The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [226]
29 Herodotus said of Babylon ‘the magnificence of this city is not matched anywhere else in the world’. In Egypt the mighty pyramids at Giza, monuments of polished stone decorated with the carvings of animals, stood as testimony to the powers of human endeavour (Herodotus, 2.124.1–125.7).
30 Herodotus, 3.80.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Delos – and the birth of an empire
1 Trans. W. R. M. Lamb (1925) [LCL].
2 Herodotus, 6.46–7. Trans. A. De Sélincourt (1954).
3 Gold wreath with myrtle, apple and pear blossom, late fourth century BC. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (restored as part of the ‘History Lost’ exhibition, made up of pieces rescued from the illicit antiquities trade, presented by the Hellenic Foundation for Culture).
4 Cf. Powell (2nd edn., 2001), 20–1.
5 Cf. Meier (1999), 291.
6 Thucydides, 1.100; Plutarch, Cimon, 12–13.
7 Eventually, the Peace of Callias came in c.449 BC, an agreement between Athens and Persia to stop hostilities. In theory the League could be disbanded; but everyone guessed that this was no real peace, just an uneasy stand-off.
8 List taken from pp. 125–6 of Beard (2002).
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Purple ambition
1 Trans. R. Warner (1972).
2 Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
3 IGI3 259–72 9EM6647 + 13453 + 13454.
4 Meiggs (1972). See Appendix 14 for a wonderfully comprehensive catalogue of all six tribute districts. See also J. Hale (2010).
5 Rhodes (2005), 174.
6 Cf. French (2006), 121–2.
7 Cf. Rhodes (2007), 221–2.
8 Thucydides, 3.82.1–2. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
9 The one building on the Acropolis that would inspire Pausanias to a whole paragraph 700 years later. Construction did not begin on the Erechtheion until 420 BC.
10 Plutarch, Pericles, 13.1–3.
11 In this section I have relied heavily on Mary Beard’s fine little book The Parthenon (2002).
12 Material presented by Dr Alexandros Mantis, Director of the Acropolis Ephorate, Greek Archaeological Committee (UK) Lecture, 22 October 2008, King’s College London.
13 Cimon’s relative Thucydides, son of Melesias: Plutarch, Pericles, 12.2 and 14.2.
14 Thucydides, 2.61.4; 64.5–6. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
15 The pro-Athenian King Evagoras, born in Salamis in 435 BC, worked with the Persians to rout Spartan forces, his ambition to reunite the eastern Mediterranean under Athenian rule, with Cyprus its easternmost outpost. Evagoras was given honorary Athenian citizenship (c.407 BC) and honoured with the erection of a statue next to the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, in the Athenian Agora. See Karageorghis (1982).
16 Plato, Alcibiades, I, 134b. What we do not know is how terrible – or not – he thought it to be apolis, cityless or exiled from the city. As Herodotus and Sophocles had already made clear, this was a fate of tragic status. Nb In 399 BC Socrates refused to flee the city.
17 Plato, Phaedrus, 279b–c.
18 Thucydides, 1.10.2. Trans. R. Warner (1972).
19 Alcman, Partheneion, 3.61.
10 Homer, Odyssey, 13.412; Iliad, 3.443.
21 See The River Eurotas Monuments, Ministry of Culture, 5th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Sparta (2008).
22 King Agesilaus in Plutarch, Moralia, 217e (cf. 210e).
23 The historian Xenophon had fought for the Spartans as a mercenary. Perhaps Xenophon exaggerated Socrates’ Spartan affiliation in his Oeconomicus. But unless he wanted to be laughed out of town, there must have been a kernel of truth in the historian-general’s opinion. These Laconophile tendencies have already been flagged in Aristophanes’ Birds, 414 BC.
24 Plato, Crito, 53b. Trans. G. M. A. Grube.
25 Plato, Parmenides, 128c. Trans. M. Gill and P. Ryan (1997).
26 Plato, Republic, 8.558a-c. Trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Cooper (1997) [adapt.].
27 Authors include Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Plutarch, Andocides, Lysias and Demosthenes.
28 See recent discussion of this mosaic by H. A. Shapiro in Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War ed. Olga Palagia. CUP