Persian Fire (73 page)

14
This, at any rate, seems the only explanation for Sicinnus' release that makes sense. Some historians have proposed that he yelled his message from his boat without ever leaving it, but this is not only inherently implausible surely the Persians could easily have sent a vessel to capture him - but directly contradicts what Herodotus (8.75) says.

15
Herodotus, 8.78.

16
Ibid., 8.80.

17
Ibid., 8.83.

18
Ibid., 8.65.

19
Aeschylus, 369-71.

20
Since Salamis was not merely the most momentous battle ever fought, but also one perilously difficult to reconstruct from the existing sources, the literature on it is unsurprisingly vast. Indeed, there are almost as many interpretations of what happened as there are historians who have written about it. For the best defence of the orthodoxy that the Persian fleet entered the straits by night, see Lazenby (1993), and his typically trenchant chapter, 'Divine Salamis'. The most convincing counter-argument can be found in Green's chapter, 'The Wooden Wall', in
The Greco-Persian Wars.
The killer detail that surely disproves the theory that the Persians entered the straits by night is the fact that the imperial battle fleet, if it had indeed lined up directly opposite the allied triremes before dawn, would have swooped down on their positions the moment that the light permitted, giving the Greek oarsmen little time to get to their benches, let alone allowing Themistocles to indulge in an oration, as Herodotus clearly tells us he did. The theory also makes a nonsense of the Persians' attempt to keep their manoeuvres a secret.

21
Aeschylus, 367.

22
Ibid., 388-90.

23
Herodotus, 8.84.

24
Aeschylus, 399-400.

25
Herodotus, 8.88.

26
Aeschylus, 415-16.

27
Ibid., 426-8.

28
Ibid., 462-4.

29
Herodotus, 8.100.

30
Herodotus, 8.100. Literally '300,000 men whom I will personally choose to finish off the job', but the figure is an obvious exaggeration.

31
In forty-five days, according to Herodotus (8.115) — although not from Athens, as is generally assumed, but almost certainly from Thessaly.

32
Ibid., 8.110.

33
Ibid., 8.114.

34
Ibid., 8.109.

35
Ibid., 8.124.

36
Ibid., 9.12.

37
It is hard to believe that Themistocles was removed entirely from the board of ten generals, but definite evidence is lacking.

38
Herodotus, 8.HI.

39
Ibid., 8.142.

40
Ibid., 8.143.

41
Ibid., 8.144. That it was Aristeides who spoke this parting injunction is a detail recorded by Plutarch.

42
Again, according to Plutarch, this embassy was led by Aristeides. Bearing in mind that he was the commander-in-chief of his city's land forces, however, and that the Persians were occupying Attica at the time, this seems improbable. Even Plutarch himself admits that his information was dubious.

43
Herodotus, 9.12.

44
Ibid., 9.13.

45
Herodotus (9.29) says that there were seven helots for every Spartan - 35,000 in all. This seems excessive.

46
Xenophon,
The Constitution of the Spartans,
9.6

47
Herodotus, 9.16.

48
If Herodotus' figures (9.29) are to be trusted, there were precisely 38,100 hoplites in the allied army. This is certainly more convincing than the total of 69,500 lightly armed troops which he also gives, and which he appears to have arrived at by a series of random calculations. If there were lightly armed troops at Plataea, then their impact on the battle was negligible.

49
Herodotus (9.32) claims that Mardonius' army included 300,000 infantry and 50,000 Boeotian and Thessalian hoplites, to say nothing of cavalry. Since these figures are clearly an exaggeration, the only way to estimate the true size of the Persian forces at Plataea is to calculate how many men might have fitted into the stockade, which, Herodotus tells us, was 2000 square metres. Anything between 70,000 and 120,000 might have been possible. See Lazenby(1993), p. 228.

50
Plutarch,
Aristeides,
13. The story is often dismissed as a fabrication, partly because it does not appear in Herodotus, and partly because Plutarch's chronology is undoubtedly muddled. Yet it is, as one of the rare glimpses we have been afforded into the Persians' espionage war, an invaluable piece of evidence, and seems convincing when placed in context.

51
Herodotus, 9.41. A claim to the contrary is made a few paragraphs later (9.45), but it comes as part of a message from the inveterately untrustworthy Alexander of Macedon. The king is supposed to have crossed no man's land in person, alone and by dead of night, in order to reveal the Persian battle plans to Aristeides: a hugely implausible story. The whiff of self-exculpation from a man who had been a notorious mediser is palpable.

52
Ibid., 9.39.

53
Ibid., 9.49.

54
Plutarch,
Aristeides,
17.

55
Herodotus, 9.62.

56
Aeschylus, 816-17.

57
Herodotus, 9.71.

58
Ibid., 9.82.

59
Euripides,
The Phoenician Women,
184.

60
Herodotus, 1.34.

61
Aristotle,
Rhetoric,
2.2.6.

62
Herodotus, 8.109.

63
As Green (p. 281) points out, this is the only explanation that can make sense of the claim, asserted unequivocally by the ancient sources, that the battles of Plataea and Mycale were fought on the same day.

64
Herodotus, 9.100.

65
Ibid. Literally,'. . . which prove the hand of things that are divine'.

66
Diodorus Siculus, 11.36.

67
Lycu rgus,
Against Leocrates,
81.

68
See Broneer.

69
Aeschylus, 584-90.

70
Ibid., 1024.

71
Xerxes, inscription at Persepolis (XPc).

72
It is all too depressingly typical of the general murk of Near Eastern history in this period that the revolt has also been dated to 482
bc.

73
Herodotus, 9.106.

74
Plutarch,
Themistodes,
29.

75
Pindar, fragment 64.

76
It is unlikely — although controversy over the matter is endless - that this peace was formalised by treaty: the Great King was not in the habit of signing treaties with foreigners.

77
For this date, and indeed the authenticity of the whole story, see Stadter, pp. 201-4.

78
Plutarch,
Pericles,
17.