Thermopylae: Herodotus Versus the Legend

chapter 2 Thermopylae: Herodotus versus the Legend

Hans van Wees

Not everyone has always been impressed with the Spartans’ performance in the Battle of Thermopylae. ‘The Mede came from the ends of the earth to the Peloponnese before you offered any resistance worth the name’, delegates from Corinth supposedly told Sparta at a conference in 432BC (Thuc. 1.69.5), implying, of course, that what happened at Thermopylae did not amount to ‘resistance worth the name’.1 The Corinthians here treated the annihilation of Spartan troops in 480BC not in the usual manner as a glorious moral vic- tory but as evidence of poor leadership by Sparta. In stark contrast, the huge war effort at sea by the Athenians in the same year led Herodotus to proclaim them ‘the saviours of Greece’ (7.139), a boast they themselves were only too happy to repeat as evidence of outstanding leadership which entitled them to rule over other Greeks (for instance Thuc. 1.73–1.74). In the late 430s, when Herodotus was writing his Histories, stories about the Persian War were not simply entertainment or merely of academic interest, but carried a powerful political charge. By telling the story of a battle or campaign in a certain way, one was inevitably taking a political position: this is why Herodotus expected his opinion that Athens, not Sparta, had done most to defeat the Persians to be ‘resented by most people’ (7.139.1).2 Two quite different stories about Thermopylae were told in antiquity, and the political dimension is vital to understanding both. One version is the full and seemingly sober account by Herodotus. The other survives only in rela- tively short summaries and is in many respects so unlikely that it has been dubbed ‘the Legend’.3 It portrays Leonidas and his men as a suicide squad who end their lives, not defending the pass, but raiding the Persian camp in an attempt to assassinate Xerxes. Diodorus of Sicily gives a fairly detailed outline of this Legend, while briefer versions containing the same essential elements appear in Plutarch’sThe Malice of Herodotus and Justin’s Epitome of Pom-

1 As pointed out by Grundy 1901: 273. 2 For the politics of Persian War historiography, see Osborne 2009: 231–234. Cf. Hammond 1996; he, however, greatly oversimplifies in arguing that Herodotus’ version of Thermopylae repre- sented a pro-Athenian, anti-Spartan view. 3 Hignett 1963: 125, 371.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004383340_003 20 van wees peiusTrogus’ Philippic Histories. Diodorus’ main source for archaic and classical Greek history was Ephorus, and the other authors may have drawn directly or indirectly on the same source.4 A common assumption among scholars has been that Ephorus himself invented large parts, if not all, of the Legend,5 and that Herodotus’ account represents an older version of events, based at least in part on first-hand testimony, oral or written, and thus much more reliable. Twenty years ago, however, Michael Flower argued that the main elements of Ephorus’ version, including the Spartan suicide mission and night-raid on the Persian camp, derived from a much earlier source: a long narrative elegy by Simonides, composed soon after the battle. Flower’s main concern in his paper was to reassess Ephorus’ merits as a historian, and he therefore went on to argue that Simonides’ version of events might well have been largely accu- rate, and that Ephorus should not be condemned for preferring it to Herodotus’ account.6 In what follows, I shall build on Flower’s essential insight that the tradition found in Ephorus may have been formulated well before Herodotus’ day, but take it in a different direction. This chapter argues that, despite deriv- ing from an early source—whether Simonides’ elegy or other poetry or oral tradition—Ephorus’ story was indeed a ‘Legend’, and was originally put about by Sparta to salvage political credit from a campaign that could easily have been regarded as a disaster due to poor leadership.7 Secondly, and most importantly, Herodotus’ account was not independent of this older Legend, but derived from it. All the notorious problems of his narrative can be explained as the result of Herodotus’ attempt to reconcile the Legend with other evidence at his disposal and to tone down the most blatant elements of Spartan self- justification.The extent of historically reliable material in Herodotus thus turns out to be even smaller than is usually assumed, and we are left with only the barest outline of ‘what really happened’ at Thermopylae.

4 Flower 1998: 365–366, 370–371; Hammond 1996: 1–4; and see in this volume De Bakker. 5 Specifically the concluding night-raid on the Persian camp. Flower 1998: 366 n. 9 and Trundle 2013: 30 n. 27, quote modern authors who have declared this a ‘fantasy’ or ‘fiction’ by Ephorus; add e.g. Cartledge 2006: 146. Others just ignore it: e.g. Balcer 1995; Cawkwell 2005. However, Green 1996: 139, suggests the story may have a factual core (cf. Holland 2005: 282; Strauss 2004: 36: ‘so improbable it might even be true’). 6 Flower 1998: 372–379; his ideas are adopted by Trundle 2013: 32–34, and De Bakker, this volume. 7 In other words, the story arose as ‘post-battle spin’, as one of the referees for the Press sug- gested it should be called instead of ‘the Legend’.