Empire: World History - 99. Marathon and the Rise of Greece

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Ionia has revolted and so Darius turns his gaze away from India and towards Greece. He crushes the rebellion, quelling all resistance. He then looks to take much of the Greek mainland and many city states acquiesce before his envoys, but not the Athenians. So the might of the Persian army land at Marathon, ready to face down the belligerent Greeks. What follows is one of history’s most famous battles. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones to discuss the Battle of Marathon. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampool. And we are joined once again by the fabulous, the marvellous, the absolutely mesmerising Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. author of Persians, The Age of the Great Kings. We are loving your storytelling of these ancient characters

who we know so little about here in the West in particular. We were talking in the last episode about Darius the Great, his sort of origin story. But we should take this now to the point where he starts to have some trouble with the Greek. Can we start with the Ionian revolt of 499? I mean, when we talk about Ionia, Ionia is the Greek-Ionian islands,

core food, that's what we're talking about. That's right. But also, it's the name that we also give to that whole city-sate system, which is now the western coast of Turkey. All that fancy hotel fronted. That's right. And wonderful, wonderful beaches and all of this. So basically, we're dealing with the great cities of Sardis that we mentioned in a previous episode. Halakanasus, where Herodotus himself was born. Isn't it curious, of course? Herodotus was born, a Persian subject. which kind of explains why he's so pissed off with them. Precisely. It really is interesting.

The great city of Ephesus, of course, was already a huge port at this time. So it's all Miletus. So it's all of these very much interconnected city states. And these have been under Persian rules since the time of Cyrus? Since the time of Cyrus, absolutely. And by and large, they've been treated fairly well. there are always some discontented groups who are pushing against the local Persian satraps who have been placed there. But the satraps have been very careful in the way that they govern the area.

And they're definitely Persian. They're not Greeks who've been co-opted. There are Greeks who've been co-opted, but they form the second system, if you like, in the tier of government. The Persians use these people all the time and they're very, very aware of what they can about local situations from these people, and they never tried to change that at all. We have a very clear image of how much the Greeks don't much like the Persians from Herodotus. Do we have any idea of sort of the colonial otter with which the Persians treat these pesky Greeks at the western end of their empire?

You know, this is what's missing, and what's really remarkable is that the Greek historiography doesn't expose any of that itself. You'd almost imagine that Herodotus and others who wrote as his time would be full of Persians lauding it over others, but they're not, which suggests to me that they didn't in that case. Now, you know, they're still colonized areas, and they're having to pay their taxes. But the Persians are not forcing them to change anything else about their lives. They are recruiting men from Asia Minor into the Persian army. but that's a given, you know, Greek soldiers, whether you're from Ionia or from the mainland, were always make up the mercenary armies of ancient armies anyway.

Why was that? Why would the Greeks always have made up mercenaries? Just because, I mean, were they particularly good at fighting? They were good fighters, and I think that they were opportunists. They were always looking for the best cash, basically. And the person who had access to the most cash was always the Persian king. So, you know, the whole idea, you know, jumping ahead here, I know, but this whole idea of, clash of civilizations between all Greeks and all Persians is an absolute make-believe. It just

never happened because there were so many Greeks fighting on the Persian side. Well, it sort of starts with kind of a rumble, local rumble over trade. So I mean, the Greeks of Ionia have been allowed to trade. They've been allowed to do, and they get permission to do this from the satrapy. You know, the Persians give them their blessing. They say you can do this. And actually, the revolt that takes place in 499. This is because somebody sticks their awe in and it's a relative of Darius who kind of does this. Explain more about why this happens.

It seems to be a bit of mismanagement going on and a clash of communications more than anything else. The trade routes that the Ionians had enjoyed were as free as they ever had been. But there was a move afoot to try to limit the amount of trade but also for the Persians to increase their taxis. in the area. And of course, nobody likes a tax rise. And so this is where difficulties began to arise. What's really interesting is that when the rebellion started, it spread like a disease.

You know, it suddenly pockmarked all of the city-states, and they all kind of had a pushback against the Persian presence there. What they actually went for as well was a more symbolic pushback than anything else. They weren't necessarily skirmishes in the streets, but they were destroying things like the satraps personal gardens and so forth, the paradiso. So they were destroying symbols of Persianism in the areas. But I mean, this is all correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a guy called Aristogoros. Aristagoras of Miletus. Thank you so much.

Aristagoras. So Aristagoras is leading an expedition, which he's been given full permission to do, so by the Persians. But then one of Darius's cousins decides to get involved. with this. So what happens there? Because this seems to be the flashpoint. It's a power struggle, really, about who has the most authority in this particular trade expedition? Nothing more than that. But, you know, that's the way that wars can often start, isn't it? You know, of a personal slight more than anything. There's no great rationale behind it at all. It's not as though the Ionian cities had contemplated this, you know, some kind of great

rebellion was being plotted from the ground up. It was an unexpected spark due to a clash of communications that really happened. Okay, so he's fallen out with Darius's kinsman, and now he's really scared that, you know, actually don't fall out with Darius' family and get away with it. So he starts Aristogoros calling for help from other Greek states, including Sparta. I mean, and they are receptive because they're also slightly chafing or a little bit pissed off about taxes? Not Sparta so much, but they want superiority over the land and the seas of Greece. Now, the Spartans are a kind of society who are so out there. I mean, they're so completely bizarre. They form a world, which is unlike anything the rest of Greece do. They are military driven.

They are absolutely the sort of Uber military force. That's all their society is about. and what they want to do is land grab. And all that stuff about Spartan babies being left out in the open. Is that all true? I doubt very much if it's all true. But let's put it this way. There was a very strong machismo culture. Come back victorious or come back on your shield, that kind of thing.

Indeed, all of this kind of thing. And what they wanted certainly was land. They wanted access to the sea coast and therefore to shipping and to trade. Okay. So that that was their thing. And they realized actually that the cards were actually. actually in Persia's hands. Either they cooperate with Persia or they push against it.

And now is the time that they have to decide what to do about that. So that's how the mainland is brought in. Okay. So they, I mean, it's Sardis that they decide as the weak link. As the weakest area, yeah. Yeah. So what do they do? I mean, what do they do to Sardis?

So there are rebellions there, first of all, in the Satrapal Palace, then in the government buildings around the city. trashing the gardens. Very bad manners. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that really shocks the Persians and then looting in the city streets and so forth. And from there on in, the news of a kind of successful pushback against the Persians begins to spread. I guess that Saadis becomes the focal point of this, because it has the longest history of occupation in the area, but also I think it's the most settled of the Persian areas. It has a personate identity, which is strong. longer than anywhere else. So they push back on that in particular. Also, don't forget, it's still

exceptionally wealthy. Sardis today is about 10 miles inland, but in antiquity, it was right on the coast. Was it? Yes, so its harbors were really lucrative. Just as, of course, Ephesus was as well. I mean, you can still just about see the sea if you stand in Ephesus. But all of those great cities were essentially port cities. This is essentially what the Ionian revolt is about. It's about access to those courts and shipping. Should Ionians get the Byzantines to join in? Meanwhile, the Persians invade Cyprus.

It all begins to take off. The Cypriot thing is really fascinating, you know, because the Cypriots have always been so aligned with the peoples of the Levant, in particular the Phoenicians, of course. Now, the Phoenicians are under the Persians. They retain some kind of independence, but there is a satrap.

The Phoenicians, we should say, are trading peoples. These are the kind of great seafaring peoples who live in the area now we call Lebanon. But they extend right across the North African coast as far as Carthage and Spain. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Great traders and colonizers themselves. Now, they were always under the authority of Persian rulers. And in fact, Persian great kings produced a great deal of coinage from the cities like Tyre, Saidan and Biblos. Cyprus is a different matter. Cyprus too was an island of city-states, but somehow it managed to retain a sense of independence from the Persians. It was definitely under the Persian watch and couldn't do much to challenge Persian authority, but they had a very strange relationship with Cyprus, where the city-states maintain their own kings, maintain their own coinages as well, and weren't directly under Persian control. So there are a different element. elements of control going on here. And so city states which were closer to the Levantine coast, so Salamis, not the Greek Salamis, but Cyprian Salamis, was far more Persian-Salamis than, say,

the city of Paphos on the western side of the island, which looked out into the European Mediterranean. Not a big landmass to have such divergent views in it. No, absolutely, absolutely. So what does Darius do when he's got this sort of chafing going on? I mean, it's interesting that he doesn't just come and wipe everything out. Yeah, you know, this is one of the huge questions about, okay, what do the Persians do when they conquer a place? There is no format, no fixed format for what you can expect a Persian force to do. If we were looking at Assyria or Rome, we could say, we can guarantee A, B and C will be done. Every time they conquered a territory, they approached it with a fresh set of eyes. They realized,

that a kind of democratic urge had begun in the Ionian cities and had been there for a good 50 years already, and they did nothing to temper that whatsoever. They allowed a kind of democracy to develop. That didn't challenge the Persian king at all, because he's used to very different forms of localized government across the whole empire, and he's not interested in the slightest in how the territory. run themselves. He's only interested in the end result, and that is that wealth, the money, the tribute, the tax keeps pouring in on a regular basis, and that there are men for his armies drawn from all over the world as well. Right. Okay. But he does get woken to the

fact that he may need ships, because if this happens again, he needs a fleet. Yes. This is something that the Persians, of course, is very new to the Persians. They'd never really needed a fleet of their own properly before. When Cambyssees had conquered Egypt, for instance, he essentially requisitioned Phoenician ships and utilised those to invade the coast of Egypt. Darias realized he needs a sitting fleet of ships for the first time. And so this becomes one of his number one guilds. And from there on in, actually, the Persian fleet is always present. When he starts building ships with the aid of the Phoenicians. And they're built in modern Lebanon? In Lebanon itself, in Phoenician style, very different to the rather cumbersome triremes of the Greeks.

So what do they look like? These are narrow, proud, swift ships with a lot of sail power, whereas the triremes tend to be bulkier, heavier with a lot of ozman power. Both can cut through the oceans quickly, but employing very different forces. And are the Greek ones more specifically aligned for naval battles? For warfare, I think, yes, absolutely. Whereas the Persian fleets they adopt from Phoenicia are swifter, they can control territories quicker, they can nip around places. And don't forget, you know, when you set out on any kind of voyage and antiquity, you cling to the coast as much as possible. So these are really good ships for dipping in and out of harbors all the time.

Okay, so I mean, he's sort of, you know, he's tooled up better than he was, but he's still not expecting difficulty, and he has reason to feel quite comfortable because he's sending Envoy. to these places, reminding them of their duties and their fealty. But the envoy who gets sent to Sparta has his head separated from his body. Yes, absolutely. So Spartan bravado, that's what that's all about. You don't do that in diplomacy. No, it doesn't help.

It's just breaking all the laws. You just don't do it. You know, diplomats are supposed to be, you know, completely neutral. And yes, it's my students are obsessed. with this scene. You may know the dreadful movie 300, which I've never actually seen it. Oh, my goodness.

William, you should treat yourself. Despite being a partial file, you'd recommend it, would you? It is, it is an extraordinary adventure into ancient history. It's also myth-making, which is actually something I like about the film. Because, you know, we deal with myth. When we deal with what happens in the Ionian Revolt, by and large, the history morphs into myth quite quickly. The scene that we have in the movie 300 is really remarkable because this Persian appears. First of all, he's a black guy.

So, you know, strange casting decision there. And his clothing. But covered in gold. He's covered in gold. Freakishly, like rings around his neck and rings hanging from his ears. Yeah, full of bling, absolutely. and dripping with human skulls, which are wrapped around his body as well. And he kind of makes this bravado speech, you know, bow to the great king or you will feel my wrath kind of stuff.

And the Spartans, Gerard Butler, the top. Too many times, too many. Gerard Butler, who plays the honor just. The Scottish Spartan. Yeah, the tartan Spartan. The tartan Spartan. Yes. With one mighty push on his powerful leg, holds this poor.

ambassador into this giant death pit. No one beheading in that particular version, but that's what happens there. But it breaks all of the rules. And, I mean, Darius is mortified by it. We're now back in history, not in... Back into real history now. But what is history?

What is history? And especially when recited by Herodotus, what is history? So he's, no, he's not impressed. No, not impressed at all. You don't do this to Darias. You just don't do it. So what is his response then?

Because he's got a whole new fleet to play it with now, hasn't it? His response gets heavy, as you would expect. You push the tiger too much with a stick, and the tiger will eventually rewall back. And this is what Darias does. He sends mercenary forces by land into Anatolia, and then they march towards the west. And at the same time, he puts together, he readies his fleet and begins to pick out those harbors of all of these great city-states. We remember this as the great event of the great Persian Greek clash. It's in all our textbooks and everything. Do the Persians, is this a big deal for the Persians or are they really kind of more interested in what's going on the East? It's something they could live without, certainly. It's an aggravation on the far western edge of empire. They've got other things to think about. Darius is always more concerned about Egypt and Babylon. They're the places he needs to placate, make sure they're happy. make sure that are running smoothly.

All of his interest is in India. Where the money is, absolutely. And it's this pesky revolt. We call it the Ionian revolt. I don't think he's sorry that way. If these little insurrections had blown up in the West, he could have probably kept all of his troops in the East and they would have conquered more of India.

But history doesn't play out that way. But the way in which the myth of marathon, the battle, the final battle that plays out in all of this, has emerged in the historiography is fascinating. The whole Herodotus works up to this, doesn't it? He writes this enormous book, and it's all aimed at this climax. Okay. And you know what?

We're going to stop there and come back after this break with Marathon. Join us then. Welcome back. So this is a marathon, not a sprint here. We can't rush through this because it's such a very, very good story. So just before the break, you were saying that Herodotus is the person who kind of tells this story that most people know here. And he's a local man.

This is a big deal for him because this is happening on his doorstep. Yeah, absolutely. He's a halikanasin. He's brought up in the shadow of all of this world. So, I mean, as far as he's concerned, and as far as the people of Marathon are concerned, you know, the Persian fleet is coming.

It's coming. It's coming. We can hear the drums. They're getting nearer. They've gone to Eritrea, and they've sacked that place. Eritrea, we should clarify, is the city in Ionia, not the next door neighbor to Ethiopia?

Absolutely. And of course, what is really irksome is the Athenians get involved in all of this. The Athenians always see themselves as the defenders of the Helenes. They've got a mighty, inflated opinion of themselves, and of course they get in there. We should remind listeners who didn't hear the last episode that Lloyd in the last episode described the Pathanon as a Nissen hut compared to. A shed. Potting shed. Potting shed compared to Perthepal. Now, according to Herodotus, what we get, because the Athenian presence in Sardis, you know, this liberation, Operation Sardian freedom, so irks Darius that it kind of sits in his mind for all time. And he says, you know, I will have my revenge on these Athenians. And one day, I will burn down their world all around them. And he tells this story of how Darius takes an arrow and he shoots it into the heavens. And as he does so, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he,

He says, you know, oh Zeus, calls on a Greek god, oh Zeus, so let me have my revenge upon the Athenians as well. And there's also this wonderful story that is told by Herodotus that when Derai sits down to dinner every night, he has a member of his court, whisper in his ear, O sire, remember the Athenians. Well, only Herodotus could write that because I think the Athenians were really the last thing on Derrides, his mind most of the time. Can I just ask you, when you do this, when you question Herodotus, do you get called anciently woke? I mean, what is the world's reaction to this? Constantly, constantly. There are things which you do not touch. Tom Harrison, whom I adore as a person and an ancient historian, when he reviewed my book Persians, you know,

he just couldn't get past the fact that I don't see Herodotus as reliable source. And that, in fact, I see him as a. as a manipulator and a wonderful myth teller, a spinner of tales, you know. What do the lovers of the Spartans like Paul Cartilage think of your work? Are they suspicious? No, they're a lot more relaxed about it because we do know, you know, in later generations that Sparta and Persia actually have a very, very close relationship. And really, it's the money from Persia under later kings like Attaxerxes I first,

Attaxerxes the second, that pours into Sparta. really makes them the most powerful of all armies in the Hellenic world. Wow. Yeah. Well, look, I took us on a little diversion, but it was worth it. Okay, so the Athenian army has marched into Marathon. They are blockading the Persian advance on Athens. And soon those Athenians are joined by others from elsewhere.

And then there's news coming. Look, Sparta's coming. Sparta's coming. We're going to be flying because Sparta. Gerard Butler is on his way. And it all will be well. So, I mean, what are the numbers here? Can you put numbers on these forces facing each other?

I am not going to go down the numbers route. Oh, why? No, I will not be forced down that route because the ancient sources always inflate, okay? So they'll say something like, oh, an army of 50 million approach on the Persian side, and they fought an army of only 20. A hundred Spartans. Exactly, you know, this is a constant game that ancient historians are playing and is still being played out to now amongst contemporary.

historians who were trying to juggle, you know, impossible to know what these forces were. Okay. They seem to have been balanced, is what I would say. Oh, really balanced? I always thought the Persians outnumbered the Greeks. Okay, they didn't. Not so very much. I mean, if you think about it, Persians have to get their mercenaries from wherever they are

stationed into one particular place. It's not the whole Persian army moving into Ionia. It can never have been that at all. I think it's more balanced than Herodotus, certainly would ever have suggested. And let's get the geography sorted out. Where is Marathon? It's situated on the Greek mainland in a very safe harbour, just inland from the sea itself. And all right, you don't want to put numbers on the troops.

No. Well, all right, fine. Fine. Be like that then. Fine. But let's talk about how they were armed because you've got the Greek infantry. They've got bronze, they've got metal, they've got she. they've got shields, they've got armour.

This is the famous hoplights, am I producing it correctly? The hoplights, yeah. We've got, again, we need to be very careful about this kind of thing. You know, Hollywood has done us no service. Well, the Persians only wear gold in their version. But generally like 1950s movies and all this, we see armies in antiquity as uniform, don't we, you know? If you just think of Ben-Hur and legions of Romans or in red marching together, armies were not like that. They were far more rag tags than that kind of thing.

Very often these men were fighting with equipment that their granddad's had used before them or something they brought from home. It wasn't as though everybody was turned out in, you know, span new armor sponsored by the state or anything. All right. But who is more tooled up? Tooled up in different ways is what it's about. Hoplight fighting is about close contact, okay? So you have your shield and you have your short sword.

and with that short sword you can do terrible damage because you've got to look into the whites of the eyes in order to do it. Stab, stab, stab, and then butter with a shield and then men will form around you to form buttresses and so forth. The Persians, a very different approach because they're taking mercenaries from all over the world.

There is going to be some of this hotlight fighting going on. But the Persians, of course, also employ spears. They are spearmen and archers. That is the standard way of fighting amongst the ancient Iranians. Darius has a wonderful inscription on his tomb, and it says that Ahura Mazda made him a soldier. As a spearman, I am a good spearman. As a bowman, I am a good bowman.

As a horse rider, I am a good horse rider. And those are the three military aspects that the Persians value the most. Do they have swords? They do have swords, but they are not reliant upon swords at all. The mercenary soldiers, some of the mercenaries fight with swords, But if you're looking for, you know, pure Persia in this, then it's the bow and arrow and the spear. Lloyd, the Athenian army marches to marathon and blocks the Persian advance on Athens. The Persians have landed, their boats have arrived on the beach, the infantry have jumped out,

there's a few cavalry with them, and they're ready now to march on Athens. What happens? The night before the battle, there seems to be some espionage going. on. It seems that some Greek spies have routed out the fact that their presence of the cavalry is not very strong, and this gives some kind of confidence to the Athenians who are waiting there. The next day when the sun rises, and this is always the time where you begin your battle before the heat of the day, the Athenians march advance rapidly across this large terrain, this open terrain, and they constantly drive the Persians back and back and back further

away from the centre of the fight until they reach the marshy areas surrounding the mainland. And this is really where they quite literally get stuck in the mud. They drive them into the marshes. And the Persians, we should say, are not big on sword fighting. They've got their arrows. No, they've got their arrows. They've got their bows. They don't like close contact.

And basically what they are now, they're backed up. They are cornered. and this is where the Greeks can get them. And they haven't got enough cavalry to fend off the infantry. So they're driven into the marshes. Or to have a cavalry swing around behind the Greeks and attack them from the rear. There's none of that there. So they drive them into the marshes and there they are massacred.

Now, then we have to have the most famous bit of the whole story. What produces the name a marathon? This is when one of the individuals, one of the fighters there, he takes it upon himself to run the stretch from the battlefield itself into Athens and beyond taking the news of this victory with him. So we have the first marathon run of all time. And it's 26 miles from the Battle of Marathon. About 26, isn't it? To Athens itself, yeah. When he arrives, he sort of tells the message and then drops dead. And I've always wondered why he didn't take a horse. I know, I know. Why didn't he just ride a horse?

I mean, I don't want to spoil everything. Not such a good story, I suppose. The other story I love that comes out of the Battle of Marathon is this one. Herodotter says, the Athenians were the first of the Greeks to endure the sight of Persian clothes. And there, he's referring to trousers because it's the first time the Greeks had ever seen men wearing trousers. And trousers presumably are useful because you're riding a horse. It stops your legs chaffing. Exactly. It's standard Persian wear. But as far as the Greeks are concerned, this is outrageous sort of dodgy. It shows again. the manliness of the Athenians because they could endure looking at leggings.

So you could say the Greeks were all marsh and no trousers. Oh, nice. Very nice. I like that. The Greeks win. I mean, they sort of thrash the Persians, which must have been quite a shock to the Persians. Absolutely.

It showed that the Athenians in particular were fine fighters. And of course, the Athenians fed on this reputation for decades. afterwards. It did nothing for the, for the Spartan opinion, of course, because, you know, they weren't really present at the battle at all. So this is very much an Athenian victory, and it becomes, therefore, the bedrock of Athenian self-perception from here on in. Marathon is the most defining moment in Athenian identity from there on in. But do the Persians regard it as such? Is it a watershed moment for them? No. No. No. No.

No reference whatsoever. You know, there is a magnificent poem that was written in 1942 by Robert Graves, great classicist, war poet, of course. And in the 1940s, he was working for the British propaganda department. So he was dealing with war propaganda every day of his work in life. And he writes this fantastic poem called the Persian version, which title I've stolen constantly. And he says in it, you know, I don't think the Persians dwelt much on this skirm at Marathon. For them, it was a happy coincidence for the Athenians that the wind was in the right direction, the weather was good to them, and that they walked away with some kind of victory. And now they are lauding it on stage, they are telling it to their children, they are spinning it out of control. That's basically what Robert Graves' idea was. And I agree with him entirely. This didn't match to the Persians. It was annoying to them. because it had cost them some money, it had cost them some men, but really it was nothing. But the legacy of it, first of all, it kind of galvanises the Athenians to think that they are

the masters of all Greeks now. But what I'm more fascinated by is the legacy long term. In the 1860s, John Stuart Milne, great Scottish historian sociologists, wrote, as an event in British history, the Battle of Marathon is of more consequence than the Battle of Hastings. Wow. Isn't that extraordinary? And what did he mean by that?

So he means that without Marathon, we would have been overrun by Orientals. We would have been kautauan to despots and we would be living under tyrants. So just like Gibbon writing about the Battle of Tour, and how without that you might have the Quran read from the Pulfits of Oxford. That's exactly it, you know. So for the Athenians themselves, for Herodotus, and this is the myth he created

and has gone right the way down to Boris Johnson, the idea is Greeks equal freedom, Persians, equal oppression, slavery. That's the way it's always been seen. So what Stuart Mill is saying there, and it's absolutely typical, is this was our moment. that we achieved Western freedom, he says. And the truth that you would say, how far tyranny and tyranny and democracy, that opposition, does that work in reality?

We already see that in the Ionian city-states, which were moving towards a democracy, the Persians let it be. It's of no interest to them. So I think, you know, the Greek miracle of sculpture, drama, or all of this would have gone on, even if the Persians had been their overlords, because they didn't micromanage on those kind of levels at all.

It's interesting as well, you know, that kind of legacy played out with somebody, William, you don't know a lot about it, and that's Lord Kersen, when he wrote his Persian question, yeah, really puzzled, he's scratching his head and he says, I can't work it out. It seems that Asiatics would sooner be ruled by Asiatics than by competent Englishmen. I mean, he just cannot get over that. And that's all the legacy of the spin that happens around Marathon. Now, it isn't long after Marathon, which, as you've brilliantly told us, you know, matters a lot to the Greeks, but not so much noticed by the Persians. But they will notice Darius is going to die very soon. So are there thoughts of succession? We should say Darius is nowhere near this, is he? He hasn't led the army in person.

Oh, he goes nowhere near it. And absolutely not. He is still occupied to the central of Iran. Absolutely. He is aging. He begins to quite clearly think about the succession. as all monarchs who have a long reign do. Now, unfortunately, in Iran, as in much of the ancient Near East, there was no rule of primogeniture at all. So it was never a given that his elder son would inherit the throne. It was a matter of, you know, a battle of strength, really, among various contestants. Which remains the case right through to the moguls.

Yes, indeed, absolutely. And it's a remarkable thing that nobody ever thought to fix this at all. Perhaps because it means that the strongest one wins. rather than some dumb eldest brother. Yeah, absolutely. We know that by the time Darius had to even come to the throne, he had several sons. And now, in his old age, he'd had even more by the wives he took

after his accession to the throne. And it's one of these sons, the elder son. By Atossa. By Atossa. Cyrus is the great's daughter. This is the one who he promotes as a favorite, Xerxes. Because this is the royal line. He may have, he may have,

usurped the royal line, but now he wants that blood in the succession. Exactly. And Xerxes, of course, has his own blood, Darius's blood, and the blood of Cyrus in his veins, and therefore is the idea of thing. Herodotus says something quite interesting as well, which I'm prepared to take quite seriously, for once. Unusually. I know. And this is, he, Xerxes became king after Darius's death, and he says, because Atossa had all the power. Now, I don't think we should think of that in terms of political power necessarily. But as the mother of the king, of the new king, the new king, she probably had more clout than most other women around her and a lot of Darius's old courtiers as well.

And certainly, of course, she had the year of the new king, her son. And I think there's many, many stories from antiquity and beyond of women helping their sons to the throne and securing those thrones for them. But we haven't actually said, so Darias dies in 486. He's about 65 years of age. Something like that, yeah. Which is a good age in antiquity. Rained for 36 years. 36 years reigning. What happens across the empire at the death of Darius? And do they immediately say, well, you know, Xerxes are king? There is a mourning period without a doubt. In terms of the politics of it, it's important to get the name of the new king out as quickly as possible. And Xerxes tries to do that, but of course, successions are always the moment, work for breakaways. And the two breakaways

come here. The first is in Babylon, that city which is always on edge, as far as the Akemaids are concerned. Xerxes goes there himself and quells it. Xerxes is now about 32. We would imagine something like this. Yeah, yeah. He goes and he actually sits and holds power and then Egypt rebels. Now, he can't have that happen because Egypt is the cash cow of the empire. And where the grain comes through. And also the breadbasket of the empire as well. So he leads a force into Egypt himself, together with some of his brothers and the army behind him, and has a success in putting down the rebellion. And that really galvanises Xerxes.

He suddenly thinks, oh, I'm an able warrior king like my dad was and my grandfather was. I'm just going to evoke Gerard Butler, Spartan-Tartan moment. So in the 300, Xerxes is a gilded pervert, is what they do to him. don't they? They make him just quite a sicko, covered in gold. And does this link straight back to Herodotus being rude about him? Herodotus is remarkably rude about Xerxes because it plays to his narrative. He loves Cyrus the Great. He has no time for Cambyses. He loves Darius the Great.

But the worst of the kings has to be Xerxes, because it's Xerxes, of course, that actually has the audacity to go into Greece, to lead his troops there and to do some considerable damage. So as far as the kind of, you know, he's playing the cards, Xerxes has to be the supervillus. of the whole story. And so he gets terrible press. What does he say? How bitchy is he? It's more about what he does rather than what he says.

So he creates the Xerxes, who for instance, one very famous story, he's trampling with his troops through Anatolia, and he sees this beautiful plane tree. And Xerxes, just crazy Xerxes, he falls in love with this tree. Oh, that's absolutely. And, you know, puts his jewelry on it. says to, I know, I'll put a guard here to look after this tree forever. I love this tree so much.

This is the Greeks being sort of rude about Persian gardening. Yes. So what they don't understand. And this is what I'm all about in my work, is to try to look for the Persian version that sits below the surface. The Persians did all their trees. They worship trees in the way that many peoples of the ancient Near East held sacred groves to be special. And indeed in ancient India, where you have all the axiads of the trees. exactly it. There was spirits in these trees, exactly.

We have a little cylinder seal showing Xerxes, hanging a necklace on these trees. So this is erotus taking a Persian truism, twisting it, so his audience say, woo, weirdo. And the same goes for that very, very famous story, where Xerxes is said to be whipping the sea at the Hellespont with iron chains. He's so angry that the sea is not allowing his army to cross. There sits the Persian version beneath. that of, again, the offering of goods, iron goods, swords, but also gold and silver, to water spirits. This is what Herodotus does to Xerxes, you know. He makes him into this kind of figure of fun, almost, hubristic, without any doubt, narcissistic too. And that tradition actually

goes into other ancient sources in the book of Esther, which is set in the reign of Xerxes. the Xerxes of that story is a bit of a buffoon, really, is a bit of a comic character. You know, everybody is pulling the wool over his eyes. But the world's most powerful man? In reality, the most powerful man there was, absolutely. Okay, so I mean, you know, Xerxes is one of his first tests has to go and put down a revolt in Babylon.

There is another story about him that he takes the golden statue of Marduk and melts it down. True or false? False. Okay. All right. How'd you know? So there's all this talk that he, you know, he desecrates the temples. He pulls down the ziggurat of Marduk.

He melts down the statue. This is typical spin. Hashtag fake news. Exactly. That anybody writes about the enemy king, essentially. The hijacking of cult statues, the melting down of them, the destruction of the temples, yada, yada, yada. It goes on and on. You know, it's just standing.

what is expected to be written really about a bad king. When Nalbanidas, the last king of Babylon, before Cyrus the Great, fell from power, essentially Cyrus the Great said pretty much the same thing about him as well. It's a literary trope that we get constantly repeated. Okay. Well, you have set the scene so brilliantly because in the next episode we are going to be talking about Xerxes, the much misunderstood. Much maligned.

The much maligned. his invasion of Greece. So, I mean, you've left us in a perfect place to do that. Huge thanks to you, Lloyd. Oh, you're so welcome. Absolutely magnificent. And we have to say, you've got to read anyone who's enjoyed this podcast and Lloyd's previous appearance. The Persians, the age of the great kings is my book of the year. I absolutely loved it. And it goes to the spectacular climax. Keep going right through. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. And also it's a book that, you know, Empire Club, if you sign up to the Empire Club, my friends, you'll get it at a discount. So, www.mpirpod, UK.com. That's it. That's where you have to go. Do you want to tell everyone what we're doing on Thursday? Join us again on Thursday as we discuss the Battle of Thermopylai. Till then. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon.

Bye for me, William Droompool.