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1 a Persian Marriage Feast in Macedon? A PERSIAN MARRIAGE FEAST IN MACEDON? (HERODOTUS 5.17-21) Herodotus’ fateful tale of the seven Persian emissaries sent to seek Earth and Water from the Macedonian king Amyntes has been the subject of increasingly rich discussion in recent years.1 Generations of commentators have cumulatively revealed the ironies of Herodotus’ account: its repeated hints, for example, of the Persians’ eventual end;2 and, crowning all other ironies, the story’s ending: that, after resisting the indignity of his female relatives being molested at a banquet, and disposing of all trace of the Persian ambassadors and their party, Alexander of Macedon then arranges his sister’s marriage to the leader of the search party sent to investigate his disappeared compatriots (Herodotus 5.21.2).3 More recent readings have gone further in 1 Most recently: D. Fearn, 'Herodotos 5.17–22. Narrating ambiguity: murder and Macedonian allegiance', in E. Irwin and E. Greenwood (edd.) Reading Herodotus: A Study of the logoi in Book 5 of Herodotus' Histories (Cambridge 2007), 98–127, S. Hornblower, Herodotus Histories V (Cambridge, 2013). 2 So, e.g., Alexander’s assurance to his father that he will give his guests all that they require (πάντα τὰ ἐπιτήδεα παρέξω τοῖσι ξείνοισι, 5.19.1, with R. W. Macan, Herodotus: The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Books (London,1895) ad loc., Hornblower (n. 1), 113), or to the Persians that ‘the hour of sleep is approaching’ (σχεδὸν γὰρ ἤδη τῆς κοίτης ὥρη προσέρχεται ὑμῖν, 5.20.2, hinting at a longer sleep: Hornblower (n. 1) 114). 3 5.21.2, with e.g. Fearn (n. 1), 103-4. All references in this format are to Herodotus unless specified. 1 uncovering the mythological archetypes for the logos,4 or in tracing its exploration of a number of themes: revenge,5 guest-friendship,6 the equation of sexual and military conquest,7 or the ‘explosion of violence resulting from the contact of two different cultures’.8 Most fruitful perhaps have been those readings that have seen the logos no longer as a detached ‘short story’ but in its wider context in the Histories: David Fearn, for example, has stressed the need to understand the presentation of Alexander I in the light of what the reader knows of his subsequent history.9 4 Fearn (n. 1), 105-112; also (on Homeric tone) D. Boedeker, ‘Epic heritage and mythical patterns in Herodotus’, E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. de Jong and H. van Wees (edd.) Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002), 97-116, at 106. 5 Fearn (n. 1), 106; cf. V. Gray, ‘Short stories in Herodotus’ Histories’, in E. J. Bakker, I. H. F. de Jong and H. van Wees (edd.) Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden, 2002), 291-317, at 297 for the logos as a stand-alone example of the revenge short-story. 6 Fearn (n. 1), 103 and n. 11. 7 See (in the context of this passage) T. Harrison, ‘Herodotus and the ancient Greek idea of rape’, in S. Deacy and Karen F. Pearce, Rape in Antiquity (London, 1997), 185-208, at 196-7; and. more broadly, e.g., E. Hall, ‘Asia Unmanned: images of victory in classical Athens’, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (edd.) War and Society in the Greek World (London, 1993), 108-33 at 110-13, K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (London, 1978), 105. 8 R. Scaife, ‘Alexander I in the Histories of Herodotus’, Hermes 117 (1989) 129-37, at 132-3 drawing attention to the repetition of the dative ἡμῖν to ‘bring out the relative nature of νόμος.᾿ 9 Fearn (n. 1), 126, an approach to reading of Herodotus pioneered by C.W. Fornara e.g. in the context of his portrayal of the Spartan Pausanias: Herodotus. An Interpretative Essay (Oxford, 1971), e.g. 64-5, at 81. See also E. Baragwanath, ‘Myth and history entwined: female influence 2 Historical interpretation, by contrast, has centred narrowly on the historicity of the episode. ‘Fortunately’, wrote Ernst Badian, ‘no one has believed the tale’.10 Though there may be disagreements over details here (most prominently perhaps the date of Alexander’s marriage of his sister Gygaie to Boubares, or whether his father Amyntes bore any culpability for Macedonian medism11) historians have been largely united in concluding the whole episode to be a transparent fabrication, designed to distract from the Macedonians’ close relations to Persia.12 For Elizabeth Carney, the story represents not only an attempt to assert ‘Argead and male usurpation in Herodotus’ Histories’, in J. Baines, H. van der Blom, T. Rood, and Y.S. Chen (edd.) Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World (London, forthcoming), emphasizing the connections of our logos with that of Candaules’ wife, and the deployment of a ‘mythodic discourse’, marked e.g. by the use of significant numbers. 10 E. Badian, ‘Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon. A study in some subtle silences’, in S. Hornblower (ed.) Greek Historiography (Oxford, 1994), 107-30, at 108. Contrast, however, the caution of G. Nenci, Erodoto. Libro V: La rivolta della Ionia (Milan, 1994), 177 on 5.18.1; cf. also P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire, tr. P. T. Daniels (Winona Lake IN, 2002), 145, appearing to credit the massacre as historical. 11 The subject of contention between Badian (n. 10) and R. M. Errington, ‘Alexander the Philhellene and Persia’, in H. J. Dell (ed.) Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson (Thessaloniki, 1981), 139-43, at 109-12. 12 See e.g. W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford, 1912) ad loc., Errington (n. 11) 140, Badian (n. 10) 113-4, Fearn (n. 1) 115, S. Sprawski, ‘The early Temenid kings to Alexander I’, in J. Roisman and I. Worthington (edd.) A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (Malden MA, 2010), 127-44, 135-6, M. Mari, ‘Archaic and early Classical Macedonia’, in R. Lane Fox (ed.) Brill’s Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Studies in the 3 political correctness in matters Hellenic’ but to ‘demonstrate cultural correctness in matters Hellenic as well, to convince Athenians and others that the women of the royal family were just as secluded as the most respectable Athenian housewife, unlikely though this was to have been true’.13 The passage’s contrast of Greek and Persian sympotic practice has also been rejected by commentators, on the basis (as George Rawlinson put it in terms characteristic of his time14) that the ‘seclusion of the women was as much practised by the Persians as by any other Orientals.’ As Plutarch attests (in a commonly cited passage15), the Persians did not get drunk or dance with their wives but only with their concubines (ὀρθῶς φασι μὴ ταῖς γαμεταῖς ἀλλὰ ταῖς παλλάκεσι συμμεθύσκεσθαι καὶ συνορχεῖσθαι, Plutarch Moralia 613a). Either then (as Rawlinson puts it), ‘the speakers’, i.e. the Persian ambassadors ‘must have presumed greatly Archaeology and History of Macedon 650 BC-300 AD (Leiden, 2011), 79-92, at 85; for historical context, also M. Zahrnt, ‘Herodot und die Makedonenkönige’, in R. Rollinger, B. Truschnegg, and R. Bichler (edd.) Herodot und das Persische Weltreich (Wiesbaden, 2011), 761-775, at 763-4. 13 E. D. Carney, King and Court in Ancient Macedonia. Rivalry, Treason and Conspiracy (Swansea, 2015), 12. 14 Rawlinson ad loc.; cf. How and Wells (n. 12) ad loc. (‘Repugnant as is the suggestion to Greek sentiment … it is even more opposed to Oriental custom’); for Rawlinson’s attitudes, T. Harrison, ‘Exploring Virgin fields. Henry and George Rawlinson on Ancient and Modern Orient’, in E. Almagor and J. Skinner (edd.) Ancient Ethnography. New Approaches (Bloomsbury, 2013), 223-55. 15 So, e.g., H. Stein, Herodoti Historiae (Berlin, 1869–71), Macan (n. 2), How and Wells (n. 12), ad loc. See also Plut. Them. 26.5 for Persian seclusion of wives and concubines. 4 upon the ignorance of Persian customs’ of their Macedonian hosts, or (if Herodotus knew of the reality of Persian customs) the story is intended as illustrative of their bad behaviour away from home.16 *** Here I offer an additional dimension to the passage, one which is complimentary to(most recent readings, but which suggests very different historical implications: that – despite its ostensibly Greek ‘colouring’17 – Herodotus’ Macedonian banquet reflects, in distorted fashion, the memory of a large-scale marriage of Persian and Macedonian elites. This possibility was mooted briefly in a note by George Cawkwell forty years ago, but neither argued for nor developed by subsequent scholars.18 16 Nenci (n. 10) 178 on 5.18. 17 A. M. Bowie, ‘Fate may harm me, I have dined today: near-eastern royal banquets and Greek symposia in Herodotus’, Pallas 61 (2003), 99-109, at 106 (a contrasting emphasis from Fearn (n. 1) 104-5). M. A. Flower and J. Marincola, Herodotus Histories IX (Cambridge, 2002), 126, similarly describe the context of the banquet at Thebes (9.15.4-16.5), for which see below, as ‘wholly Greek and Homeric’. 18 G. Cawkwell, Philip of Macedon (London, 1978) 24 n., continuing: ‘It is more likely that marriages could be disguised from the Greeks than that the disappearance of the envoys should be left unavenged by the Persians. So the precedents for Alexander’s policy of fusion of races by intermarriage may include more than just the marriage of a Macedonian princess to a Persian grandee.’ Cawkwell’s passing suggestion is noted by Simon Hornblower, Mausolus (Oxford, 1982) 219, and (n. 1) ad loc. 5 The basis for this suggestion is a pattern of parallels with our main surviving account of Persian marriage, again in a Macedonian context: Arrian’s version of Alexander the Great’s mass marriage (in Susa in 324) of the noblest daughters of the Persians and the Medes to eighty of his companions (Arrian Anabasis 7.4-8).19 For Arrian, Persian marriage consisted in three steps: the drinking of toasts, the introduction of the brides seated alongside their grooms, and the grooms’ taking of their brides by the hand and kissing them (Arrian Anabasis 7.4.7).
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