The History - Book 7 (Polymnia) by Herodotus

Author: Herodotus

Summary (Slides by nblm)

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Great Books Ep 116. Herodotus - The History - Book 7 (Polymnia). When Dreams Urge us on a Specific Path by Rob, a bibliophile

How a recurring dream caused Xerxes to launch a massive attack against the Greeks without which the course of history could have been altogether different.

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Notes

• Darius badly wants to defeat Athens. He rallies troops. During that time, Egypt revolts. So he wants to put them both down. But he dies. His son Xerxes ascends the throne
• Xerxes is deeply troubled on deciding whether to go to war or not. He has recurring dreams daily where a figure challenges him to go to war. But wisdom says not to.
• Xerxes asks his uncle Artabanus to wear royal clothes and sleep on his bed. Artabanus says that he has lived a long life and does not think that just by sleeping in someone else’s clothes you can dream their dream. He says that not going to war is the right thing to do since it is always bad for one’s heart to covet more than what one has.
• At this point, Xerxes also doesn’t want to go to war. Artabanus does what his nephew says and lies down in the bed. He gets up shrieking after some time. In the dream, he sees a person who tells him to not stop Xerxes from doing what is destined. There will be terrible consequences. Artabanus gets up and tells Xerxes that a god wants him to go war. There is no other way. So Xerxes takes care of the revolt in Egypt and spends the next four years assembling an army to go to war against Greece.
• At Athos peninsula, they create a large canal and then build a floating bridge using ships. This is the place where over 3000 of Darius’ men were killed due to violent storms. There is some storm again that destroys the bridge and Xerxes orders the waters at Hellespont to be whipped.
• Two massive projects by Xerxes
  1. The Athos Canal: A Shortcut for Ships
     • The Location: The isthmus of the Athos peninsula (in modern-day Northern Greece). The Purpose: Safe passage for the Navy.
     • The Context: Years earlier, during his father Darius’ time, while rounding the dangerous Cape of Mount Athos, a violent storm destroyed nearly 300 ships and killed 20,000 men.
     • The Solution: Xerxes was terrified of a repeat disaster. Instead of risking the open sea around the stormy cape again, he ordered a canal to be dug across the narrowest part of the land.
     • Herodotus’ Take: Herodotus notes that Xerxes could have simply dragged the ships across the land, but he chose a canal “out of a feeling of pride,” wanting to leave a permanent monument to his power.
  2. The Location: The Hellespont (now the Dardanelles), the narrow strait separating Asia from Europe. The Purpose: A “land bridge” for the Infantry and Cavalry.
  • The Context: Xerxes’ army was so massive (millions, according to Herodotus) that transporting them by boat ferry would have taken forever. He wanted to march them directly from Asia into Greece.
  • The Floating Bridges: He ordered a double bridge made of hundreds of triremes and penteconters (warships) lashed together with massive flax and papyrus cables to serve as a platform for a road.
  • The “Whipping of the Sea”: A sudden storm destroyed the first set of bridges. Xerxes was so enraged by this “insubordination” from nature that he ordered his men to give the Hellespont 300 lashes with a whip, drop a pair of fetters into the water to “chain” it, and brand the water with hot irons. He also had the original bridge-builders beheaded.
• Xerxes also sends heralds to all the cities and countries on the way to prepare a feast as the king marches. Pythius, a Lydian is the second riches man in the world (after Xerxes the King). He offers gold to fund the war. Impressed by this, Xerxes offers him money and thanks him for his hospitality.
• Pythius asks for one of his sons to be left after seeing the eclipse. Xerxes gets angry and asks his men to kill and cut this son into 2 pieces. The army marches in between the pieces. While crossing Hellespont, Xerxes laments the fate of humanity. Artabanus, the wise advices him to think of possible calamities in sea and land to be prepared. Xerxes sends him to Susa and marches forward.
• Xerxes offers prayers to Hellespont and has his army cross over to Europe. The army is so large that it takes a few days to cross. Herodotus gives a detailed account of all the different nations in the army. Each had a different style of clothing, different kinds of weapon and armor.
• Herodotus goes at length into different groups of people in the Persian army.
• Xerxes asks Demaratus whether the Greeks will fight against him. Demaratus says that he can talk about Spartans. Even if all the Greeks surrender, Spartans will fight even if their numbers are small.
• Xerxes marched on. The army was so large that it was difficult for the countries on the way to feed them.
• Xerxes sent no heralds to Athens or Sparta since heralds were killed by throwing them into pit/well. Sparta sent two people at a later time to atone for their mistake.
• Athenians ask the oracle of Delphi for advise. The oracle says a wooden wall will defend them. Themistocles interprets it as a their ships defending them and urges Athenians to prepare their fleet.
• Xerxes forgives Greek spies when they are caught. His reasoning is that the spies would go back and tell the Greeks how large the army was and hopefully surrender without fighting.
• Greeks send ambassadors to neighboring states like Argos & Syracuse to join them to fight against the Persians. The Argives say that they are related to Persians and hence will not join. Gelo the ruler of Syracuse says that he will give men to fight if he is made the leader to which the Spartan king (Syagrus) rejects. Gelo sends a counter proposal that the Spartans can lead the land army but he would lead the fleet. This proposal is rejected by Athenians.
• The Corcyraeans agree to help Greece saying - “the ruin of Greece is something they cannot standby and watch”. But when the time came, they didn’t.

• The Cretans send a messenger to Delphi to ask for advice. The Pythoness reminded them that Crete was destroyed completely two times in the past when they went to help someone (the second time being the Trojan war). So they did not go to help Athens.
• The Thessalians send message to Greece saying that they will help if Greece could send them an army to defend Thessaly against the incoming army. Greece sends around 10 thousand men who gather at a pass, but someone else advices them that they are no match to the incoming army. So they go back. After this, Thessaly joins Xerxes.
• The Greeks decide to stop the Persian land army at Thermopylae, which is a narrow pass. They send ships to fight against the navy at Artemisium. The oracle at Delphi ask them to pray to the winds.
• The Persian navy captures 3 Greek ships - 1st from Troezen, second from Egina and third from Athens. They sacrifice the handsomest man (named Leo) from the first ship, they tend to the wounds of the bravest man from the second ship. All the men from the third ship run away after crashing their ship on the beach.
• Herodotus adds up the number of men in Xerxes’s army and navy including the Greek cities of Asia minor and it comes to over 5 million!!
• The Persian fleet is caught in a fierce three-day storm near Cape Sepias, destroying roughly 400 ships and a vast amount of treasure.
• 15 Persian ships go directly into the Greek area mistaking the Greek ships as their own and get captured. Even then they have enough number of ships to fight the Greeks.
• On land, in the meantime, Xerxes marches towards Thermopylae.
• The Greeks at Herodotus traces Leonidas’ ancestry upto Hercules.
• Xerxes waits four days for the Greeks to flee in terror, but when they remain, he sends his Medes and Cissians to capture them.
• Persians fight for two full days but are a match for the Greeks. They lose people in great numbers. Ephialtes betrays Greeks by informing Persians of a secret mountain path.
• As they are fully surrounded, Leonidas asks most of his allies to get away to safety. He remains with 300 men to fight the Persians. Greeks fight to death, Leonidas is killed and there is a huge fight for his body. But all of the 300 men get killed.
• Xerxes asks Demaratus for advice and he says the Persians should split his fleet and attack the coast of Laconia. But Xerxes’ brother Achaemenes says that it is not a wise strategy to split the fleet since they already lost 100s of ships. He wanted the land and the sea troops to be together.
• Xerxes says Demaratus advised based on his knowledge and didn’t mean ill-will and tells everyone that Demaratus is his bond-friend.
• Xerxes is so angry with Leonidas that he orders his head to be cut off and trunk crucified. Herodotus mentions that it was against the Persian custom of honoring valiant enemies.
• As a plot twist, we get to know in the end that Demaratus had warned the Spartans of the attack ahead of time by sending them a waxed tablet.

Quotes

• all Asia was in commotion by the space of three years, while everywhere, as Greece was to be attacked, the best and bravest were enrolled for the service, and had to make their preparations accordingly. (View Highlight)
• “For at Sparta,” said Demaratus, by way of suggestion, “the law is that if a king has sons before he comes to the throne, and another son is born to him afterwards, the child so born is heir to his father’s kingdom.” (View Highlight)
• even without this, the crown would have gone to Xerxes; for Atossa || was all-powerful. (View Highlight)
• after having reigned in all six-and-thirty years, leaving the revolted Egyptians and the Athenians alike unpunished. At his death the kingdom passed to his son Xerxes. (View Highlight)
• Artabazanes claimed the crown as the eldest of all the children, because it was an established custom all over the world for the eldest to have the pre-eminence; (View Highlight)
• First, however, in the year following the death of Darius, he marched against those who had revolted from him; and having reduced them, and laid all Egypt under a far harder yoke than ever his father had put upon it, he gave the government to Achaemenes, who was his own brother, and son to Darius. (View Highlight)
• All this he said, because he longed for adventures, and hoped to become satrap of Greece under the king (View Highlight)
• Now in all this God guides us; and we, obeying his guidance, prosper greatly. (View Highlight)
• In his behalf, therefore, and in behalf of all the Persians, I undertake the war, and pledge myself not to rest till I have taken and burnt Athens, which has dared, unprovoked, to injure me and my father. Long since they came to Asia with Aristagoras of Miletus, who was one of our slaves, and, entering Sardis, burnt its temples and its sacred groves; (View Highlight)
• For no sooner is war proclaimed than they search out the smoothest and fairest plain that is to be found in all the land, and there they assemble and fight; (View Highlight)
• By this course then we shall bring all mankind under our yoke, alike those who are guilty and those who are innocent of doing us wrong. (View Highlight)
• a man is forced then to follow whatever advice may have been given him; but if opposite speeches are delivered, then choice can be exercised. (View Highlight)
• . In like manner pure gold is not recognised by itself; but when we test it along with baser ore, we perceive which is the better. (View Highlight)
• Again, hurry always brings about disasters, from which huge sufferings are wont to arise; but in delay lie many advantages, not apparent (it may be) at first sight, but such as in course of time are seen of all. (View Highlight)
• For slander is of all evils the most terrible. In it two men do wrong, and one man has wrong done to him. The slanderer does wrong, forasmuch as he abuses a man behind his back; and the hearer, forasmuch as he believes what he has not searched into thoroughly. The man slandered in his absence suffers wrong at the hands of both: for one brings against him a false charge; and the other thinks him an evildoer. (View Highlight)
• I know not of aught in the world that so profits a man as taking good counsel with himself; (View Highlight)
• how hurtful it is to allow one’s heart always to covet more than one at present possesses, (View Highlight)
• Whatever a man has been thinking of during the day is wont to hover round him in the visions of his dreams at night. (View Highlight)
• I knew how evil a thing it is to covet more than one possesses. I could remember the expedition of Cyrus against the Massagetae, and what was the issue of it; I could recollect the march of Cambyses against the Ethiops; I had taken part in the attack of Darius upon the Scyths —bearing therefore all these things in mind, I thought with myself that if thou shouldst remain at peace, all men would deem thee fortunate. (View Highlight)
• All these expeditions, and others, if such (View Highlight)
• there were, are as nothing compared with this. (View Highlight)
• he dreamt that he was crowned with a branch of an olive tree, and that boughs spread out from the olive branch and covered the whole earth; then suddenly the garland, as it lay upon his brow, vanished. (View Highlight)
• It seems to me, when I consider this work, that Xerxes, in making it, was actuated by a feeling of pride, wishing to display the extent of his power, and to leave a memorial behind him to posterity. (View Highlight)
• This is the man, O king! who gave thy father Darius the golden plane-tree, and likewise the golden vine; and he is still the wealthiest man we know of in all the world, excepting thee. (View Highlight)
• So when Xerxes heard of it he was full of wrath, and straightway gave orders that the Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes, and that a pair of fetters should be cast into it. (View Highlight)
• Here his first care was to send off heralds into Greece, who were to prefer a demand for earth and water, and to require that preparations should be made everywhere to feast the king. To Athens indeed and to Sparta he sent no such demand; (View Highlight)
• • “God is foreshowing to the Greeks the destruction of their cities; for the sun foretells for them, and the moon for us (View Highlight)
• Know that man’s spirit dwelleth in his ears, and when it hears good things, straight- way it fills all his body with delight; but no sooner does it hear the contrary than it heaves and swells with passion. (View Highlight)
• At the moment of departure, the sun suddenly quitted his seat in the heavens, and disappeared, though there were no clouds in sight, but the sky was clear and serene. Day was thus turned into night; (View Highlight)
• And now, as he looked and saw the whole Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on his good fortune; but after a little while he wept.
• “There came upon me,” replied he, “a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness of man’s life, and considered that of all this host, so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a hundred years are gone by.” (View Highlight)
• “Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it be here among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so happy, as not to have felt the wish — but full many a time I will not say once, —that he were dead rather than alive. (View Highlight)
• The iand will also be thine enemy; for if no one resists thy advance, as thou proceedest farther and farther, insensibly allured onwards ( for who is ever sated with success.’ ). thou wilt find it more and more hostile. (View Highlight)
• So death, through the wretchedness of our life, is a most sweet refuge to our race: and God, who gives us the tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very gift, to be envious. (View Highlight)
• Methinks it is best for men. when thev take counsel, to be timorous, and imagine all possible calamities, but when the time for action comes, then to deal boldly. (View Highlight)
• Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one’s share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen, and never incur a mischance. (View Highlight)
• if thou wilt oppose whatever is said by others, without thyself showing us the sure course which we ought to take, thou art as likely to lead us into failure as they who advise differently (View Highlight)
• Success for the most part attends those who act boldly, not those who weigh everything, and are slack to venture. (View Highlight)
• Those two things are the land and the sea. In all the wide sea there is not, I imagine, anywhere a harbour large enough to receive thy vessels, in case a storm arise, and afford them a sure protection. (View Highlight)
• since our march is not directed against a pastoral people, but against men who are tillers of the ground.” (View Highlight)
• quer them, there is not a people in all the world which will venture thereafter to withstand our arms. (View Highlight)
• ‘The beginning and end of a matter are not always seen at once.’ ” (View Highlight)
• Foremost went the Ten Thousand Persians, all wearing garlands upon their heads; and after them a mixed multitude of many nations. These crossed upon the first day. (View Highlight)
• It would have been as easy for thee to destroy it without their aid!” (View Highlight)
• whole land army together was found to amount to one million seven hundred thousand men. (View Highlight)
• a mare brought forth a hare. (View Highlight)
• It was not till Perseus, the son of Jove and Danae, visited Cepheus the son of Belus, and, marrying his daughter Andromeda, had by her a son called Perses (whom he left behind him in the country because Cepheus had no male offspring), that the nation took from this Perses the name of Persians. (View Highlight)
• They were called “the Immortals,” for the following reason. If one of their body failed either by the stroke of death or of disease, forthwith his place was filled up by another man, so that their number was at no time either greater or less than 10,000. (View Highlight)
• Want has at all times been a fellow-dweller with us in our land, while Valour is an ally whom we have gained by dint of wisdom and strict laws. Her aid enables us to drive out (View Highlight)
• want and escape thraldom. (View Highlight)
• For though they be freemen, they are not in all respects free; Law is the master whom they own; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee. Whatever he commands they do; and his commandment is always the same: it forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes, and requires them to stand firm, and either to conquer or die. (View Highlight)
• Let them be five thousand, and we shall have more than a thousand men to each one of theirs. If, indeed, like our troops, they had a single master, their fear of him might make them courageous beyond their natural bent; or they might be urged by lashes against an enemy which far outnumbered them. But left to their own free choice, assuredly they will act differently. (View Highlight)
• When all the food in the fortress was gone, he raised a vast funeral pile, slew his children, his wife, his concubines, and his household slaves, and cast them all into the flames. (View Highlight)
• And when they learnt that the name of the place was “The Nine Ways,” they took nine of the youths of the land and as manv of their maidens, and buried them alive on the spot. Burying alive is a Persian custom. (View Highlight)
• No sooner therefore had he formed this wish than he act ed accordingly. (View Highlight)
• Barbarians swore the oath, which ran thus “From all those oi Greek blood who delivered themselves up to the Persians without necessity, when their affairs were in good condition, we will take a tithe of their goods, and give it to the god at Delphi. (View Highlight)
• King Xerxes had sent no heralds either to Athens or Sparta to ask earth and water, (View Highlight)
• never having tasted liberty, thou canst not tell whether it be sweet or no. Ah! hadst thou known what freedom is, thou wouldst have bidden us fight for it, not with the spear only, but with the battle-axe. (View Highlight)
• What calamity came upon the Athenians to punish them for their treatment of the heralds I cannot say, unless it were the laying waste of their city and territory (View Highlight)
• “Was any Lacedaemonian willing to give his life for Sparta?” Upon this two Spartans, Sperthias, the son of Aneristus, and Bulis, the son of Nicolaiis, both men of noble birth, and among the wealthiest in the place, came forward and freely offered themselves as an atonement to Xerxes for the heralds of Darius slain at Sparta. (View Highlight)
• In my judgment this was a case wherein the hand of Heaven was most plainly manifest. (View Highlight)
• expedition of the Persian king, though it was in name directed against Athens, threatened really the whole of Greece. (View Highlight)
• be true. I am determined not to withhold. Had the Athenians, from fear of the approaching danger, quitted their country, or had they with out quitting it submitted to the power ot Xerxes, there would certainly have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea (View Highlight)
• If then a man should now say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece, he would not exceed the truth. For they truly held the scales; a (View Highlight)
• The Athenians, having a large sum of money in their treasury, the produce of the mines at Laureium, were about to share it among the full-grown citizens, who would have received ten drachmas apiece, when Themistocles persuaded them to forbear the distribution, and build with the money two hundred ships, to help them in their war against the Eginetans. (View Highlight)
• “Had the spies been put to death,” he said, “the Greeks would have continued ignorant of the vastness of his army, which surpassed the common report of it (View Highlight)
• This, however, I know —that if every nation were to bring all its evil deeds to a given place, in order to make an exchange with some other nation, when they had all looked carefully at their neighbours’ faults, they would be truly glad to carry their own back again. (View Highlight)
• His conduct towards both nations arose from his belief that a “people” was a most unpleasant companion. In this way Gelo became a great king. (View Highlight)
• reproaches cast forth against a man are wont to provoke him to anger; but the insults which thou hast uttered in thy speech shall not persuade me to outstep good breeding in my answer. (View Highlight)
• from us, I say, who are Athenians, the most ancient nation in Greece, the only Greeks who have never changed their abode —the people who are said by the poet Homer to have sent to Troy the man best able of all the Greeks to array and marshal an army —so that we may be allowed to boast somewhat. (View Highlight)
• They say too. that the victory of Gelo and Thero in Sicily over Hamilcar the Carthaginian fell out upon the very day that the Greeks defeated the Persians at Salamis. (View Highlight)
• The Corcyraeans hoped that a speech like this would gain them better treat- ment from the Persians than the rest of the Greeks; (View Highlight)
• The Thessalians, when their allies forsook them, no longer wavered, but warml) espoused the side of the Medes; and afterwards, in the course of the war, they were ot the ven greatest service to Xerxes. (View Highlight)
• Hereupon the Persians took the handsomest of the men-at-arms, and drew him to the prow of the vessel, where they sacrificed him; for they thought the man a good omen to their cause, seeing that he was at once so beautiful, and likewise the first captive they had made. The man who was slain in this way was called Leo; and it may be that the name he bore helped him to his fate in some measure. (View Highlight)
• the man continued to resist, and did not cease fighting till he fell quite covered with wounds. The Persians who served as men-at-arms in the squadron, finding that he was not dead, but still breathed, and being very anxious to save his life, since he had behaved so valiantly, dressed his wounds with myrrh, and bound them up with bandages of cotton. (View Highlight)
• pray to the winds, for the winds would do Greece good service. (View Highlight)
• This will give 5,283,220 as the whole number of men brought by Xerxes, the son of Darius, as far as Sepias and Thermopylae. (View Highlight)
• This was the sea force brought by the king from Asia; and it amounted in all to 517,610 men. The number of the foot soldiers was 1,700,000; that of the horsemen 80,000; to which must be added the Arabs who rode on camels, and the Libyans who fought in chariots, whom reckon at 20,000. The whole number, therefore, of the land and sea forces added together amounts to 2,317,610 men. (View Highlight)
• Among all this multitude of men there was not one who, for beauty and stature, deserved more than Xerxes himself to wield so vast a power. (View Highlight)
• Cape Sepias, found the wreck of these vessels a source of great gain to him; many were the gold and silver drinking-cups, cast up long afterwards by the surf, which he gathered; while treasure-boxes too which had belonged to the Persians, and golden articles of all kinds and beyond count, came into his possession. Ameinocles grew to be a man of great wealth in this way; (View Highlight)
• Fifteen ships, which had Lagged greatly behind the rest, happening to catch sight oi the Greek fleet at Artemisium, mistook it tor their own, and sailing down into the midst ot it, fell into the hands of the enemy. (View Highlight)
• There was no cause why they should fear; for after all the invader was not a god but a man; and there never had been, and never would be, a man who was not liable to misfortunes from the very day of his birth, and those misfortunes greater in proportion to his own greatness. (View Highlight)
• Four whole days he suffered to go by, expecting that the Greeks would run away. When, however, he found on the fifth that they were not gone, thinking that their firm stand was mere impudence and recklessness, he grew wroth, and sent against them the Medes and Cissians, with orders to take them alive and bring them into his presence. (View Highlight)
• The Lacedaemonians fought in a way worthy of note, and showed themselves far more skilful in fight than their adversaries, often turning their backs, and making as though they were all flying away, on which the barbarians would rush after them with much noise and shouting, when the Spartans at their approach would wheel round and face their pursuers, in this way destroying vast numbers of the enemy. (View Highlight)
• He therefore commanded them to retreat, but said that he himself could not draw back with honour; knowing that, if he stayed, glory awaited him, and that Sparta in that case would not lose her prosperity. (View Highlight)
• that either Sparta must be overthrown by the barbarians, or one of her kings must perish. (View Highlight)
• And now there arose a fierce struggle between the Persians and the Lacedaemonians over the body of Leonidas, in which the Greeks four times drove back the enemy, and at last by their great bravery succeeded in bearing off the body (View Highlight)
• Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell That here, obeying her behests, we fell. (View Highlight)
• A citizen does indeed envy any fellow-citizen who is more lucky than himself, and often hates him secretly; if such a man be called on for counsel, he will not give his best thoughts, unless indeed he be a man of very exalted virtue; and such are but rarely found. (View Highlight)
• For the Persians are wont to honour those who show themselves valiant in fight more highly than any nation that I know. (View Highlight)