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The Hoplite Achievement at Psyttaleia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Charles W. Fornara
Charles W. Fornara
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Among the manifest improbabilities in the tale of Aristeides' message to Themistocles on the night before Salamis, most notable, certainly, is that the information Aristeides imparted supplied indeed a lack but effected no response until its duplication by the crew of a Tenian trireme. The rejection with which the episode has been met is thoroughly deserved. But a problem, that of motive, remains, and other questions arise. For unlike the setting of the story, which has some claim to dramatic, though not to historical, validity, the supposititious message cannot, as it neither illustrates character nor exaggerates truth, simply be explained as a fanciful and harmless accretion to the Aristeides legend. How, then, came the story to be told? One possibility is worth considering. As it is likely prima facie that Herodotus derived his account of Aristeides at Psyttaleia (viii 95) from the same source that brought him to Salamis with his message, the message may have been intended to smooth his way to Psyttaleia. The story of his deed on that island, therefore, deserves attention.

The account arouses suspicion. Its context, the epilogue to the battle, where Herodotus metes out blame and praise, is not reassuring. Whatever information was related to Herodotus about the exploit, it was not embedded, apparently, in the sequence of events of which the battle of Salamis consisted. He seems to have only the vaguest notion of the relation of the exploit to the battle as a whole— viii 95; and lightly does he accord to Aristeides, apparently a private person, the leadership of the landing party.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 86 , November 1966 , pp. 51 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1966

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References

1 Hdt. viii 79–82. The episode has received a thorough discussion from Hignett, , Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (Oxford 1963) 408–11Google Scholar, who concludes it ‘may safely be dropped out of the historical record’.

2 viii 95 refers back to viii 79.1 unmistakably and emphatically, a fact which Macan's theory (ad viii 95) that one passage was written subsequently to the other fails entirely to explain.

3 viii 93 records the ἀριστεῖα, 94 the cowardice imputed to Adeimantus, 95 Psyttaleia. Hignett, , Xerxes' Invasion, 237 Google Scholar, considers the story about Adeimantus to come ‘abruptly’. It is, however, quite in place, a kind of negative plaudit balanced nicely by the garland woven for Aristeides in 95 and the honours given the Greeks in 93.

4 Bury, , CR x (1896) 414 ff.Google Scholar, suggests that Aristeides was strategos, and this has been generally accepted. But this extemporaneous inference provides credibility to Herodotus' narrative by depriving it of the claim to be circumstantially reliable.

5 JHS lxxvi (1956) 40.

6 αὐθημερόν (456) best refers to the renewed activities of the same body of men whose exploits have already been described. The phrase probably is nothing more than a poetical equivalent of the prosaic ‘intending a fight on land’; cf. our ‘gird for battle’. Taken more literally, the phrase remains equally applicable (or inapplicable) to the hoplites of the shore as to the marines on the vessels, for which see Plutarch, Them. 14. 2. Finally, ναῶν ἐξέθρῳσκον (457) should be conclusive. Though the words may be taken to emphasise a rapid disembarkation (Rose ad loc.), they seem to suggest that the Greeks disembarked not from ‘any boats available’, but from the boats already victorious that are mentioned but two lines above. Cf. Prickard, cited by Broadhead ad loc; so also (apparently) the scholiast to 457 ff., ed. Daehnhardt.

7 There is no apparent basis to the general assumption that Aeschylus wished ‘the hoplites to have their share in the glory of the Greek triumph’ ( Hignett, , Xerxes' Invasion, 238 Google Scholar), if that is to imply any detectable exaggeration of their contribution. Rather is it Herodotus who enlarges their claims. For Aeschylus divides the honours among the light and heavy armed, if, indeed, he has not been guilty of a greater kindness to the toxotai, a circumstance that enforces confidence in his accuracy. Such warriors as these would hardly ennoble his theme, particularly as the τόξου ῥῦμα of the barbarian had failed so completely against the opposing δορικράνου λόγχης ἰσχύς (Persae 147–9).

8 Compare, for example, the statements of pseudo-Xenophon, i 2, ii i, with Pericles' words, Thuc. i 141 2–143; see the self-justification of the knights in Eq. 595–610. Thucydides' ‘Archaeology’ presents an exaggerated case for sea power and a corresponding denigration of land warfare. On the last see especially i 15.

9 See, for example, Judeich, , RE ii s.v. 880. 45–52 Google Scholar, Busolt, , Griech. Gesch. iii 63.Google Scholar The most comprehensive discussion of Aristeides' political position is offered by Jacoby, , FGrHist iii b Suppl. vol. ii (Notes) p. 95 (note 104).Google Scholar The ancient tradition is evaluated by Beloch, , Griech. Gesch. 2 ii 2 137 f.Google Scholar

10 The inference is hardly inevitable. It is worth noting that Thucydides omitted the name of Aristeides in i 96.2; and we may infer no more from Aristeides' acceptance of the commission than a willingness on his part (hardly irreconcilable with conservative politics: compare Cimon's career) to represent Athens in a league designed for self-defence and counter-attack against Persia. Indeed, that he initiated or predicted the consequences of that first assessment is a notion the fifth century would have scouted. Why was he called ὁ δίκαιος? The adjective rebukes his successors (cf. Plut., Arist. 24.3) as completely as it absolves him from complicity in a πρόσχημα that until sophistic times incarnated its negative (cf. Thuc, v 87 ff.).

11 The fact of the ostracism is usually hedged with inferences. According to Jacoby (cited here above, n. 9), ‘The ostracism of Aristeides in 483/2 B.C. (Ἀθπ. 27. 7 (a misprint of 22.7)) merely shows that Themistokles saw in him an obstacle to his own naval policy’. (My italics.) The inference (cf. Busolt, , Griech. Gesch. ii 2 652 n. 1Google Scholar) that Themistocles had Aristeides ostracized because of conflict over the naval policy is attractive because it provides a likely issue for crucial disagreement. But the issue, having been inferred, may not then be cited to extenuate or to delimit the irreconcilable political difference guaranteed by the ostracism.