No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
In the following essay we shall try to show how a society uses the notion of “Foreigner,” how the image which it creates of something extraneous to it is only secondarily a means of conceiving the world, a would-be scientific approach to big problems, but is essentially an ideology for its own internal use and forms an integral part of a political play which takes place within the society itself. We thought that the example of ancient Greece, and particularly of Athens, might present a particularly interesting field for analysis, since for two centuries it had the problem of the Persian Empire's vicinity—a problem which the Greek thinkers and politicians never stopped studying, each following his own point of view; the variations of which seem to us extremely instructive.
1 E. Will's analysis represents an interesting reaction to the tendency to reduce the military events of the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century to a confrontation between Greece and Asia; beside Le mond grec et l'Orient, le V siècle, coll. "Peuples et Civilisation," Paris, 1972; see also "Notes et discussions: Deux livres sur les guerres médiques et leur temps." in Revue de Philologie, 90, 1964, pp. 70-88. On the other hand we cannot follow V. Martin's "La politique des Achéménides: L'exploration prélude de la conquête" in Museum Helveticum, 22, 1965, pp. 38-48; it describes a great plan of universal conquest founded on Ahura Mazda's promise to give the Persian King "all the kingdoms of the earth." This vision gives the events of the period from 513 B.C. (at which might be dated Darius's great campaign against the Scythians) to 479 B.C. a coherence which confirms the Greek idea formed a posteriori (see for example Herodotus, VII, p. 8 or 137), but which is just as artificial. It is impossible to take literally the formulas of universal domination which flourish in the Achaemenide inscriptions, but which are only a repetition of formulas traditional in the Middle East. We can absolve Ahura Mazda of all suspicion of imperialism: he admonished the Achaemenide ruler just like the god Assur admonished the Assyrian kings. We cannot ascribe to this traditional ideology the motivation of the Achaemenide expansion; therefore we cannot attribute a priori to this expansion a systematic form due to its theocratic source. It would be better to investigate the role of war booty in those societies as well as the fact that the increase of the revenues, beginning with the royal ones, depends essentially on the increase of the subject population. These realities which might explain the interest of the Achaemenide sovereigns for Greece, still did not make them systematic conquerors decided on absorbing the Greek world at all times.
2 See W. Kierdorf; Erlebnis und Darstellung der Perserkriege, Göttingen, 1966. There is a clear analogy with certain scenes represented on Athenian vases of the same period; they show not only a multiplication of pictures of Persians; but above all in these images the mythical elements (details of dress and weapons, attitudes) belonging to the traditional lore used to represent the Amazons are substituted for the real characteristics. (see A. Bovon, "La répresentation des guerriers perses et la notion de Barbare dans la première moitié du V siècle" in the BCH, 87, 1963, pp. 579-602).
3 This theme appeared in H. Bengtson's Griechen und Perser, Munich, 1965; or in A.R. Burn's Persia and the Greeks. The Defence of the West, c. 546-478 B.C., London, 1962. For a development of this problem see Ph. Gauthier's "Le parallèle Himère-Salamine au Ve et au IVe siècle av. J.C." in the REA, 68, 1966, pp. 5-32.
4 While waiting for the publication of H. Hartog's thesis we might refer to S. Mazzarino Il pensiero storico classico, Bari, 1965; as well as the Convegno sul tema: La Persia e il mondo greco-romano, Roma, 11-14 Aprile 1965, Acc. Naz. dei Lincei, 1966, quaderno 76 (see particularly G. Pugliese Carratelli "Le guerre mediche e il sorgere della solidarietà ellenica" p. 147 ff.; C. Mossé, "Les rapports entre la Grèce et la Perse au IVe s. av. J.C." p. 177 ff. and R. Cantarella "La Persia nella letteratura greca" p. 489 ff.). Concerning the growing importance of political causality in Herodotus' works to the detriment of the themes of divine intervention or human vengeance, see J. de Romillv "La vengeance comme explication historique dans l'oeuvre d'Hérodote" in REG, 84, 1971, pp. 314- 337. Among the many passages of Greek writers concerning the feeling of a political break between the Greeks and the Persians see e.g. Herodotus VII, 8; Æschylus The Persians, v. 56 or v. 242; Euripides Helen, v. 276. This association is repeated by later writers: e.g. see Plato, Symposium, 182 and Aristotle Politics I, 1252 b.
5 This theme, which appears clear in The Persians, or in Herodotus, soon becomes a slogan, for example as quoted by Plato: (Laws, III, 698 b) "All the time of the Persian attack on Greece as well as on more or less all the nations inhabiting Europe…" or Isocrates (Or. IV, 68 ff.; XII, 48 ff., 196, etc.).
6 Beside the famous pontoons (boat bridges over the sea) the canal dug at the basis of the Acte peninsula or the stratagem concerning the construction of a dam between Attica and the island of Salamina (see G. Roux "Eschyle, Hérodote, Diodore, Plutarque raconte la bataille de Salamina" in BCH, 102, 1978, pp. 87-96) we can mention the results of excavations of Paphos on Cyprus which revealed a concrete example of the level achieved bv the Persian poliorcetics * (see F.G. Maier, Archäologie und Geschichte, Ausgrabungen in Alt-Paphos, Constanz, 1973). The theme of these huge enterprises becomes a leitmotiv in the Greek literature; see Isocrates, Or., IV, 89.
7 Plato, The Republic, VIII, 566 ff.; Aristotle, Politics, V, 1313 b, 10.
8 For an example of the Sparta-Asia association in Herodotus see VII, 3. The subject is continued in the 4th cent.: see for example Isocrates, Or. XII, 177 ff. in which the author places Sparta outside of the Greek world, associates its name with slavery and repeats the accusation brought first by Plato against its tyranny, i.e. that Sparta uses the war in order to get rid of potential rebels' opposition (180). As to culture, the Laceademonians are placed even below the Barbarians (208).
* From the Greek: the art of the seige.
9 See P. Lévêque and P. Vidal-Naquet, Clisthène l'Athénien, Paris, 1973.
10 Æschylos: The Persians, v. 350. It might be compared with the tactics adopted by Athens in the Peloponnesian war; while in 480 B.C. the citizens fled from the city and took refuge in the "ramparts of wood," in the latter war they abandoned their land and took refuge behind the mighty walls of the city. In both cases the city is identified with its citizens and this identification allows for varying tactics. In Themistocles' time they leave the entire territory, including the urban centre and even consider the necessity of exile. In Pericles' time it is enough to flee the country-side and to exile themselves in the urban centre cut off from the exterior by its walls; the fleet and the empire allow the population to survive; what is more, by freeing it from the contingencies of the traditional city-states, they help it to realize and consolidate this superior form of the city, at one with the body of its citizens.
11 See Herodotus, VII, 102 or IX, 122 and above all IX, 80 ff.; the description of the Persian camp after Plateae: the contrast of the sumptuous Persian meal compared to the mean Laconian one; but see also Democritus, fgt. 251: "poverty in a democratic state is preferable to what the sovereigns erroneously call happiness, just as freedom is preferable to slavery."
12 See Herodotus, I, 96 ff. (The Medes and other oriental nations free themselves from the Assyrians and then choose a king to rule them. "within the the meaning of continent, all were independent; and then (by their own will) they again acquired a master"). It is the same with the Egyptians: II, 147 ("When they got their freedom back after the reign of the priest of Hephaistos, the Egyptians—being forever unable to live without a king—created twelve kings and divided all Egypt into twelve parts for them to rule.")
13 The bibliography concerning these problems is very rich; we recommend particularly G. Dobesch, Der panhellenische Gedanke in 4 Jh. v. Chr. und der "Philippos" des Isokcrates, Vienna, 1968; and S. Payrau, "Considérations sur l'echec de quelques tentatives panhelléniques au IVe s. av. J.C.," in REA, 73, 1971, pp. 24-79.
14 Xenophon, Anabasis, I, 7, 4 ff.; III, 2, p. 23 ff. and particularly p. 26 ("We shall prove to the Hellenes that, if they are poor, it is because they want to be, for they have every freedom, bringing here to Asia those who now there lead miserable lives, to see them in opulence.") Plato, Laws, 736a and 740e (colonization as a means of regulation of the Greek cities) The Republic V, p. 471 b.
15 Aeneas the Tactician's Poliorketika constitutes a precious document about the military problems and their context in the period in question. Concerning the mercenaries see particularly XII, (5 on the tyranny installed at Heraclea in Pontus by a chief of mercenaries) and XIII.
16 While Plutarch called Herodotus a "philobarbaros" Euripides, in one of his last tragedies (Iphigenia in Aulis, v. 1400-1401: "The Greek has to command the Barbarian, never… the Barbarian the Greek! He is fit only for slavery, the Greek for freedom! ") and Xenophon (since Anabasis) adopt another attitude (see I, 7, 3 ff.: the traditional subject of Greek liberty as opposed to the servitude of the Barbarian becomes here downright scornful; the speech being put into the mouth of Cyrus the Younger lends it even more force); see also Isocrates, Or. V, 90-91, 101, 124, 137, 139; VII. 75, 150.
17 See Herodotus, IX, 78-79: to the Aeginian who advises him to have Mardonios' body impaled in revenge for the beheading of Leonidas, Pausanias answers "…such behaviour is fit for Barbarians but not for Greeks…"
18 This process was rendered possible by the internal needs of Macedonia which exactly reflected those of Greece; see J.R. Ellis, Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism, London, 1976. The author shows that the Macedonian king's plans against Asia constitute the basis of his foreign policy and can be understood only in the light of internal reasons: since the army constitutes the only unified corps on which the monarchy can rely, this fact directly conditions royal policy.
You have
Access