Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [4]
Arimnestos of Plataea may – just may – have been Herodotus’s source for the events of the Persian Wars. The careful reader will note that Herodotus himself – a scribe from Halicarnassus – appears several times . . .
Archilogos – Ephesian, son of Hipponax the poet; a typical Ionian aristocrat, who loves Persian culture and Greek culture too, who serves his city, not some cause of ‘Greece’ or ‘Hellas’, and who finds the rule of the Great King fairer and more ’democratic’ than the rule of a Greek tyrant.
Arimnestos – Child of Chalkeotechnes and Euthalia.
Aristagoras – Son of Molpagoras, nephew of Histiaeus. Aristagoras led Miletus while Histiaeus was a virtual prisoner of the Great King Darius at Susa. Aristagoras seems to have initiated the Ionian Revolt – and later to have regretted it.
Aristides – Son of Lysimachus, lived roughly 525 – 468 BC, known later in life as ‘The Just’. Perhaps best known as one of the commanders at Marathon. Usually sided with the Aristocratic party.
Artaphernes – Brother of Darius, Great King of Persia, and Satrap of Sardis. A senior Persian with powerful connections.
Bion – A slave name, meaning ‘life’. The most loyal family retainer of the Corvaxae.
Briseis – Daughter of Hipponax, sister of Archilogos.
Calchas – A former warrior, now the keeper of the shrine of the Plataean Hero of Troy, Leitus.
Chalkeotechnes – The Smith of Plataea; head of the family Corvaxae, who claim descent from Herakles.
Chalkidis – Brother of Arimnestos, son of Chalkeotechnes.
Darius – King of Kings, the lord of the Persian Empire, brother to Artaphernes.
Draco – Wheelwright and wagon builder of Plataea, a leading man of the town.
Empedocles – A priest of Hephaestus, the Smith God.
Epaphroditos – A warrior, an aristocrat of Lesbos.
Eualcidas – A Hero. Eualcidas is typical of a class of aristocratic men – professional warriors, adventurers, occasionally pirates or merchants by turns. From Euboeoa.
Heraclitus – circa 535 – 475 BC. One of the ancient world’s most famous philosophers. Born to aristocratic family, he chose philosophy over political power. Perhaps most famous for his statement about time, ‘You cannot step twice into the same river’. His belief that ‘strife is justice’ and other similar sayings which you’ll find scattered through these pages made him a favorite with Nietzche. His works, mostly now lost, probably established the later philosophy of Stoicism.
Herakleides – An Aeolian, a Greek of Asia Minor. With his brothers Nestor and Orestes, he becomes a retainer – a warrior – in service to Arimnestos. It is easy, when looking at the birth of Greek democracy, to see the whole form of modern government firmly established – but at the time of this book, democracy was less than skin deep and most armies were formed of semi-feudal war bands following an aristocrat.
Heraklides – Aristides’s helmsman, a lower class Athenian who has made a name for himself in war.
Hermogenes – Son of Bion, Arimnestos’s slave.
Hesiod – A great poet (or a great tradition of poetry) from Boeotia in Greece, Hesiod’s ‘Works and Days’ and ‘Theogony’ were widely read in the sixth century and remain fresh today – they are the chief source we have on Greek farming, and this book owes an enormous debt to them.
Hippias – Last tyrant of Athens, overthrown around 510 BC (that is, just around the beginning of this book), Hippias escaped into exile and became a pensioner of Darius of Persia.
Hipponax – 540 BC – c. 498 BC. A Greek poet and satirist, considered the inventor of parody. He is supposed to have said ‘There are two days when a woman is a pleasure: the day one marries her and the day one buries her’.
Histiaeus – Tyrant of Miletus and ally of Darius of Persia, possible originator of the plan for the Ionian Revolt.
Homer – Another great poet, roughly Hesiod’s contemporary (give or take fifty years!) and again, possibly more a poetic tradition than an individual man. Homer is reputed as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two great epic poems which, between them, largely defined what heroism and aristocratic