Dr. Roel Konijnendijk
speaker
1,157 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 15 Mar
Dr. Roel Konijnendijk’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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But I do think that in those stories, there is, if we scratch the surface, something of the Persian version that goes underneath as well. And that goes back to what I was just saying about the great king being in harmony with nature as well. It's kind of it's kind of set on its head by Herodotus and other Greek writers as well.
So we get, for instance, Xerxes beating the sea with whips and chains and so forth, because it will not kowtow to him at all. But in fact, this is possibly a kind of reminiscence of a Persian water cult where gold and silver and precious metals were thrown into rivers and waters and canals and so forth.
Likewise, there's a much later story, of course, very famously about Xerxes falling in love with a plane tree. This is how crazy Xerxes is. He falls in love with this tree and he puts jewelry on it and so forth. Well, it's no coincidence that one of the very rare images we have of Xerxes is a seal that was found at Susa, which shows him decorating a sacred tree with necklaces and jewelry.
It was a Persian thing to do. It was a nature cult. It was a tree cult. So I think, you know, sitting behind some of these Greek stories, which are, you know, frankly, they're laughable because, you know, it's hubris, it's excess, it's just pure craziness, sits perhaps an element of a Persian original. And I find that really fascinating.
Well, they didn't meet much resistance, to be honest. And that's because many of the Greek city-states in the north were pro-Persian and had been for some time. So the Macedonians, in fact, readily joined elements of their army and also entertained Xerxes and his generals. And we know that as they marched right the way down through Boeotia, past Thebes, again, no resistance.
And in fact, in the heartland of a pro-Persian world there as well. Herodotus gives us some fascinating insights into how the army is sustained, because here we are thinking, you know, as Xerxes has made this journey down, I mean, we must have thousands of soldiers and thousands upon thousands of camp followers just maintaining this vast juggernaut. which is moving through.
And there are great stories that, you know, if Xerxes settles for a night somewhere, then obviously it's the duty of the local inhabitants to feed him and his court and soldiers. And God forfend that he should like the place and stay for a second night because basically they will be stripped of their resources for the next six months.
And I can see, you know, there's a lot of sense that's being said in that, you know. So here I think Herodotus, you know, understands the soldier's journey and tries to depict for us the scale of the invasion. I think it It's through those kind of anecdotes that it really comes across very clearly.
So nowhere is this really an East-West war as has been sold to us for generations now. It's simply not about that whatsoever.
And exhaust the Greeks while they're doing so.
It's also a literary trope, isn't it? Because, you know, way, way back in the siege of Sardis, for instance, you know, Sardis and the Acropolis there is impenetrable. And then suddenly, you know, some soldier drops a helmet down a path one day and then, ah, bingo, we can get into Sardis now. So there's also that going on.
But I think I'm in agreement that probably the Persians knew about this a long time in advance.
It's quite remarkable that his death serves both his legend, but also I think for Xerxes at the time, it would have been mission accomplished as well, because for Xerxes, the killing of a rebel king one of these followers of Drauga, was absolutely what he needed.
And it's sad that we don't have any written record of the Persian version of this, but I've no doubt that the propaganda would have traveled far and very fast as well. Ahura Mazda had triumphed again through Xerxes, and now the world was in a better shape than it had been a couple of days ago because one of those liar kings has also disappeared. It must have been an incredible...
Precisely. And we know from the Byzantine inscription of Xerxes' father Darius that the annihilation of rebel kings is what you're after. You don't keep them imprisoned at all. You lop off the head. So this is all done for him, really, and it's a great victory.
Yeah.
It really does make more sense, doesn't it? When you're thinking about, as you described the geography, you know, we're going into this narrow past. There's no way the whole Persian force would have been brought down there. There's simply no geographic room for them.
Not at all. I mean, the success of the Persian military had always been about keeping the distance and letting the arrows do the work, really. Quite right.
We have dozens of later Greek accounts of the Persian king showing his largesse and beneficence by giving humble peasants silver cups full of coins and so forth. It is part of the Persian mission as well to do that.
But perhaps in narrative terms, you need the scapegoat, don't you? You need to tie it up somehow. You need the villain after all.
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