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KATRIN DOLLE

Justus‐Liebig‐University of Giessen

Mountain on the southern end of ancient Acte, Chalcidice’s easternmost peninsula (width 12 stadia, about 1.5 miles: 7.22.2). Athos was already populated by several Greek poleis in Herodotus’ time (7.22.3: SANE, DIUM, OLOPHYXUS, ACROTHOON, THYSSUS, CLEONAE); today it is an autonomous monastic polity. Owing to its location at the eastern Macedonian border (BA 51 C4), Athos has an impact firstly on the campaign of MARDONIUS (6.43–45, c. 492 BCE), who loses the crews of 300 ships in a storm while circumnavigating the peninsula. This first encounter, collectively remembered by the Persians (e.g., 7.22.1), determines the subsequent campaign of DATIS and Artaphernes (6.95) and, finally, that of XERXES in 480, who has a navigable CANAL dug through the peninsula’s neck over three years (7.22–24, 37, 122; Thuc. 4.109; cf. Juv. 10.173–78). Its existence was confirmed by archaeological surveys in the 1990s. Herodotus comments on the digging methods and ascribes the technical know‐how not so much to the Persian supervisors BUBARES and ARTACHAEES as to the PHOENICIANS (7.22.2–3). For Herodotus, Xerxes’ plan is a mere manifestation of HUBRIS and stems from his wish to endow a MONUMENT to himself (7.24), since it would have been easier to pull the ships over the isthmus. The completion of the canal—a construction against nature—is linked in the narrative with the army’s departure from SARDIS, which is overshadowed by a solar ECLIPSE (7.37; cf. the same event at the ISTHMUS of CORINTH, 9.10). The fleet successfully traverses the Athos canal. But BOREAS, the North Wind, mythically related to the Athenians by marriage, who is said to have already intervened in Mardonius’ attempted circumnavigation (7.189.2), again loyally disrupts the Persians’ plan, and attacks the fleet with even graver losses at MAGNESIA (Greece) (7.188–92).

SEE ALSO: Archaeology; Artaphernes son of Artaphernes; Chalcidians in Thrace; Engineering; Persian Wars; Ships and Sailing; Weather