Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of text-figures
- List of chronological tables
- Preface
- PART I THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
- PART II THE GREEK STATES
- 4 The tyranny of the Pisistratidae
- 5 The reform of the Athenian state by Cleisthenes
- 6 Greece before the Persian invasion
- 7 Archaic Greek society
- 8 The Ionian Revolt
- 9 The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes
- 10 The expedition of Xerxes
- 11 The liberation of Greece
- PART III THE WEST
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- Map 1. The Achaemenid empire
- Map 6. Central Asia
- Map 9. The Black Sea area
- Map 11. Egypt
- Map 13. Greek and Phoenician trade in the period of the Persian Wars
- Map 15. Greece and the Aegean
- Map 18. Northern and Central Italy
- Map 19. Central and Southern Italy
- References
9 - The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes
from PART II - THE GREEK STATES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of text-figures
- List of chronological tables
- Preface
- PART I THE PERSIAN EMPIRE
- PART II THE GREEK STATES
- 4 The tyranny of the Pisistratidae
- 5 The reform of the Athenian state by Cleisthenes
- 6 Greece before the Persian invasion
- 7 Archaic Greek society
- 8 The Ionian Revolt
- 9 The expedition of Datis and Artaphernes
- 10 The expedition of Xerxes
- 11 The liberation of Greece
- PART III THE WEST
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Index
- Map 1. The Achaemenid empire
- Map 6. Central Asia
- Map 9. The Black Sea area
- Map 11. Egypt
- Map 13. Greek and Phoenician trade in the period of the Persian Wars
- Map 15. Greece and the Aegean
- Map 18. Northern and Central Italy
- Map 19. Central and Southern Italy
- References
Summary
THE NATURE OF THE SOURCES
Herodotus' description of the Persian Wars was based on many accounts by eyewitnesses, mainly but not exclusively on the Greek side (sometimes he himself heard a participant, sometimes he obtained a report at second hand), and this description in turn was recited to audiences which contained veterans of those wars. Thus it was contemporary history in the fullest sense, deriving from contemporaries of the wars and checked by contemporaries at each audition. How good was the memory of those contemporaries about the Persian Wars? We should not be misled by comparisons with the monotonous trench warfare of 1914–18; for moments of action against Persia were brief in time and exciting in character, and they must have stayed vivid in men's minds. Thus the facts related by Herodotus are very likely to be correct; for instance, that the Athenians ‘went to the defence of Marathon’ (VI.103.1) and marched back ‘as fast as possible’ after the fighting (VI. 116), or that the Athenians faced the Phoenicians shortly after dawn and a westerly wind was blowing that evening in the Salamis Channel (VIII. 83, 85, 96). The sequence of events too is likely to be correct: for instance, Eretria falling a few days before the Persians landed at Marathon, or the shield signal being followed at once by the race for Athens, and the Phoenicians arriving by sea and the army overland that very evening.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Ancient History , pp. 491 - 517Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988
References
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