Persian Fire

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*¹ To be strictly accurate, only 298 of the Spartans that Leonidas took with him to Thermopylae died there in battle.

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*² The Caliphate itself was abolished two years later, in 1924.

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*³ Although the Greeks plumped for Semiramis, a Syrian warrior-goddess who was also supposed to have founded Babylon.

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*⁴ Variations of the word “Ionian” were used as a generic term for “Greek” throughout the Near East. See, for instance, Genesis 10.2, where one of the sons of Japheth is called “Javan.” The Greeks themselves counted the island cities of Chios and Samos as Ionian, so, in total, there were reckoned to be twelve cities of Ionia.

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*⁵ Located just south of modern-day Baghdad.

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*⁶ It is impossible to know the truth about the identity of “Nidintu-Bel,” but the circumstantial evidence suggests that he probably was of royal blood.

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*⁷ According to Herodotus, at any rate, who admittedly is not the most reliable of sources when it comes to the details of Cambyses’ reign. It is only fair to record that all attempts to discover the skeletons of Cambyses’ lost army, where they are presumed to lie beneath the sands of the Libyan desert, have ended in failure.

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*⁸ The famous story of the boy who hunted a fox for food, and then, rather than confess to having it under his cloak, let the creature gnaw away his stomach, surely derives from a genuine tradition in which young Spartans were encouraged to take on vulpine characteristics—to become, in a sense, like the cornered fox themselves. Certainly, as it stands, the story makes no sense, since surely not even the hungriest boy would choose to hunt a fox for supper.

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*⁹ Fragments of a Bronze Age palace would still have been visible on the summit of the Acropolis in the seventh century BC.

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*¹⁰ It was during the Egyptian leg of this trip that Solon, according to Plato, was told the story of Atlantis.

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*¹¹ Other traditions, it is fair to say, remembered Periander in a far less favorable light. He is said to have been so crazed that he killed his wife, then made love to her corpse; to have castrated three hundred boys from an enemy city; and to have given silent advice on statecraft to a fellow tyrant by walking through a field and lopping off the tallest ears of corn with a stick. The contradictions in the historical record well reflect the ambivalence with which the Greeks tended to regard the institution of tyranny.

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*¹² It is a mark, perhaps, of the oblivion that descended upon Cleisthenes’ memory that we are not even sure of the precise date of his death. Some time around 500 BC seems likeliest.

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*¹³ The Greek word “satrapes” was a transliteration of the original Persian “xsachapava.”

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*¹⁴ This was the march that inspired the French educationalist Michel Bréal to propose a “marathon race” for the 1896 Olympic Games, tracing the route taken by the Athenians from the battlefield to Athens. The legend that it was Philippides who brought the news of the victory, gasping out, “We have won!” and then expiring, is sadly no less spurious for being so poetic and fitting.

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*¹⁵ Only when a German surveyor in the nineteenth century found a great jumble of bones on the plain was the location of the Persians’ grave identified.

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*¹⁶ No detail better proves the authenticity of Herodotus’ sources for Xerxes’ crossing of the Hellespont than this: that the Immortals marched to war with their spears held upside down. Assyrian frescoes, which no Greek could possibly have seen, show exactly the same scene, evidence both of the continuity between Persian traditions and those of earlier empires, and of Herodotus’ remarkable scrupulousness as a historian.

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*¹⁷ It is possible that such an attempt was made. Several sources claim that Leonidas, on the eve of the Spartans’ last stand, launched a raid on the royal tent and was killed. It is hard to know what to make of this story – since Leonidas himself certainly died in battle – unless it hints at a garbled memory of a foiled mission to assassinate Xerxes.

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*¹⁸ The precise date of the Battle of Himera is uncertain. Gelon’s propagandists, keen to foster the notion that their master had been fighting in defense of Greek liberty, rather than merely his own interests, liked to claim that it had been waged on the same day as either the last stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae or the Battle of Salamis.

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*¹⁹ His remains were finally brought back to Sparta for reburial in 440 BC.

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*²⁰ What the temple was called in the time of Pericles is unknown..

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*²¹ The Greek word “satrapes” was a transliteration of the original Persian “ xsachapava.” Return to text.

*²² This was the march that inspired the French educationalist Michel Bréal to propose a “marathon race” for the 1896 Olympic Games, tracing the route taken by the Athenians from the battlefield to Athens. The legend that it was Philippides who brought the news of the victory, gasping out, “We have won!” and then expiring, is sadly no less spurious for being so poetic and fitting. Return to text.

*²³ Only when a German surveyor in the nineteenth century found a great jumble of bones on the plain was the location of the Persians’ grave identified. Return to text.