CHAPTER EIGHT RELIGION IN HERODOTUS Jon D. Mikalson Although it is regularly ignored, dismissed, or disparaged by both ancient and modern historians, Herodotus explicitly offers also a reli­ gious explanation of the causes and outcome of the Persian inva­ sions. I In 499 BC a small force of Greeks, including Athenians, attacked Sardis, a principal city of the Persian empire, and in the course of the attack they accidently burned down the sanctuary of the goddess Cybebe (S.101- 102.1). When King Darius first heard of it, 'he took a bow, fitted an arrow to it, and shot the arrow into the sky. As he did, he prayed, "Zeus, grant me to take vengeance on the Athenians ... '" (S.lOS). It was the burning of Cybebe's sanc­ tuary that the Persians then used as an excuse for burning sanctu­ aries throughout the lands of hostile Greek cities for the next eighteen years (S.102.l; cf. 6.l0l.3 and 7.8.P).2 These included, after the Ionian Revolt, Apollo's temple and oracle at Didyma, and the sanc­ tuaries of all the revolting Ionian cities and islands of Asia Minor except Samos (6.l9.3, 2S, and 32). Later Datis on his way to Marathon in 490 burned the sanctuaries of Naxos and Eretria (6.96 and 10l.3). And in the second invasion Xerxes destroyed the sanctuaries in twelve Phocian cities, including Apollo's oracle at Abae (8.32.2- 33). Had he had his way, Xerxes would have had Delphi destroyed too (8.3S- 9). And, finally, with their occupation of Attica Xerxes and Mardonius fulfilled the vengeance demanded by Darius. They levelled and burned, so far as we know, all the sanctuaries of Athens and Attica (7.S.p and 140.3; 8.S3.2 and SS; 9.13.2). I Lateiner (1989) offers the most recent and systematic dismissal and disparage­ ment of religious and supernatural causation in Herodotus' Histories. For more bal­ anced treatments, see Harrison (2000b); Gould (1994); (1989); Lachenaud (1978); de Ste Croix (1977); de Romilly (1971b); and Immerwahr (1966). On the discussion of the 'tragic' aspects of Xerxes' invasion, see SaId, this volume (Ch. 6, pp. 137 ff.). 2 Diodorus (10.25.1) somewhat reformulates this point: 'The Persians learned the burning of sanctuaries from the Greeks. They were repaying the same hubris to those who had first wronged them'. 188 JON D. MIKALSON Herodotus has his Themistocles, surely not the least perceptive observer of Xerxes' invasion, directly link Xerxes' ultimate failure to these sacrileges. In the planning immediately after the victory in the Battle of Salamis, Themistocles tells his fellow Athenians, 'Not we but the gods and heroes accomplished this. They begrudged one man who was unholy and rash (atasthalon) to be king of Asia and Europe. He treated holy and profane things alike, burning and throw­ ing to the ground the statues of the gods. He even whipped the sea and hurled leg irons into it' (8.109.3).3 And, a few months later, the Athenians echoed these sentiments in their response to Mardonius' offer of alliance, 'We will attack him, trusting in the gods and heroes as our allies, the gods and heroes for whom Xerxes had no respect and whose buildings and statues he burned' (8.143.2). The gods and heroes whom the Athenians and other Greeks trusted and who brought them victory over the Persians are those whose efforts and, in particular, whose dedications after the victories Herodotus records in his narrative of the invasions: Apollo of Delphi, Zeus of Olympia, Poseidon of Isthmia, Zeus Eleutherios of Plataea, Athena of Athens, Demeter Eleusinia of Plataea, Mycale, and Athens, Artemis Agrotera and Mounychia of Athens, and Artemis of Artemision. The heroes included the Athenian Ajax, the Aeginetan Aeacidae, and the Delphic Phylakos and Autonoos. These specific gods and heroes and the gods in general helped the Greeks defeat the invading Persians against overwhelming odds. As Herodotus tells it, the 'divine' and some gods, even Greek gods, may have helped Persians and their predecessors in earlier times (e .g., Croesus, 1.46- 56.1, 85- 91, and Cyrus, l.l24.1 , 126.6, 209.4 and 9.122.2), but when the conflict became squarely between Persians and Greeks, the Greek divine world conceived of as a whole or in parts stood completely and solely behind the Greeks.4 These gods and heroes helped the Greeks on land and at sea, by oracles and omens, and by personal appear­ ances and apparitions. It was, in Herodotus' own judgment, the Athenians 'who gathered together all the rest of Greece and repulsed 3 See also Fisher, this volume (Ch. 9, p. 223). 4 Mardonius' consultations of Trophonius, Apollo at Abae and Ptobn, and Amphiaraus at Thebes apparently proved fruitless (8.133- 6), and at Plataea he even­ tually disregarded his Greek seer (9.33-41). The Persian sacrifices to Thetis and the Nereids at Cape Sepias mqy have stopped the storm off Artemision (7.191.2). For the role of the Delphic oracle in the invasion of 480 BCE, see below. .