Marathon2500 holds fifth lecture: Marathon and the Moderns with Dean Karnazes
Marathon2500, a project of the Reading Odyssey, held its fifth lecture today, Marathon and the Moderns, featuring ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes and Professor Paul Cartledge.
As with all the Marathon2500 lectures, there’s a podcast available of the talk. This is a large file so you may want to download it and play it locally (otherwise, you may find it skips and jumps depending on the speed of your Internet connection).
The next lecture in the Marathon2500 series is War and Sports with Professor Thomas Scanlon.
Information and free registration for this global lecture (via phone, Skype and web) is available here:
Thanks!
Phil
Founder, Reading Odyssey
Marathon2500 lecture #5 – Marathon and Moderns today at 1pm ET
Our next lecture – Marathon and Moderns – is with one of the top runners in the world, Dean Karnazes, and Professor Paul Cartledge, chairman of Marathon2500 and A.G. Leventis Chair of Greek Culture at Cambridge University.
The call and webinar is this Wednesday, February 9 at 1pm New York time.
This is a global lecture with students, professors and interested adults calling in from around the world.
Register free here for the teleconference/webinar information: http://Marathon2500-5.eventbrite.com
Thanks to all our sponsors – especially Citrix Online, their HiDefConferencing division and Internet startups like Posterous and others.
Herodotus Book 6 Discussion
Monday February 7, 2011
Here is the recording of tonight’s Herodotus Book 6 discussion, moderated by Andre Stipanovic and Bruce Upbin. Please feel free to download it and listen to it at your own leisure.
Alexander the Great Discussion Series Part 7
Alexander's Fusion of European and Asian Monarchic Traditions
JAMES ROMM Paul, in our last segment we agreed to discuss what is sometimes called Alexander's "fusion" policies — Principally, his attempt to hybridize Greco-Macedonian and Persian styles of monarchy in his own person. I wrote the appendix in the Landmark Arrian on fusion, and I said there that the difficulty for historians lies in distinguishing Alexander's policy choices from his personal predilections. The decision to sport royal purples, for example — an affectation of Asian monarchies, seen as arrogant and autocratic by Europeans — has often been regarded as a sign of Alexander's megalomania. But Arrian, in the eulogistic assessment of Alexander with which he ends the Anabasis, describes it as a carefully thought-out strategy by which Alexander increased his authority and legitimacy among his Asian subjects. Alexander had an enormous leadership challenge, after all: How to win acceptance from the elite of the Persian empire, whom he had invaded, defeated, and whose royal house he had devastated. He could not hope to succeed among these proud nobles by pure intimidation; he ultimately had to win their respect and cooperation. All his "fusion" strategies have to be looked at in that context, do they not?
PC They do indeed have to be looked at in context, Jamie, and I suppose the largest context of all is what overall view one takes of Alexander – positive or negative, pragmatic or idealist, and so on. I tend myself to the view held for instance by the great French scholar Pierre Briant that Alexander was in general and on the whole a pragmatist, but I would add that he infused his pragmatism with a certain amount of romanticism (modelling himself on Achilles, e.g.). In the case of 'fusion', I think Arrian got it basically right – Alexander's aim was to create a new Greek/Macedonian + Iranian ruling elite for his new kingsom of 'Asia', so he began (330) by appointing an Iranian (Mazaeus) to the top satrapy of Babylonia, then (327) recruited a huge number of young Iranians to bolster and eventually replace his mainly Macedonian core military forces, and then (324) conducted the mass-marriages at Susa. In 327 he'd had to abandon the idea of literally fusing his Graeco-Macedonian and his Iranian court circles, but it was in recognition of the absolute necessity of winning the respect, admiration and co-operation of the old Iranian ruling elite that he took on more and more of the outward trappings of oriental especially Persian regalia (the 'purples' you mention, etc).
JR And might I add to your pairs of antithetic views of Alexander, "emotional vs. rational." It seems to me that where Arrian, and those who essentially follow him, differs from the vulgate sources and those who follow them, is that Arrian tends to see Alexander as a rational man making rational decisions, where others see him driven by emotion, impulse, and appetite. It's an antithesis that goes right to the heart of the fusion question. To "Asianize" or "Persify," in the Greek world, implied giving in to desires and impulses, as opposed to European models of behavior based on restraint and self-control. For Arrian, self-control — or karteria in Greek — was Alexander's outstanding quality, whether in combat, relations with women, or drinking habits. So also in matters of royal style: Alexander mixed his purple with plain white cloth, avoiding the temptation to go whole-hog despot.
PC I couldn't have put it better myself… The West vs East (hard/rational/self-controlled West vs soft, irrational and self-indulgent East) culturally stereotyped dichotomy goes back to 5th-century BCE Greek writers. But in the case of Arrian it could be argued that, against his own better judgement perhaps (the ideal of karteria you mention), he did also see some degree of deterioration, some sort of decline, in Alexander from the ideal Greek-style monarch into an excessively despotic, oriental-style ruler. It is a good measure, I think, of how difficult it was for him to escape the cultural stereotyping he'd inherited, though it's also a token of how good a historian he was that he didn't swallow the Vulgate sources hook, line and sinker.
Alexander the Great Discussion Series Part 6
How religious was Alexander the Great?
PAUL CARTLEDGE Jamie, it's very hard indeed to penetrate the psychology of any prominent ancient (Greek or Roman) figure, I find, apart perhaps from Cicero and Augustine, because we usually lack the right sort of intimate auto/biographical sources – but in the case of Alexander I wonder whether you agree that one way in from the outside as it were is by considering his religious attitudes and practice. I'm not thinking here of the vexed question of whether he thought of himself as in some sense divine – or at any rate possibly ordered others to behave towards him as if he were! I mean, rather, do you agree that he seems to have been quite exceptionally pious, even superstitious – especially in the offering of animal sacrifice to various gods and heroes, and in his constant recourse to divination? The index entries in The Landmark Arrian under 'Aristandros of Telmessos' (Alexander's favourite soothsayer) and 'sacrifices offered by Alexander' are I think a good point of departure.
JAMES ROMM Yes I would agree (and thank you for noting the utility of that index!). I must say I have not made a study of the sacrifices and prayers you mention, but I know that Alexander gave thought and consideration to each one — choosing the particular god or gods to address based on the territory he was on, the culture that surrounded him, or the tactical demands of the situation at hand. If we trust Arrian's evidence, he believed in the efficacy of sacrifice and the predictive power of omens (though he ignored an omen that told him not to cross the Jaxartes when he badly wanted to — an interesting case of pothos trumping piety). What's also interesting is the range of beings he sacrificed to — not just the Greek gods and heroes, but to Bel-Marduk (in Babylon), the Apis bull (in Egypt) and Ammon (in India), among others. Of course, some of this heterodoxy was good politics — showing new subjects that he embraced their religious traditions — but my sense is that Alexander felt a personal attachment to these foreign divinities. After all, he wanted to be buried next to the shrine of Ammon in the desert west of Egypt, or so Quintus Curtius tells us.
PC You're absolutely right about the 'catholicity' (if I may use that word…) of Alexander's tastes and attachments in the matter of foreign
religions. Of course, Greeks were well used to identifying or assimilating foreign gods to their own, e.g. most relevantly Egyptian Amun (in Greek Ammon) became thought of as similar or identical to Greek Zeus. But Alexander interestingly went further than the average Greek in this: for him, I think, Ammon remained importantly Egyptian Amun, and as you say one tradition has it that Alexander wished to be buried at the oracular shrine of Ammon/Amun at Siwah oasis in the western desert, while Arrian says that it was specifically Ammon that Alexander consulted as to what type of posthumous religious honours should be paid to Hephaistion (Alexander was rumoured to have desired them to be divine honours, but Ammon firmly said they should be a hero's honours and Alexander complied). Becoming sort of Pharaoh in Memphis and the chief god's elect in Babylon went in the same direction – and surely were designed to secure the favour of the respective priesthoods who'd led the resistance to Persian domination in the past. But how do you think this impacts on the issue of whether Alexander was trying
to make himself into a new kind of Graeco-Oriental monarch? And what do you think the average Greek subject of Alexander's empire might have thought of their ruler's religiosity?
JR Paul, those are such big questions that I suggest we take them up in the next segment of our discussion. We have also deferred the question you alluded to at the outset, whether Alexander thought he himself was divine. That's a big one indeed, and a tough one! But to conclude the current discussion: I want to note in connection with your last remark that Alexander was commonly depicted by his Successors with ram's horns curling from the sides of his head, an image that may have perplexed some of our readers. The ram was associated with Ammon in the ancient world, since that god had once taken the form of a ram, so the horns are intended to show kinship with Ammon — not Zeus, as one might have expected (though Alexander seems to have depicted himself wielding Zeus' thunderbolt on the so-called elephant medallion). The coins with the ram's-horn image circulated all across what is now the Middle East, so when we later find Alexander referred to in the Koran as "Dhul Quarnain" — The two-horned one — it's likely that those Hellenistic coins are the reason!
Professor Thomas Harrison: “The Persian Version” – Marathon2500 Lecture #4
Professor Thomas Harrison, The Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool, delivered on January 18, 2011 the Marathon2500 Lecture #4: “The Persian Version: What did the Battle of Marathon look like from the Persian side?”
He discussed his research on the Achaemenid Persian empire (at the time of the lecture, he had a forthcoming book on the topic) and, based on the insights from his research, he addressed the Battle of Marathon from the perspective of the Persians.
Listen to his podcast here:
See his slides here:
– – –
Thomas Harrison Biography
The Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool, Tom Harrison’s research is concerned primarily with Greek history and historiography: especially with Herodotus, religious belief, and the representation of foreign peoples. A short book on the modern historiography of the Achaemenid Persian empire is forthcoming; other current projects include a volume of essays, jointly edited with Bruce Gibson, arising from a Liverpool conference in honour of F.W. Walbank, Polybius 1957-2007, a book on Greek religious belief, and a book on Herodotus.
Recent publications
T. Harrison, Writing Ancient Persia, London, 2010.
T. Harrison (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians, Edinburgh, 2002.
T. Harrison, Divinity and History. The Religion of Herodotus, Oxford, 2000.
T. Harrison, The Emptiness of Asia. Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century, London, 2000.
Herodotus Book 6 Discussion Questions
Dear fellow readers,
Here are the discussion questions for Book 6, which you can use to help stimulate your thinking as you read for our next discussion (scheduled for Mon Feb 7.
As you can see in our questions below, Book 6 presents many interesting stories about Greek society before leading up to the climactic battle at Marathon. Sparta gets special treatment here in Book 6 (even though they don’t make it to the battle!).
Enjoy the read,
Andre
Herodotus Book Six Discussion Questions
1. In Book VI ch. 30, Histiaeus’ end at the hands of Artaphrenes and Harpagos is related in gruesome but cursory fashion: “they took him to Sardis and there hanged him from a stake. But they embalmed his head and brought it to King Darius in Susa” (p. 437). Just prior to this remark, Herodotus himself tells the reader that in his opinion “if, after being captured alive, Histiaeos had been taken to Darius, I suppose that Darius would have forgiven him for his offense and that he would have suffered no harm” (437). Knowing what we know about Darius in the Histories, would that be an accurate prediction? Why does Herodotus feel this way and what evidence from earlier in our reading could support his assertion?
2. In chs. 51-55, Herodotus digresses on the origins of the Spartan dual kingship. He comments on both the Spartan version and the common Greek traditional version. What are we to make of the story? Is Herodotus favoring one or the other? Are there other versions deliberately not mentioned by Herodotus? Why does Herodotus suddenly proclaim: “let that be the extent of what is said on this topic” (449)?
3. In ch. 84, Herodotus presents various views on the Spartan king Kleomenes’ madness and eventual death. After presenting the Argive and Spartan explanations, Herodotus claims: “For myself, I think that the best explanation is that Kleomenes was punished for his treatment of Demaratos” (460). What does this say about Herodotus’ judgment? Is he taking sides or does he have justification, according to his evidence, that his assertion has credence? What does this remark say about Herodotus’ regard for history in general?
4. Herodotus uses 94 chapters to set the stage for one of the most important battles in history. Given the actual details of the battle, why does Herodotus not go into more detail about the individuals and events on the battlefield? How does Herodotus contrast the Athenians to the Persians in this conflict? How is Sparta compared/contrasted with Athens? Persia??
5. Ch. 121 just seems to leap out of nowhere. After a description of the battle of Marathon and Sparta’s late arrival, Herodotus seems eager to address the veracity of Alkmeonid treachery against Athens: “I am astonished by that story about the Alcmeonids” (478). He then goes on to elaborate on the Alcmeonid clan, seemingly making an appeal for them, through chapter 131. How convincing is his defense? Why does Herodotus make this appeal here? What sort of tensions are betrayed in Herodotus’ words that show the movement between myth and history, fact and fiction?
Listen: Herodotus Books 4, 5 Reader Call
We had a great call this evening about Herodotus Books 4 and 5. Scythia and its mysteries and might and the Persian incursion (and ultimate withdrawal in defeat) became the primary topic for the first hour. We put the conflict in Scythia in context with the overall narrative of the Persian-Greek conflict. Later in the call, we covered the restiveness of the Ionians, the birth of democracy in Athens and its utterly transformative effect in theregion. We finished with a lively discussion about how Herodotus treats women. Please give a listen.
Bruce
Listen to the Herodotus Books 4 & 5 Discussion
Dear Herodotus readers,
Thanks for a wonderful discussion tonight. The role of Greek colonists seems to have connected much of the narrative in these two books. Please feel free to listen to our discussion at your leisure (see attached).
I look forward to discussing the battle of Marathon in Book 6 with you on our next call.
Sincerely,
Andre
Alexander the Great Discussion Series Part 5
How Great a General was Alexander?
JAMES ROMM Paul, our topic this week is whether Alexander was as great a general as he's cracked up to be. No one can deny his success rate in major battles — 100% — and his enormous skill in matters of logistics, strategy, even military technology. I suppose the nub of the question, for me, is how great a challenge he faced in his enemies. He fought first the Theban Greeks, then the Persians, then the Bactrians and other Central Asian peoples, and finally the Indian peoples of the Punjab. Could any of these opponents have been expected to pose difficulties for him, given the size, experience and equipment of his army? Or were his victories more or less predetermined (as his own officer Cleitus grumbled) by the innovations and training methods devised by his father, Philip? PAUL CARTLEDGE Gosh, Jamie. that's a tall order of a question… but it does indeed go to the heart of Alexander's 'great'-ness. I'm on record as putting Alexander right up there in the premier league of all time – with Genghis Khan, John Churchill, Napoleon, and very very few others…., so why do I think that? Three reasons: 1. Napoleon allegedly said that the morale factor in warfare is three times as important as all the other factors put together – Alexander, despite a couple of very serious mutinies, the first of which occurred only after a whole 8 years of massively draining nonstop campaigning over ferocious and alien terrain and huge distances, maintained most of his troops' morale at a very high level through a combination of success and charisma 2. successful generalship requires a synergistic combination of successful strategy and successful tactics – conquering an entity of the type and size of the Persian empire in 334 demanded devising a completely new type of strategy (not to take anything away from father Philip's army reforms and generalship, he'd never had to face such a challenge) and winning three major set-piece encounters each in very different circumstances 3. one of Alexander's 'Successors' earned the monicker 'the Besieger', but actually if anyone deserved that title it was Alexander himself. Philip had suffered only two defeats – both failed sieges against Greek opponents. Alexander never failed in a siege against Greeks or nonGreeks, except (partially) at Halicarnassus in 334, and won two absolutely extraordinary and crucial siege victories – Tyre in 334 (an offshore island-city with formidable walls), and the (nearly naturally impregnable) Rock of Aornos in 327. JR Well, I have a footnote to your point #1, but there is lots more to be said about point #2. First, the footnote regarding morale. I have just been researching the current theory that the mutiny at the Hyphasis river in India, the point at which the army rejected Alexander's order to advance, was not in fact a mutiny but a staged event designed to give Alexander a good pretext for doing what he already wanted to do, i.e. stop advancing and head back toward the middle of his empire. I don't find this theory convincing (do you?), but if there's anything to it at all, it would cause our measurement of Alexander's charisma to go even higher than it already does. Now, as to point #2, the quality of the armies Alexander faced, which principally means the Persians. I'm reminded of a speech in Thucydides where the Corinthians, speaking of the war against Xerxes in 480 B.C., say that the Greeks did not win that engagement so much as the Persians lost. We also have the campaigns of Xenophon's 10,000 mercenaries in 401, and of Agesilaus the Spartan in the 390's, as evidence that phalanxes of Greek hoplites could beat Persian armies that greatly outnumbered them. It seems possible to me that the Persians were a paper tiger, capable of putting huge numbers together but relatively ineffective, even incompetent, in using them. What do you think were the odds in the matchup between Alexander and Darius, at the outset of the invasion of Asia?
PC 'Paper tiger', eh? Well, at least the tiger did flourish in a part of the then Persian empire, so I'll go along with you to that extent… Point 1: The Hyphasis mutiny – the modern interpretation of it as purely stage-managed has, I think, no solid basis in any surviving ancient source, but I'm prepared to accept that elements of it were indeed staged – Alexander could be very theatrical when he thought it appropriate, as it certainly was here and was to be again later, for example, when still in what's today Pakistan he miraculously recovered from a death's door combination of a near-fatal wound and serious fever, possibly aggravated by excess alcohol intake, and made a stagey appearance in public to convince the army that he really was still alive. His troops, mostly Macedonians by then, went crazy with joy and relief. But their earlier mutiny had had a solid basis, not so much in a collapse of their morale (in the sense of a critical loss of confidence in Alexander's powers of leadership) as in their perception that Alexander's strategic objectives were by no means confined to conquering and holding an enlarged Persian Empire, whereas they felt that enough was enough, and many indeed were straightforwardly homesick (not an affliction from which Alexander seems ever to have suffered much).
But to get to your main point, point number 2: just how good were the opposition? Frankly they performed well below capacity, and partly – crucially – through lack of a leadership in anything like Alexander's class. Had the Greek from Rhodes called Memnon, who served Persia as a mercenary general (as the Spartan Clearchus had served Cyrus the Younger in his failed attempt to seize the throne from his older brother in 401) not died from illness early on in the campaign, Alexander might have been given a much tougher ride. But then we must allow a great deal for chance and luck throughout, must we not – for example, had Cleitus the Black not intercepted the blow, Alexander might well have been killed at the Granicus River Battle in 334, so that the campaign – his campaign – would have been over almost as soon as it started. As it was, Alexander was able to capitalise on a structural feature of the Persian army's military organisation and capacity, that any army raised by any Great King was almost a 'scratch', pick-up force of a multifarious, multi-ethnic composition, lacking the cohesion that came from a common, strongly identified Macedonian and/or Greek military and political culture. And it has also to be said that no general on the Persian side – the Great King Darius III very much included – was anything like as competent as Alexander – or even Alexander's much older number 2, Parmenion (no 2, that is, until Alexander had him put to death for alleged treason, but only well after the final decisive pitched land battle of Gaugamela in 331).
JR Gaugamela was indeed the consummate expression of Alexander's art of warcraft, if we can call warcraft an art. His use of various stratagems to deal with the threat of encirclement — a very potent threat considering he was outnumbered perhaps three to one, even by conservative estimates — are rather remarkable. I'm thinking especially of the way the battle began, with Alexander sending cavalry units to his far right, as though trying to outflank Darius, when by all rights Darius should have been the one doing the outflanking. Darius reacted to this effrontery by stretching his li
ne thin in an effort to counter Alexander's move, and that, ultimately, created the opening through which Alexander charged — thus inflicting the decisive blow. I suspect — though I can't prove this — that Alexander foresaw that whole chain of events when he ordered the initial move to the right. So he really was thinking several moves ahead, was he not? PC He surely was, Jamie – though I suppose we should add that any reconstruction of how the Gaugamela battle went has to be a bit tentative and speculative, given the nature of the evidence available and the nature of battle (any battle). The image I'm left with, finally, is of Alexander himself leading in person the decisive Macedonian Companion Cavalry charge, mounted on his faithful Thessalian Greek stallion Bucephalas ('Ox-head'), and scything through the opposition straight at Darius III who fled the field.
ne thin in an effort to counter Alexander's move, and that, ultimately, created the opening through which Alexander charged — thus inflicting the decisive blow. I suspect — though I can't prove this — that Alexander foresaw that whole chain of events when he ordered the initial move to the right. So he really was thinking several moves ahead, was he not? PC He surely was, Jamie – though I suppose we should add that any reconstruction of how the Gaugamela battle went has to be a bit tentative and speculative, given the nature of the evidence available and the nature of battle (any battle). The image I'm left with, finally, is of Alexander himself leading in person the decisive Macedonian Companion Cavalry charge, mounted on his faithful Thessalian Greek stallion Bucephalas ('Ox-head'), and scything through the opposition straight at Darius III who fled the field.