]he atlas pose was laden with symbolism in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. It seems probable that the use of the pose on the Achaemenid reliefs represents the deliberate selection of the posture for this new context precisely because of the iconographical impact it still conveyed. The unique rendering of the hands of the supporting figures, combined with the interlocking of their arms in a meticulously controlled rhythm, strengthens the suggestion that the posture had meaning to the Achaemenids. Both of these formal aspects seem calculated to enhance the aura of dignity and effortless, one might almost say joyous, cooperation with which these subject peoples are imbued. The men hardly seem to bear any weight on the tips of their fingers; and the platform they lift up in each case thus appears to be virtually self-levitating. All in all, the Great King himself captures the essence of the message conveyed by the interlocking figures of his subjects when he declares in his tomb inscription, ‘The man who cooperates, him according to his cooperative action, him thus do I reward.’ Root (1979: 152–3)

The king regards his loyal followers as his bandaka, his bondsmen, that is, those bound to him by ‘the mutual lines of trust and loyalty linking subject to king’



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(DB §7 and note on bandaka; above, SK 3.3.3). His disloyal subjects are infected by the Lie with arika, which makes them susceptible to the lies of rebellious pretenders to the throne. Arika is a corruption of the mutual bond of ‘trust and obligation’ between the king and his bandaka. This mutual relation of trust and obligation that exists between the king and his bandaka is rooted in the mutual relation between the king and Ahuramazda. It is the royal responsibility of the king to ensure good order by purging his kingdom of arika and restoring arta/ arsta (truth and justice). In so doing, he puts things back in their rightful place, where they belong. ‘In accordance with what had been previously, I brought back what had been taken away’ (DB §14, Kuhrt 2007a: 143–4). The relation of the king to the empire, and the concept of imperialism generally, is rooted in this same ideology of mutuality, the basic idea of which is again captured in the unique (and intentionally idealized) iconography of the Achaemenid tribute procession reliefs, such as the manner in which the depiction of ‘hand-holding’ departs from Egyptian and Assyrian models. In the first place, however, ‘it is important to note there is no suggestion of subjection about the leading figure in each tribute delegation – no kneeling, no groveling prostration in the presence of the Great King’:157 The internal imagery which characterizes the tribute procession of reliefs at Persepolis departs radically from that found in Egyptian or Assyrian representations of the same theme. The first man in each tribute delegation is shown being led forward by the hand toward the figure of the enthroned king … By contrast, the leaders of the Egyptian delegations generally are depicted on their knees, beseechingly … while leaders of delegations to the Assyrian king generally either kiss the feet of the king or hold their hands clenched at face level as a sign of submission … An understanding of the hand-holding image is clearly crucial to our iconographical analysis of the Apadana tribute representation. In Egypt and in Mesopotamia the image of a figure being led by the hand is associated with religious scenes in which a person is brought into a presence of a divinity … The hand-holding image, as it is used on wing B [of the Apadana relief] casts an aura of religiosity over the scene – derived as the image seems to have been, from antique Mesopotamian presentation scenes, with influence also from Egyptian scenes of presentation to the Underworld. The use of the handholding image rather than the use of any classical image of submission (such as the Assyrian clenched fist gesture) suggests that the Apadana relief depicts a ceremonial presentation of symbolic gifts of praise to the Achaemenid king. Similarly, the type of tribute brought by the delegates suggests the concept of

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an encomium rather than the concept of an annually levied tax. Whether the Apadana relief illustrates a type of ceremony which actually took place as it is depicted is, however, a more difficult issue. Root (1979: 267, 277–8)

In contrast with their Assyrian models, the Achaemenid procession reliefs do not emphasize the one-way hierarchy of subordination of the lower to the higher; rather, they express the two-way hierarchy of mutual reciprocity. If the relief is an encomium, the delegates bear gifts rather than tribute; but in either case, gift or tribute, what is brought to the king signifies the offering of honour to the king, and it is conveyed with a dignity made possible by the graciousness of the king. Like the use of the ‘altas pose’, the use of the hand-holding image expresses the two-sided nature of the relation of king and his bandaka – that each receives something from the other. The king receives the honour of the people; the people are graced with dignity by the king’s receptiveness to their gifts/tribute. Also, as we uncovered earlier in our study of the depiction of Persians and Elamites on these same reliefs, what might seem to us – as it did to Herodotus – as a scene of subjection, of a subject people bearing the weight of their burden of enslavement, is shown, by contrast with earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian iconography of Babylonia and Assyria, rather to be conveying the opposite sense: rather than being burdened with enslavement, the people are being honoured by the king for honouring the king. In this sense, it is wrong for us to consider tribute as a tax. To consider tribute as merely a tax is fine in the case of the tribute demanded by Athens of her subjugated allies, which Athens argued was really not a tax but an honour (‘it’s no disgrace to be subject to your superior’). But in the Achaemenid ideology, the tribute is a form of what the Greeks regarded as timē, a payment of honour. In the first place, then, the depiction of peoples paying their tribute to the king should be regarded as a matter of ‘paying tribute’ to their king; there belongs to the paying of tribute something of the sense of the encomium. Second, the paying of tribute should be regarded as contributing to the well-being of the community, insofar as it fell upon the king to ensure the well-being of the empire by means of the strategic redistribution of the wealth received by way of tribute. Third, it should not be regarded as a slavish burden, but as an honourable responsibility, the fulfilment of which confers honour upon the loyal subject and a sense of well-being in his making a contribution to the well-being of the community of which he is part.158



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Practically, the purpose of collecting tribute is to run the business of ruling the empire, of maintaining justice, and of restoring it when it has been destroyed by the Lie: King Darius proclaims: These are the people I seized outside Persia; I ruled over them; they brought me tribute; what I said to them, that they did; my law [OP data – decree] that held them (firm): Media, Elam, Parthia, Areia, Bactria, Sogdiana, Chorasmia, Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Maka, Gandara, India, Saca who drink hauma, Saca with pointed hats, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Sardis, Ionians of the sea, Scythians beyond the sea, Thrace, Ionians beyond the sea, Caria. King Darius proclaims: Much had been done wrong, that I put right; the lands were in turmoil, one smiting the other. That which I have done, all that I did by the favour of Auramazda – that the one no longer smites the other, each one is in his place. My law – that they fear, so that the stronger does not smite nor harm the weak. Susa fortifications, DSe 3–4; Kuhrt (1997b: 491)

Ideologically, in contributing to the well-being of the community, the subjects contribute to the king’s salvific mission of restoring the community to its original state of well-being in paradise. In Lincoln’s reading of the Apadana tribute relief, its narrative expresses ‘something that legitimately be understood as a theology of empire’: Directly they [all these people, animals and objects mounting the stairs] stand assembled upon the platform of the Apadana itself, all of them – animate and inanimate – will have left their provincial identities behind and been absorbed (or dissolved) into the imperial whole. At that moment, the state of unity and ‘happiness for mankind’ that the Wise Lord made the crown of his original creation will have been restored, at least at the imperial center: a microcosm, where representatives of all the lands/peoples stand assembled, so the Great King can call God’s blessing upon them. Lincoln (2012: 186)

How far this ideology was present in the subjects and not just in the rulers is difficult to ascertain (Harrison 2011: 85). Once Darius had re-established his pax Achaemenica, it lasted for 200 years. There was, of course, a practical side to the ideology, which could be brutal, as exemplified by Darius’ account of how he followed through on his own advice to his successors, that to those who are followers of the Lie or evil-doers, ‘to those, be not friendly, punish them well’

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(DB §63–4; above, SK 3.3.3), in the justice he meted out to the Median rebel leader, Fravartish: Fravartish was seized; he was brought before me. I cut off his nose, ears and tongue, tore out one eye. He was held in fetters at my palace entrance; all the people saw him. After that, I impaled him at Ecbatana; and the men who were his foremost followers, those I hanged at Ecbatana in the fortress.159 DB §32; Kuhrt (2007a: 145–6)

Indeed, it must be admitted that others might regard the Ahuramazdan ‘theology of empire’ from a meaner perspective: [Once the peoples are re-united under the Great King], the entire world becomes happy, prosperous, peaceful, and whole once again, as history ends and a state of eschatological perfection opens onto eternity, thanks to the work of the Achaemenian king, the Persian army, and the tribute bearers of every land/people. Or so the ideologists of empire believed and wished to believe … other, lesser-minded types might describe [it] as conquest, domination, and tribute. Lincoln (2012: 186)

As Herodotus appears to be utterly unacquainted with the Ahuramazdan ‘theology of empire’, it may be not fair to think of him as one of the ‘lesserminded’; nonetheless, we shall find he does hold precisely that view in his account of what he perceives as Persia’s ideology of constitutional despotism and imperialism (SK 4.4.5). Where we have been so dependent upon Lincoln’s reading of the Achaemenid reliefs as expressing a ‘theology of empire’, it is worth noting that the earlier study of Root of the same material from an art-historical perspective tended towards a similar view – that it expressed an idealized vision of cosmic order centred upon the Great King: The world is at peace on the walls of Persepolis as it never was in actuality. While news of the Persian sack of Miletus was striking terror into the Athenian soul, artisans from far and near were carving dreams in stone for Darius. It is easy to be cynical about this paradox between the actuality and the art of Pax Persiana. And yet, even to have conceived this vision of an imperial cosmos where the Four Quarters sing harmonious praises to the power of the king was something unprecedented in the ancient world: a haunting finale for the pre-Hellenic East. Root (1979: 310–11, original emphasis)



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3.3.4 Xerxes’ daivas and world-wide empire Xerxes the king proclaims: When I became king, there is among those countries which (are) inscribed above (one, which) was in turmoil.160 Afterwards Auramazda brought me aid; by the favour of Auramazda I defeated that country and put it in its proper place. And among those countries there were (some) where formerly the daivas [demonic beings or false gods] had been worshipped. Afterwards by the favour of Auramazda I destroyed that place of the daivas, and I gave orders: ‘The daivas shall not be worshipped any longer!’ Wherever formerly the daivas have been worshipped, there I worshipped Auramazda at the proper time and with the proper ceremony …161 You, who shall be hereafter, if you shall think, ‘Happy may I be (while) living and (when) dead may I be blessed’, obey that law, which Auramazda has established! Worship Auramazda at the proper time and with the proper ritual! The man who obeys that law which Auramazda has established, and (who) worships Auramazda at the proper time and in the proper ceremonial style, he both becomes happy (while) living and blessed (when) dead. Xerxes the king proclaims: Me may Auramazda protect from evil, and my (royal) house and this land! This I pray of Auramazda; this may Auramazda grant me. XPh. §4a–b, 4d–5; (Kuhrt 2007a: 305)

It is within this political context in which Darius’ original Ahuramazdan ideology of empire is expanded by Xerxes beyond the traditional boundaries (at least that of the West between Asia and Europe) inherited from Cyrus and Cambyses – and the Neo-Babylonians and Neo-Assyrians before that – to include the whole of the known world, that we should regard Xerxes’ addition of the daivas to Darius’ myth of the Lie, rather than within the more specific religious context of the Achaemenid foreign policy regarding the gods of subject peoples. For Xerxes’ expansion of the Achaemenid religious policy to include the persecution of daivas is consequent upon his expansion of their imperial policy to incorporate mainland Greece. Darius’ Lie explains the rebellions within the existing empire inherited from Cyrus and Cambyes. Xerxes’ daivas explains the relationship of the Achaemenids to the mainland Greeks as outsiders. The mainland Greeks live outside the boundaries of the empire and prove resistant to Persian rule. They dared to trespass those boundaries in an attempt to aid the Ionian rebellion, and later withstood and drove back the armies sent across the furthest boundary of the empire by Darius and Xerxes to subdue them. The gods of the Athenians and Spartans, therefore, are unlike those of the subject peoples of the empire, ‘the other gods who are’, gods who

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did not oppose the sovereignty of Ahuramazda and whose worship could be allowed by Ahuramazda. These were the gods of a people who denied the sovereignty of Ahuramazda, the true god, which meant they were false gods, daivas, who Xerxes claims to have rooted out and replanted in their stead the cult of Ahuramazda, even though the Greeks had defeated the Persian armies in mainland Greece and liberated Ionia from Persian rule. Yet it is precisely the failure to subdue mainland Greeks in war that necessitates their ideological conquest by declaring they are the peoples of false gods. In the name of their gods, the Greeks stand outside the empire and call the sovereignty of Ahuramazda into question and remain a constant threat to the ideology of Ahuramazdaism and the salvific mission of the restoration of paradise through the establishment of empire. In declaring the Greek gods daivas, and recording his institution of the cult of Ahuramazda among the Greeks, Xerxes effectively denies the validity of the Greek claim to independence of Ahuramazdaism and incorporates the Greeks as outsiders, personae non gratae. It was Xerxes’ failure to realize the universal empire by conquering the Greeks in war that necessitated its ideological realization in the daiva inscription which effectively denies truth and real existence to those beyond the boundaries of the empire. By the claim to have set up in their midst as the measure of their non-being the true standard of the worship of Ahuramazda, the Greeks who worship their own gods in denial of Ahuramazda are incorporated as non-peoples of non-gods of the universal empire of Ahuramazda.

3.3.5  Herodotus and Ahuramazdaism Herodotus evinces no factual knowledge of the cult of Ahuramazda and Ahuramazdaism as evidenced in the material evidence of the Achaemenids. We might find evidence of the presence of Ahuramazdaism in his account of Persia, but he does not identify it as such and appears not to recognize it as such. Such is the case with Herodotus’ account of the chariot brought by Xerxes to Greece: ‘It was also certainly Ahura-Mazda to whom [was] dedicated “the holy chariot of Zeus” brought to Greece by Xerxes (VII.40;* VIII. 115) … But it would be simplistic to “translate” Zeus automatically as Ahura-Mazda.’162 Indeed, most importantly, it is not the case that Herodotus identifies Ahuramazda as Zeus; rather, Herodotus identifies as Zeus the Persian god whom we recognize must be Ahuramazda, but Herodotus only knows as a sky god. His account of the Persian Zeus knows virtually nothing of the god worshipped by the Achaemenids as Ahuramazda the creator god, who is not a sky god per se.



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In accordance with Herodotus’ notion of a universal pantheon of gods, the human names and known attributes of the gods vary from one culture to another (SK 2.2.5). The god that Herodotus identifies as the Persian Zeus is the one they call ‘the whole vault of the sky’, to whom they sacrifice ‘from the tops of mountains’ (1.131). The basis of the identity seems to be simply that the domain of Zeus in Greek religion is ‘the broad heaven in the sky among the clouds’ (Il.15.192),163 in which we hear ‘a muted echo’ of Ahuramazda, ‘the god “who created heaven, who created earth” ’.164 But in neither Homer nor Hesiod is Zeus a creator god; creation is the work of fate. On the other hand, ‘Zeus is the only name of a Greek god that is entirely transparent etymologically’ as referring to a sky god.165 Ahuramazda in the Achaemenid evidence is not related to Zeus through a common origin in the Indic sky god Dyaus pitar;166 he is the creator god, a role that the sky god of Indo-European origin does not have (Burkert 1981: 125). Herodotus’ view of the Persian gods as nature gods and especially of the Persian Zeus as a sky god is best expressed by Xerxes: ‘we will make Persian territory end only at the sky, the domain of Zeus, so that the sun will not shine on any land beyond our borders’ (7.8c1; emphasis added). Herodotus does not admit into his account of Persian religion and their worship of Zeus as a sky god either the attributes of Zeus known to the Greeks as the god of justice, or the attributes of Ahuramazda as the creator god and source of justice in his creation – in which regard, as gods of justice, Zeus and Ahuramazda are similar. What needs to be brought into view as well is how we are to understand the difference between the nature gods of the Scythians and the worship of the natural elements by the Persians in terms of the antithesis on Herodotus’ ethnographic grid of the Scythians as the most natural and uncivilized of peoples and of the Persians as the most sophisticated of peoples. For there we find that Herodotus imports into the Persian worship of the natural elements, and especially their worship of Zeus as the sky god whose domain is the vault of heaven, a sophisticated notion of the illimitable potency of nature as the ground of Persian nomoi, and especially of the nomos of imperialism cited by Xerxes as an Achaemenid custom handed down by his royal predecessors (7.8.a.1). What then remains to be asked is to what extent the close association in Achaemenid monumental art of Ahuramazdan kingship with the natural imagery of mountain, sky, water, earth and fire may have influenced Herodotus’ depiction of Persian religion as a sophistic ‘religion’ proper to the Persosophist culture of nomos phuseōs, a devotion to the illimitable potency of phusis that is the source of the erōs turannidos in human nature.

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3.4  Persian kingship and empire 3.4.1  Evolution of the Persian model of kingship 3.4.1.1  Near Eastern models of divine and non-divine kingship167 The Near Eastern model of ‘a hierarchical society with the king as the center of political power’ (Brosius 2009: 178–9) had originated in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. In Egypt the model was of divine kingship. The Egyptian pharaoh ‘united divine and human authority within himself, and was thought to merge with the god Osiris upon his death’ (Ray 2009: 191). Outside Egypt, the model was generally of non-divine kingship, whereby the king ‘ruled with the divine sanctioning of the god or gods’ (Brosius 2009: 179), but was not regarded as a god. Mesopotamian kingship might be legitimized by an elevation to superhuman (but not divine) status through marriage to a goddess or by birth to a god and a mortal, as is the case in the ‘Stele of the Vultures’, which celebrates the birth of Eanatum of Lagash (2450) as the son of the god Ningirsu, whom the goddess Inana declares is ‘Worthy in the Eana-temple of Inana of the Ibgal-shrine’ (Jones 2005: 332). The ‘first empire builder’, Sargon of Akkad, pushed the superhuman status of the king to the limit when he ‘took the title King of Kish, giving it a new meaning … as king of totality … The emperor … now had a different essence from other humans’ (Chavalas 2005: 43). His grandson, Naram-Sin (2260– 2223), took the further step of proclaiming that the gods Ishtar of Eanna, Enlil of Nippur, Enki of Eridu and Sin of Ur (among others) had fulfilled the prayers of his city ‘to have him as the god of their city and they built him a temple in the midst of Akkad’ (Brosius 2009: 181). On his victory stele he is depicted ‘[w]earing a horned headdress indicating his deification’; his figure ‘dominates the upper part of the stele, while three astral symbols occupy the topmost space, relegating the divine presence to a symbolic level’ (Feldman 2005: 293). In Babylonia, divine kingship was the model in the second millennium, when it was believed that no one god was in charge of things and that cosmic order depended somewhat upon the abilities of the king to ‘ensure that human actions did not displease the gods’ (Jones 2005: 330); in the first millennium, when it was believed that Marduk had attained sovereignty among the gods and was now ‘the regulator of cosmic order, the king was no longer treated as divine’ (Jones 2005: 337). Thus the Neo-Babylonian kings of the first millennium were satisfied with the modest titles of ‘king of Babylon’ and ‘king of Sumer and Akkad’; the Neo-Assyrian kings of the first millennium, on the other hand, preferred ‘the old



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Mesopotamian titles implying universal dominion, such as “king of the world’ and “king of the four quarters”’ (Beaulieu 2005: 55), exalting themselves as rulers ‘from the horizon to the heights of heaven’ (Beaulieu 2005: 53).168

3.4.1.2  Elamite origin of the local model of kingship under Teispes For Herodotus the Achaemenid royal tradition is … a Median inheritance … a man named Deioces was first appointed king by the Medes at a time of widespread lawlessness and created ex nihilo the basic structures of a centralized kingship: a privileged royal space (the capital fortress of Ecbatana), court protocol, and law-enforcement procedures (1.98.1–101), features that will largely become the trappings of Persian royalty later on … But Herodotus’ theory that Persian kingship derives from Median kingship is historically problematic because the very existence of a large centralized Median state such as Herodotus describes is not corroborated either by archaeology or by the documentary texts. Munson (2007: 459–61)

Herodotus’ ‘theory’ of the Median origin of Persian kingship likely follows from his acceptance of a Median source strategically emphasizing the Iranian kinship of Persians and Medes,169 whom the Greeks regarded as virtually indistinguishable by the mid-fifth century. Herodotus’ Median logos, related as the background of his Persian logos, is capped by the muthos of Cyrus’ birth as the grandson of the Median king, Astyages. The archaeological record shows that Cyrus was the grandson of Teispes, ‘King of Anshan’, whose royal title attests to the early association of Persians and Elamites (unidentified by Herodotus) and thus the probability of an Elamite origin of Persian kingship: 170 In the second half of the seventh century BC a Persian, named Cyrus I (Elam. Kurush; c. 620–c. 590), inherited the title of ‘King of Anshan’ from his father Teispes. They ruled over a principality located in southwest Iran, called Parsa, or Persis (modern Fars). This region had formerly been part of the kingdom of Elam … In recognition of the former Elamite power Teispes and his immediate successors adapted the Elamite royal title, ‘King of Susa and Anshan’, to the title ‘King of Anshan’. This was an act of political symbolism with which the Persians gave weight to their role as successors of the Elamite kings … The inscription on his personal seal refers to Cyrus I simply as ‘Cyrus of Anshan, son of Teispes’ … Brosius (2006: 6–7)

In Babylonian records of Cyrus’ defeat of Astyages, he (Cyrus II) is identified by the Elamite title handed down from his great-grandfather: ‘he [Marduk] roused

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against him [Astyages] Cyrus, king of Anshan’ (Kuhrt 2007a: 56), ‘(Astyages) mustered (his army) and marched against Cyrus, king of Anshan’ (Kuhrt 1997b: 657). The Cyrus Cylinder, whose ‘text was actually composed by Babylonian priests of Marduk’ (Dandamayev 1993: 521–2), documents Cyrus’ purported public declaration of descent from the Persian line of kings of Anshan: ‘I, Cyrus … son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, great king, king of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan’ (Kuhrt 1997b: 602). The significance of Teispes having attained the royal title ‘king of Anshan’ is that it indicates his elevation above his peers, the leaders of the Persian tribes, from one of several Persian tribal chieftains to the status of king of the Persians as one people, nation or ethnos. The elevation of Teispes from chieftain to king thus also indicates the reorganization of Persian society from a loose tribal confederacy to the Near Eastern model of ‘a hierarchical society with the king as the center of political power’, a model that their use of the title ‘king of Anshan’ suggests the Persians had inherited from the Elamites, though the originally Mesopotamian model was common to all Near Eastern kingdoms, local and imperial, Assyrian, Babylonian and Median.

3.4.1.3  Babylonian influence on the imperial model of kingship under Cyrus Under Teispes, c.650, the Persians established themselves as a local kingdom with its capital in Anshan, alongside the local kingdom of the Medes with its capital in Ecbatana. The Medes had assisted the Babylonians in taking Nineveh in 612 and bringing about the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. When Cyrus II assumed the Persian throne in 559 as ‘king of Anshan’, it was as ruler of a local kingdom. When he died in 530, having conquered the Medes in 550 and the Babylonians in 539, it was as ruler of a world empire that had once belonged to the Neo-Assyrians: ‘I, Cyrus, king of the universe, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters, son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan …’ The Cyrus Cylinder principally documents Persia’s inheritance of the Babylonian model of imperial kingship. Upon the fall of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom to Cyrus, the Babylonians bestow upon their conqueror (and, as numerous Babylonian records in addition to the Cyrus Cylinder declare, their savior), the Babylonian titles of imperial kingship. These new imperial titles take precedence over the traditional royal title ‘king of Anshan’, as indeed they must, since the once local king of Persia has made himself



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an imperial king of kings, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of Media and so on. These latter titles, ‘king of Sumer and Akkad, king of Media’, were the modest titles preferred by the Neo-Babylonian kings. In the order of the Cyrus Cylinder, however, Cyrus first claims for himself and thus gives precedence to the exalted imperial titles of universal dominion that had belonged to the Old Babylonian model of kingship and which had been preferred by the Neo-Assyrian kings. Cyrus was a warrior king, a conqueror (matched by Herodotus’ depiction of Cyrus as the greatest imperialist, SK 5.4.1). Had he lived to preside over the empire he had won, it is likely that he would have modelled his kingship on that of Ashurbanipal. A reference to the finding of an inscription of Ashurbanipal at the end of the Cylinder text ‘suggests that Cyrus was picking out this Assyrian king as a former benefactor of Babylonia and so a suitable role-model’ (Kuhrt 1997b: 602). But Cyrus died in his attempt to expand the empire beyond the north-east boundary of the old Neo-Assyrian Empire in his attack upon the Massagetae, and he was succeeded by his natural son Cambyses, upon whom it fell to expand the empire and the model of kingship by conquering Egypt.

3.4.1.4  Egypt’s extension of divine kingship to Persia under Cambyses The Horus Smatowy [= Uniter of the Two Lands], King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesuitire, son of Re, Cambyses – may he live forever! He has made a fine monument for his father Apis-Osiris with a great granite sarcophagus, dedicated by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mesutire, son of Re, Cambyses, may he live forever, in perpetuity and prosperity, full of health and joy, appearing as King of Upper and Lower Egypt eternally! Cambyses inscription on the Apis sarcophagus; Kuhrt (2007a: 124)

In Egypt, the king or pharaoh was a god-king who ‘united divine and human authority within himself, and was thought to merge with the god Osiris upon his death’ (Ray 2009: 191). The pharaoh ‘ascends the throne as Horus, champion of cosmic order (maat)’ (Lloyd 2003: 369), of whom he was a ‘manifestation’, and was introduced as the ‘son of Ra’ (Malek 2003: 92). As ‘the living king [he] is the embodiment of Horus and rules the living; the deceased king is Osiris, king of the dead, but, at the same time, since Osiris in this context was assimilated to Ra, the king expected to participate in the cycle of cosmic action’ (Lloyd 2003: 371). ‘For the people of Egypt, their king was a guarantor of the continued orderly running of their world’ (Malek 2003: 92). The role of the pharaoh in the divine model of kingship of Egypt is nearly that of the Old Babylonian king, ‘when it was believed … that cosmic order depended somewhat upon the abilities of the

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king to ‘ensure that human actions did not displease the gods’ (Jones 2005: 330); the divine status of the pharaoh had been approached by the old Akkadian king, Naram-Sin. The Neo-Babylonian kings had surrendered the status and role of the king as the guarantor of cosmic order to Marduk, on whose behalf Cyrus claimed to have taken Babylonia, to the delight of the other Babylonian gods: I, Cyrus, king of the universe, … eternal seed of kingship, whose reign was loved by Bel and Nabu and whose kingship they wanted to please their hearts – when I had entered Babylon peacefully, I set up, with acclamation and rejoicing, the seat of lordship in the palace of the ruler. Marduk, the great lord, […] of Babylon, daily I cared for his worship … Marduk, the great lord, rejoiced at my [good] deeds. Cyrus Cylinder; Kuhrt (1997b: 602)

Cyrus’ acceptance of the exalted title of the Old Babylonian model of non-divine kingship as nearly divine as the chosen agent by which the gods restored their honour in Babylon suggests the significance of Cambyses’ acceptance of the title ‘son of Re’, by which the Egyptians bestowed upon their Persian king the divine status of the pharaoh as a god-king. Just as Cyrus, who stood among Persians as ‘king of Anshan’, stood also among Babylonians (over whom Cambyses was first given command) as ‘king of the four quarters’ and chosen agent of Marduk’s divine retribution (and among the Jews as the one anointed by Yahweh to deliver them from Babylonian captivity), so did Cambyses stand among the Egyptians as their pharaoh, while assuming the status and role of the Babylonian kings among Babylonians, and of the Persian kings in Persia. There is no evidence to suggest that up to this point there had been any attempt to consolidate the role and status of the Persian king as king of a Persian empire; rather, the acceptance of foreign titles and gods alongside and not in place of traditional Persian titles and gods suggest a characteristic tendency of the Persians remarked upon by Herodotus, that they were as a people most open to adopting the customs of others as their own (1.135.1).

3.4.1.5  Assyrian origin of the Achaemenid model of non-divine kingship under Darius Ashur is king – indeed Ashur is king! Ashurbanipal is the [representative] of Ashur, the creation of his lands. May the great gods make firm his reign, may they protect the life [of Ashurba]nipal, king of Assyria! May they give him a straight scepter to extend the land and his peoples! May his reign be renewed, and may they consolidate his royal throne for ever! … Anu gave his crown, Illil



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gave his throne, Ninurta gave his weapon; Nergal gave his luminous splendor. Nusku sent and placed advisers before him … Gather, all the gods of heaven and earth, bless king Ashurbanipal, the circumspect man! Place in his hand the weapon of war and battle, give him the blackheaded people, that he may rule as their shepherd! Ashurbanipal’s coronation hymn; Kuhrt (1997b: 507–8, reformatted) A great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth (bumi-), who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Darius king, one king over many, one lord of many. I am Darius the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king on this great earth far and wide, son of Hystapes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage. Inscription on Darius I tomb at Naqsh-I Rustam; ( Kuhrt 1997b: 676, reformatted)

The evolution of the Persian model of kingship was completed by Darius not by way of adding to the old, but by creating something new that broke with the tradition established by the ‘kings of Anshan’. As Allen (2005a: 42) points out, [Darius] combined his ‘ancient’ royal genealogy with a new Persian identity distinct from those Babylonian and Median imperial histories. This Persian identity included a new patron god, Ahuramazda, as bringer of divine approval and help to the king. Like Marduk in the Cyrus Cylinder, Ahuramazda ‘bestowed the kingdom’ on a man whose honesty and righteousness he discerned.

The third component of Darius ‘reinvention of the monarchy’, in addition to his creation of the myth of Achaemenid ancestry and the religion of Ahuramazdaism, was his adaptation of the Neo-Assyrian model of imperial exalted non-divine kingship to the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship. The Neo-Babylonian model of kingship as adapted by Cyrus formed the historical basis of the Achaemenid model of imperial exalted non-divine kingship (and that may also have owed something to the Assyrian model given Cyrus’ mention of Ashurbanipal in the Cylinder seal inscription). Certain aspects of Cambyses’ acceptance of the elevation of the Persian king to divine status as pharaoh would contribute to Darius’ exaltation of the king in the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship. What was lacking in these Persian adaptations, however, was that the religions and gods of Babylonia and Egypt belonged to one culture, the Persian king to another. Under Darius, the two are united: the Achaemenid kingship is bestowed by the Achaemenid god, Ahuramazda, and the model of imperial exalted non-divine kingship used by Darius for that purpose was that of the Assyrians.171

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Striking similarities shown by Root between the propaganda of Darius and that of his Assyrian predecessor, Ahurbanipal (Inscription on Darius I tomb at Naqsh I Rustam and Ashurbanipal’s coronation hymn), assures us that it was mainly Ashurbanipal’s relationship to his god, Ashur, that Darius consciously adapted to the Ahuramazdan theology to form a new foundation for the Achaemenid model of imperial exalted non-divine kingship. The most striking iconographic element that Darius borrowed from Ashurbanipal for his own royal propaganda was the iconic winged figure depicting Ashur as the model for the winged figure of Ahuramazda in Darius’ relief sculptures, which he adapted to the Achaemenid Ahuramazdan iconography by combining the Assyrian winged figure of the god with the Egyptian winged sun-disc. As such, the figure of Ahuramazda within the winged disc is the perfect icon to symbolize the synthesis of Elamite, Babylonian, Egyptian and Assyrian elements in the Achaemenid model of kingship. In the Assyrian model, the king, while not a god, is a creation of the gods and their chief representative to mortals. The royal role of representing the god Ashur to the Assyrians confers upon Ashurbanipal the exalted semi-divine status of divine agency – as king he acts on behalf of and thus in place of the gods. His kingly office and the acts that flow from the fulfilment of his office are originally empowered by the gods and continuously strengthened by the gods, his person constantly protected by the gods. His rule is to be respected, obeyed and revered as divine insofar as the gods act through him; by their will and to fulfil their will he holds the throne, protects the people as their shepherd, administers divine justice on earth with his sceptre, and extends the domain of the gods on earth. His power, ‘absolute and unchangeable’, is absolutely integral to ‘the institution of kingship of Assyria, directly linked to the acquisition of empire and hence of the evolution of a system to govern it’ (Kuhrt 1997b: 505). Much of this Assyrian ideology of imperial exalted non-divine kingship is taken over by Darius and applied to his role as the agent of a new god, Ahuramazda, who Darius introduces as the god of the Achaemenids, and, more importantly, as the Persian god of the Persian empire, as attested in the inscriptions of himself and his successors. In a Persepolis inscription written in Old Persian, Darius prays to Ahuramazda to aid him in his kingly role as protector of the land, people and kingdom of Persia: Great (is) Auramazda, greatest of the gods – he made Darius king, he bestowed kingship upon him; by the favour of Auramazda Darius (is) king. Darius



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the king proclaims: This country, Persia, which Auramazda bestowed upon me, which (is) good, containing good horses, good men, by the favour of Auramazda and of me, Darius the king, it fears no one else. King Darius proclaims: May Auramazda bring me aid, together with all the gods; and may Auramazda protect this country from the army (of the enemy), from famine from the lie! May there not come upon this country the army (of the enemy), famine, the lie! This I pray as a favour from Auramazda together with all the gods; this favour may Auramazda grant me together with all the gods. DPd; (Kuhrt 2007b: 487)

It is indicative of the basis on which Darius assumed the throne that in his royal propaganda he created a new universal title for himself as ‘the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king on this great earth far and wide’ (see above, SK 3.4.1.5, Inscription Darius I tomb at Naqsh-I Rustam), whereas Cyrus in his royal propaganda had simply given precedence to the Babylonian titles of imperial exaltation in addition to the old Elamite title of local kingship handed down by his Persian predecessors. The sense of Darius establishing the Persian ideology of kingship firmly on its own ground is expressed not only by the titles inscribed on the monument at Bisitun, but in the languages in which it is inscribed: first in Elamite, the language of the original model of Persian kingship going back to Teispes, then in Babylonian, the language of the exalted imperial model assumed by Cyrus, and finally, in a new script created for the purpose of publishing royal propaganda in the language of the royal house, in Old Persian, the Aryan language of Darius as ‘son of Hystapes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage’. There is a paradoxical aspect to the Achaemenid model of kingship created by Darius. On the one hand, it is exclusively Achaemenid. Cambyses is said by Herodotus to have demanded that his successor be a Persian, not a Mede; after Darius, it was not enough to be Persian, one needed to be an Achaemenid, which also meant an adherent to the Achaemenid religion of Ahuramazdaism. On the other hand, it is the kingship of all the peoples of the world. The paradox is easily solved by recognizing its logic as that of the pyramid: the one and the many, top and bottom, centre and periphery. The sense of it is expressed in a wonderfully concrete fashion by Kuhrt: First and most striking [in the Achaemenid vision of the world], is the strong emphasis placed on the ethnic identity of the king and the pre-eminent place occupied by Persia within the empire, which is equated with the world as a whole. Thus Darius I proclaims himself:

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‘I am Darius, the great king, king of kings, king of all kinds of peoples, king on this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage.’ [DNa 8–14] Expressions of this kind appear for the first time with Darius in the context of his refoundation of Cyrus and Cambyses’ empire, after a brief, but terrible period of internal dissension, which threatened to tear it apart. After saving the realm from this crisis, the Persian king and Persia are presented, time and again, as the only source of rightful power, which has created order in, and for, the world. This places Persia ‘a good country, possessed of good men, possessed of good horses’ [DPd 7–9], at the centre of the imperial space. The countries ruled over have been seized by the Persian king, the ‘Persian man’ has gone forth and fought battles at the distant corners of the earth to create the prosperous tranquility which now enfolds it. Kuhrt (2002b: 19)

3.5  Achaemenid model of kingship172 3.5.1  King and people As we learned from Root’s study of the royal inscriptions and relief sculptures commissioned by Darius at Bisitun and Persepolis, the ideology – or better, in light of Lincoln’s reading of that ideology – of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire writ large in stone by Darius owes something as well to the Egyptian model of divine kingship extended to Persia by its adoption of Cambyses as the pharaoh of Egypt and son of Re. As an example of how Darius created a new style of Achaemenid art, we looked at how he had adapted the Egyptian motif of hand-holding to replace the raised fists of tribute bearers in the Assyrian model for his Apadana tribute relief. In so doing, he effect­ ively adapted the Assyrian model of despotic imperial iconography to the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire by fusing it with the salvific iconography of Egyptian reliefs of departed souls being led before the god of the underworld. Partly this conveys the sense of an even higher exaltation of the Achaemenid king to semi-divine status, somewhere between the Assyrian king and the Egyptian pharaoh.173 But the manner in which it does so also conveys the corresponding exaltation of the tribute bearers, especially by comparison with their Assyrian predecessors, who typically prostrate and debase themselves as slaves as they approach the king. The exaltation of both the Great King and the



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peoples of the empire belongs to the salvific significance of the mundane act of giving and receiving tribute. As Lincoln had shown through his exegesis of the narrative of the tribute relief, as each delegate is led before the king to present his tribute, in the manner in which the Egyptians are led before the god of the dead, he symbolically enters into the eschatological paradise of the restoration of the kingdom. Obviously, it is not the case the Apadana relief is an actual depiction of that eschatology; rather, it expresses the eschatological significance of bearing the tribute to the king. To regard the tribute relief in this manner is to see it as the depiction of a ritual act in which the participants, both king and bandaka, participate in the theological significance of the mutual reciprocity involved in giving and receiving tribute with the blessing of Ahuramazda. We saw the same theology of kingship implied in the throne-supporters of the Bisitun and tomb reliefs: that it is not an image of the king sitting on the people, but of the people raising up their king to their god and rising up with him, bearing the throne on their fingertips as though it weighed nothing at all. The point of returning to the theological implication of these royal images here in our examination of Achaemenid kingship from a historical perspective has precisely to do with our need to grasp the true character of the relationship between the king and the people in the Achaemenid model of imperial exalted non-divine kingship. Theologically, the king and the people are united in a harmonious relationship by the favour of Ahuramazda – the salvific work of restoration to paradise is not the work of the king alone, but of the king supported by the people. But this is, of course, the theology of kings. Ahuramazdaism was not a state religion, and although Xerxes did carry out persecutions of the daivas, this seemed aimed at defending the cult of Ahuramazda rather than imposing it. Indeed, most Ancient Near East scholars are adamant about correcting (Greek) misrepresentation of the Persians on two points: first and foremost, that the Achaemenid king was not a god (on this point, Kuhrt 2010: 92 and Root 2013: 60 appear to be at variance); second, that the Achaemenids did not impose Ahuramazdaism on the people, who were free to worship ‘the other gods that are’. Ahuramazdaism was, so far as we know, the religion of kings; the cult of Ahuramazda was the religion of the royal house of the Achaemenids. It seems never to have become the religion of the Persians or of the other peoples of the empire. We do not even know if it was the religion of the Persian nobles who made up the royal court.174 In following the interpretative readings of the material evidence of the Achaemenids offered by Root (1979, 2013) and Lincoln (2012), which emphasize the mutuality and proximity of the king and the people of the empire, we are at

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variance with what seems to be the more established opinion, both of those who tend to read the evidence through Herodotus (e.g. Cook) and those who tend to read it apart from Herodotus (e.g. Kuhrt). In Kuhrt’s reading of the material evidence (at a critical distance from Herodotus), the exaltation of the king in the Achaemenid model of kingship simultaneously increases his proximity to the gods and his distance from the people: The royal declarations are suffused with the sense of the king’s dependence on the gods. He himself is part of the divine creation and it is his duty to strive to maintain it. Gods are invoked to protect Persia’s land and people, the empire and royal constructions. While the king stands in a privileged relationship to the divine sphere, he is certainly not himself a god. But his role in defending the god-given order means that his subjects must remain obedient to it, as symbolized by this god(s) and incarnated by him – a message clearly stated by Darius I and Xerxes … The Persian king was not a god, but he was a person set apart; he was not like others. Kuhrt (2007b: 473, 475)

Cook, who reads the material evidence in light of the Greek literary tradition of Aeschylus, Ctesias, Xenophon, Plutarch and, of course, Herodotus,175 places Darius at even greater remove from the people, a distance that increases with Xerxes; indeed, the Achaemenid model is nearly identical to its Assyrian predecessor: Darius’ exaltation of his own status had the effect of making his successors too remote from what we should now call the grass-roots. The pinnacle of power was a lonely perch. The King lived largely in seclusion; he is said by Xenophon to have prided himself on being inaccessible; when he met his subjects or counsellors there seems to have been no frank discussion but monologues addressed with due reverence to the King … All men under the King’s rule were his slaves,176 so he had the power of life and death. All property was at his disposal; and since he was the fountainhead of justice it was axiomatic that he could no wrong. This appears in Herodotus’ story (III 31) of Cambyses receiving the reply from his royal judges that they knew no law against his marrying his sister but there was one that the King of the Persians could do what he pleased. Cook (1983: 132)

We have here diametrically opposed perspectives on the relationship between the king and the people. On the one hand, there is the material evidence of the Persocentric self-perception of the kings as the agents of Ahuramazda and the



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protectors of Persia, and of themselves as tied closely to the people – at least the loyal bandaka – in the salvific work of restoring the community to its original state of paradise, all of which they communicate to the people through the royal propaganda of monumental sculptures and inscriptions in the languages of the empire. On the other hand, there is the Greek literary evidence in which we find the Hellenocentric perception of the Persian kings as barbarian others who rule as god-like despots, unrestrained by accountability to the law, over a people reduced to the abject servitude of slaves. It is not a matter of choosing one over the other; the difficulty is that each possesses only some measure of the truth. The distance perceived by Kuhrt between the king and the people owes something to Greek literary evidence, though not nearly as much as Cook. Even Root and Lincoln agree that the vision inscribed in stone by the kings likely fell short of the reality experienced by the people. Indeed, if it can be said that Herodotus’ Hellenocentric account of the ideology of the Persians (SK 4.4.5) knows nothing of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship, which explains Persian kingship and empire from an Achaemenid perspective, it must also be admitted the material evidence by which we learn of this theology tells us nothing of its reality as experienced and perceived by the peoples of the empire (cf. Harrison 2011). Nor do we have any other Persian evidence to which we may turn for the Achaemenid period.

3.5.2  Royal centre and periphery of empire After their own nation they hold their nearest neighbour most in honour, then the nearest but one – and so on, their respect decreasing as the distance grows, and the most remote being most despised. Themselves they consider in every way superior to everyone else in the world, and allow other nations a share of good qualities decreasing according to distance, the further off being in their view the worst. Hdt. 1.134 And this image of Persia as the centre of the universe, part of the Iranian god, Ahuramazda’s, bountiful creation, assigns its subjects their relative space in the cosmos. One of the recurring features of the royal inscriptions is a list of the countries and peoples over which the Achaemenid king claims dominion … The list always begins with those nearest the imperial centre in Persia, and then moves progressively outwards, enumerating all subjects up to the edges of the known world. The order is not completely constant: the lists can start either with the eastern or the western part of the empire but the movement is always

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out from the centre to the periphery. This makes for a kind of ripple effect, with Persia as the perfect, still centre; and it is this image which may be reflected in Herodotus’ statement (1.134) … Kuhrt (2002b: 19–20)

Kuhrt finds in Herodotus’ account of Persian hierarchism a ‘reflection’ of the ideological movement outward from centre to periphery in the inscription empire lists, ‘with Persia as the perfect, still centre’. Herodotus evinces no sense of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire that Kuhrt finds expressed in that orderly procession. Their point of agreement is their characterization of the order as Persocentric, that ‘Persia as the centre … assigns its subjects their relative space’. Kuhrt also associates the ‘ripple effect’ of the outward movement from Persia at the centre to ‘the distant outer margins’ occupied by Greece’ (21) with Herodotus’ account of the order not only as Persocentric but also as hier­archical. Kuhrt understands that ‘in listing his subjects the Persian king wants to drive home to his audience the multiplicity and variety of the peoples he has conquered, by underscoring how manifold is the creation now united under his rule’ (21). The placement of the Greeks at the fringes of the cosmos, as it were, and furthest from the king at the Persian centre, also places them at the very bottom of the Persocentric hierarchy of honour, so low that they disappear from his view altogether as a distinct ethnos: Here, as the Persian king contemplates his empire, gazing out from the centre to the four corners of the world, the Ionians, along with other north-western tribal groups, are not deemed distinctive enough to serve as a significant boundary marker. Kuhrt (2002b: 22)

Kuhrt’s point here is to displace the Hellenocentric perspective that is the root of Orientalism in the West and which has traditionally occupied the centre of studies of the Ancient Near East and replace it with a Persocentric perspective that places Greece at the periphery. It is a crucial point – a crucial perspective – to have gained in Achaemenid studies. Whether it is to Herodotus’ credit to present this Persocentric perspective as expressing a sophistic ideology (SK 4.4.4.1) that is actually antithetical to the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire is another matter.177 As we saw in our study of the evolution of the Persian ethnos, there is always some degree of prioritization in the processional order on the Achaemenid reliefs, where Persians, Medes and Elamites usually come first in line and form an elite upper echelon in the Persian political and social pyramid. But are we



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to understand that order, in the theological perspective of Ahuramazdaism, as a hierarchy established and maintained by the king as the centre and apex of the imperial Persian pyramid? Perhaps we should begin by noting that when we focus, as do Herodotus and Kuhrt, on the ethnic hierarchy of diversity that ranges from Persians at the top and centre to Ionians at the bottom and periphery, we tend to lose sight of the egalitarian aspect of these same lists and processions whereby we see all peoples represented equally in their role of supporting and elevating the royal throne, bearing gifts and offering tribute (whether as a tax or as an honour, or as both) to the king. Let us begin with the Persians as the head of the order. Although the Persians hold the exclusive honour of exemption from tribute, since they belong to the ethnos of the king, and therefore do not appear among the delegates in the Apadana tribute reliefs, there is otherwise hardly any distinction made between Persian and non-Persian in the Achaemenid reliefs, as we saw in our examination of the Bisitun and Persepolis king-supporting (throne and podium) reliefs. The ethnic representatives on the Persepolis throne hall reliefs are of equal stature beneath the greater stature of the king whom they support. In their relationship to the exalted status of the sovereignty of the king as the god’s earthly representative, all the peoples of the empire share a common status, not in respect of their common inferiority to the king, but in respect of their mutual exaltation within the theological context of Ahuramazdaism in which they are most intimately bound to the king as his loyal bandaka. It is as though in order for the whole world of diverse ethnea as represented in the empire to be united and elevated in their elevation of the king toward Ahuramazda and the final restoration of paradise, the ethnic distinction between Persian and non-Persian must be made almost of no account. Finally, we must not underestimate the degree to which Darius had broken with preceding tradition of the kings of Anshan in establishing the Achaemenid genealogy, or that the Persia Darius ruled after they had rebelled could not have been the same as before. The Persians stand first among the peoples who rebelled against Darius and the legitimacy of his claim to the throne. This aspect is clearly represented on the Bisitun relief by the placement of Guatama, the rebel Magus, beneath the foot of Darius at the head of the line of rebel liar kings who stand before Darius with hands bound behind their back. Their rebellion clearly placed them more on the side of the ruled than that of the ruler, and may be what made the approximate equalization of Persian and non-Persian in the royal propaganda conceivable. A different way of regarding the socio-political hierarchy evidenced in the relief sculptures and inscriptions is to see it as expressing the ‘earthbound’

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aspect of the peoples of the empire, which is not yet in its perfect form, but in the ‘purgatorial’ condition as it were of being restored to the original harmony of paradise. The egalitarian and hierarchical aspects of the relation of king and peoples in the Achaemenid reliefs and inscriptions can be regarded as presenting the same relationship from the exalted egalitarian perspective of the king on the one hand, and from the earthbound hierarchal perspective of the peoples on the other. From the exalted and unified perspective of the king, who regards the relationship from the top down as the one elevated above and by the many, the ethnic diversity of the empire is compressed into a singular common equality by the equity of the eschatological vision of the Ahuramazdan theology. The social–political hierarchy results rather from the ethnic perspective of the peoples of the empire, especially Persians, Medes and Elamites, regarding one another vis-à-vis their common relationship to the king, as it were, from the ground up. Acutely aware of their political and social position as one of a diverse multiplicity of ethnea that constitute the empire, Persians, Medes and Elamites arrange themselves before the king in a hierarchical order that demands recognition of their particular ethnic status. Surely the most astonishing lacuna in Herodotus’ knowledge of Persia is that he knows nothing of Cyrus and Darius as the architects of Pasargadae and Persepolis as new royal centres of the Persian Empire. In his account, Cyrus and Cambyses reside in Ecbatana; Darius and Xerxes at Susa, the old royal capitals of Media and Elam. Nor does Herodotus know that it was the practice of Darius and Xerxes and their successors to move from one capital to the other almost on a seasonal basis, or of the implications of that itinerary for the practice of imperial kingship, foremost of which was to connect the peoples to the king, and the periphery to the centre. The mobility of the royal centre was enabled by the same royal road system that connected all four points of the periphery to the four royal capitals of the empire: The Persian royal road system was the effective means by which the Achaemenid empire maintained its control and administered its vast imperial landscape. Preoccupation with the major Sardis–Susa artery has obscured the extensive communication and transportation network that existed throughout the Persian realm. In fact, as a result of travel-ration texts in the Persepolis archives, the best known segment of the system now is that which functioned between Susa and Persepolis in the Iranian heartland. Other sources permit us to extend the royal highways into the rest of the Iranian plateau, Bactria, and India in the east; and Mesopotamia, Asia-Minor, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt to the west.178



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The royal road system also made accessible the royal propaganda of relief sculptures and inscriptions that communicated the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship to the peoples of the empire: the Bisitun monument was located on the old well-travelled path between Babylon and Ecbatana; the road to Persepolis was an extension of the main highway from Sardis to Susa. Of course, the royal propaganda was also propagated throughout the empire itself, in Sardis and Susa, Babylon and Egypt, and elsewhere. Again it is unlikely that the peoples of the empire regarded the imperial ideology from the same perspective as the king. It may well be that as one travelled down the royal road from centre to periphery, the less egalitarian and more hierarchal the perspective became, until, finally, at the furthest remove from the royal centre, where the Ionian Greeks resided, the salvific theology of Persian rulership appeared from that distant remove as the despotic ideology of imperialism and tyranny practiced by the Greek tyrants at home.

3.5.3  Achaemenid self-portrait of the ideal king A great god is Ahuramazda … who bestowed wisdom and energy [aruvasta – physical prowess]179 upon Darius (Xerxes) the king: by the favour of Ahuramazda I am of such a kind that I am a friend to what is right, I am no friend to what is wrong. It is not my wish that to the weak is done wrong because of the mighty, it is not my wish that to the weak is hurt because of the mighty, that the mighty is hurt because of the weak. What is right, that is my wish. I am no friend of the man who is a follower of the lie. I am not hot-tempered. DNb, XPl; Kuhrt (1997b: 681)180

Excellence of mind and of body constitute the qualities of the ideal king appointed by Ahuramazda. Royal wisdom is to know and practice justice. The virtues espoused by Darius and Xerxes are summed up for the Greeks in dikaosune and sophrosune, justice and self-control. Yet, the Medo-Persian kings are generally portrayed in Herodotus as lacking in these virtues, or at least as lacking in the ability to practise them consistently and at the critical times they are needed. That Herodotus had no real knowledge of Ahuramazda and the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire of itself bears some witness to the isolation of the cult of Ahuramazda and its ideology within the royal centres of the empire, suggesting that it likely did not penetrate the far reaches of the periphery where Herodotus had access to Persian sources, nor all that far among the peoples outside Persia proper, or even the lower part of the social hierarchy (about which we know little except from our Greek literary sources)

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within Persia. That there must be some truth to Herodotus’ perception of Persian kingship and empire is suggested by a comparison of the ideal portrait of the king that Darius draws of himself and which Xerxes copies for his own self-portrait with the gruesome acts reported in Herodotus and other Greek sources.181 Since Herodotus does not understand the Medo-Persian kings to have this self-perception even as an ideal model to emulate, he is free to explain their actions to himself and his Greek audience in a manner that makes sense to him, and that is to understand them as embodying in their character and as practising in their actions the most radical teachings among the sophists regarding the conventionality of laws and moral virtue, and of the need to follow the model of nature, conceived as opposed to nomos. This is not to say that he thinks the same of the Persian people, who are very much presented as the douloi of the king. Rather, Herodotus’ explanation for the despotic and even insane acts of the Persian kings lies in their decision to be ruled by the sophist constitution established by Deioces, which set the king above the law and the people under it, and which Herodotus invents as the only possible explanation for what he perceives as the despotic character of Persian kingship and Persian society. As we shall see (SK 5.2–5), Herodotus will represent the entire line of Medo-Persian kings as the very antithesis of both the Achaemenid model of the ideal king and the Hesiodic model of the ideal citizen: as sophist kings, they profess and practice the sophistic teaching that abjures the traditional teaching of Hesiod and justifies the right of might.

4

Persians as Other in Herodotus

We have seen that much of Herodotus’ account of the history, religion, society and culture of Media and Persia has been discredited in new histories of the Ancient Near East largely based on the archaeological record, especially the royal inscriptions and reliefs of the Achaemenids. Herodotus’ attribution of the rise of Persia to the fall of a Median empire and of the Achaemenid model of kingship to Deioces as the founder of the kingdom of Media on the one hand, and the absence of a record of the cult of Ahuramazda whose theology informed the Achaemenid model of kingship crafted by Darius in his account on the other, recommend against using his narrative as the basis for interpreting the archaeological record. What little the archaeological record has to say on Persian culture and society, especially outside the palace court, does not agree with the Herodotean description of the culture of despotic hierarchy, which more likely reflects Herodotus’ representation of the Persians as the Greek Other. While much has been written on the representation of the Persians as the Greek Other in Herodotus, a comprehensive study of their cultural polarity in the Histories remains a desideratum. It is well established now that the Histories is informed by a Hellenocentric cultural grid which has a geographical aspect that is most visible in the cultural polarity of Egypt to the south and Scythia to the north. When we add to the grid the cultural polarity of Greece to the west and Persia to the east, it assumes a multidimensional complexity which arises from relationships between what we can speak of as the south–north ‘axis’ of cultural polarity between Egypt and Scythia and the west–east ‘axis’ of cultural polarity between Greece and Persia. The key to the grid is the relationship between nomos and phusis in each of the cultures that constitute its axes: a more basic and extreme polarity between nomos and phusis on

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the north–south axis of cultural polarity between Scythia and Egypt; a more sophisticated and subtle polarity between nomos and phusis on the west–east axis of cultural polarity between Greece and Persia. One way to express this difference between a more simple polarity of nomos and phusis on the north– south axis and a more complex polarity of nomos and phusis on the east–west axis is to describe the north–south axis as the ‘lower’ axis on the cultural grid and the east–west axis as its ‘upper’ axis. Conceptualizing a three-dimensional relationship between these upper and lower axes of the grid enables us to consider and express the complex multidimensionality of relationships that arise from considering polarities that exist between the axes that also highlight cultural affinities between the cultures on each axis (e.g. cultural exclusivity shared by Egypt and Scythia on the lower axis vs cultural inclusivity shared by Greece and Persia on the upper axis), as well as cross-polarities and crossaffinities that exist between the individual cultures constituting the axes (e.g. polarities between Greece and Egypt, Persia and Scythia; affinities between Greece and Scythia, Egypt and Persia).

4.1  Herodotus’ map of the world Herodotus’ cultural grid employs a complex relationship between ethnography and geography that is in a dialogical relationship with the Ionian tradition of Hellenocentric geography and ethnography. On the one hand, Herodotus employs the Ionian map of the world in which geographical divisions are aligned with cultural divisions; on the other hand, he disputes its two basic assumptions – first, that natural boundaries define national borders; second, that the natural environment determines cultural development.

4.1.1  Geography and ethnography Nor can I guess for what reason the earth, which is one, has three names, all of women … nor can I learn the names of those who divided the world, or whence they got the names which they gave … Thus far have I spoke of these matters, and let it suffice; we will use the names by custom established. 4.45, trans. Godley (1920), adapted

On the map of the world that Herodotus inherits from the Ionian geographers (4.36), the earth is a perfect circle as though drawn by a compass centred upon the Aegean sea (whose islands and shores were populated by the Greeks),



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divided equally into northern and southern hemispheres by the Mediterranean, its circumference the river Ocean, running around the earth’s edge as it does around Achilles’ shield. The northern hemisphere was Europe (including Scythia), the southern hemisphere was Asia (including Libya). From this map, Herodotus erased its mythical circumference (the River Oceanus, 2.23); the map’s edges now represented the ‘empty spaces’ or eremoi of uninhabitable waste (mostly deserts) at the edges of what Herodotus is the first to call the oikoumenē, the known, inhabitable world.1 The geometric equality of northern and southern hemispheres was replaced with ‘a new system with three continents of different size: Europe, Asia and Libya (Africa)’, which the Ionians had introduced (2.16) and whose usage had become customary (4.45).2 Herodotus uses the Ionian geographers’ map, but he does not believe in it.3 He regards the geographers’ tripartite division of the earth as a human convention (nomos) arbitrarily imposed upon the earth’s actual geography (phusis), which is one (4.45, above).4 His main objection is that its continental geography transgresses cultural borders; he would do away with continents altogether and have only countries or nations (i.e. territories marked by the cultural borders of ethnea).5 Herodotus launches his argument against the validity of continental geography with the quip: ‘I do not believe that the Egyptians came into being at the same time as the Delta (as the Ionians call it); on the contrary, they have existed ever since men appeared upon the earth’ (2.15). His point is that on the true map of the world, there are no continents, only countries: Egypt is the land occupied by the Egyptians, Cilicia the land occupied by the Cilicians and Assyria the land occupied by the Assyrians (2.17). Providentially, national and natural borders would align with one another, as with the River Halys, which traditionally separated the nations of western Asia from those of eastern Asia, and the Aegean sea, which traditionally united mainland and Ionian Greece. In the transgressive state of imperial expansionism, national borders transgress the natural boundaries, as when Lydia extended its national border to the natural boundary of the Aegean sea in its subjection of Ionia, transgressing the Aegean coast as the cultural boundary unifying Greece. The imperial transgression of the natural boundaries of nations was an act of hubris in Herodotus’ view, punishable by the gods: paradigmatically, the fall of Croesus ensured by his crossing the River Halys to invade Persia (1.75); fatally, that of Cyrus, by his crossing the River Araxes to conquer the Massagetae (1.208); most famously, the defeat of Xerxes ensured by his bridging the Hellespont to invade Greece (7.55); less notably, the failure of Darius to subject the Scythians ensured by his bridging the Ister (Danube) (4.97) to invade Scythia, after having bridged

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the Bosphorus to invade Europe (4.89); more noteworthy, the Scythians’ recognition that that the Persian invasion of Scythia was itself an act of divine tisis for the Scythians having invaded Asia (4.119) when Cyaxares ruled the Median Empire (1.104). It is worth noting that the Ionian map of continents agrees with the Persian partition of the world, allotting Asia to Persia, Europe to the Greeks (1.14). From a Herodotean perspective, Persia’s empire represents the tyranny of (human) nomos transgressive of the (divine) nomos which sanctions the sovereignty of nations. The greatest transgression possible was that attempted by Xerxes, which, had he succeeded, would have reduced the ethnographic map of nations to the geography of the earth as one: the containment of the whole world within a single national boundary, the precise antithesis of Herodotus’ vision of one world without boundaries.

4.1.2  Ethnographic centre and periphery On Herodotus’ ethnographic map of the world, the Ionian geometric artifice of northern and southern hemispheres enclosed within a perfect circle is replaced with the ethnographic divide between the oikoumenē and the eremoi, the known world inhabited by men and the unknown, uninhabitable waste that lies beyond, ‘in all directions except the West’:6 east of the Indians who ‘dwell furthest east and closest to the sunrise’, the land is ‘empty (erēmiē) on account of the sand’ (3.98); north of the Scythians, the land is ‘empty (erēmon) of men, so far as we know’ (4.17); north of Thrace, ‘beyond the Ister the territory seems to be empty (erēmos) and unbounded (apeiros)’ (5.9); south of Libya, the land is ‘empty (erēmos) and unirrigated, with no beasts, nor shade, nor trees; there’s not even any moisture in it’ (4.185).7 The relationship of the ethnographic centrer of the oikoumenē to its periphery is that of a central region populated by cities and characterized by an ‘orderly and familiar’ way of life, an intermediate region populated by nomads, and an exotic fringe of eschatiai (‘furthest reaches’), ‘the countries which lie on the circumference of the inhabited world’ (3.116).8 The eschatiai are ‘peopled by savages, but at the same time still abounding with the benefits of the Golden Age’,9 ‘the things which we believe to be most rare and beautiful’ (3.116). These realms are distinguishable ‘in every aspect of economic and social life: in religion and funeral customs, love and marriage, food and drink, habitation and means of living’,10 as demonstrated by a comparison of Greeks (representing the civilized norm) to nomads (e.g. Scythians) and savage fringe-dwellers (e.g.



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Massagetae).11 We can add to this pattern that, in Herodotus, the Egyptians and Persians stand alongside the Greeks as the most civilized of peoples composing the central region. Scythia, as the principal nomadic ethnos dwelling nearest the uncivilized fringe of savages beyond whom there are no known peoples living, are among the least civilized of peoples. At this extreme edge of the oikoumenē are such Scythian tribes as the Neuri (werewolves) and the Androphagi, a tribe Herodotus characterizes quite precisely as occupying the liminal threshold of civilization, geographically and culturally: a0ndrofa/goi de a0griw/tata pa/ntwn a0nqrw/pwn e1xousi h1qea, ou1te di/khn nomi/zontej ou1te no/mw| ou0deni\ xrew/menoi: noma/dej de\ ei0si, e0sqh~ta/ te fore/ousi th~| Skuqikh~| o(moi/hn, glw~ssan de\ idi/hn a0ndrofage/ousi de\ mou~na tou/twn. The Androphagi are the least civilized of civilized peoples, caring nothing for justice or the rule of law; they are nomads and dress in the Scythian style, but have their own language and are the only Scythian tribe to practise cannibalism. 4.106, my translation

4.2  Herodotus’ cultural grid Herodotus’ cultural grid is based on cultural polarities among the nations that make up his ethnographic map of the world. The principal cultural polarities exist between Egypt and Scythia as the north–south axis on the cultural grid, and Greece and Persia as the east–west axis.12 The grid has an obvious Hellenocentric bias by which Herodotus most often selects customs that most clearly mirror Greek customs in their alterity,13 so there are explicit contrasts made between Greece and Egypt and Greece and Scythia as well as Greece and Persia. This bias may be traced to the rhetorical purpose of the Histories as ‘a Greek book for Greeks about Greeks and others – and it makes Greek sense of the others’.14 Yet, this Hellenocentric bias of the cultural grid is not its basis.15 The grid as such rests upon the universal perspective of Herodotus as an ethnographer, a judicious perspective comprehensive of the ethnocentrism culturally inherent to all nations (to a greater or lesser degree):16 each ethnos prefers its own customs to those of others (3.38); the Egyptians (2.158) are as capable as the Greeks (1.60) of viewing others as barbaroi; the Persians are perfectly capable of viewing themselves as the cultural centre of the world and the Greeks as their cultural periphery (1.134).17

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The structural logic of Herodotus’ grid is based on the cultural polarities between the ethnea with respect to their respective relationships to nomos and phusis. The focus of the cultural polarity of Egypt and Scythia is between a culture in which phusis proves receptive to the imposition of a nomos derived from the gods (the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros), and a culture in which nomos is derived from phusis itself (the Scythia culture of nomos phusikos). The extremes of the south–north cultural axis are between a ‘Golden Age’ culture in which nomos and phusis are as one and an uncivilized culture in which phusis and nomos are utterly apart. The cultural polarity of Greeks and Persians is that between cultures with a more dynamic relationship of nomos and phusis originating from within human nature and realized in the more active manner that the human self-determines its relationship to the gods on the one side and to nature on the other. The Greeks are closer to the Egyptians as a culture in which nomos rules over phusis (the Greek culture of nomos basileus), but phusis is not as repressed by nomos as it is among the Egyptians, and there is common ground between Greeks and Scythians in their natural love of freedom. The Persians are closer to the Scythians as a culture in which phusis is the ground of nomos (the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs), but there is an intellectual sophistication among the rulers in Persian culture that sets them apart from the Scythians and nearer to the Egyptians in their despotic use of nomos to rule over others.

4.2.1  Origin of cultural alterity in Herodotus As we saw in our examination of Herodotus’ views of nomos and phusis (SK 2.2.6–8), what is common to all peoples is that they regard their own nomoi as by far the finest (3.38); from this universal human quality equally manifest in disparate cultures, we should infer a universal human nature. The origin of cultural alterity among nations in Herodotus arises from the relationship that develops between the human and the gods on the one side, and with nature on the other. The foundation of Herodotus’ view of human culture is that all humankind shares a common, universal human nature, which is self-determining. Cultural differences do not arise from different human natures or essential differences in human nature; there is not to be found in Herodotus an essentialist explan­ ation of cultural difference: he never speaks of a ‘Scythian nature’ as opposed to an ‘Egyptian nature’, nor of a ‘Greek nature’ as opposed to a ‘barbarian nature’. As Gruen, in particular, has been at pains to show, Herodotus records cultural transformations of various kinds (acculturation, appropriation, etc.) by sundry



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means (war – Persians appropriate Median customs, 1.133; tribal intermarriage – Sauromatae as the union of Scythians and Amazonians, 4.110–17; imperial decree – emasculation of Lydians, 1.155–6). At one time Athenians were Pelasgians and only became Greeks after learning the language (1.57). A characteristic common to Greeks and Persians is their openness to adopting the customs of others as their own. Whereas the potential for cultural alterity lies in the plasticity of human nature itself as self-determining (a view of human nature with which the sophists would agree), the various actualizations of that potential in different cultures among different peoples arises from the interaction of a people with the natural environment on the one side, and, on the other – and here Herodotus sets himself apart from the sophists – their relationship to the gods (or, rather, the relationship that the gods establish with them), which explains why religion is normally paramount in a Herodotean logos of nomoi that constitute an ethnos. It is primarily which gods a people worship, and how they conceive of them, that would seem to determine how they live and where they live. To a considerable extent, cultural differences arise from the interaction of a universal human nature with different natural environments, which is why Herodotus’ ethnographic map has a geographic orientation. This is most apparent in the cultural polarity of Egyptians and Scythians, whose natural environments are so antithetical that we can speak of the Scythian rivers as ‘mirroring’ the Nile canals, but in the sense that in the mirror we see a reverse-image as Other. This is not to say, however, that nature determines culture – another essentialist idea, which Herodotus explicitly rejects in his rejection (or at least profound modification) of Ionian environmentalism. (Thus we should not ascribe to Cyrus’ last words, with which the Histories end, that he is espousing on behalf of Herodotus a determinist view of the relationship of nature and culture. Either Cyrus is not an environmental determinist, or he is not speaking for Herodotus, but for the Persosophist ideology of nomos phuseōs, which more readily aligns (though not seamlessly) with Ionian environmentalism.) Herodotus’ view is made clear in Demaratus’ account of the evolution of Greek culture in the impoverished environment of mainland Greece: whereas nature provides the environment for cultural development, its origin lies in human nature, the human capacity for sophia and nomos (7.102.3, SK 2.2.8). Nature contributes the conditions necessary to certain kinds of cultural developments, and in that sense could be spoken of as a secondary cause, but it specifically belongs to the ‘unnatural’ aspect of the ‘rational animal’ to develop cultures which, in every case, sets humans apart from all other natural species.

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It is in virtue of its godlike capacity for reason that humankind develops various cultures which reflect the variety of relationships with a variety of gods – the same gods known differently and by different names in different cultures. The golden age culture of Ethiopians to the south and the monstrous culture of the cannibals to the north represent the extreme possibilities of alterity, in some sense exceeding the boundaries of human civilization, the nature of which is easier to discern in the polarity of the ‘nature’ culture of Scythia and the ‘hieratic’ culture of Egypt. The cultural development of the Scythians, who adapted their way of life to their land, is the culture most influenced by interaction with the natural environment. The cultural development of the Egyptians, on the other hand, who adapted their land to their needs through technē, is least influenced by interaction with the natural environment. (Somewhat ironically, the culture most influenced by the environment makes least use of technē to inhabit the land and thus engages physically with nature the least, whereas the culture least influenced by the environment makes most use of technē to inhabit the land and thus engages with nature the most.) While there are natural differences between the vast Iranian plateau and mountainous Greece, both are harsh lands that give rise to cultures that are characterized principally by their intellectual sophistication, yet which have developed antithetical cultures based on antithetical ideologies, so that they, too, are mirror images of one another – where the image is reversed as the Other – but that difference is not to be explained by a difference in natural environment. Rather, it is to be explained as arising from within the different, even opposed, possibilities for cultural development that lie within human nature itself, anthrōpinē phusis. In the Greeks and Persians is realized a polarity of cultures based on the relation of divine and natural not merely as present to, but more as present in, human nature in the form of our rational capacity for sophia and nomos on the one side (given priority in Greek culture), and the ineradicable presence of erōs turannidos as innate to our human nature on the other (given priority in Persian culture). Both cultures are political and ideological in a manner that is not true of the Scythians or Egyptians, yet they realize contrary forms of polity based on antithetical ideologies. The manifestation of their contrariety, in a Herodotean view, is none other than the historical realization of the contrary possibilities of human destiny: of humanity piously recognizing its dependence upon and subjection to the divine (the basis of the Greek culture of nomos basileus) or of humankind asserting its natural independence as self-determining and self-serving (given priority in the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs). To seek a further explanation for the origin of cultural alterity in Herodotus, we are directed to our belief – or



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disbelief – in the gods as the ultimate aitia explanatory of human affairs, but that as lying beyond the province of historia as a human enquiry into the human achievement.

4.2.2  Ethnographic axes of the cultural grid The ethnographic axes constituting Herodotus’ cultural grid are: the lower axis of cultural polarity between the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros in the south and the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos in the north; the upper axis of cultural polarity between the Greek culture of nomos basileus in the west and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs in the east. The geographical orientation of the cultural grid overlaps with that of the ethnographic map which generally locates the centre of civilization in the Mediterranean network of coastal cities in Greece, Egypt and Asia at the heart of the oikoumenē and the periphery of civilization at the far reaches of the oikoumenē bordering the uninhabitable wastelands to the north, south, east and west. But these geographies are not identical. The focus of the cultural polarity of Egypt and Scythia is between the city-dwellers of Egypt as the most civilized all peoples, and the nomads of Scythia as the least civilized of civilized peoples in the world (the civilized area of city-dwellers in Scythia are made up of Greeks). The extreme of cultural antithesis on the south–north cultural axis, moreover, is found between the southern and northern fringe-dwellers, the ‘Golden Age’ Ethiopians and the cannibals of the north. The south–north orientation on the lower axis thus aligns with the fundamental polarity between the most and least civilized of peoples in the oikoumenē. The west–east orientation of the upper axis of Greece and Persia maps over the oikoumenē somewhat differently. While Egypt may be nominally venerated as the origin of civil­ ization, the Hellenocentric bias of the grid tends to place the Greeks at the very centre of the oikoumenē as the centre of civilization itself, despite their cultural debt to the Egyptians. And while the Persians may be represented as a highly sophisticated culture mirroring that of Greece (the first political theorists and the first to propose democracy), their homeland lies far from the Mediterranean Greek centre of civilization; their acquisition of culture is by way of conquest and appropriation; their empire is a quilt of cultures ranging from the ancient civilization of Assyro-Babylonian Nineveh to nomadic Persian tribes, extending even to Egypt and Ionia. More importantly, Persia offers an alternative mirrorimage of the cultural map with itself at the centre as the most civilized of peoples and the Greeks at the periphery of civilization (1.134).

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Turning to the three-dimensional relationship between the upper and lower axes of the grid, we can discern a cultural polarity between the rigid exclusivity of cultural boundaries on the lower axis and the porous inclusivity of those on the upper axis. On the lower axis, Egyptians (2.91.1) and Scythians (4.76) are alike in setting themselves apart as self-enclosed societies which avoid adopting foreign customs, especially Greek customs. On the upper axis, the Persians distinguish themselves as the nation most open to adopting the customs of others (1.135.1), with whom only the Greeks bear comparison in their adoption of the alphabet and other achievements from the Phoenicians (5.58), games and coinage invented by the Lydians (1.94), and their special debt to the Egyptians for most aspects of their religion (2.4, 50, 58), as well as other customs that resemble those of Egypt, such as couples living together (2.92.1). Despite the enormous debt of the Greeks to Egypt and the openness of the Persians to all, however, the general relationship between the axes is more of a cultural polarity of difference than the relationship of cultural antithesis between the antipodes of the axes themselves. Egyptian customs are the inverse of all others (2.35), partly owing to the unique influence of the Nile, but also because as the oldest culture it is the original culture from which other, later cultures deviate in forming their own ethnic identity. Greek customs in particular are the inverse of Egyptian customs, yet, given its cultural debt to Egypt, it is obvious that the culture of Greece is not antithetical to that of Egypt. Likewise, though generally no one has borrowed the customs of the Scythians, the youngest and least civilized of the ethnea on the grid, the cultural proximity of Scythian and Persian religion is obvious, despite that one Iranian nation is found in Europe, the other in Asia. On the other hand, there are some cultural antitheses: the Egyptians are the most religious of peoples, Persians are the most sacrilegious; the Persians are the most sophisticated, Scythians the least sophisticated, of peoples. Owing to the Hellenocentric bias of the Histories, Greek culture is the ‘norm’ that falls between and marks off these extremes, except insofar as it differs from all other cultures on the grid in the outstanding devotion of the Greeks (Athens and Sparta above all, but all in a general way, even in Ionia) to the principle of isonomia, the equal subjection of all to the sovereign rule of law, which explicitly recognizes the sovereignty of nomos basileus.



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4.3  Egyptian–Scythian axis: Nomos hieros vs nomos phusikos The Egyptians and the Scythians are the two peoples most thoroughly described by Herodotus … Placed toward the northern and southern edges of Herodotus’ world, these two peoples display self-contained, self-created – and contrasted – cultural systems. Redfield (1985: 106)

In the Histories, the Egyptian logos precedes the Scythian logos because Cambyses invades Egypt before Darius invades Scythia. Ethnographically, Egypt precedes Scythia as the oldest civilization precedes the youngest, the most civilized precedes the least civilized, and as the urban center precedes the periphery. Due to this (somewhat Hellenocentric) ethnographic bias of Herodotus’ cultural grid (Egypt is venerated as the origin of Greek religion), the polarity of Persia as the specific Other to the Greek Self on its upper axis is mirrored by the polarity of Scythia as the specific Other of the Egyptian Self on its lower axis. The symmetry arising from presenting the land and culture of Scythia as the reverse mirror-image or Other of the land and culture of Egypt on the lower axis thus gives rise to a symmetry of polarities between the upper and lower axes on the grid as a whole.

4.3.1  Nomos hieros: Culture of Egypt Civilization originates in Egypt; the Egyptian priests claim that the Egyptians ‘discovered the year, and were the first to divide it into twelve parts’ (2.4). The basics of religion – knowledge of the gods’ names and of religious practices – originate in Egypt (2.4, 2.50, 2.58), as did the arkhaioi nomoi by which the gods established civilization.18 As the oldest nation who preserved the arkhaioi nomoi handed down to humankind from the gods (2.79, 2.91), over time Egyptian nomoi became the inverse (2.35.2) of those of younger nations whose distinct cultures could only evolve by way of deviation from that of Egypt. A good example of cultural inversion is the art of writing, which originates in Egypt as a right-handed practice and later becomes a left-handed practice among the Greeks (2.36). As explained above (SK 4.2.1), these cultural alterities arise from the manner in which cultures originate in the interaction of a common human nature with different natural environments. Thus it is the Scythians, as the youngest of all civilized peoples, inhabiting a land that is the mirror opposite to that of Egypt, who deviate most from the Egyptians, the oldest nation and point of origin for civilization itself.

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4.3.2  Nomos phusikos: Culture of Scythia The Scythians are composed of nomadic tribes of pastoral warriors (4.46). The lives of the men are mostly spent on horseback riding, hunting and waging war; those of the women and children are spent travelling around in wagons. The civilized and orderly Egyptians are the people Herodotus venerates most, save only (perhaps) the Greeks; the nearly uncivilized Scythians he admires the least, except in one respect, in which the Egyptians fail to earn his admiration, which is their devotion to, and their ability to maintain, their freedom. ‘Civilized, hot, fertile, and rich Egypt fell victim to Persian aggression while savage, chill, infertile and poor Scythia successfully resisted the Persians’ (Lateiner 1989: 156). As polar opposites on Herodotus’ ethnographic map, the Scythians and Egyptians share a certain symmetry in both their land and customs. Scythia is nearly overrun by rivers, most of which flow into the Ister, which form a kind of natural other to the singular and monumental Nile whose man-made canals irrigates Egypt’s desert19 – their nomadic existence arose from adapting to a land full of rivers (4.47). Whereas Egypt is a country adapted by human artifice to the needs of civilised people who look to the gods in all things, Scythians find happiness in learning from their natural environment, whose land is naturally suited to their purpose (e0pithde/hj) and whose rivers are natural allies (summachoi) to it as well, a way of life that preserves their natural freedom.

4.3.3  Cultural polarities of Egypt and Scythia Whereas the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos is predicated upon the harmonious adaptation of nomos to phusis, the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros is predicated upon the harmonious adaptation of phusis to nomos. In both lands, nomos and phusis are in agreement. (In this respect, the lower axis is the cultural antithesis of the upper axis, where the relation of nomos and phusis is more antagonistic.) The cultural polarities of Egypt and Scythia arise from the polarity between the unnatural religious culture of nomos hieros and the feral, barely civilized culture of nomos phusikos. Their differences are substantial: the Egyptians are a time-honoured people, bound in a rigid, unchanging cultural system of sacred nomoi, ruled by priests and god-like kings; the Scythians wander around freely in nomadic bands within, sometimes without, their natural borders, a young nation of hunter-warriors shooting from horseback.



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4.3.3.1  Culture and environment ‘The courses of the rivers mirror each other, Herodotus believed (2.33.2–34.2)’ (Lateiner 1989: 156). Redfield (1989: 106–9) gives an exhaustive review of the points of cultural polarity to be found in Herodotus’ descriptions of Egypt and Scythia,20 which includes an insightful demonstration of how the polarity of their river systems give rise to the fundamental cultural polarity between the hyper-civilized Egyptians as a people whose way of life derives from nomos and the nomadic Scythians as a people whose way of life is rooted in phusis: The Scythian rivers are plural, and this plurality of rivers is the most notable fact about the country (4.82). The Nile is single, although broken up into channels – which are explicitly compared to the Scythian rivers (4.47.1). The Scythian rivers, however, are natural, while the Nile channels are artificial; the latter were cut by King Sesostris (2.108.2) – and the result is a country in a crucial respect opposite to Scythia: whereas the Scythians ride horses and live in wagons, Egypt is a country where horses and chariots are useless (2.108.3). Sesostris divided the country into equal lots (2.109.1) and invented geometry in order to take account of changes produced by shifts in the river (2.109.2). In Egypt nature is under cultural control. Egyptian history begins before King Sesostris with King Minas, who first directed and controlled the Nile (2.99) … by controlling the river the people brought into existence the greater part of usable Egyptian territory In Scythia, by contrast, the territory was there before the people; all three origin stories (4.5–11) specify that before the Scythians the land was empty (e0rh/mh). Scythia is a natural landscape which came to be inhabited; Egypt is a landscape radically reconstructed by habitation. Redfield (1985: 107, emphasis added)

We see here how the polarity of natural environments in Egypt and Scythia is shown to give rise to the cultural differences in human interaction with the environment, such as transportation and agriculture, which in turn becomes the basis of the basic cultural polarity in their ways of life, the fixed, ‘artificial’ and ‘geometrical’ culture of Egypt derived from the imposition of nomos upon a receptive phusis, and the natural mobility of the Scythians who lively freely in nature by adapting themselves to their harsh environment rather than adapting the natural environment to themselves.

4.3.3.2 Religion Religion has its origins in Egypt, whose original rulers were the gods (2.144), and it is to them that the rest of the world, directly or indirectly, owe their

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knowledge and acquisition of ta theia, ‘things divine’ (2.3), including the names of the gods (2.50) and the erection of altars, statues, and temples (2.4.2). Egypt is home to most of the gods known to humankind, with the greatest number of temples, religious rituals and practices. The least civilized of peoples, Scythia recognizes the fewest gods, with the least number of temples, religious rituals and practices (4.59). In the Scythian pantheon, the more natural gods of the Hesiodic ages of Ouranos (Earth, mother of all), Kronos (Hestia, goddess of the hearth) and Zeus (Ares, god of war, held in least esteem by Homeric Zeus) hold greater place of honour than do the more rational gods under Olympian Zeus.21 Pre-eminence is given to Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, which may seem strange for a nomadic society without fixed dwellings. Obviously, the Scythians have a different concept of the hearth, one that is mobile and moves with their wagons. Perhaps any family campfire could serve as the site of honouring the dead, no matter where they are buried. More importantly, the pre-eminence of Hestia in Scythia (by Herodotus’ account) signifies the pre-eminence of the natural bond of the family, philia, associated with the hearth of Hestia, as the centre of the culture of nomos phusikos; also, that it is the model of the natural family that provides the basis of social and political organization in a tribal society rather than the political nomos dikaios of Zeus. Generally, the religious customs of the Egyptians are civilized (the origin of religion among civilized peoples), sophisticated (elaborate sacrificial and funeral rites, 2.39–40) and divine (divination is through the gods’ oracles, 2.83), whereas those of the Scythians are savage (self-mutilation and human sacrifice are part of the royal funereal rites, 4.71), simple (sacrifices prepared without fires, consecrations or libations, 4.60) and natural (sacrificial animals are strangled and cooked in their own skin, 4.61; divination is a rudimentary craft practised by diviners using bundles of willow rods or tree bark, 4.67).22 A primitive concept of the afterlife as a continuation of one’s natural life in the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos stands in stark contrast to Herodotus’ attribution of the theoretical concept of the reincarnation of the immortal human soul to the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros. The most extreme aspect of the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos is a ‘barbaric’ practice of human sacrifice and dismemberment in their worship of Ares, the god of war (4.62).

4.3.3.3 Morality In Egypt, a person’s entire natural life is subject to nomos theios, from the day they are born until the day they die (2.82). Nomos hieros is the basis of Egyptian



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morality, which equates cleanliness – removing natural filth – with holiness (2.37), including circumcision (2.36). Among the priests, holy hygiene is taken to its full extent by way of maintaining clean-shaven bodies with daily and nightly ablutions, in addition to the other numberless religious observances they practise (2.37). The unnatural Egyptian customs of urinating indoors and eating outdoors are explained by their strict adherence to their religious morality (2.35). Nature does not provide a model for human morality in Egypt (a principle of which Herodotus heartily approves, implicitly voicing his opposition to the radical sophists who champion phusis as the basis of nomos). Instead, religion rules over nature, as evidenced by the Egyptian ban on having sex within or before entering a sanctuary, a custom contrary to the practice of nearly all other peoples (2.64), who draw no such distinction between humans and animals. In Scythia, morality does not have its basis in religious laws whose aim is to purify and sanctify the natural. Scythian morality is composed of the customs of a people who have adapted their mode of life to nature. In contrast with the Egyptian obsession with cleanliness, the white linen robes and twice-daily bathes of the priests in water, the Scythians never bathe in water, but clean themselves by ‘bathing’ in hemp smoke, and make their clothes of hemp as well. They drink from earthenware vessels rather than bronze, or else from the famous gilded skull-cups made from the heads of their enemies (4.65). Barbarity in Scythian warfare nearly equals that of their sacrifices to Ares: they attach their enemies’ scalps to their horses’ bridles, or even sew them together to make a leather coat; the skin from their right arms is used to make quivers; sometimes they skin their enemy whole and carry it with them (4.64). The most famous example of their barbarity is, of course, the renowned Scythian skull cup made from the heads of enemies cut down before their king, even those of disaffected kinsmen, which earns Herodotus’ rare voice of disapproval: ‘all of which passes for proof of courage’ (4.65). Their greatest disgrace is not to have killed a single man in a year; those who have killed most are honoured most at an annual festival (4.66). In warfare, the Scythians exhaust the model of behaviour to be learned from nature’s law of predator and prey. The barbarity of the Scythian customs in warfare demonstrate a capacity for savagery in the culture of nomos phusikos that is the cultural antithesis of the capacity for unnaturalness in the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros.

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4.3.3.4  Society and education Egyptian society constitutes a hieratic hierarchy composed of seven professional castes based on profession. At the top of the hierarchy are the priests, followed next by the warriors, beneath whom are the cowherds, swineherds, retailers, translators and pilots (2.164.1). Priest and warrior are dynastic castes with sons succeeding their fathers (2.37.5, 2.164.2, 2.166.2). The social ranking of the Egyptian hierarchy with priests and warriors possessing an elite status lacking among the artisans is universal, possibly originating in Egypt but recognized among Greeks and non-Greeks alike, including the Scythians (2.167). In Scythia, there appears to be only one class: all are trained to be warriors (4.64), and the contrast between Egyptian and Scythian society is between hieratic stratification and natural homogeneity. With respect to education, Egypt possesses the most learned people in the world (2.77, 2.154), while the Scythians live among the most unlearned peoples (4.46), among whom they stand out in virtue of their nomadic lifestyle by which they maintain their freedom.

4.3.3.5 Kingship The king of the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos is a warrior-king of the tribe of Royal Scythians, who leads the tribal bands of warriors, presides over disputes among Scythian kinsmen, and no doubt over religious sacrifices. The Scythians believed their first king was Colaxais, the youngest of the three sons born to the ancestral father of the Scythian race, Targitaus, son of Zeus and the daughter of the Borysthenes River. Colaxais obtained the throne because only he was permitted to pick up the four objects that had fallen from the sky: a plough, a yoke, an axe and a cup, representing the Scythian farmers (plough and yoke), nomadic warriors and Royal Scythian king as chief priest (4.5). Herodotus is at pains to clarify that Egypt’s pharaohs are not god-kings, though he tells us they believed the first kings of Egypt were the Olympian gods, establishing their culture of nomos hieros (2.144). Of interest are striking parallels between the line of Egyptian kings and those of Persia. The career of Sesostris, who basically founded Egypt and carried out an early career of imperialism, has its parallel in that of Cyrus. The strongest parallel is Psammetichus and Darius. Like Darius, Psammetichus took over after a break in the royal line by a priest of Hephaestus, the last of the bad kings, but only after a consensus reached in a conference of rivals for the throne (2.147), which was usurped by an unforeseen event (2.152) that put Psammetichus on



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the throne. Lesser parallels can be found between the sacrilegious behaviour of his son, Pheros, matched by that of Cambyses; the hubris and sacrilege of Cheops and Chepren finds a parallel in Xerxes’ treatment of his brother’s wife, Masistes; the false dream sent to Sesos is paralleled by that sent to Xerxes. Amasis, however, as the first to subject the Cyprians to tribute has an obvious parallel in Croesus.

4.3.3.6 Ideology Regarding themselves as nearest to the gods, the Egyptians regard all others as ‘barbarian’ (2.158.5). Where the whole of the Egyptian way of life is to maintain their proximity to the gods, the whole of the Scythian way of life is to maintain their natural liberty. It is a natural freedom that Herodotus sets apart from, in some sense as the natural origin of, the lawful or conventional freedom of the Greeks, based on human nomos, the freedom of isonomia. If its natural aspect is the polar opposite of the divine aspect of the Egyptian ethnos, its freedom aspect is most clearly set in bipolar opposition to the slavery imposed by the Persians in accord with their nomos of imperialism (‘The mere mention of slavery [by the Persian herald] filled the Scythian kings with rage’, 4.128). Indeed, it is precisely in this respect that Herodotus uses the Scythians as a cultural yardstick by which to measure both the shameful failure of the Ionian Greeks to maintain the lawful freedom fundamental to their ethnos (4.142), and of the Persians’ humiliating failure to impose despotism on the Scythians as required by their cultural imperative of imperialism (4.127, 4.141).

4.4  Greek–Persian axis: Nomos basileus vs nomos phuseōs The cultural polarity of the lower axis on Herodotus’ cultural grid is characterized by antithesis; the cultural polarity of the upper axis is characterized by antagonism. The hieratic culture of the Egyptians is the cultural antithesis of Scythia’s culture of nomadic warriors; the Scythians mirror the Egyptians in their alterity to Egypt’s identity. The antithetical cultures of Egypt and Scythia coexist at the opposite ends of the oikoumenē. The relation between Greece and Persia is that of a momentous cultural conflict whose furthest origins can be traced back to the Trojan War. Greeks and Persians are at one another’s throats and the Histories presents itself as an enquiry into who or what is to blame for their mutual hostility. The locus of the cultural polarity of Greece and Persia is

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their respective ideologies as two ways of living in the world that cannot abide one another. The Greeks are devoted to political freedom and autonomy based on the sovereign rule of law; the Persian devotion to despotism and imperialism has its origin in erōs turannidos, the natural lust for power. The truth claim of one denies the truth claim of the other; peaceful coexistence is impossible; conflict is inevitable; its outcome uncertain until the very end. This qualitative difference in polarity between the axes of the cultural grid extends even to the relationship of human interaction with the natural environment which is the locus of the symmetry of Egypt and Scythia as the cultural antithesis of each other. The cultural polarity of the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros and the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos on the lower axis of the cultural grid is predicated of the basic polarity of nomos and phusis, culture and nature: the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros is imposed on nature; Scythia’s culture of nomos phusikos is derived from nature. In both cultures, however, the result is a harmonious relationship of nomos and phusis, where phusis is receptive to the imposition of nomos among the Egyptians and nomos is freely adapted to the necessity of phusis among the Scythians. The cultural polarity of Greek and Persian culture on the upper axis bears some similarity to that of the lower axis with respect to the relationship of nomos and phusis, but is decidedly different. The difference is that the relationship of nomos and phusis in the cultures of the upper axis remains antagonistic, never achieving the harmonious resolution of the lower axis. Unlike the lands of Egypt and Scythia, the lands of Greece and Persia have little to contribute to their way of life except hardship: in either land, nomos can neither impose itself upon nor adapt itself to the natural environment, which is regarded as ‘impoverished’ in Greece and as ‘harsh’ in Persia. Despite this difference, the similarity of the upper and lower axes lies in how the Greeks view their relationship to the natural environment as one in which they have freed themselves from natural necessity and obtained a leisurely way of life grounded in nomos, whereas the Persians view their relationship to the natural environment as one in which their way of life has developed within an antagonistic relationship with their native land, the survival of which depends upon maintaining that relationship. Unlike the accounts of the ethnea of the lower axes, these views are clearly expressed not by Herodotus as narrator, but in key speeches made by the Greeks (Demaratus to Xerxes 7.102) and Persians (Cyrus to the Persians, 9.122) themselves. But while the cultural polarity of Greece and Persia on the upper axis of the cultural grid is inclusive of the polarity of their respective relationships to the natural environment (which has in it the basic polarity of nomos and phusis



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found on the lower axis of the gird), the ideological basis of cultural polarity on the upper axis is removed from this external relation of nomos to phusis. The basis of the ideological conflict that has given rise to warfare is not the external relation of culture to the natural environment, but an internal relation of reason to human nature within human culture. What drives the Persians in their bid for world conquest is the same inner compulsion of human nature that gives rise to tyranny in Greece and despotic monarchies in Asia: erōs turannidos. Deioces, the founder of the Persian constitution of despotic monarchy, is described as a sophos anēr who is erastheis turannidos, ‘an intelligent man with a lust for power’. It is the natural lust for power in human nature among the Persians that gives rise to their sophisticated ideology that adheres to an abstract grasp of nature as a model of illimitable potency, as when Xerxes declares his ambition to extend the boundaries of Persia on earth to match those of the sky above (7.8c). By contrast, in Herodotus’ view nature provides a concrete model of selfcontainment under the sovereign rule of nomos as basileus pantōn (3.108, where Herodotus speaks of the balance of powers in the order of nature as the work of divine providence). The key passage against which to set Xerxes’ declaration of the Persian adherence to the law of nature, nomos phuseōs, is Demaratus’ declaration that the foundation of Greek culture is a self-discipline (aretē) obtained by reason (sophia) and nomos ischuros – the strength of law ‘by which Greece now keeps both poverty and despotism at bay’ (7.102).

4.4.1  Nomos basileus: Ethnos and culture of the Greeks to\ 9Ellhniko\n e0o\n o3maimo/n te kai\ o9mo/glwsson kai\ qew~n idru/mata/ te koina\ kai\ qusi/ai h1qea/ te o9mo/tropa, There is the Greek identity (to Hellenikion): common ancestry, common language, common religion, and common way of life. 8.144.2, my translation

To the Athenians is given, on the eve of the crucial victory at Plataea, the climactic declaration of to Hellenikon, the most famous (and studied) selfdefinition of the Greek identity.23 It is a concise expression of a common ideology shared by all (none of the Greek representatives at the council objects to the Athenians that it is not), constituting a cultural bond based on the ties that bind them together, despite their social, political and cultural differences, as a single Greek ethnos. In Herodotus, it is only through their conflict with Persia that the Greeks (a few on behalf of many, Athens above all) develop a collective

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sense of self-identity. What the Greeks come to realize in their struggle to find a common principle of unity deeper than the self-interests that divide them is that they are culturally one nation, a single Greek ethnos composed of politic­ally independent states (poleis), each dedicated to preserving their own local traditions, customs and laws (patrioi nomoi), speaking regional dialects that are nearly nonsensical to one another, occupying territories isolated by the geography of land and sea, and customarily at war with one another. There are four elements in the Athenian self-definition of what it means to be Greek, consisting of two pairs: ancestry and language (o3maimo&n te kai\ o m( o&glwsson), and religion and common way of life (qew~n idru/mata/ te koina\ kai\ qusi/ai h1qea/ te o9mo/tropa). They appear in that order, with the necessary conditions of a common identity coming first (ancestry and language) and the cultural content of the common identity (religion and way of life) coming last, in the place of greatest emphasis. Ancestry and language come together first because the Greeks consider themselves to share a common ancestry because they speak one language. ‘It seems clear to me that the Hellenes have always spoken the same language, ever since they began’ (1.58.1). Language is not only a cultural identifier but also a cultural medium and thus the necessary condition of being Greek. Greeks are those whose native language is Greek, no matter whence they originate or where they reside in the world. Language is both the origin and medium of Greek self-identity. Through their common language was transmitted the oral tradition of Greek epic (Homer and Hesiod), familiarity with which was shared by all Greek-speaking peoples, and in that oral tradition is preserved the ancestral tradition of a common Greek religion and a common way of life constituted of oikos and polis. The origin of Hellenic identity is traced back by Herodotus to when Greek became the common language of the Dorian Spartans and Ionian Athenians. The Spartans had always spoken Greek, but the Athenians originally spoke the language of the Pelasgians at a time when the Atttic people were still Pelasgians, who spoke a non-Greek language. When the Athenians became Hellenized (presumably by adopting the Greek religion and the social and political institutions of the Greek oikos and polis), they adopted Greek as their ‘native’ language. Former members of the non-Greek race of Pelasgians, once acculturated by Hellenes, the Athenians became Hellenes (1.56–7).24 The Greek ethnos is constituted of a host of politically independent poleis. Geographically united by the Aegean, the Greek cities are also separated by its waters. The main distinction is between the Greeks who live on the mainland and those who inhabit the Aegean islands and the coast of Asia, called Ionia.



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The Ionians all speak Greek, but like the Spartans and Athenians different dialects of Greek (1.142). In Ionian Greece there are several distinct groups of Greeks – twelve Panionian cities, five Dorian cities (once six, but Herodotus’ native Halicarnassus was expelled) and Aeolians; different cities or groups have their own ties with the Spartans, Athenians and Achaeans on the mainland (1.143–51). The most significant difference among the Greek poleis is in their political constitutions. When Croesus makes his enquiries into Greece, he finds that the Spartans had just adopted a unique constitution fashioned for them by Lycurgus, in which they were ruled by two kings (1.65–8), while in Athens, the Pisistratids had established a tyranny (1.59–64). Tyranny had been established also in Corinth and on the island of Samos (3.39–60), and was the form of government adopted throughout Ionia under Lydian and then Persian rule. Tyranny was the rule of one man who took and held power unconstitutionally, and though some tyrants had popular support and benefited their city (as was the case with Pisistratus who enforced Solon’s reforms), Herodotus regards it as a form of government transgressive of the Hellenic principle of isonomia (equal before the law) that is perfected in a limited form in the constitution of Sparta (equally subject to the law) and appears in its most complete form in the democratic constitution of Athens, which allows for isegoria, equal say in law. That Greek tyranny is in contradiction of the culture of political freedom in Greece is made absolutely clear by the Scythian rebuke of the Ionians for siding with the Persian king rather than with the Scythian cause of freedom, when the opportunity arose to betray Darius to the Scythians (4.133) and the Ionians decided against it: ‘as a free people, they are, they say, the most despicable and craven in the world’ (4.142). The Ionians were initially persuaded by the argument of Miltiades of Athens (one of the Ionian tyrants) to side with the Scythians and liberate Ionia from Persian rule (4.137.1), but it was the counter-argument made by the Milesian tyrant Histiaeus that won the day (4.137.3): ‘Thanks to Darius each of them was tyrant in his polis; without Darius in power, he could not rule Miletus and nor could any of them stay in power, since each polis would choose democracy over tyranny’ (4.137.2, my translation). Herodotus’ final comment fits the overall characterization of the medizing tyrants as Persosophists: ‘[Most of the] voters on this occasion were … all men highly esteemed by Darius, and all tyrants of their states on the Hellespont’ (4.138.1). The passage, however, that best expresses that tyranny is, in principle, antithetical to the culture of nomos basileus and a betrayal of Greek tradition is the plea made by Sosicles of Corinth to the Spartans not to restore tyranny in Athens:

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In truth heaven will be beneath the earth and the earth aloft above the heaven, and men will dwell in the sea and fishes where men dwelt before, now that you, Lacedaemonians, are destroying the rule of equals [i0sokrati/aj] and making ready to bring back tyranny [turanni/daj] into the cities, tyranny, a thing more unrighteous [a0dikw/teron] and bloodthirsty [miafonw/teron] than anything else on this earth. [kat’ a0nqrw/pouj]. 5.92a (trans. Godley 1920, adapted)

The constitution in which the principle of nomos basileus is most fully realized is that of democracy, as known by ‘the finest of names, isonomia’ (3.80.6), singled out in the constitution debate as the antithesis of the Persian monarchy. Democracy is the constitution of the Athenians, and the Athenians are the greatest cultural antagonist of the Persians. The Athenians are the principal target of the Persian invasions of Greece, and it is to the Athenians that Herodotus gives credit for the Greek victory over the Persians: ‘anyone who claims that the Athenians proved themselves to be the saviours of Greece would be perfectly correct’ (7.139.5).

4.4.2  Nomos phuseōs: Ethnos and culture of the Persians The Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is fundamentally ideological. Nomos phuseōs refers to the theoretical manner in which an abstract apprehension of phusis as potency or power is adopted as the basis of nomos in the sophistic teaching that humankind is ruled by a ‘law of nature’, whereby the strong rule the weak and the powerful hold sway wherever they can. As it appears in the Histories, this sophistic principle originates in the erōs turannidos of the sophos anēr, the lust for power in the mind of a clever man. Neither gods, nor nature, per se is the source of Persian culture; its source is human nature. In Herodotus’ account, the Iranian culture of Persia comes about not by way of a cultural evolution among the Medes and Persians themselves, nor by way of foreign acculturation as we know was historically the case in the Anshan period of Elamite acculturation, nor by way of cultural adoption as occurred when Cyrus and Cambyses adopted aspects of the Babylonian and Egyptian models of kingship. The creation of a Persian culture and a distinctively Persian nation (ethnos) is a human achievement, the political achievement of one man, Cyrus, the result of his ability to manipulatively persuade a number of Persian tribes (genea) to unite as a kingdom under his rule, overthrow the Medes and adopt as their own the culture of their foreign rulers (Medes regarded Persians as xenoi,



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1.120.5). The Median culture of kingship and empire which the Persians gained by right of conquest (nomos phuseōs) was itself the political achievement of another sophos anēr, Deioces, who had established the Median kingdom (and by that a distinctively Median nation and Median culture) by persuading the Median tribes to make him their king and to accept the royal protocol which he himself devised to rule over them. The despotic protocol established by Deioces is the origin of a political constitution (despotic in its elevation of the king above the law) which gives birth to the Iranian culture of nomos phuseōs characterized by despotism, hierarchism, relativism, ethnocentrism and imperialism. Like the Greeks, the Persians are an ethnos composed of distinct genea, one nation composed of ten tribes. Unlike the Greeks, even as an ethnos Persia consists of the rule of one tribe (genos), the Pasargadae, which includes the royal phratry of the Achaemenidae, over the other nine tribes (genea) of Persia; the other Persian tribes are either farmers or nomadic herdsmen (1.125). There is a rigid class structure within Persian society, at the head of which would be the Achaemenid royal house; beneath the royal house, a rigid hierarchy of nobles from the various ethnea headed by non-royal Achaemenids, with a hierarchy of commoners at the bottom headed by the Persians (1.134.1). This hierarchic structure within Persian society extends to the relationships of Persians to other peoples of the empire. In the cultural make-up of the Persian Empire, the Persians are one ethnos among many. The Persian rulers have no interest in Persianizing their subject peoples; on the contrary, as in the Persian royal inscriptions, the Persians in Herodotus retain an elite status at the top of a rigid Persocentric social and political hierarchy that sets them apart from the other ethnea of the empire, much in the same manner in which the Achaemenid genos of the Pasargadae are set off from the other genea of the Persian ethnos: After their own nation, they hold their nearest neighbours most in honour [timw~si], then the nearest but one – and so on, their respect decreasing as the distance grows, and the most remote being the most despised. Themselves they consider in every way superior to everyone else in the world, and allow other nations a share of good qualities decreasing according to distance, the furthest off being in their view the worst. 1.134

The catalogue of Xerxes’ army (7.61–99) provides a concrete illustration of the hierarchic principle of the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs. We find there the same hierarchical order of progression as appears in the royal inscriptions, giftbearing reliefs and tribute-bearing reliefs of Persepolis and Bisitun. Herodotus

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attributes the regimental organization of the army to the Median king Cyaxares, when there were only spearmen, archers and cavalry (1.103). Under Xerxes, the army is organized by spearmen (7.61–83), cavalry (7.84–8) and navy (7.89–99), and this appears to be in order of progression. The catalogue begins with the Persians at the top of the ethnic hierarchy representing the Persian centre of the world-map (7.61), followed by the elite ethnea of Medes and Elamites (7.62), and then generally progresses downwards and outwards from the hierarchic centre to conclude with those of Greek descent at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy representing the ethnographic periphery of the world-map from a Persocentric standpoint (7.90–5).25 It is an essential feature of Herodotus’ representation of the Persians that, in the virtual parade of ethnic contingents, each and every ethnos bears its own insignia of native dress and weaponry, just as one finds on the royal Persian reliefs. It is, then, as much a feature of the Persian hierarchy to respect and preserve the native ethnic identity of the subject peoples (phusis) as it is to order the ethnea in a hierarchy of ethnic superiority and inferiority to one another as measured by the supreme status of the Persians (nomos). Another key aspect is Herodotus’ inclusion of the myths of Perseus and Medea by which the Greeks incorporated the Persians and Medes into their mythographic histories of the world (the Achaemenid kings are referred to as ‘oi9 Persei~dai, descendants of Perseus’ (1.125). This latter aspect establishes an ethnic tie between the Greeks and Persians, which, taken together with the respect shown for ethnic identity in the Persian hierarchy, suggests that the ethnic hierarchy is not based on ethnic chauvinism (though we examine the presence of cultural chauvinism in the views Greeks and Persians take of one another; SK 4.4.3). Rather, hierarchism is itself an ideological principle, a component of the Persian ideology; the Persian political, social, military and ethnic hierarchy is based on an idea, a theoretical principle, by which the Persian rulers rule. That the hierarchy is not based on ethnic chauvinism is indicated by the equality of representation in the catalogue in the same manner as we find it on the royal reliefs: each contingent appears in its native dress for war; the hierarchy is suggested only by the order of their appearance, Persians come first and the Greeks last. We found agreement also with the archaeological record in Herodotus’ account of the order in which Xerxes’ sent his troops into battle against the Spartans at Thermopylae. Faced with Spartan intransigency, he sent in the elite contingents, in order of status: first the Elamite Kissoi, then the Medes and finally the Persian immortals (7.210–11) – the reverse order of their appearance in the catalogue. That Xerxes risked his Persian immortals after the Spartans had depleted his



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other elite corps, rather than sacrificing those he regarded least, indicates that the hierarchy respects and expects a display of merit by a proven ability in battle and, above all, fealty to the crown. Such, also, would be the necessary prerequisites for the hierarchy of rulerships (1.134.3). At the ethnic level per se, Greeks and Persians are alike – both are open to adopting the nomoi of other nations as their own – and unlike the Egyptians and Scythians, who are closed to adopting foreign customs, which of itself constitutes a fundamental difference between the lower and upper axes of Herodotus’ cultural grid. That Greeks and Persians are open to foreign customs in opposed ways, based on antithetical views of nomos, however, constitutes a fundamental polarity on the upper axis of the grid. Cultural relativism is another ideological principle constitutive of the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs (1.135), by which it is in an antagonistic relation to the Greek culture of nomos basileus. Here, we need note only that given their openness to adopting foreign customs, it is unlikely that Persian hierarchism is grounded in ethnic prejudice. We do find in Herodotus something of the fifth-century stereotype of the Persians as weak, effeminate and decadent; indeed, we have the Greek tyrant Aristagoras of Miletus represent them as such to King Leonidas of Sparta (4.49), but we are assured that everything he said was in service of a failed bid to persuade the Spartans to serve his cause (4.50, SK 4.4.3). These supposedly ‘un-Greek’ attributes are shown to be no more characteristic of the Persians than of the Greeks themselves in Herodotus. As with the Greeks, so with the Persians these are a corruption of native morality and ethos. There is nothing weak, effeminate or decadent about Deioces, Cyrus, or Darius; nor, for that matter, about Cambyses’ wife, Cassandra, Darius’ wife, Atossa, or Xerxes’ wife, Amestris (and this is true of non-Persian barbarian women as well: the Lydian wife of Candaules, Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae, and the Halicarnassian queen and general, Artemisia). The Persians are, as Cyrus says, a hard people of a hard land; a people disciplined in the conquest of nations with an earnest devotion to world domination. The ‘weakness’ of character in Cambyses and Xerxes is that of the tragic flaw of hubris. As we shall see when we turn to examine Herodotus’ portraits of the Persian kings (SK 5.4–5), there is a sense in which the tragic fate of the unrelenting Cyrus is Aeschylean, that of the repentant Cambyses Sophoclean, and that of Xerxes, as a reluctant youth seduced by his counsellors and intimidated by the gods, Euripidean, prefiguring the Dionysian manipulation of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae. What Herodotus adds to the familiar picture of the Persians as Greek Other is to represent their otherness as consisting of their identity with the Greeks themselves.

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4.4.3  Cultural polarities of Greece and Persia As already noted (SK 4.4), one way in which the upper axis of the cultural grid differs from the lower axis is that the cultural antagonism between the Greeks and Persians is articulated by Herodotus in their own voice, rather than his as narrator. Thus, we can compare equally chauvinistic statements made by Cyrus about the Greeks, and by Aristagoras about the Persians, as offering evidence of the level of their cultural antagonism. What antagonizes Cyrus about the Greeks is the agora in the middle of the Greek polis as a public centre for talk and trade (1.153), not only of the goods noted by Herodotus, but of political opinions and theoretical ideas as well. In the Greek agora, there is no control over the flow of goods or the flow of ideas. Herodotus does not tell us so, but the distribution of goods in Persia was through the royal place. In a sense, what occurs in the public space ‘in the middle’ of the Greek polis among the Greeks would occur under the watchful eye of royal officials of the King’s court in Susa or Persepolis. But surely the real import of Herodotus’ comment that ‘the agora is unknown to them’ goes to the heart of cultural antagonism between the democratic institutions of the Greeks and the despotic institutions of the Persians: that one cannot stand to ‘know’ the other. Aristagoras attempts to persuade the Spartans to join the cause of Ionian revolt by depicting the Persians as cowardly (not valiant men), less than manly (they have short ‘spears’) and effeminate (they wear trousers and turbans), and thus easily defeated (5.49.3–4). The other side of Aristagoras’ defamation of the Persians is his lavish praise of the Spartan reputation for courage in battle, but also the implication that they are manly soldiers who wear hoplite armor, stand their ground with their shields (rather than shoot arrows) and are prepare to do battle with their long ‘spears’. It is a valuable lesson in how the Greeks were not above the kind of low-brow cultural bashing of the enemy that became popular in the fifth century (SK 0.1).

4.4.3.1  Culture and environment As noted above (SK 4.2.1), with regard to the relationship between human culture and the natural environment, the upper axis of the cultural grid is the antithesis of the lower axis. In both the Scythian culture of nomos phusikos predicated upon the adaptation of nomos to phusis and the Egyptian culture of nomos hieros predicated upon the adaptation of phusis to nomos, nomos and phusis are in agreement, whereas on the upper axis the relationship of culture and environment in both Greece and Persia is antagonistic. Unlike in Egypt



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and in Scythia, the natural environments of both Greece and Persia make no contribution to their cultures except to provide an adversity which must be overcome by human ingenuity. Thus in the cultures of the upper axis there is an underlying antagonism between nomos and phusis. Another difference between the lower and upper axes is that on the lower axis natural boundaries agree with the national boundaries of the cultures that inhabit them, whereas on the upper axis national boundaries transgress natural boundaries. Whereas Egyptian culture resides in the land of Egypt, which has its own distinctive geography, and Scythian culture remains within the distinctive geography of Scythia, the culture of the Greeks and the borders of Persia expand across continents, indifferent to the natural terrain.

4.4.3.1.1  Natural boundaries and national borders There is a symmetry between the upper and lower axes of the cultural grid in the similarity between their south and west poles and their north and east poles, with respect to the relationship of national boundaries to natural environment: in the former, the relationship is internal, in the latter it is external. Scythia and Persia are separated by the mutual external national boundary of the river Ister as the natural border separating the continents of Europe and Asia; their other borders are the external boundaries of the eschatiai of the north and east. In Egypt and Greece, their national boundaries are determined by an internal relationship of their culture to their natural environment. Egypt is a nation of people populating the banks of the Nile, which runs through the middle of the entire length of the country; Greece is a nation of peoples populating the European and Asian coasts of the Aegean sea, reaching through the Hellespont to the Pontus and even the far reaches of the Euxine Sea which borders on Thrace and Scythia. On Herodotus’ ethnographic map, the external national borders of Egypt and Greece are simply their cultural borders – Egypt is the land inhabited by Egyptians, the people of the Nile; Greece is the land inhabited by Greeks, the people of the Aegean. The difference between Scythia and Persia is that, whereas Scythia is selfcontained within the natural boundaries that constitute its national borders, Persia is contained only by the national borders of cultures able to withstand their imperial aggression. Both Egypt and Scythia engaged in imperial aggression, for a while ruling lands beyond their natural boundaries in attempts to extend their national borders. But these were sporadic rather than systemic forays, which ended in failure and a return to the cultural norm of respecting autonomy. At

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least, that is what Herodotus seems to want to make clear by way of the stinging rebuke levelled against the Scythians by the most savage tribes dwelling in the Scythian hinterland, including the Neuri and Androphagi (4.106, SK 4.1.2), that the Persians were just paying them back for their unjust invasion of Asia when Cyaxares was king of Media (4.119). Normally, the national boundaries of Scythia and Egypt are completely self-contained: neither adopts foreign customs, especially those of the Greeks. The difference between Scythia and Egypt is that the latter has had the greatest cultural influence on the rest of the world, the former none. The Greeks are more like the Egyptians in this regard, except that, while the Egyptians stay in Egypt, the Greeks are willing to live on or even within the national boundaries of Egypt, Scythia and Persia, transplanting Greek culture outside the contin­ ental boundaries of Europe, expanding the cultural borders of the Greeks outwards in all directions from its internal natural boundary of the Aegean sea. It is only the shadow of future imperial aggression by the Greeks that is forecast in the Histories, a shadow cast by Persia as the Greek other. In its complete commitment to the ideology of imperialism, Persia stands by itself on the cultural grid, and is alone responsible for the antagonistic relations between itself and other nations that result from its relentless transgression of natural boundaries and national borders. The reason for the clash of cultures between Greece and Persia is that political autonomy, the sovereign independence of a self-governing polis, is as much a fundamental ideological principle of the Greek culture of nomos basileus as imperialism is a fundamental ideological principle of the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs.

4.4.3.1.2  Culture and environment in Greece Though Greece, at the centre of the known world, has ‘by far the most temperate climate’, it lacks the riches (ta\ ka/llista) of the e0sxatiai/ th~j oi0koume/nhj, the periphery of the oikoumenē (3.106). This is true for Ionian Greece as well, ‘a region which enjoys a better climate than any other we know of. It does not resemble what is found either further north, where there is an excess of cold and wet, or further south, where the weather is too hot and too dry’ (1.142). The lands inhabited by the Greeks are impoverished, the natural source of poverty which the Greeks have overcome by aretē, a combination of sophia and nomos ischuros, reason and law (3.106). In the Greek culture of nomos basileus, the adversity of the Greek environment is never wholly overcome. Greece is not wealthy, and what prosperity it has comes not from the fertility of the land,



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which basically suffices to meet the needs of survival for most of its inhabitants. The principal sources of wealth in Greece are the spoils of war (principally slaves) and trade in manufactured goods. The native crops of olives and grapes are manufactured into the commercial exports of olive oil and wine. The most lucrative export was fine pottery, another product of techne, rather than phusis. Precious metals are rare and normally came from afar; the discovery of silver in Laurium was practically a totally unexpected (though timely) windfall for the Athenians. Luxury goods and even raw goods such timber and grain are imported. The natural poverty of the land is what prompted Greeks to emigrate beyond the Aegean and to colonize the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. At home on the Greek mainland, Sparta’s economy rested upon the ability of trained hoplites to keep Messenian helots at work in the fields, while Corinth and Athens depended upon their navies and seaports for the export and import of commercial goods. It is by way of technē – the art of manufacturing olive oil, wine and pottery, the mercantile art of trade, and the art of war and its concomitant slave trade – that the Greeks overcame their lack of natural resources. Thus, as was pointed out to Cyrus, at the centre of every Greek polis was the agora, the marketplace, where the Greeks bought and sold the goods, some domestic, some foreign, mostly those of other Greek poleis, but also what was imported from Egypt, Italy, Spain, the Black Sea and the Levant. Economic life, however, depends upon the nomoi that regulate it and make it possible. International trade depends upon the arkhaios nomos of Zeus Xenios, which forbids host and guest of foreign states from harming one another. The Histories begin with a Persian account of the transgressions of the law of Zeus Xenios by mercantile sailors who abducted the women of their mercantile hosts (SK 2.3.4). The Persian logioi ultimately blame the Greeks for taking these transgressions so seriously that they were willing launch an invasion of Asia over the abduction of Helen. The failure of the Persians to fathom the injustice of the transgression of the nomos xenios as the principle that governs relations between sovereign states that the Greeks are willing to go to war over has in it the fundamental antagonism between the culture of nomos basileus and that of nomos phuseōs. In Greece, then, it is the adversity of phusis that gives rise to a technē that depends on the rule of nomos basileus, the sovereignty of the rule of law, in this case the law of Zeus Xenios that makes international relations possible by establishing as the basic protocol of trade and commerce ‘look to your own’.

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4.4.3.1.3  Culture and environment in Persia The very first thing we learn about the Persians is that ‘they claim Asia and the non-Greek nations (ethnea barbara) who live in it as their own’ (1.4, my translation). Further on, Croesus is advised that the Persians are ‘the kind of men who wear nothing but leather, including their trousers. Their food consists of what they can get, not what they might want, because of the ruggedness of their land (mainly the Iranian plateau, 4.38). They drink no wine, just water, and figs are the only good things they have to eat’ (1.71). That the source of Persian wealth is not to be found in the native land of Persia proper but obtained from elsewhere in the empire is made clear when Cyrus incites the Persians to rise up against the Medes. The thorny patch of ground that they spend a hard day clearing with sickles represents the adversity and poverty of their native environment; the luxurious symposium he provides on the following day represents what is to be gained by overtaking the Median Empire (1.126). In Aristagoras’ description of that part of the Persian Empire traversed by the royal road leading from Sardis to Susa, the fertile lands lie outside Persia proper, in Lydia, Phrygia and Armenia; the source of Persia’s wealth is the tribute flowing from the peoples inhabiting these lands into its royal treasuries (5.49). Aristagoras uses the stark contrast between the native poverty of Greece and the vast acquired wealth of Persia to bribe the Spartans to ally with the Ionians against Persia (5.49.3–4). The same contrast between the impoverished resources of Greece and wealth of resources provided to the Persians by way of conquest is clearly implied in the Athenians rebuke of the Spartans for thinking they could be bribed by the Persians: ‘There is not so much gold in the world nor land so fair that we would take it for pay to join the common enemy and bring Greece into subjection’ (8.143). By right of conquest, the naturally impoverished Persians obtain an empire of wealth, luxury and power. The change from natural poverty to imperial riches is marked by what Croesus learns about Persia on the eve of his own ruin, and what he teaches about Persia to Cyrus on the eve of the Great King’s self-destruction. Once it was the case that Lydia was rich and Persia was poor, so there was no good reason for Croesus to march on Cyrus. After Croesus and other kings lost their kingdoms to Cyrus, it was now the case that Persia was enriched by its imperial possession of the lands rich in soil, flocks and precious metals, and the lands that remained beyond its borders were poor, so there was no good material reason for Cyrus to march on the Massagetae, for Darius to invade Scythia or for Xerxes to invade Greece (Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt, of



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course, did add to the resources of the empire; his folly was to march against the Ethiopians). What ultimately drives the Persians, however, is not the external need to acquire the natural resources lacking in their own land, but their insatiable lust for power.

4.4.3.1.4  Cultural polarity in culture and environment Hesiod’s Works and Days teaches that the path to prosperity and happiness lay in work and prayer. Once there had been a time when mortals were pious and the earth was so fertile that one day’s labour would provide for a year’s living. But mortals were tricked by Prometheus into offending Zeus, and their punishment was to toil an earth now reluctant to bear the fruit of their labour (ll. 42–58). But for that community whose citizens worked the land in due season, and whose rulers abided by the justice of Zeus, the land would grow more rewarding to their labours, and prosperity and happiness would be at hand (ll. 220–84). Herodotus finds no place in the Histories to recall Hesiod’s teaching, perhaps since it is a customary aspect of the Greek ethos. The reason for recalling it here is to establish the cultural polarity between the Greek ethos regarding their cultural relationship to working the soil – ‘only farmers make good citizens’ – and the ethos of the Persians as expressed by Herodotus’ account of the rather ingenious method by which the Persian king obtained a living from the land by damning up the water supply and charging the people for its use (3.117). In Greece, the land of each polis belongs to the citizens of that polis; individually they work the land to provide a means of living – every oikos is a farm, be it small or great. Collectively, shoulder to shoulder, shield by shield, they defend their land from foreign invasion. In Persia, the lands of all peoples subject to Persian rule belong to the king. In Greece, the proper relationship with the land from which one earns a living is one of pious reverence for the earth. In Egypt, King Seostris dug the canals by which the Nile, a god in Egypt, irrigated the lands and thus King and God provided for the people of Egypt. In Persia, the land is treated by the king as an exploitable resource – a slave – by which he exploits his subjects’ need for water to irrigate their lands in order to provide the means of life. The same adversity of the natural environment (phusis) that prompted the Greeks to develop the innate capacity of human nature for virtue, reason and law (nomos basileus) prompted the Persians to develop the innate capacity of human nature for the nomos phuseōs of imperial conquest and despotic rule. Cyrus incited the Persians to revolt by contrasting a life of poverty and

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hardship in their native land with the life of wealth and leisure to be won by conquest of others (1.126). As made clear by the examples of Tellus, Cleobis and Biton that Solon presented to Croesus (1.30–1), the Greeks are satisfied to live within the bounds of what they have and are compelled by natural adversity to devote themselves to the acquisition of self-discipline (aretē) based on the human capacity for reason (sophia) and the rule of law (nomos ischuros). By contrast, the Persian erōs turannidos, which compels them to endlessly expand their borders beyond all natural and cultural boundaries, knows no limits, natural, human or divine. Erōs turannidos is an uncontrollable passion that is as peculiar to human nature as is reason. The tragic fall of Cyrus at the hand of the Massagetae is by the relentless, irresistible compulsion that arises from within his own human nature (1.204). The pathetic nature of this inner drive is made clear by the fact that there was absolutely nothing to gain, materially, from conquering the Massagetae. The Persians were already in possession of all the wealth and fertile lands that the neighbouring lands had to offer. All that was left in Asia (excluding Egypt) were the eschatiai of the oikoumenē and the uninhabitable lands that lay beyond. Clearly the Persians have nothing further to gain by way of conquest except to extend the boundary of their dominion on earth to its furthest horizon where it meets the sky. Herodotus concludes the Histories with Cyrus presciently teaching the lesson to be learned from Persia’s career in despotic imperialism, of which he was the founder. Ever fond of hosting an agōn logōn,26 Cyrus advises the Persians not to forsake their native land of poverty for the rich lands of their empire on the basis that the move will corrupt the ‘hardness’ by which they have won their independence and will rule their future empire: they must prepare themselves to rule no longer, but to be ruled by others. ‘Soft countries, he said, ‘breed soft men …’ The Persians had to admit that this was true … and chose rather to live in a rugged land and rule than to cultivate rich plains and be slaves to others. 9.122

4.4.3.2 Religion The cultural polarity of Greek and Persian religion in Herodotus is evident in his Hellenocentric account of Persian religion as ‘other’ to Greek religion. The erection of statues, temples, and altars is not an accepted practice among them, and anyone who does such a thing is considered a fool, because,



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presumably the Persian religion is not anthropomorphic like the Greek … As for ceremonial, when they offer sacrifice … they erect no altar and kindle no fire; the libation, the flute-music, the garlands, the sprinkled meal – all these things they no use for … The actual worshipper is not permitted to pray for any personal or private blessing, but only for the king and for the general good of the community, of which he is himself a part. 1.131.1–32.1

Persian religion is presented by Herodotus as the cultural antithesis of Greek religion. The gods of Greek religion are said to come from Egypt, but Herodotus’ Hellenocentric universal pantheon actually assimilates the theriomorphic gods of Egypt to the anthropomorphic gods of the Greeks. Within Herodotus’ universal pantheon, the Persians worship the Olympian deities as well, though under different names and in the form of the natural elements of the sky, air, fire, earth and water: Zeus, in their system, is the whole circle of the heavens, and they sacrifice to him from the tops of mountains. They also worship the sun, moon, and earth, fire, water, and winds, which are their only original deities. 1.131.2–3

Herodotus presents an ‘exaggerated view of the “naturalism” of Persian religion’, which reduces it to an abstract form of nature worship.27 The naturalism of Persian religion is the antithesis of the anthropomorphism of Greek religion; their difference resembles that between Hesiod’s primordial gods of the natural elements and the divine personalities and powers of the Olympians. Unlike the religion of Hesiod, however, there are no generation of gods in the Persian religion; unlike the primordial gods of Greece, the potency of the elemental gods of Persia is not of the sort as to generate a higher order of divinity out of itself. The source of cultural antagonism in religion, however, does not arise from a clash of gods, but from the contempt shown by the Persian rulers for the sanctity of religion per se. To Herodotus, Cambyses’ contempt for the Egyptian worship of Apis is so outrageous that it can only be explained by madness (3.38), while Xerxes’ destruction of the statues and temples of Athens is viewed as a wanton act of hubris that inspires in the Athenians an ideological fervour of resistance (8.142). As we noted earlier in our account of Ionian religion within the Persian Empire (SK 3.2.3.5), the Persian assault on their gods and heroes provokes the Greeks to identify their common religion as a fundamental aspect of their ethnic identity (8.144). The cultural antagonism that arises from the polarity of

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Greek and Persian religion in Herodotus is fundamentally ideological, the basis of which is that the sophistic ideology of Persian imperialism has no respect for the cultural autonomy of other nations, not even for what they consider holy and divine. In this regard, Herodotus’ account contradicts the evidence of the Persian practice of religious tolerance (SK 3.2, 3.2.3).

4.4.3.3 Society The cultural polarity of the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is not as prominent at the level of society (except for the polarity of hierarchism and egalitarianism, SK 4.4.3.3.1) as it is at the political level, and so it may seem that in our effort to discern it we may be fitting Herodotus’ account of societal nomoi into the cultural schema. Generally, we find it present in the naturalism that characterizes Persian nomoi of society and family, which is not of the same order as that of the Scythian nomos phusikos, whose natural freedom is absent from Persia’s despotic culture of nomos phuseōs.

4.4.3.3.1  Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism When Persians meet in the streets one can always tell by their mode of greeting whether or not they are of the same rank; for they do not speak but kiss – their equals upon the mouth, those somewhat superior on the cheeks. A man of greatly inferior rank prostrates himself in profound reverence. 1.134.1

The fundamental cultural polarity between Greek and Persian society is ideological: Persian hierarchism is the cultural antithesis of Greek egalitarian­ism. The rigid social hierarchy of Persian society is virtually non-existent in Greece, where the old class distinction between the aristoi and demos has largely been stripped of its significance. The nearest that the Greeks come to Persian hierarchism is the similarity Herodotus notes between Sparta and Egypt with respect to youth showing respect for their elders in public (6.60), which has nothing to do with class structure. Where the custom of Egypt differs from that of the Greeks highlights the antithesis between the Greek culture of egalitarianism and the social hierarchism of Egypt and Persia: ‘But they are unlike any of the Greeks in that they do not greet one another by name in the streets, but they make a low bow and drop one hand to the knee’ (2.80). Though the societies of Egypt and Persia are hierarchical, they differ ideologically. The fixed caste structure of Egypt’s culture of hieros nomos comprises a hierarchical specialization of labour,



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which has the priests at the top, followed by the warriors, with the artisans at the bottom. Social status in Egypt is based on one’s social role, which in Egypt’s religious culture places the priests at the top of the hierarchy just beneath the kings. In the social hierarchy of Persia’s culture of nomos phuseōs, social status is not determined by one’s role in society; rather, one’s social role is determined by social standing. Persian hierarchism is a hierarchy of social status determined by proximity to the supreme status of the king as one above all, followed by the Achaemenid clan, the Pasargadaean tribe, the Medes, Elamite Kissians and so on, with the Ionian Greeks at the bottom. The basis of social status or honour in the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is power: the most powerful members of society are those nearest the king and these have the greatest honour next to the supreme dignity of the king, with the king standing above all the rest as all-powerful. In this respect, there is to be discerned a similarity between Sparta and Persia with respect to the timē of the Spartan diarchs (6.56). The Spartan constitution accords them special privileges (gerea), chief among which is the singular ‘power of declaring war on whom they please. In this no Spartan may attempt to oppose their decision, under pain of sacrilege’ (6.56.1). Their other gerea mostly exalt the royal office socially as primus inter pares; these privileges of greater public dinners, front-row seats at the games, elaborate state funerals, etc. place the diarchs among rather than apart from the Spartan homoioi, unlike the Persian royal protocol, which separates the Persian king from the people and elevates him above them as incommensurably superior in godlike status. That the Spartan diarchs do not sit above the law was firmly established by the Lycurgan constitution, which made the diarchs members of a senate, along with twenty-eight elders (the gerousia) (6.58), as well as subject to the censorial powers of the ephorate, which was instrumental in deposing Demaratus (6.66). Also, a law was later passed forbidding both kings taking the army to battle, so that one had to remain in the city (5.75). Indeed, the cultural antagonism between Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism is well illustrated by the example of the two Spartans who came to Persia to give their lives in payment for the injustice of the Spartans having killed the Persian ambassadors, a transgression of the law of Zeus Xenios (Xerxes himself declares that by murdering the heralds the Spartans had ‘overthrown the laws of all humankind’, sugxe/ai ta\ pa/ntwn a0nqrw/pwn no/mima, 7.136.2, my translation). The Spartan emissaries are willing to surrender their lives but refuse to honour the Persian practice of proskynesis. (7.136). The point seems to be that in Sparta honour is not based on the hierarchical principle of power but

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on the egalitarian principle of the Greek culture of nomos basileus, by which all stand free and equal before the law.28

4.4.3.3.2  Masculinity, effeminacy, sexuality and pederasty The cultural polarity of Greeks and Persians in Herodotus is cognizant of the popular Greek cultural stereotype of Persian men as the ‘other’ of the popular stereotype of Greek men. Whereas Greek men are masculine, strong, courage­ous, sexually potent and suitably endowed for sexual penetration, Persian men are weak, cowardly, sexually penetrable effeminates, lacking manly endowment. The popular stereotype appears in Aristagoras’ manipulative misrepresentation of the Persians to the Spartan King Leonidas: ‘the barbarians are not brave … Their mode of warfare is this: bows and short spears. They go into battle wearing trousers and bonnets on their heads’ (5.49; trans. Lincoln 2012: 351). Lincoln has pointed out that the ‘short spears’ of the Persians is brought up again when the Persian Immortals attempt to dislodge the Spartans at Thermopylae with no greater success than the Median contingent, ‘only the same, because they were fighting in a narrow pass, using shorter spears … than the Greeks and they could not make use of their numbers’ (7.211, trans. Lincoln 2012: 351). A comparison with actual spears depicted on reliefs reveals that Herodotus exaggerated the shortness of the Persian spear as ‘a trope for the deficient masculinity of Asia and the phallic superiority of the West’ (Lincoln 2012: 353). There is an element of ‘decadence’ in the Persian adoption of foreign customs that are more leisurely and licentious, providing aesthetic and sensual pleasure, than politically, socially or morally advantageous: Median dress, Egyptian armour and pleasures of every kind (eu0paqei/aj te pantodapa\j), which ‘they are quick to indulge in when they get to know about them – a notable instance [kai\ dh\ kai\] is pederasty, which they learned from the Greeks’ (1.135). Herodotus’ emphasis (kai\ dh\ kai\) on the Persian adoption of the Greek custom of pederasty does not suggest a slur on Persian masculinity; as a social institution, pederasty was an ethnic custom (like the symposium and games) by which the Greeks distinguished themselves as superior to non-Greeks. The emphasis, rather, is on how Persia is the specific mirror Other of the Greeks, non-Greek Greeks, as it were, just as the hierarchic aspect of Spartan society and the ‘slavish’ obedience of the Spartans to their constitution suggests that they are, at least in those respects, the Greek non-Greeks. If there is an implicit critique of the Persians in the customs they prefer to adopt from other nations, it should be interpreted as an allusion to Cyrus’ teaching that in adopting the



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luxurious lifestyle of foreigners, the Persians would grow soft and lose their native ‘hard’ character, which enabled them to conquer and rule the soft peoples in lands of riches. The cultural polarity of the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is to be found, however, in their different concepts of masculinity. If we take Solon’s examples of Tellus, Cleobis and Biton as portraying the Greek idea of masculinity, it is to be found in a patriot’s willingness to sacrifice his life for his polis, a father’s devotion to his oikos, and the willingness of sons to serve and obey their parents. In short, among the Greeks the aretē of men, andreia, is demonstrated by their obedience to nomos. Among Persians, aretē is demonstrated by male potency – a physical display of power in the ability to produce the strength of numbers that is the mark of distinction in the culture of nomos phuseōs: ‘After bravery in battle, manliness is proved above all by producing plenty of sons, and every year the king rewards the person producing the most; they think that quantity constitutes strength’ (1.136.1, trans. Waterfield 1998: 62). By contrast, the Greeks assigned to pederasty the practical value of limiting the number of children (Aristotle, Politics 1272a),29 an overabundance of which would only impoverish the Greek oikos (Plato, Republic 2.372b–c). The tie between the social institution of pederasty and pedagogy in Greek culture is also noticeably absent among the Persians.

4.4.3.3.3  Women and family Every [Persian] man has a number of wives [game/ousi … kouridi/aj gunai~kaj], and a much greater number of concubines [pallaka\j ktw~ntai]. 1.135

The cultural polarity of Greek monogamy and Persian polygamy and of the status of women generally in their respective cultures belongs to the more general cultural polarity of Greeks and barbarians and has its classic expression in Homer’s Iliad in Hera’s opposition to Priam’s harem of fifty wives, which the Greeks would not regard as an oikos. Both Persian concubines (Herodotus uses the Greek word for concubine, pallakē, ‘young girl’) and Greek hetairai (individual mistresses such as Pericles’ Aspasia and the flute girls hired for symposia) were slaves, and both were social institutions. The difference is that Persian concubines are attached to the household for sex and procreation, while the Greek hetairai are kept strictly apart from the oikos, in custom and law. Persian men display the same chauvinistic attitudes towards women as the ‘weaker sex’ as Greek males, as shown by Xerxes’ comment upon hearing of

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the success of Artemisia, who captained the Halicarnassian ship in his navy: ‘My men have turned into women, my women into men’ (8.88). Yet the Persian women in Herodotus (like women in Herodotus generally) have a strength of character equal to such heroines of Greek epic and drama as Penelope, Medea and Lysistrata. The obvious parallel for the bedroom scene of Darius and Atossa, in which the wife proves herself equal to her respectful husband is that of Odysseus and Penelope; Xerxes’ vengeful wife, Amestris, has the murderous capacity of Medea (though that belongs to Medea more as a barbaros); Artemisia’s martial prowess could serve as a model for Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The Massagatean queen, Tomyris, knows no equal among women in Greece or Persia (though her thirst to avenge her slain child is comparable to that of Clytemnestra); her peers are Greek commanders and Persian kings. The source of cultural antagonism between the cultures of Greece and Persia regarding women in Herodotus is ideological and made explicit in the logos of the Persian logioi (1.1–5; SK 2.3.4), followed by the Candaules’ logos (1.7–15): in Greece, wives are not the property of their husbands; in Asia, they are. Among the Persians, this is difficult to see as the women who appear have special status as members of the royal household, and also because the social status of everyone in Persian society is that they are the property – or slave – of the king. In Herodotus, the war between Greeks and Persians is not about women, but it is about the principle that protects the status of women as free members of society, deserving of social respect and in possession of protection under law, and fundamentally as persons in their own right: the right to your own, which is the basis of selfhood, private property, the family, citizenship in the polis, political independence and cultural autonomy in the Greek culture of nomos basileus.

4.4.3.3.4  Education and morality The period of a boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and they are taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth. 1.136.2 What they are forbidden to do they are also forbidden to mention. They consider telling lies more disgraceful than anything else, and, next to that, owning money …. [believing] that a man who owes money is bound also to tell lies. 1.138

Persian education is rudimentary, tribal rather than political. Horsemanship and archery train youth in the essential survival skills of hunting and killing,



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skills necessary to the survival of the family and tribe, of providing food for the family as a hunter and of defending the tribe and triumphing over one’s enemies as a warrior. These tribal skills are common to Persians and Scythians alike, both of Iranian descent, whose cultures share a common naturalism.30 The moral customs that Herodotus singles out by their alterity to Greek culture and practice – the Persian prohibitions against going into debt, telling lies and doing anything they are not allowed even to talk about – reflect, like their religious customs of praying only for king and community, the slavish relationship of ruler and ruled, commoner and noble in Persian society. ‘Truthtelling’ is basically taught by parents to children everywhere as a universal principle of social morality without which social life at any level becomes impossible. It is surprising, really, that Herodotus identifies it as a principle of education, except that it is a natural morality that, when elevated to a cultural principle, becomes the cultural antithesis of the Odyssean virtue of ‘storytelling’. Truth-tellers will be literal-minded by comparison with the intellectual agility of a sophos anēr. It is worthy of note that Darius, the most Odyssean of the Persians, declares truth-telling to be a matter of expediency, which it is at least for the kings. Persian truth-telling is an immature form of rational virtue, childish and slavish compared with the freedom of thought and command of reason in the Greek cultural tradition of poets, philosophers, legislators and sages such as Solon and Pythagoras, and above all the sophists. It is precisely this more sophisticated Greek paideia in poetry, logic, rhetoric and the art of argument taught by the sophists, however, that the Persian logioi appear to possess, as do others, all of whom are associated with the royal court: ambassadors, judges, counsellors (Atossa, Mardonius, Artabanus) and, above all, the kings themselves, especially Deioces, Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, whose intellectual sophistication is far beyond the ken of the tribal education of the Persians accounted for by Herodotus. The consistency with which Herodotus represents the culture of the Persian court as possessing an intellectual sophistication equal to that of the Greek and especially Athenian aristocracy compels the reader to suppose a higher, more formal education for the Persian nobility, such as could be gained by entertaining itinerant sophistai such as Solon, who visited the court of Croesus, or Demodocus, the doctor who conspired with Atossa to persuade Darius to invade Greece, from whom Herodotus may have learned something of the life of the court. But Herodotus makes no mention of any such formal training occurring in the royal court, and the only group who might be characterized as intellectuals are the Magi who serve as royal judges. The absence of explanation for the intellectual sophistication of the Persian nobility, especially

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of their expertise in the teachings and methods of the sophists, obviously points to the discrepancy between what Herodotus learned about the Persians from his sources and what he attributed to the Persians as the sophistic Other of the Greeks.

4.4.3.3.5 Symposium If an important decision is to be made, they discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk. 1.133

The Persians share with the Greeks the social institution of the symposium. As a forum of debate, the Persian symposium is modelled upon the fifth-century Greek symposium attended by sophists, the kind of symposium Herodotus would have attended in Athens and elsewhere and undoubtedly hosted himself with the enormous sum allegedly awarded for his work by the Athenians. Yet the Persians are not said to have borrowed the custom from the Greeks; their respective symposia are in fact reverse mirror images of one another. In the agonistic culture of the Greek polis, causes for celebratory symposia are personal victories in the dramatic competitions of the Great Dionysia or in the Olympic Games and so on. Among the Persians, the greatest reason to host is to celebrate the day of one’s natural birth (1.133.1). The naturalism expressed in birthday celebrations is also found in dining customs, where the Greeks observe a limit that the Persians find unnatural. For them, nature provides the rule to nomos (1.133) and they eat as much as they like. Historically, the symposium – as an institutionalized banquet in which wine, food and song are supplied by a royal or noble host to guests as a sign of social status, privilege and responsibility – originated with the rise of civilization itself in Mesopotamia as the oldest of royal institutions, which kings shared with their nobles and visiting dignitaries. What the Greeks added to the symposium in which guest and host (xenioi) were foreign to one other was the nomos of Zeus Xenios, a lawful relationship between host and guest that protected each from harm by the other and made foreign relations between nations possible. (This is the custom transgressed by the abductors of heroines in the logos of the Persian logioi, SK 2.3.4). The symposium would have been brought to Greece in the bronze age by the Mycenaean kings and, following the collapse of Mycenaean



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civilization, re-established itself among the aristocracies of the Greek poleis by the seventh century, probably initiated as the proper social setting of Homeric recitations, and then of the lyric poets as well.31 A more lavish, quasi-royal symposium was adopted by the Greek tyrants aspiring to imitate the royal symposium of Lydian kings, such as Croesus would have hosted for itinerant Greek sophistai, according to Herodotus. The most lavish private symposium ever hosted by a Greek would seem to be that of the wealthy Theban Attaginus, to ingratiate himself with the Persians, which exhausted his resources (9.16). In Herodotus, the Persian banquet becomes a reverse mirror image of the Greek symposium in which the social activity of drinking goes hand in hand with the intellectual and political activity of debating. In the royal symposia hosted by the Great King or his local governors, the alterity of Persian practice to the Greek symposium can be explained by the lack of distinction in the king’s court of public and private: the site of social drinking and conversation is also the site of political debate and decision-making. Among the Greeks, the agora of the polis is the site of public life where public issues are debated and political decisions made, whereas the social symposia occur in private oikoi. Thus among the Persians we have the dual process of debating issues only when drunk, as would take place in the agōn logōn of the Greek symposium, and of vetting decisions only when sober, as would take place in the agora as the locus of political assembly of the polis. Generally, there is no better image of how the Persians mirror the Greeks in their cultural and intellectual sophistication than in Herodotus’ account of the symposium hosted for the Persians by the wealthy Theban Attaginus (9.16). In the Persian symposia, or wherever the debates hosted by the Persian kings are set, the Persians are clearly being depicted as modelled upon the Greek sophists. And the most apparent reason for Herodotus doing this is that it enables him to represent in the ideological conflict of Greeks and Persians the conflict of the same ideological principles and policies as in the debates of fifth-century Greeks caught up in a seemingly endless self-destructive war with one another. When Thersander’s Persian dinner companion laments ‘because we are constrained by necessity, we continue to take orders from our commander’, he touches on a core element of the cultural polarity of the Greeks and Persians: the freedom of the Greeks versus the despotism of the Persians.

4.4.3.4  Constitutional polarity: Isonomia vs erōs turannidos The cultural polarity of political constitutions on the upper axis of the cultural grid is more complicated than the cultural polarity of hieratic divine kingship

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(Egypt) and tribal non-divine kingship (Scythia) on the lower axis. The constitutional polarity of the rule of one (monarchy and tyranny) and the rule of many (democracy) is complicated by Sparta’s constitution of the rule of the few (oligarchy). The polarity of the constitutional rule of law (Athens and Sparta) and the unconstitutional rule of force (tyranny) is complicated by Persia’s constitutional despotism. Nonetheless, it is clear that the fundamental cultural polarity is between the embodiment of isonomia in the rule of law of Sparta and Athens and the embodiment of erōs turannidos in Greek tyranny and Persian monarchy. That Persia’s constitutional monarchy is regarded by Herodotus as a form of tyranny is made clear by his account of its origins in Deioces’ erōs turannidos (1.96.2) and by how Otanes characterizes the monarch (mou/narxon 3.80.2) as a tyrant (a1ndra tu/rannon 3.80.4) in the constitutional debate. Otanes rejects monarchy on the basis that absolute power corrupts even the best of men. Darius’ argument that an ideal oligarchy and an ideal democracy will inevitably degenerate into tyranny as a form of monarchy (Darius’ always says monarch, never tyrant) supposes the same principle. The truth of human nature in Herodotus’ account is that it contains the natural impulse or inner compulsion of erōs turannidos, which inevitably gives rise to nomos phuseōs, the rule of nature in the rule of force, which not even the best of persons can resist, and against which the only remedy is isonomia, the equal subjection of all to the rule of law. Sparta’s constitution represents the limited perfection of isonomia; Athens’ democratic constitution represents its most realized form. While there is no constitutional distinction between monarchy and tyranny as the rule of one, there is a fundamental cultural polarity between the political despotism of the kingdoms of Asia and Egypt and the tyrannies of Greece on the one hand, and the freedom of Sparta, Athens and the Scythians on the other. More generally, there is a cultural antagonism between the natural freedom prized by the Scythian ethnos under the rule of their tribal chieftains and the political freedom prized by the Greek ethnos under the rule of law on the one hand and, on the other, the slavish obedience to despotic rule among the ethnea of Asia and Egypt. It is within this fundamental polarity of cultures devoted to freedom in Europe and cultures rooted in despotism in Asia (as including the Asian promontories of Egypt and Africa on Herodotus’ map of the world) that there arises the cultural antagonism between the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs and the Greek culture of nomos basileus, between the rule of the law of nature whereby right belongs to might and the sovereign rule of law whereby might belongs to right.



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4.4.4  Cultural antagonism of Greek and Persian ideologies The cultural antagonism of Greeks and Persians is rooted in the cultural antithesis of their ideologies. In Herodotus, the Persian ideology has a sophistic character that is foreign to the Achaemenid ideology of the Persians. In certain respects, the ideology of the Persians in Herodotus more resembles that of the Athenians in Thucydides than that of the Achaemenid reliefs and inscriptions.

4.4.4.1  Persocentrism and Hellenocentrism We know from our study of the ideology of Persian kingship and empire that the Persian kings had a Persocentric perspective in which they were at the centre and the Greeks were at the periphery (SK 3.5.2), just as the Greeks had a Hellenocentric perspective which places Greece at the centre and Persia at the periphery. But the ethnocentric ideology that Herodotus attributes to the Persians (1.134) is of a different order from that which is historically true of either the Greeks or the Persians. The cultural ideology of Persocentrism differs from Hellenocentrism in Herodotus in that it is an institutionalized perspective; second, it differs from Achaemenid Persocentrism in that it is a constructed perspective, based partly on Herodotus’ limited knowledge of Achaemenid Persocentrism, partly on a sophistic subjectivity that regards itself as ‘the measure of all things’, which Herodotus attributes to the Persians. Third, it is an ideology more in keeping with the Athenocentric ideology of imperialism espoused by Pericles’ ‘Funeral Oration’ in Thucydides than with the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire at the root of Achaemenid Persocentrism. What lies at the root of both Persocentric imperialism in Herodotus and Athenocentric imperialism in Thucydides is the idea that ‘might’ defines ‘right’. Pericles offers up as proof of the superiority of Athens in every way to her subject states as well as Sparta and her allies – that is, to the rest of Greece – that Athens holds greater sway in her command of the sea and of the states under her command. Power rather than justice, tyranny rather than autonomy, the self-advantage of Athens rather the common good of Greece, is what his apology of Athenian imperialism rests upon in the end. His speech is the antithesis of that of the Athenian speech made on the eve of the battle of Plataea: the Athens that declares itself ‘the school of Greece’ is the cultural antithesis of the Athens that Herodotus proclaimed ‘the saviour of Greece’. The same can be said for the justification of Persocentric imperialism in Herodotus, which knows nothing of the Achaemenid theology of kingship and empire,

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which aims at the salvation of the human community by way of its restoration to the justice and happiness of life under the governance of Ahuramazda. The Persocentric perspective in Herodotus is hierarchical, based on and demanding the imperial subjection of others. It is from on high that Persia can regard itself as the centre; as the one ruling over the many, it can regard itself as the measure of all: wonderfully symbolized by Herodotus in the image of Xerxes surveying the whole of Greece and Asia, from a throne mounted high on a hill overlooking the Hellespont on the eve of hoped-for world conquest (7.44–6). What Herodotean Persocentrism and Thucydidean Athenocentrism have in common with the Protagorean teaching that ‘man is the measure of all things’ is that there is no other principle by which it is justified – it finds its ground in itself, in its own ability to exercise the power of ‘measurement’. There is no objective basis for the measuring power of subjectivity (one neither looks to ‘the end’ nor ‘the good’ as supplied by the gods of Achaemenid or Greek religion), only to one’s self, one’s ability to determine for one’s self what is good as what is best for one’s self, what is in one’s own self-interest. Of course, what inevitably arises from self-interest is conflict with the self-interests of others, the war of conflicting subjectivities, each declaring itself the measure of others; in sophistic circles, this took the form of the agōn logōn. In Herodotus, it takes the form of warring ideologies. Hellenocentrism is an ideological consequence of the rise of the Panhellenic ideology of Hellenicity in response to the Persian threat of world domination. Its espousal by Athens is couched in terms of their common opposition to the Persians as the enemy of all Greece (8.144.2). The common religion and common way of life of which the Athenians speak constitutes the culture of nomos basileus, the embodiment of divine nomos in the sovereign rule of law in the autonomous polis. As such, the Hellenocentric ideology of Hellenicity and Panhellenism, based on a common adherence to a belief in divine justice and the rule of law, is the cultural antithesis of the ideology of Persocentrism, based on power and the rule of others. What the ideological antithesis of Greek and Persian ethnocentrism reveals about the antagonism between the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs in Herodotus is that it is really based on the antagonism of an archaic belief in divine justice and the rule of law as a unifying ideology among the Greeks and the sophistic doctrines of homo mensura and that by ‘a law of nature’ the powerful are justified in their rule of the weak that are championed by the Persians in a manner prefiguring the Athenians in Thucydides.



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4.4.4.2  Persian and Greek cultural relativism The sophistic subjectivity that regards itself as ‘the measure of all things’ that underlies Persian ethnocentrism underlies Persian cultural relativism as well. We have already established (SK 2.2.7) that the cultural relativism of Herodotus’ teaching, that every ethnos prefers its own nomoi to those of others (3.38.1), is not that of the sophist Protagoras’ teaching, that ‘whatever each city judges to be just and fine, these things in fact are just and fine for it, so long as it holds those opinions’. In the Histories, the cultural relativism of Herodotus, which looks to justice and equality under the rule of law as a basis of cultural judgment, is that of the Greeks; the cultural relativism of Protagoras, which has the sophistic subjectivity of homo mensura as its basis, is that of the Persians. A principal difference between the upper and lower axes of the cultural grid is that the Greeks and Persians are open to adopting the customs of other peoples, while the Scythians and Egyptians are not. That is to say, the Persians and Greeks are more cosmopolitan than Scythia and Egypt, which matches what we know of the Greek and Persian cultures historically. In Herodotus, both Greeks and Persians adopt customs that they regard as desirable: the Athenians adopt Libyan dress as befitting their cult statue of Athena; the Persians adopt Median dress because they find it attractive. In their openness to foreign customs, the Greeks and Persians demonstrate a tendency towards cultural relativism that contradicts the Herodotean principle of ethnocentrism: that every people prefer their own customs. But then, nearly every culture borrows customs from others without Herodotus commenting upon it as anything extraordinary. It does not seem to matter whether customs are indigenous or adopted, it is generally the case that people naturally prefer their own customs as they do their own children (even if adopted), simply because they are their own. (Herodotus himself does not strictly abide by his teaching, as he singles out the occasional custom for praise or blame.) Yet, this is a practice that Herodotus highlights as more predominant among the Persians than any other ethnos: ‘the Persians adopt more foreign customs than anyone else’. The world is a cultural marketplace from which the Persians can choose whatever they find desirable. Within their empire, the Persians have at their command and subject to their rule a cosmopolitan array of customs from all the cultures of the world. As is the case with Persocentrism, cultural relativism is institutionalized as an ideological principle among the Persians. To prove that ‘this opinion of one’s own customs is universal’, Herodotus turns to Persian practice and cites Darius’ experiment in cultural relativism, the sophistic character of which has already

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been established (SK 2.2.7). The commercial crassness and cultural insensitivity of Darius’ experiment – the Greeks and Indians are equally horrified by his offer to pay them for switching funerary rites – indicate that in the Persian perspective the rites have no integrity of their own; their value is only to those who practise them. This is exactly how the Athenians represent the Persians to the Greeks – as having no sense of holiness or justice that should have prevented them from destroying the temples and statues of their gods. Of course, it was Cambyses’ acts of sacrilege against the Egyptians that prompted Herodotus’ discussion of custom at 3.38, which he can only explain as madness (3.38.2). Among the Greeks, there is an openness to foreign customs, but not of the same order or magnitude as practised by the Persians (Herodotus makes no comparison to the Greeks on this point). Most of Greek foreign customs are adopted from Egypt in the area of religion, and there are certain national customs that make up the Greek culture of nomos basileus that they are willing to die for in the belief that they have an absolute value and are universally true of human nature, such as the right to one’s own. In the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs, customs are the sophists’ human conventions whose true origin is human nature, the human capacity to originate the laws and customs by which humans live, a human nature whose capacity for self-determination is that of the potency of nature itself as the source of erōs turannidos. For Herodotus and the Greeks, nomoi are laws and traditions ultimately derived from the divine, as represented by Pindar’s phrase ‘custom, king of all’ (no/mon pa/ntwn basile/a 3.38.4), from where we take the name of nomos basileus for Greek culture.

4.4.4.3  Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism We have already discussed Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism as antithetical principles of society (SK 4.4.3.3.1) and we touched on them again in our discussion of hierarchical centre and periphery in Persocentrism and Hellenocentrism (SK 4.4.4.1). It is also an aspect of the constitutional polarity of Greek isonomia, of all being equally subject to the rule of law, and Persian monarchia, where are all are subject to the rule of one who is above the law (SK 4.4.3.4). It is the sophistic character of Persian hierarchism that we address now, whereby it differs from Egyptian hierarchism on the one hand and Greek egalitarianism on the other. The social hierarchism of Egypt reflects their cultural unification of the divine and natural as a world of sacred necessity, without human freedom. One is born into one’s natural place in the hieratic order and even one’s afterlife



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is predetermined. Greek egalitarianism reflects the cultural separation of the human from the divine on one side and the natural on the other. On the side of nature is the necessity that holds the Egyptians in their place; on the side of the divine is a freedom of self-determination that the human seeks to emulate and is institutionalized in hero worship, the greatest cult being that of Heracles the mortal hero. Nature is the source of inequality: one is born into the aristoi or the demos. Law is the source of equality, and it was in their political development, that is, in the social evolution of the polis as a community of citizens centred upon the agora as a place of public assembly, that the ideology of egalitarianism evolved among the Greeks, most fully in the homoioi or ‘equals’ of Sparta and the ‘isoi’ of Athens.32 In these communities, the common law as agreed upon ‘in the middle’ of the polis, by the assembly in the agora, rules the citizens; all are equally subject to the law. It is this ‘despotic’ aspect of the law of the egalitarian polis – nomos despotēs, as Demaratus calls it – that gives offence to the radical sophists, especially Callicles,33 for whom the stronger should rule over the weak according to the law of nature, nomos phuseōs (Pl. Gorgias 483). For Plato’s Callicles, the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs is inherently inegalitarian and individualistic, the antithesis of the egalitarian communitarianism of the Greek polis. What underlies the argument of Callicles (and other sophistic arguments that construe nomos as human convention) is the sophistic principle of human subjectivity, homo mensura. Persian hierarchism, in society, state, and empire, is founded upon the elevation of the king above the people and above the laws and customs of the ethnos. The sophistic principle of homo mensura finds its fullest expression in the Great King, who is the measure of all things in the Persian Empire, nearly the whole world: he resides at the centre and at the top, above all. As remarked upon before, Herodotus’ paints the dark shadow of hubris in the details of Xerxes’ transgressive crossing of the Hellespont, the natural boundary between Asia and Greece (7.44–5), followed by the auspicious greeting from a lowly Greek on the other side, which mocks the Persian elevation of their earthly ruler to the status of a god by pointing out that, were he really a god, he wouldn’t need an army to impose his will upon the world: Why, Zeus, do you disguise yourself as a Persian man and take the name of Xerxes instead of Zeus? If you want to devastate Greece, why do you bring the whole of mankind with you, when you could do it yourself? 7.56

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4.4.4.4  Persian determinism and Greek providence Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil. Cyrus, 9.122.3, trans. Godley (1920: adapted) Indeed it was not we who performed this exploit; it was the gods and the heroes, who were jealous that one man in his godless pride should be king of Asia and of Europe too – a man who does not know the difference between sacred and profane, who burns and destroys the statues of the gods, and dared to lash the sea with whips and bind it with fetters. Themistocles, 8.109.3

Where the Persians look to nature as the source of their own might (though their negligence of Cyrus’ teaching predicts their ruin), the Greeks look to the gods as the source of the divine justice that punished Persian hubris with defeat (though Herodotus portrays Themistocles as a Persosophist in his own right (SK 5.6.3), here he presents to the Greeks their own belief). As discussed elsewhere (SK 4.4.3.2–3, 4.4.4.5), there belongs to the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs a naturalism that agrees with the sophistic teaching that by the law of nature the strong rule the weak. The crude simplicity of Ionian environmental determinism where topography and climate determine whether a culture is despotic or free is not what Cyrus is expressing. The property of a hard land that makes a people strong and capable of ruling over others is natural necessity; the property of a soft land that makes a people soft and capable of being ruled over by others is civilized luxury. It may seem similar to the teaching one finds in Plato’s Republic 2 of the ‘city of needs’ and the ‘city of desires’, which he compares as a healthy body to a diseased one. The health of the Arcadian city depends wholly upon living within the limits of the community’s natural resources by limiting human desires to natural needs. In such a city, Socrates finds an image of natural justice. Cyrus does not wish to limit the Persians to the city of needs; what he seeks is the city of desires, of pleonexia and of war. It is not to avoid war that Cyrus advises the Persians to rule others from their native country, but to wage it. He does not advise the Persians to observe a natural limit to their appetites, but rather to give the illimitable erōs turannidos full rein. Whereas Solon teaches Croesus the need to observe a limit to one’s ambition as discernible to reason (look to the end), Cyrus teaches the Persians to observe the rule of necessity in their natural pursuit of unlimited power. If one wants to rule the world, one must first rule one’s self in the same way as one is ruled by nature, by the whip of natural necessity, by which the Great King drives his army into battle, and bids the Hellespont to do his bidding.



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4.4.4.5  Persian naturalism and Greek idealism Darius … asked who the Athenians were, and then, on being told, called for his bow. He took it, set an arrow on the string, shot it up into the air and cried, ‘Grant, O God, that I may punish the Athenians.’ 5.105 Then sunrise came, and Xerxes poured wine into the sea out of a golden goblet and, with his face turned to the sun, prayed that no chance might prevent him from conquering Europe or turn him back before he reached its utmost limits. His prayer ended, he flung the cup into the Hellespont and with it a golden bowl and a Persian acinaces, or short sword. I cannot say for certain if he intended the things which he threw into the water to be an offering to the Sun-god; perhaps they were – or it may be that were a gift to the Hellespont itself, to show he was sorry for having caused it to be lashed with whips. 7.54 And now tell Mardonius, that so long as the sun keeps his present course in the sky,* we Athenians will never make peace with Xerxes. On the contrary, we shall oppose him unremittingly, putting our trust in the help of the gods and heroes whom he despised, whose temples and statues he destroyed with fire. [*Cf. Heraclitus (B94): ‘the sun will not transgress his measures; otherwise the Furies, ministers of Justice, will find him out’ (B94).34] 8.143.2

These passages sum up the fundamental contrariety between the ideology of Greece and that of Persia. In Herodotus, the Persian worship of nature is a mere reflection of the Persosophist ideology of nomos phuseōs: the human worships in nature the image of its own limitless potency – literally the target of Darius’ arrow, ‘the sky is the limit’; the truth of the relationship is revealed in the ambivalence of Xerxes’ despotic expectation that nature serve the boundless ambition of erōs turannidos in human nature – it is not perfectly clear whether Herodotus sets out the possibility that Xerxes is atoning for his sin against the divinity of the Hellespont, or, merely retracting his punishment of the divinity for having sinned against the King. On the Greek side, Herodotus portrays the Greek devotion to the Olympian gods as reflecting a human reason grounded in the idealism of divine justice (nomos dikaios) and equality (isonomia), and the observation of limit in the universality of the right to one’s own, expressed in the Hellenic ideology of the sovereign rule of law, nomos basileus. (It should be noted that Herodotus’ naturalist reading of the Achaemenid religion practised by Darius and Xerxes is not wholly off the mark. Root’s (2013)

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most recent account of Achaemenid monumental art lays great emphasis on its use of natural imagery to convey a cosmic sense of divine potency (Root 2013: 58, SK 4.4.5.1).)

4.4.5  Sophistic ideology of Persian kingship and empire The ideology of kingship and empire that Herodotus ascribes to the Persians is not that of the Achaemenid ideology based on Ahuramazdan theology, but that of the sophistic view that law, government and empire have their origin in erōs turannidos, the natural lust for power present in human nature, and their justification in nomos phuseōs, the law of nature by which the strong should rule the weak, and seek to increase their power as far as possible. The sophistic ideology of Persian kingship and empire is supported by the natural religion that Herodotus ascribes to the Persians, whose Zeus appears to sanction the Persian campaign to match their rule of the earth with Zeus’ rule of the sky.

4.4.5.1  Sophistic ideology of Persian kingship On Mount Bisitun, with its craggy peaks to the sky, its eastward-looking face, and its watery stream trickling down the very carving of Darius to emerge in the oasis pool below, Darius is portrayed as channelling the cosmic force of earth, mountain, sky, sun, water. Given the spectacular setting selected for the monument, Darius also oversees the panorama of distant purview sweeping east–west contingencies of empire. The Persepolis Apadana achieves a similar force of panoramic potency within a built environment redolent with crenel­ lations that echo in man-made form the multiple-pointed rocky crests of Bisitun and the crenelated crown of Persian kingship. Root (2013: 58)

The archaeological evidence for the Elamite origins of Persian kingship in the early period of Anshan kings (from Teispes to Cambyses I) indicates that it was based on the Mesopotamian model of non-divine kingship, to which Cyrus attributed elements of the Assyro-Babylonian model of exalted imperial non-divine kingship, and Camybses attributed elements of the Egyptian model of divine kingship (SK 3.4.1.4). Darius refounded the Persian model of exalted imperial semi-divine kingship by accommodating the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire, which became the basis of the Achaemenid ideology of kingship and empire in place in Herodotus’ time (SK 3.4.1.5).



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Herodotus appears to know little, or else has suppressed what he may have heard, about the royal inscriptions and reliefs of Susa, Ecbatana, Bisitun, Persepolis and Pasargadae. There is no mention of Persepolis or Pasargadae, the new capitals founded by Cyrus and Darius, in the Histories. Herodotus’ history of Persia is unfamiliar with the historical development of the Persian model of kingship; what he presents is a constructed history which uses Median folklore concerning Deioces to model a sophistic ideology by which to explain the Achaemenid ideology of kingship established by Darius (SK 2.2.10.2). Unlike the monarchies of archaic Greece, preserved in the limited powers of Sparta’s diarchy, the Persian constitution enthrones the monarch above the law by which he rules over those subject to him, a principle made explicit by the ruling of royal judges (3.31). In the constitutional debate, Darius justifies the constitution founded by Deioces on the hypothetical basis of an ideal individual able to subject the erōs turannidos to the rule of justice. Sophistic in style and substance, Darius’ speech is a polished example of his own sophistic teaching on the expediency of telling a lie and serves perfectly as royal propaganda justifying the royal protocol of exaltation by which the Persosophist king conceals his erōs turannidos beneath the robes of justice. As despotēs doulōn, best exemplified by the despotic cruelty of Astyages and Cambyses, the Persosophist king is Callicles’ caged ‘young lion’ who comes of age and breaks free of the nomoi that bind him: he tramples underfoot our codes and juggleries, our charms and ‘laws’, which are all against nature; our slave rises in revolt and shows himself our master, and there dawns the full light of natural justice [to\ th~j fu/sewj di/kaion]. Pl. Gorgias 484a–b, trans. Lamb (1967)

All the speeches in the constitutional debate make ‘secular’ arguments, without recourse to the gods or divine principle of governance. The account of human nature as naturally prone to lawless violence agrees with that which Thucydides saw exposed in the Corcyrean revolution of 427, which occurred in the final years of Herodotus preparing his work for publication: As people’s lives kept pace with the tumultuous changes in the city, human nature came to predominate over human laws (kai\ tw~n no/mwn krath/sasa h( a0nqrwpei/a fu/sij); human nature, which habitually breaks laws anyway, showed itself in its purest form as eager to be above the law as the enemy of all authority. Th. 3.84.2, trans. Blanco and Roberts (1998)

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The erōs turannidos of human nature is not of itself a sophistic principle. Herodotus agrees with Thucydides and the sophists that human nature is the source of an unlimited ambition that proves transgressive of nomos. He further agrees with the moderate sophists that religion provides the necessary support to human laws to sustain them against the natural individualism of a Thrasymachus or Callicles that proves destructive of the polis. Even the radical sophists saw the need of man to ‘invent’ religion in order to control the natural impulse of rebellion against the limitations of nomos (for Callicles, the conventions of religion and morality are the chains from which the strong must break free to establish the nomos phuseōs). He disagrees with the radical sophists that true justice is the rule of the strong over the weak and argues that it lies in isonomia, the equal subjection of strong and weak to the sovereign rule of law; and he disagrees with the moderate sophists that religion is itself a human convention and argues that the gods exist. Unlike the sophists, Herodotus is unwilling to let the erōs turannidos of human nature become the basis of human institutions and way of life, which he represents as those of the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs. Rather, it is the sovereign rule of nomos basileus – the nomos of Hesiod’s Zeus Dikaios – that sustains the rule of law among the Greeks in Herodotus (and which fails to do so in Thucydides). The laws that institute isonomia in the constitutions of Sparta and Athens are not merely the human work of Lycurgus, Solon and Clisthenes, but also that of the gods. In Herodotus’ view, which generally is a traditionalist outlook enlightened by the religious rationalism of the natural philosophers, such as those expressed by Xenophon, Anaximander and Heraclitus, and sharpened by debate with the humanist teachings of sophists, such as those expressed by Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon and the Anonymous Iamblicus, the gods of the Egyptians, Greeks and all other peoples of the world really do exist, though perhaps not really in the imaginative form in which the poets conceived them. The divine expresses itself in Herodotus by way of tisis as a punishment of the hubris of transgressing nomos. Herodotus agrees with Pindar that nomos is basileus pantōn, ‘king of all, immortals and mortals alike.’ For Herodotus, history proves that the gods still preside over human affairs and it is they, as Themistocles is wise enough to point out in the end, to whom the preservation of the culture of nomos basileus belongs. In his account of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, Herodotus points repeatedly to the role of divine intervention. For example, the solar eclipse that occurs just as Xerxes is leaving Sardis for Greece is favourably interpreted by the Magi: ‘They said that the god was foretelling the abandonment by the Greeks of



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their towns and cities because in their view the sun prophetically symbolized the Greeks, and the moon themselves’ (7.37; trans. Waterfield). Given that it is to the sun that Xerxes makes his prayer for a successful conquest of Greece at the Hellespont, the interpretation of the Magi is ingenious. The sun which represents the Greeks cannot be the natural deity to whom Xerxes prays, but the Olympian deity to whom the Athenians refer when they declare that, as long as the sun holds its course, they will never surrender – which we have glossed with Heraclitus’ maxim that what keeps the sun on its course is divine justice. The interpretation of the Magi implies that since the sun appears to have abandoned its natural place in the sky, the Greeks will abandon their land to the Persians. The prophecy comes true, but not as they think. It is the exceptional example of Athens that proves the Persian interpretation false – it is with complete trust in the ideal nature of their Olympian gods that the Athenians can abandon their polis to the Persians, a trust repaid with a victory engineered by Themistocles, cunning enough to give the credit to where his fellow-Greeks believe it belongs, not to human reason but to divine justice. The Olympian sun whose eclipse assured the Persians of imminent victory had deceived them: it kept its course after all.

4.4.5.2  Sophistic ideology of Persian imperialism In my opinion, nature herself (h9 fu/sij au0th\) proclaims the fact that it is right for the better to have advantage of the worse, and the abler of the feebler. It is obvious in many cases that this is so, not only in the animal world, but in the states and races, collectively, of men – that right has been decided to consist in the sway and advantage of the stronger over the weaker (ou3tw to\ di/kaion kekritai, to\n krei/ttw tou~ h3ttonoj a1rxein kai ple/on e1xein). Pl. Gorgias, 483d, trans. Woodhead (1973: 266, adapted)

The sophistic ideology of Persian imperialism is presented by Herodotus in the form of sophistic debate (agōn logōn) of opposed logoi (gnwme/wn a0ntie/wn, 7.10.a.1) hosted by Xerxes (7.8–11). In the absence of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire, Herodotus has Xerxes drape the Persian ideology of imperialism in the religion of Zeus phusikos: We will make Persia’s boundaries one with the sky of Zeus [tw~| Dio\j ai0qe/ri]. No land that the sun beholds will border ours, but I will make all into one country … Thus the guilty and the innocent will alike bear the yoke of slavery [dou&lion zugo\n]. 7.8c, trans. Godley (1920, adapted)

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The Persian Zeus of nature is not Hesiod’s Zeus who established the nomos dikaios, the law that humankind should live not by the law of nature but by the law of justice. The Persian Zeus is the law of nature, nomos phuseōs. The speech of Mardonius that follows makes clear that the erōs turannidos from which the Persian ideology of imperialism stems knows no limit and requires no justification other than the natural right of the strong to hold sway over the weak: [We] have defeated and enslaved the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and many other great nations, who did us no injury, but merely to extend the boundaries of our empire [du/namin proskta~sqai boulo/menoi]. 7.9.2

Xerxes’ equation of limitless human ambition with divine rule looks ahead, as it were, to the sophistic ideology by which the Athenians justify their thirst for power in Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue: We believe it of the gods, and we know it for sure of men, that under some permanent compulsion of nature [dia\ panto\j u9po\ fu/sewj a0nagkai/aj] wherever they can rule, they will [ou[ a2n krath|~, a1rxein]. Th. 5.105.2; trans. Hammond

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‘Sophist Kings’ is, of course, an allusion to the ‘Philosopher King’ of Plato’s Republic. Like Plato’s philosopher king, Herodotus’ sophist kings are men of formidable intellect, possessing the ability to craft a political ideology and to see it realized in the world, principally by their command of what Protagoras calls ‘the political art’, by which he means the art of persuasion. The difference between them is that the philosopher king holds power to administer justice, whereas the sophist kings administer justice as an exercise in power. Under the heading ‘Sophist Kings’, we examine the Iranian kings of Media and Persia, as well as the Greek tyrants and medized generals, who adopted the Persosophist ideology of power and effectively reigned – or aspired to reign – as sophist kings in their own states or even all of Greece. But first we shall place these individuals within the broader context of other ‘Persosophists’ who appear in the Histories, all of whom are Persian royals or royal officials, except the Persosophist mythic hero Paris, who appears in the logos of the ‘learned Persians’.

5.1  Persosophists in Herodotus Herodotus’ portrayal of the Persian logioi as sophists establishes a profile that identifies the characterization of other Persians as ‘sophists’ as well, which we might describe as the profile of a ‘Persosophist’. It is chiefly the employment of sophistic reasoning in the service of self-interest that characterizes the Persosophist in Herodotus. The Persosophist profile immediately established in the characterization of the Persian logioi fits the characterization of Paris as a hero who self-justifies his abuse of nomos xenios; it also fits the characterization

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of the Persian ambassadors who resemble the Persian logioi in their knowledge and rhetorical use of Greek myth and the royal judges who resemble the Persian logioi in their use of forensic argument. Atossa and Mardonius exemplify the role of Persosophist as counsellor by their rhetorical appeal to self-interest in arguments advancing the cause of imperialism. The most notable Persosophists among the Persians are the Iranian kings who succeed to the throne of ‘sophist king’ established by Deioces – who scholars agree is largely Herodotus’ invention – the archetype of the sophist king. Undoubtedly, however, the two master Persosophists of the Histories are Darius, the greatest of the Persian sophist kings, and his Greek counterpart, Themistocles, the greatest of medized Greek tyrants and generals characterized by their betrayal the Greek ideology of nomos basileus for the Persosophist ideology of nomos phuseōs.

5.1.1  Persosophist hero: Paris of Troy The Persian logioi enter Paris’ abduction of Helen on the Asian and therefore Persian side of the forensic ledger, and characterize him as a ‘Persian’ sophist hero. His calculated contempt for nomos, based on his epistemic certainty (epistamenos pantōs) that there would be no retribution for his transgression of nomos xenios, demonstrates a kinship with the views held by the radical sophists such as Thrasymachus and Callicles, advocating the rule of self-interest and the subjection of the rule of law to a law of nature.

5.1.2  Persosophist ambassadors Like the Persian informants whom Herodotus cites as the source of the account that ‘Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek’ (6.54, my translation), the Persian ambassadors to Argos demonstrate an unlikely knowledge of Greek myth similar to that of the Persian logioi. Their knowledge of the myth of Perseus enables the ambassadors to argue for a common ancestry of Argive Greeks and Persians as the basis for maintaining their neutrality when Persia invaded mainland Greece. Their argument is not unlike that by which the Persian logioi advance their argument on the basis of Greek myth, showing a similar mastery of the sophistic art of persuasion in service of self-interest (7.150).



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5.1.3  Persosophist judges: Magi as royal judges (basilēioi dikastai) In the Achaemenid royal inscriptions Old Persian dāta- is used in a dual sense. In texts of Darius I … all the references are to the king’s law, by which order was established and guaranteed in his empire (DB I.23: ‘these countries obeyed my law’; DNa 21–22=DSe 20–21=XPh 18–19: ‘my law – that held them (firm)’; DSe 37–39 ‘my law – of that they are afraid’). In two instances in Xerxes’ so-called ‘daiva inscription’, however, the law of Ahura Mazdā … is mentioned (‘obey that law which Auramazdā has established’; the man who obeys ‘both becomes happy while living and blessed when dead’; XPh 49–56; Kent, Old Persian, pp. 151–2). Both these meanings, ‘king’s law’ and ‘divine law’, recurred elsewhere. In the royal decree of Artaxerxes I (465–25 B.C.E.) quoted in chapter 7 of the Book of Ezra ‘the law (dāṯā) of your God (i.e., Yahweh)’ and ‘the law of the king’ (dāṯā dī malkā) are mentioned side by side. Other evidence in the Old Testament confirms this dual meaning; it suffices to mention only the famous immutable ‘law of the Medes and the Persians’ (Daniel 6:9, 6:13, 6:16; Esther 1:19). Schmitt (1994)

In the inscriptions of Darius, the king’s decree is law (dāta), a practice reflected in the biblical stories of Daniel and Esther, set in the Achaemenid period but which in their final form resemble the ancient Greek novels of the early imperial period. The Book of Esther begins with the Persian queen being summoned by the king to appear before the royal court ‘wearing her royal crown, in order to display her beauty to the people and the officers; for she was indeed a beautiful woman’ (Esther 1:10–11). Demonstrating an independence of mind like that of the wife of Candaules (Hdt. 1.11), the queen refuses, which ‘greatly incensed the king, and he grew hot with anger’ (Esther 1:12). Then the king conferred with his wise men versed in misdemeanours [laws, dāt];1 for it was royal custom to consult all who were versed in law and religion … He asked them, ‘What does the law require to be done with Queen Vashti for disobeying the command of King Ahasuerus [Xerxes I or Artaxerxes II] …?’ Esther 1:13–15, The New English Bible, Ebor (1970: 551)

The judgement of the judges is that a single act of royal disobedience sets a universal precedent of disobedience for the wives of all husbands, resulting in ‘endless disrespect and insolence!’ (1:18). The judges then advise the king on a remedy: If it please your majesty, let a royal decree go out from you and let be inscribed in the laws of the Persians and Medes, never to be revoked, that Vashti shall not

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again appear before King Ahasuerus; and let the king give her place to another woman who is more worthy of it than she. Thus when this royal edict is heard through the length and breadth of the kingdom, all women will give honour to their husbands, high and low alike. Esther 1:19–21, The New English Bible, Ebor (1970: 552)

It is clear that what guides and motivates the judges in their deliberation is their duty to maintain the immutability of the law. The first requirement and law concerning the law is that it be obeyed. Insofar as the law is the decree of the king, whatever the king orders, his subjects must obey; even the queen must obey his command, for it is law. Their judgment against the queen is in favour of maintaining the law, which accords with the law that the law must be maintained. The judges in Esther are ideal judges; their judgment is based on the principle that it is imperative that the law be maintained. The story of Daniel makes clear that the law concerning the law – that it be obeyed by all – extends even to the king. Even the king must obey the royal decree – once uttered, it can neither be rescinded by another decree nor contradicted by a royal act: the king is bound by his own word as law. In the book of Esther, royal judges advise the king on the law; in the book of Daniel, royal ministers and satraps conspire to use the immutability of the law against the king. Their motivation is self-interest. Seeking to remove Daniel from the king’s favour, ‘the chief ministers and the satraps began to look round for some pretext to attack Daniel’s administration of the kingdom’ (6:4), but could find no fault with his royal service. Knowing Daniel prayed to his God thrice daily, they persuaded the king to issue a decree: ‘whoever within the next thirty days shall present a petition to any god or man other than the king shall be thrown into the lions’ pit. Now, O king, issue the ordinance and have it put in writing, so that it may be unalterable, for the law of the Medes and Persians stands for ever’ (6:7–8). They then informed the king that Daniel had broken the law and demanded they throw him to the lions. When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed. He tried to think of a way to save Daniel, and continued his efforts till sunset; then those same men watched for an opportunity to approach the king, and said to him, ‘Your majesty must know that by the law of the Medes and Persians no ordinance or decree issued by the king may be altered.’ So the king gave orders and Daniel was brought and thrown into the lions’ pit … Daniel 6:14–16, The New English Bible, Ebor (1970: 552)

In the book of Esther, also, the Persian king is bound by his own decree. Owing to court intrigue arising from the desire of Persian courtiers to remove the



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Jews, Mordecai and his adopted daughter, Esther (who had replaced the former Persian queen), from royal favour, the Persian king was persuaded to issue an edict that would destroy the Jews in his kingdom (Esther 3). Later, following Queen Esther’s intervention, he sought to remedy the situation. She asks that he recall the edict, but that is impossible; instead, she is allowed to issue another edict in his name, whereby ‘the king granted permission to the Jews in every city to unite and defend themselves’ against those acting on the earlier edict to destroy them (Esther 8:7–8, The New English Bible, Ebor 1970: 557). In Herodotus, the royal judges perform the same function of ‘juriconsults and interpreters of the law’2 as they do in Esther and Daniel, hearing cases, pronouncing judgments and deciding punishments recommended to, or on behalf of, the king: These royal judges [oi9 de\ basilh/ioi dikastai\] are specially chosen men, who hold office either for life or until they are found guilty of some misconduct; their duties are to determine suits and to interpret the ancient laws of the land, and all points of dispute are referred to them. 3.31

In Egypt, Cambyses executed two thousand Egyptians sentenced to death by the royal judges, ten Egyptians for every Mytilenean murdered at Memphis (3.14). Judges convicted of accepting bribes to render unjust judgments receive the harshest possible sentence, such as that carried out by Cambyses against Otanes’ father, Sisamnes, who was flayed alive, his skin used to upholster his judge’s throne, as a reminder to his son, whom Cambyses appointed to replace his father and admonished to be just (5.25.1–2). In these cases, the accounts of Herodotus agree with the biblical evidence, which agree as well with the royal inscriptions and the Achaemenid theology of kingship. As in Esther and Daniel, the law is inviolable. The unsparing judgments against the corrupt judge and culpable Egyptians seem to be guided by the same principle of protecting the immutability of the law as the unsparing judgments against the disobedient Persian queen in Esther and the prophet Daniel. Unlike the biblical accounts in which even the Persian kings are subject to ‘the immutable law of the Medes and Persians’, however, in Herodotus royal decrees can be rescinded. Unlike the Persian kings who were unable to save Daniel and the people of Esther and Mordecai from their own royal decrees, Darius takes it upon himself to rescind his unsparing judgment of crucifixion against a corrupt judge, Sandoces, who survived his death sentence (for accepting a bribe to render an unjust judgment) to serve as a governor

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of Cyme and an admiral under Xerxes (7.194). In Herodotus, Darius breaks with the Iranian tradition of the immutability of the law, a tradition that he himself appears to have re-established in his reforms of the law that grounded royal decrees in the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship, whereby the royal and divine decrees become one.3 The significance of this Herodotean departure from what appears to have been Persian tradition is that it sets the king above his own law. The royal inscriptions of Darius identify his decrees with the law of Ahuramazda, on whose behalf he acts. Darius serves Ahuramazda, and appears to bind himself to the immutability of the divine law. In the Persian tradition and in the Achaemenid theology of kingship embedded in the royal inscriptions of Darius, the king is not above the law; only Ahuramazda would be above the law. But for Herodotus, there is no Ahuramazda; the Persian monarchy is of human rather than divine origin, and thus the only source of law are the human kings, which is in keeping with Protagoras’ teaching that ‘man is the measure’. In the sophistic constitution established by Deioces, the kings are above the law to which all others are subject as immutable and inviolable. This is made possible because in the first instance the king is both the source of law and basilēios dikastēs, the royal judge hearing cases and pronouncing sentence in the application of the law: Once his sovereign power was firmly established, he continued his strict administration of justice. All suits were conveyed to him in the form of written documents, which he would send back after recording upon them his decisions. In addition to this were other practices he introduced: if he heard of any act of arrogance or ostentation, he would send for the offender and punish him as the offence deserved, and his spies were busy watching and listening in every corner of his dominion. 1.100.1–2

The result is that, when it comes to later judges judging the kings, their judgments reflect the sophistic character of the status of the law originally established vis-à-vis the king as judge of his own law. That relationship is made perfectly clear in the judgment the judges rendered when asked by Cambyses to rule on his intention to marry his sister even though Persian nomos forbade it (ou0k e0wqo/ta e0peno/ee poi/hsein, 3.31.2): They rendered a judgement which was both legal and safe (kai\ di/kaia kai\ a0sfale/a): namely, that while they found no law bidding a brother to marry his sister, they did indeed uncover another law which granted to the king the royal privilege of doing whatever he wanted (a1llon me/ntoi e0ceurhke/nai no/mon, tw|~



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basileu/onti Perse/wn e0xei~nai poie/ein to\ a2n bou/lhtai). Thus they kept to the letter of the law (ou1te to\n no/mon e1lusan) … 3.31.3, my translation

In their forensic judgment justifying Cambyses’ despotic abuse of royal power on constitutional grounds, the royal judges exemplify the role of the Persosophist as judge in the tradition first established by Deioces. As Asheri (2007c: 430) notes, ‘the anecdote about the royal judges is not unlike a Greek sophistic argument’. In an overt sense, the sophistic argument of the judges is the obvious sophistry (in the bad sense of the word) of developing a sophisticated argument that creates a legal loophole that will allow the king to commit an outrageous offense against the law that he, above all, should protect the law against. The judges are practised in the sophistic art of forensic logic, and in this respect resemble the Persian logioi as Persosophists. There is another sense in which the royal judges are sophists, and that is as judges whose judgments are the result of a constitution that is based on a sophistic theory of the origin of law and government. It is clear that the judges fear the king; their traditional status as guarantors of the law is not preserved in Herodotus as it is in the books of Esther and Daniel, although Herodotus attributes this corruption of the law, in Otanes’ critique of Cambyses (3.80), to the absolute power of the king. Under Cambyses, neither the law nor its institutional defenders, the judges, are inviolable. The judgment of the judges shows that they, like the law they are to preserve and protect, are subject to the king, and not the king to the law, nor even to royal judgments based on the law. The sophisticated reasoning of their judgment that permits Cambyses to marry his sister effectively rules that the king may break the law without breaking the law since it is not against the law for the king to break the law. The sophisticated reasoning of the judgment also protects the judges, their judgment and the law from self-contradiction, since it clarifies that the law is founded on the principle that the king is above the law. The sophistic reasoning of the Persosophist judges in Herodotus, then, resides not primarily in fear of royal reprisal, but in the sophistic principle of the constitution that sets the king above the law as the measure of all things, by which all others are bound. This seems to be the very point that Herodotus wishes to make. The judgment that permits the king to break the law does not contradict the constitution that is the basis of law; rather, it clarifies the constitutional relationship between the law, the king and the judges. The royal judges are Persosophist judges primarily in the sense that their judgment is guided by

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a constitution based on a radical sophistic theory that the natural origin of law and government is to be found in human self-interest, erōs turannidos.

5.1.4  Persosophist counsellors: Atossa and Mardonius Atossa and Mardonius exemplify the role of the sophist as counsellor by their use of the sophistic art of persuasion. In this aspect of their portrayal by Herodotus, they, too, fit the pattern established by the Persian logioi of an intelligentsia versed in the rhetorical art of making highly sophisticated arguments to win over one’s audience. The arguments by which Atossa persuades Darius, and Mardonius persuades Xerxes, to invade Greece, are grounded in self-interest.4 The sophistic character of their arguments lies both in their rhetoric and their reason. Both rhetoric and reason appeal to erōs turannidos as the basis of the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs: the cause of imperialism is advanced primarily on the grounds that the kings should want to increase the power of their kingdoms and thereby increase their status as kings.5 The assumption of both Persian queen and Persian general is that the lust for absolute power is innate and insatiate. The ‘just cause’ claimed by the Persians for Xerxes’ invasion of Greece is retribution (tisis). But Herodotus reveals that tisis only supplied a pretext; its true aitia had its origin in Mardonius’ counsel which first set Xerxes in motion. To persuade Xerxes, Mardonius tempted him with what Thucydides describes as ‘power pursued for the sake of greed and personal ambition (a0rxh h( dia\ pleoneci/an kai\ filotimi/an, Th. 3.82.8; trans. Blanco and Roberts (1998)): ‘Master it’s wrong for the Athenians to go unpunished (o0u dou~nai di/khn) for all the harm (polla\ dh\ kaka\) they’ve done Persia … you ought to march against Greece. It will enhance your reputation (lo/goj … pro\j a0nqrw/pwn a0gaqo/j), and also make people think twice in the future before attacking your territory.’ This was his argument for retaliation (timwro/j), but he also invariably added the rider that Europe was a particularly beautiful place, where every kind of cultivated tree grew and the soil was excellent; it was a place, he said, which no one but the king of Persia ought to own. He argued in this way because he wanted to stir things up and also because he wanted to become the governor of Greece. 7.5.2–3; trans. Waterfield (1998: 405)

The persuasive mix of the Persian ideology of imperialism with personal motives of natural self-interest are found to lie behind Darius’ invasion of Greece as well, which had its origin in the counsel of Atossa (the ‘all-powerful’, h9 ga\r 1Atossa ei]xe to\ pa~n kra/toj, 7.3.4):



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My lord, with the immense resources (du/namin) at your command, the fact that you are making no further conquests to increase the power of Persia (ou1te ti e2qnoj prosktw/menojou1te du/namin Pe/rshsi) must mean that you lack ambition. Surely a young man like you, who is master of great wealth, should be seen engaged in some active enterprise, to show the Persians that they have a man to rule them. 3.134

When empire and reputation (Thucydides’ archē and philotimia) fail to motivate Darius sufficiently to undertake the invasion of Greece at once (Darius prefers first to invade Scythia), Atossa adds (her own) pleonexia as well. Just as Mardonius later sweetens the desirability of Xerxes’ invasion with the possession of Greek paradises, so Atossa sweetens Darius’ invasion with the desirability of possessing Greek women for her slaves (3.134).

5.2  Archetype of the sophist king Deioces establishes the profile of the sophist king as sophos anēr motivated by erōs turannidos; it belongs to his descendants, Phraortes and Cyaxares, to manifest the insatiability of erōs turannidos and establish the patrios nomos of imperialism, which drives Cyrus to ruin; his last descendant, Astyages, first displays the hubristic nature of the sophist king as despotēs doulōn (master of slaves), which corrupted and destroyed Cambyses. Darius proves himself the master sophist king; his son, Xerxes, completes the profile of the sophist king as a tragic figure, a theomachos who, like Pentheus, was driven by the gods to taste the bitter fruit of his own hubris, as had Astyages, Cyrus and Cambyses before him.

5.2.1 Deioces: Sophos anēr erastheis turannidos a0nh\r e0n toi~si Mh/doisi e0ge/neto sofo\j tw~| ou1noma h}n Dhio/khj, pai~j de\ h]n Frao/rtew. ou{toj o( Dnio/khj e0rasqei\j turanni/doj e0poi/ee toia/de: 1.96.1–2

The archetype of the sophist king introduced in Deioces is that of a sophos anēr erastheis turannidos, a wise and clever man motivated by erōs turannidos, a lust for absolute power. The sophist king’s sophia consists of a theoretical grasp of justice and injustice as contraries: e0pista/menoj o3ti tw~| dikiaiw| to\ a1dikon

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pole/mio/n e0sti (1.96.2). The abstract grasp of contraries is characteristic of sophistic knowledge, forming the basis of sophistic argumentation, especially that of antilogy and the art of contradiction, at least as demonstrated by the sophists who appear in the Platonic dialogues. It is on the basis of this sophistic grasp of justice and injustice as contraries that Deioces obtains absolute power as the archetypal sophist king over the Medes, establishing a lawful constitution, based on common consent, of despotic monarchism, by which all are subject by the rule of law to a king who stands above the law, subject neither to nomos nor demos.6 The characteristic feature of the archetype of the sophist king is that sophia serves erōs turannidos in founding a constitution in which nomos is founded upon phusis. The sophistic character of Deioces’ sophia is made manifest first by how he uses his knowledge to establish himself as the measure of all things political, first as judge and then as king. Flory’s argument that Deioces (like Darius and Peisistratus) wears the archaic smile of a benevolent despot or philosopherking is not far off the mark;7 it need only be said that it belongs to a mask behind which Deioces fulfils his ambition for absolute power, maintains absolute power and exercises absolute power.8 Unlike Plato’s philosopher king (or Darius’ Ahuramazdan king), whose rule is grounded in a knowledge of divine justice by which the ruler maintains justice as the common good of the political community, the rule of Herodotus’ sophist king is based on the theoretical knowledge of the contrariety of justice and injustice in human affairs as subject to the sophistic principle of homo mensura, whereby the origin and maintenance of justice in the human community is understood to be dependent solely upon the subjection of human affairs to the knowledge and power of a human ruler. The political ambition of Deioces as a sophist king is not that of the Ahuramazdan king or Plato’s philosopher-ruler, whose rule is in service to a divine principle of cosmic governance; rather, the ambition of Herodotus’ sophist king serves the compulsion of erōs turannidos inherent to human nature, that is, phusis. Darius’ Ahuramazdan king, like Plato’s philosopher king, uses power to serve the good of divine justice; Herodotus’ sophist king uses justice to serve the human ambition of acquiring absolute power. Herodotus’ theoretical sophist king is best understood as the historian’s ontogenetic explanation of the unfamiliar model of kingship established by Darius on the basis of Ahuramazdan theology.9 The historical reality obscured by the theoretical construct of the sophist king is that of the Achaemenid king whose rule is grounded in a theological knowledge of cosmic order (arta) by which the monarch maintains justice as the common good of the human



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community.10 The archaic smile of Deioces perceived by Flory belongs really to the Bisitun Darius above whom hovers the winged figure of Ahuramazda. That Herodotus’ sophist king is an interpretation of Darius’ Ahuramazdan king is particularly evident in the royal protocol (ko/smon) that Herodotus puts into effect upon the completion of the fabled seven-walled palace of Ecbatana, designed to protect his person and property, as well as to distance the royal person from, and to elevate it above, his subjects, who lived outside the palace walls: that no person should have access to the king; that all communication with the king be mediated by messengers; that the king be seen by no person; additionally, that it be an act of disgrace for any person so much as to laugh or to spit in his vicinity. 1.99, my translation

The royal palace and protocol thus established by Deioces in Ecbatana is clearly Herodotus’ interpretation of the royal protocol of the Achaemenid model of Ahuramazdan kingship established by Darius, interpreted in terms of the sophistic political theory he has Darius later put forth as the master sophist king, a theory obviously modelled upon the theories of the sophists. Ironically, Herodotus’ assignment of a self-serving purpose and sophistic protocol to the palace masks the Achaemenid royal protocol intended to establish the exaltation of the king as the divine agent of Ahuramazda, by whom king and people are lifted up together into paradise. As Herodotus’ archetype of the sophist king, Deioces sits upon his throne within and atop the hierarchy of concentric palace walls built for the purpose of self-exaltation, the human source of justice within the kingdom, founder of an immutable law not to be violated by any except the king himself, whose exalted status places him above the law. There is no god to which the semi-divine status of the king can be attributed, as is the case historically in the Assyrian model adapted by Darius to establish the Ahuramazdan model of kingship among the Achaemenids. If Herodotus has knowledge of Darius’ Ahuramazdan theology of kingship, it is cynically denied as the selfserving guise of a sophist king.

5.3  Median sophist kings Deioces’ successors to the Median throne are sophist kings by right of inheritance of the throne of the founder, but they also develop the political implications

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of the sophistic constitution founded by Deioces upon erōs turannidos: the establishment of the Iranian tradition of imperialism in foreign affairs (and the organization of the army to serve that purpose) that Cyrus will make the ancestral custom of the Persians, and the exercise of constitutional despotism in domestic affairs that enables the royal abuse of absolute power that most characterizes Herodotus’ portraits of Iranian kings.

5.3.1  Phraortes and Cyaxares: Nomos of imperialism Deioces’ achievement, in Herodotus’ estimation, was to unite the Median tribes into a kingdom (1.101.1). The achievement of his son and successor, Phraortes, was to convert the kingdom into an empire, first subjecting Persians to Medes, ‘then, strengthened by their union, undertaking to subject all of Asia, nation by nation’ (katestre/feto th\n 0Asi/hn a0p’ a1llou e0p’ a1llo i0w\n e1qnoj, 1.102, my translation). Herodotus makes clear that the Iranian nomos of imperialism established by Phraortes arises directly from the insatiability of erōs turannidos, which he inherits along with the throne: ‘having inherited the throne, he was not satisfied to rule the Medes alone’ (ou0k a0pexra~to mou/nwn Mh/dwn a1rxein, 1.101, my translation). Phraortes’ ambition to go on and conquer what remained of the Assyrian Empire is achieved by his son and successor, Cyaxares, grandson of Deioces, who consolidated and strengthened the nomos of imperialism by transforming the Trojan-like loose assembly of subdued nations into an Achaean-like highly organized army to achieve its purpose of the conquest of the whole of Asia (1.103). Cyaxares conquered the Assyrians, but was himself overcome by the Scythian invasion of Asia, which lasted twenty-eight years. Under Scythian domination, civilization was ‘everywhere laid waste by wanton violence and contempt for law and order’ (te u3brioj kai\ o0ligwri/hj, 1.106, my translation), effectively returning Asia to the condition of lawless violence under which Deioces first came to power. By means of a sophismata characteristic of the sophist kings, Cyaxares finally overcame the Scythians and went on to subdue the Assyrians as well (1.106.2), serving the insatiable nomos of Iranian imperialism arising from the royal erōs turannidos.

5.3.2 Astyages: Despotēs doulōn The last of Deioces’ royal line, to Astyages falls the dubious honour of realizing the abusive potential of a nomos (the constitution) that subjects itself to erōs turannidos (the ruler). Astyages adds to the attributes of the sophist king



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archetype – sophos anēr, erastheis turannidos – despotēs doulōn, ‘master of slaves’. Under Astyages the despotic character of the Iranian constitution manifests itself. For Herodotus, the despotic cruelty of the Iranian kings (and Greek tyrants) makes manifest the inherent contradiction in the subjection of nomos (lawful government) to phusis (absolute power), which proves itself over and again destructive of sophist kings who succeed the throne. Astyages is characterized by a cruelty arising from his obsession with holding on to power, his erōs turannidos, in service to which he is willing to exile his own daughter, Mandane, and to attempt the murder of his own grandson, Cyrus (not unlike Agamemnon’s willingness to sacrifice Iphigenia) (1.107–8). Blaming the failure of his plans on Harpagus, he punishes him by butchering and feeding him his own son (1.117–19), which proves his own undoing, as well as that of the Medes (1.123–8). In so doing, Astyages demonstrates the same hubristic transgression against nomos that causes the downfall of the Lydian kings, Candaules and Croesus, and the Persian kings, Cyrus, Cambyses and Xerxes. Betrayed by Harpagus as an act of tisis, Astyages is helpless to prevent the subjection of Medes to Persians by way of a revolt led by Cyrus. Herodotus’ account suggests that the rise of Cyrus and the fall of Astyages is due to divine design, an exaction of justice that is an act of divine tisis as well as an exaction of justice by Harpagus. But that is not how Astyages regards it. Characteristic of Astyages as a sophist king is his brilliant rebuke of the gloating Harpagus as ‘the most stupid and unjust man in the world’ (skaio/taton te kai\ a0dikw/taton e0o/nta pa/ntwn a0nqrw/pwn, 1.129.3, my translation).11 Demonstrating his skill in the sophistic art of argument characteristic of the Iranian kings, Astyages argues that Harpagus has proved himself most stupid for having helped another take power when he could have taken power himself; and most unjust for having made his own people, the Medes, slaves instead of masters (dou/louv a0nti\ despote/wn gegone/nai 1.129.4), and the Persians, once slaves of the Medes, now their masters (Pe/rsav de dou/louv e0ontav to/ pri\n Mh/dwn nu=n gegone/nai despo/tav 1.129.4). By his words and deeds, therefore, Astyages completes the archetype of the sophist king as sophos anēr and erastheis turannidos by his inevitable manifestation as despotēs doulōn. Just as we can decipher Herodotus’ exposure of Darius’ argument as sophistic propaganda from the manner in which the constitutional debate concludes with Otanes’ withdrawal into a self-imposed ‘democratic’ exile from the throne, a similar implicit authorial comment on Asytages’ argument can be derived from the manner in which this episode concludes as well. Having allowed Astyages his say, Herodotus sends him offstage, as it were, in chains at the hand

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of a vindicated Harpagus, and pronounces his own verdict: that the Medes fell subject to the Persians not on account of Harpagus’ stupidity and injustice, but ‘on account of Astyages’ cruelty’ (dia\ th\n tou/tou pikro/thta 1.130.1, my translation).

5.4  Persian sophist kings Sire, like other men I have seen in my time powerful kingdoms struck down by weaker ones, and it was for that reason I tried to prevent you from giving way to your youth. There is danger in insatiable desire [to\ pollw~n e0piqume/ein], and I could not but remember the fate of Cyrus’ campaign against the Massagetae and Cambyses’ invasion of Ethiopia. Yes, and did I not march with Darius, too, against the Scythians? Artabanus to Xerxes, 7.18.2

According to Herodotus, Persia’s sophistic constitution of monarchic despotism and the mandate of imperialism were obtained from the Medes, so that one may speak simply of an Iranian tradition of constitutional despotism and imperialism. Archaeological evidence (and the lack thereof) suggests that it is more likely that the Persian monarchy originated in Elamite Anshan with Teispes and evolved under the Mesopotamian influence of Babylonia and Assyria, and that Persian imperialism originated with Cyrus; also, that the Persian empire known to Herodotus was principally the work of Darius based on the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire, an ideology unfamiliar to Herodotus, who supplies instead a sophistic ideology that he attributes to Deioces (serving also the rhetorical purpose of critiquing the sophistic ideology justifying Athenian imperialism as the cause of the Peloponnesian War). Our concern with the Persian kings as sophist kings is focused on a comparison with the archetype established in Deioces, in light of the arguments set forth in the constitutional debate by Otanes and Darius, for and against the constitutional despotism established by Deioces. Our study barely skirts the edges of discussion about Herodotus’ portrait of the Persian kings from other perspectives, such as the tragic aspect of their rise and fall through hubristic transgression against nomos in a pattern established in the rise and fall of Croesus, which reaches its climax in the tragic arc of the career of Xerxes. Of specific interest here is the degree to which the Persian kings fit the profile and fulfil the role of the sophist king as sophos anēr erastheis turannidos, despotēs doulōn, the archetype established by Deioces and his Median descendants.



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5.4.1 Cyrus: Sophos anēr, erastēs turannidos King of Persia, stop racing to that for which you run: you know not if you will profit from completing the course. End it here: you rule yours and watch us rule ours. But no, you will not want to accept my proposal: for you, anything is better than to be at peace. Tomyris to Cyrus, 1.206, my translation

Under Cyrus, the Iranian empire reaches beyond the traditional boundary, set by the greatest extent of the Assyrian empire, to the greatest natural boundary, the Asian continent. Ever expanding, the Iranian nomos of imperialism strives towards its ultimate goal of limitless power, a campaign that could only be completed by bringing the whole of the known world under the rule of one man, all in service to the insatiability of erōs turannidos as an ineradicable element of human nature. Cyrus’ career exemplifies that of the sophist king as a sophos aner relentlessly driven onward by his own erōs turannidos, without recourse to selfrestraint. Unlike his Median predecessor, Cyrus never displays the domestic abuse of power characteristic of the despotēs doulōn. In the case of Astyages, where we would expect cruel and exacting vengeance, we learn that he ‘treated Astyages with greater consideration and kept him at his court until he died’ (1.130). In founding the Persian Empire, Cyrus proves himself Deioces’ equal as sophos anēr and erastēs turannidos. Assured by Harpagus that the Medes would desert Astyages in face of a Persian revolt (1.124), Cyrus’ immediate response is to think and to keep on thinking (e0fro/ntize … fronti/zwn) until he works out the wisest (sofwta/tw) and most effective (kairiw/tata) way that he might persuade (a0napei/sei) the Persians to accept him as their leader of a revolt against the Medes, whereupon he does exactly as he thinks (e0poie dh\ tau~ta) (1.125). Just as Deioces had successfully manipulated the Medes into making him their king, Cyrus successfully manipulates the Persians into accepting him as their leader of a revolt against the Medes (1.126). After a day of rough toil in the wilderness followed by a day of feasting in an idyllic setting, Cyrus begins his carefully rehearsed speech, proving himself to be, like Deioces, as much a master of the sophistic art of persuasion as a master of strategic thinking: ‘Men of Persia,’ he said, ‘listen to me: obey my orders, and you will be able to enjoy a thousand pleasures as good as this without ever turning your hands to servile labour; but, if you disobey, yesterday’s task will be the pattern of innumerable others you will be forced to perform. Take my advice and win your freedom. I am the man destined to undertake your liberation …’ 1.126

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Cyrus ends his speech by appealing to the Persians’ desire for freedom, but he begins it by appealing to their desire to enjoy the life of the masters to whom they are enslaved, his rhetoric crafted to awaken a long-repressed erōs turannidos. As Astyages pointed out to Harpagus, that is what the revolt came to in the end (1.129). When Cyrus takes over Astyages’ throne, it is clear that he is a greater king than his Median predecessor –more intelligent as sophos anēr, more ambitious as erastēs turannidos, his mind set on his passion for conquest, proving himself the greatest of imperialists in the history of the world (unsurpassed until Alexander the Great). Following the conquest of Lydia, Cyrus assigns the subjection of ‘lower’ Asia as far west as Ionia and Caria to Harpagus, while he undertakes the successful conquest of every nation in ‘upper’ Asia to the north and east (1.177). Just as his accession to rebel leader and king was the result of strategic manipulation of the Persians, likewise his conquest of Babylonia is the result of a strategic manipulation of the river protecting it, undertaken without fear of divine reprisal (1.191). In his fatal campaign to subject the invincible Massagetae on the far side of the River Araxes, and thus to extend the empire beyond the north-eastern fringe of the oikoumene, beyond the boundary of civilization itself in that part of the world, however, Cyrus exemplifies the inevitable tendency in human nature of insatiable erōs to exceed the limitations of human wisdom. The extraordinary ambition of the Massagetae campaign is such that Herodotus pauses in his account of it to provide an additional rationale for its undertaking by Cyrus: Many great things incited and urged him on: first and foremost, his birth, which seemed to be something more than human (ple/on ti ei~nai a0nqrw/pou), and second, his good fortune in war: for in whatever direction he extended his campaign, that nation was helpless to escape from his path. 1.204, my translation

Herodotus hammers home the hubris of Cyrus’ ambition and overconfidence by immediately following his supplementary explanation with Tomyris’ warning that the young king reflect on the uncertain outcome of his zeal for conquest (1.206, quoted at the start of this section, SK 5.4.1) as a final prologue to his account of the fall of Cyrus, nicely framed as fitting the tragic pattern of hubris punished by divine tisis, well established in the narrative by the kings of Lydia, Candaules and Croesus. The fall of Cyrus is the direct result of his despotic decision as sophos anēr to veto the counsel reached by way of a democratic debate that he initiated among



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his officers, where everyone got to voice their opinion and to vote (mirroring the Athenian assembly). Rather than accepting the prudent counsel of his Persian officers, he decided to follow the ruinous advice of Croesus. Cyrus thus begins and ends his career as a sophist king in the same way: by way of arguments and decisions made in royal symposia, which Herodotus tells us was always the proper (or at least preferred) setting of political decision-making among the Persians (1.133). It is actually Cyrus who establishes the sophistic custom of Persian symposia in which the Persosophist kings preside over formal debates (undoubtedly the invention of Herodotus). For the first such symposium hosted by the Persians is that hosted by Cyrus as part of the sophotatos tropos, the smartest way he found to persuade the Persians to make him their leader of the revolt against Astyages. And it is by means of the argument made at that symposium – of which the Persians had no previous experience except perhaps as servants – that Cyrus came to power. An irony of Cyrus’ demise as sophist king is that the plan he accepted from Croesus was to repeat the strategy of hosting a banquet for those who had no experience of such luxury as a way to overcome them. Among the feted Persians, Cyrus employed the instrument of rhetoric; among the drunken Massagetae, he used the sword (1.211). The relationship between Cyrus and Croesus is a Herodotean study in the relationship of sophia and erōs turannidos, with Croesus establishing the tragic pattern that Cyrus would follow, of wisdom coming too late to the powerful to save them from self-ruin. Herodotus ends the Histories by bringing Cyrus back into the narrative as a sophist king whose sophia is deepened by a prescient knowledge that erōs turannidos is a hard master, demanding hardness in his agents, whose promise of leisure in the beginning is recanted in the end as the path to ruin. With such hindsight, Cyrus would never have instituted the symposium among the Persians. Another aspect of Cyrus’ character, by which Herodotus adds a further characteristic to the profile of the sophist king as sophos anēr, is that of the intellectually curious enquirer and experimenter, a characteristic common to the kings of all nations: Scythian, Persian, Egyptian and Ethiopian (Christ 1994: 168). Cyrus is not the great exemplar of intellectual curiosity among the Persian kings12 – that is Darius, and after him Cambyses and Xerxes –but it is Herodotus’ portrait of Cyrus that first introduces this trait to the Persian profile of the sophist king. Speculating on Cyrus’ decision to immolate Croesus, Herodotus offers three possible explanations to this uncharacteristic display of despotic behaviour. The first two are that it was meant as an act of religious piety: Croesus’ immolation was to have been offered as the first fruits of victory

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‘to some one of the gods’ (qew~n o3tew|)) or as a way of having a prayer fulfilled. A third possibility is that ‘having learned by inquiry (puqo/menoj) that Croesus was god-fearing (qeosebe/a), for that reason he mounted him on the pyre, wishing to know if some divinity would save him from being burned alive’ (1.86.2, my translation). In Christ’s (1994: 198) view: The third and most elaborate explanation suggests the possibility that Cyrus was conducting a perverse experiment concerning the divine. While this peculiar explanation seems far-fetched, it turns out to be consistent with the tale ‘reported by the Lydians’ (1.87.1) [according to which] … Croesus was saved from the pyre by divine intervention and Cyrus therefore concluded (maqo/nta, 1.87.1) that he was ‘beloved of the gods and a decent man’ (qeofilh\j kai\ a0nh\r a0gaqo/j, 1.87.2).

Though intellectual curiosity is a trait the Persians share with other non-Greek kings, in two respects they set themselves apart from the others: first, that their enquiries often have the strategic aim of conquest, as in Cambyses’ enquiry to verify the existence of the Ethiopians’ Table of the Sun (3.17), Darius’ enquiry into the end of the Indus River (4.44) and Xerxes’ examination of the River Peneus (7.128–30)13; second, that their experiments are often marked by a despotic cruelty, as in Cambyses’ experiment on the calf Apis and Darius’ experiment in the funeral customs of Greeks and Indians, led by Cyrus’ experiment on Croesus.14 In both respects, the subordination of inquiry to erōs turannidos is typical of the sophist king as sophos anēr.

5.4.2 Cambyses: Homo furens You know the extent of Cambyses’ hubris. How can monarchy be a healthy thing, when the ruler can do what he wants without being held accountable? Give absolute power to the best man in the world and he would be incited to transgress the boundaries of custom (e0kto\j tw~n e0wqo/twn nohma/twn). Hubris arises from placing everything at his disposal, while envy is innate to human nature (fqo/noj de a0rxh~qen e0mfu/etai a0nqrw/pw|). Having these two qualities, he possesses every wickedness (pa~san kako/thta) … To speak last of his worst offences: he overthrows ancestral customs (no/maia/ te kine/ei patria), forces himself on women (bia~tai gunai~kaj), and kills indiscrimin­ ately [ktei/nei te a0kri/touj]. 3.80.3–6, my translation

In Cambyses, the absolute freedom assigned by the royal judges to their king (3.31) combines with the absolute power inherited with the throne to realize



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the ambition of the sophist Callicles’ unfettered strong man. If that be the case, then Herodotus’ rebuttal is unmistakeable: power without restraint only leads to madness and ruin. If in his successor, Darius, we find the able embodiment of Protagoras’ homo mensura, Cambyses plays out the tragic role of homo furens.15 Cambyses typifies the turannos outlined by Otanes.16 His reign – brief, brutal and bizarre – exemplifies the full extent to which the sophistic constitution of constitutional despotism enables its sophist kings to transgress nomos. As Hartog (1988: 331) puts it, ‘A despotēs is bound to violate the nomoi – the social, religious, and sexual rules … Cambyses is probably the nomoi-violator par excellence.’ Cambyses’ erga are a cruel catalogue of transgressions against the nomoi of his own and other ethnea, highlighted by what Herodotus regards as insane acts of sacrilege against the gods. Cambyses’ career of hubristic violence starts from the desecration of the embalmed corpse of the Egyptian king Amasis (3.16) and descends to the senseless desecration of temples in Memphis (3.37). Of the desecration of Amasis, Herodotus is careful to point out that by burning the embalmed corpse, Cambyses offended the nomoi of both Persians and Egyptians (ou3tw dh\ ou0dete/roioi nomizo/mena e0nete/lleto poie/ein 3.16.4–5).17 Inflicted by a madness whose cause was uncertain (3.33), Cambyses became increasingly unbalanced (3.33).18 He murdered his own sister after marrying her contrary to Persian nomos (3.31) and then murdered his own brother as well, believing he was seeking to usurp his throne. The ironic circumstances of his death (3.64–66) suggest divine retribution (ti/siv) for his outrageous transgressions against nomos. Accidentally wounding himself in the thigh, he recalls that it was the exact spot on the body where he had accidentally wounded the god Apis, a sacred bull, while the Egyptians were worshipping it (3.29). To disprove the animal’s divinity, he inflicted a fatal wound in its thigh (missing the mark he had aimed for, the belly). Learning that the Syrian city in which this happened is called Ecbatana, he recalls the irony of having interpreted an oracle that had prophesied his death in a city of that name to be his own imperial capital, which had led him to expect to die at home of old age (3.64). The coincidence of the wound and the oracle provokes his recognition that his end is not accidental, but an act of fate (peprwme/non teleuta~n 3.65.1). This tragic moment of recognition or discovery (what Aristotle calls anagnōrisis)19 is accompanied by the restoration of his sanity evinced by his public confession and repentance of fratricide and a warning to the Persians that a Mede was about to usurp the throne (3.65). The tragic pattern suggests that Cambyses is a tragic figure ruined by hubris and phthonos. Cambyses’ insanity takes the form of an irrational reason in which logos becomes the slave of erōs. As a sophist king, Cambyses’ career exemplifies the

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corruption of the archetype of the sophist king as sophos anēr, erastēs turannidos and even despotēs doulōn. Both logos and erōs are corrupt in Cambyses, or, rather, logos and erōs corrupt each other. Cambyses’ corruption of the sophist king as erastēs turannidos can be seen in his reason for invading Egypt. The pattern of imperialism set by Phraortes and Cyaxares, then instituted as a Persian custom by Cyrus, is one in which the motivating principle is purely that of erōs turannidos – imperial conquest in an endless pursuit of increasing the reach of empire. Though there is some uncertainty, Cambyses’ invasion of Egypt seems to be motivated by personal revenge rather than imperial conquest. By one account, it is the desire to avenge a slight to his mother, Cassandane, Persian queen and mother of Cyrus’ children, given by Cyrus’ attention to a beautiful Egyptian concubine in his harem. Hearing her complaint, the boy Cambyses promised that, when he became a man, he would ‘turn all Egypt upside down. When he said this, he was about ten years old, and the women were amazed; but he kept it in mind, and it was thus that when he grew up and became king, he made the campaign against Egypt’ (3.3). Rather than providing a pretext – sophōtatos trophos – for invasion, the invasion is made a pretext for revenge. Cambyses’ corruption of the sophist king as sophos anēr can be seen in the madness displayed by sadistic cruelty. To make a trial of the spirit (διεπειρᾶτο αὐτοῦ τῆς ψυχῆς) of the conquered Egyptian king, Psammetichus (3.14), Cambyses parades before the fathers’ eyes the humiliation of his children on their way to execution, his daughter dressed as a slave, his son gagged and bound by a rope around his neck. In an insane trial to prove his own sanity (3.35), he uses Prexaspes’ son as a target and shoots an arrow through his heart; Cambyses’ joyful celebration of having hit the mark only convinces Prexaspes that he is insane (οὐ φρενήρεα). As Christ (1994) observes, Cambyses is set apart by ‘Herodotus’s critical portrayl of Cambyses as a cruel and coercive experimenter’ (186). Cambyses’ corruption of the sophist king as despotēs doulōn is proven by his transgression of the most inviolable customs of his own ethnos: first and foremost, his marriage to his sisters, the youngest of whom he killed in a fury by kicking her while she was pregnant, for alluding to the murder of their brother (3.32). Herodotus’ judgement is that ‘These two crimes were committed against his own kin; both were the acts of a madman – whether or not his madness was due to his treatment of Apis’ (3.33). Further acts of outrageous sacrilege performed upon the dead and the divine in Egypt bring Herodotus to make a summary judgement on Cambyses’ character: that sheer insanity (e0ma/nh mega/lwv) is the only rational explanation for the irrationality of Cambyses’



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outrageous acts against the sacred and lawful (i9roi~si te kai\ nomai/oisi) for the sole purpose of mocking them (e0pexei/rhse katagela~n) (3.38.4). By Otanes’ account of Cambyses as turannos, we can judge the madness of Cambyses on the human level to be the capacity of absolute power to corrupt human nature, fostering acts of unfettered hubris and unleashed envy, phthonos. A divine level of explanation is provided by the Egyptians: that his insanity appears to have been visited upon him as a form of divine punishment (tisis) for his hubristic assault on hieros nomos, his violence against the sanctity of the dead and the divine. Herodotus’ depiction of Cambyses as tragically subject to self-destructive madness can thus be read as a gloss on the sophistic principle it embodies – that homo furens is a defective realization of homo mensura. Cambyses is ruined by his inheritance of the throne from Cyrus.20 His descent into madness proves his character is not equal to the office he inherits. His successor, Darius, does not inherit the throne, but makes it own.

5.5  Achaemenid sophist kings To legitimize his accession to the throne, Darius had likely invented the common ancestry he claimed with Cyrus through Achaemenes, which in the Histories is simply recited by Xerxes (7.11) as the case. There are clearly stages in the Herodotean line of succession from Deioces to Xerxes, which supplies to it a cyclical character that corresponds to the universal cycle of history established in the paradigmatic rise of Gyges and fall of Croesus: the rise of Deioces and fall of Astyages, followed by the rise (and fall) of Cyrus and fall of Cambyses, then the rise of Darius and fall of Xerxes. There is also a progressive and climatic aspect to this continuum of succession, of an ever-expanding empire that reaches its zenith under Darius and then overreaches itself under Xerxes. Sophōtatos anēr, Darius rules at the height of the empire, marking the maturity of the model of the sophist king established by Deioces, which he himself describes in the constitutional debate; Xerxes, in turn, tragically exhibits the full extent of the ruinous hubris of the insatiable erōs turannidos to which the sophia of the sophist king is in thrall, revealing the inherent contradiction in Persian culture that the Great King is himself a slave to nomos phuseōs.

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5.5.1 Darius: Homo mensura One could describe nothing better than the rule of the one best man; using the best judgement, he will govern the multitude with perfect wisdom, and best conceal plans made for the defeat of enemies. 3.82.2, trans. Godley (1920, adapted)

Darius is the master sophist king. Nearly faultless in the thirty-six years of his rule, he utterly defies Otanes’ stereotype of the turannos as inevitably corrupted by the unlimited power invested in him by constitutional despotism, inevitably falling prey to hubris and phthonos. In contrast with Cambyses’ corruption of the profile of sophist king as homo furens, Darius virtually personifies Protagoras’ principle of homo mensura that is embodied in the archetype of the sophist king established by Deioces. From the outset, we are introduced to Darius as a master sophist: This first meeting of the conspirators … puts on stage the two main antagonists, Darius and Otanes … who represent the two stereotypical characters of every political debate: the determined authoritarian conspirator, who has clear plans and is ready to use every means, and the noble elder, experienced and moderate, who counsels caution and seeks the support of the majority. Asheri (2007c: 468)

Darius begins his winning argument by a strategic use of rhetoric aimed at discrediting his opponent’s position as weak and cowardly, his own as effective and courageous, which he achieves by way of a standard rhetorical comparison of logos and ergon (lo/gw| me\n … e1rgw| de) which sets the veiled cowardice of men who use only words against the courage of men who prove their words by their actions.21 He then proceeds to lay out a plan based on a pretext (skh~yij) that requires telling a lie, which requires justification since it transgresses the strict Persian taboo against telling lies. (Persians are taught to tell the truth (a0lhqi/zesqai, 1.136); the greatest disgrace is to tell a lie (ai1sxiston, 1.138)). The sophistic argument by which Darius justifies the expediency of telling a lie (3.72) sets forth the basic premise of arguments advanced by the more radical sophists, Antiphon and Thrasymachus, who argue that the only true basis of justice and morality is self-interest (SK 2.2.9.2). If Herodotus required a Greek model on which to base his intellectual portrait of Darius as a consummate sophist, however, it would undoubtedly have been Protagoras. And while this question of a model is purely a speculative exercise, it has the value of highlighting the difference between Herodotus’ portrait of Darius as a sophist



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and the self-portrait of Darius in his royal reliefs and inscriptions at Bisitun, Persepolis and the royal tombs as an enemy of the Lie (DNb, XPl, Kuhrt 1997b: 681, SK 3.5.3). Herodotus supplies Darius with the sophisticated intellectuality and teachings by which Protagoras won renown as the master sophist, and it is precisely as a master sophist that Darius proves himself a master sophist king. As sophos anēr, Darius is unparalleled among the sophist kings – we might think of him as sophōtatos anēr. His intellectual curiosity is evidenced by his cultural experiment, asking Greeks to eat their dead according to Indian custom and Indians to cremate their dead according to Greek custom (3.38), examined earlier as evidence of Herodotus’ familiarity with the sophistic teaching of Protagoras on nomos (SK 2.2.7). The experiment is performed by Darius in a purely theoretical spirit: there is no strategic purpose other than to prove the validity of a principle. It may have appeared callous and repugnant to the participants, but it is utterly exempt of the perverse cruelty and sadism of the trials that Cambyses made of Psammetichus and Prexaspes. Cambyses would certainly have compelled the Greeks to eat their dead, the Indians to burn theirs (his desecration of Amasis’ corpse by burning was an outrageous transgression of Persian funeral custom); Darius only asks if they would be willing to do so for a sum, making a trial of their piety by tempting them with wealth. Herodotus does not tell us what Darius learned from his experiment, but as we established in our earlier examination of 3.38 (SK 2.2.7), scholars have readily found in it the cultural relativism of Protagoras’ teaching that ‘whatever a community considers just is just for it’. We noted as well, however, that the context in which the anecdote is told – as proof that Cambyses’ desecration of nomos was due to madness – establishes a contrast between the relativist view of the sophists that nomos is a human convention, and the traditional view held by Herodotus that universal reverence for nomoi is proof of the sovereignty of nomos as a divine principle, transgression against which is punished by divine tisis.22 As we saw in our examination of Herodotus’ account of Persian customs (SK 4.4), the antithesis of views expressed in this passage is central to the cultural antithesis of the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs. Of all ethnea, the Persians were most open to adopting the customs of others, as they saw fit (1.135). That Darius is the consummate sophos anēr among sophist kings is best demonstrated by his participation in the constitutional debate (3.80–3) held by the co-conspirators, which we examined as evidence of Herodotus’ familiarity with sophistic political theory (SK 2.3.10.3), where we established the sophistic character of debate as an agōn logōn made popular among the sophists in the

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mid-fifth century. Herodotus’ insistence that such a debate took place in face of his reader’s scepticism can easily be understood as a defence of his fundamental comprehension and representation of the Persian kings as sophisticated intellectuals and the cultural equivalent of the Greek sophists, that is, as sophist kings. What is most striking about his portrait of Darius as the master sophist king, the personification of Protagoras’ homo mensura, is the complete secularity of Darius’ philosophical outlook: the gods simply do not appear. Herodotus’ Darius shares with the Darius of the Bisitun monument an uncommon originality of mind and purpose that sets them apart from predecessors, rivals, and successors. In place of Darius’ crafting of the religious doctrine of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship as the foundation, explanation, justification and means of his accession to the throne, Herodotus’ Darius crafts the royal propaganda of a secular theory of kingship (consistent with Deioces’ concealment of erōs turannidos in royal protocol) as the foundation, explanation, justification and means of his accession to the throne. Herodotus simply replaces the one with the other, for which the most likely explanation would be that, whatever he learned of Darius and his theological ideology, he interpreted it in light of his Greek experience of the Persian culture of imperialism in his youth and the Athenian culture of imperialism in his later age. Looking back upon Darius from the perspective of Periclean Athens, he perceived in the cycle of human history the fundamental conflict of the opposed principles of nomos basileus and nomos phuseōs, of the rule of law and the rule of nature, of divine providence and erōs turannidos. These are the principles that appear in the constitutional debate, where the common assumption in the arguments of the participants is that erōs turannidos is innate to human nature (Darius’ argument hypothesizes an ideal nature only for the ruler, a presumption for which Cyrus paid with his life), and the principle division that appears in the debate between the positions of Otanes and Darius is whether it can best be stabilised and contained by isonomia, the equal subjection of all to the sovereign rule of law as Otanes argues, or by the equal subjection of all to the rule of one as sovereign, as Darius argues. Informing their opposed views are fundamentally different set of assumptions concerning the human and divine. Behind Otanes’ critique of constitutional despotism and his praise of isonomia lies the Herodotean belief in the divine sovereignty of the rule of law; behind Darius’ argument for constitutional despotism and his critique of oligarchy and democracy lies the sophistic teaching that the gods have been replaced by man as the origin of law and the measure of what is just, homo mensura. Otanes’ critique of monarchism has in it the moral and religious sensibility of Herodotus’ declaration that the proof that nomos is ‘king of all’ is that all people



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are devoted to their ethnic nomoi. Implicit in Otanes’ and Herodotus’ critique of Cambyses as a sophist king is that the erōs turannidos unleashed by despotism will inevitably transgress against the moral and religious restraint of nomos as a universal principle of divine providence presiding over human affairs. Darius’ praise of the ideal monarch, on the other hand, matches perfectly the profile Deioces established for the archetypal sophist king, as one who sets himself apart from and above the common humanity of his subjects, ruling from above like a god. Darius’ ideal sophist king would likewise be godlike in his rule: ‘using the best judgement, he will govern the multitude with perfect wisdom’ (a0mwmh/twj, ‘infallibly’); also, like Deioces, he would rule from behind a veil of secrecy: ‘and best conceal plans made for the defeat of enemies’ (3.82.2). Hidden in Darius’ account of the ideal sophist king is that the erōs turannidos of one which sets itself over and above that of the many. Read in light of its hidden assumption, his ideal ruler is no longer hypothetical: the best man will be he who obtains and maintains absolute power. He will do so, however, not by mere force, but by winning over those he would rule, by persuading the community to make him their king as a champion of justice. He must then be a master of the sophistic art of persuasion: Deioces established the throne of the sophist king in part by persuading the Medes to make him their king; Cyrus obtained the throne by persuading the Persians to make him king; Darius obtains the throne in part by persuading the co-conspirators to preserve the Deiocean constitution. In each case, there is need for manipulation and ruse, what Cyrus called the sophotatos trophos (1.125). Darius turned to the sophia of another sophos anēr, his groom (i9ppoko/moj a0nh\r sofo/j … sofi/hn, 3.85.1), to devise the clever ruse (so/fisima, 3.85.2) by which he manipulated the outcome of the equine lottery which the co-conspirators agreed would decide their future king.23 Darius’ argument for constitutional despotism is founded on the ideal sophist king whose sophia is equal to his erōs, an ideal by which we can measure those who accede the throne of sophist king. By this measure, Deioces, Darius and Cyrus most successfully realise the ideal; Astyages, the last of Deioces’ line, Cambyses, Cyrus’ only successor, and Darius’ successor, Xerxes, in whom sophia is not equal to the erōs turannidos, prove defective. There is in the succession of sophist kings a political cycle of rise and fall, generation and corruption. In the model sophist kings, reason does not give way to hubris and envy; nomoi are respected rather than desecrated; subjects are protected rather than abused. Law and justice are maintained on the basis of absolute power. The founder of the constitution, Deioces, used his reputation for justice to obtain power; having obtained absolute

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power, he used it to impose justice (1.100), by which he secured his power. The justice of Deioces’ rule might appear to justify the absolute power of his rule, but his employment of spies and eavesdroppers to root out injustice reminds us that his administration of justice is an exercise in power. Deioces’ use of spies to impose justice brings to mind Hesiod’s account of Dikē reporting injustices to her father Zeus, and ‘the eye of Zeus that sees everything and notices everything’ (Works and Days l.267, trans. West 1988: 45). Like Zeus, the ideal sophist king would be the source of justice in the community. But on what basis does the sophist king decide what is just? He is not, like Zeus, the god of justice. His justice is not the divine justice of Zeus, nor that of an absolute principle of cosmic order to which he and all of humankind is subject, nomos basileus. The justice maintained in the community ruled by the sophist king is a human justice determined by a sophos anēr who personifies the sophistic principle of homo mensura, of man as the measure of all things. On the one hand, the sophist king can measure what is just by looking to the ancestral traditions, customs and laws of the community, the customs that every community prefers as their own; on the other hand, justice is whatever the sophist king decides is just, even if it transgresses the nomoi of the community. Such was the ruling of the royal judges: the sophist king is above the law to which all are subject, free to do whatever he wants.

5.5.2 Xerxes: Homo theos Why, O Zeus, have you assumed the shape of a man of Persia, and changed your name to Xerxes, in order to lead everyone in the world to the conquest and devastation of Greece? You could have destroyed Greece without going to that trouble. 7.56 Too swiftly then the Oracles came true, and on my son [Xerxes] Zeus hurled down prophecy completed, and I [Darius] had somehow hoped that gods would take a longer time to work their plan. But when a man speeds towards his own ruin, a god gives him help. Now a fountain of defeats has been struck for everyone I love. And my son in his ignorance, his reckless youth, brought on its spurt: he hoped to dam the flow of holy Hellespont – the Bosporos that streams from god – by locking it in shackles like a slave and he altered the strait and, casting over it hammered chains, made a footpath broad enough for his broad array of troops. Mere man that he is, he thought, but not on good advice, he’d overrule all the gods, Poseidon most of all [qnhto\j w1n qew~n te pa/ntw~n w1et’, ou0k eu0bouli/a|,



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kai\ Poseidw~noj krath/sein]. How can this not be a sickness of mind that held my son? Aeschylus, Persians ll.739–51, trans. Lembke & Herrington, reformatted

Herodotus’ portrait of Xerxes is overshadowed by that of Aeschylus as the youthful king who would be a god, homo theos.24 In a manner uncharacteristic of his Iranian forebears, Xerxes is intensely mindful of the gods, reverencing and abusing both his own and those of the Greeks (e.g. 7.54, 8.54). More characteristic of the archetype of the sophist king is the hubris that moves him to exalt the role of king to ruler of gods as well as men, assuming the role that Pindar attributes to nomos basileus: ‘king of mortals and immortals alike’. If Cambyses lacked the massive shoulders required, as it were, to wear the mantle of Cyrus, the young Xerxes seems better suited to fulfil the insatiate aspirations of his forebears for imperium infinitum: We Persians have a way of living, which I have inherited from my predecessors and propose to follow … Now I myself, ever since my accession, have been thinking how not to fall short of the kings who have sat upon this throne before me, and how to add as much power as they did to the Persian empire. And now at last I have found a way … I will bridge the Hellespont and march an army through Europe into Greece … we shall so extend the empire of Persia that its boundaries will be God’s own sky, so that the sun will not look down upon any land beyond the boundaries of what is ours. 7.8.a–c

In his tragic role of homo theos – for we sense from the outset that the young king is destined to fall from the height to which he aspires – Xerxes suffers the fate of inheriting the role of sophist king before he is fully ready for it. As erastēs turannidos, he inherits, rather than possesses, the erōs of Cyrus and Darius, and in his attempt to make it his own, he takes on something of the role of a Patroklos assuming the armour of Achilles. The immaturity of Xerxes also characterizes his role of sophos anēr. The verdict of Aeschylus’ Atossa that he was misled by bad counsel (Persians 753–8) is sustained by Herodotus: his own youthful ambition to live up to and even surpass his predecessors falls prey to the self-serving counsel of Mardonius, failing to recognize the sage counsel of the Herodotean persona, Artabanus; otherwise, Xerxes would never have undertaken the conquest of Greece. But it is not only bad counsel that misleads Xerxes in Herodotus; the inconstant youth, torn between erōs and logos, overconfidence and doubt, is tortured by terrifying visitations of the ghostly daimon demanding that he satisfy the erōs

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turannidos of the sophist kings, clearly an echo of the evil dream sent by Zeus to urge Agamemnon to act upon his hubris and expose his own folly. With tragic irony, it is Artabanus who finally persuades Xerxes that it must be the will of the gods that he invade Greece (7.18.2–3). If Xerxes misjudges the debate of Mardonius and Artabanus, therefore, it is not only merely on account of his youth; the sophia he inherits from the Iranian line of sophist kings is not one that opposes erōs turannidos, but rather seeks its fulfilment. By the time the young god-king sets his throne upon a hilltop overlooking the Hellespont to survey his army readied for the invasion of Greece (7.44), he has grown into his inheritance of the throne of sophist king. His maturity is marked by his ability to engage in an argument with Demaratus concerning the ability of the Greeks to withstand the Persians with good humour, hearing him out without heeding a single word. Both debates, that of Xerxes and Demaratus and that of Mardonius and Artabanus, the sophistic aspects of which we attribute in part to Herodotus’ dialogical relationship to the sophists, articulate the antagonism between the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs and the Greek culture of nomos basileus. The representation of the Pindaric principle of nomos basileus is best represented to Xerxes by Artabanus’ warning that the young king recognize the limitations set upon phusis – and its manifestation within a rational human nature as erōs turannidos – by divine nomos: You know, my lord, that amongst living creatures it is the great ones that the god smites with his thunder, out of envy of their pride. The little ones do not vex him. It is always the great buildings and the tall trees which are struck by lightning. It is the god’s way to bring the lofty low. Often a great army is destroyed by a little one when the god in his envy puts fear into the men’s hearts, or sends a thunderstorm, and they are cut to pieces in a way they do not deserve. For the god tolerates pride in none but himself. 7.10e

Herodotus brings a sense of closure to the Histories as a ring composition by way of recounting Xerxes’ despotic acts of transgression towards women (9.108–13) – his own wife, the wife of his brother and her daughter – on par with those of Cambyses, thereby recalling Candaules’ transgressive shaming of his wife with which the narrative proper begins, following the prefatory argument of the Persian logioi that the Greeks were to blame for the war since they unjustly invaded Asia to bring back a man’s wife to her husband. In the end, the youthful homo theos matures into the role he inherits from his Iranian forebears, perfectly fitting the archetype of the sophist king established



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in Deioces, lauded by Darius, and critiqued by Otanes as sophos anēr and erastēs turannidos. Humbled by his humiliating defeat, it would be impossible for him not to recognize and even repent the hubris of his defeated ambition to rule the world, mortals and immortals alike, as homo theos; difficult, even, to maintain the lesser hubris of his father, Darius, as homo mensura, where that role is proven to belong to Pindar’s nomos basileus. But the hubris of the sophist kings belongs not only to the Iranians, it has its counterpart among the Greek tyrants and generals as well, many of whom fit the Persosophist archetype of sophos anēr erastheis turannidos. It is worth noting how the final words of the Histories, the advice of Cyrus as the pre-eminent imperialist, that it would be better for the Persians to live in austerity and rule others than live in luxury and be ruled by others (9.122), proves equally applicable to the Greeks.

5.6  Persosophist Greeks [T]he tyrants of the various Ionian cities … had fled to the Persians … and it was to them that the Persian commanders turned in their difficulty. Having called them to a conference, they said, ‘Men of Ionia, now is the time for you to show yourselves true servants of the king. Each of you must do his best to detach his own countrymen from the Ionian alliance …’ The exiled tyrants agreed to the Persian proposal … 6.9–10

Tyranny in Greece is closely associated with Asian despotism in Herodotus and the Greek tyrants share a profile similar to the despotic kings of Lydia, Media and Persia. One of the strongest examples is the similarity of Sosicles’ account of the injustice of despotism, as exemplified by the tyrants of Corinth (Periander, in particular) (5.92) to that of Otanes as exemplified by Cambyses (3.80): Well, Lacedaemonians, now you can see what despotic government [h( turanni/j] is, and the sort of things it can do … We implore you, in the name of the gods of Greece, not to saddle our cities with tyrants. If you refuse to desist from your purpose – if you still attempt to restore Hippias to power, contrary to all law and justice [para\ to\ di/kaion] – you may at least be certain that you have no support from Corinth. 5.92h.4–5

The obvious explanation for Herodotus’ method of mutatis mutandis is that, while Herodotus matches the Greek tyrants to the profile of the sophist kings

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of Media and Persia, the profile of the sophist kings is actually derived from Herodotus’ knowledge of the Greek tyrants. Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, and Thrasybulus tyrant of Miletus, for instance, fit the profile admirably. Both are men of sophistication, sophoi andres, enamoured of absolute power, erastai turannidos. Like Deioces and Darius, both use their sophia to devise sophismata (clever ruses) to gain or hold absolute power. The incredible ruse by which Pisistratus persuaded the Athenians to reinstate him as tyrant (1.60) is so well known we needn’t repeat it here. In the case of Thrasybulus, he had been tyrant of Miletus during Alyattes’ failed campaign to extend the Lydian empire over Ionia. Aided by information received from his friend and fellow-tyrant on the Greek mainland, Periander of Corinth, Thrasybulus proved himself a sophos anēr when he created the ruse that induced Alyattes to negotiate an alliance that held until Croesus subjected all of Ionia (1.22). Later, Thrasybulus proved his sophia to be that of an erastēs turannidos when he returned Periander’s favour with his ruthless advice that Periander should systematically execute all potential rivals (5.92f.). Tyranny existed in Greece prior to Lydia’s subjection of Ionia, which later fell under Persian rule, and Herodotus does not claim that tyranny was imported to Greece from Asia. But while the tyrannies of Pisistratus in Athens and Thrasybulus in Miletus may have held sway before the possibility of medizing existed, in the subsequent histories of their families or cities they do become associated with Persian rule. In Pisistratus’ case, Hippias flees in exile to Persia and later returns with Xerxes in the hope of restoring his tyranny in Athens under Persian rule. In Miletus, Thrasybulus’ successor, Histiaeus, is held responsible by Herodotus for persuading the Ionian tyrants to slavishly hold the bridge that enabled Darius’ escape from Scythia by reminding them that they all owed their tyrannies to Darius’ support (4.137). Miletus had been the only Ionian city to accept the terms of subjection offered by Cyrus before he conquered Lydia (1.14, the same terms Thrasybulus had secured from Lydia, 1.22.4), and it remained a medized tyranny until Aristagoras machinated the failed Ionian revolt, which ended with Darius’ complete subjugation of Miletus (6.18). To illustrate how Herodotus’ characterization of the Greek tyrants and medized generals fits the profile of the Iranian sophist kings, namely, that of a sophos anēr who is an erastēs turannidos, we shall look at how the characters and careers of certain Greek leaders resemble those of certain Persian kings: as a fellow erastēs turannidos, the career and character of Polycrates as tyrant of Samos resembles that of Cyrus; the madness attributed to the bizarre acts of cruelty and shamelessness of Periander as tyrant of Corinth matches that of



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Cambyses as homo furens; the brilliant career and character of Themistocles of Athens matches that of Darius, the master sophist king. (Were we to supply Herodotus with Thucydides’ account of the medized Spartan general, Pausanias (Thuc. 1.130), we would have a figure comparable to Xerxes as homo theos.)

5.6.1  Polycrates of Samos: Erastēs turannidos Polycrates was the first Greek we know of to plan the dominion of the sea … and he had high hopes of making himself master of Ionia and the islands. 3.122.2

Polycrates, one of the greatest Greek tyrants (‘apart from those of Syracuse, no other tyrant in the Greek world can be compared with Polycrates for magnificence’, 3.125), ably fits the profile of sophist king established by Deioces. A sophos anēr who kept company with the likes of Anacreon, the poet of Teos (3.121), he was capable of a bon mot: ‘he used to say that a friend would be more grateful if he gave him back what he had taken, than if he had never taken it’ (3.39). His fame, however, was based on his outstanding ability to fulfil the demands of an insatiable erōs turannidos: ‘It was not long before the rapid increase of his power became the talk of Ionia and the rest of Greece. All his campaigns were victorious, his every venture a success’ (3.39). His capacity for despotic cruelty was revealed early on by the murder of one brother and the exile of another, with whom he no longer wished to share power (3.39). That his fall is the punishment of divine tisis for the hubris of his erōs turannidos (which Oroetes, the Persian satrap, had fanned into an ambition ‘to rule the whole of Greece’ (a1rceij a9pa/shj th~j (Ella/doj, 3.122.4)) is confirmed by way of an ominous event (3.41–3, the ring in the fish, like Cambyses’ wounding himself where he had wounded Apsis) and his failure to heed his daughter’s prophetic dream (3.124–5, not unlike the dreams of Xerxes). The omen was enough to persuade King Amasis of Egypt to end their friendship (so he would not suffer the pain of losing a friend, 3.43), which Polycrates repaid by agreeing to assist Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt (3.44). Herodotus’ own verdict that ‘he met an end unworthy of himself and his high ambition’ (3.125) mitigates the portrait of Polycrates as erastheis turannidos, and casts him as a tragic figure who, while responsible for his own downfall (like Croesus, Cyrus, Cambyses and Xerxes), was undeserving of his gruesome death brought about by the treachery of Oroetes, a hubristic satrap to whom the Greek nomos of Zeus Xenios obviously meant nothing. That he was seduced by the temptation to extend his own

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empire to all of Greece suffices, however, to characterize him as the first of the Greek tyrants to medize, basically adopting the Persian nomos of imperium infinitum as his own. Further evidence of his medizing was his willingness to assist Cambyses in his conquest of Egypt (3.44). His self-serving treachery against his supposed enemies is a ruthless exercise in what Otanes describes as despotic hubris and phthonos (3.80.3). Just as Otanes’ portrait of the constitutional despot serves as a foil to Darius’ portrait of the ideal sophist king in the constitutional debate, and Herodotus’ portrait of Otanes as champion of isonomia serves as a foil to the portrait of Darius as sophist king, so does the portrait of Polycrates’ successor, Maeandrius, serve as a foil to the portrait of Polycrates as the first Persosophist Greek tyrant. Maeandrius could, in fact, even serve as a Greek foil to Deioces, the archetypal founder of the Iranian sophist kings, who used his ability to exercise justice as a means of exercising absolute power. By contrast, Maeandrius, who inherited Polycrates’ tyranny by mischance, sought to depose himself of absolute power because he aspired to be ‘the most just of men’ (tw~| dikaiota/tw| a0ndrw~n, 3.142.1). Wishing to liberate Samos from the abuse of one-man rule and to establish isonomia as the form of government that would be sanctioned by the justice of Zeus, his first act upon assuming power was to erect an altar to Zeus the Liberator (Dio\j e0leurqeri/ou) in a sanctuary outside the city where all could see it, and then to summon the Samians to assembly (e0kklhsi/hn) (3.142.2), where he offered them what Otanes had proposed to the Persian conspirators, to trade turannis for isonomia (3.142.3). Like the Persian conspirators, the Samians preferred despotism to democracy (3.143). Shortly after the rejection of Maeandrius’ offer of democracy, Samos became the first city in the world to fall to Darius (3.139). The poetic justice of the Persian subjection of Samos is heightened by the fact that it took place at the hands of Otanes, whom Darius had ordered to replace Maeandrius with Polyrates’ exiled brother, Syloson (who had ingeniously ingratiated himself to Darius). As the result of Maeandrius’ machinations, Otanes ended up subjecting Samos instead, the pro-isonomia Persian effectively avenging the pro-isonomia Greek.

5.6.2  Periander of Corinth: Homo furens To begin with, Periander was less violent than his father, but soon surpassed him in bloody-mindedness and savagery. 5.92.f.



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Periander’s despotic union of sophia and erōs turannidos is demonstrated by his ability to decipher Thrasybulus’ cryptic act of strolling through a wheat field with his messenger while lopping off the tallest ears of wheat, the best of the crop, and throwing them away – which the messenger regarded with prescient common sense as the act of a madman, ‘a wanton destroyer of his own property’ (5.92.f.3). The result of accepting Thrasybulus’ advice was that ‘from that time forward there was no crime against the Corinthians that he did not commit; indeed, anything that Cypselus had left undone in the way of killing or banishing, Periander completed for him’ (5.92.g). Demonstrating the same disrespect for women’s aidōs as exemplified in Candaules’ exposure of his wife to his bodyguard Gyges, he had his guards strip all the women of Corinth naked in the very temple of Hera, goddess of marriage. This unprecedented transgression against women had a bizarre cause: it was an attempt to appease the ghost of his wife, Melissa, who had appeared to him ‘cold and naked, the clothes, which had been buried with her, having been of no use at all, since they had not been burnt’ (5.92.g). Periander’s horrific act of moral transgression – committing necrophilia with his wife’s corpse – is rivalled only by Cambyses’ marriage and murder of his sister. For Herodotus, the murderous advice of Thrasybulus and the transgressions of Periander are explicable, it seems, only by the madness that fell upon Cambyses, as what Otanes characterizes as the occupational disease of those who hold absolute power, perhaps visited by divine tisis. Another connection between Periander’s tyranny and Asian despotism lies in how Herodotus has Sosicles cite Periander’s career in an effort to prevent the Spartans from reinstating Hippias as tyrant of Athens, who eventually returns from Persian exile at the side of Xerxes, seeking to regain control of Athens, and possibly become Persia’s viceroy of Greece.

5.6.3  Themistocles of Athens: Homo mensura In his speech Themistocles lied, and the Athenians obeyed him. For since from before he was reputed to be clever (dedogme/noj ei]nai sofo\j), now that it was clear that he was truly clever (e0fa/nh e0w\n a0lhqe/wj sofo\j) and also a man whose counsel was well worth heeding (eu2bouloj), they were prepared to follow his every command. 8.110.1, my translation

What really proves that Themistocles is the sophōtatos anēr in Athens is his ability to convince the Athenians that he is so by proposing counsel that seems

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be in their own best interest, but really serves his own future interest as against that of Athens. For what he persuades the Athenians to believe is that it is best for them to remain home and let Xerxes escape back to Persia, when really it is his way of securing a future safe haven in Persia when the Athenians finally catch up with him and drive him into exile (8.109).25 Herodotus only hints at the future medizing of Themistocles; for a full account, we must turn to Thucydides: In this intervening year [between King Artaxerxes’ agreement to grant him exile and his departure for Persia] Themistocles learnt all that he could of the Persian language and the way of life in the country. He presented himself after the year was over, and became a man of importance at the King’s court and more influential than any Greek had been. This was due to his previous reputation, to the hope he held out of enslaving Greece under the King, and most of all to the constant evidence he gave of the quality of his mind. Thuc. 1.138; trans. Hammond

That Themistocles is Darius’ equal, if not his superior, as sophōtatos anēr, is proven by what he accomplished for Athens and Greece, by which he won his reputation as sophos: it was he who had persuaded the Athenians to build the fleet of warships by which they led the Greeks to victory at the key battle of Salamis under his command; he who had persuaded the Athenians to accept his interpretation of the oracle to be advising them to abandon Athens for their warships that was key to their rescue from Persian capture, and he who engineered the victory at Salamis by secretly advising Xerxes to launch his attack. In addition to his command of the sophistic arts of argumentation and persuasion (SK 2.2.1.1), Themistocles has his own sophismata by which he obtains the outcomes he desires: money. Although Herodotus tells us that Themistocles (like the Milesian tyrant Thrasybulus) was ‘greedy for money’ and secretly extorted it from the Greek islanders (8.112), it does not seem that he desired money for its own sake, but (again like Thrasybulus) as a resource required to fulfil one’s ambitions, as when he used a portion of a bribe he received to remain at Artemisium to persuade others of the same (8.4–5). At any rate, money and rhetoric went hand in hand as Themistocles’s means of obtaining his desired ends; in an effort to extort money from the Andrians for himself and Athens, ‘he had put to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion’ (8.111). The principle difference between Themistocles and the archetype of the sophist king is that what motivates Themistocles is not erōs turannidos but philotimia. It was not the temptation of ruling all of Greece that sent Themistocles to Persia,



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but the desire of an Achilles to avenge the failure of his Greek comrades to render the honour that was due to him as their greatest general and as ‘by far the cleverest man of the Greeks’ (a0nh\r pollo\n (Ellh/nwn sofw/tato) 8.123–4. Above all, it is Thucydides’ freedom to do what he thinks is best, for Greece, for Athens, but above all for himself, which makes him Darius’ counterpart as homo mensura, the sophist king who regards himself as the ‘measure of all things’. Finally, it is precisely as the consummate homo mensura that Themistocles (like his Persosophist counterpart, Darius) stands proxy, as it were, for Protagoras and the sophists in the Histories. And it is precisely in the irony of Herodotus making Themistocles the sophistic spokesperson for the historian’s judgement on the Greek victory that he offers to his Greek reader, present and future as the ultimate lesson to be learned from the ‘Great War’ (8.109.3, SK 4.4.4.4), that we find summed up Herodotus’ rebuttal of the sophistic challenge to the rule of divine justice over human affairs. Scholars are right to find in both Themistocles and Darius an Odyssean intelligence, for it was with respect to his ability to tell a lie, to hide behind a tale and ultimately to conceal his true identity beneath a disguise that Athena, goddess of reason and persuasion, favoured him above all others. It is that Odyssean ability that endowed Themistocles and Darius with the capacity to most fully realize the archetype of the sophos anēr erastheis turannidos established by Deioces, who came to power by concealing his ambition behind a royal protocol which elevated him to the godlike position of a semi-divine arbiter of justice. In his defence of that ancestral constitution in the constitutional debate, Darius offered a sophistic argument idealizing the monarch as a champion of justice behind which lay his design to gain the throne, the argument itself perfectly representing the royal propaganda by which the sophistic kings exercised absolute power. In having Themistocles deliver Herodotus’ own judgement on what was to be learned from the war between the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs, as a means to gain his own end, Herodotus reveals the true character of Themistocles not to be that of the Odyssean hero whose virtue embodies the justice of Zeus, but the Protagorean homo mensura which would claim the sovereignty of Zeus for himself. For Themistocles, his speech about gods and heroes was simply presenting the Greeks with their own ideology, their own religious propaganda that was no more valid or true than the royal propaganda espoused by Darius and Xerxes. Themistocles sets himself apart from his fellow Greeks by setting himself above them as a Persosophist. In this respect, he follows equally in the steps of Darius and Pisistratus who came to power by manipulating popular belief in gods and justice. But we are meant to follow

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Herodotus’ lead and to judge Themistocles finally as a traitor to his countrymen, obviously afflicted by the mania for timē, if not power, that beset Ajax. For this is the ultimate message of the Histories – and it is simply perverse to argue that there is no such thing – that the true cause of trouble in Greece and in human affairs generally is precisely the sophistic displacement of divine justice by human justice, of an archaic belief in the gods by a hubristic reason that regards itself as ‘the measure of all things’.

Conclusion

The primary assumption made by the argument of Sophist Kings is that Herodotus had no real knowledge of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship on which Darius had refounded the Achaemenid Empire. By way of conclusion, it is fitting to consider the implication of allowing that he had encountered accurate descriptions (by way of oral or literary ekphrasis, or even drawings) of the Bisitun and Persepolis reliefs and Greek translations of their inscriptions, the sources from which we know of Achaemenid Ahuramazdaism. For given what Herodotus does know of Persian history and culture, it is irresponsible not to give this possibility its due consideration. Thus, instead of explaining away the absence of Ahuramazdan doctrine in the Histories as a matter of ignorance or unfamiliarity, which effectively created an information vacuum Herodotus then filled with the sophistic ideology of nomos phuseōs he saw practised in Athens, we shall instead entertain an argument in favour of the view that Herodotus was familiar with the Ahuramazdan ideology of the Persian reliefs and that he interpreted this ideology as imperialist and despotic propaganda concealing the sophistic ideology that he attributes to the Persians as the truth behind the lie. But first it is useful to speculate on the contrary (im)possibility of Herodotus having not only known Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire, but as having accepted it as the real ideological basis of Persian kingship and imperialism. A great god is Ahuramazda who created this excellent work which one sees; who created happiness for man; who bestowed wisdom and energy upon Darius (Xerxes) the king: by the favour of Ahuramazda I am of such a kind that I am a friend to what is right, I am no friend to what is wrong. It is not my wish that to the weak is done wrong because of the mighty, it is not my wish that to the weak is hurt because of the mighty, that the mighty is hurt because of the weak. What is right, that is my wish. DNb; XPl. Kuhrt (1997b: 681)

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For this was the nomos for men that Kronos’ son laid down: whereas fish and beasts and flying birds would eat one another, because Right [dike] is not among them, to men he gave Right, which is much the best in practice.1 For if a man is willing to say [a0goreu~sai, ‘to speak in the agora’] what he knows to be just [dikaios], to him wide-seeing Zeus gives prosperity; but whoever deliberately lies in his sworn testimony, therein, by injuring Right, he is blighted past healing; his family remains more obscure thereafter, while the true-sworn man’s line gains in worth. Works and Days ll.276–285 (trans. West 1988: 45)

Central to the Achaemenid ideology of kingship is a view of human justice grounded in a divine justice that transcends and rules over the law of nature by which the strong rule the weak (SK 3.5.3). The proximity of the Achaemenid view to the archaic Greek view handed down by Homer and Hesiod is such that, had Herodotus knowledge of the theological doctrine informing the Achaemenid ideology, he perhaps ought to have followed his syncretistic tendency and identified Ahuramazda with Zeus as the Olympian god of divine justice, rather than with Zeus as the sky god of natural potency.2 The identification of the Achaemenid Ahuramazda with the Homeric Zeus would have had a profound effect on his writing of the Histories. The suggestion made by the Persian logioi at the outset that the Persian wars had their origin in the injustice of the Greek invasion of Troy could not be so easily raised and set aside by way of recusatio. If Persian kings were recognized as sceptred by Zeus-Ahuramazda, it would lend credence to the argument of the Persian logioi that the invasion of Greece was justified as an act of divine tisis for Greek hubris. Indeed, that is the very argument made by Darius: to punish the Athenians for aiding the Ionian revolt (the work of the Lie in Ahuramazdan ideology); and again by Xerxes: to avenge the defeat of Darius and to achieve world rule (the restoration of earthly paradise in Ahuramazdan ideology). In effect, Herodotus would have been compelled to present an even more Homeric view of the war, and even more Aeschylean view of the war, as a tragic conflict of epic heroes, than he does. As it is, there is in Herodotus a suggestion of the identification of Trojans and Persians that appears in fifth-century art and architecture.3 Typically viewed as a denigration of the heroic status of the Trojan heroes in Homer to that of Persians vilified as barbarian other, that view reads against the obvious effect of elevating the battle of Marathon to the status of the Trojan war: the elevation of the erga megala kai thaumasta of both Greeks and Persians to the heroic status of those of the Achaeans and Trojans in Homer. This echo of Homer in the Proem continues to reverberate throughout the Histories; it is perhaps more

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easily heard when read as a narrative structured around the Homeric theme of Greek victory emerging as the result of insight into the justice of the Greek cause. For both Homer’s Achaean kings and the leaders of Herodotus’ Greek poleis, victory eludes them until near defeat gives rise to a common recognition that what unites them as an ethnos is not the individual pursuit of timē, but rather a common political good. In Homer, this is realized in the common way of life of Greek oikos and polis, emblazoned on Achilles’ shield in the Iliad and celebrated by the heroes in Hades in the Odyssey. In Herodotus, the Homeric image of the common way of life that defines the Greek ethnos is translated into prose as the Panhellenic to Hellenikon. Until the Greeks purge their cities of the hubris and injustice of tyranny sustained by Asian imperialism, and embrace isonomia as the principle of the culture of nomos basileus, they are much in the place of the Achaeans pushed back to their ships by the Trojans advancing under the leadership of Hector. In effect, the Persians do play the role of the Trojans in forcing the Greeks to learn, by way of suffering near defeat (pathei mathos), what is to be Greek. But it would be too much to expect of Herodotus (or any Greek of his time) to interpret the Persian wars as an act of divine retribution for Greek hubris, giving to their enemy the role of agency for the justice of Zeus. The earthly realization of the Ahuramazdan theology takes the form of the Achaemenid pax, one world kingdom under the rule of one world king as the agent of Ahuramazda, a prototype of the Augustan ideology of the Roman pax deorum achieved under the constitutional imperium of the emperor, whose divinity is legitimized by the identification of the imperial office with the divine lex.4 But Greece is neither Persia nor Rome. Between the pax Persica and pax Romana lies the cultural ethnos of the Greeks centred upon the political autonomy of the Greek polis, 1500 of which were established around the Aegean and Mediterranean coastline in the aftermath of the collapse of the kingdoms of the Mycenaean age, all independent city-states. The polis grew up around the public space of the agora, which in Athens lay beneath the old palace walls on the Acropolis, and quickly devolved the royal powers of the Hesiodic basileus upon archons elected among the aristoi to govern the demos, then, increasingly enfranchised the demos at the expense of the aristoi, giving rise in Athens to a popular tyranny that broke the back of the aristocracy and paved the way to democracy. The autonomy of the polis, which the Greeks then defended against Persia, would in turn fall to Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic kingdoms established by his successors; not long after, both Greek polis and Roman res publica, which owed its origin as a polis to the influence of Greek colonization

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in Italy, would give way to imperium Romanum under Augustus Caesar. The simple point of rehearsing well-known history is to mark out the age of the classical polis as the expression of the Greek culture of nomos basileus, to which empire – Persian, Alexandrian, Roman – was antithetical. Herodotus could not be expected to accept the pax Persica as the work of Olympian Zeus, by whom was established the Greek way of life based on the autonomy of a polis constituted of oikoi, a community of free citizens self-governed by the laws passed in the common assembly, equally free under the law to attend to the public affairs of government and the private affairs of the family, without subjection to any but the law itself. Although the Greek poleis had originally been ruled by Hesiod’s basileis sceptred by Zeus, neither these kings, nor their Mycenaean forebears remembered in the Homeric wanax were divine; it was precisely this distinction in the status of the earthly ruler that established the Greek polis on a different foundation than the kingdoms and city-states evolved on the Mesopotamian model of exalted kingship in the near east. Thus, with respect to the Greek tradition of Zeus and the Olympians dwelling upon Mount Olympus, the Achaemenid portrayal of the king as a god (Root 2013) could only be read as a hubristic act of self-elevation of an earthly ruler to divine status. The Persian Empire is the antithesis of to Hellenikon. In the Herodotean account of divine influence commanding Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, we must find the deceptive wisdom of Homeric Zeus by which Agamemnon was prompted to an act of folly that would educate the Wanax and the Achaeans under his command in true kingship as having its basis in the justice of Zeus, which invests the sceptre of the king, not in the ambition of the king endowed with it. Here we have the beginnings of the argument advanced by Herodotus at the beginning of the narrative proper in an implicit rebuttal of the argument set forth by the Persian logioi: if we look back to the origin of hostility between Greeks and non-Greeks we should look back, not to Agamemnon’s sack of Troy, but to Croesus’ subjection of Ionia, and take that as a paradigm of Asian despotism and imperialism grounded not in divine justice, but in the hubris born of erōs turannidos, a hubris punished by divine tisis. It is with the Lydian subjection of Ionian Greece that Herodotus’ narrative begins – and does so by marking the historical significance of the event: ‘before the rule of Croesus all Greeks were free’ – and with the liberation of Ionia from Persian rule that it ends. As a Greek narrative of the loss and recovery of Greek freedom based on the autonomy of the Greek polis, the climax of the Histories is the Athenian declaration of to Hellenikon as the Panhellenic banner around which the Greeks rally to defend their way of life from Persian rule. Within

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the context of that narrative, the role assigned to Persia is precisely to provide a mirror image in which the Greeks are to find reflected the truth of tyranny and imperialism as practised in Greece itself (tyranny especially in Athens of the not-so-distant past and imperialism in the Athens of the not-sodistant future), and to see it for what it really is: a fundamental betrayal of to Hellenikon, the Greek way of life, the culture of nomos basileus. The culture of nomos basileus based on the Greek polis is of divine origin: the nomos of Zeus Dikaios. Tyranny and empire are of human origin: the hubristic erōs turannidos of the sophos anēr who aims to gain for himself the universal timē of the gods. Thus Herodotus imputes to the Persians the sophistic ideology of nomos phuseōs by which contemporary Athenians justified the despotic tyranny of their empire, as the truth that must lie behind the political propaganda emanating from the royal palaces of Persia. For, in truth, it cannot be that the Persian vision of one man ruling the world, which Xerxes declares the aim of his invasion of Greece, has its origin in the justice of Zeus, for that is realized in the autonomy of the Greek polis threatened by Asian rule, first under Lydia, then Persia. In Herodotus, the claim of the Achaemenid kings to be agents of divine justice (while true to the extent that their actions correct the hubris of Ionian Greek tyrants dependent upon Persian support and poleis either too fearful of Persia’s might (Thebes) or overly concerned for their own affairs (Syracuse) to rise to the call of Panhellenism) is ultimately revealed to be hubristic propaganda promulgated by Darius, punished by a tragic delusion of grandeur induced in Xerxes by Olympian Zeus as the champion of nomos basileus and the enemy of nomos phuseōs. Whether by design or de facto, Herodotus sets forth his reasoning about Persia in the constitutional debate. Darius’ ideal ruler, who champions the cause of just government over and against the hubris of erōs turannidos innate to human nature, is a secularized version of the Ahuramazdan theology of kingship, in which Herodotus’ Darius’ exclusion of reference to divine agency is most telling – the erased corner of the tablet, as it were, that allows one to discern the script once written beneath. For the founder of the ancestral constitution which Darius defends was by no means a god, but Deioces, a sophos aner, who did indeed establish himself as a heroic champion of justice, but did so in service to erōs turannidos, and by way of instituting a royal protocol that elevated the ruler to the godlike status of transcending the law by which he rules. The self-contradiction of a ‘just’ constitution lawfully setting its ruler above the rule of law is suppressed in Herodotus’ account until the despotic acts of cruelty committed by Deioces’ final descendant, Astyages, to retain power, but is made unmistakeably manifest

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in the despotic cruelty of Cambyses, which Herodotus can only explain as a passing fit of madness. In the constitutional debate, Otanes’ account of how Cambyses’ madness originated in the ancestral constitution of monarchy, as effectively instituting the rule of erōs turannidos over and against the rule of law, gives the lie to Darius’ argument based on a theoretical ideal ruler as really a bit of royal propaganda intended to maintain the deception by which tyranny masquerades as justice, by which the law of nature masquerades as the rule of law. An exposition of the ideology that Herodotus perceived to reside upon the throne at the heart of the Persian Empire lay near at hand in the arguments advanced by sophists, who, by opposing nomos and phusis, severed law and justice from its divine origin in the arkhaioi nomoi handed down by poets and sages – Homer, Hesiod and Solon alike – and made them a human affair. As we saw in our review of the sophists (SK 2.1), it was the argument of Protagoras that law and justice were the expression of human nature endowed with a godlike reason, man-made but valid nonetheless, on a relative basis, where whatever a polis holds to be just is just for that polis. Once opposed to phusis and made relative, nomos begins to yield to phusis in the arguments of other sophists. In Gorgias’ epideictic defence of Helen, Herodotus could have heard a brilliant application of the law of nature (as overriding justice) to the relationship of gods and mortals, followed by the application of the rule of law (as punishing violence) to human society – one can see how this division might well be applied to the division in the Persian constitution: the law of nature that Gorgias applies to the rule of the gods appears to be the same principle by which the Persian king rules over his subjects from the godlike position of being set above the law by which he rules; the rule of law that Gorgias applies to human society applies as well to Persian society, whose members are subject to the absolute justice imposed by their ruler (in an exercise of absolute power). Nearest the logic of Herodotus’ account of the origin of the Persian constitution in the erōs turannidos of Deioces as a sophos anēr is the account of the origin of law and religion in the Sisyphus fragment attributed to the sophist Critias (who later stood and fell as one of the 30 Tyrants instituted by Sparta upon the surrender of Athens that ended the Peloponnesian war). Nearest the arguments by which the Persosophist kings (Deioces, Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes) implicitly or explicitly justify despotism and imperialism are the radical arguments championing the law of nature as justification for despotism and imperialism advanced by the sophist Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias and by the Athenians in Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue. These same passages proved seminal to the formation of the thesis advanced in this work. To Plato (undoubtedly referencing Herodotus) having Callicles pose the rhetorical

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question ‘What justification did Xerxes have for invading Greece, or his father for invading Scythia? … Only, I suppose, that they were following … the law of nature’ (Gorgias 483d, my translation) is owed the very idea that the historian drew upon and imputed to the Persian culture of despotism and imperialism the sophistic ideology of nomos phuseōs, by which the Persians were then located on Herodotus’ cultural grid, adding to it a hitherto unsuspected multidimensionality. To Thucydides is owed the idea that in attributing the sophistic ideology of nomos phuseōs to the Persians, Herodotus intended that the Athenians should see in the Persians a reflection of their betrayal of to Hellenikon and the culture of nomos basileus. What this adds to Fornara’s now widely accepted insight that the Persians also stand proxy for the Athenians as a warning against the fate of imperialism is a more accurate account of the deliberate, complex and comprehensive manner in which he does so. For Herodotus ascribes a sophistic ideology not only to Persian kingship and empire, but also to the whole way of life by which the Persian ethnos arises, structures and sustains itself, making it the very thread by which Persian religion, morality, society, education, etc. are woven into the fabric of the sophistic culture of nomos phuseōs. Perhaps the most basic observation to be made about the Histories is the sheer consistency with which Herodotus attributes the methods and teachings of the sophists to those Persians and medized Greeks tyrants who fit the ‘Persosophist’ profile of the sophos anēr erastheis turannidos, and never espouses their teachings or embraces their methods as his own. Under scrutiny, Herodotus evinces a considerable command of the teachings and methods of the sophists, which he employs to compose a narrative that is in constant dialogue with them. In his account of the war that arose between the Greek culture of nomos basileus and the Persian culture of nomos phuseōs, however, Herodotus places himself firmly on the side of the Greeks, the sophists firmly on the side of the Persians. Philosophically, Herodotus stands alongside Heraclitus in opposition to Protagoras and the other sophists (one might even regard Herodotus and Protagoras as developing philosophically opposed interpretations of Heraclitus). Herodotus’ view of nomos echoes the Heraclitean teaching that the variety of human nomoi have their ground in an universal theios nomos, rather than the Protagorean teaching that forms the basis of all sophistic argument regarding nomos, that nomos is of human origin and relative. We might sum the matter up by entertaining the notion that it would have been as fitting for Herodotus to have taken every opportunity offered by his stay in Athens and his retirement to Thurii to engage in prolonged dialogue with Protagoras, as to have enjoyed with Sophocles the intellectual companionship of a like-minded friend.

Notes Introduction 1 Cf. Cartledge (1993: 59–60): ‘he was both an ethnographic comparativist and – in principle at least – a radical ethical relativist. Whether the report is true or not, it is at least not incredible that Herodotus should have been on friendly terms with the Sophist Protagoras of Abdera, who formulated the famous homo mensura (“Man is the measure …”) doctrine.’ 2 An aspect of essentialism that deeply concerns Gruen (2011c: 9). 3 Citing Gruen (2011c), Almagor and Skinner (2013: ‘Introduction’) claim that ‘the overwhelming rigidity of the Greek–barbarian paradigm can no longer be said to be predominant’ and declare the ‘effective downfall of the Greek–barbarian paradigm that saw the terms “self ” and “other” become all but ubiquitous to Classics’.

Chapter One   1 On Herodotus and the Histories, Jacoby (1913) is the basis of modern scholarship (cf. Myres 1953: 1–16). Asheri (2007a) is now authoritative on the life of Herodotus and composition of the Histories. Luraghi (2008) is good brief introduction to Herodotus’ historical methods and Lateiner (1989) remains the best singlevolume study; on Herodotus as histor and the Histories as historia, see Connor (1993) and Bakker (2002). Together, the Brill (Bakker, de Jong and van Wees 2002) and Cambridge (Dewald and Marincola 2008) ‘companion’ volumes of essays provide an excellent introduction to the various facets of Herodotean scholarship by leading scholars in the field, on which Marincola (2001) remains an useful overview. Romm (1998) and Tolbert (2011) provide popular introductions informed by scholarship. The bibliography bears witness to the exponential growth of Herodotean scholarship since 1980, the year Hartog published his seminal volume translated into English in 1988, introducing the concept of the ‘Other’ into Herodotean studies; see also Bichler (2000).   2 Konstan (2001: 32–4).   3 Lateiner (1989: 134) notes that the Histories concludes with a hint of Athenian imperialism; Fine (1983: 332) clarifies that the league joined by Samos, Chios and

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10 11 12 13

Notes to pages 13–15

Lesbos following the battle of Mycale (9.106) is the ‘Hellenic league’ founded by Sparta in 480/1, which precedes and perhaps precipitates Athens founding the ‘Delian league’ in 478. A view principally associated with Fornara (1971); cf. Marincola (2001: 25), with n. 23 citing Fornara as ‘the classic exposition of this position’; Dewald and Marincola (2006: 3–4) note the growing acceptance of Fornara’s reading, ‘namely that Herodotus is critical of Athens and his portrait of the Persian Empire is meant to serve as a warning to the Athenians of the dangers of imperialism’. (One looks forward to the publication of papers presented in a 2013 conference organized by T. Harrison and E. Irwin, ‘The Past in the Present: Interpreting Herodotus after Charles W. Fornara’). Rood (1999: 142) shares Romm’s (1998: 53–4) reservations about ‘an increasing tendency to replace one Athenocentric story [Jacoby’s view that Herodotus wrote in response to Periclean Athens] with another’ [Fornara’s view that he was responding to the Peloponnesian War], but these should be taken as laid to rest by Moles (2002). The historiographical purpose of the Histories to preserve, commemorate and adjudicate an immemorial record of human achievement is explicitly declared in the Proem (1.0) and governs the work as a whole; the implicit rhetorical purpose of the Histories to reflect the present in its reconstruction of the past best accounts for the Preface (1.1–6) as explaining why the narrative proper should begin with the rule of Croesus rather than the abduction of Io. Cf. Gould (1989: 99): ‘what he [Herodotus] perceives has to be made sense of by reference to his own ideological categories and what is lacking is any true measure of the gulf separating the Persian world-view from Herodotus’ own, or even the nature of the difference’. Cf. Hunter (1982: 52–61) on Egypt as providing the ‘historical space’ enabling Herodotus’ invention of history. Supported by ‘a local mid-fifth century inscription … [which] shows that the Carian names of his father Lyxes and Panyassis, as well as the Greek name of his brother Theodorus, appear also in other Carian-Greek families from Halicarnassus’ (Asheri 2007a: 3). It is unlikely that “Herodotus needed to go to Samos to familiarize himself with the Ionic dialect’ as ‘Ionic was by now used there [in Halicarnassus] even for official purposes, and had been a recognized as a literary dialect ever since Homer’ (Asheri 2007a: 3). West (2007: 28). See Marincola (2001: 20–1) for a brief discussion of biographical sources. Asheri (2007a) offers an authoritative discussion of Herodotus’ life; see also West (2007). Asheri (2007a: 6).



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14 On Herodotus’ travels: Jacoby (1913: 249–81), Asheri (2007a: 6–7), West (2007: 27), Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265–6). The conclusion drawn by Armayor (1978: 71), from a critical examination of evidence for and against Herodotus’ ever having been to Egypt, bears witness to Herodotus’ ‘othering’ of the Egyptians:   Ionian tradition rather than Herodotus’ own experience was decisive in shaping his story of the everything-backwards, double-axe land of learned priests and circumcised blacks. Even if Herodotus did go to Egypt, we cannot go on indefinitely trying to account for what he found there on the basis of a simpleminded and confused autopsy […] Herodotus drew heavily on previous Greek traditions of the country when he came to build his narrative, and we must look to those traditions to account for it. 15 Harrison (1998), ‘1. Herodotus’ knowledge of foreign languages’. 16 Principal discussion in Jacoby (1913: 237–42) and Ostwald (1991); cf. Marincola (2001: 21–2, esp. n. 9). 17 Easterling and Knox (1985: 427): ‘It is surprising, then, that the most important event in Herodotus’ life, his stay in Athens, is not mentioned in the work or directly in the biographical tradition. Yet it is certain.’ See also Ostwald (1991: 137–40), Asheri (2007a: 4), West (2007: 29–30), and Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265). Podlecki (1977) remains largely unsupported in his challenge to the communis opinio. 18 On the sophists in Athens, see Wallace (1998). 19 Eusebius, Chron. Olymp. 83.4 and Diyllus, FGH 73 F3. For full citations and discussion, see Ostwald (1991: 138), Marincola (2001: 23n.16), Asheri (2007a: 3–4), West (2007: 29), Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265). On the Histories as a literary work performed orally and other aspects of its ‘orality’ as a literary narrative: Flory (1980: 12–13), Lang (1984: 5), Murray (1987) and Brock (2003: 12–13). 20 Plutarch, Mor. 785B. For full citation and discussion, see Asheri (2007a: 3–4), Ostwald (1991: 138), West (2007: 29), Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265). 21 Easterling and Knox (1985: 427):   Sophoclean reminiscences of the Histories run from Ajax to Oedipus at Colonus, among them the famous passage Antigone 905–912, which is here taken to be certainly genuine Sophocles and which shows knowledge of the very wording of the story of the death of Intaphernes, one of the Seven Conspirators with Darius, as preserved in our text of Herodotus.

Cf. Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265); full discussion of Herodotus and Sophocles in Jacoby (1913: 232–7).

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Notes to pages 15–20

22 Asheri (2007a: 4). Cf. Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265). Easterling and Knox (1985: 432) note generally that ‘the pattern by which balance is maintained in the world of conflicting forces [in Herodotus] is that often found in Attic tragedy, which was perhaps a greater influence on Herodotus than any other form of literature’. The tragic structure of the historical narrative of the Histories in whole and part is widely recognized; early recognition in English-speaking scholarship by Grene (1961: 481 ff.), and in the classic study by Immerwahr (1980: 78). On linguistic evidence of the influence of Athenian drama on Herodotus, Chiasson (1982). 23 Winton (2000: 102). Cf. Ostwald (1991: 139): ‘the conception of the work as a whole, integrating as it does the Persian Wars with the events in different parts of the world that led up to it … was stimulated by his stay in the city, which had roused itself from the rubble in which the Persians had left it to become an imperial and cultural centre second to none in the Greek world’. 24 Asheri upholds Jacoby’s (1913: 233) certainty that ‘Eine der sichersten Tatsachen in H.s Leben ist seine intime Verbindung mit Athen und im besondern mit dem Kreise um Perikles.’ Cf. Easterling and Knox (1985: 427) and Landfester, Egger, Jerke and Dallman (2009: 265). 25 Konstan (2001: 32–4). 26 Nomos, in particular, has the full range of meaning given to it by Humphreys (1987) and by ‘rule of law’ is not meant the narrow ‘Whig interpretation’ Humphreys attributes to Ostwald’s view of fifth-century nomos as man-made law, but her own sense of ‘keeping within the bounds of nomos’ (214). 27 That the enslavement of Ionian Greece to Persia is due to more to the Ionian embrace of tyranny than Persian imperialism is made clear in Herodotus’ account of Ionia, especially of the origin and failure of the Ionian revolt, in which Ionian citizens are repeatedly shown to be slavish in their acceptance of Greek tyranny supported by Persian rule. Key passages illuminating the problem: 4.137, 142; 5.37; 6.9–18. 28 The deficiency of the Greek fraternity when it is first formed on the eve of the battle of Thermopylae (7.145; 156–63) is made clear by the failure of Athens and Sparta to suppress their self-interests in support of a common front sufficient to win over Syracuse; it requires the Spartan-led defeat at Thermopylae, the Athenian-led victory at Salamis and the imminent threat of Athens’ betrayal to Persia to compel Sparta to commit fully to the fraternity (8.140–2); it is in Athens’ avowal of absolute dedication to the ideology of Panhellenic freedom and unity on the eve of the battle of Plataea that Herodotus articulates the principle of the Greek victory (8.143–4). 29 Polycrates’ death and posthumous crucifixion fits the pattern of the rise and fall of hubristic tyrants; cf. Hamel (2012: 102–3).



Notes to pages 20–3

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30 Herodotus likens the despotic power of the Spartan dyarchy to the Persian monarchy (6.56–9), cf. Stadter (2006: 243–6). 31 The pathetic and cruelly hilarious parting image of the aged exiled tyrant, Hippias, returning to Greece under Xerxes only to sneeze his teeth out on the shore as he lands, and taking this to be an omen of the divine rebuke of his treacherous ambition to be made Persian viceroy of Greece, betrays the extent to which Herodotus endeavours to organize his historia of ta genomena ex anthrōpōn according to the tragic pattern of hubris and tisis. 32 Oikos and polis are the forms that the family and state took in ancient Greece, which have characteristics foreign to the contemporary forms of family and state in Western culture. For example, the Greek polis was a city and a sovereign state, whose franchise of full citizenship excluded women, children, slaves and resident aliens; it was also fundamentally a religious institution; the Greek oikos included the physical house and property, household slaves and relationships with the familial dead as ancestral gods. According to Aristotle, a Greek oikos must belong to a Greek polis, and every polis be made up oikoi, where the head of the oikos (kyrios) was a full citizen of the polis. (On the oikos in Plato and Aristotle, see Provencal (1998, 2001).) 33 Cf. Asheri (2007b: 172), note on 1.141.1 e1pempon a0gge/louj: ‘to retain their power, the Ionian and Dorian elites were ready to switch their support from the Lydians (ludi/zontej) to the Persians (medi/zontej); during the revolt of 500–494 they were even prepared to become patriotic’. 34 Saxonhouse (1996: 31–57) elucidates how freedom and democracy derive their value from equality in Herodotus, but isos is unduly privileged over nomos in calculating the value of isonomia; it is not (perhaps as in American democracy) ‘equality of individuals before the law’ that Herodotus values most highly in Sparta as well as Athens, but ‘equal subjection of all to the sovereign rule of law’ as the traditional principle of the Greek polis: Hesiod’s ‘nomos of Zeus’ and Pindar’s ‘nomos basileus’, etc. The value of equality, democracy and freedom are all derived from their association with the (divinely sanctioned) sovereignty of nomos in human affairs, moral and political. 35 Powell (1966: 209), s.v. lo/goj 1 b. 36 Cf. Flory (1987). 37 Themistocles’ speech can be regarded as a prescient, Odyssean stratagem of self-preservation; cf. Fornara (1971: 70–2), Podlecki (1979: 70–2), Blösel (2007: 195–6), but especially Evans (1991: 80). It can also be regarded as characteristic of a sophos aner duping the gullible multitude, achieved in archaic Athens by Pisistratus, and in keeping with the model of the sophist king set by Deioces. Themistocles’ exploitation of Greek piety to his own advantage is particularly self-damning if we consider that his speech expresses a belief consonant with that expressed by Herodotus himself elsewhere throughout the Histories.

264

Notes to pages 23–30

38 The tragic structure of the historical narrative of the Histories in whole and part is widely recognized; early recognition in English-speaking scholarship by Grene (1961: 481 ff.), and in the classic study by Immerwahr (1980), see, e.g., 78. 39 As noted earlier, the reading chiefly introduced by Fornara (1971), nicely summed up by Winton (2000: 107): ‘For Persia read Athens and her empire’.

Chapter Two   1 In LSJ 9 Herodotus is cited as using sofisth/j to designate a ‘master of one’s craft, adept, expert’, at 2.49 of the diviner Melampus, a sophos aner who, along with later sophistai, introduced Dionysus to Greece; and to designate a ‘wise, prudent or statesmanlike man’, at 1.29.1 of Solon and ‘all the sophistai of Greece’ who visited Croesus at the height of Lydia’s prosperity; also at 4.95, of Pythagoras as ‘not the least sophist’ in Greece. This Herodotean use of sophistes could be described as an honorific title. Non-Herodotean uses of sofisth/j ‘from late V [fifthcentury] B.C.’ designate ‘a Sophist, i.e. one who gave lessons in grammar, rhetoric, politics, mathematics, for money, such as Prodicus, Gorgias, Protagoras’, used by Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle; also ‘sophist (in bad sense), quibbler, cheat’ used by Aristophanes, Plato and Diogenes Laertius. The non-Herodotean use of sofisth/j could be described as a professional title, which Plato first attributes to Protagoras (o9mologw~ te sofisth\j ei]nai kai\ paideu/ein a0nqrw/pouj, Protagoras 317b). Kerferd (1976) challenges the history and meanings of sophistes, sophos and sophia in standard lexica as unduly influenced by Aristotelian classifications, and argues in favour of the underlying notion of paideia found in Protagoras’ inclusion of himself and his peers in the tradition of Homer and Solon sophistai.    2 Guthrie (1971: 28–34); Kerferd (1981: 24–5); Winton (2000: 92–3).    3 Nestle (1908, 1942) is the earliest study of sophistic passages in Herodotus cited by Raaflaub (2002: 160n. 39) and Thomas (2006a: 75, n. 33), followed by Dihle (1962); Meyer (1892) is cited by Raaflaub (ibid.) as an ‘astonishing’ instance of a scholar denying ‘any influence of the sophists and their rhetorical teachings’. De Romilly (1992: 17) and Winton (2002) believe Herodotus influenced the sophists; Kerferd (1981: 150) states the communis opinio: ‘there were definitely sophistic influences at work upon the historian’. It would be highly unlikely that any scholar would now deny that that the Histories evince Herodotus’ familiarity with sophistic teachings and methods.    4 Cf. Raaflaub (2002: 149), n. 1.    5 For general studies of the sophists, see Guthrie (1971), Pfeiffer (1976), Kerferd (1981) de Romilly (1992), Gibert (2003) and O’Grady (2008); brief summary by



Notes to pages 30–4

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Kennedy (1985). Classen (1976a) collects seminal articles by various scholars on individual sophists.    6 Nearly all known evidence of the sophists is collected in Diels and Kranz (1952), with a complete English translation by Sprague (1972) with some additional material, effectively replacing the partial translation by Freeman (1948). More recent English editions of the evidence: Gagarin and Woodruff (1995), Waterfield (2000), Dillon and Gergel (2003) and Curd (2011). Subsequent references to the evidence collected for individual sophists are indicated by the Diels–Kranz numbering system (e.g. DK80 as Protagoras generally, DK80B1 as a specific reference).    7 Waterfield (2000): Heraclitus, F11 (DK22B114), 39; Protagoras, T11 (DK80C1), 216–17. Gill (1995: 72) usefully remarks on how in the history of Greek thought the sophistic controversy regarding nomos and phusis had not occurred among the Presocratics.    8 On traditional morality in Herodotus, see Fisher (2002); on Solon: ‘The Herodotean Solon’s elaboration of lives to which he will ascribe the coveted label “olbios” reveals further fundamental moral values linked closely to traditional Greek thinking (not least, ideas to be found in what remains of the real Solon’s poetry)’, Fisher (2002: 202).    9 In addition to entries and chapters on the life and teachings of Protagoras in general texts and studies of the sophists, see also Sinclair (1951) and Vlastos (1951) in Classen (1976a).   10 The precise nature of Protagoraean subjectivism and relativism has been debated since Plato. Gibert (2003: 39–44) offers a useful summary of contemporary discussion of ancient evidence, on which Bett (1989) is influential; outside the mainstream is Seaford’s (2004) interpretation of Protagoras’ ‘measure’ within an alleged historical context of the unconscious influence of money on Greek philosophical development; entirely neglected is Doull’s (1977) rigorous interpretation of Protagoras’ teaching within the perspective of Plato’s Theaetetus.  11 Prwtago/raj … fhsi\ gar pou ‘pa/ntwn xrhma/twn me/tron’ a1nqrwpon ei] nai, ‘tw~n me\n o1ntwn w(j e1sti, tw~n de\ mh\ o1ntwn w9j ou0k e1stin.’ Cf. Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7.60: pa/ntwn xrhma/twn me/tron e0sti\n a1nqrwpoj, tw~n me\n o1ntwn w(j e1stin, tw~n de\ ou0k o1ntwn w9j ou0k e1stin. Cf. Neumann (1936), who recounts difficulties in interpretation already abundant in early twentiethcentury scholarship.  12 e0pei\ oi[a/ g’ a2n e(ka/sth| po/lei di/kaia kai\ kala\ dokh~|, tau~ta kai\ ei]nai au0th~|, e3wj a2n au0ta\ nomi/zh|.   13 Cf. Vlastos (1956/1976: 273–4), Guthrie (1971: 64–6), Kerferd (1981: 125–6, 133–5, 142–3, 168), Winton (2005: 96–7).   14 Sprague (1972: 105).

266

Notes to pages 34–8

  15 On Antiphon’s On Truth, see especially Ostwald (1990). Herodotus is excluded from Moulton’s (1972) examination of resemblances between Antiphon and his contemporaries: Euripides, Aristophanes and Thucydides.   16 Callicles does not appear in Diels and Kranz or in English editions of the sophists, although he does appear in studies of the sophists by Guthrie (1971), Kerferd (1981), Gibert (2003) and Groarke (2008). It is worth noting that Callicles is omitted by Kennedy (1985) in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, but included by Gill (1995: 72) in the Greek & Roman New Surveys in the Classics, Greek Thought (as a Greek ‘thinker’) and by Taylor (2004) in The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization (as a sophist). Nails (2002: 75–6) cites the seminal influence of Dodds (1959) on subsequent debate on Callicles’ questionable status as a sophist; the principle evidence contra is that Callicles does not appear among the sophists in Plato’s Protagoras and is not introduced as a sophist in Plato’s Gorgias, where he is dismissive of the sophists as teachers of virtue (Gorgias 520a, cf. Guthrie 1971: 102).   17 Kerferd (1947: 547, 562).   18 Groarke (2008: 102), arguing that Callicles is most clearly a sophist except in a ‘technical sense’.   19 Kerferd (1981: 62–3). The ideal erists for Plato are Euthydemus and Dionysodorus who compete for the sheer love of victory (Euthydemus 271d–72b).   20 Nestle (1908) avers generally that ‘one often hears the distinct note of sophistic eristic’ (15) in the debates that take place in Herodotus, such as the constitutional debate (3.80 ff.), Solon’s conversation with Croesus (1.30 ff.) and Xerxes’ conversation with Artabanus (7.46 ff.); from the last of these, he cites the ‘especially characteristic’ sentence of 7.50.2.   21 Cf. DK 80B5: ‘the Antilogikoi (e0n toi~j 0Antilogikoi~j) written by Protagoras’.   22 Nestle 1908: 16: ‘Auch in dem Wort a0ntile/gein, das wie das Substantiv a0ntilogi/h erstmals bei Herodot (IX 88) erscheint, könnte eine Hindeutung auf eine zweite protagoreische Schrift.’  23 Euthyd. 286c; Meta. 4.5.1009a7–16. Cf. Kerferd (1981: 84).   24 Thomas (2000: 265): ‘the practice of antilegein was wider and reminiscent of more than Protagorean debating; … antilegein is mentioned in Nat. Man (Ch. 1), and compare the opening of On Diseases I’.   25 Thomas (2000: 17) dismisses Nestle’s (1908: 15) suggestion of resemblance to Gorgianic antithesis, in favour of an ‘echo of the Protagorean claim to be able to make the weaker argument the stronger’ (266). But an argument setting forth the best and worst of human nature need not be one that attempts to make the weaker argument appear the stronger (although Aristotle says to do so was a rhetorical application of antilogic, Rhet. 1402a5–28).



Notes to pages 39–45

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  26 Guthrie (1971: 204–5).   27 Kerferd (1981: 73): ‘[T]he search for onomatōn orthotēs or correctness in names was above all associated with Prodicus.’   28 Classen (1976b) characterizes Protagoras as valuing ‘correctness’ (o0rqo/thj) in the use of language to construct logical arguments; Gorgias is interested in the persuasive power of language as employed in rhetoric; Prodicus’ interest in definitions (diai/resij) demonstrates ‘a tendency to lay down definite rules and norms that stand in marked contrast to the manner and methods of the other sophists’ (23n. 63).   29 ‘The thesis of Hermogenes, that words are of purely arbitrary and conventional origin, is agreed in the dialogue to lead to the Protagorean doctrine that there is no reality behind appearances’ (Guthrie (1971: 206–7)). Classen’s (1976b: 222–3) account of the importance of ‘correctness’ to Protagoras has a better sense of how, in relation to Protagoras’ a1nqrwpoj as ‘the measure of things’, the reality imaged in language, perception and appearances is strictly speaking relative rather than non-existent; i.e., reality exists as the relation of perceiver to perceived; what lies beyond the being which is relative to the measuring subject on the side of the perceived object is to be properly thought of as indeterminate and unknowable rather than non-existent (on which, see Doull (1977)).   30 Cratylus (listed as a ‘Heraclitean philosopher’ in Nails (2002: 105)), ‘developed a debased form of Heracliteanism by exaggerating, and combining together, the Ephesian’s belief in the inevitability of change and his belief (quite common in his time) in the significance of names’, Kirk, Raven and Schofield (1983: 184).   31 Munson (2005: 43).   32 Harrison (2000a: 32–3).   33 Harrison (2000a: 33).   34 Harrison (2000a: 182).   35 Harrison (2000a: 182–3).   36 Cf. Thomas (2000: 280): ‘Herodotus does not go along with this degree of scepticism; indeed he goes outs of his way to say that he thinks the gods do, in fact, intervene in human affairs.’   37 Harrison (2000a: 183): ‘Herodotus’ ‘policy of exclusion’ is one that is limited to Egypt.’   38 Cf. Mikalson (2003: 138–9): ‘The Greek language of religious belief was cognitive, not emotional, and we must allow for that in determining what Herodotus “believed”.’   39 Cf. Harrison (2000a: 190), citing Herodotus’ speculation about divine matters at 9.65.2 as a gloss on what Herodotus means when he maintains that ‘all men know equally about such things’ at 2.3.2.   40 Cf. Harrison (2000a: 191).

268

Notes to pages 46–9

  41 Mikalson (2003: 139) reconstructs Herodotus’ theory of the origins and development of Greek religion as follows: ‘the gods exist everywhere, but each society creates for itself its particular conceptions and worship of them; the pre-Greek Pelasgians living in what was to be Greece gave the gods Egyptian names; and Hesiod and Homer gave these gods their genealogies, offices, crafts, outward appearances, and distinctive epithets. From at least Pelasgian times gods received sacrifice and prayer, but in later times Greeks took up the Egyptian custom of giving the gods altars, processions, offering bringings [prosagōgias, Mikalson (2002: 196–7)], temples, and statues.’   42 Cf. Demont (1994: 147–55) for a survey of discussion of the resemblance of the passages of Herodotus and (Plato’s) Protagoras, noting that scholars have rejected Nestle’s view that Protagoras is the source of Herodotus, in favour of a source common also to the Hippocratic writers (149–50, citing Kerferd (1981)) and raising the important question of Plato’s possible debt to Herodotus (153; cf. n. 28 on the question of how much of Herodotus one finds in Plato). He rightly concludes by emphasising the difference between divine providence in Herodotus and nature in Protagoras’ myth (represented by Epimetheus) as the source of balance in the natural world (157–8). It should be noted, however, that Herodotus and Protagoras still stand together against the radical sophists who used the example of the weak and strong as evidence of a natural law – inverting the lesson of Hesiod’s fable of the hawk and nightingale – to be deplored or advocated as a model of justice in human society (e.g. Democritus DK 267 and Callicles, Gorg. 482–4).   43 Cf. Romm (2006: 182), who examines further how Herodotus ‘allows his larger notions about the natural world, and its governance by “the forethought of the divine”, to guide his selection and presentation of material’.   44 Cf. DK 1, Protagoras 327, 334; Theaetetus 171–2.   45 Cf. Cartledge (2002: 74–5); Romm (1998: 98; 178).   46 Cf. Christ (1994: 188): ‘Herodotus provides numerous clues that Darius’s experiment involves a crass and intimidating display of power.’   47 Cf. Humphreys (1987: 212) (speaking specifically of Herodotus’ citation of Pindar): ‘the context of 3.38 rules out a strongly relativist reading’.   48 Cf. Christ (1994: 188): ‘At first glance, Herodotus appears to identify closely with this kingly experimenter, who, like the historian, is curious about human nomoi and methodically enquires into them. Several features of Herodotus’s account suggest, however, that he is interested not only in the way Darius’s experiment substantiates his own view, but also in what it reveals about the autocrat who conducts it.’   49 Cf. Christ (1994: 188).



Notes to pages 50–2

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  50 Cf. Christ (1994: 169–71; 173–4; 177–9; 187–9).   51 Cf. Munson (1991: 44): ‘a statement about ‘all men’ and the norm which governs them’.   52 Reprinted in Evans (2006: 134–5). Cf. Asheri (2007c: 435), note on 3.38: ‘although “customs” are very different on a universal level, their authority is absolute and undisputed within each culture’.   53 Fr. 114 in Kirk, Raven Schofield (1983): cu\n no/w| le/gontaj i0sxuri/zesqai xrh\ tw~| cunw|~ pa/ntwn, o#kwsper no/mw| po/lij, kai\ polu\ i0sxurote/rwj. tre/fontai ga\r pa/ntej oi( a0nqrw/peioi no/moi u(po\ e(no\j tou~ qei/ou: kratei~ ga\r tosou~ton o(ko/son e0qe/lei kai\ e0carkei~ pa~si kai\ perigi/netai.   54 Pindar, fr. 169. For the view that Herodotus misinterpreted Pindar’s nomos in a relativist sense, see Gigante (1956). The literature on fr. 169 since Gigante is considerable and to enter into the debate on its meaning is not within our range of consideration. With respect to Herodotus, we offer the view that he would not interpret Pindar in the sense of Asheri (2007c: 438), note on 3.38.4, Pi/ndaroj: ‘Pindar probably meant that mortals and the gods themselves are ruled by an irrational and arbitrary “law” … which there is no use opposing, even when it justifies acts of violence repugnant to universal moral sense.’ For Herodotus, the violence of Heracles justified by nomos basileus would be seen to demonstrate that the monstrous violence of Geryon and Diomedes will not gain the upper hand over the divine justice of nomos basileus: nomos will meet violence with violence. Geryon and Diomedes would be seen to suffer divine tisis at the hands of Heracles in the same manner as did Candaules at the hand of Gyges, Cyrus at the hand of Queen Tomyris, and Cambyses by his own hand. Cf. Humphreys (1987: 212–13).   55 Cf. Chapter 4 in Lloyd (1966) for discussion of the Presocratic fragments evincing a cosmological theory of justice. Perplexed by the apparently contradictory roles of war and nomos in the cosmology of Heraclitus which he attributes to the ‘social upheavals of the sixth century’, he sets him apart from a ‘new idea of Justice in the cosmologies of Anaximander, Parmenides and Empedocles especially …: each of them expresses some idea of a cosmic law, or justice, or contract, which is independent of the caprice of individuals … an impersonal justice which regulates relationships between equals’ (224). If we accept Lloyd’s view, we should set Herodotus nearer to the cosmological justice of Heraclitus in that the democratic equality of isonomia is not principally that of citizens being equal to one another, but that of the equal subjection of citizens to a common law, in accordance with the cosmological subjection of all creatures, natural and human, to the divine sovereignty of nomos basileus.

270

Notes to pages 53–63

  56 Cf. Thomas (2000: 111): ‘The debate is being drawn up in part along the lines of nomos and physis’. Guthrie (1971: 55–134) remains the best overview of the mid-fifth-century debate on nomos and phusis among the sophists and others.   57 Dihle (1962: 209): ‘Xerxes versteht … Demarats Worte im Sinne der ionischen Ethnographie, die nach der Nature des einzelnen Menschen oder der Gattung Mensch zu fragen gewhohnt ist.’   58 Thomas (2000: 111) has less reservation about Dihle’s view that Demaratus’ position is sophistic than that Xerxes’ position is that of the Ionian ethnographers.   59 Cartledge is right to see Demaratus and the Spartans as ‘standing proxy for the Greeks’, as exemplifying the rule of nomos in Greek culture, a role that Athens would place less well. For antilogical purposes, Sparta’s ethos makes for a sharper contrast with that of Persia.  60 Gorgias, Helen 6; Antiphon, Tetralogy 2; Plutarch, Pericles 36.  61 Antiphon, Tetralogy 2: ‘For it is those guilty of a mistake in carrying out their intentions who are the cause of accidents: even as it is those who voluntarily do a thing or allow it to be done to them who become responsible for what happened to them. Now my lad [who threw the javelin at a target], on his side, did not make any mistake in relation to anyone … He was not therefore the cause of any accident’ (Dillon and Gergel (2003: 185–6)).  62 Gorgias, Helen 6: ‘If then on Fate and on God one must place blame (anatheteon) / Helen from disgrace one must free (apolyteon)’ (trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 79)).  63 Plutarch, Pericles 36: ‘a certain pentathlete had hit Epitimus the Pharasalian with a javelin accidentally, and killed him, and Pericles, Xanthippus said, spent an entire day discussing with Protagoras whether it was the javelin, or rather the one who hurled it, or indeed the judges of the contests, that “in the strictest sense” ought to be held responsible for the accident’ (trans. Dillon and Gergel (2003: 8)).   64 The basis of discussion of the political theory of the Deioces logos is now Walter (2004) and Thomas (2012).   65 Patzek (2004: 66) sees this as the point in the Deioces logos where Herodotus departs from Near Eastern tradition and introduces contemporary Greek theory.   66 Cf. Thomas (2012: 248): ‘Though set in Media, it sounds like a perfect Greek theory of both state-formation and state-tyranny.’   67 Cf. Thomas (2012: 249–50) for a comparative analysis of the use of anomiē in the Sisyphus, Thucydides, and Anonymous Iamblichi, observing that, ‘anomiē is a very unusual word. (…) It tends to be associated in late-fifth-century thought with the threat of stasis or a coup that results in tyranny’ (249). Thomas concludes: ‘There seems to be a relationship between this theory [of the Anonymous Iamblichi] and the Deioces story. Perhaps the story and the baldly stated theory both simply have their roots in a mixture of theories and ideas of the latter part of the fifth century, of which the Anonymous text is one surviving manifestation’ (250).



Notes to pages 66–73

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  68 Cf. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1993: 145): ‘At present, no-one would seriously argue that the so-called constitutional debates in Herodotus III 80–3 reflect an actual discussion which took place in the Persian Empire. It is clear that Herodotus is here representing the results of Greek political thinking.’   69 Cf. Thomas (2012: 250): ‘The telling of an invented story in order to persuade an audience of a theory is the method Protagoras chooses in the Platonic dialogue of that name (should he tell a mythos or a logos? [Plato, Prot. 320c]), and one must wonder about telling stories as a way of advancing and explaining theory.’   70 There is a strong possibility (on which further consideration is deferred to SK Conclusion), that Herodotus may in fact be responding directly to reports of Achaemenid propaganda, perhaps textual, more probably visual. While Root (2013: 59, n. 97) argues against taking Achaemenid monumental art as merely imperial propaganda, it remains the case that ‘Darius I initiated a powerful mechanism for both creating and fostering hegemonic order in the form of a visual programme. This Achaemenid art was calculated to speak persuasively and compellingly to an array of receivers … [both] members of the inner circle of the court itself … [and] individuals and peoples across the vast domain who had varying relationships of complicity with and resistance to the Achaemenid mandate’ (Root (2013: 27)).   71 Raaflaub (2002: 161). Cf. Lateiner (1989: 167), Waters (1985: 78), Evans (1982: 58), Kerferd (1981: 150).   72 Cf. Lateiner (1989: 167), Cartledge (2002: 110), Thomas (2000: 55), Kerferd (1981: 150).   73 Romm (1998: 178).   74 Cf. Lateiner (1989: 170–86).   75 Antiphon DK 44; Callicles, Gorgias 482–4; Critias DK 25.   76 Lateiner (1989: 167), Evans (1982: 59); cf. Thomas (2000: 5), Lassere (1976: 74).   77 Lateiner (1989: 167–68) notes the repeated use of hubris by Otanes and Megabyzus.   78 Nagy (1987: 181; 1990: 224).   79 For a critical summary of Jacoby’s account of Herodotean logioi andres, see Luraghi (2009: 440–1).   80 Jacoby 1949: 216. As Dewald (1999: 228) points out, ‘Not just Persians and Phoenicians but a long list of other informants as well appear in the Histories, either tacitly or explicitly mentioned as the sources for logoi recounted in the text (Jacoby 1956 [=1913]: 398–9)’.   81 Easterling and Knox (1985: 428) notes that the best ‘informants’ are ‘the local people, the epichorioi, and among them those that can give the best account (the logioi andres) such as priests and members of aristocratic families who participated in the events’.

272

Notes to pages 73–87

  82 Cf. Kurke (1999: 29): ‘Herodotus’ logioi seem to derive not just from the educated elite, but, on occasion, from other segments of the Greek population.’   83 Cf. Corcella (2007: 636), note on 4.76.2 qewrh/saj … pollh\n: ‘travel with the objective of seeing and acquiring knowledge (as with Solon I 30, 1)’.   84 It is fair to say that Herodotus employs this strategy himself, and to good effect, insofar as he begins his narrative with the argument of the Persians, which would have caught the ear of his audience more quickly than had he began straight away in 1.6 with Croesus. Even so, the rhetorical effect is lessened by constantly emphasising that he is only reporting what the barbaroi say, and doing so most emphatically at 1.5.3, where he finally sets it aside and begins anew.   85 Cf. Goldhill (2002: 55–9), an analysis of Gorgias’ On Helen as an exemplary display of epideictic rhetoric.   86 Dewald (2012: 65–7); cf. Drews (1973: 88–90) and (Goldhill 2002), 14. Griffiths (2006: 131) bucks the trend in finding in their telling ‘some of the characteristic stigmata of the Herodotean story: a talent for vivid realization in almost cinematographic detail …; the rationalization of mythical stories into real-world, natural events …’  87 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.3, 10.   88 Goldhill (2002: 45, 53) places epideictic rhetoric in the agora alongside deliberative rhetoric rather than in the symposium, where Plato has Protagoras deliver his ‘Great Speech’, and which surely would also have been the venue for Gorgias’ Helen.  89 Cf. Medea 522–575. Euripides (485–406) was a contemporary of Herodotus; Medea was performed at the Athenian Great Dionysia of 431 bc (E. Hall (1997: xiv)).   90 Cf. Thucydides’ Melian dialogue in which the Athenians answer the plea of the Melians: ‘We believe it of the gods, and we know it for sure of men, that under some permanent compulsion of nature wherever they can rule, they will’ (5.105, trans. Hammond [2009]).   91 Cf. E. Hall (1997: xxx–xxxi).   92 West translates nomos here as ‘rule’, which can be misleading. In Hesiod, the sense in which the nomos established by Zeus is a ‘rule’ would be that of a ruling principle, the principle by which actions are subject to the rule of law put into practice by judges and juries deliberating and ruling on legal cases. The nomos established here by Zeus is that of the sovereignty of the rule of law itself, of justice, among humankind.   93 Herodotus never identifies a particular god as the cause of a particular event; in each instance, the reason may differ or be a combination of such possible reasons as he does not claim for himself the inspirational knowledge of the poets; he observes a limit as to how he should speak about ta theia, which is the



Notes to pages 87–93

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province of priests; to some degree, he accepts the rationalization of myth not only by mythographers, but also by philosophers such as Heraclitus, who tended towards a monotheistic view of the divine as a principle. The difference between Herodotus and the sophists is that where the latter profess atheism or agnosticism, Herodotus professes belief and a certainty of divine participation in human affairs based partly on reason, partly on belief.   94 Gorgias, too, argues in his Encomium that it does not matter that Helen went willingly, she was not to blame for the passion that overthrew her reason. Indeed, it gives rise to his encomium to rhetoric, the beauty of speech that possesses the power of persuasion, of which his Encomium to Helen remains the great example.   95 Cf. Moles (1993: 95–6) (citing Fehling): ‘Although billed as “Persian” and “Phoenician”, as if Herodotus had meticulously consulted oriental sources, its content is solidly Greek. “The invented source” will become commonplace in ancient historiography and related genres of literature.’ Fowler (1996: 85) concedes that ‘Herodotos [sic] sincerely believed that this is what the Persians would say and therefore did say.’   96 Asheri (2007b: 74), notes on 1.1–5 and 1.1.   97 Cf. Drews (1973: 89), ‘not so much an investigation of the causes of the wars as a parody of previous treatment of the subject’; Dewald (1998b: 596), note on 1.1, ‘a tongue-in-cheek survey of a sequence of four mythic abductions of women’; Węcowski (2004: 151), ‘a divertimento, a playful piece, put at the beginning of the work as a display of the author’s proficiency and a sort of seductive invitation to the reader, perhaps even a parody of a sophistic (mythical) display piece, or epideixis’.   98 Pelliccia, acknowledging a debt to Race (1982: 111), traces the device back to Sappho.   99 As Thomas (2000: 268) points out, Herodotus’ use of recusatio places himself in the company of the sophists: ‘This combination of the Homeric and the new is characteristic of the sophists who seem to have seen themselves as the direct successors of Homer, performing at the same festivals as the rhapsodes and even wearing similar purple robes.’ 100 The difficulty remains of reconciling Herodotus’ own later use in book 2 of the spatium mythicum of events leading up to the Trojan war introduced in 1.1–5 with the spatium historicum that he introduces with Croesus at 1.6, and which he later extends in book 2 back to the origin of civilization in Egypt and the gods. Cf. Cobet (2002: 395–7). 101 Bakker (2006: 98–102) offers a tour-de-force analysis of the complexities of Herodotus’ language and syntax in constructing the Persian logos as ‘a complex truth-claim of a third party’, an ‘external story’ which ‘has been included as an intrusion into Herodotus’ account, but is not impervious to intrusions itself ’

274

Notes to pages 96–8 (99). Bakker concludes that ‘even though the story is announced as a Persian logos … [t]he dialogue, and the real locus of historiē, is not between Herodotus and the Persians, but between Herodotus and his public’ (100). His analysis also demonstrates how Herodotus constructs the Persian logos as an antilogical argument between the competing ‘truth-claims’ of the Phoenicians, Persians and Greeks (100). Slings (2002) does not apply ‘Discourse Analysis’ to 1.1–5, though it appears to have the ‘chunk’ as its basic unit of speech (54), and to employ men … de as an oral/literary device that ‘helps the reader/listener to keep track of the developments as the story is told’ (67).

Chapter Three    1 Brosius (2006: 3).    2 Briant (2002: 180).    3 Bisitun Inscription, Brosius (2007: 537). Cf. Kuhrt (1997b: 652): ‘The earliest Persian we know (from Achaemenid royal inscriptions) is Old Persian.’    4 Darius’ tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam, Kuhrt (1997b: 676).    5 Briant (2002: 180).    6 Allen (2005a: 7).    7 Cook (1983: 1).    8 Cf. Dewald (1998b: 623): ‘H[erodotus] is interested in Perseus, like Cadmus, as an ancient alleged founder of a variety of peoples.’    9 Mitchell (2007: 187–91). Mitchell also reads Aeschylus’ Persians (ll.180–7) as effectively implying that ‘Greeks and barbarians are of the same race’ (ll.186–7).   10 Kuhrt (1997b: 652–3).   11 Potts (1999: 259).   12 Hansman (1985: 33); Cook (1983: 3–9).   13 Potts (1999: 288); cf. Cook (1983: 3–10).   14 Liverani (2005: 18–19):   The Persian empire was in a sense a synthesis of different traditions, among which the Babylonian tradition was predominant. The empire inherited from Assyria the very idea of empire, and the basic features of the celebrative apparatus. It inherited from Elam the federal system of governance that had been typical of the Iranian peoples for a long time. And it inherited from Media important features of court life and probably the Zoroastrian religion … At a symbolic level, it is significant that the celebrative inscription of Darius I (521–486) was written in three different languages, Babylonian, Elamite, and the new Persian script, and that the seat of the court shifted seasonally between the highland cities of Ecbatana, modern Hamadan, and Persepolis and



Notes to pages 98–104

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the lowlands cities of Susa and Babylon, as a formal acknowledgment of the role that the four regions of Elam, Babylonia, Media, and Persia played in the building of the empire.  15 Pace Vogelsang (1992: 1–2).   16 Vallat (1998a: EI), ‘The Neo-Elamite Period (1100–539 b.c.e.)’.   17 Kuhrt (1997b: 653).   18 Brosius (2006: 6).   19 To legitimize his accession to the throne, Darius revised Cyrus’ account to include Achaemenes as the eponymous founder of the ‘Achaemenid’ dynasty. Modern scholars are skeptical of Darius’ claim: Cook (1983: 8–10), Briant (2002: 16–17), Kuhrt (1997b: 665) and Allen (2005a: 41–2). The reasons for scepticism are summarized by Brosius (2006: 17–18). ‘Achaemenid Persia’ remains, however, the common designation even among scholars for Persia prior to Alexander’s conquest.   20 Brosius (2006: 6).   21 Potts (1999: 307).   22 Potts (1999: 307), citing Briant (1984, 1990a).   23 Kuhrt (1997b: 653).   24 Kuhrt (1997b: 666).   25 Schmitt (1990: 300–1), as cited by Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1999: 102).   26 The Akkadian translation was needed to address the former subjects of Babylonia and Assyria. Although Old Persian, the native Aryan language spoken by Persian royalty, was the language in which Darius would have formulated the original text, it was added to the monument last, in a brand new adaptation of the cuneiform script invented by Darius himself as part of his project of refounding Persia on an elite Achaemenid tradition, accessible to the chosen few, and a new pre-requisite for those seeking to maintain or find a position within the Persian hierarchy.   27 Flower (2006: 279).   28 Brosius (2006: 6–7).   29 Cf. (Potts 1999: 318).   30 Kuhrt (1997b: 666).   31 Potts (1999: 317).   32 Potts (1999: 325), citing de Miroschedji (1987).   33 Carter (1998: 313–25); also Potts (1999: 345–6).   34 Potts (1999: 325), citing Calmeyer (1992).   35 Potts (1999: 346).   36 Potts (1999: 351).   37 Tuplin (1994: 235).   38 Tuplin (1994: 238, 240).   39 Tuplin (1994: 245, 249).

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Notes to pages 104–13

  40 Asheri (2007b: 151), note on 1.101; see also Jones (1996: 316–18).   41 Asheri (2007b: 151), note on 1.101; cf. Cook (1983: 7).   42 Cf. (Cook 1983: 7).   43 Brosius (2006: 3); cf. Muscarella (1994: 58).   44 Muscarella (1994: 60).   45 Kuhrt (1997b: 655).   46 Cf. Muscarella (1994: 60); Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1994: 39).   47 Argued by Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1988, 1994); summarized by Kuhrt (1997b: 656). For a rebuttal citing inconsistencies in the use of evidence, see Muscarella (1994: 60).   48 The same table is produced by Cook (1983: 4) and Asheri (2007b: 147), notes on 1.95–106.   49 Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1994: 39).   50 Cook (1983: 4).   51 Cf. Brosius (2006: 7–8).   52 Asheri (2007b: 152), note on 1.102.2.   53 Tuplin (1994: 235–6).   54 Speaking of a Median or Medo-Persian culture defies the minimalist ruling of Muscarella (1994: 57).   55 Asheri (2007b: 150), note on 1.99.1: ‘In fact, the Medes imitated the Assyrians, and in turn were imitated by Persians.’   56 That the ethnic regiments formed a military hierarchy is inferred from the taxonomy of Xerxes’ army, which is organized on the Median principle (kata telea), and which begins first with the Persians, followed by the Medes (7.62–3).   57 Asheri (2007b: 150), note on 1.99.1: ‘the Greek historians imagined the court of Ecbatana as modelled on the Persian, known to them’.   58 Cook (1983: 18).   59 Sancisi-Weerdenburg (1994: 43).   60 Asheri (2007b: 147), note on 1.95–6.   61 Cf. de Jong (1997: 390): ‘There is no reason to assume that the Magi were not Iranians. There is not much to suggest that all Magi were Medes.’   62 Asheri (2007b: 172), note on 1.140.2 ma/goj.   63 Asheri (2007b: 172), note on 1.140.2 ma/goj: ‘Some scholars distinguish between the Median Magi, persecuted by Darius and Xerxes, and the Persian Magi, employed by the Achaemenids in their stead. The Greeks had no clear views about the Magi, although they started writing Magika/ already in the 5th cent.’   64 Cf. the omen-interpretation at Hdt. 7.37.   65 Macan (1895: 314), note on 7.211.1, citing Ephoros.   66 Potts (1999: 431–2) notes ‘the parallelism between the order of the first three names in Herodotus’ list of units that fought at Doriscus – Persians, Medes,



Notes to pages 114–20

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Kissians – and that of two Old Persian inscriptions in which the Elamites stand in third position after the Persia and Media … although the order varies and may be Persia-Media-Elamite (e.g. DNa §6, XPh §3) or Persia-Elam/Elamite-Media (e.g. DPe §2, DSaa)’.   67 Cf. Calmeyer (1987: 11–12), who compares Herodotus’ account of Persian dress at 7.62 to the Achaemenid reliefs and concludes that ‘Herodotus’ brief remark gives most of the facts correctly … He was wrong only in the historical explanation.’   68 Calmeyer (1987: 11): ‘From the monuments we now know that the Persian dress was identical with that of the Elamites’. Cf. Potts (1999: 431–2).   69 This interpretation fits with how Kuhrt (1997b: 687) understands Darius to have secured his kingship among the Persians by demoting even his co-conspirators to equal status with the other peoples vis-à-vis his own eminence:   The result of Darius’ handling of the nobility was to demote them from a peer-group to servants, dependent for their status and position on the king, like the others. Their names were famous … their families remained highly honoured among the Persians … but, in relation to the king, they had no special rights, no greater claim on his person than anyone else. They were all the king’s bandaka, an Old Persian word which means, literally, ‘bondsman’, ‘servant’. This, significantly, is the word Darius uses to describe them, again and again, in the Behistun inscription.   70 Kuhrt (1997b: 687).   71 Cf. Brosius (2006: 40): ‘Without doubt a hierarchical structure existed among the Persian nobility. They were ranked according to a system of meritocracy, which meant that individuals received rewards from the king which distinguished them from one another. These rewards were given in the form of gifts.’   72 Tuplin (1994: 235–6), Kuhrt (2001: 98–9).   73 Brosius (2006: 66).   74 Cf. de Jong (1997: 119–20).   75 Hallock (1969).   76 See Bibliography for list of works by Mary Boyce.   77 This point is made repeatedly in scholarship on the rule of the Achaemenids; e.g. Dandamayev (1994: 234), Brosius (2006: 69).   78 Briant (2002: 242).   79 Wiesehöfer (2009: 86–7).   80 Vallat (1998b: EI), ‘The Old Elamite period’:   an initial impression of the Elamite pantheon is furnished by the treaty of Naram-Sin [2254–18 b.c.e.], which … begins with an enumeration of about forty divinities … [I]n the Old Elamite period most of the divinities honored at Susa were Suso-Mesopotamian … Mesopotamian dominance ended with the

278

Notes to pages 120–5 Middle Elamite period, when gods from the plateau began to invade Susiana, a trend that continued to accelerate until the end of Elamite history.

  81 Vallat (1998b: EI), ‘The Neo-Elamite period’.   82 Brosius (2009: 178): ‘Temples, and the sacred enclosures within which they stood, were the dominating feature of Near Eastern cities, often erected on high, raised platforms. These ziggurats housed the cult statues of the gods, and it was the responsibility of the high priest, the king, and the priesthood, to observe religious festivals and to perform religious rituals in the presence of the populace.’   83 Vallat (1998b: EI), ‘The Middle Elamite period’.   84 Vallat (1998b: EI), ‘The Neo-Elamite period’: ‘Hu(m)ban … had been mentioned second in the list of gods in the treaty of Naram-Sin’.   85 PF339, Kuhrt (2007b: 557).   86 Razmjou (2004: 114).   87 Razmjou (2004: 103–4).   88 Razmjou (2004: 104).   89 Briant (2002: 254).   90 Kuhrt (2007b: 554).   91 Brosius (2006: 67).   92 Briant (2002: 253).   93 Boyce, Chaumont and Bier (1989). Cf. de Jong 1997 and Cook (1983: 150).   94 Dandamayev (1993: EI).   95 De Jong (1997: 118): ‘In Iranian religions there are no generations of gods who succeed one another; descriptions of the divine origins are therefore quickly settled … [It is] likely that the invocation sung by the Magus at the sacrifice was indeed the appropriate hymn to the divinity addressed.’   96 Dandamayev and Medvedskaya (2006: EI).   97 Diakonoff (1985: 140, 141n. 1).   98 Diakonoff (1985: 140).   99 Dandamayev and Medvedskaya (2006: EI). Cf. Diakonoff (1985: 140–1). 100 Malandra (2005: EI). Dandamayev (2012: EI) summarizes discussion of the Magi’s relationship to Zoroastrianism. 101 De Jong (1997: 393). 102 De Jong (1997: 391). 103 Lincoln (2012: 450–2, 461). 104 Brosius (2006: 63–64). 105 Trans. Brosius, in Kuhrt (2007a: 124). 106 Brosius (2006: 64). 107 Porada (1985: 817). 108 Porada (1985: 819).



Notes to pages 125–30

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109 Lloyd (2002: 432) notes that Herodotus had ‘a profound conviction that the Greek and Egyptian deities are one and the same thing’. 110 Brosius (2006: 64): ‘We can assume that the gods of the Lydians and Ionians were similarly respected by Cyrus II.’ 111 Brosius (2006: 69). 112 Dandamayev (1994: 234): ‘Although the Persian kings considered their own gods the most powerful ones, they also believed in the deities of the vanquished peoples, worshipped them and offered them sacrifices trying to gain their favours.’ 113 Brosius (2006: 63, 68) includes the non-Iranian Elamites. 114 Cf. PF 339 in Hallock (1969: 151). 115 Briant (2002: 242), Brosius (2006: 63). 116 Brosius (2006: 63), Boyce (1975: 22). 117 Boyce (1979: 3). 118 Persian practice bears a striking resemblance to the respect shown for rivers in Hesiod, Works and Days, ll. 737–42; 757–9. 119 Munn (2006: 226). 120 Briant (2002: 248–9) cites Strabo XV.3.14, 160, and Dinon, FGrH 690 F28. 121 Boyce (1979: 5). 122 Kuhrt (2007b: 552–61), figures 11.41, 11.44, 11.46, 11.47. 123 Briant (2002: 250–1), citing Plutarch, Art. 29.12 and Xenophon, Cyropaedia VIII.3.12, 24. 124 Corcella (2007: 624), note on 4.59–82. 125 Schmidt (2006: EI). 126 Schmidt (2006: EI). 127 De Jong (1997: 118): ‘Herodotus describes a lay sacrifice, initiated by an individual layman presumably for a specific purpose. The ritual, however, is attended by a Magus, a priest, who has a double task: to be present and to sing a ritual text, explained to Herodotus as a theogony.’ 128 De Jong (1997: 115): ‘It is very likely that this part of the liturgical vestments was influenced by western Iranian Zoroastrian usage. Herodotus has thus possibly preserved an element of ancient Iranian ritual attire which has vanished from contemporary practices.’ 129 De Jong (1997: 110):   One of the interesting facts is that Herodotus makes some contradictory statements, because right after denying the use of fire and wreaths in the sacrificial ritual, they are both introduced: the sacrificer wears a wreath around his tiara and the meat is cooked. These statements, therefore, can only be understood if they are read in connection with the specific use of wreaths and fire in Greek rituals, which indeed does not correspond at all

Notes to page 130

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with the use of wreaths and fire in the Persian sacrificial ritual as described by Herodotus. 130 De Jong (1997: 118):   In Iranian religions there are no generations of gods who succeed one another; descriptions of the divine origins are therefore quickly settled. Nevertheless, the absence of texts resembling a theogony more than the Yasts do, and the possible ritual function of the Yasts, make it likely that the invocation sung by the Magus at the sacrifice was indeed the appropriate hymn to the divinity addressed. 131 De Jong (1997: 110). 132 De Jong (1997: 112–13). 133 De Jong (1997: 120). 134 Schwartz (1985b: 684). 135 Brosius (2006: 66). 136 By ‘Ahuramazdaism’ is meant specifically the cult of Ahuramazda as we find it in the royal inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. ‘Mazdaism’, as used for example by Lincoln (2012: 16) and Brosius (2006: 68), refers to the larger context, historically, geographically and theologically, within which ‘Ahuramazdaism’ might be placed as the ‘last stage’ of (western Iranian) non-Zoroastrian Mazdaism before it merged with (eastern Iranian) Zoroastrianism under Artaxerxes II. On the distinction of eastern and western branches of Zoroastrianism, Boyce (1984: 7):   Eastern Iranians evidently carried Zoroastrianism with them [when they migrated into Iran], and eventually the western Iranians, i.e. the Medes and Persians, also adopted the faith. It became the religion of the Persian Achaemenians … and religious material occurs in their inscriptions. The Avesta itself remained, however, Eastern Iranian in substance as well as language, and there is no reference in it to these or any other Western Iranians, although the Medo-Persian magi became the best known of the Zoroastrian priests. 137 Boyce (1984b: EI): ‘The earliest reference to Ahura Mazdā in western Iran appears to be in an Assyrian text, probably of the 8th century B. C., in which as-sa-ra ma-za-aš is named in a list of gods. This would presumably be the Old Iranian divinity, rather than Zoroaster’s God.’ Cf. Hutter (2009: EI): ‘It is further possible to take the divine name D Assara D Mazaš (from a ninth–eighth century Assyrian source) as the cuneiform adaptation of Zaraθuštra’s god Ahura Mazdā, who is mentioned in a list of gods from Assyria, Urartu, northern Syria, and Elam. From such Iranian words in Assyrian texts, referring geographically to Media, we can deduce that Zoroastrianism was already known in western Iran in the ninth century.’    Kreyenbroek (2010: 104) argues against the separation of Ahuramazda and Zoroastrianism:



Notes to pages 131–4

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  The most obvious reason for assuming that the Achaemenian inscriptions reflect a form of Zoroastrianism is, simply, the presence there of Ahuramazda (‘Lord Wisdom’). Some scholars have held that Mazda was originally an Indo-Iranian divinity, while others reasoned that Mazda-worship (or ‘Mazdaism’) was a common feature of ancient Iranian religious traditions, and not necessarily related to Zoroastrianism. Such theories, however, assume the existence of this divinity in Indo-Iranian, or at least pre-Zoroastrian, times, for which there is no evidence. 138 Cf. Vasunia (2007) and Shannon (2007) as examples of citing the status quo of uncertainty with respect to the relationship of Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda and Darius among authorities. 139 Boyce (1983: EI). 140 This is somewhat the approach advised by Lincoln (2012: 16). 141 A definitive statement on the status quo is that of Malandra (2005: EI):   There is no consensus among scholars over the question whether the early great kings (Cyrus II The Great, Darius I The Great, Xerxes) were influenced by some form of Zarathuštrianism. They certainly believed in the absolute supremacy of Ahura Mazdā (OPers. Auramazdāh-) and in the dichotomy of ahura- and daiva-. Beyond that, however, all is speculation. Neither the Achaemenids themselves nor Herodotus mention Zarathustra, and Gathic quotations, which some see in the inscriptions … may merely reflect phrases common to the shared (Indo-) Iranian poetic diction. 142 Malandra (2005: EI). 143 Soudavar (2010: 119). 144 Brosius (2006: 68–9). 145 Kreyenbroek (2010: 104), identifying Zoroastrianism as the worship of Ahuramazda, regards the Achaemenid adoption of Ahuramazda as the transformation of Zoroastrianism from a pastoral to an imperial religion:   [During the Achaemenid era] the Zoroastrian tradition, which until then had presumably served villages and small communities, became the faith of the imperial family. Thus it was cast in the role of an imperial faith in a land that was remote from its country of origin. Many of the new demands on such a religion must have been unknown until then, and presumably required new beliefs, traditions and institutions, which came to be accepted as fully Zoroastrian. In other words, a new form of the Zoroastrian tradition must have developed under the Achaemenians. It was this tradition that ultimately gave rise to the later forms of Zoroastrianism that are best known to us. 146 De Jong (2010: 88). 147 Lincoln (2012: 17–18).

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Notes to pages 134–41

148 Kuhrt (2007a: 152), n. 9: ‘OP arika means both morally evil and the contravening of trust and obligation’. Lincoln (2012: 213) finds that ‘the adjective arika denotes a certain weakness of character or intellect that renders a person susceptible to believing a falsehood’. 149 Kuhrt (2007a: 152n. 15): ‘OP drauga means “falsehood”, “lie”. It has religious and cosmological overtones, hence it is “The Lie” and, by implication, a threat to the political order, which the king defends with the help of Auramazda. It, therefore, also has, by extension, the meaning “rebellion”; cf. the repeated description of the rebels against Darius as “liars”.’ 150 Cook (1983: 147): ‘It is implicit in Darius’ thought that in the world-wide struggle between good and evil Ahuramazda is the upholder of Justice … The inscriptions clearly indicate the polarization of Justice (or Truth) and the Lie.’ He notes (156) that ‘Darius … does not himself speak of Justice (arta) ’, but argues (n. 33, 254–5) that ‘Arta is an attribute which was one of six Amesha Spentas (“archangels”) in the Zoroastrian scriptures. The belief that in Xerxes’ text “arta” is a noun coupled with Ahuramazda has been questioned, but he three times uses the word “aratawan” (= blessed in the hereafter).’ Cook also would find it ‘strange if Darius was not acquainted with Zoroaster’s doctrine’ (157). 151 Kuhrt (2007a: 152n. 7): ‘OP bandaka: a term expressing the mutual lines of trust and loyalty linking subject to king’. 152 Kuhrt (2007a: 156n. 111). According to Slocum and Harvey (2013), in OP, arta = truth, arsta = truth, righteousness. 153 Kreyenbroek (2010: 105) argues that the dualism of truth/righteousness (arta/arsta) and ‘the Lie’ (drauga) can be seen as evidence of ‘the presence of Zoroastrianism as an important factor in the religious life of the early Achaemenians’. 154 Root (1979: 169), overriding ‘Herodotus’ assertion that the Persians made no images of their gods’ (1.1.32) as ‘unreliable’ (169–70). Root prefers this interpretation to that of Parsee scholars that it is the ‘fravashi’ or ‘spirit of the king’. Cook (1983: 149–150) takes the same view, but he never cites Root (1979). 155 Root (1979: 173). 156 Root (1979: 176). 157 Root (1979: 176). 158 Root (1979: 153, n. 64): ‘On all the Achaemenid reliefs except the Throne Hall south doors and Tomb VI at Persepolis.’ 159 Root (1979: 248). 160 Lincoln (2012: 184): ‘the tribute bearers depicted on the Apadana stairs bore contributions of things that had been distributed as the result of the Lie’s assault, and the concentration of those goods – also of the peoples – at the imperial center



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was a means of reversing the fragmentation and strife that had characterized existence ever since’. 161 Lincoln (2012: 461): ‘Reading against the grain, as always, yields another story, whereby kings who defined their enemies as instruments of “the Lie” thus empowered themselves to treat the latter like vermin and call it a sacred business.’ 162 Brosius (2006: 70): ‘it is important to note that the cult of Ahuramazda will not be imposed on the people, but that Xerxes will worship Ahuramazda there – a significant distinction.’ 163 Lincoln (2012: 247): ‘Xerxes’ famous “Daiva-inscription: (XPh) – tells us virtually nothing about how the daivas (“Demons”? “Old gods”? “Foreign gods”?) were conceived, only that they ought be rejected.’ 164 Briant (2002: 248). Asterisk represents Briant’s sign indicating use of a published English translation instead translating his French into English for the English translation of his work. 165 ‘ou0rano\n eu0ru\n e0n ai0qe/ri kai\ nefe/lhsi’, Il. 15.192. 166 Briant (2002: 248). 167 Burkert (1981: 125–6):   The same name appears in the Indic sky god Dyaus pitar, in the Roman Diespiter/Juppiter, in the Germanic Tues-day, and the root is found in the Latin deus, god, dies, day, and in the Greek eudia, fair weather. Zeus is therefore the Sky Father, the luminous day sky … Only for the Greeks and Romans is the Sky Father the highest god and he is so primarily as a rain and storm god … Zeus dwells on the mountains where storm clouds gather … on Mount Ida near Troy: there, according to Homer, he has his temenos and his altar, and the Iliad tells how he lay there with Hera, veiled in a golden cloud from which glistening drops fell. 168 Cf. Castriota (2000: 454) on the Mesopotamian origins of Persian kingship. 169 Somewhere between the Old and New Babylonian models of divine and non-divine kingship were the Hittite kings, who ‘occupied a pivotal position. Standing at the point of contact between the realm of men and the realm of the gods, the king both represented the Hittites before their pantheon and directed the activities of the people on behalf of their divine overlords’ (Beckman 2005: 345–6). 170 The most likely source is the Median nobles who sought to ingratiate their families with the new Achaemenid line. 171 The title ‘king of Anshan’ was first used by Elamite kings when Fars (Persis) was subject to Elam, before the arrival of the Iranians. Given the close association of Elamites with Persians after their arrival in Fars, its Persian use ‘suggests that the

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Notes to pages 152–60

early Persian kings saw themselves as reviving and/or continuing a local Elamite kingdom, although they were themselves Iranian’ (Kuhrt (1997b: 653)). 172 Cf. Root (2013: 60): ‘In the end I must urge that Achaemenid monumental art expressed a nature of kingship that merged with the divine and even presented the king as a member of the divine realm.’ 173 Cf. Castriota (2000: 447–56). 174 It was, of course, the (older) view of Cook, Boyce, et al. that the Achaemenid worship of Ahuramazda, Anahita and Mithra was some form of Zoroastrianism. Rather than the religion of the royal house, Cook (1983: 147) believes that it ‘had a wide currency among the Iranians, and there is no sign of any feeling that it was the exclusive property of a chosen people to be jealously guarded from outsiders; … Equally there was no attempt to force Persian religious beliefs and practices on subject peoples who had deities of their own.’ 175 See Cook (1983: 132–133; also, 249, nn. 1–5). 176 Cook (1983: 249, n. 3): ‘The Greeks used the word “doulos” (slave) … Darius uses the word “bandaka” (bondsman) of his generals and satraps … In the Orient there is nothing unusual in this attitude; it was remarked by the European travelers that courtiers and nobles under the Safavids were happy to call themselves slaves of the king.’ Seemingly innocuous, this last remark typifies the entrenchment of orientalism in Classical studies that the Achaemenid Workshops were organized to overcome. It is true that a Persian subject would be happy to call himself a bandaka of the king, which Herodotus would certainly translate as doulos; but this would be a misreading for he would not grasp how a bandaka (which Kuhrt interprets as signifying the bonds of mutuality and trust between king and subject) did not perceive himself as a doulos in the abject Greek sense of the word. 177 Kuhrt (2007b: 487), citing Bichler, acknowledges that ‘Although this (Hdt. 1.34.2) fits nicely with the Persian ethnocentrism promulgated in the royal inscriptions, Herodotus may here be transposing Greek ethnocentric notions onto the Persians.’ 178 Graf (1994: 188). 179 Lincoln (2012: 342). 180 Kuhrt (1997b: 503): ‘Two inscriptions, virtually identical in content, one inscribed on Darius I’s tomb at Naqsh-i Rustam (DNb), the other, in Xerxes’ name, found 2 km north of Persepolis.’ Darius is trilingual, Xerxes OP. 181 Cf. Harrison (2011: 88–9):   This pattern of scholars wishing Persia’s imperial subjects to have a positive attitude toward Persian rule is evident not only in the interpretation of imperial art and inscriptions but also (in ample examples) in the context of historical narrative. Herodotus’ story, for example, of the death of the satrap Oroites … has been interpreted … as apparently ‘revealing’ of the real relations between



Notes to pages 163–72

285

King and subjects … The underlying historical hypothesis here, of a strong interdependence of monarchy and elite, may well be a valid one. What needs to be underlined … is that Herodotus’ tale is an expression of an ideology of loyalty to the King; it is not evidence of actual loyalty.

Chapter Four   1 Romm (1992: 36–7).   2 Karttunen (2002: 457), who says it was Herodotus who ‘introduced’ this ‘new system’, whereas Hecataeus ‘probably’ followed the old bipartite division (n. 1). But Herodotus attributes the tripartite system to the Ionians (2.14), and uses it under protest (4.45).   3 Thomas (2000: 85).   4 Thomas (2000: 84).   5 It is an argument he makes with reference to the status of Egypt, divided between Asia and Libya by the Nile and constrained to the Delta on the map of the Ionians (2.17). If the Ionians were consistent in their geography, Herodotus argues, they should make Egypt a fourth continent (2.16).   6 Romm (1992: 35).   7 Romm (1992: 35–6, adapted).   8 Karttunen (2002: 457).   9 Karttunen (2002: 460). 10 Karttunen (2002: 460). 11 Karttunen (2002: 460–3) credits Rossellini and Saïd (1978) for defining this pattern in Herodotus, noting as well that it was ‘not invented by Herodotus – some traces of it are already seen in Homer’ (460). 12 These polarities are found in the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places (AWP) as well. The antithesis of Europe and Asia in AWP 16 is basically that of Greece and Persia; the antithesis of Egypt and Scythia appears in AWP 18. Cf. Redfield (1985: 109). 13 Cf. Gould (1989: 89); Lateiner (1989: 147). 14 Redfield (1985: 102). 15 Cf. Gould (1989: 95). 16 Cf. Lateiner (1989: 145). 17 Cf. Romm (1998: 95–7). 18 Cf. Lateiner (1989: 148). 19 Comparing the Nile and Ister, Munson (2001a: 75) makes a similar observation: ‘Here the Egyptians sailing across the flooded plain (2.97.1) and the Scythians driving their cart on the frozen sea (4.28.1) are complementary visions of the extraordinary. Implicitly but unmistakably, Scythia is the polar opposite

286

20

21

22 23

24

25

26

27

Notes to pages 173–93

of Egypt; and each of these two is not only different from Greece but utterly unique.’ Redfield (1989: 107n. 6), acknowledges a debt to Hartog. Lateiner (1989) offers separate reviews of Egypt (147–52) and Scythia (155–7), but his account of Scythia contains comparisons with Egypt. Cf. West (2002: 450–1): ‘a theological system in which Hestia was pre-eminent might be thought to call into question such equations [of Greek and Scythian gods]’. Hartog (1988: 120–1) points out that Hestia’s role as goddess of the (fixed) hearth seems at odds with the nomadic lifestyle of the Scythians. By way of a structuralist comparison with the role of Hermes, Hestia is finally tied to the royal hearth of the king as the mobile centre of a social rather than geographical space. It may be simpler to say that since the wagon is their home and they have no public square in a public state, Hestia is pre-eminent in an obvious way – the natural family associated with the hearth is the organizing principle of a tribal society of nomads. Hartog’s (1988: 133–51) structuralist commentary provides helpful insights on details of the Scythian burial rites. If the Athenians are not expressing an ideology that is common to all Greeks as they claim, it makes little sense for them to make the speech at all, historically, or historiographically. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood (2003: 107) for an attempt to make sense of Herodotus’ account of the Pelasgians, taking the approach that ‘ “The Pelasgians” were not a fixed essence in the Greek representations; they were a fluid set of concepts, which included several categories of perceptions.’ Of course, the Greeks come last because the Greek contingents served in the navy, but even there they are listed last. But the catalogue still basically agrees with the order of progression found on the royal reliefs, with the Greeks coming last, and least. Despite his lack of respect for the Greeks as a people who meet ‘in the middle of the polis’ to talk and trade goods and ideas, Cyrus likes to host his own debates in which the matter to be discussed is ‘tossed into the middle’ (e0s me/son sfi proeti/qee to/ prh~gma, ‘threw the matter into the middle for them’) (1.206.3). The key decisions made in his career as an imperialist are all marked by debates whose social context seems to be a symposium: the symposium where he incites the Persians to overthrow the Medes (1.125–7), the debate in which he decides to invade Massagetae (1.206–8) and the debate in which he advises the Persians not to forsake their native land for the luxurious lands they have conquered (9.122). Schwartz (1985b: 693). Two customs that exhibit the naturalism of Persian religion are the taboos regarding rivers and lepers (1.138). Leprosy, in which the skin turns white – or untanned – is regarded as an act of divine punishment for religious



Notes to pages 196–222

287

offence to the sun. Both lepers and white doves are banned from the city. Rivers are holy and not to be polluted by urination, spitting or washing of hands. 28 Before meeting the king, the Spartans dine with the Persian commander Hydarnes, who advises that it is in Sparta’s own interests to surrender to Persia and be rewarded rather than resist and be punished, to which they reply: ‘Although you know what it’s like to be a slave, you’ve never experienced freedom and you have no idea whether or not it’s a pleasant state. If you had experienced it, you’d be advising us to wield not spears, but even battleaxes in its defence’ (7.135). 29 Cf. Percy (2005: 21). 30 The striking similarity between Herodotus’ description of Persian education and the royal publication of the regal virtues cannot be accidental:   I am no friend of the man who is a follower of the lie … I am trained with both hands and feet. As a horseman I am a good horseman. As a bowman I am a good bowman, both afoot and on horseback. As a spearman I am a good spearman, both afoot and on horseback. DNb, XPl, Kuhrt (1997b: 681) 31 Xenophanes of Colophon, Fragment B1 provides a classic description of a Greek symposium. 32 It was especially to Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, that the Greeks looked for aid (7.145), who saw that among the allies it is really the common threat of Xerxes’ intention to subdue the whole of Greece (and not just Athens) that has forged their common bond (7.157). 33 Cf. Raaflaub (2000b: 47). 34 Cf. Winton (2000: 99). 35 Cf. Raaflaub (2000b: 50).

Chapter Five   1 Barton and Muddiman (2001: 326): ‘The importance of law and the related issue of obedience versus disobedience is obvious from the repeated use of the term dāt (vv. I3, I5, etc.). This Persian word, meaning “law” or “decree”, appears about 20 times in Esther (elsewhere only twice in the HB).’   2 Asheri (2007c: 431).   3 Schmitt (1994). In DB I.23–4, ‘Darius seems to have equated his law with his command: “By the favor of Auramazdā these countries obeyed my law; as has been said to them by me, thus they used to act.”

288

Notes to pages 224–33

  4 Cf. Evans’ (1991: 70) characterization of Mardonius as ‘opportunistic, for he wanted to be satrap of Greece’.   5 Cf. Evans’ (1991: 70) characterization of Mardonius as ‘the supreme imperialist’.   6 Cf. the comparison with the Anonymous Iamblichi 7.12 made by Thomas (2012: 250): ‘the people are themselves responsible for a tyrant taking over, and this is because they lack nomoi and justice’.   7 Flory (1987: 127).   8 Cf. Thomas (2012: 249): ‘Aristotle’s delineation of the clever tyrant is one who makes the people think that he is serving the community of citizens (Pol. 1315a–b): this could well describe Deioces.’   9 Georges (1994: 178) thought that Deioces’ sophia had ‘some authentic acquaintance of the ideology of Persian kingship’. Cook (1982: 18) had suspected Zoroastrian dualism, which he believed could have originated with Harpagos, possibly the Median source of the Deioces logos. But as Gould (1989: 99) warned, ‘Herodotus has no knowledge of ideology, of ancient Persian religious dualism (in itself so radically different from Greek religious ideas as to present a genuine opposition) … So what he perceives has to be made sense of by reference to his own ideological categories.’ 10 Thomas (2012: 251): ‘The main element that could be attractive and highly “useable” for Greek thinkers interested in the nexus between giving judgement and taking power or gaining tyranny is the strong Persian tradition that the king was the embodiment of cosmic order (arta) and justice.’ 11 Cf. Evans (1991: 54): ‘Astyages was singularly purblind and foolish; yet Herodotus allowed him a last speech that had a degree of wisdom.’ 12 Christ (1994: 198): ‘Herodotus stops short of casting Cyrus definitively as a regal investigator.’ 13 See Christ (1994): for Cambyses (180–2); for Darius (177–8); for Xerxes (179). 14 See Christ (1994): for Cambyses (186–7); for Darius (187–8). 15 Gammie (1986: 180): ‘[F]or some reason the historian chose to portray Cambyses as the stereotype of which the speech of Otanes is but a summary. Without exception, each one of the characteristics of the typical tyrant is exemplified by Cambyses.’ 16 Thompson (1996: 71): ‘Cambyses shows how sinister it can be to equate truth and custom, to measure all of human life with a Persian calculus.’ 17 Immerwahr (1980: 97): ‘The section on customs (nomoi) [2.35–98] establishes an implicit connection with the campaign of Cambyses, since he comes to be the destroyer of both Persian custom and Egyptian religious practice.’ 18 He was also a drunkard (3.34). The cruel reward of the Persian noble, Prexaspes, for telling him that the Persians thought their king drank too much was the instant



19

20

21 22 23

24 25

Notes to pages 235–52

289

death of his son, whom Cambyses promptly shot through the heart with an arrow, to prove the Persians thought wrong (3.35). Pol. 1452a229: ‘a change from ignorance to knowledge, and thus to either love or hate, in the personages marked for good or evil fortune’ (trans. Bywater); a good example is Cambyses’ remorse for killing his brother which follows upon the discovery that he had killed the wrong Smerdis. Lateiner (1985: 97): ‘Cyrus and Darius won empires, established law and order, and prospered. Cambyses and Xerxes, who inherited their power, are less secure and often less wise about preserving it.’ Cf. (Asheri 2007c): 468, note on 3.72.2: ‘lo/gw| me\n … e1rgw| de: Darius’ sophistic argument begins’. Cf. Christ (1994: 188–9): ‘Darius’ kingly play with others’ nomoi suggests, that he, like so many Herodotean kings, does not fully appreciate that nomos is king.’ Root (2013: 49) reads the story as Herodotus’ interpretation of how, according to the Indo-Iranian mythological tradition, ‘during an interregnum, a new king may be selected by omen. The omen is activated through the agency of the sungod’s special sacred animal – the horse.’ Cf. Evans (1991: 61): ‘The Xerxes to whom readers of the Histories are introduced … has more in common with the young king of Aeschylus than otherwise.’ On Themistocles as a mirror of Athens, Blösel (2007). Of the considerable literature comparing Herodotus and Thucydides on Themistocles (often alongside Pausanias), see especially: Fornara (1971: 66–74), Podlecki (1979: 67–75), Gould (1989: 117–18), Evans (1991: 75–80), Munson (2012: 250–6) and Blösel (2012).

Conclusion 1 Cf. Castriota (2000: 458–61). As to why Herodotus does not make this connection so readily, we should note the natural imagery and natural location of the Achaemenid reliefs, established in the Bisitun archetype, to which Root (2013: 50) draws our attention:   Bisitun … was really intended to be received as a great monument of cosmic adoration of Darius himself along with the great god Ahuramazda. In this, Ahuramazda has been merged with [the Assyro-Akkadian sun god] Shamash; Darius has been fused with Shamash and also with natural sun and mountain, heaven and earth. Together, they preside over dawn (and cyclical time). They preside over earth, water, sky, and also the domain of man from the mountain peak.

Herodotus’ ascription of naturalism to Persian religion is easily understood as a

290

Notes to page 252

Greek interpretation of the natural imagery and locations of Achaemenid reliefs. For the Greeks, the Titanic gods of nature had been subordinated to the rule of Olympian Zeus. The difference in status of the sun god in Greek and Persian religion is most instructive on this. In Homer, Odyssey 12, Zeus uses reason to persuade the outraged Helios against acting on his threat to forsake the upper world and to shine in Hades (effectively the same threat of overthrowing the cosmic order made by Ishtar in the Epic of Gilgamesh). 2 Hall (1989: 68–9). Castriota (2000: 466–73) offers an instructive comparison of the relief sculptures of the Parthenon and Apadana. 3 Cf. Root (2013: 36): ‘On its own visual terms it [the Bisitun relief] effectively portrays Darius as already having achieved full status as law incarnate.’ More generally, Root (2013: 28–9) argues that ‘visual imagery across a range of Achaemenid monuments reinforced divine aspects of the king’s nature in relation to abstract principles of belief, in relation to the cosmos, and in relation to earthly practice within the society of humankind’.

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West, S. (2002), ‘Demythologisation in Herodotus’, Xenia Toruniensia 6: 1–48. —(2002), ‘Scythians’, in Bakker, de Jong and van Wees, 437–56. —(2007), ‘Life of Herodotus’, in Bowie, 27–30. Whiting, R. (2001) ed., Mythology and Mythologies. Methodological Approaches to Intercultural Influences, proceedings of the second annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project held in Paris, France, Oct. 4–7, 1999, Melammu symposia, 2, Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki. Wiesehöfer, J. (2004), ‘“Persien, der faszinierende Feind der Griechen”: Güteraustausch und Kulturtransfer in Achaimenidischer Zeit’, in Rollinger and Ulf, 295–310. —(2004), ‘Daiukku, Deiokes und die medische Reichsbildung’, in Meier, Patzek, Walter and Weisehöfer, 15–26. —(2005), Iraniens, Grecs et Romains, Studia Iranica, Cahier 32, Paris: Peeters Publishers. —(2009), ‘The Achaemenid Empire’, in Morris and Scheidel, 66–98. Windfur, F. (1994), ‘Saith Darius: Dialectic, Numbers, Time and Space at Behistun (DB, old Persian Version)’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Kuhrt and Root, 265–81. Winton, R. (2000), ‘Herodotus, Thucydides and the Sophists,’ in Rowe, Schofield, Harrison and Lane, 89–121. Woodhead, W. (1961), trans., Gorgias, in Hamilton and Cairns, 229–307. Woodruff, P. (1999), ‘Rhetoric and Relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias’, in Long, 290–310.

Expanded Table of Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction 0.1  Greek and Other 0.2  Summary overview 0.3  Note on abbreviations, dates, and translations

1

1

2

2 9 12

Herodotus and the Histories 1.1 Herodotus 1.2  Historical narrative of the Histories 1.3  Rhetorical purpose of the Histories 1.4  Argument of the Histories 1.5  Persia as the sophistic Other of Greece 1.6  Rhetorical purpose of representing the Persians as sophistic Other

13

Herodotus and the Sophists 2.1  Sophists and their teachings   2.1.1 Protagoras (DK80)   2.1.2 Gorgias (DK82)    2.1.3  Prodicus (DK84) and Hippias (DK86)    2.1.4  Antiphon (DK87) and Critias (DK88)    2.1.5  Thrasymachus (DK85) and Callicles   2.1.6 Anonymous Iamblichi (DK89) and Dissoi Logoi (DK89) 2.2  Sophist teachings in Herodotus     2.2.1.1 Argumentation: Eristic (7.50.2)     2.2.1.2 Argumentation: Antilogic    2.2.2  Language (2.2, 2.32, 2.50)    2.2.3  Humanism and rationalism (Proem) (1.0)   2.2.4 Agnosticism and scepticism   2.2.5 Anthropology of religion   2.2.6 Phusis   2.2.7 Nomos   2.2.8 Nomos and phusis

29

14 16 17 18 23 25

29 31 33 34 35 35 36 36 36 37 39 42 43 45 47 48 53



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317

   2.2.9.1  Moral relativism: Moral responsibility (1.35–45)    2.2.9.2  Moral relativism: Truth and deception (3.72.4–5)    2.2.10  Political theory (1.95–101, 3.80–4)   2.2.10.1 Sophistic political theory    2.2.10.2  Political theory: Deioces logos (1.95–101)    2.2.10.3  Political theory: Constitutional debate (3.80–4)       2.2.10.3.1 Sophistic construction of the constitutional debate       2.2.10.3.2 Sophistic character of the argument of Darius       2.2.10.3.3 Sophistic structure of the constitutional debate       2.2.10.3.4 Rhetorical purpose and narrative function of the constitutional debate 2.3  Introducing Persians as sophists (1.1–5)   2.3.1 Perse/wn oi9 lo/gioi (1.1.1)    2.3.2  Sophistic character of the Persian logioi    2.3.3  Sophistic character of the Persian logos    2.3.4  Sophistic argument of the Persian logioi    2.3.5  Rhetorical purpose of the preface (1.1–5) 2.4 Conclusion

56

3

95

Herodotus and the Persians 3.1 Persian ethnos   3.1.1 Iranian origins     3.1.1.1 Iranian origins in Greek myth   3.1.2 Persia and Assyria   3.1.3 Persia and Elam     3.1.3.1 Persian origins in Anshan (700–600)     3.1.3.2 Persian ethnogenesis     3.1.3.3 Elamite influence     3.1.3.4 Elam under Persian rule   3.1.4 Persia and Media     3.1.4.1 Persian and Median history      3.1.4.2  Medes and Persians in the Median logos (1.95–130)     3.1.4.3 Medo-Persian ethnography in the Persian logos (1.95–140)      3.1.4.4  Relation of the Median Magi to the Iranian throne    3.1.5  Persian sovereignty and the elite status of Media and Elam    3.1.6  Achaemenid Persia under Darius 3.2  Religion in Persia   3.2.1 Mesopotamian milieu

58 59 60 62 66 66 67 69 70 71 72 73 78 81 91 93

95 96 97 98 99 99 99 100 102 104 105 106 108 110 112 118 118 119

318

4

Expanded Table of Contents

  3.2.2 Elamite religion    3.2.3 Religions of the empire: Media, Babylonia, Judea, Egypt and Greece     3.2.3.1 Media     3.2.3.2 Babylonia     3.2.3.3 Judah     3.2.3.4 Egypt     3.2.3.5 Greece: Ionia and Athens   3.2.4 Indo-Iranian religion     3.2.4.1 Iranian worship of natural elements     3.2.4.2 Scythia     3.2.4.3 Indo-Iranian cult of Mithra     3.2.4.4 Persian sacrificial ritual in Herodotus 3.3  Achaemenid religion: Ahuramazdaism    3.3.1  Ahuramazda the creator: Creation, happiness and paradise    3.3.2  Ahuramazdan cosmic history and the Lie    3.3.3  Ahuramazdan theology of kingship and empire   3.3.4 Xerxes’ daivas and worldwide empire   3.3.5 Herodotus and Ahuramazdaism 3.4  Persian kingship and empire    3.4.1  Evolution of the model of Persian kingship      3.4.1.1  Near Eastern models of divine and non-divine kingship      3.4.1.2 Elamite origin of the local model of kingship under Teispes      3.4.1.3 Babylonian influence on the imperial model of kingship under Cyrus      3.4.1.4 Egypt’s extension of divine kingship to Persia under Cambyses      3.4.1.5 Assyrian origin of the Achaemenid model of non-divine kingship under Darius 3.5  Achaemenid model of kingship   3.5.1 King and people    3.5.2  Royal centre and periphery of empire    3.5.3  Achaemenid self-portrait of the ideal king

120

Persians as Other in Herodotus 4.1  Herodotus’ map of the world   4.1.1 Geography and ethnography

161

121 122 123 124 124 125 127 127 128 129 129 130 131 132 134 141 142 144 144 144 145 146 147 148 152 152 155 159

162 162



Expanded Table of Contents

   4.1.2  Ethnographic centre and periphery 4.2  Herodotus’ cultural grid    4.2.1  Origin of cultural alterity in Herodotus    4.2.2  Ethnographic axes of the cultural grid 4.3  Egyptian–Scythian axis: Nomos hieros vs nomos phusikos   4.3.1 Nomos hieros: Culture of Egypt   4.3.2 Nomos phusikos: Culture of Scythia    4.3.3  Cultural polarities of Egypt and Scythia     4.3.3.1 Culture and environment     4.3.3.2 Religion     4.3.3.3 Morality     4.3.3.4 Society and education     4.3.3.5 Kingship     4.3.3.6 Ideology 4.4 Greek–Persian axis: Nomos basileus vs nomos phuseōs   4.4.1 Nomos basileus: Ethnos and culture of the Greeks   4.4.2 Nomos phuseōs: Ethnos and culture of the Persians    4.4.3  Cultural polarities of Greece and Persia     4.4.3.1 Culture and environment       4.4.3.1.1 Natural boundaries and national borders       4.4.3.1.2 Culture and environment in Greece       4.4.3.1.3 Culture and environment in Persia       4.4.3.1.4 Cultural polarity in culture and environment     4.4.3.2 Religion     4.4.3.3 Society       4.4.3.3.1 Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism       4.4.3.3.2 Masculinity, effeminacy, sexuality and pederasty       4.4.3.3.3 Women and family       4.4.3.3.4 Education and morality       4.4.3.3.5 Symposium     4.4.3.4 Constitutional polarity: Isonomia vs. erōs turannidos    4.4.4  Cultural antagonism of Greek and Persian ideologies     4.4.4.1 Persocentrism and Hellenocentrism     4.4.4.2 Persian and Greek cultural relativism     4.4.4.3 Persian hierarchism and Greek egalitarianism     4.4.4.4 Persian determinism and Greek providence     4.4.4.5 Persian naturalism and Greek idealism    4.4.5  Sophistic ideology of Persian kingship and empire

319 164 165 166 169 171 171 172 172 173 173 174 176 176 177 177 179 182 186 186 187 188 190 191 192 194 194 196 197 198 200 201 203 203 205 206 208 209 210

Expanded Table of Contents

320

5

    4.4.5.1 Sophistic ideology of Persian kingship     4.4.5.2 Sophistic ideology of Persian imperialism

210

Sophist Kings 5.1  Persosophists in Herodotus    5.1.1  Persosophist hero: Paris of Troy   5.1.2 Persosophist ambassadors    5.1.3  Persosophist judges: Magi as royal judges (basilēioi dikastai)    5.1.4  Persosophist counsellors: Atossa and Mardonius 5.2  Archetype of the sophist king   5.2.1 Deioces: Sophos anēr erastheis turannidos 5.3  Median sophist kings   5.3.1 Phraortes and Cyaxares: Nomos of imperialism   5.3.2 Astyages: Despotēs doulōn 5.4  Persian sophist kings   5.4.1 Cyrus: Sophos anēr, erastēs turannidos   5.4.2 Cambyses: Homo furens 5.5  Achaemenid sophist kings   5.5.1 Darius: Homo mensura   5.5.2 Xerxes: Homo theos 5.6  Persosophist Greeks   5.6.1 Polycrates of Samos: Erastēs turannidos   5.6.1 Periander of Corinth: Homo furens   5.6.3 Themistocles of Athens: Homo mensura

215

213

215 216 216 217 222 223 223 225 226 226 228 229 232 235 236 240 243 245 246 247

Conclusion

251

Notes Bibliography Expanded Table of Contents Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories Index of Persons

259 291 316 321 327

Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories 1.0  42, 260 1.1  38, 81, 273 1.1.1  72–4, 78, 91 1.1–5  11, 38, 71, 78–9, 91–2, 198, 273–4 1.1–6 260 1.2.1 82 1.3 83 1.4  87, 190 1.4.1 86 1.4.2 89 1.4.4 90 1.5.1 73 1.5.3  77, 92, 272 1.6 272–3 1.6.3 18 1.7–15 198 1.8 49 1.8.4 89 1.11 217 1.14  164, 244 1.22 244 1.22.4 244 1.29 75 1.29–30 75 1.29.1 264 1.30 266 1.30–1 192 1.34.2 284 1.35–45 56 1.45.2–3 56 1.46 57 1.55 107 1.56–7 180 1.57  18, 167 1.58.1 180 1.59–64 181 1.60  165, 240 1.65  21, 107 1.65–8 181 1.71 190 1.75 163 1.86.2 232

1.87.1 232 1.87.2 232 1.91.5 107 1.91.5–6 107 1.94 170 1.95  50, 106 1.95–6  106, 276 1.95–101  59, 62 1.95–130 108 1.95–140 108 1.96 63 1.96 100 1.96.1–2  62, 223 1.96.2  202, 224 1.97 64 1.98.1–101 145 1.99  108, 225 1.99–100 64 1.100 239 1.100.1–2 220 1.101  104, 110, 226, 276 1.101.1 226 1.102  95, 106, 108, 226 1.102.2 276 1.103  106, 107, 109, 184, 226 1.103.1 106 1.104  107, 164 1.106  72, 226 1.106.2 226 1.106–7 107 1.107 111 1.107–8 227 1.107–28 110 1.117–19 227 1.119 109 1.120 111 1.120.5  110–1, 183 1.123–30 95 1.123–8 227 1.124 229 1.125  104, 183, 184, 229, 239 1.125–7 286

322

Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories

1.126  190, 192, 229 1.126–7 38 1.128 111 1.128–30 107 1.129 230 1.129.3 227 1.129.4 227 1.130  108, 229 1.130–40 109 1.130.1  228, 272 1.131  128–9, 143 1.131–2 119 1.131–40 109 1.131.1 126 1.131.1–32.1 193 1.131.2 127 1.131.2–3 193 1.131.3 121 1.132  122, 128, 130 1.132.3 110 1.133  167, 200, 231 1.133.1 200 1.134  95, 108, 113, 155–6, 165, 169, 183, 203 1.134.1  183, 194 1.134.3  109, 185 1.135  75, 110, 114, 185, 196–7, 237 1.135.1  148, 170 1.136 236 1.136.1 197 1.136.2 198 1.138  58, 198, 236, 248, 286 1.138.2 127 1.140  110, 122 1.140.2 276 1.141  20, 21 1.142  181, 188 1.143–51 181 1.153  20, 109, 186 1.155 57 1.155–6 167 1.157 167 1.169 21 1.177 230 1.184 72 1.191 230 1.204  192, 230 1.206  229, 230 1.206–8 286

1.206.3 286 1.208 163 1.211 231 1.215 128 2.2 39 2.3 174 2.3.1  72, 74, 76 2.3.2  39, 40, 44, 267 2.4 170–1 2.4.2 174 2.14 285 2.15 163 2.16  163, 285 2.17  90, 163, 285 2.23 163 2.32 39 2.33.2–34.2 173 2.35  170, 175 2.35–98 288 2.35.2 171 2.36  171, 175 2.37 175 2.37.5 176 2.38 72 2.39–40 174 2.42 47 2.46 125 2.50  14, 39, 40, 171, 174 2.53  43, 46 2.53.1 44 2.53.2 41 2.58  46, 171 2.64 175 2.65.2 44 2.77  74, 76, 176 2.77.1 72 2.79 171 2.80 194 2.82 174 2.83 174 2.91  97, 171 2.91.1 170 2.92.1 170 2.97.1 285 2.99  72, 173 2.100 76 2.108.2 173 2.108.3 173 2.109.1 173



Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories

2.109.2 173 2.115 87 2.120 86 2.125 76 2.142 76 2.143 76 2.144  173, 176 2.147 176 2.152 176 2.154 176 2.158 165 2.158.5 177 2.164 76 2.164.1 176 2.164.2 176 2.166.2 176 2.167 176 3.3  107, 234 3.14 234 3.16 233 3.16.4–5 233 3.17 232 3.29 233 3.31  59, 109, 111, 211, 219, 232–3 3.31.2 220 3.31.3 221 3.32 234 3.33 233–4 3.34 288 3.35  234, 288 3.37 233 3.38  36, 48–53, 165–6, 193, 206, 237, 268–9 3.38.1  48, 124, 205 3.38.2 206 3.38.3–4 49 3.38.4  49, 53, 206, 235, 269 3.39 245 3.39–60 181 3.41–3 245 3.43 245 3.44 245–6 3.61–79 110 3.62 108 3.64  109, 233 3.64–6 233 3.65 233 3.65.1 233 3.67–8 112

3.72 236 3.72.2 289 3.72.4–5 58 3.75 112 3.79  110, 112 3.80  14, 19–20, 51, 69, 221, 243, 266 3.80–2  38, 66 3.80–3 237 3.80–4  59, 66 3.80.2 202 3.80.3 246 3.80.3–6 232 3.80.4 202 3.82.1–4 67 3.82.2  236, 239 3.83 50 3.85.1 239 3.85.2 239 3.91 102 3.91.4 102 3.93 96 3.98 164 3.106 188 3.108  53, 86, 179 3.108.2 47 3.116 164 3.117 191 3.121 245 3.122.2 245 3.122.4 245 3.124–5 245 3.125  20, 245 3.134 223 3.139 246 3.142.1 246 3.142.2 246 3.142.3 246 3.143 246 4.5 176 4.5–11 173 4.17 164 4.28.1 285 4.36 162 4.38 190 4.44 232 4.45  7, 162–3, 285 4.46  72, 172 4.46.1 72–4 4.46.2  74, 129

323

324 4.47 172 4.47.1 173 4.49 185 4.50 185 4.59  128, 174 4.59–82 279 4.60  128, 174 4.61 174 4.62  129, 174 4.64 175–6 4.65 175 4.66 175 4.67 174 4.71 174 4.76 170 4.76.1 75 4.76.2 75 4.82 173 4.89 164 4.97 164 4.106  165, 188 4.110–17 167 4.119  164, 188 4.127 177 4.128 177 4.133 181 4.137  22, 244, 262 4.137.1 181 4.137.2 181 4.137.3 181 4.138 22 4.138.1 181 4.141 177 4.142  177, 181, 262 4.178 72 4.185 164 5.9 164 5.25.1–2 219 5.30 22 5.35 22 5.37.2  22, 262 5.49  102, 113, 190, 196 5.49.3–4  186, 190 5.50 21 5.52  102, 113 5.58 170 5.66 20 5.75 195 5.78  13, 20–1

Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories 5.91–2 20 5.92  20–1, 243 5.92a 182 5.92a1–2 19 5.92f  244, 246–7 5.92f.3 247 5.92g 247 5.92h.4–5 243 5.97 22 5.103 22 5.105  22, 209 5.124 20 6.9–10 243 6.9–18 262 6.18 244 6.39 72 6.42 19 6.43  14, 24, 26 6.53–4 97 6.56 195 6.56.1 195 6.56–9 263 6.58 195 6.58–9 21 6.60  21, 194 6.84 20 6.107 20 6.119 102 7.1 22 7.8–11 213 7.8a–c 241 7.8a.1 143 7.8b 126 7.8c  179, 213 7.8c1 143 7.9.2 214 7.10a 39 7.10e 242 7.11 235 7.18.2 228 7.18.2–3 242 7.19 112 7.19–191 110 7.21 128 7.22 128 7.24 128 7.35 128 7.37 276 7.39 109



Index of Passages – Herodotus’ Histories

7.40 142 7.43 125 7.44 242 7.44–5 207 7.44–6 204 7.46 266 7.50.2  36–7, 266 7.54  128, 209, 241 7.55 163 7.56  207, 240 7.60 109 7.61 184 7.61–2  97, 112 7.61–83 184 7.61–99 183 7.62  96–7, 102, 113–14, 184, 277 7.62–3 276 7.63 96 7.66 96 7.81 109 7.84–8 184 7.86 102 7.87 106 7.89–99 184 7.90–5 184 7.91 126 7.102 178–9 7.102–4 53 7.102.3  55, 167 7.103.3–4 54 7.104  20, 21 7.104.4  53, 55 7.104.4–5 55 7.128–30 232 7.135 287 7.136 195 7.136.2 195 7.138 22 7.139  13, 22

7.139.5 182 7.145  22, 262, 287 7.150  24, 97, 216 7.156–63 262 7.157 287 7.158 22 7.159–62 22 7.194 220 7.210  102, 113 7.210–1 184 8.4–5 248 8.53–4 126 8.54 241 8.77 39 8.77.1 45 8.83 39 8.88 198 8.109  23, 126, 248 8.109.3  208, 249 8.110.1 247 8.111 248 8.112 248 8.115 142 8.123–4 249 8.140–2 262 8.142 193 8.143 190 8.143.2 209 8.143–4  22, 262 8.144  13, 179, 193 8.144.2 204 9.16  18, 201 9.41–2 38 9.88 266 9.100.2 45 9.108–13 242 9.122  55, 108, 178, 192, 243, 286 9.122.3 208

325

Index of Persons Achaemenes 102, 118, 235, 275 Achilles 125, 163, 241, 249, 253 Adad 120 Adrastus 56–8 Aeschylus 5, 15, 102, 154, 241, 274, 289 Agamemnon 227, 242, 254 Agave 84 Ahasuerus 217–8 Ahuramazda/Auramazda 68, 95, 112, 114, 116, 118–22, 129–37, 139, 141–3, 149–51, 153–5, 157, 159, 161, 204, 217, 220, 225, 251–3, 280–4, 287, 289 Ajax 250 Alcibiades 17 Alexander the Great 230, 253, 275 Alyattes 106, 244 Amasis 177, 233, 237, 245 Amestris 185, 198 Amun 47 Anacharsis 74–6 Anacreon 245 Anahita 119, 121, 129, 131, 284 Anaphes 112 Anaximander 30, 52, 212, 269 Antigone 56, 84 Antiphon 30, 35, 43, 48, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 80, 85, 212, 236, 266, 270, 271 Aphrodite 119,121, 128–9 Apis 51, 121, 124, 147, 193, 232–4 Apollo 56–8, 126 Ares 128–9, 174–5 Aristagoras 20, 22, 185–6, 190, 196, 244 Aristophanes 78, 198, 264, 266 Aristotle 6, 15, 30–1, 53, 72, 78–80, 197, 233, 263–4, 266, 272, 288 Artabanus 38–9, 70, 199, 228, 241–2, 266 Artaxerxes I 217, 248 Artaxerxes II 119, 121, 129, 131, 217, 280 Artemisia 14, 185, 198 Ashur 148, 150 Ashurbanipal 98–9, 147–50

Astyages 11, 95, 100, 105–12, 145–6, 211, 223, 226–31, 235, 239, 255, 288 Athena 58, 125, 205, 249 Atossa 185, 198–9, 216, 222–3, 241–2 Attaginus 201 Atum 124 Augustus 254 Bel 123, 148 Bisitun 100–3, 117–19, 132–3, 136, 151–3, 157, 159, 183, 210–11, 225, 237–8, 251, 274, 289–90 Biton 20, 57, 89, 192, 197 Cadmus 274 Callicles 1–2, 30, 34–6, 49, 53, 59–62, 65, 68, 85, 207, 211–12, 216, 233, 256, 266, 268, 271 Cambyses 7, 11, 16, 20, 23, 49–52, 59, 69–70, 101–3, 107–10, 112, 115, 118–19, 121, 123–4, 130, 133, 141, 146–9, 151–2, 154, 158, 171, 177, 182, 185, 190, 193, 206, 210–11, 219–21, 223, 227–8, 231–7, 239, 241–3, 245–7, 255–6, 269, 288–9 Candaules 14, 49, 51–2, 57, 88–9, 185, 198, 217, 227, 230, 242, 247, 269 Cassandane 107, 234 Cassandra 185 Cheops 177 Chepren 177 Cicero 15 Cleobis 20, 57, 89, 197 Cleomenes 20 Cleon 17 Clisthenes 26, 212 Clytemnestra 198 Colaxais 176 Cratylus 39–42, 267 Critias 30, 35, 44–6, 49, 60, 63–5, 85, 256 Croesus 11, 16, 18, 20–1, 45, 51–2, 56–8, 70, 75, 89, 92, 107, 163, 177, 181,

328

Index of Persons

190, 199, 201, 208, 227–8, 230–32, 235, 244–5, 254, 260, 266, 272–3 Ctesias 154 Cyaxares 11, 105–7, 109, 164, 184, 188, 223, 226, 234 Cypselus 247 Cyrus I 98–101, 145 Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great) 7, 11, 14, 16, 18, 20–1, 23–4, 26, 38, 52, 55–8, 68–70, 89, 95, 98–105, 107–11, 115, 118–19, 121, 123–4, 128–30, 133, 141, 145–49, 151–2, 158, 163, 167, 176, 178, 182, 185–6, 189, 190–2, 196, 199, 208, 210–11, 223, 226–32, 234–5, 238–9, 241, 243–5, 256, 269, 275, 279, 281, 286, 288–9 Daniel 217–19, 221 Darius 7, 10–2, 16, 20–4, 26, 35–6, 38–9, 49–51, 53, 58–9, 65–71, 74, 92–3, 95–6, 100–3, 109–19, 121, 123–6, 130–6, 139–41, 148–52, 154, 157–63, 171, 176, 181, 185, 190, 198–9, 202, 205–6, 209–11, 216–17, 219–20, 222–5, 227–8, 231–3, 235–41, 243–6, 248–9, 251–2, 255–6, 261, 268, 271, 275–7, 280–2, 284, 287–90 Deioces 11, 26, 35, 50, 59, 62–9, 71, 105–6, 108–10, 136, 145, 160–1, 179, 183, 185, 199, 202, 211, 216, 220–1, 223–6, 228–9, 235–6, 238–40, 243–6, 249, 255–6, 263, 270, 288 Demaratus 8, 10, 21, 53–5, 167, 178–9, 195, 207, 242, 270 Democritus 72, 268 Demodocus 199 Demosthenes 72 Diomedes 269 Dionysodorus 266 Dionysus 84, 125, 264 Dryo 14 Ea 120 Eanatum 144 Empedocles 269 Enki 144 Enlil 120, 144 Epimetheus 48, 268

Epitimus 270 Esther 217–19, 221, 287 Euripides 15–16, 83–4, 185, 266, 272 Europa 81–2, 84–5, 91–2 Eusebius 15, 261 Euthydemus 266 Fravartish 140 Gelon 22, 287 Geryon 269 Gorgias 30, 33–5, 44–5, 56, 58–60, 78–80, 92, 256, 264, 267, 270, 272–3 Gyges 11, 49, 57, 88–9, 235, 247, 269 Hades 253, 290 Harpagus 109, 227–30 Hecataeus 76, 91–2, 285 Hector 253 Helen 33, 56, 78–87, 89–92, 189, 216, 256, 270, 273 Helios 76, 290 Hellanicus 92 Hera 89, 197, 247, 283 Heracles 207, 269 Heraclitus 1, 30, 41, 45, 47, 51–2, 56, 209, 212–13, 257, 265, 269, 273 Hermes 286 Hermogenes 40, 267 Hesiod 2, 14, 26, 32–4, 43–4, 46–7, 58, 60–1, 63, 65, 84, 125, 143, 160, 180, 191, 193, 212, 214, 240, 252, 254, 256, 263, 268, 272, 279 Hestia 174, 286 Hezekiah 124 Hippias 20, 30, 34–5, 43, 48, 60, 243–4, 247, 263 Histiaeus 181, 244 Homer 2, 14, 19, 26, 34, 43–4, 46–7, 61, 84, 92, 113, 116. 125, 143, 180, 197, 252–3, 256, 260, 264, 268, 273, 283, 285, 289 Horus 124, 147 Humban 120 Hystaspes 152 Inanna 120 Inšušinak 120 Io 81–6, 91, 92



Index of Persons

329

Iphigenia 227 Ishtar 121, 144, 290 Isocrates 264

219, 221, 227–8, 233, 235–6, 238–9, 243, 246–7, 256, 271, 288 Ouranos 174

Jason 83–5, 90

Panyassis 15, 260 Paris 82–5, 87, 89–90, 215–16 Parmenides 269 Patizeithes 110 Patroklos 241 Pausanias 245, 289 Penelope 58, 198 Pentheus 185, 223 Periander 20, 243–4, 246–7 Pericles 13, 15–17, 31, 56, 80, 197, 203, 261, 270 Perseus 24, 93, 97, 184, 216, 274 Pharnaspes 107 Pheros 177 Phraortes 11, 62, 105–9, 223, 226, 234 Pindar 23, 35, 49–50, 52, 56, 72, 206, 212, 241, 243, 263, 268–9 Pisistratus/Peisistratus 181, 224, 244, 249, 263 Plato 1, 12, 30–2, 34–5, 39–40, 42, 68, 78, 197, 207–8, 215, 224, 256, 263–6, 268, 271–2 Plutarch 15, 154, 261, 261, 270, 279 Polycrates 20, 244–6, 262 Poseidon 40–1, 240 Prexaspes 108, 112, 234, 237, 288 Priam 83, 87, 116, 197 Prodicus 30, 34, 37, 39–40, 264, 267 Prometheus 32, 60–1, 191 Protagoras 1, 15–16, 23, 30–4, 36–49, 51–3, 55–6, 60–3, 65–7, 75, 78, 85–6, 205, 212, 215, 220, 233, 236–8, 249, 256–7, 259, 264–8, 270–2 Proteus 87–8, 91 Psammetichus 176, 234, 237 Pythagoras 199, 264 Pythius 109

Kiririša 120 Kronos 85, 174, 252 Kurash 98–9 Leonidas 55, 185, 196 Lycurgus 26, 181, 212 Lydagmis 14 Lysistrata 198 Lyxes 14, 260 Maeandrius 246 Mandane 107, 111, 227 Mardonius 19, 24, 38, 199, 209, 214, 216, 222–3, 241–2, 287 Marduk 119, 123, 144, 145–6, 148–9 Masistes 177 Mazdakku 122 Medea 81–3, 85, 90, 92, 97, 184, 198 Megabyzus 271 Melampus 264 Melissa 247 Menelaus 79, 87, 90 Miltiades 181 Minas 173 Mitra/Mithra 119, 121–2, 127, 129, 131, 284 Mordecai 219 Musaeus 47 Nabu 123, 148 Naram-Sin 144, 148, 277–8 Nergal 149 Nietzsche 34 Ningirsu 144 Ninurta 149 Nusku 149 Odysseus 7, 58, 198 Oedipus 57 Oroetes/Oroites 245, 284 Orpheus 47 Osiris 121, 124, 144, 147 Otanes 10, 19, 24, 51, 67–70, 112, 202,

Ra/Re 121, 124, 147–8, 152 Sandoces 219 Sargon 117, 144 Sesos 177 Sesostris 173, 176

330

Index of Persons

Shamash 289 Simonides 47, 78 Sin 120, 144 Sisamnes 219 Smerdis 110, 112, 289 Socrates 37, 40–2, 208 Solon 20, 26, 30, 56–7, 70, 75–6, 88–9, 181, 192, 197, 199, 208, 212, 256, 264–6, 272 Sophocles 15–6, 56, 84, 257, 261 Sosicles (Socleas) 21, 181, 243, 247 Strabo 104, 122, 279 Syloson 246 Targitaus 176 Teispes 99, 145–6, 151, 210, 228 Tellus 20, 57, 192, 197 Themistocles 12, 20, 39, 208, 212–13, 216, 245, 247–50, 263, 289 Theodorus 14, 260 Thersander 201 Thetis 125 Thrasybulus 244, 247–8 Thrasymachus 30, 35–6, 49, 58, 60–2, 65, 68, 85, 212, 216, 236 Thucydides 2, 12–13, 17, 23, 26, 34, 203–4, 211–12, 214, 222–3, 245, 248–9, 256–7, 266, 270, 272, 289

Tigranes 112 Tomyris 185, 198, 229–30, 269 Untaš-Napiriša 120 Upurkupak 120 Vashti 217 Xanthippus 270 Xenophanes 30, 45, 47, 287 Xenophon 104, 127–8, 154, 212, 264 Xerxes 1, 7–8, 10–11, 16, 18–20, 22–5, 35, 37–8, 51, 53–5, 70–1, 93, 96, 109–13, 115–16, 119, 125–6, 128, 130–2, 141–3, 153–4, 158–60, 163–4, 177–9, 183–5, 190, 193, 195, 197–9, 204, 207, 209, 212–14, 217, 220, 222–3, 227–8, 231–2, 235, 239–42, 244–5, 247–9, 251–2, 254–7, 263, 266, 270, 276, 280–4, 287–9 Zeus 2, 32, 33, 41, 47, 60–5, 84–5, 87–8, 119, 125, 127–9, 142–3, 174, 176, 189, 191, 193, 195, 200, 207, 210, 212–14, 240, 242, 245–6, 249, 252–5, 263, 272, 283, 289 Zoroaster/Zarathustra 122, 130–1, 280–2