Chapter 5 - Physis on the Battlefield

Summary

This chapter explores the Histories’ interest in human nature on the battlefield in terms of valour. It reviews instances in which the historical actors – including Pixodarus, Xerxes, and Themistocles – foreground the strategic importance of "surpassing nature." This is a motif that places the speakers in a network of sophistic and later, Platonic, theories on man’s desire to outstrip his own nature. At stake is a philosophy of "superior nature" that is strongly undercut by the complexity of the action on the battlefield.

The Histories’ incorporation of physis as a universal measure of the capacities of man has so far suggested a set of limits on human traits and actions. This emphasis plays out rather differently as the narrative moves forward into the Greco-Persian Wars. The startling Hellenic victory over the Persians left behind a politically charged causal lacuna. In the course of the fifth century, competing ideological narratives were drafted in order to justify the successful outcome of the loosely coordinated Greek defensive alliance against the vastly superior Persian force.¹ This under-determined outcome shaped and drove a debate on human nature on the battlefield.² In the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places, for example, the European physis was viewed as made of sterner stuff than any eastern counterparts. In this text, physis offers an opportunity to naturalize the Greek victory as the inevitable outcome of innate European superiority. Like Airs, the Histories draws on physis as a conceptual category for thinking about martial valor. Various historical actors in the Histories appeal to physis as a causal paradigm explaining victory. However, the Histories has generally been read as espousing the cause of nomos – “custom,” “law,” “convention” – as the proximate, though not exclusive, cause of Greek success.³ This conclusion often pits Greek nomos against Persian physis.⁴ This chapter will challenge the opposition of nomos and physis that is so familiar from contemporary sophistic discourse. Rather than opposing human nature to law or custom, the Histories explores a rhetoric of transhumanism, or the enhancement of nature. However, we shall see that Herodotus represents a counter-discourse to a superior physis, and nature’s enhancement is ultimately displaced as a causal paradigm for victory on the battlefield.

Surpassing physis

What is distinctive to the Histories as the narrative turns toward the Greco-Persian Wars is the emphasis it places on transcending or enhancing one’s physis. This motif focuses on the limitations that physis imposes on the human, but only via surpassing them, in a kind of impermanent transhumanism.⁵ This human enhancement is entangled with environment, warfare, and victory. The potential to transcend nature is first evident prior to the Persian invasion of Greece, during the Ionian revolt. There, Herodotus explicitly endorses the strategy of going beyond human physis in the context of the Carian rebellion against Persia. The Carians’ loose confederation of cities and villages allied itself to the rather desperate Ionian forces. After discovering their defection, the Persian general Daurises marched on Caria, leaving conquered poleis along the Hellespont in his wake. Herodotus delays his narrative of the Persian invasion with an assembly of Carian nobles who deliberate their course of action at the White Pillars on the river Marsyas:

After the Carians gathered there, many different views were expressed, of which the best seems to me to have been that of Pixodarus …. This man’s opinion was that the Carians should cross the Maeander and join the battle having the river at their back, so that they would be unable to flee and be compelled to stay on the spot and become still better than their physis (ἵνα μὴ ἔχοντες ὀπίσω φεύγειν οἱ Κᾶρες αὐτοῦ τε μένειν ἀναγκαζόμενοι γενοίατο ἔτι ἀμείνονες τῆς φύσιος).

(5.118.2)

According to How and Wells, Herodotus “as usual, shows complete ignorance of tactics; he really thinks that an army should fight where no retreat is possible.”⁶ Yet the strategy, explicitly approved as it is by the narrator and the only one given exposure, provides a view to the counterfactual logic of military tactics in the Histories. To unpack the narrator’s position: the Maeander can act as a mechanism to transcend physis by compelling those standing with their backs to it to take either absolute victory or suffer total annihilation.⁷ The zero-sum scheme enforces conditions for humans to go beyond themselves, and the participle ἀναγκαζόμενοι (anankazomenoi) points to the loss of agency that this requires – the enhancement of physis overcomes the rational human subject.⁸ In the end, the Carians decide against Pixodarus’ strategy and instead place the Persians against the river to keep them from fleeing in the event of a Carian victory.

A parallel configuration occurs in the nonhuman world in the context of the description of the Danube. The superlative nature of the Danube, “greatest of all rivers,” excepting perhaps the Nile, leads into a description of its current. Unlike other rivers, its stream remains equal in both winter and summer: “during the winter it is as big as it is, and even slightly greater than its physis,” and this is the result, Herodotus hazards, of the amount of snow that falls in winter in Scythia (4.50.2–3). The summer flow of the river remains steady due to the heavy rains that feed tributary streams and the increased evaporation from the sun, a combination that produces the same current in summer as well as winter. Waters enlarged by rivulets of winter snow outstrip the current of the Danube and make it slightly “greater than its nature.”

Like the river, the nature of man can be temporarily enhanced. In this case, it is in light of the compulsion effected by another river, the Maeander. In the final analysis, it is the Persians who are given the advantage of compulsion, as they are positioned against the stream, on the grounds that this would prevent their retreat. It is a strategy that ends in the rout of the Carians – though they fought well, we are informed – because of the multitude arrayed against them (5.119.1: τέλος δὲ ἑσσώθησαν διὰ πλῆθος). As is evident from this passage, transcending physis is bound up in compulsion and success in warfare. It theoretically encourages a kind of bravery that might render possible the defeat of superior numerical forces.⁹ The notion here of the potential boundary of the human that might be transgressed in battle is reprised, significantly, in Xerxes’ famous interlude with the exiled Spartan king, Demaratus, on the Spartans, numerical superiority, and victory in battle.¹⁰

The passage has been much discussed. It is generally interpreted as one of the key causal moments explaining Greek success against the Persians.¹¹ As we shall see, this set-piece on human nature, fear, compulsion, and bravery places the dialogue in a constellation of ideas that jointly combine to have great explanatory power. After a lengthy catalog of the land forces Xerxes has at his disposal and a general review of his navy, the Persian despot returns to the beach and questions Demaratus.¹² He is particularly interested in the prospect of a lack of opposition to his forces, given their superior number. His question is not an idle one but in fact bears on the later narrative: the Thracians would plead with the Hellenes to guard the pass at Olympus and threaten to medize if military aid were not forthcoming, concluding, “for necessity is never by nature stronger than inability” (7.172.3: οὐδαμὰ γὰρ ἀδυνασίης ἀνάγκη κρέσσων ἔφυ). And during the Greco-Persian Wars, the Greeks, including the Spartans, are often portrayed as on the point of flight – before Artemisium (8.4.1), Salamis (8.74.2), and Plataea (9.51). Xerxes’ inquiry prompts Demaratus to reflect on the nature of Hellenic courage.

τῇ Ἑλλάδι πενίη μὲν αἰεί κοτε σύντροφός ἐστι, ἀρετὴ δὲ ἐπακτός ἐστι, ἀπό τε σοφίης κατεργασμένη καὶ νόμου ἰσχυροῦ· τῇ διαχρεωμένη ἡ Ἑλλὰς τήν τε πενίην ἀπαμύνεται καὶ τὴν δεσποσύνην.

(7.102.1)

Poverty has always been a foster-sister of Hellas, but virtue is imported, attained by wisdom and powerful nomos; making use of it, Hellas defends itself against both poverty and despotism.

In these famous lines, Demaratus forecasts the Hellenic success in the Greco-Persian Wars by expounding on their “acquired valour” and resistance to despotism.¹³ He assigns greatest import not to a superior physis but to wisdom and nomos.¹⁴ By valor Hellas keeps its land fertile and free from an externally imposed tyranny.

Demaratus continues his disquisition by turning specifically to Lacedaemonian bravery by explaining to Xerxes that the Spartiates would not come to terms but oppose him with their numbers – whatever numbers those might be, a thousand, or more, or less: ἤν τε ἐλάσσονες τούτων, ἤν τε καὶ πλεῦνες (7.102.3). Xerxes rejects this as an idealized, exaggerated portrait of the Spartans. The idea that a thousand men, or five times that, would take the field against the myriad Persians and their subjects beggared belief.¹⁵ As David Konstan has observed, the Persians generally, and Xerxes in particular, display a fascination with the “reification of value.”¹⁶ This passion for quantification and its association with the surveyor’s gaze equate size with power. In this way, Xerxes’ response mirrors Herodotus’ on the physis of Heracles in the second book, where the narrator used human physis as a corrective to the fantastic myths of the Greeks. Correspondingly, Xerxes opposes the extravagant vaunting of bravery as beyond the Spartans’ nature. And in a rejoinder to Demaratus’ jab at despotism, he identifies political freedom as a hindrance to success:

ὑπὸ μὲν γὰρ ἑνὸς ἀρχόμενοι κατὰ τρόπον τὸν ἡμέτερον γενοίατ’ ἂν δειμαίνοντες τοῦτον καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἑωυτῶν φύσιν ἀμείνονες, καὶ ἴοιεν ἀναγκαζόμενοι μάστιγι ἐς πλεῦνας ἐλάσσονες ἐόντες· ἀνειμένοι δὲ ἐς τὸ ἐλεύθερον οὐκ ἂν ποιέοιεν τούτων οὐδέτερα.

(7.103.4)

For if they were ruled by one man as in our way, fearing this man they would become better than their own nature and would advance by compulsion of the whip into greater numbers, although fewer in number themselves. Given over to freedom they would do neither of these things.

Demaratus’ estimation is impossible because of the limits of human nature. Nature follows reasoned mathematical probabilities in warfare and selects for survival. Xerxes identifies a potential exception to this principle in one-man rule, which can compel men to overcome their physis.¹⁷ Xerxes sees the monarch as a kind of human engineer who exerts a mastery over nature. But he does so by dehumanizing his subjects. The passive participle – again we see ἀναγκαζόμενοι – along with the detail of the presence of the whip and the prominence of fear that overcomes physis explores discursive transhumanism but does so by equating man with the nonhuman, with the animal. The involuntary nature of this phenomenon is again driven home in the final sentence – freedom eliminates the potential for this species of transhumanism. Xerxes’ words are remarkably in line with the strategy of Pixodarus on men overcoming their physis through their compulsion to stay and fight or drown (5.118.2) – a strategy endorsed by Herodotus.

What precisely is at stake in this passage? Rosalind Thomas has argued that the nomos-physis opposition so common in the intellectual circles of the fifth-century sophists is evident here in the Demaratus-Xerxes debate and that “Persian natural instincts, or nature, are counteracted by fear, Spartan nature by nomos.”¹⁸ In line with her wider thesis, Thomas finds that nomos outmaneuvers its antithesis, in this case, physis. Let us consider this hypothesis by looking to another meditation on excellence in war in relation to physis and nomos, one that suggests that Xerxes was not making an idle observation in the context of fifth-century intellectual culture.

Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen attempts to justify the dubious actions of his subject by charting the force of several potential motivations. While justifying the power of erotic feeling to override reason, Gorgias sketches a theory of sight and aesthetics that is relevant to this discussion.¹⁹

For the things we see do not have the nature that we want [them to have], but the nature that each one has happened to have (ἃ γὰρ ὁρῶμεν, ἔχει φύσιν οὐχ ἣν ἡμεῖς θέλομεν, ἀλλ’ ἣν ἕκαστον ἔτυχε). And through sight the soul is formed even in its habits. For as soon as hostile bodies arm themselves against opponents with hostile equipment made of bronze and iron, the former for defence, the latter for attack, if sight sees them, it gets upset and it upsets the soul, so that they often flee stupefied, as if the imminent danger were already there. For strong though it is, the habit of nomos is driven away by the fear of sight, which upon arrival makes one neglect both what is judged fine by nomos and whatever nobility comes about through victory. And immediately upon seeing fearful things they depart from their present confidence in the present circumstances.

(DK 82 B 11.15–17)

On Gorgias’ analysis, the power of sight is such that the physis of objects attacks the passive viewer – illustrated here appropriately by the analogy of a group of hoplites standing opposite one another in battle formation. The physis of the enemy as revealed by their psychic image overrides acculturated behaviors and ethical norms.²⁰ In this case, it results in the disturbance of the closely held directive (nomos) of displaying courage and valor and remaining in battle. Aesthetic response has the terrifying potential to drive out rational and non-emotional behavior and to manifest itself in action – retreat – on the battlefield.

For Gorgias, or at least for his Helen, physis overpowers nomos. Xerxes offers an account that differs from this in important respects. He implicitly challenges Demaratus on Greek nomos with his own reference to Persia’s tropos, “custom,” of monarchy, which he affirms is alone responsible for battle order against a numerically superior enemy. In contrast to the Encomium, physis can be overcome in battle by fear of the ruler. Xerxes interprets human nature as feeble and, by extension, as an object of imperial mastery.²¹ Xerxes’ own representation as a transhumanist spectacle supports the ruler’s analysis of his ability to amplify the nature of his men: he is regularly described as transcending the category of the human. In an observation made by an anonymous Greek while seeing Xerxes cross the Hellespont, he is identified as Zeus (7.56.2); similarly, the Macedonian ruler, Alexander, explains to the Athenians that they must capitulate to the king after Salamis because of the superhuman force of Xerxes: “Truly, the power of the King is something beyond that of man, ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον (hyper anthropon), and his arm is long” (8.140.β2). His position as a spectacle supports the ruler’s analysis of his ability to amplify the nature of his men. Again, Xerxes’ speech sounds suspiciously similar to the earlier narratorial endorsement of the strategy of improving upon man’s constitution and defeating superior numerical forces in battle during the Carian revolt through compulsion (ἀναγκαζόμενοι).²²

Reading the overall message of the dialogue as an endorsement of nomos, however, rides on the response of Demaratus that follows. The exiled Spartan king reacts to Xerxes’ disbelief that a man would fight against superior numbers without compulsion by affirming that he or any Spartan would go into battle in such circumstances if compelled by some necessity. He continues:

ἐλεύθεροι γὰρ ἐόντες οὐ πάντα ἐλεύθεροί εἰσι· ἔπεστι γάρ σφι δεσπότης νόμος, τὸν ὑπερδειμαίνουσι πολλῷ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἢ οἱ σοὶ σέ. ποιεῦσι γῶν τὰ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ἀνώγῃ· ἀνώγει δὲ τὠυτὸ αἰεί, οὐκ ἐῶν φεύγειν οὐδὲν πλῆθος ἀνθρώπων ἐκ μάχης, ἀλλὰ μένοντας ἐν τῇ τάξι ἐπικρατέειν ἢ ἀπόλλυσθαι.

(7.104.4–5)

For although they are free, they are not free in every way; for a despotic nomos is set over them, which they fear even more than your men fear you. At any rate, they do whatever it commands. It always commands the same thing, not allowing them to retreat from battle for any number of men, but by remaining in battle formation, to prevail or be destroyed.

The opposition of Xerxes’ appeal to a superior physis as leading to victory, on the one hand, and Demaratus’ to the Spartan nomos of remaining in battle, on the other, has suggested to some that Herodotus is engaging in the famous nomos-physis debate. As noted above, he is often interpreted as weighing in on the side of the former; according to Thomas, “he is making a stand for nomos.”²³ Yet, this reading of the speeches neglects correspondences in the exchange between the Persian monarch and the exiled Spartan one.

Demaratus’ response closely aligns with the sentiments expressed by Xerxes, with a shared stress on compulsion and objectification.²⁴ He implicitly accepts the limits placed on human nature that are raised by Xerxes. He counteracts these limits, however, with Spartan custom, which he presents as a force of even greater compulsion than the institution of Persian monarchy. For Demaratus, it is nomos that masters human nature. In parallel with Xerxes’ configuration of this power dynamic, it does so by rejecting autonomy. Like Persia, Sparta is not free on the battlefield. Their custom acts as a despot that is “set over” (ἔπεστι) them. Fear too has significance on the battlefield for Sparta; the ὑπερ in ὑπερδειμαίνω (hyperdemaino), accepting Wilson’s reading, ratchets up Sparta’s dread in a rhetorical outbidding of Xerxes’ δειμαίνω.²⁵ The whip that might thrust Persians into action against a superior force finds an analog in the Spartan nomos of conquering or dying in battle formation, where retreat is not an option. Far from setting up a nomos-physis antithesis, this characterization reveals the similarity of Spartan and Persian strategies of success in warfare. For both speakers, compulsion and fear motivate exceptional valor. According to Xerxes, it inspires men to go beyond themselves. Demaratus does not disagree; his revision is simply in the fear-inducing agent – Xerxes had identified this with his own person or with one-man rule, Demaratus with despotic nomos.

The correspondences between these examples are reinforced by a discussion of citizen bravery from the fourth century BCE. In Aristotle’s treatment of courage in the Nicomachean Ethics, he aligns the motivation of fear with compulsion and an inferior variety of bravery on the battlefield (1116a). Generals compel such men to second-rate courageous action, and the examples given are of men marshaled before a ditch or some such obstacle and those beaten by their commanders for moving backwards (1116a–b). Courage, Aristotle declares, cannot be based on compulsion but on nobility. This configuration of military bravery throws into relief the ethical conclusions that could, at least by the fourth century, be drawn from involuntary military action. In the Histories, surpassing human nature inspires involuntary courage.

Rather than interpreting this debate as a dialogue on Spartan nomos and Persian physis, it turns out to concentrate on a different set of preoccupations.²⁶ Both speakers suggest their respective armies will have fear instilled in them, one by the nomos of despotism, the other by the despotism of nomos. Nomos and physis are opposed but only insofar as the force of nomos is said to compel the transcendence of physis among Persians and Greeks. Demaratus is thus not “right” and Xerxes “wrong.” The dialogue encourages a test of the relationship between word and deed. It also establishes an expectation that surpassing physis will play a key causal role in the Greco-Persian Wars, but, as we shall see, Xerxes and Demaratus’ assertions are undermined by the historical action.

Demaratus’ declaration is supported by looking immediately ahead to the Spartan stand at Thermopylae.²⁷ Yet, if we move back in time to Herodotus’ first introduction of Demaratus, this statement rings rather oddly coming as it does from a Spartan king who is responsible for the revision of nomos in Sparta for abandoning his place in battle.²⁸ In Book 5, during the allied Peloponnesian campaign against Athens, Sparta and its allies from the Peloponnese marched to battle in western Attica at Eleusis. They intended to fight a pitched battle to install Isagoras as tyrant of Athens (5.74.1). Demaratus is introduced as co-ruler with Cleomenes – who will later contrive his exile (6.61–7) – and as having led out his army in concert with Cleomenes. Up to this point, the Corinthians have acted as the allies of Sparta; however, here they ultimately decide against supporting the assault on Attica and disband their forces. Abruptly, Demaratus too abandons the campaign, “although not at a variance with Cleomenes until then” (5.75.1). This leads to a break in protocol. Up to this point, both kings had gone on campaign together as allies; but as a result of this event, the nomos mandating that both kings be present on campaign is changed: “It was as a result of this break between the two kings that the rule was established at Sparta that when the army went on campaign both kings were not allowed to go with it at the same time. For before this they both followed” (5.75.2). Read against this background, Demaratus’ professed rigidity in observing Spartan nomos on standing in battle sounds rather odd.²⁹ Placing the former king’s speech in its context in Spartan historical action in the narrative complicates the traditional interpretation of the jingoistic superiority of Spartan nomos, or, metonymically, for many scholars, Greek nomos.³⁰ This finds corroboration in the famed narratorial intrusion on the critical role of the Athenians in the Greek victory. Had they abandoned the alliance, Herodotus reasons, the Spartans would have been left to stand alone against Persia and either died noble deaths or come to terms with Xerxes (7.139.4).³¹

As already observed, Thermopylae stands most obviously in responsion to the Demaratus-Xerxes debate. Sparta’s heroic stance against the Persian forces makes Demaratus’ words on the despotic nomos of standing one’s ground a reality. At first, the allied Hellenic force experiences success against the Persians, but if there is a leitmotif on the cause of victory, it is related to kosmos, not physis or nomos: οἱ δὲ Ἕλληνες κατὰ τάξις τε καὶ κατὰ ἔθνεα κεκοσμημένοι ἦσαν, καὶ ἐν μέρεϊ ἕκαστοι ἐμάχοντο (7.212.2: “The Greeks were arrayed by contingent and by nation and each people fought in turn”). Following the discovery of the Persian forces moving around the mountain pass, the Spartan king Leonidas famously dismissed the allies, except the Thebans, his unwilling hostages, and the Thespians, his most zealous ally. Herodotus explains that he did not want to have the allies leave “in disorder” (7.220.4: ἀκόσμως) after internal division. Initially, the foreigners fall in droves due to the whips of their commanders, which keep the soldiers moving forward unabatedly (7.223.3). This detail, a snapshot of Xerxes’ strategy in the dialogue, dramatizes the nomos of despotism.³² As a test case, it fails, and compulsion leads to precisely the opposite of the intended effect – the soldiers are unable to exercise bravery and end up dying en masse. In parallel, Leonidas plays out the role outlined for him by Demaratus in his speech. Knowledge of their imminent deaths pushes Spartan courage to its peak. Faced with extreme numerical inferiority, they are nevertheless able to destroy a number that defies logos (7.223.3). The explanatory power for their might is grounded in the geographical and strategic conditions that have pinned them between two hostile forces. Like the Carians, the Spartans have no option of escape. Leonidas has ruled out survival, and Demaratus’ projection of the compulsion of standing firm in the face of an enemy does play out as he had predicted.

However, the dialectic between the Demaratus-Xerxes debate and action on the battlefield does not cease here; it continues into the battles of both Salamis and Plataea, confirming the hypothesis that this is a key passage for reflecting on Hellenic victory and success. Just prior to the sea battle at Salamis, Herodotus reports that Themistocles gave the best of the battle orations. He narrates:³³

ἠώς τε διέφαινε καὶ οἳ σύλλογον τῶν ἐπιβατέων ποιησάμενοι … προηγόρευε εὖ ἔχοντα³⁴ μὲν ἐκ πάντων Θεμιστοκλέης· τὰ δὲ ἔπεα ἦν πάντα <τὰ> κρέσσω τοῖσι ἥσσοσι ἀντιτιθέμενα, ὅσα δὴ ἐν ἀνθρώπου φύσι καὶ καταστάσι ἐγγίνεται· παραινέσας δὲ τούτων τὰ κρέσσω αἱρέεσθαι καὶ καταπλέξας τὴν ῥῆσιν, ἐσβαίνειν ἐκέλευσε ἐς τὰς νέας.

(8.83.1–2)

Dawn was breaking and they made an assembly of the marines … out of all, Themistocles was proclaiming splendidly: his words were opposing all of that which is stronger to the weaker, as many things as are innate in the constitution and condition of man. After exhorting them to choose the stronger of these, he concluded his speech and ordered the men to embark on their ships.

In a valuable article, Vasiliki Zali draws attention to the oddness of the inclusion of this brief, indirect exhortation.³⁵ Its placement is perfectly primed for a long speech rousing the Greeks to action in the face of innumerable odds, and Herodotus inexplicably misses the opportunity for a rhetorical display piece by Themistocles, architect of the naval victory. How and Wells are typical in their summation, stating that Herodotus, “spares us the well-worn antitheses, victory and defeat, freedom and slavery.”³⁶ According to Zali, narrative gapping invites the reader to supply the material herself and creates a dialogue between the narrator and the implied reader.³⁷ Filling the gap has relied upon the timeworn topoi of battle exhortations: “In all probability, it involved the most common harangue antitheses, such as victory vs. defeat, freedom vs. slavery, bravery/glorious death/honour vs. cowardice/shameful death/disgrace.”³⁸ This finding corresponds well to Thucydides’ Nicias, whose speech rousing the trierarchs before the battle at the harbor in Syracuse is in oratio obliqua. Nicias’ reaction to the situation is put in generic terms as “the sort of thing men experience” (7.69.2: ὅπερ πάσχουσιν) in great danger. Fittingly, his harangue is also boiler plate, as he exhorts the Athenians by saying “what men in such a critical moment would say, not guarding against seeming to someone to recite the old commonplaces” (7.69.2: ὅσα ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ ἤδη τοῦ καιροῦ ὄντες ἄνθρωποι οὐ πρὸς τὸ δοκεῖν τινὶ ἀρχαιολογεῖν φυλαξάμενοι εἴποιεν ἄν) – with the specification that such commonplaces include referring to wives, children, and the ancestral gods.

However, the early date of the composition of the Histories and the vigorous Nachleben of pre-battle speeches in ancient historiography should caution against an early exhaustion in the genre, particularly considering the reputation for eloquence that Herodotus enjoyed throughout antiquity. More to the point, the idées reçues on the content of the speech have obscured the actual significance of the language used to describe it. Themistocles is said to have opposed the stronger to the weaker; specifically, those things that are inborn stronger and weaker in the physis and katastasis of man. He advises the hoplites to choose the stronger of these and concludes with an order to board.³⁹ The substance of the exhortation then is the nature of man, his strengths and weaknesses. This language rules out the possibility that this was an opposition between, for example, victory and defeat, or freedom and slavery. These are not referents for either physis or katastasis.⁴⁰ Instead, Themistocles spurs the hoplite soldiers to choose the “strong” within their own natures.

Particularly interesting is the collocation φύσι καὶ καταστάσι – as striking as it is rare.⁴¹ Prior to the Hellenistic period, the two are seldom used in conjunction. In addition to the Histories, only Hippocratic and philosophical treatises, tellingly, connect the terms.⁴² Airs, Waters, Places describes the deficiencies of the climate of Scythia as leading to the flabbiness of the bodies of their men, which cannot dry and become firm “in such a land, with their physis and climate” (19: ἐν τοιαύτῃ χώρῃ καὶ φύσει καὶ ὥρης καταστάσει). The treatise differentiates between human physis and the condition of the seasons in order to make a larger point on the necessity of bearing in mind the human constitution, geological conditions, and climatological considerations as a doctor. Closer to the language in the speech of Themistocles is Herodotus’ near contemporary, Democritus.⁴³ In a surviving fragment, the philosopher from Abdera meditates on the acquisition of children: “people suppose that having children is one of the necessities from physis and from some ancient condition” (DK 68 B 278: ἀνθρώποισι τῶν ἀναγκαίων δοκεῖ εἶναι παῖδας κτήσασθαι ἀπὸ φύσιος καὶ καταστάσιός τινος ἀρχαίης).⁴⁴ Democritus’ collocation rationalizes the human drive to produce children as a product of physis and katastasis, the internal and instinctive drives within man. He goes on to argue that these drives are analogously present in the animal kingdom. The philosopher’s use of the terms in the context of man points to the unique inflection of this language in Themistocles’ speech and tells against the interpretation that these terms stand in for topoi common to the battle exhortation. Their association with the milieu of the Presocratic intellectual should not be discounted.

Surpassing physis is a concern among Presocratic thinkers and does not refer to hackneyed oppositions typical of exhortations before battle. In Palamedes’ defense speech in the eponymous treatise by Gorgias, the hero exonerated himself from the suspicion that he might have been motivated to commit treason to enrich himself by appealing to his self-mastery:

For those spending a great deal need an abundance of wealth, not those stronger than the pleasures of physis (οὐχ οἱ κρείττονες τῶν τῆς φύσεως ἡδονῶν), but those enslaved by pleasures and seeking to acquire honours from riches and magnificence.

(DK 82 B 11.15)

Here, physis takes on an appetitive quality familiar from Thucydides, and Palamedes reveals the negative elements associated with physis – its acquisitive tendencies. In contrast to the many who attempt to gain honor, Palamedes is free from this psychological enslavement.⁴⁵

A fragment of Democritus warns against man’s exceeding his physis:⁴⁶

The cheerful individual must not undertake many things, not in a private capacity or public one, and in what he does undertake he should not choose to do what is beyond his power and his physis (ὑπέρ τε δύναμιν αἱρεῖσθαι τὴν ἑωυτοῦ καὶ φύσιν).

(DK 68 B 3)

Viewing the self as an obstacle to be overcome is not uncommon. It is frequently found in Plato, who turns to the ethical implications of rising above oneself by interiorizing the battle. In the Republic’s discussion of soundness of mind as a kind of order, Socrates refers to “mastery over certain pleasures and desires, as they say that someone is stronger than himself” (430e: καὶ ἡδονῶν τινων καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν ἐγκράτεια, ὥς φασι κρείττω δὴ αὑτοῦ). He draws out the oddity of the expression κρείττω αὑτοῦ, which implies that the same individual can be both superior and inferior to himself. This is explained as follows:

“But,” I said, “this phrase seems to me to want to say that something better and something worse in man himself exists as concerns his soul, and whenever that which is better by nature (τὸ βέλτιον φύσει) is in control of the worse element, that this communicates ‘better than himself’ (τὸ κρείττω αὑτοῦ), at any rate, it is praise. And when the better (being smaller) is ruled by the quantity of the worse – by poor upbringing or some association – this is to find fault with as an insult and to call someone ‘worse than himself’ (ἥττω ἑαυτοῦ) and as one depraved.”

(431a)

The paradoxical suitability of the phrase “greater than oneself” gives Socrates the opportunity to refer to the subdivision of the soul. Man’s struggle for power between better and worse elements, with the triumph of the former, is carefully connected to Socrates’ conception of the stable workings of the soul. The superior element within it is a regular constituent (φύσει). Socrates expands the application of the phrase from the individual to Kallipolis, assuring his interlocutors that the worse elements within the citizenry will be ruled by the select minority who are “best in their nature” (431c: βέλτιστα μὲν φῦσιν) or in education. The connection made between becoming “greater than oneself” and physis in Plato supports reading the phrase as commenting on human nature.⁴⁷ Like the Republic, the Laws highlights the presence of a superior and inferior within man, “each one of us is greater than himself and worse than himself” (626e–7a: εἷς ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ὁ μὲν κρείττων αὑτοῦ, ὁ δὲ ἥττων ἐστί).⁴⁸ Cleinias declares that there is a war within the human, in which victory over the self is the greatest victory and defeat of the self the worst possible outcome (626e). While the term φύσις is not present in this passage, this discourse draws on the same conception of the internal constitution of man as a site of contestation, a sphere for conquest or defeat.

Themistocles’ speech too opposes the strong in man to its opposite, the weak, stressing the presence of both elements in the constitution and condition of man. The reference is strengthened by the use of ἀντιτιθέμενα (antitithemena), the verbal term for “making an antilogy,” an argumentative strategy famously associated with Protagoras.⁴⁹ Themistocles, then, suggests that one may select the stronger impulse within nature and, in doing so, go beyond the normal workings of physis, in which these elements commingle. Themistocles thus inscribes within his exhortation the terms that Xerxes and Demaratus had – he endeavors to better the constitution of the Greeks – but does so in a way that de-emphasizes external compulsion and instead draws attention to the individual capacity to choose (αἱρέεσθαι) betterment, in a manner evocative of Plato’s Socrates. This de-emphasis of external compulsion is, however, tempered by his speech to Aristides, just prior to his battle speech. Aristides had reported to Themistocles that the Greek navy was encircled by the Persians, a fact that Themistocles then took credit for as a necessary stratagem to get the disunited Greek forces to fight at Salamis. He explains, “for it was necessary when the Greeks were not willing to begin, to bring them over even unwilling” (8.80.1: ἔδεε γάρ, ὅτε οὐκ ἑκόντες ἤθελον ἐς μάχην κατίστασθαι οἱ Ἕλληνες, ἀέκοντας παραστήσασθαι). So, though reported in indirect speech and only in brief, the substance of this oration returns to a key debate staged within the Histories, namely, valor’s relationship to physis. Themistocles couches this in the language of the weak versus the strong within the individual and sets the first clash within man, as Gorgias, Democritus, and Plato do, and only after this in relation to the war between the Greeks and Persians. Of course, he has stage-managed the clash from the beginning, compelling the Greeks to fight as Xerxes did with the allied Persian forces.

Yet the narrative of the battle itself plays out unexpectedly. Paradoxically, it is the Persians who are singled out as becoming “braver than themselves,” rather than the Greek forces Themistocles has just addressed, or the Spartans, as Demaratus implied: καίτοι ἦσάν γε <ἄνδρες ἀγαθοὶ> καὶ ἐγένοντο ταύτην τὴν ἡμέρην μακρῷ ἀμείνονες αὐτοὶ ἑωυτῶν ἢ πρὸς Εὐβοίῃ, πᾶς τις προθυμεόμενος καὶ δειμαίνων Ξέρξην, ἐδόκεέ τε ἕκαστος ἑωυτὸν θεήσεσθαι βασιλέα (8.86).⁵⁰ Fear is highlighted, (δειμαίνων) and its effectiveness is confirmed by the fact that the Persian navy is ἀμείνονες ἑωυτῶν, language that readily evokes Xerxes’ words, γενοίατ’ ἂν δειμαίνοντες τοῦτον καὶ παρὰ τὴν ἑωυτῶν φύσιν ἀμείνονες. Salamis showcases the success of Xerxes’ stratagem – his fleet does appear to display a superior valor under the gaze of its despot.⁵¹ This is an endorsement of the sentiments expressed by Xerxes to Demaratus – the nomos of despotism affects physis in battle. The Persian navy’s ignominious defeat at Artemisium may well be partly attributed to the absence of its leader overseeing the event, as Xerxes himself concludes (8.69).

Yet the triumph over nature compelled by nomos through the gaze of the despot is highly qualified. It is immediately preceded by the aetiology of Greek victory: Herodotus narrates that this was accomplished by fighting just as the allied Greeks had at Thermopylae, with kosmos,⁵² “in an orderly arrangement,” and kata taxin, in the “order of battle,” and he contrasts this with the invaders who were not drawn up in battle order nor acting with “intention,” nous.⁵³ The denouement of the battle illustrates the limits of transhumanism as a causal factor and ultimately validates other elements as explaining success. Certainly, Greece and Persia diverge, but their opposition is not one of Greek nomos versus Persian physis. There is greater nuance, pitting kosmos and intention over the nomos of monarchy and an army momentarily superior to itself.⁵⁴

Chris Pelling has convincingly shown that kosmos is a “keyword” in the Plataea narrative.⁵⁵ Salamis has perhaps set up the expectation of an “orderly arrangement” on the Greek defensive, but this is partially deflated through the allied forces’ continued quarrelling and indecision.⁵⁶ On the other side of the battle lines, Mardonius is amazed by the Lacedaemonians’ lack of order. Although he has arrayed the Persian troops against the Spartans – forces explicitly said to be by far superior in number (9.31.2), in a return to Xerxes’ claim – they exchange positions with the Athenians. Later, the Spartans retreat from the battlefield with the rest of the Greek forces, an act that compels Mardonius to cross the Asopus and assume the weaker position to launch his attack.⁵⁷ When he finally leads the Persians against their enemies, his foreign armaments break into a run to follow them into battle “drawn up in battle formation without an orderly arrangement or battle line” (9.59.2: οὔτε κόσμῳ οὐδενὶ κοσμηθέντες οὔτε τάξι). In contempt of the Spartans, the Persian force rushes into action and finds itself entirely unprepared for hoplite warfare. In particular, they are hampered by inferior gear.⁵⁸ The Histories tells against assertions to the contrary and states that the Persians possessed equal courage and strength, even if they were poorly armed and lacking in cunning (9.62.3: λήματι μέν νυν καὶ ῥώμῃ οὐκ ἥσσονες ἦσαν οἱ Πέρσαι, ἄνοπλοι δὲ ἐόντες καὶ πρὸς ἀνεπιστήμονες ἦσαν καὶ οὐκ ὅμοιοι τοῖσι ἐναντίοισι σοφίην).⁵⁹ Greek victory is attributed to Persian weaponry and disorganization, not to exceptionalism in Hellenic nomos or physis.

The retreat of the Persians is likewise described as confused: “The Persians … fled utterly disordered to their own camp” (9.65.1: ἔφευγον οὐδένα κόσμον).⁶⁰ The general Artabazus, after seeing the Persian forces withdrawing, deserts the battle “without the same order” (9.66.3: οὕτω δὴ οὐκέτι τὸν αὐτὸν κόσμον κατηγέετο).⁶¹ To drive the point home further, Herodotus inverts the paradigm by describing the movements of the Hellenic center after the victory of the Greeks at Plataea. The right center flank has taken up its position at the Heraion, and following the news of the Greek victory, their exhilaration leads to a disastrous lack of order, οἳ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ταῦτα, οὐδένα κόσμον ταχθέντες (9.69.1: “those who heard this were drawn up in no order”). This is spied by the Theban cavalry fighting in support of Persia (9.69.2: ἀπιδόντές σφεας οἱ Θηβαίων ἱππόται ἐπειγομένους οὐδένα κόσμον) and leads to the annihilation of the Greeks, who Herodotus concludes are destroyed “without any reason.”⁶²

In the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus that prepares for the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, Herodotus raises an expectation that overriding the limits of physis will play a key role in the unfolding of events. By surveying the potential of physis to act as a cause of success and defeat, the narrator taps into a prevalent strand of interpretation for the Hellenic victory over the Persians, as is clear from Airs, Waters, Places. In Salamis, the success of the Greeks is attributed to kosmos. At the battle of Plataea, it is the absence of kosmos among the Persians that contributes to their defeat.

Kosmos and related terms appear regularly in Homeric epic. There, they signal appropriate speech, ornamentation, and regulated action on the battlefield. This latter category is noteworthy for contextualizing Herodotus’ integration of kosmos-language in the narration of the Greco-Persian Wars. In the Iliad, the sons of Atreus are “marshallers of armies” (1.16, 1.375); the rulers of the Greek forces at Troy “array” their soldiers to enter battle with the skill of goatherds who separate out their combined flocks (2.475–7); warriors order their charioteers to maintain “good order” (11.48, 12.85). When leaders are fallen or absent, such as Protesilaus and Philoctetes, others quickly take their places to arrange the soldiers (2.703–7, 2.726–7). Even when wounded, kings including Ajax, Odysseus, and Agamemnon supervise the organization of their warriors for battle (14.379–80). Alternatively, the absence of what is kosmos forbodes defeat and destruction. For example, Polydamas advises Hector against attacking the Achaean ships after seeing a portent, since it foreshadows a Trojan retreat from the ships “without order” and with many of their own left behind (12.225). And before Hector’s death, Zeus laments how the Trojan despoiled Achilles’ armor from the body of Patroclus “contrary to order” (17.205). In her work on the kosmos-polis analogy, Carol Atack has highlighted the intentionality of kosmos, as an order brought about by the effort of an individual ruler.⁶³ Applying this insight to the Histories suggests that by activating the kosmos motif at Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, Herodotus relies upon the portrait of the Homeric warrior-ruler who both maintains order and brings victory on the battlefield.

Physis and the Stronger

A question, then, remains: why does the Histories invest in priming the reader for the importance of an enhanced physis only to eclipse it in the end? The answer to this question will take us beyond Plataea, into postwar success narratives. Hellenic victory in the Greco-Persian Wars spawned various impassioned explanations of the triumph. One of the most influential theses explained Greek victory by pointing to the superior European physis. As noted in Chapter 4, Airs, Waters, Places takes a position of soft biological determinism regarding European and Asian habitats, which naturalizes victory and defeat. Reading Hellenic victory in terms of physis holds that the Hellenic constitution is harder, braver, stronger, and renders comprehensible its domination of inferior physeis. Freedom is achieved, according to this model, due to the particularly doughty physis of the Europeans and slavery from the weak Asiatic one. This naturalization of domination and subjection in terms of physis became a commonplace – though a contested one – during the fifth and fourth centuries. If it is physis that the strong rule the weak, and the physis of the Hellenes is by nature heartier and braver than that of their opponents, then the Greek victory against Persia becomes all but preordained. This gestures to a debate on empire much discussed among philosophers on the right of the stronger to rule, a philosophy underwritten by an appeal to physis.

Democritus, for example, affirmed that “by physis ruling is natural for the stronger” (DK 68 B 267: φύσει τὸ ἄρχειν οἰκήιον τῷ κρέσσονι).⁶⁴ Thucydides too includes a theory of natural domination by which the Athenians argue that they possess a mandate to act upon their impulses to acquire more due to their power, while inferior states have a similar mandate to accept their enslavement.⁶⁵ Of course, it is Plato’s Gorgias that offers the most famous enunciation of this principle, through the mouthpiece of the young sophistic orator, Callicles.

I suppose that nature itself proclaims it, that it is just that the better have more than the worse and the stronger more than the weaker. Nature shows that these things are so in many places, both among the other animals and all the cities and races of men, that justice has been judged in this way, that the stronger rule the weaker and have more (ὅτι οὕτω τὸ δίκαιον κέκριται, τὸν κρείττω τοῦ ἥττονος ἄρχειν καὶ πλέον ἔχειν). Since it was on which notion of justice that Xerxes campaigned against Greece and his father against the Scythians? But one could adduce thousands of similar cases. But I believe that these people act according to the physis of justice, and, yes by Zeus, even according to the nomos of physis, but perhaps not according to that nomos that we legislate. By moulding the best and strongest among ourselves, taking them from their youth, as we do with lions, enchanting and bewitching them we turn them into slaves, by telling them that they must have equality and that this is both good and just.

(483d–4a)

In this response to Socrates, Callicles asserts the primacy of the “law of nature,” whereby the strong rule the weak. As he continues, he expands on this to endorse a philosophy whereby the stronger physis rules over the weaker one, which is precisely the phenomenon that is found in Airs, Waters, Places and in the Histories:

I suppose that if there were a man who had a sufficient physis (φύσιν ἱκανὴν), upon shaking off all these things and breaking through and escaping, after having trodden underfoot our written rules, magic spells, chants, and all our nomoi that are against physis (καὶ νόμους τοὺς παρὰ φύσιν ἅπαντας), that slave would rise up and show himself to be our master, and therein the justice of physis would blaze forth (ἐπαναστὰς ἀνεφάνη δεσπότης ἡμέτερος ὁ δοῦλος, καὶ ἐνταῦθα ἐξέλαμψεν τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιον).

(484a–b)

Callicles blurs the distinction between physis as the law of nature that prescribes the stronger rule the weaker and the principle that a stronger physis should rule the weaker. The scenario is one that was clearly current in the fifth century, as the Anonymous Iamblichi attempts to rebut a similar argument by stating that even if an individual were to emerge with a transcendent physis, invulnerable, unaffected by disease, without emotion, enormous, with an adamantine body and soul (6.2: εἰ μὲν δὴ γένοιτό τις ἐξ ἀρχῆς φύσιν τοιάνδε ἔχων, ἄτρωτος τὸν χρῶτα ἄνοσός τε καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ὑπερφυὴς καὶ ἀδαμάντινος τό τε σῶμα καὶ τὴν ψυχήν), to whom it might be considered fitting to rule for gain, still, the author argues, he would not survive unless he allied himself to the people’s nomoi.

In his address to Socrates, Callicles unpacks a thesis of inverted moralism, with the assertion that what is just (τὸ δίκαιον) exists by nature (φύσει) but that its justice contradicts the mandates of nomos.⁶⁶ Notably, the historical exempla deployed in order to justify this position are invasions perpetrated by Darius and Xerxes.⁶⁷ However, Callicles’ historical exempla have been interpreted as ironic – his evidence consists of two dramatically unsuccessful campaigns – apparently undercutting his thesis.⁶⁸ Yet he may prove a more sensitive reader of Herodotus’ Persian monarchs than has previously been realized; his exemplum recalls Darius’ words in Book 4 during his disastrous invasion into the Scythian hinterland. In response to the offensive, the Scythians took to their customary nomadic lifestyle and successfully avoided fighting a pitched battle with the Persians in order to defeat their opponents through a war of attrition. Finally disenchanted with his wandering, Darius sent a message to the king of the Scythians, Idanthyrsus, bidding him enter into battle or capitulate, “and you, if you admit that you are inferior, after ceasing your run come to an audience with your master, bringing earth and water” (4.126: εἰ δὲ συγγινώσκεαι εἶναι ἥσσων, σὺ δὲ καὶ οὕτω παυσάμενος τοῦ δρόμου δεσπότῃ τῷ σῷ δῶρα φέρων γῆν τε καὶ ὕδωρ ἐλθὲ ἐς λόγους). Surrender is envisioned as proceeding from an awareness (συγγινώσκεαι) of one’s own subordination (ἥσσων).⁶⁹ Darius’ negotiations with the Scythian king are underwritten by a social order founded on the basis of strength and weakness. On this view, the weakness of Darius’ subjects legitimates his despotism. Opposition is warranted only if there is a question of strength. This ethical system in international affairs informs the norms championed by Darius and brings the debate on whether the strongest physis should be victorious straight into the Histories. Xerxes too displays a high opinion of his own power and even wonders whether his inferior opponents will bother fighting or immediately surrender. The same logic operates subtly in the rhetorical address of Themistocles.⁷⁰ Herodotus continually stresses this statesman’s understanding of human nature and recounts his ability to manipulate those around him.⁷¹ His battle exhortation prior to Salamis revisits an understanding of physis in its positive and negative valences. Like Darius, Themistocles realizes that the weaker fall to the stronger and, to this end, encourages the hoplite force to embrace “the stronger,” τὰ κρέσσω, in their physis. Still, in opposition to the rhetorical acrobatics of Callicles, to the speeches of Darius and Xerxes in the Histories, and even the presumption of Themistocles, the narrative itself does not treat physis as a variable of success in battle. When it is noted, as in the battle of Salamis, it is outmaneuvered by Hellenic order. The Histories’ unwillingness to align transcending physis with victory in the battle at Salamis points to a counter-discourse – one that undermines the association of superior human nature with the path to rule. In this way, historical action participates in an ethical discourse that undercuts the mandate for domination that becomes increasingly common in the later fifth century, as is clear from Herodotus’ successor, Thucydides.

In fact, alternatives to physis can be found in the fragments of several of the Presocratic intellectuals. In addition to the more familiar opposition of physis to nomos, the constitution of man was also paired and contrasted with “practice” in the context of virtue.⁷² A fragment of Epicharmus first juxtaposes the two: “practice offers more gifts to friends than a good physis” (DK 23 B 33: ἁ δὲ μελέτα φύσιος ἀγαθᾶς πλέονα δωρεῖται φίλοις). Critias repeats the sentiment almost verbatim: ἐκ μελέτης πλείους ἢ φύσεως ἀγαθοί (DK 88 B 9). Democritus, a later contemporary, affirms the continued relevance of virtue and its maximization, using the same collocation, πλέονες ἐξ ἀσκήσιος ἀγαθοὶ γίνονται ἢ ἀπὸ φύσιος (DK 68 B 242: “more men become good from practice than physis”). The relationship between physis and praxis bleeds into a general discussion of instruction; Protagoras states that instruction cannot rely on human nature alone, φύσεως καὶ ἀσκήσεως διδασκαλία δεῖται (DK 80 B 3).⁷³ Democritus’ physis is shaped and harmonized by instruction, ἡ φύσις καὶ ἡ διδαχὴ παραπλήσιόν ἐστι. καὶ γὰρ ἡ διδαχὴ μεταρυσμοῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον, μεταρυσμοῦσα δὲ φυσιοποιεῖ (DK 68 B 33: “physis and instruction are alike, for instruction harmonizes man, and by harmonizing, shapes physis”). Even more elaborate is Socrates’ response in Xenophon to an interlocutor’s question on whether courage is acquired by natural disposition or by instruction:

Next, when asked if courage is teachable or innate (εἴη διδακτὸν ἢ φυσικόν), he said, “I suppose that just as a body grows (φύεται) stronger than another body as regards pains, similarly a soul becomes by physis more powerful than another soul as regards suffering. For I see that people who have been brought up within the same system of laws and customs differ substantially from each other in daring. I think, however, that every physis grows stronger in courage through learning and practice (νομίζω μέντοι πᾶσαν φύσιν μαθήσει καὶ μελέτῃ πρὸς ἀνδρείαν αὔξεσθαι). For it is clear that if Scythians and Thracians were to receive shields and spears they wouldn’t dare fight against Lacedaemonians; and it is obvious that the Lacedaemonians wouldn’t be willing to contend with Thracians with small wicker shields and javelins or with Scythians with bows. Certainly, I see that men differ equally from each other by physis in everything else and that they improve a lot by means of diligence. It is clear from these things that all, both those who are more naturally gifted and those who are duller by nature (τοὺς εὐφυεστέρους καὶ τοὺς ἀμβλυτέρους τὴν φύσιν), should learn and practice the things in which they wish to become distinguished.”

(Xen. Mem. 3.9.1–3)

These responses should help to contextualize Herodotus’ insistence on the import of physis as a category of analysis to be debated and tested in the Histories. Equally, they situate his rejection of this as an overarching explanatory paradigm. In the end, the text shows that bravery and military success are not exhausted by the nomos-physis dichotomy; analogously, Epicharmus, Critias, Democritus, Protagoras, and Xenophon’s Socrates all give weight to elements in addition or in contradiction to the supremacy of physis.

Conclusion

Intellectual culture in the fifth century was gripped by a heated debate on the relationship of human nature to rule. Presocratic thinkers grappled with human physis in the context of conquest and domination, both internally and externally. Like these texts, Herodotus is preoccupied with physis as a conceptual framework, and he too explores the notion of human enhancement in the speeches of Pixodarus and Xerxes. Yet transhumanism is a fundamentally ambivalent motif, associated as it is with compulsion and despotism. Themistocles’ speech, with its reorientation toward human agency, offers a different perspective from which to examine transcending nature. Through these examples, the motif appears set to explain the success of the numerically inferior force of the Greeks against the Persians. But, on the battlefield it is the Persians and not the Greeks who transcend their natures, via the gaze of the monarch. As I have argued, this narrative bait and switch destabilizes the logic of the rule of the stronger, according to which the superior nature was the natural victor.