I had read Herodotus’s Histories several times in the past, but only excerpts of what is a lengthy and detailed story. Previous readings had focused on the ‘main event,’ the war between Greeks and Persians. But Herodotus takes his sweet time getting there and regales his readers with lengthy excursions, stories of great wars and campaigns, and lengthy accounts of barbarian religious and sexual customs. While also describing many actions of the Greeks, he spends less time with them, probably because as a Greek writing in Greek for Greeks, he assumes they are already familiar with their own world. He wants to inform his audience of things strange and unfamiliar.
This summer I took a seminar at St John’s in which we read the ‘whole thing,’ an adventure that I don’t think anyone in the class, including the tutors, had ever undertaken. What do we learn from the whole that is perhaps less evident from focusing on the Persian invasion of Greece?
The Histories begins with the famous statement that his book is written “so that the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians, not go unsung; as well as the causes that led them to make war on each other.” Herodotus does not distinguish between Greeks and barbarians; both are worthy of respect, and both provide lessons for his readers.
It ends, some 700 pages later, with a pithy lesson supposedly imparted by Cyrus, the founder of the Persian Empire—the Persians being the primary ‘barbarian’ discussed in the book. On hearing a proposal that the Persians should conquer more fertile and better lands, Cyrus warns that if they do so “they should prepare to be rulers no longer, but rather to become subjects under the rule of others. This was so, he said, because soft places tend to produce soft men; for the same land cannot yield both wonderful crops and men who are noble and courageous in war. And so the Persians agreed with him and departed, leaving him alone. They had lost the argument with Cyrus, and chose to dwell in a poor land rather than to be slaves to others and to cultivate the plains.” (9.122)
Now this last sentence of the book is quite astonishing, since a good part of the previous 700 pages has been devoted to detailing how Cyrus and the Persians did indeed conquer the ‘plains’—the immensely wealthy Babylon on the Euphrates, and then the most fruitful land of all, Egypt, where bountiful crops grow just by throwing seed into the fertile Nile mud. What would make Herodotus say something so obviously untrue?
The theme of interaction between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ peoples is a recurring one in the Histories. Early on King Croesus, rich ruler of Lydia, a powerful kingdom in Asia Minor, is warned not to start a war with the Persians, who live in a rocky, poor country. Such people are used to hardships and fighting. Further, if you defeat them, what do you gain? Croesus doesn’t listen and is beaten, becoming a prisoner—and loyal advisor—of Cyrus.
The Persians themselves do not seem to learn the lesson. Much of the Histories recounts all the times the Persians mount expeditions against exactly the kind of poor, warlike, unappetizing enemies that it seems you should avoid. Cyrus himself, after making Persia wealthy via victory in Babylonia, decides to march against the remote Massagetians, a nomadic people living in what is now Central Asia. Herodotus tells us that by this time Cyrus is convinced of his invincibility. To conquer them he takes the advice of Croesus, who recommends a strategem in which the Persians lay out a tremendous feast with wine and delicacies, which the poor Massagetians won’t be able to resist. When they are drunk and distracted, the Persians can easily defeat them. (1.207)
Croesus’s plan works, up to a point, allowing the Persians to destroy one-third of the Massagetian army and capture the queen’s son (who kills himself rather than remain a prisoner). But this only enrages the Massagetians, leading to a great battle—Herodotus calls it the greatest ever held between barbarians—that the Persians lose and in which Cyrus is killed. New-found Persian wealth and luxuries are not a solid basis for defeating poor, hardened tribesmen.
Cyrus’s more than sightly mad heir, Cambyses, successfully conquers Egypt but then gets it into his head to attack the far-off Ethiopians, a people who pose no threat and about whom he knows nothing. After sending spies ahead who report among other things that the Ethiopians live tremendously long lives, he mounts a huge campaign but, consumed by rage, fails to equip his army for a march through the desert. When they run out of food they resort to cannibalism and are forced to turn back.
In the most detailed of his Persian campaign stories, Herodotus describes the assault by Cambyses’s successor Darius against the Scythians, another nomadic people living to the north of the Black Sea. Darius attacks, supposedly to punish them for an earlier Scythian incursion into Persian territory (which took place well before Persia itself had been formed). Herodotus tells us that Darius’s decision was shaped by Persia’s flourishing, with many troops and ample revenues. Darius pulls together an enormous force of 700,000 men from all over the empire and marches them across the Hellespont, around the Black Sea, and deep into the northern steppes in a fruitless attempt to bring the Scythians to battle and win a victory.
Herodotus foreshadows this failure when he tells us “The Scythians were more clever than any other people in making the most important discovery we know of concerning human affairs, though I do not admire them in other respects. They have discovered how to prevent any attacker from escaping them and how to make it impossible for anyone to overtake them against their will. For instead of establishing towns or walls, they are all mounted archers who carry their homes with them and derive their sustenance not from cultivated fields but from their herds. Since they make their homes on carts, how could they not be invincible or impossible even to engage in battle?” (4.46). In short, the Scythians have no cities, no accumulated wealth, and live only to fight and resist. Darius is astonishingly blind to the nature of his enemies.
These unsuccessful campaigns provide the backdrop for the most unsuccessful of all, the eventual Persian invasion of Greece, initiated under Darius and continued under Xerxes, his successor. The Persians are ignominiously beaten not once, but twice. The Athenians throw back Darius’s forces at Marathon; then the much larger invasion under Xerxes is defeated at sea by the Athenians, at Salamis, and on land, at Plataea, by a Spartan-led Greek army.
From these prior endeavors we can see that the decision to attack the Greek mainland is consistent with Persia’s history of campaigns against peripheral peoples. The Greeks are not particularly wealthy; they live in a rocky and poor country, as anyone who has visited Greece can attest. Darius is moved to attack not out of any serious strategic calculation, but out of annoyance at Athens for instigating a revolt of the Greek states in Asia Minor which results in the destruction of Sardis. Xerxes is urged to continue by advisors who tell him “it is unreasonable that the Athenians have inflicted great evils on the Persians but have paid no penalty for it.” (7.5). Herodotus tells us that Xerxes’ uncle Artabanos tries to dissuade him by pointing to the previous failures against the Massagetians, Ethiopians, and Scythians, but is thwarted by divine intervention in the form of dreams sent to Xerxes telling him he must invade. (7.18)
The Greeks, while they are capable of mustering significant military power, especially at sea, are divided into a multitude of competing city-states, often fighting one another. They would only be a danger to Persia if they united, which is highly unlikely. Unless of course they had a common enemy.
In short, the Persian threat creates the threat to Persia. Persia fails to use its most powerful weapon to divide the Greeks, mainly money; the Greeks are highly susceptible to being bought off, and a canny enemy can easily play on their mutual suspicions. The Persian commander Mardonios is advised by his Theban allies to “Just send some money to the most powerful men in their cities. You will thus divide Hellas against itself…”. But Mardonios “out of foolish pride” doesn’t listen. (9.2)
Herodotus describes in detail how the Greeks, especially Athens and Sparta, the two greatest powers, can’t get their act together even as the Persians are at the gates. How many times do the Spartans arrive with too little, too late, because they are waiting for the omens to be favorable; or maybe because they wouldn’t mind that much if the Persians took out the Athenians. How many bitter arguments over which city should be in the lead and who has the right to the top position on the battlefield.
The Athenians, at least, are willing to give way to Sparta when necessary to achieve common action, even though in the first invasion they basically fight off Darius on their own, and when Xerxes invades they watch the Spartans retreat to the Peloponnese without any thought for Athens. (8.3) Greek division is just barely overcome to create a united front against the Persians at key moments.
Persian self-satisfaction and confidence in their numbers leads them into a series of mistakes, both moral and strategic. Under Darius they are beaten at Marathon; under Xerxes at Salamis and Plataea. In one of history’s most famous examples of hubris, Xerxes orders the sea to be whipped after a storm destroys his boat-bridge at the Hellespont. Hundreds of thousands of troops are lost, and hundreds of ships, and Xerxes has to beat a humiliating retreat that culminates, according to one account given by Herodotus, in ordering senior Persians to leap in the ocean to lighten the ship in a storm. (8.120)
What have we learned from Herodotus’s detailed accounts of Persia flinging itself into massive attacks against marginal enemies? Since the same pattern is repeated under Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes we can conclude it comes from something deep in Persia’s strategic position or self-understanding.
It seems that engaging in unprofitable battles for questionable gains is something Empires frequently do. Once established, frontiers have to be defended, distant allies must not be allowed to lose, and the Imperial Power has a reputation to uphold. Emperors find it easy to imagine that their money, numbers, and superior armament make them invincible. From Scythia and the Germanic forests to Vietnam and Iraq, the logic is consistent.
It is also possible that Persia’s Kings see these campaigns as a way to avoid the danger pointed to by Cyrus, the ‘softness’ that accompanies becoming wealthy and successful. Once Persia becomes rich, it might be wise to make sure Persia’s elite does not lose its original warrior spirit. Regular campaigning keeps these virtues alive; it also occupies the time and talent of those who might otherwise become disgruntled schemers against the King. Darius at one point justifies the Scythian campaign as necessary to keep his people occupied.
Xenophon, writing after Herodotus and with his own extensive knowledge of Persian ways from his service during one of Persia’s internal wars, addresses this issue in his Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus. After Cyrus’s initial victories that create the Empire, Xenophon’s Cyrus considers how to rule, saying “I know that if we turn toward easygoingness and the pleasure seeking of bad human beings, who believe that laboring is misery and living without labor is happiness, I say that quickly we will be but of little worth to ourselves and quickly be deprived of all good things..It is a great work to gain an empire, but it is an even greater work to keep one safe after taking it” (Cyropaedia VII 5). Cyrus tries to keep his key supporters in trim with regular training and lots of hunting.
Empires once established can take a long time to die. Their riches and power cushion them, and they often find a second wind under new rulers who undertake needed reforms. As Herodotus portrays it, failure, even on a colossal scale, does not seem, at least immediately, to threaten either the empire itself or even the position of its Kings. Defeat in war on the periphery does not lead to the overrunning of the imperial core, or the revolt of subjugated peoples, or embolden internal enemies to move against the King, at least not successfully. These are all frequently observed consequences of military failure in other cases. Xerxes makes it back to Susa, his lieutenants straggle home. The Empire lasts another 150 years.
Herodotus of course is not aware of the course of Persian-Greek relations over this period, during which Persia becomes closely involved in the internal politics of Greece. But he can tell that the aftermath of the wars with Persia will be a test for the Greeks as much as the Persians. As Darius’s fleet is bearing down on Greece, he tells us that this portends a period when “more evils befell Hellas than in all the other generations prior to Darius. Some of these evils were caused by the Persians, but others by the leading states of Hellas waging war for political domination among themselves.” (6.98).
Athens creates its own sea-based empire, building on fear of Persia among the Greek states of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands. Its rising power alarms Sparta, which responds, as Thucydides meticulously describes, by seeking to subdue Athens in a 20-year extended struggle.
Persia, having learned from its defeats, stops trying to conquer the Greeks and adopts an ‘offshore balancing’ strategy of weakening Athens and Sparta by intervening regularly on one side or the other, using money and arms and occasional direct support. It helps engineer Sparta’s ultimate victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian Wars. The Empire goes through multiple succession crises, and loses control of Egypt among other setbacks, but stabilizes and has a lengthy period of internal growth under the 45 year reign of Arataxerxes I. The King’s Peace achieved under Artaxerxes II in 387 BC marks an acknowledgement of Persian dominance over all of Asia Minor.
In the end, though, the Persian fear of the Greeks proves prophetic. The Macedonians, a people ironically often allied with Persia, gather strength. One hundred and fifty years after Salamis, Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great conquer and unite the Greek city-states. Then Alexander, apparently motivated in part by a desire to avenge the Persian invasions, brings down Persia and makes Greek culture and language dominant throughout the Near East, ushering in the Hellenistic Age.
But Alexander, like the Persians, can’t stop fighting, often against the same kind of peripheral nomads that proved irresistible to Cyrus and Darius. He and his Greeks become possessors of the great wealth and luxurious habits that have overtaken the Persians; more than once his own followers object to Alexander’s adoption of Persian ways. When Alexander dies, his Empire breaks apart into warring dynasties. The Alexandrian successor-states become bywords for corruption and decadence.
What exactly happens when a poor, hardened, and god-fearing people suddenly achieves great wealth and power? Is it ever possible not to be corrupted and, eventually, give way to the next round of poorer, harder, more disciplined successors? Persia, Alexander, Rome, Byzantium, Baghdad, Spain…the list is long. Ibn Khaldun devoted his great medieval study of politics, the Muqaddimah (much of it drawing on the history of the same lands once occupied by Persia and Alexander), to these same cycles of rise and decline. The wealthy, organized urban centers generally have the means to fend off the warlike tribes of the desert; but every so often the tribes find a leader, they unite, and the cities fall. For a time the new rulers hold on to their old ways and stay strong, but inevitably their wealth and security softens them, they lose their edge, and the cycle repeats.
Is the United States, or the West more generally, subject to the same arc? Many have thought so and predicted the end of liberal democracy, or of modernity as a whole. Nietzsche famously described in the late 19th century the despicable “Last Man,” the soulless product of a modern society that prioritizes comfort and security, and called for his replacement. Influenced by Nietzsche and similar thinkers, fascists and communists alike claimed in the 20th century that the capitalist democracies had become corrupt and weak and ripe for the taking.
The decadent democracies however somehow rallied to fire-bomb the cities of their fascist enemies in World War II and force them to surrender unconditionally, then out-spent and out-maneuvered their Cold War communist adversaries. Perhaps fundamentally new developments—industrialization, scientific progress, mass democracy—allow modern powers to resist the seemingly inevitable cycles of the past. Nevertheless, the same arguments are heard now from Moscow and Beijing. Your time is up, is their message.
Nothing lasts forever, and it may be that this time the enemies of liberal democracy have found a winning formula. Using new media and technology, they have become adept at deepening fissures of race, inequality, and culture inside their adversaries, and instilling distrust of the institutions—government, the press, the schools, science—that provide the glue for liberal societies. China in particular has taken aim at what it sees as the West’s source of strength, its advanced technology, and dedicated itself to dominating the new realms of quantum computing, AI, and renewable energy.
Like the ancient Greeks, winning has allowed latent divisions to surface and become toxic. Post-Persian War Greece splintered between democracy and autocracy, with external powers regularly boosting their preferred faction to weaken and take over target cities. Within most democracies there now exist growing movements whose leaders look to the world’s tyrants as models.
As the title suggests, Francis Fukuyama’s oft-cited 1992 treatise on the victory of liberal democracy and market economics, The End of History and the Last Man, pointed back to Nietzsche. He warned that success in winning the Cold War could be followed by profound dissatisfaction with the ensuing era of peace and consensus. The decades since have confirmed his fears. Forty years of neoliberalism have created an atomized, individualistic citizenry that is prickly in defense of its rights and has little use for, or understanding of, the common good. Wealth and technology undergird a highly capable military, but also a joyless consumerism that is bemoaned but seems inescapable. A sluggish politics mired in factionalism and corruption appears unable to respond to today’s challenges, whether climate change or immigration or inequality.
In response, many have turned to extreme nationalism or religious zeal or fealty to One Leader, looking for purpose and direction. This is the modern version of Cyrus’s warning. If you conquer the plains, be ready to become weak. Your riches will not save you forever. Be ready, if you lose your footing, to be enslaved, if not from without, then from within.