You've probably heard of the time a bunch of Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes. But have you heard of the two times Spartan armies were defeated by women?
The first case involves the early Spartan king Charilaos, who may or may not be a historical figure. Allegedly, he was persuaded to invade neighbouring Tegea, thinking it would be easy for the Spartans to capture the city and its territory and enslave the Tegeans. But they were warned of his approach and prepared to defend themselves:
At the time of the Lakonian war, when Charilaos king of Sparta made the first invasion, the women armed themselves and lay in ambush under the hill they call today Phylaktris ("Sentry Hill"). When the armies met and the men on either side were performing many remarkable exploits, the women, they say, came on the scene and put the Lakedaimonians to flight. Marpessa, named the Sow, surpassed, they say, the other women in daring, while Charilaos himself was one of the Spartan prisoners.
-- Pausanias 8.48.4-5
The second case happened about 494 BC, when the Spartans under king Kleomenes annihilated the Argive army at the battle of Sepeia and tried to seize the city:
When Kleomenes led his troops to Argos there were no men to defend it. But Telesilla mounted on the wall all the slaves and all those who were too young or too old to bear arms, and she herself, collecting the arms in the sanctuaries and those that were left in the houses, armed the women of vigorous age, and then posted them where she knew the enemy would attack. When the Lakedaimonians came on, the women were not dismayed at their battle-cry, but stood their ground and fought valiantly. Then the Lakedaimonians, realizing that to destroy the women would be an invidious success while defeat would mean a shameful disaster, gave way before the women.
-- Pausanias 2.20.8-9
Both stories come to us through Pausanias, an author of the Roman Imperial period who was mostly interested in reporting local traditions that explained the statues and sanctuaries he saw on his tour of Greece. We don't really know how much of these stories are history and how much is self-aggrandizing legend. Both are associated with oracles already reported by Herodotos and rely on alternative readings of those oracles, possibly reflecting later local "corrections" to the stories he told. But it's certainly a nice thing to point out to modern people who are a little too excited about the Spartans as unstoppable manly men ;)
Well, I might as well share a classic story of one of the most influential, if not the most, influential person of this time period—Alexander the Great. When he was fighting at the famous Battle of the Granicus against Greek mercenaries, Persian light infantry, and the Persian heavy cavalry, he (as always) fought up close in the battle. On his horse, he used what was believed to be an actual ancient Trojan shield. While on horseback, his shield was knocked away, and he was stabbed by a Persian in the back of the skull; the Persian sword went THROUGH Alexander’s helmet, and cut his scalp. Alexander was phased, and a Persian came up from behind him on horseback and was about to kill King Alexander with his sword. At the last second, Alexander’s bodyguard Cleitus the Black severer the Persian’s arm. Alexander would later go on to get in a drunken fight with said bodyguard where he threw a javelin through his heart. Alexander really did seem immortal.
This week I'm writing about the Etruscans, members of a civilization that existed from roughly 900 BCE to the first century BCE, which makes them a perfect subject for this post's time period.
There’s little popularly known about the Etruscans in general – they’re an obscure Italic people. One tidbit that gets passed around from contemporary Greek commentators like Aristotle and Athenaeus is that they were very accepting of public nudity and sex, throwing orgies and shaving their bodies in a “barbarian” fashion. Some other, related ideas were that Etruscan women were on an equal footing with men (in a bad way), and that Etruscan men were happy to raise their wives’ children regardless of their biological fathers.
Some Greek observations about Etruscan women may have been based on simple fact, but the conclusions they made likely reflected their own biases. Tomb paintings and sculptures depicting banquets, for instance, show Etruscan women reclining on couches alongside their husbands – something that was not a staple of Greek social life. To the commentators, the only women who would be present at an event where men were drinking and enjoying themselves were slaves and sex workers (though the line between them was ever so thin), which meant that obviously even free and well-born Etruscan women were like sex workers, which meant that Etruscan society was untethered to any standards of sexual respectability.
While “an equal footing” might be too much speculation, surviving material culture does bear out the idea that Etruscan women had much greater power and importance than contemporaneous Greek women (not that that is a high bar to clear). Even beyond their banquet seating, there is evidence of some sort of civic position (hatrencu) that they could hold, and of matronymic names that preserved a certain amount of information about an individual’s maternal ancestry. Etruscan art also focused a lot on weddings and happy couples, even ones that were certainly not depicted as very ideal in Greek myth – Zeus and Hera, Hades and Persephone, Paris and Helen.
The Karatepe and Çineköy inscriptions: Luwian and Phoenician and Sea Peoples, oh my!
Excavations in 1947 at the site of Karatepe in northeastern Cilicia (southern Turkey) uncovered a citadel with two monumental gates. Each of the gates had a copy of a Luwian and Phoenician bilingual inscription, as did a fragmentary statue of the Storm God. The Phoenician inscription ran along the left side of each gate, and the Luwian inscription ran along the right side. The Luwian inscriptions are written with the syllabic Anatolian hieroglyphic writing system, and the Phoenician inscriptions use the Phoenician alphabet.
The Phoenician inscription is best preserved on the North Gate. This inscription is more or less complete and consists of 62 lines and 1390 characters, making it the longest Phoenician inscription yet discovered. The Luwian inscription is also well-preserved, though some confusion arises from the effect of fractures and faults in the rock on small strokes such as word-dividers. Unlike the Phoenician texts, the Luwian inscriptions were carved on bases, orthostats, and portal sculptures rather than consecutive undecorated blocks. Fortunately, all of the blocks were discovered in situ except three from the North Gate.
The Çineköy inscription was discovered in 1997 by O. Kadir Özer at Çineköy near modern Adana in Cilicia and was first published in 2000 by Recai Tekoglu and André Lemaire. The inscription was carved on the base of a large statue of the Storm-God depicting him driving a chariot pulled by bulls. The Çineköy inscription is relatively brief, and only the first twelve clauses survive.
The Karatepe inscription begins with a discussion of the background of the dedicator. The man responsible for the construction of the gates and the statue was Azatiwada, who belonged to the Sun God and was the servant of the Storm God (§1). Azatiwada notes that he was "made great" by Awariku, the king of Adana (§2). The text then continues with a discussion of the deeds of Azatiwada, who caused the city of Adana to prosper and extended it to the east and west (§4-6), increased military strength (§8-10), and eliminated threats to the kingdom (§11-13). Azatiwada "seated [the offspring of my lord] on his paternal throne" (§16), and "every king" made Azatiwada his father on account of his justice and good heart (§18). He built fortresses along remote portions of the borders "not under the house of Muksas" (§19-21) and built the city of Azatiwataya (§39) for Tarhunt and the house of Muksas (§58). The text concludes with the traditional curses against the removal or damaging of the inscriptions.
Like the Karatepe inscription, the Çineköy inscription begins with the introduction of the dedicator of the statue. The statue was dedicated by Warikas, the son of a king whose name is not preserved, and the grandson of Muksas (§1). Muksas (mu-ka-sa-si-sa) is described as the king of the Hiyawaeans (hi-ia-wa/i-sa-ha-wa/i) and the servant of the storm god Tarhunzas. Like Azatiwada, Warikas claims to have extended the boundaries of his territory (§2) and built up military strength (§3-4). Unlike Azatiwada, however, Warikas makes explicitly mentions his association with Assyria.
REL-p[a]-wa/i-mu-u su+ra/i-wa/i-ni-sa(URBS) REX-ti-sá su+ra/i-wa/i-za-ha(URBS) DOMUS-na-za ta-ni-ma-za tá-[ti-na MATER-na-ha] i-zi-ia-si
hi-ia-wa/i-sa-ha-wa/i(URBS) su+ra/i-ia-sa-ha(URBS) ”UNUS”-za DOMUS-na-za i-zi-ia-si
The king of Assyria and the house of Assyria became father and mother to me, and Hiyawa and Assyria became one house.
King Awariku/Warikas is known from Assyrian records, where he is recorded as Urikki, the king of Que, and dates to the last decades of the 8th century BCE. Urikki is mentioned in the records of Tiglath-Pileser III as supplying tribute from 737 BCE onwards. A couple of decades later, a letter from Sargon II was sent to the Assyrian governor in Que, Aššur-šarru-uṣar, and recounted how a messenger of Midas of Phrygia - well-known in mythology as Midas of the golden touch - brought him fourteen men of Que who had been dispatched by Urikki on a diplomatic mission to Assyria's rival Urartu. Sargon II seized fortresses controlled by Que in 715 BCE, but no punitive actions against Urikki himself are described, suggesting that Urikki had either fled or been quietly killed or removed from power.
Muksas, the ancestor of Awariku, has been identified with the legendary Mopsos. According to the Greek geographer Pausanias, Mopsos sailed from Crete and founded a kingdom in Cilicia. It seems that Mopsos was indeed a name in use during the Late Bronze Age; line §33 of the "Indictment of Madduwata" (a Bronze Age Hittite text) references a Mu-uk-su-us, but the text is too fragmentary to determine what role he was playing in Aegean or Anatolian affairs. Additionally, the name mo-qo-so is attested in two Linear B tablets from Knossos. Moreover, Anna Jasink has argued persuasively for a connection between Rhakios, the father of Mopsos, and (A)warikas. Although the latter is said to be a descendant of Mopsos, royal names were frequently recycled.
Given that the legendary Mopsos came from Crete, one would expect that the historical Muksas originated in the Aegean, and this seems to have been the case. Awariku's land of Hiyawa has been equated with Aḫḫiyawa, the Bronze Age Hittite toponym for the Mycenaean Aegean. Hiyawa seems to have morphed over time into the Que of Assyrian records. A distinction should be drawn between the country of Hiyawa/Que and the city of Adana. The Luwian toponym Adana(wa) seems to have been adopted from an ethnonym, Adanawani. This was rendered dnnym in the Phoenician portions of the Karatepe and Çineköy inscriptions. It has been tentatively suggested that this group should be identified with the Denyen known from Egyptian records, one of the many groups of "Sea Peoples." The group may also be identified with the Homeric Danaoi.
The discovery of Mycenaean pottery assemblages in Cilicia supports the idea that a branch of the Sea Peoples or a group dispossessed by the Sea Peoples settled in Cilicia during the Early Iron Age. Although the presence of Mycenaean pottery at a site is insufficient evidence for the presence of Mycenaeans, as Mycenaean vessels were popular trade items, the majority of the Mycenaean vessels recovered from Tarsus were regular household vessels used for food preparation and consumption. Such cooking wares are less likely to have been imported than luxury wares, and petrographic analysis indicates that the pottery was locally produced. Most of the Mycenaean pottery belongs to the Late Helladic IIIC corpus and therefore dates to the early twelfth century BCE.
Based on these bilingual inscriptions and other historical and archaeological evidence dating to the end of the Late Bronze Age, one can tentatively propose a settlement in Cilicia in the Early Iron Age, possibly after the destruction or collapse of preexisting polities, by a group of dispossessed individuals, most likely from the Aegean. In a similar fashion, the Luwian inscriptions from the temple of the Storm God at Aleppo (ca. 1100 BCE) were dedicated by the king of the "land of Palistin," most likely associated with the Peleset of the Egyptian "Sea Peoples" inscriptions.
Small fun fact: It was at some point between 610 BCE and 594 BCE that the Egyptian Pharaoh Nico II comissioned a group of Phoenician sailors to travel arround the entirety of the African continent.
Apparently this expedition lasted three years and is the first known circumnavigation of Africa.
Well how can I not talk about my favorite years when the opportunity presents itself. 522 BCE ladies and gents. The story begins on March 11, or 14 Viyaxana in thr Achaemenid Persian calendar, 16 days before the Persian New Year. On that day, Bardiya - the crown prince and younger brother of the Great King, Cambyses - "raised a rebellion" in a town just outside of the palace complex of Pasargadae. Cambyses was busy in the west wrapping up the first Persian conquest of Egypt.
The Persian Empire was growing increasingly rebellious under royal tribute and conscription that had sustained almost 30 years of continuous expansion. Bardiya was apparently trying to right the ship and prevent full scale revolt from his brothers leadership. Cambyses got news of this on his way back from Egypt, but never confronted his brother. He was injured en route back to Persia and died of an infection.
But there's a catch. According to all of our sources, it wasn't actually Bardiya. It was a Magi (a Median religious class/tribe) named Gaumata. Gaumata had been impersonating the crown prince since Cambyses had his brother assassinated years earlier. Thus the new King of Kings after Cambyses' death was not only a rebel, but illegitimate. Despite universal agreement by ancient sources, scholars have questioned this story since at least the 19th century.
Regardless of his true identity, I call him Bardiya because that's the name he used on the throne and can account for either the real prince or Gaumata. Bardiya was properly coordinated on July 1 (9 Garmaparda). In his time on the throne, Bardiya stabilized the empire at large but alienated a lot of the nobility who had benefited from Cambyses aggressive taxes, seized some of their property, and executed others.
In the later months of his reign a group of seven nobles coalesced around Otanes and Darius, disgruntled distant cousins to the royal family. Darius lead them in a coup against Bardiya. On September 29 (10 Bagayadish) They forced their way into a royal palace outside of Ecbatana in Media and attacked Bardiya in person. They killed him there and Darius was declared the new king.
Whatever fragile peace Bardiya was holding together fell apart and provinces all over the Persian Empire went into revolt, including the heartland in Persia, Media, and Babylon went into revolt and it took at least 4 years to retake central control. In 518, though Egypt was still in revolt, Darius had a monument carved into the sacred mountain at Behistun with a chronology of all his victories and a catalogue of defeated rebels down to the exact days.
I want to tell you a story within a story. A short interjection by one man that saved a city and depicted the essence of citizenship within a democracy. That man's name is Diodotus and his story takes place during the Peloponnesian War (435 - 411 B.C.), as recorded by Thucydides (Hobbes' translation).
After the demagoguery of Pericles ended, one of his primary opponents, Cleon, filled some of the power vacuum. The citizens of Mytiline revolted at Sparta's prompting and Cleon convinced the Athenians to put each of their male citizens to death. The next day, however, hungover with guilt, the Athenians debated once more on the island's fate. Should they punish the entire island or merely those that authored the revolt?
Cleon opened his speech with this: “I have often on other occasions thought a democracy incapable of dominion over others, but most of all now for this your repentance concerning the Mytilenians.”[1] He goes on to argue that “three most disadvantageous things to empire, [are] pity, delight in plausible speeches, and lenity.”[2]
Diodotus sees it differently. Unlike Cleon he does not see unilateral punishment of the island as being in Athen's interest. Rather, punishing the entire city would not only disunite Athens from her allies but would unite those same people with the Athenians’ enemies, the few who author revolution.[3] He makes the additional point that “it is a thing impossible and of great simplicity to believe when human nature is earnestly bent to do a thing that by force of law or any other danger it can be diverted.”[4] If people perceive it to be necessary that they revolt, they will completely disregard justice.
Most importantly, Diodotus says this: A [moderate] state ought not either to add unto, or, on the other side, to derogate from, the honour of him that giveth good advice, nor yet punish, nay, nor disgrace, the man whose counsel they receive not.”[5]
We cannot say why the Athenians chose Diodotus' advice over Cleon's but we can say that Thucydides framed Diodotus' reply as an echo of the Periclean ideal and ethos of democracy. Free speech.
[1] Thucydides 3.45-46.
[2] Thucydides 3.45.7.
[3] Thucydides 3.40.3.
[4] Thucydides 3.37.1.
[5] Thucydides 3.42.5.
Edit: some weird grammar as this is a cutup version of an old paper
I really like these Floating Features. Here I decided to share a bunch of stories about the Persian court but this time involving women.
Women on the mountain
When the Persians were in difficulties because of the enemy’s greater numbers they began to flee to the mountain’s summit, where their women were. And the women pulled up their dresses and shouted, ‘Where are you off to, you cowards! Do you want to crawl back in where you came from?
Sexual shenanigans
When [Princess] Amytis was ill – albeit only mildly and not seriously – Apollonides, the doctor from Cos, who was in love with her, told her that she would recover her health if she consorted with men because she had a disease of the womb. When his plan succeeded and he started sleeping with her, the woman began to waste away and he put an end to their sexual relations. So since she was dying she told her mother [Amestris] to take revenge on Apollonides. And her mother told King Artaxerxes everything: how Apollonides had been sleeping with her, how he then stopped aft er he had abused her and how her daughter had asked her to take revenge on him. And he let her mother deal with the situation herself. And she took Apollonides, bound him and punished him for two months. She then buried him alive and at this time Amytis died too.
Poisoning the king’s wife
And so Parysatis, who had felt hatred and jealousy towards Stateira from the very beginning, seeing that her own infl uence with the king stemmed from the respect and esteem he felt for her, but that Stateira’s influence – based on love and trust – was steadfast and secure, plotted against her, playing for what in her opinion were the highest possible stakes. She had a trusted servant called Gigis who held great influence with her: Deinon says that she helped in the poisoning, Ctesias only that she was unwillingly in on the secret. Ctesias says the man who procured the poison was called Belitaras, whereas Deinon says it was Melantas. Aft er their former suspicion of each other and their differences, although they had begun to frequent the same places again and to dine together, their mutual fear and caution nevertheless led them to eat the same food as each other served on the same dishes. Th e Persians have a small bird, every part of which can be eaten since it is entirely full of fat inside – and for this reason they think that this animal feeds on air and dew. It is called a rhyntaces. Ctesias says that Parysatis cut a bird of this kind in two with a small knife smeared with poison on one side, thus wiping the poison off on just one part of the bird. And she put the undefiled, clean part in her mouth and ate it, but gave the poisoned half to Stateira. Deinon says that it was not Parysatis but Melantas who did the cutting with the knife and gave the poisoned meat to Stateira. And so this woman died in convulsions and in considerable agony. And she was herself conscious of the evil that had befallen her and made her suspicions about his mother known to the King, who was aware of his mother’s brutal nature and implacability. For this reason he set out in search of his mother’s servants and attendants at table, arrested them and tortured them. Parysatis kept Gigis at home with her for a long time and she would not surrender her when the King asked, but when Gigis later asked for leave to go home at night, the King got wind of this, set an ambush, seized her and condemned her to death. In Persia the law prescribes that poisoners be killed in the following way: there is a broad stone on which they place the poisoners’ heads and with another stone they pound and crush until their face and head are mashed to a pulp. So it was like this that Gigis died and Artaxerxes neither reproached nor harmed Parysatis in any other way, but sent her to Babylon in accordance with her wishes, saying that so long as she lived, she would not see Babylon again. And so this was the state of affairs in the King’s household.
With the semester winding down, I've been busy with final assignments, final projects, and of course my capstone play going up this weekend. So naturally I didn't think at all about that over Thanksgiving when I should have, and instead distracted myself with some dramaturgical research for my school's production of Aristophanes's ancient Greek comedy, The Birds (send help, I still need more resources). Well, I quickly got distracted from my distraction when I discovered something in my early research that absolutely captivated me, and I want to share it with you guys: a curious play from the Classical period called The Letters Tragedy or The ABC Show, by Calias, likely written some time around the 430s BCE. This play is famous (or is it infamous?) for featuring—as you might not expect in a Greek play—a chorus of Letters singing to the audience about the alphabet.
The tragedy of studying Greek theatre is how so few plays from the time survive; we have about 30 full scripts from a period that produced hundreds of plays. As such, the main source of The Letters Tragedy appears to be not a script of the play, but rather a few passages from Deipnosophists, a history and literary book by the 3rd century CE Greek writer Athenaeus, a few centuries after it would have been written. The book presents its discourse in the form of a series of conversations about history and literature and whatnot at a banquet hosted by Larensius, and at one point the character Aemilianus brings up a book called On Riddles by Clearchus which mentions the Tragedy, and so they engage in conversation about the play. Joseph Smith quotes Gulick's translation of Deipnosophists:
Callias the Athenian (we were making inquiry about him a bit earlier), who was a little before the time of Strattis, composed his so-called Alphabet Show and arranged it in this way: its prologue consists of letter names (stoicheia) which must be read dividing out the letter names through the whole group of letters (graphae), making word division (teleute) in broken-down fashion at alpha:
alpha, bêta, gamma, delta, now god’s eî,
zêt’, êta, thêt’, iôta, kappa, labda, mû,
nû, xeî, oû, peî, rhô, sigma, taû, û,
pheî being next, and cheî, to pseî, ending at ô.
And the chorus of women has been composed by Callias out of pairs [of stoicheia], in meter and set to music in this way: bêta alpha “ba,” bêta eî “be,” bêta êta “bê,” bêta iôta “bi,” bêta oû “bo,” bêta û “bu,” bêta ô “bô,” and again in antistrophe of music and rhythm, gamma alpha [“ga”], gamma eî [“ge”], gamma êta [“gê”], gamma iôta [“gi”], gamma oû [“go”], gamma û [“gu’], gamma ô [“gô”], and in the case of each of the remaining syllables, all have the same meter and melody in antistrophic substitutions in the same way.
From this description, it feels like a song from a program like Sesame Street, designed to teach children how to read. There are also lines that Jesper Svenbro thinks might be a dialogue between a teacher and students:
You must pronounce alpha by itself, my ladies, and secondly ei by itself. And there, you will say the third vowel!
Then I wlil say eta.
Then you will ay the fourth one by itself?
Iota.
References to writing in theatre at the time isn't unique to this time. Jennifer Wise notes that there are at least 80 references to writing in the plays and fragments we have access to, and at least eleven of these plots rely on their characters to be literate. She later notes, "Why were the Athenian playwrights so taken with the theatraical and thematic possibilities of the alphabet? To behin with, the alphabet was relatively new. From surviving samples of Archaic writing, specifically from inscribed objects such as cups, vases, and tombstones, scholars dated the early use of alphabetic writing in Greece to the middle of the eight century, circa 740 BCE. This means that writing had been in use for only two hundred years before Thespis won the first known prize for a drama" (emphasis added).
Suffice to say, though, there is a lot of mystery surrounding The Letters Tragedy, such as authorship and its impact on following theatre. Athenaeus says that Callias claimed to influence the structure of future plays, like Oedipus and Medea, but it is quite likely that the play—despite the title—was actually a comedy, and therefore these claims were exaggerated. There's a whole lot more to unpack and decipher about this play, but I'm still learning about it, and figured this would be a neat story to share.
Sources
Wise, J. (1998). The ABCs of Acting. In Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece (pp. 15-69). Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press. doi:10.7591/j.ctvr7f9tg.5
Rosen, R. (1999). Comedy and Confusion in Callias' Letter Tragedy. Classical Philology, 94(2), 147-167. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/270556
Smith, J. (2003). Clearing Up Some Confusion in Callias’ Alphabet Tragedy: How to Read Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 332–33 et al. Classical Philology, 98(4), 313-329. doi:10.1086/422369
Welcome to Volume II of 'The Story of Humankind', our current series of Floating Features and Flair drive!
#Volume II spans the continues the story from 776 BCE to 202 BCE, and we welcome everyone to share history that related to that period, whatever else it might be about. Share stories, whether happy, sad, funny, moving; Share something interesting or profound that you just read; Share what you are currently working on in your research. It is all welcome!
Floating Features are intended to allow users to contribute their own original work. If you are interested in reading recommendations, please consult our booklist, or else limit them to follow-up questions to posted content. Similarly, please do not post top-level questions. This is not an AMA with panelists standing by to respond. Such questions ought to be submitted as normal questions in the subreddit.
As is the case with previous Floating Features, there is relaxed moderation here to allow more scope for speculation and general chat than there would be in a usual thread! But with that in mind, we of course expect that anyone who wishes to contribute will do so politely and in good faith.
Please be sure to mark your calendars for the full series, which you can find listed here. Next up is Volume III on December 7th, spanning 322 BCE to 202 CE. Be sure to add it to your calendar as you don't want to miss it!
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