Irene Coltman Brown begins this series on the historian as philosopher by taking a look at the Greek historian known as the Father of History. History is philosophy from examples taught the literary historian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who worked in Rome some years before the birth of Christ. Some historians have particularly desired to emphasis the philosophical implications of the examples of human experience revealed in their reconstruction of the past. Unable to write coherently without some general conception of the probable causes and effects of human behaviour, these historians have thought it possible to extract from their knowledge of what has been done, advice on what should be done, and even to aspire to predictions of what will most probably be done in the future. This new series on the historian as philosopher ranges from the ancient Greek and Roman historians, through their Italian, French, German and North African successors to the nineteenth-century Russian historian, Plekhanov, but it begins on the note of ambiguity which is characteristic of the philosophy of historians who draw their principles from the contradictory nature of what men and women do instead of the smooth consistency of what they say. Herodotus, who is known as the Father of History, has also been called the Father of Lies. Thus, from the start, the history of writing history warns that historians also share in the frailties of fallible mankind, the long record of which they pass on to every succeeding generation as perhaps their most valuable bequest. History has always had an anti-obscurantist bias as its practitioners shed their light on humanitys dark corners, and Herodotus himself wrote in the illumination cast by the Ionian Enlightenment when, during the sixth century BC, an extraordinary extension of the range of human thought took place amongst the Ionian Greeks living on the west coast of Asia Minor. In that much travelled and vulnerable colony, where a host of strangers passed through on the trade route to Asia, bringing new ideas and ways of life, the Ionian Greeks stood back from their own society to consider the implications of these differing cultures. The revelation that instead of the Ionian way of life being the ordained way, decreed by the gods for man to live and obey their commands, theirs was one of many. This nurtured a scepticism that was to have fundamental implications. Though not entirely free from the mythologising they had intellectually abandoned, this scepticism of the sixth-century Ionian philosophers had the detachment of natural science. It made the formation of the world no longer a supernatural, but a natural event, wrote Professor Cornford. Thanks to the Ionians and no one else, this has become the universal premise of all modern science. Heraclitus called on man in sixth-century Greece to learn the language of nature, aware that what had happened in Ionia was a great awakening. Men rose from an inhibited sleep-walking through the universe to a consciousness of the world order that was available to all. They now had a heightened awareness of alternatives, of the relativity of many moral judgements and the validity of different modes of thought. Having taken the leap from obedience to enquiry, the Ionian philosophers explored the cosmos. They had faith that observation would bring them understanding of the effects of the past, of the demands of the present and of the predictable future. Men of science, like Thales of Miletus, believed that the universe had a natural origin and would have a natural ending. He had learned that eclipses occur in cycles. Refusing to accept the old belief that the sky was the medium of divine disfavour, Thales had predicted an eclipse based on scientific observation as being visible in Asia Minor in 585 BC. Anaximander, the astronomer, also groped for the pattern of the cosmos. He drew the first Greek map of the world and detected a universal law in the resolution of its opposing elements. This gave him the courage to welcome change and accept its destructive creation in both nature and society. In the middle of the fifth century an historian was reciting his history in Athens. He was called Herodotus and Halicarnassus on the Asia Minor coast claimed him as its own. His work had developed from the ideas of these Ionian philosophers in the form of an Historia or enquiry into the human constructions of the past. Unwilling to accept a single unilinear story of historical decline as Plato had done, his comprehensive view of the world included the possibility of change and development, and Herodotus rejoiced that the human race was so diverse that one man alone could hardly record their myriad customs and experiences. Involved in the movement towards human equality which was a legacy of the ideas of the Ionian Enlightenment, Herodotus rejected the mystical exclusiveness of the shaman , the religious diviner, and the soothsayer and claimed that all men can know equally about divine things and thus it followed that they were sufficiently equal in judgement to be trusted with political decisions. This direct knowledge of the world was linked by Herodotus to the creative power of human responsibility and freedom and it was on this perception that he built his political faith. In the history of his own people Herodotus saw men tested to the limit of their nature by success and by disaster. He believed that will and courage changed the odds. He may have learned this from Thales who taught that lack of courage in the citizens was a more obvious sign of approaching defeat than a comet. In 504 BC the expanding Persian Empire absorbed the renowned Ionian Greek colony and demanded tribute from its citizens. The Athenians thus realised how short-lived their own freedom would also be unless they could defend their independence from Persian encroachment. The defeat of the Persian invasion of Greece was therefore considered an essential part of the history of Greek freedom, and more so because many Greeks did not consider that they had won accidentally or by a miracle, but they believed they had defeated the Persians because free men are stronger than slaves. Set in Herodotus History of the Persian Wars is a formalised presentation of the arguments for democracy, aristocracy and kingship. In this historical parable, seven Persians having made a successful coup against their false king, discuss the government they should now establish. One recommended that the whole nation should govern themselves. He reminded the others of the arrogance of tyrants and the temptations for kings who were allowed to do as they liked. Another conspirator, however, advised setting up an oligarchy. He wished the Persians to choose the worthiest citizens and entrust the state to them so that, power having been given to the best men, the best political counsels would prevail. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies, he concluded, identifying democracy with weakness. But Darius came forward and said What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state? He chooses the path of justice and moves secretly along it, unhampered by the violent quarrels of aristocratic lords and the corruption of democracy. The other conspirators then supported Darius and it was decided that the one whose horse first neighed after the sun was up should be chosen. Darius, by a trick, became that one and under his rule the Persian Empire became the most formidable power in the Near East. However, Herodotus had mentioned in passing that, even during the coup, Darius at one critical moment had not known what to do and his History of the Persian Wars shows the concentration of decision-making in one man as a source of weakness in the Persian Empire. Monarchy did not give the state the strength which Darius claimed. Such absolute power needed to be exercised with absolute wisdom which is beyond the power of mortal men. In contrast, the power of Athens grew with her freedom so that Herodotus could say freedom is an excellent thing. He claimed that before the Athenian citizens won their freedom they were no braver than anyone else but, as soon as they shook off their despotic rule and were equally free to speak on political affairs, Athens became the first city-state in Greece. While they lived in servitude the Athenians did not care if they were conquered, for they had nothing to lose, but as soon as they got their freedom, each man fought to defend it. Asias recurrent thrust towards Europe was thwarted by Europes free institutions and Athens was fated to bear the brunt of this frustrated challenge. The Persian wars started when the Ionian Greeks revolted against their far-away Persian rulers to whom they resented paying tribute, and Athens sent twenty ships to help the rebellion. The rebellion failed and their burning cities showed the risk of challenging Persia and the risks of that love of freedom that blazed up from the Ionian awakening. There was a general impression that it pleased the Persian King to have a pretext for invasion, so that Darius punitive expedition against Greece in 490 BC was recognised as the first move towards absorbing all of Europe in his empire. The fleet sailed with orders to reduce Athens to slavery and to bring these new slaves before the King. When the enormous Persian army landed near Marathon twenty-four miles north- east of Athens, near an open plain where they could deploy their terrifying cavalry, and made ready to advance on the unwalled city, some sections of the population thought it wiser to surrender without bloodshed. But the Athenian representative Assembly took the decision to resist. Until this time, said Herodotus, the very name of the Persian had frightened the Greeks, but at Marathon they were defeated by the Athenians who had obeyed the order of the Assembly to take provisions and march and sent ten thousand infantrymen to attack the invading force. Although the Athenians had sent messages to Sparta, the independent Greek warrior state, for assistance, that aid, delayed by a ritually unpropitious moon, did not arrive. The Athenians realised that if they waited longer for help from others, the Persians would use the time to consolidate their European foothold. So the Athenians attacked alone with brilliant success and, as Herodotus said, describing one of the turning points of history, the Persians departed and sailed away to Asia. The Battle of Marathon was a devastating blow to Persian prestige, and this unexpected defeat made Darius more anxious than ever to lead a new army against Greece but he died before doing so and, according to Herodotus, the new King Xerxes was at first more interested in the wealth of Egypt. It was his cousin Mardonius, who wanted to become governor of Greece, who persuaded the Persian Emperor of Europes riches. It would be fitting for the Great King to possess the West and fitting for the West to be a jewel in the imperial crown rather than a collection of city-states. Xerxes then called together an assembly of Persian nobles and told them of his plan to be revenged on the Greeks. He made it plain that this was less of a punitive expedition than a once-and-for-all attempt to conquer Greece. By defeating Greece he would turn Europe into a province of Asia and absorb its free states into his oriental despotism. Once let us subdue this people, and those neighbours of theirs who hold the land of Pelops the Phrygian, and we shall extend the Persian territory as far as Gods heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no land beyond our borders; for I will pass from one end to the other, and with your aid make of all the land which it contains one country. Greece was the only obstacle to the Persian conquest of the known world. If it were once permanently subjugated, no other city or nation would dare to oppose the might of Persia and by this course then we shall bring all mankind under our yoke.... Xerxes was assured that he was certain to be victorious and that he had nothing to fear from the Greeks as they had neither men nor money, and the other Persians were silent, as Herodotus points out, because in the Persian despotism they were all afraid to raise their voices against any plan of the Emperor. In the spring of 48O BC the Persian King crossed the narrow Hellespont straits between Europe and Asia over bound pontoons, lashing the waves in fury because a storm destroyed the first bridge and crying King Xerxes will cross thee, whether thou wilt or not. Herodotus implied that there was something unnatural in this presumption. Xerxes had also dug a canal across the isthmus which joins Mount Athos to the mainland. He thus marched armies across the sea and navies across the land in a violation of the natural order, and Artabamus, Xerxes uncle and the only one who spoke against the invasion, said that Xerxes enemies included the land and sea and that the Emperor was defying the universe. It was the essence of despotic hubris , or arrogance, to will what could not be willed: the transformation of reality by will alone. Xerxes, however claimed that great empires were only won by taking great risks and declared boldly that when the Persians had subdued Europe, they would then return safely home. There had never been such an army before, said Herodotus. All the armies of Asia had been brought together and led by the Ten Thousand Immortals, the warrior élite, glittering in gold. It took them seven days and seven nights to cross into Europe until it seemed as if all the world were marching against Greece. Was there a nation in all Asia, asked Herodotus rhetorically, which Xerxes did not bring with him? Xerxes hoped to wrest some advantage from the weakness of Greek political society. His army was conscripted from a united empire. The Greek armies came from numerous independent city-states and peoples. He looked forward to the divisions that would arise from their conflicting counsels and from the uncertain and fluctuating policies of their democratic assemblies. He did not understand their strength. His army crossed the Hellespont under the lash and he could not see what would hold the Greeks together. Even Apollo, the god of the Delphic oracle, warned of terrible disasters if the Greeks resisted, but the Greeks had faith in themselves. Although all suspicion could not be dispelled overnight, nor all ancient hostilities forgotten, the Greeks had sufficiently patched up their quarrels at the conference which met in 481 BC under the headship of Sparta to form an organisation of Greek unity for their mutual defence. During the years when news had seeped into Greece of the Persian preparations for invasions, the Spartans had held assemblies to ask Is anyone willing to die for the Fatherland? At the pass of Thermopylae separating Thessaly from Phocis, where there was scarcely twenty yards between the sea and its sheer cliff face and the sulphur springs, the Spartan King Leonidas took up his position as if to answer the question. He led to Thermopylae his elite royal guard of three hundred young warriors, a few allied troops, theperioikoi from other cities in Lacedaemonia who accepted Spartan hegemony, and the Helot shield-bearers. Sparta at this time could count on scant support from estranged allies, and once again the Spartans were restrained from full participation in the defence of Greece by religious prohibitions. This was therefore to be an advance guard until the whole Spartan army could be used, but Leonidas must have realised he was probably marching to his death, for he chose only guards who already had sons to live after them. Since the spring the Greeks had watched each other as closely as they watched the enemy. As they advanced to the pass, these men could not be sure that the rest of Greece would not give up the fight. It was hoped that the Persians would be halted by the Spartan holding action while the Greeks made preparations for a naval battle, and on August 17th, 480 BC Xerxes ordered the Persians to advance. For two days the Persian army attacked, and the Greeks beat them back, so that even the Immortals, the Emperors own bodyguard, were defeated. It is said that three times Xerxes leapt from his throne in terror lest the whole army be lost, for at any moment panic could have sent all his conscripts scrambling away into the mountains. Yet on the third day Leonidas was betrayed. He had posted his local Phocian allies to watch if the Persians came over the mountain track, but they, unaware of the enemy advance until they heard the dry leaves fallen from summer trees rustling in the still air beneath their marching feet fled as a spy showed the Persians the way they could attack the Spartans from the rear. Even though he had been betrayed, Leonidas did not surrender. He sent away most of his forces and Herodotus describes how he and his remaining guards were then killed fighting to the last. A monumental inscription said Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to and are buried here and, although three days afterwards Xerxes was marching south destroying every village as he went, and the way lay open for Persia to march into central Greece, the Spartan resistance was a moral appeal to other Greeks that did not go unanswered. When the enemy attacked Atheas the Athenians showed that they were a city-state with a unity that resided not in ancestral soil but in their laws. Together with traitors who wanted to overthrow the democracy and restore a tyranny, the Persian army entered the city and burned the sacred Acropolis. The Athenian commander, Themistocles, who had to persuade the Athenians to leave their homes and carry on the struggle outside their city, was taunted as a man without a country. He answered that his country was in his ships, for Athens was a united people not a place. The wooden walls that the oracle said would save Athens were not her city defences but their hulls. Aristides, his political opponent, then made common cause with him against the Persian peril, and the great Greek naval victory at Salamis on September 20th, 480, one month after Thermopylae, showed, said Herodotus, that the gods did not want one man to be the ruler of Asia and of Europe. After the burning of Athens the Athenians took refuge on the island of Salamis, and under the Emperors eyes the thousand Persian ships were lured forward into its narrow waters. Xerxes may have been too anxious to clinch the Greek defeat. Pressing eagerly forward as if to imperial victory, the Persians found themselves exposed to a brilliant manoeuvre of Themistocles who, having feigned withdrawal so as to lead on the great ships of the enemy, now watched as in that narrow strait they rammed each other in a futile effort to evade the Greek attack. When they were unable to move they lay exposed to the well-armed Greek hoplites – the citizen militia – who leapt upon their decks. The Persian navy was crushingly defeated and the Persian army, which had been relying on the fleet to maintain its supplies and its lines of communication, retreated. At the final battle of Plataea in 479 BC Mardonius, Xerxes ill-fated adviser, learned how wrong he had been, as he was defeated by treachery on his own side and the bravery of the Spartans. He was killed in the fighting by a Spartan stone and, as the Persian survivors fled to the coast, a last naval battle marked the end of Persian aspirations, and thenceforth Europe was safe from any further danger from its emperors. The Persian wars were the high noon of Athenian patriotic history. The dramatist, Aeschylus, fought at Marathon and Socrates at Salamis. Victory made Athens the leading power in Greece but tempted her into the Imperial hubris and pride of the Persian emperors, as her greatest historian, Thycydides, was to record. Historians since Herodotus have protested at his inaccuracies. Sometimes these are due to his Ionian love of curious travellers tales, but some of the errors derive from mistaken numbers. The Cretan say all Cretans are liars. Herodotus says that neither the Ionians nor any of the other Greeks know how to count. Classical scholars claim that his figures of the vast Persian host are wildly exaggerated. Also, as Paul Cartledge emphasises, he had overlooked the nine hundred to a thousand men who advanced with Leonidas to Thermopylae who came from Lacedaimonia but were not Spartan citizens. Besides the subject Helots and the few allies stood the perioikoi , the free men from other Lacedaimonian cities, who were nonetheless subject to Spartan suzerainty and were therefore in some sense forced to defend them against their foreign enemies, and probably even against the Helots if ordered to. This oversight or disregard raises a more serious allegation. Herodotus, it has been said, abandoned history for myth. He forced the record of the Persian wars into a mould which justified his political creed. In fact it was not only free men who defended Thermopylae, nor was Greek freedom absolute. Herodotus blurred the fact that the perioikoi also stayed with Leonidas, as did the Spartan Helot shield-bearers whose name is synonymous with slavery. For, denied political liberty themselves, the freedom of the Spartans rested on their forced labour, as the magnificent resistance of Athens came from a participatory democracy that denied that participation to all its women and to all its many slaves. Freedom inspired the Spartans to fight bravely, but Xerxes Persians had also advanced courageously against the Spartan line. Was it not the longer spears, as Herodotus claims, and the great bronze shields of the defenders, as Ernle Bradford describes them, that forced back the Immortals until the Greeks were overwhelmed by treachery and a superior force? It may be difficult for future historians to find a place where love of freedom and ones native land tipped the balance in a nuclear war. The myth of the few free men who miraculously withstand the many could be a more dangerous falsehood than Herodotus statistical errors, because it idealises out of existence the implacable mathematics of power and the ultimate despotism of fortune. The winds of Greece that buffeted the Persian fleet proved a natural check to Persian aspirations, but the uncertain elements cannot always be relied upon to protect human freedom. Battles have been won or lost through a sudden storm. As a character in one of Conrads novels protests, as spokesman for the author, but also expressing the conviction of Thucydides, Life is not for me a moral romance. And yet Persia, the mighty empire, was defeated against all the odds... - See more at: historytoday/irene-brown/herodotus-and-strength-freedom#sthash.NobTBFZY.dpuf
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 03:53:03 +0000
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