•

Xerxes I (519–465 BC)

•

486 BC: took over Persia on the death of his father, Darius

•

capital in Perseopolis

•

determine to get revenge on the Greeks for the defeat that they inflicted on his father's troops

•

begins his rule with enormous power

•

Herodotus gives up a remarkable psychological portrait of the young king

•

in a debate as to what he should do

•

Mardonius

•

commander

•

encouraged King Xerxes I, Darius' successor, to invade Greece

•

"strike back, get glory, live up to Persian standards"

•

Artabanus, Xerxes' uncle and advisor

•

not so fast

•

there is so much that could go wrong

•

we have much to lose and little to gain

•

we should just consolidate our powers

•

Xerxes

•

flies into a range

•

says to Artabanus, if he weren't his uncle he would kill him

•

then repents, says he's sorry, he's a hot head and young man

•

has a dream

•

figure appears and says to attack the Greeks

•

second dream

•

figure comes back again and says that he should not ignore his advice to attack the Greeks

•

a combination of advanced thinking and traditional thinking

•

characterizes so much of this era

•

uncle says that dreams are just representations of what you've been thinking about during the day

•

a modern psychological theory

•

Artabanus then wears Xerxes bed clothes, sleeps in his bed, same dream figure comes and threatens him with burning hot irons

•

Artabanus then changes his mind, tells Xerxes that he should attack Greece

•

but be careful how you do it

•

Herodotean pattern

•

κόρος

•

having just enough

•

ύβρις

•

breaking some kind of boundry

•

by boundry of the bedroom wall for Gyges [Γύγης] and Candaules [Κανδαύλης]

•

the river Halys for King Croesus [Κροῖσος]

•

landing at Marathon for King Darius's army

•

Xerxes decides to go all out

•

has a bridge built over the Hellespont

•

a storm comes up and breaks it

•

he becomes so angry, he flogs and has chains thrown into the Hellspont waters, and decapitated the overseers

•

bridge is finally built

•

had a large armada accompanying them on the seaside

•

a storm occurs of the island of Euboea

•

Persian land army is making good progress

•

Athens is very concerned about the large, advancing army

•

there was the idea to make a wall near Corinth and move everyone down to the Peloponnese

•

there are still remanents of the beginnings of this wall

•

instead, the Spartans send a force up

•

make their stand at the Battle of Thermopylae

•

traveling with the Persians is a Spartan king in exile, Demaratus

•

Xerxes sends a spy out to see what the Spartans are doing

•

the spy reports that the Spartans playing games, exercises, combing out their long hair

•

Demaratus warns him that this is how Spartans behave when they are preparing to die

•

highlighting the cultural incomprehension that Herodotus is so interested in

•

480 BC: Battle of Thermopylae

•

Spartans have blocked narrow pass

•

here we see again: quality vs. quantity

•

Spartans hold off wave after wave of Persian attacks

•

finally a Greek traitor leads the Persians around on a mountain pass to the other side

•

Spartans are caught from behind

•

Spartans are annihilated down to the last man

•

epitaph: "Traveler, you who pass by, go tell the Spartans that, faithful to the end, here we lie"

•

Thermopylae has become a great battle in the imagination of the West

•

the evacuation of Attica

•

Persians continue progress down into Greece

•

the wooden walls prophecy

•

Delphi says that the Athenians should trust their wooden walls

•

Themistocles interprets it correctly, meaning: "our ships"

•

a decree that ordered the Athenians to evacuate

•

unclear if this was planned or a panic

•

Persians enter Athens, kill the few who remained there, and sacked and burned the city

•

Spartan King Leonidas had died at Thermopylae

•

480 BC: The Battle of Salamis

•

Themistocles sends message to Persians: Greeks are about to escape, you should cut them off

•

thus lures the Persians to fight in the straits near the island of Salamis

•

the battle proceded exactly as the Greek command expected

•

smaller, faster Greek ships punch apart the Persian fleet

•

Xerxes watched in despair

•

the Greek victory here sealed the Persians fate

•

Tthemistocles lets Xerxes escape

•

Persian army stays in Greece

•

under command of Mardonius

•

479 BC: Battle of Plataea

•

north of Athens

•

Greeks win

•

the Persian military threat was now effectively ended

•

Sparta and Athens have risen to a position of hegemony

•

now these two were first among equals in the Greek polis