the capacity to resist aggression, exemplified by the Scythians as well as Cyrus’ Persians and the Greeks of 480 BCE, but it also supplies such men with both the capacity to seek power themselves and a motive for doing so (1.125–26). The increase in Persian material prosperity after their conquest of Lydia (1.71, 89, 135; note in particular the use and abuse of WINE in relation to the MASSAGETAE and Ethiopians: 1.133, 207, 211–12; 3.20–22) suggests a gradual decadence as the explanation for Persian failure to conquer Greece (see SOFTNESS), but the re‐appearance of the theme in the elusive final chapter (9.122) implies that this is not the whole story, and the Persian choice not to migrate to a soft land chimes with Herodotus’ recognition of Persian valor (Flower and Marincola 2002, 311–14). We should note, too, that while the Lydians and Medes fall into subjection as a result of the downfalls of Croesus and ASTYAGES (though the effeminization of the Lydians comes later and was not inevitable: 1.154–56 with 79–80), the Persians and their empire survive the repeated overreaching of their rulers. This might be no more than an acknowledgment of contemporary reality, but it also suggests that Herodotus is not a simple determinist with a cyclical view of history.
Herodotus clearly has his own times in view, and particularly the rise of the Athenian Empire and the resulting tensions in the Greek world which culminated in the battle for archē in the PELOPONNESIAN WAR (esp. 8.3; 6.98; prolepses extend as far as 430 BCE: 7.137), and some scholars have read the work as closely foreshadowing those developments (Raaflaub 1987) and as warning the Athenians that their empire will share the fate of its predecessors (Moles 1996). Certainly there are disquieting elements in the closing chapters, in which the Athenians carry the war into ASIA, impale ARTAŸCTES (a Persian punishment: see MUTILATION) and stone to death his innocent son (9.114–21: the annalistic formula at the end of the passage positively invites meditation on the sequel), and already after the Battle of Salamis THEMISTOCLES had begun to extort money from other Greeks (8.111–12; note the Andrian rebuff in terms of their poverty), though the complexities of the passage, including evocation of the TROJAN WAR, the differences between Greece and Persia which contribute to Herodotus’ explanation of the outcome of the war, and the ambiguities surrounding Persia’s failure already noted all leave scope for a more open‐ended reading of this enigmatic and not obviously closural sequence (Boedeker 1988; Dewald 1997; and see END OF THE HISTORIES).
Indeed, while on one level Herodotus indubitably takes a moralizing view of empire, he also recognizes it as a comprehensible human drive explicable in terms of a variety of factors which are not mutually exclusive. Beyond the natural will to power and the desire to expand, attacks on neighbors may be pre‐emptive and motivated by concern for self‐preservation (1.46; 7.11), or else envisaged as retaliatory (1.73, 75; 7.8.β, 11 and see RECIPROCITY and VENGEANCE: revenge on the Athenians for the burning of the temple of CYBELE in SARDIS is a recurrent motif in Xerxes’ campaign, e.g., 8.68, 102, 140.α; cf. 6.101), while the cases of Darius (3.143) and Xerxes (7.8) show that individual kings may feel, or come under, pressure to take imperial initiatives for personal reasons, to present themselves as worthy and manly rulers and to live up to their predecessors, influenced by a perception that expansion has become a national tradition (which indeed might to some extent reflect authentic Persian ideology: Harrison 2015). These reasons are often combined, as when Darius plans to use revenge on the Athenians as a pretext (prophasis) for subjecting those Greeks who had not given EARTH AND WATER (6.94), and in the most fully developed cases, those of Croesus and Xerxes, the full range of human motivations are simultaneously in play, alongside the broader theological and cosmic patterns generated by Herodotus’ thinking about GODS AND THE DIVINE.
SEE ALSO: Athens and Herodotus; Causation; Conquest; Date of Composition; Wealth and Poverty
REFERENCES
1 Boedeker, Deborah. 1988. “Protesilaos and the End of Herodotus’ Histories.” ClAnt 7: 30–48. Reprinted in ORCS Vol. 1, 359–78 (slightly revised).
2 Dewald, Carolyn. 1997. “Wanton Kings, Pickled Heroes, and Gnomic Founding Fathers: Strategies of Meaning at the End of Herodotus’s Histories.” In Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature, edited by Deborah H. Roberts, Francis M. Dunn, and Don Fowler, 62–82. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Reprinted in ORCS Vol. 1, 379–401.
3 Fisher, Nick. 2002. “Popular Morality in Herodotus.” In Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, edited by Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, and Hans van Wees, 199–224. Leiden: Brill.
4 Flower, Michael A., and John Marincola, eds. 2002. Herodotus: Histories Book IX. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5 Fornara, Charles W. 1971. Herodotus: An Interpretative Essay. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
6 Harrison, Thomas. 2015. “Herodotus on the Character of Persian Imperialism (7.5–11).” In Assessing Biblical and Classical Sources for the Reconstruction of Persian Influence, History and Culture, edited by Thomas Harrison and Anne Fitzpatrick‐McKinley, 9–48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
7 Immerwahr, Henry R. 1966. Form and Thought in Herodotus. Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press.
8 Moles, John L. 1996. “Herodotus Warns the Athenians.” Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 9: 259–84.
9 Raaflaub, Kurt A. 1987. “Herodotus, Political Thought, and the Meaning of History.” Arethusa 20: 221–48.
FURTHER READING
1 Lateiner, Donald. 1989. The Historical Method of Herodotus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
ARCHELAOI, see DYMANATAE
ARCHELAUS (Ἀρχέλεως, ὁ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
Legendary Spartan king, son of AGESILAUS (1), member of the Agiad royal house of SPARTA. Herodotus mentions Archelaus in the GENEALOGY he provides for LEONIDAS before the Battle of THERMOPYLAE (7.204).
SEE ALSO: Agis son of Eurysthenes; Teleclus
FURTHER READING
1 Vannicelli, Pietro, and Aldo Corcella, eds. 2017. Erodoto. Le Storie, libro VII: Serse e Leonida, 555–56. Milan: Mondadori.
ARCHERY
JOHN O. HYLAND
Christopher Newport University
Archery carried powerful symbolic associations in both the Ancient Near East and Greece. Achaemenid Persian reliefs avoid the image of the king in combat, but show him with bow in hand, confronting defeated enemies (BISITUN) or watching over loyal subjects (Naqsh‐i Rustam). Royal darics and sigloi minted in western Anatolia show the royal archer in more active stances, drawing his bow in Type II, and advancing with bow and spear (Type III). Herodotus is well aware of the bow’s associations with Persian masculinity and royal might (1.136.2; 3.30.1; 5.105.1). Greek perceptions of archery included the divine and heroic (APOLLO, ARTEMIS, HERACLES, and Odysseus), although a negative connotation, perhaps alluded to by HOMER (Il. 11.385–87), grew more common in the classical period.
In practice, units of archers formed important components of Ancient Near Eastern ARMIES. Regular Persian infantry were armed with both bow and spear, and some Persian CAVALRY carried bows instead of, or in addition to, javelins. Bowmen were common in early Greece, and although
