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William Shepherd - The Persian War: In Herodotus and Other Ancient Voices

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William Shepherd The Persian War: In Herodotus and Other Ancient Voices
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Weaving together the accounts of the ancient historian Herodotus with other ancient sources, this is the engrossing story of the triumph of Greece over the mighty Persian Empire.
The Persian War is the name generally given to the first two decades of the period of conflict between the Greeks and the Persians that began in 499 BC and ended around 450. The pivotal moment came in 479, when a massive Persian invasion force was defeated and driven out of mainland Greece and Europe, never to return. The victory of a few Greek city-states over the worlds first superpower was an extraordinary military feat that secured the future of Western civilization.
All modern accounts of the war as a whole, and of the best-known battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, depend on the ancient sources, foremost amongst them Herodotus. Yet although these modern narratives generally include numerous references to the ancient authors, they quote little directly from them.
This is the first book to bring together Herodotus entire narrative and interweave it with other ancient voices alongside detailed commentary to present and clarify the original texts.
The extracts from other ancient writers add value to Herodotus narrative in various ways: some offer fresh analysis and credible extra detail; some contradict him interestingly; some provide background illumination; and some add drama and colour. All are woven into a compelling narrative tapestry that brings this immense clash of arms vividly to life.
Distinguished military historian of the Persian Wars William Shepherd [...] shows himself to be also a most sensitive interpreter of those Wars original historian Herodotus. With Shepherd as our guide and Herodotus by our side this key moment in West-East relations is given its full cultural and strategic due.
Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

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If you go to the Hot Gates take some historical knowledge and your imagination - photo 1

If you go to the Hot Gates take some historical knowledge and your imagination - photo 2

If you go to the Hot Gates take some historical knowledge

and your imagination with you.

William Golding, 1965

The interest of Grecian history is unexhausted and inexhaustible.

As a mere story, hardly any other portion of authentic history can compete with it.

Its characters, its situations, the very march of its incidents, are epic.

It is an heroic poem, of which the personages are peoples.

It is also, of all histories of which we know so much,

the most abounding in consequences to us who now live.

The true ancestors of the European nations (it has been well said)

are not those from whose blood they are sprung,

but those from whom they derive the richest portion of their inheritance.

John Stuart Mill, 1846

Contents Herodotus of Halicarnassus c 485425 the father of history - photo 3

Contents

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, c .485425, the father of history.

Historia : 2nd-century ad manuscript fragment.

Heavy infantry in close formation, Mesopotamia c .2450.

Corinthian helmet, early 5th century.

Hoplite arming for combat.

Chalcidian helmet, early 5th-century sculpture in original colouring.

Heroic single combat showing double-grip shield system.

Hoplite battle lines in combat.

Psilos.

Archer in typical Barbarian dress.

The Great King enthroned.

Persian gold, Darius with his bow.

The Great Kings ceremonial capital, Persepolis.

Achaemenid treasure.

Immortals, the Great Kings Guard.

Persian nobility.

Early 7th-century Phoenician warship.

Design drawings for the trireme Olympias.

Olympias off Phalerum.

Siege machinery, engineering and tactics; 8th-century Assyria.

Remains of the harbour at Miletus.

The plain of Marathon from the south.

Marathon by John Varley, 1834.

One stade , the running track at Olympia.

In effect, naked men battling against hoplites. (9.63)

3rd-century ad Roman sculpture possibly depicting Marathon.

The Soros at Marathon.

Helmet, allegedly excavated at Marathon in 1834 with the skull inside.

The Hellespont around Xerxes crossing point.

Poseidon, god of the ocean, late 6th century.

Themistocles, who very clearly displayed immense natural ability that was more worthy of admiration than in any other man. (Thucydides 1.138)

The north shore of Euboea on the Straits of Artemisium.

Olympias oar system, side view.

The three tiers of oarsmen seen from the bows.

Thermopylae, looking west from the area of the Middle Gate.

The pass in an engraving made in 1877.

Spartan hero figure from early 5th century.

The crags of Parnassus above the precinct of Athena Pronaea at Delphi.

Apollo in gold and ivory, Delphi.

The Straits of Salamis from the east.

Olympias prow and ram.

The Straits of Salamis from the west, Enchantress 1 in the foreground.

Entering the Straits past the north-east end of Psyttaleia.

Olympias from astern.

Athena triumphant.

View north from the skirts of Cithaeron.

View south from the north of the River Asopus.

Spartan, early 5th-century bronze statuette.

Hellene archer and hoplite fighting Persian cavalry, mid 5th century.

Archer and hoplite fighting side by side.

Hellene hoplite and Persian cavalryman fighting over a fallen warrior, recalling Marathon or Plataea, or both.

Slave, Helot or lower-class citizen carrying water or wine.

Barbarian cavalry against Hellene psiloi.

View to the east from above the site of the city of Plataea.

The Persians set aside their bows and faced up to the Hellenes, and at first the fighting was along the wall of shields [they] were not inferior in courage or physical strength. (9.62)

The battlefield on Cape Mycale.

The Barbarians fell apart and lost any will to resist. (9.70)

Column drums built into the ramparts of the Acropolis in the autumn of 479.

Ostraka mass-produced by Themistocles political opponents.

Athena, patron goddess of Athens.

The remains of the Serpent Column in Istanbul.

The Serpent Column was still intact in the late 16th century.

Thucydides ( c .455395).

The Persian War is the name generally given to the first two decades of the period of conflict between the Greeks and the Persians that began in 499 bc and ended around 450. However, in 480 and 479, a massive Persian invasion force was defeated and driven out of mainland Greece and Europe, never to return.

When they had gathered together all the spoils, the Greeks put one tenth aside for dedication to the god at Delphi. With this they set up the golden tripod resting on a bronze triple-headed serpent that is to be found very close to the altar. ( Historia 9.81)

This Serpent Column was 7m or 8m tall and crowned with a golden dish for sacrificial offerings to Apollo, its dedicatee. On its shaft were engraved the names of 31 city-states ( poleis , singular polis ) or peoples that had fought the Persians, one of the very few contemporary inscriptions to have survived as evidence of the war. The golden dish survived until only half-way through the following century, but, in the 4th century ad, Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor of the West and East, brought the column to Byzantium, the crossing point between Europe and Asia. The serpents (actually three of them, not one with three heads) were decapitated, allegedly by a drunken Mameluk soldier during the Ottoman era, but the twisted column still stands in the Hippodrome of Constantine, now Istanbuls Sultanahmet Square. Beyond, reliefs at the base of a commemorative column show Theodosius I in his pomp as Emperor of the East in the late 4th century. The great basilica of Agia Sophia with its four minarets behind, and the Sultanahmet Blue Mosque is close by. These are massive symbols of the glories of Greece, Rome, Christianity and Islam.

Alternate history is often little more than an entertaining game, but here the what-if questions are profound. If the Persian War had been lost in 479, would there have been the same golden flowering of Athenian culture and institutions in the decades that followed? If Greece had become part of a Persian empire with southern Italy now on its frontier, would Rome (which had turned republican at about the same time as the Athenians were taking their first steps towards democracy) have been allowed to grow into the world power that Constantine ruled? If not, what of Christianity? Without the bloodstream of the Roman Empires communications network to sustain its growth, Christianity might never have spread to become a world religion and the catalyst that brought another, Islam, into being. A Persian victory would have changed much more than the scenery at the centre of the site of ancient Byzantium. It could have profoundly redirected the subsequent evolution of the cultural, intellectual, political and religious landscapes of Europe and the Middle East.

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