PUSHOVERS AND PUTTINGS-ACROSS: ARISTAGORAS AT ATHENS

1. (a) Apparently it is easier to impose upon a crowd than upon an individual, for Aristagoras, who had failed to impose upon Cleomenes, succeeded with thirty thousand Athenians.

2. (b) It seems to be easier to fool a crowd than a single person, since Aristagoras could not persuade Cleomenes of Lacedaemon, who was all alone, but he succeeded with thirty thousand Athenians.

3. (Herodotus 5.97.2, tr. (a) de Sélincourt and (b) Waterfield)

If Aristagoras were a website, he would be full of links. The most obvious link here is between the way he played matters at Sparta (5.49–51) and the way he is now more successful at Athens: hence this famous comment that it is εὐπετ⋯στερον – ‘easier’, or more literally ‘more of a pushover’ – to διαβ⋯λλειν thirty thousand people than one – not really Waterfield's ‘fool’ or ‘persuade’, nor even quite de Sélincourt's ‘impose upon’, but rather ‘put one across’. More on these boldly daring choices of colloquial translation in a moment: but, however we translate them, we shall anyway see that those two words εὐπετ⋯ς and διαβ⋯λλειν are almost Aristagoras’ signature tunes. At Athens Aristagoras has indeed just used εὐπετ⋯ς of the Persian foe: they are hopeless with shield and spear, and would be such a pushover (εὐπετ⋯ες τε χειρωθ⋯ναι εἴησαν, 5.97.1).