to the Athenians, when the Persians attacked, Ameinias was the only man not to back water, but attacked and became inextricably entangled with a Persian ship; the Greeks came to his aid and the battle began. The Aeginetans, however, attributed the start to a ship bringing deities from their island (8.84). To his great annoyance, Ameinias was later pursuing the ship of the Carian queen ARTEMISIA when it attacked a ship on the Persian side; deceived, he turned away (8.87). This cost him the prize of ten thousand drachmas offered to whomever captured her alive: the Greeks took it as a great INSULT that a woman should attack Greece (8.88, 93).
Tradition made Ameinias brother of the poet AESCHYLUS, who also fought at Salamis (Diod. Sic. 11.27.2; Vit. Aesch. 4); however, Aeschylus was from ELEUSIS, not Pallene. PLUTARCH (Them. 14.3; cf. Cat. Mai. 29.2) has a slightly different account of the battle, in which Ameinias is from the deme of DECELEA and was attacked by the great ship of Ariamenes, brother of XERXES and admiral of the Persian fleet. They were entangled and Ariamenes was killed attempting to board Ameinias’ TRIREME; his body was found and taken by Artemisia to Xerxes. There is a friendly letter to Ameinias purporting to be from THEMISTOCLES (no. 11; Doenges 1981, 177–81).
SEE ALSO: Athens; Euphorion the Athenian; Naval Warfare
REFERENCE
1 Doenges, Norman A., ed. 1981. The Letters of Themistokles. New York: Arno Press.
FURTHER READING
1 Lazenby, J. F. 1988. “Aischylos and Salamis.” Hermes 116.2: 168–85.
2 TrGF vol. III, pp. 46–48.
AMEINOCLES (Ἀμεινοκλῆς, ὁ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
A merchant of Magnesia in northern Greece, son of CRETINES, who owned land near Cape SEPIAS. Ameinocles profited greatly from scavenging the Persian fleet that had been heavily damaged in a storm during XERXES’ invasion of 480 BCE. However, Herodotus contrasts this sudden fortune with the fact that Ameinocles “suffered the misfortune of having killed a son” (7.190; cf. Macan 1908, I.1: 292). PLUTARCH viewed Herodotus’ account as defamatory, claiming that Herodotus mentions Ameinocles for the sole purpose of revealing him as a child‐murderer (Mor. 864c3–13).
SEE ALSO: Disaster; Happiness; Magnesia in Greece; Wealth and Poverty
REFERENCE
1 Macan, Reginald Walter. 1908. Herodotus: The Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Books. 2 vols. London: Macmillan. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
FURTHER READING
1 Vannicelli, Pietro, and Aldo Corcella, eds. 2017. Erodoto. Le Storie, libro VII: Serse e Leonida, 537. Milan: Mondadori.
AMESTRIS ( Ἄμηστρις, ἡ)
ROBERT ROLLINGER
University of Innsbruck
Daughter of OTANES (3) and wife of XERXES (7.61.2). Herodotus presents Amestris in more detail in two episodes characterized by the Greek topos of a licentious and notoriously cruel Persian queen (Rollinger 2010). Herodotus alleges the existence of a Persian custom of burying people alive, referring to a story he purportedly heard that the aged Amestris buried alive fourteen sons of notable Persians as a gift to the god of the netherworld (7.114.2). Near the end of the Histories he relates in detail (9.109–12) Amestris’ cruel PUNISHMENT of the anonymous wife of Xerxes’ brother MASISTES after Xerxes committed adultery with Masistes’ daughter ARTAŸNTE. Amestris has her blameless relative mutilated, cutting off her breasts, nose, ears, lips, and tongue and throwing them to the DOGS.
Some MANUSCRIPTS exhibit the variant spellings Amastris and Amistris. The name is Iranian, although the exact etymology is debated (Schmitt, IPGL 70–71).
SEE ALSO: End of the Histories; Human Sacrifice; Mutilation; Violence; Women in the Histories
REFERENCE
1 Rollinger, Robert. 2010. “Extreme Gewalt und Strafgericht. Ktesias und Herodot als Zeugnisse für den Achaimenidenhof.” In Der Achämenidenhof—The Achaemenid Court, edited by Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger, 559–666. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
FURTHER READING
1 Brosius, Maria. 1996. Women in Ancient Persia, 559–331 BC. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
AMIANTUS (Ἀμίαντος, ὁ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
Amiantus, son of LYCURGUS, from TRAPEZUS in ARCADIA, was one of the thirteen men who came to SICYON as a suitor for Cleisthenes’ daughter AGARISTE (I), sometime in the sixth century BCE (6.127.3). Nothing else is known of him. (See ALCON for bibliography.)
SEE ALSO: Cleisthenes of Sicyon; Competition; Hippocleides; Megacles (II)
AMMON ( Ἄμμων, ὁ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
“Ammon” refers both to the Sîwa OASIS in the western DESERT of EGYPT (BA 73 C4) and to the god, equated by the Greeks with ZEUS, whose sanctuary and ORACLE were found there. Herodotus attributes the community there to colonists from Egypt and ETHIOPIA (2.42.4), ruled by a king ETEARCHUS in or just before Herodotus’ time (2.32.1). The archaeological and literary evidence indicates a Libyan people influenced by or adapting Egyptian culture, including the iconography of Ammon wearing a ram’s‐fleece headdress (Asheri in ALC, 425–27). Herodotus places the Ammonians ten days’ journey west of Egyptian THEBES; they are the first people living along the sand ridge he envisions running the length of north Africa, i.e., LIBYA (4.181); the actual distance is 900 kilometers (Corcella in ALC, 704–5).
The oracle of Zeus/Ammon was well‐known to the Greeks by the fifth century BCE. PINDAR was said to have written a hymn to Ammon and dedicated an image of the god at his temple in Boeotian THEBES (Paus. 9.16.1), and Herodotus includes it as the only non‐Greek oracle tested by CROESUS (1.46.3). He also links it with the oracle of Zeus at DODONA, both by reporting the account he heard from the priestesses at the latter and by noting the resemblance in divinatory methods at the two sites (2.55–57). Herodotus uses an oracle issued by Ammon to the CITIES of MAREA and APIS as PROOF of the correctness of his own argument concerning Egyptian GEOGRAPHY (2.18). The “Spring of the Sun” was also famous in antiquity (e.g., Diod. Sic. 17.50.4–5; Lucr. 6.840–78) and still today maintains its constant temperature, creating the illusion that it fluctuates opposite to the daily heating and cooling cycle of the desert (Hdt. 4.181).
The Ammonians were supposedly the object of a failed attempt at CONQUEST by the Persian king CAMBYSES (II), who in his MADNESS sent an
