ABSTRACT

The fullest description of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece is contained in the last three books of Herodotus (all source references in this chapter are to Herodotus unless otherwise stated). Although he has been criticized justifiably by modern and ancient historians for his weaknesses (see Chapter 1 for a fuller discussion), his strengths, especially when compared with later writers, are such that his account of these events should be considered reasonably trustworthy. His accuracy has often been proved by other sources, when they are available, for example, his list of the six Persian nobles who helped Darius to seize the throne of Persia in 522 compares very favourably with Darius’ own list which was included in an official inscription at Behistun in Media, recording his achievements; there is only one mistake and that an explicable one. This accuracy was due to his painstaking research and interviews with many of the eyewitnesses, both Greek and Persian, of the events that he narrated. As he was writing in the third quarter of the fifth century, he had access to many of the combatants and junior officers who took part in the battles. However, his accounts of the discussions in the Greek councils of war must be treated with caution, as they must be based upon gossip and rumour, since the middle-aged chief commanders who left no memoirs were dead by the time of his research. It is also clear from his descriptions that he visited the sites of the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, although his understanding of strategy is very limited. It is to Herodotus’ credit that Thucydides, although critical of him as a historian (Thucydides 1.20.3), generally accepts his history of the war, and adds very little extra information when referring to the Persian War, with the exception of his praise of Themistocles’ qualities which was intended to contradict the anti-Themistocles traditions accepted too uncritically by Herodotus. The other main contemporary fifth-century source is the Athenian tragedian

Aeschylus, who took part in the battle of Salamis in 480 and commemorated

this great victory by making it the centrepiece of his play, the Persai, performed in 472. It is useful to use his account of the battle to supplement and compare with that of Herodotus, but clearly the major aim of the play was to celebrate, with as much dramatic skill as possible, one glorious deed in the history of the Greek resistance to the Persians, and thus sheds little light on the Persian War as a whole. Apart from Aeschylus, Herodotus and Thucydides, the other main evi-

dence comes from or is derived from the fourth-century writers, Ephorus and Ctesias. Ctesias of Cnidus was the court doctor of King Artaxerxes II of Persia (c.404-360) and wrote a Persica, a history of the Persians in 23 books. His history has not survived; a brief epitome, written by the Byzantine Bishop Photius in the ninth century, survives, and there are references to his work in Plutarch’s Life of Artaxerxes, Strabo’s Geographia and Diodorus’ World History. He claimed to have used Persian royal documents (Diodorus 2.32.4) but, whatever his merit as a historian of Persian affairs during the second half of the fifth century, his account of the Persian War is filled with errors. The most glaring are the placing of the battle of Plataea (479) between Thermopylae and Salamis (both in 480), and the death of Mardonius, the Persian commander-in-chief killed by the Greeks at Plataea, at the hands of the gods in a storm that saved Delphi. His inaccuracy and untrustworthiness make not only his evidence unreliable but also those who used him as their source. Plutarch, who was particularly critical of Herodotus in his De Malignitate Herodoti (About the Spitefulness of Herodotus), used in his Life of Themistocles the work of a certain Phanias of Lesbos who appears also to have been dependent on Ctesias; and this may be the source of Plutarch’s account of the battle of Salamis which is not based on Herodotus’ narrative. In fact, Plutarch made use of many sources, and thus provides some interesting information to add to Herodotus’ account, but as their information is probably derived from Ephorus, it is of doubtful value. The most important of the fourth-century writers was Ephorus, who

wrote the Historiai, a ‘universal’ Greek history in 30 books. His description of the Persian War has not survived, but it is widely agreed that Diodorus of Sicily, writing in the first century BC has followed his account closely but more briefly (11.1-19, 27-37). Ephorus clearly used Herodotus as a source, as Herodotus’ name, his history and its scope are specifically mentioned (Diodorus 11.37.6); and, on many occasions, there is a marked similarity in detail. However, he was a pupil of the orator and teacher Isocrates, and shared his beliefs in the use of history and rhetoric as a means of moral improvement, namely to glorify virtue and to condemn vice. His version of Thermopylae, influenced by such rhetoric, has the Spartan King Leonidas bravely attacking the Persian camp and even entering Xerxes’ tent on the night before the final destruction of the Greek forces. The differences between Ephorus’ account and that of Herodotus seem to be derived, not

from a separate unidentified fifth-century source, but from his attempt to rationalize the different accounts of Herodotus, Aeschylus and Ctesias. If this is the case, then Ephorus (through book 11 of Diodorus) will add very little to the content of those three sources.