Once again, I apologize it took so long to get my post on Book 8 out. I had to take a week off for church related matters and got tied up with work right after that.
The next post will be the last one for Herodotus! I don’t think I will be doing a final essay on Herodotus, not any time soon at least, so I will be moving on to Euripides.
I probably won’t publish a book on Herodotus. I have another book project in mind instead. Whether it will come to fruition remains to be seen.
Without further ado…
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“The farther into Hellas the Persian advanced, the more nations followed him.”
HERODOTUS, HISTORIES, 8.66; A. D. GODLEY TRANSLATION
Summary
The Greeks assembled their navy at Artemisium (near Euboea), but when they found out how large the Persian navy was, they decided they weren’t going to fight. The Euboeans eventually gave Themistocles, the admiral of the Athenian fleet, a large bribe to stay. He accepted it and used the bribe money to convince Eurybiades, the commander of the Greek navy to stay and fight. Themistocles hid the fact he was bribed, and that the money he gave to the others was bribe money, so he ended up pocketing a lot of it.
The Persians, on their part, were afraid that if they attacked the Greeks directly they would flee, so they sent 200 ships to be stationed behind the Greek navy to catch them if they attempted to escape. However, a Greek deserter from the Persian navy told the Greeks about the 200 ships. The Greeks then sent a small fleet of ships at the main Persian navy to test them. The Greeks then planned to hit the 200 ships at nighttime, but a storm hit which wrecked all 200 ships. By now, storms had destroyed 600 Persian ships—roughly half of their navy. In terms of power, the Greek and Persian navies were now about equal.
A few days later, the Persian navy decided to attack Artemisium. The Greeks waited until the Persians attempted to encircle Artemisium before confronting them. By the end of the Battle of Artemisium, both navies suffered great loss, but the Persians took the bigger hit. The Greeks then retreated to Salamis after hearing about the results of the Battle of Thermopylae and the Persians took over Artemisium and devastated it.
Meanwhile, the Persian land army continued its march through Greece. Everywhere it went, it plundered cities, burned down temples, and forced the populace to serve the army. One part of the army tried to attack Delphi, but according to Herodotus the army was panicked by divine intervention from Athena and the Delphians attacked and rebuffed the Persian regiment.
The Persian army then came to Athens and launched an attack. There were still people there—people who kept the sacred precincts, the poor, and those who believed the Prophecy of Wood referred to the acropolis. They fortified themselves inside the acropolis and put up a good fight, but the Persians prevailed and killed all of them. They plundered and burned Athens to the ground—temples and all.
Back in Salamis, where the Greek navy was now stationed and where the Greeks were protecting their women and children, the Greeks found out about the destruction of Athens and many of them wanted to retreat to the Peloponnese and protect that. Themistocles was convinced by an advisor to persuade the Greeks to stay and fight at Salamis and he had another council called. He tols the Greeks that if they try and fight the Persians in the Peloponnese rather than at Salamis, Greece will be lost. When the Corinthians tols Themistocles to shut up because the Athenians were now men without a city, Themistocles warned the council that if they leave for the Peloponnese, the Athenians, who brought 200 ships to the Greek navy, would abandon Greece and settle in a colony they had in Italy. This was enough to convince Eurybiades to keep the navy at Salamis.
Xerxes held a council of his own and asked his commanders what they should do. All of them advised Xerxes to attack the Greeks at sea except Artemisia. She instead advised Xerxes to stay where they were in Phalerum (where the Persian navy moved to) and wait for the Greeks to make the next move. The Greeks would either be forced to attack them, leave for the Peloponnese, or go back to their homes, due to running low on provisions. In any of those scenarios Xerxes would have victory. However, if they attacked the Greeks at Salamis, Xerxes would surely lose. Xerxes appreciated Artemisia’s advice, but decided to listen to everyone else. He will have his navy sail for Salamis while the land army will continue its march to the Peloponnese.
When the Greeks heard that the Persian land army was heading for the Peloponnese, the Peloponnesians became intent on returning to their land and began outvoting everyone else. Themistocles, to stop them, sent one of his servants to the Persian navy telling them the Greeks were scared and getting ready to flee. Xerxes believed this to be credible and stationed the navy around Salamis during the night so the Greeks could not escape. When messengers told the Greeks the Persians have them surrounded, the Greek navy immediately set out and the Persians attacked.
The Battle of Salamis ended with the Persian navy being decimated by the Greeks which demoralized Xerxes. One of his commanders, Mardonius, sensed he was going to retreat and asked to stay behind with 300,000 picked men to continue the campaign against the Greeks. Xerxes agreed and during the night the Persian navy fled back to the Hellespont and, along with the army, crossed it back into Asia. The Greeks tried to pursued, but were not able to catch the Persians so they all returned to their cities.
Next spring, the Greek navy gathered at Aegina while Mardonius attempted to convince the Athenians to join the Persian army. However, the Athenians refused, stating that they were obligated by the gods to repay the Persians for destroying their temples.
Xerxes’ Propaganda
Herodotus reveals that about 20,000 of the Persian army died at the Battle of Thermopylae while only about 4000 Greeks died. However, wanting to show his navy his own power and the foolishness of the Greeks for resisting him, he had all but 1000 of the Persian soldiers buried in trenches and covered over with dirt. When the men of the navy came to view the site of the battle, they weren’t deceived because of how ridiculous the scene looked. The 1000 fallen Persian soldiers were scattered around, but the fallen Greek soldiers were concentrated in one place (see 8.24-25 for the story).
Propaganda and the ways people manipulate others has been interesting to me since I got out of a cult many years ago. I want to think that propaganda was easier to pull off in the ancient world since it was more difficult to corroborate facts and stories, but Xerxes (or the people he sent) did such a bad job that no one was convinced. I imagine they had to keep their opinions to themselves though or risk the wrath of the king.
Staging a scene for propaganda purposes appears to be an old technique. It only got easier with the advent of the camera and film.
Aeschylus Also Criticized Xerxes’ Bad Habit
“Men usually succeed when they have reasonable plans. If their plans are unreasonable, the god does not wish to ascent to human intentions.”
Herodotus, Histories, Book 8.60; A. D. Godley translation
If you joined me on my journey through the plays of Aeschylus, you’ll already be a little familiar with the Battle of Salamis. Aeschylus’ play, The Persians, is about the aftermath of that battle and the demoralized Xerxes retreating back to Persia.
In my post on Book 7, I criticized Xerxes’ inability to listen to good advice, instead listening to those who agreed with what he already wanted to do. This is despite the fact that the people who advised him—like Demaratus, the exiled king of Sparta—had expert opinions on what Xerxes wanted to know about. However, because his Persian (and non-expert) advisors told him the others’ opinions were stupid, Xerxes decided not to listen. Even when Xerxes had been humbled (like by the Battle of Thermopylae) and should have paid more attention to Demaratus’ advice, he still listened to his Persian buddies instead. What was ironic (or something—I’ve never figured out the correct use of the word “ironic”), was that Demaratus the Greek foreigner actually had Xerxes’ best interests at heart while his Persian buddies were self-interested (wanting reputation, revenge, etc.).
I had forgotten this, but Aeschylus also criticized Xerxes for listening to bad advice. Aeschylus has Xerxes’ mother, Queen Atossa, say:
Such is the lesson, ah, too late! to eager Xerxes taught –
Trusting random counsellors and hare-brained men of nought,
Who said Darius mighty wealth and fame to us did bring,
But thou art nought, a blunted spear, a palace-keeping king!
Unto those sorry counsellors a ready ear he lent,
And led away to Hellas’ shore his fated armament.E. D. A. Morshead translation
Xerxes’ counselors played into his pride and he listened to them.
Listening to bad advise ultimately became Xerxes’ downfall in the war. If he had listened to Artabanus and Demaratus (Book 7), or Artemisia (Book 8), rather than his Persian advisors who were either self-interested or didn’t know what they were talking about, the Persian invasion of Greece could have been a footnote in the history of the Persian empire. Would there have been an Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides? Would there have been a Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle? The Peloponnesian War definitely wouldn’t have happened which means we wouldn’t have had Thucydides’ amazing work. This then begs the question: would there have been an Alexander the Great and a Macedonian Greek empire? How would that have affected the Romans and their eventual empire (if it would have happened at all)?
Why I Relate More to the Ancient Greeks
Even though the ancient Greeks were pagans, who worshiped gods I don’t believe in, and had practices in their culture I either find disagreeable or horrifying, I find myself relating to them more than modern man and society. Take these quotes:
[Herodotus]: In this they judged rightly, for civil strife is as much worse than united war as war is worse than peace. (8.3)
[Demaratus]: “The gods will see to the [Persian] army.” (8.65)
[Herodotus]: I cannot say against oracles that they are not true, and I do not wish to try to discredit them when they speak plainly. (8.77)
[Themistocles]: “For it is not we who have won this victory, but the gods and the heroes, who deemed Asia and Europe too great a realm for one man [Xerxes] to rule, and that a wicked man and an impious one who dealt alike with temples and bones, burning and overthrowing the images of the gods, – yes, and the one who scourged the sea and threw fetters into it.” (8.109)
[The Athenians to the Spartans]: “For there are many great reasons why we should not do this, even if we so desired; first and foremost, the burning and destruction of the adornments and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the utmost rather than make pacts with the perpetrator of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false. Know this now, if you knew it not before, that as long as one Athenian is left alive we will make no agreement with Xerxes.” (8.144)
Herodotus, Histories; A. D. Godley translation
The Greeks had a loyalty to each other, to their gods, and to their religion that is seen less and less in modern Western society. I wish America was more concerned about taking care of each other, rather than on foreign wars, taking in immigrants and refugees, and being a part of a “global community.” While Americans struggle to get their daily bread and start families, our leaders, and many others, want us doing more and more for strangers. Xenophobic? Don’t care. I’m tired of watching myself and others around me struggle to survive, or watching the younger generations get stupider and stupider, while the culture brow beats me about the plight of countries and their people who have nothing to do with me.
I wish America would return to Christianity and stop persecuting it. It was the unifying religion and culture of our nation and it’s pretty obvious at this point that it has been to our detriment to minimize or remove it from our society. Christian Nationalism? So what? It would be better than the degenerate garbage of a government and society we have now.
I wish Americans would stop being stupid and throwing our culture into chaos over ridiculous notions like “men and women are the same”, or “diversity is our strength”, or that commonly held beliefs and practices are “racist”, “sexist”, and all the other buzzwords they toss around. They are only serving to disintegrate the nation—and if it doesn’t stop, they’re going to find out how bad that is when their electricity stops working or they no longer have running water in their homes or food to buy at a grocery store.
That's all for the Histories, Book 8.
May your days be filled with grace.
-Andronikos Anodos
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Thumbnail: The Battle of Salamis by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1868. Public domain.