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“When the Medes have a mule as king,
Just then, tender-footed Lydian, by the stone-strewn Hermus
Flee and do not stay, and do not be ashamed to be a coward.”
HERODOTUS, HISTORIES, BOOK 1.55; A. D. GODLEY TRANSLATION
Summary
After Croesus’ son died, he fell into a two year depression. He was shaken out of that depression when he heard that a new king in Persia had risen up and was rapidly expanding the Persian empire. That king was named Cyrus.
Croesus decided he that he would seek the advice of many different oracles about what to do with the up and coming Persians, but he first wanted to test their reliability. He told his messengers to consult the oracle they were sent to exactly one hundred days after they left. They were to ask the oracle exactly what Croesus was doing that day. In order to make sure the oracles simply didn’t get lucky or say something so vague that it could pass the test, Croesus did something unusual: he boiled a tortoise and a lamb together in a bronze cauldron with a bronze lid.
Only the oracle at Delphi correctly stated what Croesus was doing at that moment, so Croesus decided he would seek Delphi’s favor. He showered them with gifts and then asked the oracle if he should send an army against the Persians and whether he should make any alliances. The oracle responded that if he attacked the Persians “he would destroy a great empire.” Furthermore, he should ally himself with the strongest Greek state.
Croesus was pleased with this answer. He investigated Greece further and determined that the two strongest Greek states were Athens and Sparta. He then investigated both Athens and Sparta to determine which was the strongest.
Herodotus then goes into an explanation about the conditions of both Athens and Sparta during the time of Croesus.
Athens at that time was being ruled by the tyrant Pisistratus, who came to power through force and political intrigue. Two factions had been warring in Athens for power and Pisistratus came along asserting himself as the leader of a third faction. He tricked Athens into giving him some of their best fighting men and used them to take power. The other two factions came together and drove out Pisistratus, but then quickly devolved to fighting with each other again. The leader of one of the factions, Megacles, then petitioned Pisistratus to join his faction. If he did, he would become the ruler and marry Megacles’ daughter. Pisistratus agreed and they put into motion a very strange plan to get into power. They found a woman who was about six feet tall, clad her in armor, put her on a chariot, and had her drive into Athens while men around her proclaimed that she was Athena and she was bringing Pisistratus to be their sovereign. The Athenians accepted it and once again Pisistratus was the ruler. However, when Pisistratus refused to have children with the daughter of Megacles and shamed her instead, Megacles was furious. He reconciled with the other faction and was preparing to oppose Pisistratus. However, Pisistratus found out and fled. He spent ten years in exile, making alliances and raising up an army, then returned and conquered Athens. Megacles and his family, among other prominent Athenians, were exiled. That was where Athens stood in the days of Croesus.
Sparta, on the other hand, had just turned their fortunes around. For a long time, Sparta was poorly governed and worse off than most of the other Greek states. However, that changed when a man named Lycurgus1 came back from his travels with a constitution which he strictly enforced. He also restructured their army and improved it. After this, Sparta began to flourish and they began wishing to expand their reach. They consulted the oracle at Delphi, but the oracle deceived them and told them that they should start by conquering Tegea.2 The Spartans then attacked Tegea and were so confident in conquering them that they brought the chains with which they intended to enslave them with. However, the Tegeans ended up winning and used those chains to enslave Spartan captives and put them through forced labor. The Spartans were unsuccessful for some time until they consulted Delphi again. The oracle told them they needed to bring back the bones of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, which were somewhere in Tegea. Their only hint is that they were buried somewhere where “two winds blow under strong compulsion” and where “blow lies upon blow, woe upon woe.” The Spartans were at a complete loss until one of them stumbled upon a blacksmith who claimed to have dug up the grave of a twelve foot man. Convinced that this was Orestes, and that the blacksmith’s shop fit the oracle, the Spartans used trickery to get the bones out of Tegea and in their possession. After this, they began beating the Tegeans in battle. By the time Croesus was ruler, Sparta had conquered most of the Peloponnese.
After learning all of this, Croesus determined that Sparta was the strongest Greek state at the time and sent messengers to them to ask for an alliance. Sparta was flattered that Croesus sought them first and agreed to the alliance.
A Cure For Depression
After Croesus lost his son, he fell into a two year depression. And understandably so. What shook him out of it, though, was the looming threat of the Persian empire by the future Cyrus the Great.
I found this otherwise insignificant part of the story to be quite thought provoking. I’m also someone who handles dark feelings by shutting down and being unwilling to do much (except maybe binge video games or YouTube for 12+ hours). I don’t call it depression because I’ve never been formally diagnosed, but a lot of the descriptions of depression match what I go through.
What caught my eye was the way Croesus was able to shake himself out of his depression: recognizing a rising foreign power that may threaten his empire, and therefore his own power and position in the world. He realized he had to act early and quickly or this foreign power would one day overtake him.
Croesus could sit around and be depressed because he was in a position to do so. He was the king of a major empire. He had power, comfort, and resources few in the world at the time had access to. Power, comfort, and resources that weren’t going away any time soon—until Cyrus showed up on the scene.
Because of the current circumstances in my life, I can “afford” to be consumed by these dark feelings every now and then. Thanks to modern amenities, I don’t have to work twelve hours a day of grueling labor just to survive. I don’t have to fight for my life constantly. I have leisure time to pursue hobbies and interests and think about lofty ideas. However, if something came around and threatened my circumstances, would it be enough to stop giving in to those dark feelings and get to work?
I like comfort and leisure. A lot. I wish I had more of it. At the same time, I’ve been slowly taking to heart that comfort and leisure is a double-edged sword. There’s a penalty to pay for it. That penalty seems to be the slow unraveling of a civilization. It’s not people struggling for their survival who pick fights about their being more than two genders, or being concerned about who someone is attracted to, or whether air conditioners are sexist. It’s people who take their leisure for granted.
Giants!
It’s interesting that there are so many similarities among the ancients when it comes to their accounts of prehistory:
There was a time when human beings didn’t suffer and toil. And then something ruined it.
Some catastrophic event—a flood, a fire, etc.—affected the whole world.
Great men once ruled, but are now gone for some reason. Maybe they were stronger than men today. Maybe they lived much longer. Maybe they were giants. Maybe all of the above.
It’s no different with Herodotus. I had completely forgotten the story about finding Orestes’ bones until I read it again for this blog. The account states that Orestes was twelve feet tall! Does that mean Agamemnon and Achilles and Odysseus were about that tall? What about the men who preceded them like Heracles, Theseus, and Oedipus? What about their enemies like the Trojans? How tall were the women?
What was the extent of this belief that these Greek warriors of legend were giants?
These are the fun tidbits I hope to find when I read through these ancient works.
That's all for the Histories, Book 1.46-70.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos
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Thumbnail: Lycurgus of Sparta by Merry-Joseph Blondel, 1828. Public domain.
1Lycurgus was a legendary figure in ancient Greece, though it’s unknown if he was a real person. He is the reason Sparta became what it was famous for and the reason why the word “spartan” means “self-disciplined and austere.” Herodotus won’t be the only author who will mention him.
2Tegea was a settlement in the Peloponnese where Sparta also resided.