The Persian Wars and the 2,500-year conflict between East and West
Leonidas at Thermopylae
As Greek colonisation spread eastwards across the Aegean Sea into Asia Minor, it was destined to come into contact with the Persian Empire expanding relentlessly westwards. Lydia, the kingdom of Croesus, would be the meeting place for East and West. Herodotus, the world’s first historian, tells us that Croesus was the first foreigner who came into direct contact with the Greeks both in the ways of conquest and alliance. He forced tribute on some and formed a pact of friendship with the leading Greek state of Sparta (1). When Croesus was overthrown by the might of the Persian Empire in 546 BC, the Greek cities of Asia now found themselves under the rule of the Great King, “A monarch absolute in religion, politics and war, the antithesis of city-state liberalism and the anathema of Greek religious belief.” (2) The exploration, encounter, and exchange that took place on the coast of Asia Minor led to two political and cultural opposites to become involved in a conflict, a conflict between East and West, which has lasted 2,500 years. This conflict has been epitomised by Alexander the Great, Rome against Parthia, the incursion of the Moors, the Crusades, the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire, the Gulf War, and it is still simmering today with the threat to the West of ISIS. It all started with the Persian Wars in the early fifth century BC.
To strengthen his support against the power of Persia, Croesus had sought an alliance with Sparta, the strongest of the Greek states of the mainland (3). When Croesus was defeated, the Persians began to subdue the Greek states of Asia Minor but the Spartans sent no military aid to the Greeks of Asia. They did however warn the Persians not to harm any Greek state or Sparta would take action. Such warnings were ignored as various Persian kings expanded the Persian Empire into Asia Minor, Egypt, and finally Europe. By 500 BC the outstretched arm of the Persian Empire was threatening mainland Greece itself, a land known to be a collection of disunited states constantly quarrelling with each other (4).
Throughout this 46-year period Sparta had remained consistently hostile to Persia. Being the most prominent of the Greek states, Sparta had allied herself with the enemies of Persia. Special attention was focused on tyrants, individuals who had seized control of Greek states and who ruled above the law. In 510 BC Sparta was instrumental in the overthrow of the Peisistratids, the pro-Persian tyrants of Athens (5). However, bitter in-fighting between prominent families soon led rival factions seeking either Spartan or Persian support. Twice at the end of the sixth century Athens tried to enlist the help of Persia. The first time, the Athenian envoys were compelled to give earth and water, tokens of surrender, though this was later repudiated by the Athenian assembly (6). On the second occasion Persia demanded the return of the Peisistratid tyrant Hyppias as a condition for an alliance and Athens broke off negotiations with them. Thus started the open hostility of Athens to Persia and more friendly relations with Sparta.
In 499 BC the Greek states of Asia Minor rebelled against Persia. The Ionian Revolt was led by Aristagoras. He enlisted popular support by proclaiming “isonomia”, equality of rights, as a constitutional form of government. Aristagoras then went to mainland Greece for support. Aristagoras failed to get help from Sparta but was more successful in Athens. A fleet of twenty warships sent by Athens participated in the burning of Sardis in 498 BC. Thereafter the Athenians withdrew and the Ionians were eventually defeated, but the attention of the Persians was now focused on Greece. In 490 BC the Persian king Darius ordered an assault on Athens for their part in the Ionian Revolt. Greece was also to be conquered because without control of the Greek mainland, Asia Minor would never be secured (7). Envoys were dispatched to Greek states demanding earth and water. Darius sent a fleet of ships across the Aegean Sea to crush Athens. The fate of the whole Greek world would depend on its outcome (8).
The resultant battle at Marathon, 490 BC, has been called one of the most decisive events in world history (9). Although it was an almost exclusively Athenian rather than a Greek victory, it made the name of Athens, inspired the other Greek states with the will to resist the Persians, and showed the Spartans how the Persians could be defeated. The victory at Marathon did not avert the Persian invasion of Greece, it merely postponed it for 10 years. When it did come, the invasion of Greece by the new king Xerxes was the largest in history and few gave the Greeks any chance of survival. As head of its own alliance of Greek states, Sparta was the obvious leader for those Greeks determined to defy Xerxes. Xerxes sent envoys to demand earth and water from all Greek states except Athens and Sparta. When Darius was king, his envoys were hurled into a pit in Athens and thrown into a well in Sparta (10). Xerxes singled out these two states for attack (11).
During the invasion by Xerxes there were only four military engagements on the Greek mainland, two by land and two by sea. In 480 BC the Greek navy held its own at Artemesium and won a splendid victory at Salamis. In 479 BC the Greek army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persian land forces at Plataea which ended the invasion. Ironically it is not the victories but the one defeat for which Greek resistance to Persia is best known. That one defeat was the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC.
The glory of the Spartans’ last stand at Thermopylae is one of the most famous events in the history of the West. It is the epitome of courage and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. At the time it gave all of Greece inspiration and motivation. A rallying cry for Sparta and Greece, it ultimately became the rallying cry for the West. Diodorus Siculus writing in the first century BC asked, “What men of later times might not emulate the valour of those warriors, who finding themselves in the grip of an overwhelming situation, though their bodies were subdued, were not conquered in spirit? These men, therefore, alone of all of whom history records have in defeat been accorded a greater fame that all of those who have won the fairest victories.” (12) “These men passed into immortality because of their exceptional valour.” (13) What motivated these men to sacrifice their lives in such a way?
Although there are other later sources for the Persian Wars, such as Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus, they do not share in Herodotus’s desire to show why the conflict between Greece and Persia, West and East, originated (14). At the beginning of Book 7 Herodotus explains why the Persians attacked Greece. The personal desires of the Persian king Xerxes were more important than political or economic reasons. Herodotus lists Xerxes’s lust for conquest, maintenance of a super-human image, the need to rival ancestors, revenge, envy, and ambition as the causes of the invasion of 480 BC. Diodorus Siculus (15) says virtually the same thing for Darius’s motives. In other words, this was naked imperial aggression.
The famous Alexander Mosaic depicting Alexander and his men chasing King Darius at the Battle of Issus
But what about the Greeks? Was this a fight between right and wrong, the good Greeks and evil Persians? Not so. Herodotus reports both good deeds and atrocities committed by both sides. He makes the Greeks far from perfect and the Persians far from ignoble (16). This did not satisfy later historians like Plutarch. This second century AD writer, who regarded the Persian Wars as the most glorious of Greece’s achievements (17), called Herodotus a philobarbarus or barbarian lover. He produced a diatribe called On the Malice of Herodotus attacking the way Herodotus portrayed Greeks and Persians (18). That Herodotus did not portray this as a conflict between good and evil can be seen in the following stories. Herodotus relates the story of the Spartans hurling Darius’s Persian envoys into a well when they asked for earth and water (19). The wrath of the gods prompted Sparta to send two volunteers to atone for this outrage with their lives. Herodotus goes on to say that Xerxes with true noble generosity would not behave like the Spartans and would not take reprisals for their crimes (20). He does however accept the story of the decapitation of the body of Leonidas after the Battle of Thermopylae due to the anger of Xerxes. Nonetheless he does add that the Persians normally honour men who had distinguished themselves in war (21). Quite often Herodotus informs us of the cruelty of the Persian king to those who had offended him. When the Lydian Pythius requested that his elder son be excused from the war, Xerxes had the boy cut in half and the army marched between the two halves of the body placed on each side of the road (22). Another contemporary view of the Persians by Aeschylus sees them portrayed as effeminate, excessive, and barbaric in their practices (23). However, Robert Garland in his lectures on Persia presents the Persians as being tolerant and fair to the conquered peoples (24). The Jewish book of Ezra has the Persian king Cyrus return the Jews from their captivity in Babylonia to their native land (25). Indeed the ordinary people had nothing to fear from the Persians as long as they did not cause trouble. It was only the Persian nobility that lived in fear of its king.
If Persia was not a vicious regime and gave the ordinary Greek nothing to fear, why did thirty-one Greeks states bury their differences and stand up to the Persian threat? Herodotus produces three major themes that are all interlinked. Forcibly brought out are the ideas of the slavery of the barbarians and the liberty of the Greeks, oriental autocracy and Greek constitutionalism, and Persian materialism and Greek idealism. By slavery Herodotus did not mean physical slavery. Persia was not a slave society whereas many Greeks did own slaves. Herodotus is talking about ideological slavery. To explain what he meant by Persian slavery and Greek freedom, he recounts the story of the two Spartans sent to Persia to atone for the killing of the Persian envoys. Hydarnes, a Persian satrap, welcomed them and asked them why they would not submit to the Great King which would bring them a life of luxurious ease. Their reply was that Hydarnes knew what slavery was but had never tasted freedom and if he had he would fight for it with all he possessed (26). The point here is that slavery could be accepted without exertion and could lead to a life of luxury. However, because the slave was subject to the whims of a single master and not a written set of laws, the slave lived a precarious life. Freedom, in contrast, obeyed laws.
Depiction of Greek and Persian troops
The idea of freedom was the most important concept the Greeks gave to the Western world. It was even written into the laws allowing Greek citizens to participate in the political process. In the East, all the empires were controlled by a single ruler who made the laws and controlled the state. The average citizen had no input. To Herodotus the political freedom of the citizens in the city state was a characteristic of the Greeks, while unquestioning obedience to a single ruler was a characteristic of the Persians. Herodotus especially praises “isegoria”, equality of speech (27), which meant that all Greeks were free to speak in the assembly and hence govern themselves. This difference between democracy and autocracy is brought up in Book 3 of Herodotus. Here three leading Persians discuss the three types of government, democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy (28). Otanes, the first speaker, claims that monarchy allows a man to do what he likes without responsibility or control. Under such circumstances even the best of men would change for the worst. The typical vices of a monarch are envy and pride, and excessive wealth and power lead to the delusion that he is something more than a man. These vices lead to wickedness including putting a man to death without trial. Otanes contrasts the rule of one person with the rule of the people which he calls equality under the law. Here an official is appointed by the people, is responsible for his conduct in office, and all questions are put up for open debate. At the end of the 20th century, Herodotus’s description could still be applied to the contrasting regimes of Saddam Hussain in the East and the Western democracies.
The second speaker states what a Persian king might find distasteful about democracy. The masses are a feckless lot and nowhere will you find more ignorance and more irresponsibility (29). This idea can be seen in Xerxes’s conversation with Demaratus, an exiled Spartan king, in Book 7. Xerxes asks how the Greek army could withstand the Persians when they are free to do as they pleased whereas his men are ruled by fear (30). Demaratus’s reply reflects the idealism of the Greeks over the materialism of the Persians. He says that the Greeks are not entirely free for they have a master which they fear more than Xerxes’s subjects fear him. This master is Law. Whatever the Law commands, they do. The Law states never to retreat in battle, to stand firm, to conquer or die (31). Diodorus Siculus stated that the Spartans at Thermopylae chose to preserve this ideal over their own lives (32). Xerxes does not understand what freedom means and how a man can be prepared to sacrifice his life for such a concept. In his world fear leads to obedience. The contrast between the speech of Demaratus to Xerxes and that of Hydarnes to the Spartan envoys cannot be clearer. Hydarnes accepted slavery for material awards, the Spartans at Thermopylae accepted death in order to live up to an ideal.
Throughout history this ideological nature of slavery and freedom, East and West, has persisted. The Persian Wars might well have ended in 479 BC, but tensions between East and West have remained. Imperialism and religious zeal may well have replaced the Greeks’ ideological motivations of 2,500 years ago, but in the early years of the 21st century the pendulum has swung back to the clash of ideologies, autocratic control versus the freedom to decide one’s course of action. The words of the messenger in Aeschylus’s play The Persians, written by Aeschylus in 472 BC, may still resonate with some in the West today. “On you sons of Hellas. Free your homeland, free your children, your wives, the homes of your fathers’ gods, and the tombs of your ancestors. Now is the time to fight for all these things.” (33).
References
Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt, Penguin, 1954, 1.6.
N.G.L. Hammond, A History of Greece to 322 BC, Oxford, 1986, p.177.
Hdt 1.69.
Hdt 7.9.
Hammond, A History of Greece, p.184.
Hdt 5.73.
Hammond, A History of Greece, p.212.
Hammond, A History of Greece, p.212.
Hammond, A History of Greece, p.217.
Hdt 7.133.
Hammond, A History of Greece, p.223.
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Loeb Classical Library, 1935, 11.11.1-5.
Diod. 11.11.6.
Hdt 1.1.
Diod. 10.19.5.
Herodotus, The Histories, editor A.R. Burn, Penguin, 1954, p.15.
J.Marincola, The Fairest Victor: Plutarch, Aristides and the Persian Wars, Histos 6, 2012, p.91.
Plutarch, Moralia, On the Malice of Herodotus, Online Library of Liberty, 1-43.
Hdt 7.133.
Hdt 7.136.
Hdt 7.238.
Hdt 7.38.
Frazer Brown, The Persian Wars, Dickson College, 2009, p.1.
Robert Garland, The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World, 2013, p.136.
Ezra. 1. Bible Gateway.
Hdt 7.135.
Donald Kagan, The Athenian Empire, Yale Courses, YouTube video (19:00).
Hdt 3.80.
Hdt 3.81.
Hdt 7.103.
Hdt 7.104.
Diod.11.11.4.
Aeschylus, The Persians, trans. H.W.Smyth, Perseus Project, line 405.
Bibliography
PRIMARY SOURCES
Aeschylus, The Persians, trans. H.W.Smyth, Persius Project.
Aeschylus was a tragedian who wrote this play in Athens in 472 BC which reflects popular opinion of the Persians during the war. It is not history and deals mainly with hubris of Xerxes and the resultant nemesis of the gods.
Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica, Loeb Classical Library 1935.
Writing 400 years after the Persian Wars, Diodorus’s universal history relates the history of the Mediterranean world from mythological times down to Julius Caeser. He draws from the works of many unknown authors in his account.
Book of Ezra, Bible Gateway.
This book of the Hebrew Bible covers the fate of the Jews in the Persian Empire and the benevolent attitude of the Persian kings towards them.
Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey De Selincourt, Penguin, 1934.
Credited as the world’s first historian, Herodotus’s work is a result of his inquiries into the origins of the Graeco-Persian Wars. Writing within living memory of the events, Herodotus utilises many sources and is generally impartial with regards to treatment of Greeks and Persians.
Plutarch, Moralia, On the Malice of Herodotus, Online Library of Liberty.
A Greek historian and essayist of the 2nd century AD whose main works are the Parallel Lives and the Moralia. He is particularly scathing on Herodotus because the latter does not depict the Greeks as the glorious victors and the Persians as evil barbarians.
Secondary Sources
Brown, Frazer, The Persian Wars, Dickson College, Clio History Journal, 2009.
This paper written on the Persian invasions of 490 and 480/79 examines mainly the resistance and attitudes of Athens and Sparta towards the Persians.
A.R. Burn, Herodotus, The Histories, Penguin, 1954.
Wrote the comprehensive review of Herodotus’s Histories in the forward of the 1954 edition where he examines the writer in considerable detail with regard to style, plan, composition, and veracity.
Garland, Robert, The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World, 2013.
A fascinating exploration in 48 lectures of what it was like for ordinary people to live in ancient times where he portrays a decent review of Persian customs and way of life.
Hammond, N.G.L., A History of Greece to 322 BC, Oxford, 1986.
An acknowledged expert on this particular period, Hammond’s work is arguably the most concise and comprehensive coverage of the Persian Wars.
Kagan, Donald, The Athenian Empire, Yale Courses, YouTube video.
An American historian and classicist at Yale who specialises in Ancient Greece and has presented a number of talks on the Persian Wars which are available on YouTube.
Marincola, J., The Fairest Victor: Plutarch, Aristides and the Persian Wars, Histos #6, 2012.
A specialist in Greek and Roman historiography, his paper highlights the attitude of Plutarch towards the Greeks.
