Cartledge - After Thermopylae

AFTER THERMOPYLAE

EMBLEMS OF ANTIQUITY

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After Thermopylae

The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars

PAUL CARTLEDGE

THE OATH OF PLATAEA AND THE END OF THE GRAECO-PERSIAN WARS

PAUL CARTLEDGE

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cartledge, Paul.
After Thermopylae : the oath of Plataea and the end of the
Graeco-Persian Wars / Paul Cartledge.
pages cm.(Emblems of antiquity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-974732-0
1. Plataea, Battle of, Plataiai, Greece, 479 B.C . I. Title.
DF225.7.C37 2013
938.03dc23 2013010296

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

To the memory of John David Lewis (19552012)

Chapter One
INTRODUCTION: ARMS AND THE MEN

Chapter Two
THE OATH OF PLATAEA: TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

Chapter Three
THE PLATAEA OATH AS A DOCUMENT OF ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

Chapter Four
THE PERSIAN WARS: MAKING HISTORY ON OATH WITH HERODOTUS

Chapter Five
THE FACE OF THE BATTLE OF PLATAEA

Chapter Six
THE GREEKS INVENT THE PERSIAN WARS: THE MYTHOLOGY AND COMMEMORATION OF PLATAEA

Chapter Seven
CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF PLATAEA

The Persian Wars, as they are widely known, because typically they are looked at from a Greek viewpoint, are famous enough not to need any special attention. The names of Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis are as celebrated in their way as those of Hastings, Blenheim, and Waterloo in the annals of English (or British) military history. Indeed, the classically educated Victorian political philosopher and activist John Stuart Mill was once famously moved to claim that Marathon was more important than Hastings, even as an event in English history! That claim may seem extraordinary, almost outlandish, but it chimed with his high-Victorian readerships view that the ancient Greeks and especially the ancient Athenians were their cultural ancestors, and that there was at least an imagined continuum between the Greeks fifth-century BCE culture and that of the English or British in the nineteenth century CE .

But memory of the Persian Wars was also then, as it often still is, highly selective. Will Cinderellathe Battle of Plataeabe allowed to go to this ball? Not always, nor indeed very often. If the ancient Persian empire could quite recently be calledor mislabeledthe forgotten empire (in an important exhibition held at the British Museum), how much more deservedly is the epithet forgotten to be attached, ironically enough, to the Battle of Plataea, the land battle that actually decided the Persian Wars. Giles MacDonoghs Great Battles. 50 Key Battles from the Ancient World to the Present Day (2010) is just one of the most recent such compilationsor rather selectionsknown to me that manages to include Thermopylae and Salamis but yet to exclude Plataea. Going back three-quarters of a century, we find that Compton Mackenzies brief but sharp essay of 1934 subtitled The Battles that Defined the Western World is significantly and typically entitled Marathon & Salamis, not, as of course it should have been, Marathon, Salamis & Plataea. But at least Mackenzie did have the proper decency to acknowledge in his text that it was Plataea, and not either of his two titular battles, that was the decisive battle (). Sadly, the register of long oblivion could easily be extended back in time, as far indeed as Mill and beyond.

It was therefore with alacrity that I accepted the challenge thrown down to me by the Oxford University Press (New York) to contribute to their new Emblems of Antiquity series with a book paying due homage to the Battle of Plataea as a key and pivotal moment not just in ancient or classical Greek history but in all Western history. This book, like the series as a whole, is the brainchild of the ever-inventive Stefan Vranka, and it has been a pleasure as well as a stimulating learning experience to work, again, with him and his colleagues in New York. In accordance with the aims and objectives of the series, this book is addressed to a wide general readership, but yet it has some academic scaffolding and infrastructure too, and through its Epameinondas-like (oblique, slantwise) manner of approach to the battle via the Oath of Plataea (rather than more head-on, via the so-called Serpent Column victory monument, say) it is hoped that some new or newer light may be shed on the topic in general, and not just for general readers but even perhaps for some of my ancient historian colleagues in the field too.

The position I held from 2006 to 2010 of (visiting) Global Distinguished Professor in the excellent Department of Classics at New York University greatly facilitated the negotiations leading to the contracting of the book. At N.Y.U. I have also to thank most warmly President John Sexton, former Deans Dick Foley and Matthew Santirocco, Associate Dean Jonathan Friedman, and colleagues in the Classics Departmenttoo many to name them all, though I absolutely must name Phillip Mitsis, Joan Connelly, and Mike Peachin. Likewise, various collaborations with the marvelous Director of the NYC-based Onassis Cultural Foundation (USA), Ambassador Loukas Tsilas, and his right-hand woman Amalia Cosmetatou have been both a constant encouragement and a constant reminder that it was a key part of my N.Y.U. Global Distinguished Professorship remit to reach out to the Hellenic community in New York City and environs. For their unstinting