Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 540

ROGER BROCK

University of Leeds

Archē, power or rule over others, is a recurrent feature of and key theme in Herodotus’ narrative, operating both at the individual level and, more typically, as empire or hegemony. To some extent it appears a natural human drive, revealed by recurrent examples of individuals seeking power over their communities, a process most fully explored through the career of DEIOCES (1.96–101), where there is a characteristic tension between Herodotus’ aversion to DESPOTISM and his recognition that for some societies MONARCHY is an effective form of government (cf. e.g., 2.147; 3.82). Likewise his observation that if the Thracians united under a monarch they would be invincible (5.3) implies that peoples able to take control of their neighbors may be expected to do so (as Deioces’ successors do: 1.102–3), but he does not regard it as inevitable or admirable, as shown by the rebuke of the Ethiopian king to Persian imperialism, in a context which has established his moral superiority (3.21; compare Cadmus’ laying down of the tyranny of COS, motivated by “justice”: 7.164).

Nevertheless, it is a key structural feature of Herodotus’ work, which is organized around the ascendencies of three archai, those of LYDIA, the MEDES, and PERSIA, especially the last (Immerwahr 1966); many scholars have also detected a fourth, the contemporary ATHENIAN EMPIRE, lurking in the background (e.g., Fornara 1971). Others noted as ruling over others are the ASSYRIANS (1.95), SCYTHIANS (1.106), and Egyptians, notably under SESOSTRIS (2.102–10); typically, this is marked by the imposition of TRIBUTE (1.6, 27, 106; 2.182; 3.67, 89–96), a notorious feature of Athenian imperialism. Given his belief in the mutability of human fortune, programmatically stated at 1.5 (see TYCHĒ), Herodotus regards archē as inherently unstable, and liable to a recurrent pattern of uncontrolled ambition which in due course will lead to overreach and DISASTER, one of the repeated patterns which he perceives in historical events and through which he seeks to make sense of them. Thus the desire for power and territory grows into uncontrolled greed (pleonexia), even megalomania (7.8.γ; for the moral aspect see Fisher 2002, 217–24), and this leads to a failure to respect BOUNDARIES, symbolically represented by the repeated crossing of river borders of which CROESUS crossing the HALYS is the classic instance (indeed proverbial: Aesch. Pers. 865–66; Arist. Rh. 1407a37–39), echoed in the crossing by CYRUS (II) of the ARAXES, by DARIUS I of the ISTER (Danube), and by XERXES of the HELLESPONT; CAMBYSES (II)’s abortive desert campaigns against ETHIOPIA and the Ammonians (3.25–26) likewise exceed natural limits, though inverting the motif. The transgression is even more marked when continents are linked together by BRIDGES as Darius and Xerxes do (4.83, 87–88; 7.34–36), or land is turned into SEA by the digging of a CANAL (Red Sea: 2.158; ATHOS: 7.22–24; contrast 1.174, and for Persian kings manipulating natural water features cf. Cyrus and the GYNDES river (1.189) and Darius in CHORASMIA (3.117)): such interference with the natural order hints at a HUBRIS which Xerxes’ WHIPPING of the Hellespont makes explicit (7.35, with 8.109). Since in eastern monarchies such policies are determined by the will of individual kings, these ideas are enmeshed with Herodotus’ thinking on despotism. That imperialistic expansion becomes an end in itself is underlined both by the discarding of considerations of justice (1.26, 76; 7.8.γ, 9) and by episodes in which it is pointed out that the aggressors stand to make no material gain from their conquests, as Croesus is warned by SANDANIS (1.71): the poverty of Greece in comparison to Persia is highlighted in Xerxes’ conversation with DEMARATUS (7.102) and even more in the object lesson mounted by PAUSANIAS (9.82). These ideas themselves form part of wider reflections on the relationship between austerity and archē: hard lands produce hard men with the capacity to resist aggression, exemplified by the Scythians as well as Cyrus’ Persians and the Greeks of 480 BCE, but it also supplies such men with both the capacity to seek power themselves and a motive for doing so (1.125–26). The increase in Persian material prosperity after their conquest of Lydia (1.71, 89, 135; note in particular the use and abuse of WINE in relation to the MASSAGETAE and Ethiopians: 1.133, 207, 211–12; 3.20–22) suggests a gradual decadence as the explanation for Persian failure to conquer Greece (see SOFTNESS), but the re‐appearance of the theme in the elusive final chapter (9.122) implies that this is not the whole story, and the Persian choice not to migrate to a soft land chimes with Herodotus’ recognition of Persian valor (Flower and Marincola 2002, 311–14). We should note, too, that while the Lydians and Medes fall into subjection as a result of the downfalls of Croesus and ASTYAGES (though the effeminization of the Lydians comes later and was not inevitable: 1.154–56 with 79–80), the Persians and their empire survive the repeated overreaching of their rulers. This might be no more than an acknowledgment of contemporary reality, but it also suggests that Herodotus is not a simple determinist with a cyclical view of history.

Herodotus clearly has his own times in view, and particularly the rise of the Athenian Empire and the resulting tensions in the Greek world which culminated in the battle for archē in the PELOPONNESIAN WAR (esp. 8.3; 6.98; prolepses extend as far as 430 BCE: 7.137), and some scholars have read the work as closely foreshadowing those developments (Raaflaub 1987) and as warning the Athenians that their empire will share the fate of its predecessors (Moles 1996). Certainly there are disquieting elements in the closing chapters, in which the Athenians carry the war into ASIA, impale ARTAŸCTES (a Persian punishment: see MUTILATION) and stone to death his innocent son (9.114–21: the annalistic formula at the end of the passage positively invites meditation on the sequel), and already after the Battle of Salamis THEMISTOCLES had begun to extort money from other Greeks (8.111–12; note the Andrian rebuff in terms of their poverty), though the complexities of the passage, including evocation of the TROJAN WAR, the differences between Greece and Persia which contribute to Herodotus’ explanation of the outcome of the war, and the ambiguities surrounding Persia’s failure already noted all leave scope for a more open‐ended reading of this enigmatic and not obviously closural sequence (Boedeker 1988; Dewald 1997; and see END OF THE HISTORIES).

Indeed, while on one level Herodotus indubitably takes a moralizing view of empire, he also recognizes it as a comprehensible human drive explicable in terms of a variety of factors which are not mutually exclusive. Beyond the natural will to power and the desire to expand, attacks on neighbors may be pre‐emptive and motivated by concern for self‐preservation (1.46; 7.11), or else envisaged as retaliatory (1.73, 75; 7.8.β, 11 and see RECIPROCITY and VENGEANCE: revenge on the Athenians for the burning of the temple of CYBELE in SARDIS is a recurrent motif in Xerxes’ campaign, e.g., 8.68, 102, 140.α; cf. 6.101), while the cases of Darius (3.143) and Xerxes (7.8) show that individual kings may feel, or come under, pressure to take imperial initiatives for personal reasons, to present themselves as worthy and manly rulers and to live up to their predecessors, influenced by a perception that expansion has become a national tradition (which indeed might to some extent reflect authentic Persian ideology: Harrison 2015). These reasons are often combined, as when Darius plans to use revenge on the Athenians as a pretext (prophasis) for subjecting those Greeks who had not given EARTH AND WATER (6.94), and in the most fully developed cases, those of Croesus and Xerxes, the full range of human motivations are simultaneously in play, alongside the broader theological and cosmic patterns generated by Herodotus’ thinking about GODS AND THE DIVINE.

SEE ALSO: Athens and Herodotus; Causation; Conquest; Date of Composition; Wealth and Poverty