Persian Fire (69 page)

32
Ibid., 16.5.

33
Ibid., 16.7.

34
The exact date is unknown. It would later please the Alcmaeonids to pretend that they had never reached an accommodation with the tyrants, but had always remained in obdurate and principled exile. Only the discovery in 1938 of an archon list from the late fifth century
bc
gave the game away.

35
Plutarch,
Solon, 29.
He is said to have made the comment to Thespis, who was held by the ancients to have been the inventor of tragedy. Since Solon died around 560
bc,
and Thespis was said to have produced the first tragedy in 535, the tradition is clearly unreliable in the extreme.

36
Herodotus, 5.93.

37
Thucydides, 6.54.

38
[bid., 6.57.

39
Aristotle,
The Constitution of the Athenians,
19.3.

40
Herodotus, 5.63.

41
Ibid.

42
Aristotle,
The Constitution of the Athenians,
20.1.

43
We are nowhere told explicitly that Cleisthenes made his proposals to the Assembly, but such is the almost universal presumption.

44
Whether Cleisthenes ever used the word
'demokratia'
is much debated. The consensus is that he didn't, and that it was not coined until the 470s nc, more than thirty years later. In a sense, however, the argument is sterile: later generations of Athenians certainly recognised the form of government established by Cleisthenes as a democracy, and so too has almost every modern historian. In this book, I will refer to it, and post-Cleisthenic Athens generally, as a democracy. For the reasoning of a classicist who would argue that this is no anachronism, see Hansen (1986).

45
Herodotus, 5.66.

46
Aristophanes,
Lysistrata,
279.

47
Such, at any rate, is the implication of a phrase in Herodotus (5.78), where he associates the sudden rise to greatness of democratic Athens with the benefits that derive from
'isegoria' —
literally, equality in the
agora,
the place of assembly in a Greek city, but with a specific subsidiary meaning: that of the right of every citizen to address the people. Some scholars argue that
isegoria
was introduced to Athens by later reformers.

48
Plato,
Protagoras,
9.82.

49
Herodotus, 5.74.

50
In Greek, the Eteoboutadai.

51
Herodotus, 5.78.

52
Ibid., 5.77.

53
For the best account of the earlier
agora,
see Robertson.

54
Herodotus, 5.73.

V Singeing the King of Persia's Beard

1
  
Xenophon,
Cyropaedia,
8.2.11—12.

2
  
Darius, inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam (DNb 8a).

3
  
Such, at any rate, is what the archaeology suggests. See Dusinberre, p. 142.

4
  
Isaiah, 45.1. 'Christ' —
'chnstos'
— is the Greek translation.

5
  
Ibid., 45.2-3.

6
  
Xenophanes, 3d.

7
  
Heraclitus. From Diogenes Laertius, 9.6.

8
  
Diogenes Laertius, 1.21. The saying was also attributed to Socrates.

9
  
Hipponax, 92.

10
The dating is not absolutely certain.

11
Herodotus, 4.137.

12
Ibid., 5.28.

13
For this interpretation of Herodotus, 5.36, see Wallinga (1984).

14
Herodotus, 5.49.

15
Ibid., 5.51.

16
Ibid., 5.97.

17
Ibid.

18
Aelian, 2.12.

19
Plutarch,
Themistodes,
22. Plutarch does not otherwise describe Themistocles, but his assertion that life-like portrait busts of the great man could still be seen under the Roman Empire makes the survival of exactly such a portrait bust at the Roman port of Ostia all the more intriguing. Conventionally dated to the second century
ad
, the bust is judged by most - though by no means all - scholars to derive from an original sculpted between 480 and 450
bc
, and therefore almost certainly drawn from life.

20
Thucydides, 1.138.

21
Herodotus, 6.11.

22
Precisely when is unclear.

23
Herodotus, 6.76.

24
Ibid., 6.21.

25
Ibid., 6.104.

26
Ibid., 5.105.

27
Strabo, 15.3.18.

28
Herodotus, 5.35.

29
Ibid., 6.1.

30
Ibid., 6.42.

31
Yam,
30.6.

32
Ibid., 32.3.

33
Herodotus, 7.133.

34
Ibid., 6.61.

35
Ibid., 6.95. Six hundred triremes were marshalled for the expedition, but Herodotus does not tell us how many troops were sent. .Six thousand four hundred Persians were killed at Marathon, mostly from the centre. Since the centre of an army was conventionally a third of its total, and since not all of the troops sent on the expedition were present for the battle, a total of 25,000 seems a reasonable estimate.

36
Ibid., 6.94.

37
Ibid., 6.97.

38
The chronology has to be worked out from assorted scattered clues. The key question is whether the Battle of Marathon was fought in August or September — nowhere are we specifically told. The balance of probability is overwhelmingly in favour of August: if the battle was fought in September,

as some scholars argue, then Datis must have spent an unfeasibly long time in crossing the Aegean.

39
Pausanias, 7.10.1.

40
Plutarch,
Spartan Sayings.
The aphorism is attributed to Demaratus.