ABSTRACT
Herodotus gives us an excellent and entertainingly dramatised picture of this in the episode of the allied embassy to Gelon of Syracuse: the humorous and masterful tyrant is contrasted with the anxious and prickly ambassadors. The Theban contingent is given credit for courageous and effective fighting on the Persian side at Plataea, although the general picture of Thebes is unfriendly. This is probably not just a matter of Athenian hostility, though the mutual antipathy of Athens and Thebes was one of the facts of Greek life. Halicarnassus was an interesting place, and even without Herodotus' preface we can find several passages that testify to his special knowledge of it. A colony of Troizen, it was one of the group of Dorian cities and islands of south-west Asia Minor, forming, with Cnidos, Cos, Lindos, Ialysos and Camiros, a Dorian Hexapolis; they were united by a common religious festival in honour of Triopian Apollo, in Cnidian territory.
