Bisaltes served as a deputy of the former Milesian tyrant Histiaeus in their freebooting activities in the HELLESPONT after the Ionian defeat at LADE in 494 BCE (6.26.1). His name may be of Thracian origin (Scott 2005, 141–42), but he is not otherwise attested.
SEE ALSO: Bisaltia; Histiaeus son of Lysagoras; Ionian Revolt; Thrace
REFERENCE
1 Scott, Lionel. 2005. Historical Commentary on Herodotus Book 6. Leiden: Brill.
BISALTIA (Βισαλτίη, ἡ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
A region west of the STRYMON River in northern Greece, around and north of the Greek city of ARGILUS (BA 51 B3; Müller I, 163–64). The inhabitants, the Bisaltae, were Thracians. XERXES led his Persian invasion force through Bisaltia in 480 BCE and recruited troops there; Herodotus notes that the Thracians still in his day treat the road Xerxes marched on with great reverence (7.115). During his narrative of Xerxes’ retreat after SALAMIS, Herodotus relates a “monstrous deed” (8.116) of the Bisaltian king: he withdrew to the RHODOPE Mountains rather than “become a slave” to Xerxes and forbade his six sons from joining the Persian expedition. They ignored his command; when they returned alive from the war, he gouged out their eyes. Coinage issued by the Bisaltae, dating to the 470s and 460s, refers to a King Mosses (Greenwalt 2015, 341), perhaps indicating a period of independence after the Persian retreat until the expansion of Macedonian power under ALEXANDER I (son of Amyntas). The Bisaltae still inhabited the region, and maintained a fierce reputation, when Roman armies began to arrive in the second century BCE (Livy 45.30.3).
SEE ALSO: Bisaltes; Creston; Macedonia; Punishment; Slavery; Thrace
REFERENCE
1 Greenwalt, William S. 2015. “Thracian and Macedonian Kingship.” In A Companion to Ancient Thrace, edited by Julia Valeva, Emil Nankov, and Denver Graninger, 337–51. Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell.
FURTHER READING
1 Zannis, A. G. 2014. Le pays entre le Strymon et le Nestos: géographie et histoire (VIIe–IVe siècle avant J.‐C.), 303–7. Athens (Meletemata 71).
BISANTHE (Βισάνθη, ἡ)
CHRISTOPHER BARON
University of Notre Dame
Greek settlement on the north coast of the PROPONTIS (BA 52 B3), founded by SAMOS (Steph. Byz. s.v. Βισάνθη (Β 104)), usually identified with modern Tekirdag. Herodotus describes Bisanthe as “on the HELLESPONT” (7.137.3)—interesting for his conception of GEOGRAPHY, but perhaps also reflecting the ATHENIAN EMPIRE’s definition of the “Hellespontine District” (which stretched all the way to BYZANTIUM). Herodotus only names Bisanthe in passing, as the place where the Spartan envoys Nicolaus and Aneristus were seized by the Thracian king SITALCES and taken to ATHENS for execution in 430 BCE, the latest event explicitly referred to in the Histories.
SEE ALSO: Aneristus son of Sperthias; Date of Composition; Peloponnesian War; Thrace
FURTHER READING
1 IACP no. 673 (914–15).
2 Isaac, Benjamin. 1986. The Greek Settlements in Thrace until the Macedonian Conquest, 212–13. Leiden: Brill.
BISITUN
MATT WATERS
University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
The trilingual Bisitun Inscription is the victory MONUMENT of DARIUS I, inscribed c. 520 BCE around a central relief showing the king triumphant over ten rivals. It is the longest, narrative Old Persian inscription extant. It also served as a template for ACHAEMENID royal ideology. In addition, the Bisitun Inscription is the foundation text for the modern discipline of Assyriology; it provided the key to the decipherment of the Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian cuneiform scripts (see esp. Wiesehöfer 2001, 223–42).
Mt. Bisitun (Behistun, Bisotun, etc.—spelling varies) is on the main east‐west road through Media across northwestern Iran, roughly halfway between modern Kermanshah and Hamadan (ancient ECBATANA). Darius commissioned a relief approximately 200 feet above the road that pictured himself triumphant over nine rebels, with a tenth added subsequently. Behind the king are two unidentified retainers, and Ahuramazda as the winged disk hovers above the scene (Trümpelmann 1967; Luschey 1968; Root 1979 and 2013; Feldman 2007). The inscription is recorded in three languages around the relief: Elamite (Grillot‐Susini, Herrenschmidt, and Malbran‐Labat 1993; Vallat 2013), Babylonian Akkadian (Voightlander 1978), and Old Persian (Kent 1953, 116–34; Schmitt 1991; Kuhrt 2007, 140–58; note also Lecoq 1997, 187–217 and Bae 2001), each in a distinct cuneiform script. The organization of INSCRIPTIONS around the relief figures suggests that the Elamite version was inscribed first, then the Akkadian, and the Old Persian added subsequently. A fifth column of additional text chronicling campaigns of Darius’ second and third years (DB §§75–76) was added later in Old Persian only, along with an additional figure, the Scythian Skunkha. This resulted in defacement of part of the first Elamite version, so a second copy of the entire Elamite version was inscribed to the lower left of the relief. The Akkadian version is to the direct left of the relief, and the Old Persian version underneath the relief. Captions in all three languages identify the rebel kings, but not the retainers behind Darius.
Figure 9 The multi‐lingual inscription carved into Mount Bisitun, comprising the same text repeated in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, records the military victories of Darius I (c. 550–486 BCE) and proclaims the legitimacy of his kingship. BLP1220398. http://www.artres.com/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=2UN365CWOND6P&IT=ZoomImageTemplate01_VForm&IID=2UNTWAG9I6VK&PN=1&CT=Search&SF=0.
Photo © Zev Radovan / Bridgeman Images.
Figure 10 Detailed drawing of the relief at Bisitun, labeling the captions which identify the figures, in Old Persian (Per.), Akkadian (Bab.), and Elamite (Sus.). From L. W. King and R. Campbell Thompson, Sculptures and Inscriptions of Darius the Great, on the Rock of Behistûn in Persia (London, 1907), Plate XIII. Public Domain.
Darius claimed that copies of the inscription were disseminated throughout the empire (DB §70). This claim is substantiated by a fragmentary copy, with abbreviated relief sequence, found at BABYLON (Seidl 1999) and by a later copy in Aramaic found at ELEPHANTINE in southern EGYPT (Greenfield and Porten 1982). Further, despite significant
