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The Invention of Athens
Culture, Politics, and the Persian Wars
Perpetuation of Persian Wars Myth
“In terms of world history, the ramifications of the Greek triumph
over the Persians are almost incalculable. By repulsing the assault
of the East the Hellenes charted the political and cultural
development of the West for an entire century. With the triumphant
struggle for liberty by the Greeks, Europe was first born, both as a
concept and as a reality….The freedom which permitted Greek
culture to rise to the classical models in art, drama, philosophy
and historiography, this Europe owes to those who fought at
Salamis and Plataea… If we regard ourselves today as free
thinking people, it is the Greeks who created the condition for
this.”
~H. Bengtson, History of Greece (Ottawa 1988), pg. 106
Persian Invasions and Athenian Identity
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Commemoration of Dead at Marathon
Aeschylus’ Persians (472 BCE)
Herodotus’ Histories (440s-430s BCE)
Later Historical Memories and Associations
 Galatian Invasions of 280-279 BCE
 See Polybius, Histories, 2.35
Marathon Legend
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Marathonomachoi
Aeschylus
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Brother Cynegeirus died at Marathon (Herodotus, 6.114)
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Aeschylus was veteran of Marathon; probably fought at
Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea
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Aeschylus’ Epitaph (see Pausanias, 1.14.5)
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Aeschylus, Euphorion’s son
of Athens, lies under this stone
dead in Gela among the white
wheatlands; a man at need
good in fight
—witness the hallowed field of Marathon,
witness the long-haired Mede.
Marathon Tumulus: Monument for Fallen
Creation of Persian Wars Myth
Indeed upon the Asian land
no longer are they subject to the Persians
nor do they yet pay tribute
through the master’s crushing necessity
nor are they ruled falling prostrate before the king.
For the kingly strength has perished.
~Aeschylus, Persians, lines 584-97
produced 472 BCE
Herodotus, 7.139
At this point I am forced to declare an opinion that most people will find offensive; yet,
because I think it is true, I will not hold back. If the Athenians had taken fright at the
approaching danger and had left their own country, or even if they had not left it but
had remained and surrendered to Xerxes, no one would have tried to oppose the King
at sea. If there had been no opposition to the King at sea, what happened on land
would have been this: even if the Peloponnesians had drawn many walls around the
Isthmus for their defense, the Spartans would have been betrayed by their allies, not
because the allies chose to do so but out of necessity as they were taken, polis by polis,
by the fleet of the barbarian; thus the Spartans would have been isolated and, though
isolated, would have done deeds of the greatest valor and died nobly. That would have
been what happened; or else they would, before this end, have seen that all the other
Greeks had medized and so themselves would have come to an agreement with Xerxes.
In both these cases, all of Greece would have been subdued by the Persians….So, as it
stands now, a man who declares that the Athenians were the saviors of Greece would
hit the very truth.
Legends of Divine Intervention
Gods Support Greek Cause at Marathon
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Herodotus, 6.105 (Pan)
Plutarch, Theseus, 35
 Theseus emerges from the Underworld
Pausanias 1.15.3
 Theseus emerges from Underworld
 Addition of Marathon, Athena, Echetlus, and Heracles
Herodotus, 6.105
First of all, when the generals were still within the city, they
sent a herald to Sparta, one Philippides, an Athenian, who
was a day-long runner and a professional. According to the
story of Philippides himself, and what he told the Athenians,
Pan met him on Mount Parthenium, above Tegea. Pan
shouted his name, ‘Philippides,’ and commanded him to say
this to the Athenians: ‘Why do you pay no heed to Pan, who
is a good friend to the Athenian people, has been many times
of use to you, and will be so again?’ This story the Athenians
were convinced was true, and when the Athenian fortunes
had again settled for the good, they set up a shrine for Pan
under the Acropolis and propitiated the god himself with
sacrifices and torch races, in accord with the message he had
sent them.
Plutarch, Life of Theseus, 35
In after times…the Athenians moved to honor Theseus as
a demi-god, especially by the fact that many of those who
fought at Marathon against the Persians thought they saw
an apparition of Theseus in arms rushing on in front of
them against the barbarians.
Pausanias, 1.15.3 on Stoa Poikilē
At the end of the painting are those who fought at
Marathon; the Boeotians of Plataea and the Attic
contingent are coming to blows with the barbarians. In this
place neither side has the advantage, but the center of the
fighting shows the barbarians in flight and pushing one
another into the morass, while at the end of the painting are
the Phoenician ships, and the Greeks killing the barbarians
who are scrambling into them. Here is also a portrait of the
hero Marathon, after whom the plain is named, of Theseus
represented as coming up from the Underworld, of Athena
and of Heracles.
Legends of Divine Intervention
Gods Support Greek Cause at Salamis
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Herodotus, 7.189-193
 Boreas works against Xerxes’ fleet
 Poseidon destroys Persian ships off Cape Artemisium
Pausanias, 1.36.1-2
 Hero Cychrius appears as sea-serpent at Salamis
Plutarch, Moralia, 349f-350a
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Artemis Mounychia (full moon) at Salamis
Herodotus, Histories, 7.189 (Boreas)
It is said that the Athenians had summoned Boreas, the North Wind, to
help them, being so bidden to do so by a prophecy, there having been
another oracle given them to ‘call in their son-in-law to help them.’ Now,
according to the Greek story, Boreas married an Attic wife, Orithyia,
daughter of Erectheus. The Athenians construed this in terms of a
marriage connection with themselves, so the tale goes, and saw Boreas as
their son-in-law. They were at their station in Chalcis in Euboea when
they saw that the storm was rising, and then, or even before then, they
sacrificed to Boreas and Orithyia and called on them to come to their
help and to destroy the ships of the barbarians, even as before, at Athos
[see 6.44]. Now, whether this was why Boreas fell upon the barbarians as
they anchored there, I cannot say. But the Athenians say that Boreas
came to their help before and now again, and that this action was his;
and so, when they came home, they built a shrine to Boreas by the river
Ilissus.
Pausanias, 1.36.1 (Cychreus)
In Salamis is a sanctuary of Artemis, and also a trophy
erected in honor of the victory which Themistocles the son
of Neocles won for the Greeks. There is also a sanctuary
of Cychreus. When the Athenians were fighting the
Persians at sea, a serpent is said to have appeared in the
fleet, and the god in an oracle told the Athenians that it
was Cychreus the hero.
Herodotus 7.192 (Poseidon)
Anyway, on the fourth day the storm ceased [with the Persian
fleet severely damaged off the Sepiad headland]. The daywatchers on the Euboean heights ran down from their
positions on the second day after the storm’s commencement
and told the Greeks of all that had happened in the
shipwrecking. Then the Greeks, when they learned this, made
prayers to Poseidon the Savior and, having poured libations,
hastened back with all possible speed to Artemisium, having
formed the expectation that there would be very few ships left
to oppose them.
Historical Events and Artistic Innovations
A Problem of Causality
Artemision Zeus (or Poseidon?)
Life-Size Bronze Statue, ca. 460-450 BCE
National Museum,
Athens, Greece
Jerome Pollitt, Classical Art,
and the Persian War Experience
“What factors were there which might be said to have brought into
being this new analysis of consciousness in Early Classical art? It
seems something more than a natural evolution from what had gone
on in the Archaic period and should perhaps be ascribed to both a
new self-confidence and a new uneasiness which arose among
many thoughtful Greeks in the wake of the Persian Wars.”
~Art and Experience in Classical Greece
Temple of Olympia, East Pediment,
“Seer,” ca. 460 BCE
Riace Bronze, ca. 450 BCE
Olympian Apollo:
Severe Classicizing Style Hellenic Rationality
Athenians to Spartans during Second Persian Invasion
(Herodotus, 8.144)
And then there is our common Greekness: we are one in
blood and one in language; those shrines of the gods belong
to us all in common, and there are our habits, bred of a
common upbringing.
Pericles’ Funeral Oration
(Thucydides, 2.35-46)
I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they
should have the honor of the first mention on an occasion like the
present. They dwelt in the country without break in succession from
generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by
their valor….Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring
states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its
administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called
a democracy….We cultivate refinement without extravagance and
knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for
show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact
but in declining the struggle against it….In short, I say that as a city we
are the school of Greece; while I doubt if the world can produce a man,
who where he has only himself to depend on, is equal to so many
emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility as the Athenian.
Athenian Imperial Mythologies:
Athens as Ionian “Mother-City”
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“[Aristagoras] said this, and also said that Miletus was a
colony of Athens and that, given the greatness of Athenian
power, they should certainly protect the Milesians.”
(Herodotus, 5.97, Ionian Rebellion)
“When the appointed time comes children born of these
shall come to dwell in the island cities of the Cyclades and
the coastal cities of the mainland, which will give strength
to my land. They shall dwell in the plains in two
continents on either side of the dividing sea, Asia and
Europe. They shall be called Ionians after this boy and
win glory.” (Euripides, Ion, lines 1581-88, produced in
410 BCE)
Athenian Imperial Mythologies:
Athenians as “Autochthonous”
(“Born of the Earth”)
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“Accordingly Attica, from the poverty of its soil enjoying
from a very remote period freedom from faction, never
changed its inhabitants.” (Thucydides, 1.2)
“For there cohabit with us none of the type of Pelops, or
Cadmus, or Aegyptus or Danaus, and numerous others of
the kind, who are naturally barbarians though nominally
Greeks; but our people are pure Greeks and not a
barbarian blend; and so it happens that our city is
imbued with a whole-hearted hatred of aliens.” (Plato,
Menexenus, 245d)
Greek Victory and Greek Collective Identities
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Centripetal Forces (Panhellenism)
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Validation of Greek Way of Life
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Articulation of to Hellenikon (see especially Herodotus, 8.144)
Centrifugal Forces
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Athens and Sparta as Leaders
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Medizing States
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Athenian Growth and Spartan Suspicion
Intellectual and Cultural Impact of Persian Wars
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Apotheosis of Athens
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Historical Consciousness (Herodotus)
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Hellenic Rationality/Barbarian Emotion
Athenian Imperial Mythologies
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Athens as Ionian Metropole (“Mother-City” of Ionian Greeks)
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Athenian Autochthony (“Born of the Earth”)
Afterlife
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J.B. Bury, A History of Greece (p.161), “The significance of the battle of Marathon, as a
triumph for Athens, for Greece, for Europe, cannot be gainsaid...”
G.W.F. Hegel " (Philosophy of History, tr. J. Sibree [New York 1956], p. 257), the
battles of the Persian wars “live immortal not in the historical records of Nations only,
but also of Science and of Art- of the Noble and the Moral generally. For these are
World-Historical Victories; they were the salvation of culture and spiritual vigour and
they rendered the Asiatic principle powerless.”
John Stuart Mill (Discussions and Dissertations, vol. II [London 1859] p. 283) wrote of
Marathon, “The battle of Marathon, even as an event in English history, is more
important than the battle of Hastings. If the issue of that day had been different, the
Britons and the Saxons might still have been wandering in the woods.”
Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (New York [1941] 37), “Everywhere you go in
Greece the atmosphere is pregnant with heroic deeds.... For stubbornness, courage,
recklessness, daring, there are no greater examples anywhere. No wonder Durrell
wanted to fight with the Greeks. Who wouldn't prefer to fight beside a Bouboulina, for
example, than with a gang of sickly, effeminate recruits from Oxford or Cambridge?”
Edward Said, Orientalism