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Persian Wars : The birth of the feeling of superiority
2500 years ago the Persian Wars ended. The united Greeks had won. And they soon found an explanation for their success: their culture is superior to anything foreign. by David Neuhäuser
Loading … © AKG Images/Erich Lessing (excerpt)
At the beginning of the 5th century BC the end of the Greek world was imminent. The Persian kings, who had already conquered dozens of peoples, set about finally taking all of the Greek city-states. Soon the aristocratic Sparta and the democratic Athens, but also Poleis like Syracuse in Sicily and Corinth in the Peloponnese were to pay tribute to the great kings. But it turned out differently. An alliance never before formed by the Hellenes was retained at the last battle in 479 BC. the upper hand. The Persians under King Xerxes & nbsp; I. (519–465 & nbsp; BC & nbsp; Chr.) Did not undertake another attack on Greece afterwards. And the Greeks? They puzzled as to how they could actually win and came to the conclusion that it was because of their culture. Their values and beliefs are apparently superior to anything foreign.
When the Persians in 480 B.C. Having crossed the Hellespont, today's Dardanelles, many cities found it pointless to offer resistance in view of the enemy’s troops. The invaders had already set foot on the Greek peninsula with a small force – at that time they defeated the Athenians in 490 BC. at Marathon & nbsp; – but Greek Asia Minor was already in Persian hands. And the army with which Xerxes now appeared was enormous.
Several northern Greek cities then surrendered to the advancing Persians. Faced with the threat, other Poleis contacted the Delphi Oracle, which was more concerned about its future for the same reason. The city of Argos should remain neutral, it advised. Crete should also stay out of it. Presumably it tried to prevent supposedly senseless resistance from forming in Greece. But the Athenians did not want to be satisfied with that. When the oracle advised them to avoid the fight, they asked for a second, better prophecy. They got it: Athens should trust in its wooden walls. As is so often the case with oracles, the words had to be interpreted. Wooden walls & nbsp; – apparently the Persians should be confronted with ships.
The Greek alliance proved successful
Between the island of Salamis and the Attic coast, the alliance led by Athens then gave the Persians a crushing defeat. The Athenians had done well to put everything on their fleet. The Persian associations fell apart. They were powerless against the well-coordinated Greeks. Xerxes then turned his back on the war and handed over the supreme command of the land forces to his general Mardonios. In the summer of 479 BC, exactly 2500 years ago, he moved with the Persian troops against the Greek army led by the Spartan king Pausanias near Platää in central Greece. As with Salamis, the Persians were outnumbered & nbsp; – and again they were defeated. Although the Greek alliance was anything but sovereign. The Spartans tried to avoid combat, and the commanders around Pausanias were characterized by indecision. But when it finally came to the greatest battle that the Greek world had seen until then, the discipline of the hoplites from Sparta, Tegea and Athens prevailed. 759 & nbsp; of them fell, 3000 & nbsp; Persian warriors were captured.
The Persian War was over. Greece remained free.
A previously desperate hope had become reality. The Greeks could hardly believe it themselves. What happened? How did they manage to defeat the invincible Persians? It was wonder enough that they had successfully forged an alliance – an alliance that brought old archenemies like Athens and Aegina together as partners on the battlefield. The need had shown them that they were more united than the fragmented city-states previously believed. At least that is how the ancient historian Herodotus (490/480-430/420 & nbsp; BC & nbsp; Chr.) Explains it. He narrates that the Athenians invoked the “blood and language community” of the Greeks, the “commonality of sanctuaries, sacrificial feasts and way of life”. Even if the city-states feuded regularly and often, their residents are all of one kind, so the statement.
It was the Persians who forced the Greeks to act together with their campaign. For their military alliance, the Hellenes were looking for common qualities with which they could set themselves apart from the oriental invaders. For example, one was: virtue. Herodotus had the Persian Tigranes, when he heard of the Olympic Games, in which the winners brought home only fame and an olive wreath, amazed and terrified: “Woe, Mardonios! Are you leading us into a war against a people who are not fighting for the value of money, but for the price of virtue? «
A new conviction is ripening: Panhellenism
Right at the beginning of his' Histories', Herodotus emphasizes the contrast between Greeks and Persians & nbsp; – and why the Persians had harbored a grudge against the Greeks since the mythical fall of Troy: 'From this time on the Persians always had what is Hellenic as viewed hostile. Because they see all of Asia as their fatherland and all the barbarian peoples who inhabit it as their relatives. But Europe and the land of the Hellenes are a foreign country to them. «Although Herodotus reveals commonalities between Greeks and Persians in the course of his work, their differences form an enemy image on which, in his eyes, the resistance of the Greeks was based. It is ultimately this enemy image that creates a new conviction: Herodotus speaks of panhellenism, the Greek unity in the face of external threats.
The unexpected victory caused a fundamental change in awareness among the Greeks
That was new – a common political identity. At that time, however, it was not yet coupled with the feeling of self-evident superiority. Herodotus is more concerned with declaring a seemingly hopeless struggle and an all the more astonishing triumph. “Great and wonderful deeds” he approves of both sides; and Herodotus, in spite of his Panhellenic concerns, in no way portrays the Persian character in a derogatory manner. This view had long persisted in Greece. Three centuries before the historian, Homer in his “Iliad” portrayed the Achaeans, the Trojans, perceived as Orientals, and all other peoples as similar in respect to one another.
The Persian Wars changed that. The unexpected victory caused a fundamental change in awareness among the Greeks. Even in the time of Herodotus, the Hellenes explained their success with the fact that they were superior in all respects. As a result, in the 5th & nbsp; century BC & nbsp; Chr. Stereotypes that quickly determined the perception of the non-Greek world: barbarians are despotic, cruel, faithless, devious, scheming, addicted to luxury, effeminate and hungry for power. Greek freedom was contrasted with a barbaric slave nature, Greek masculinity with barbaric femininity.
The common identity produced a feeling of superiority
The playwright Euripides (around 480–406 & nbsp; BC & nbsp; Chr.) Has the protagonist exclaim in his tragedy “Iphigenia in Aulis” that Greeks should rule over barbarians and not the other way around, because barbarians are slaves, but Greeks are free. The famous philosopher Aristotle (384–322 & nbsp; BC & nbsp; Chr.) Expresses himself no differently in his state-philosophical treatise »Politics«: Naturally, a non-Greek is more suitable for slavery than a Greek, he writes there. In the 4th century B.C. this picture has become so solid that one could only imagine a war against the Persians as the only major slave hunt. It was part of the good manners of Greek intellectuals to deny the barbarians any qualities or achievements. The speech writer Isocrates, for example, who tried throughout his life to persuade the Greeks to invade the Persian Empire, was convinced that the barbarians were virtuous & nbsp; – most of them would be better trained in bondage than the slaves of the Greeks.
When King Philip of Macedonia finally ruled the Hellenic Poleis, he and his son Alexander were expected to overrun and plunder the Persian Empire. The displeasure in the Greek world was all the greater when Alexander the Great (356–323 & nbsp; BC & nbsp; BC) did not care after his victory. He wanted to rule the world, but as king of a multi-ethnic state. He integrated the Persian nobility into his retinue, putting them on a par with the Greeks and Macedonians.
The victory of Greece found in Herodotus its first and for a long time only observer who tried to clarify
This policy, which earned him a lot of criticism even during his lifetime – even from his own soldiers – died with the Macedonian general. The Diadochi and Epigones, Alexander's generals and their successors, who had divided his empire among themselves, ended the rapprochement. Greeks should again be above barbarians, even if the latter had the opportunity to receive Greek privileges themselves through a Greek lifestyle. Racism in its present form did not determine the thinking of the Greeks. They believed, however, that a barbarian was only entitled to be on a par with them by adopting their culture.
Herodotus, a »barbarian friend«, so the accusation
The historian Plutarch (around & nbsp; around & nbsp; around & nbsp; 125), who wrote the most important biographies of antiquity, later accused Herodotus of having been a barbarian friend in his work »On Herodotus' Malignancy«. Plutarch scoured the work of his predecessor for passages in which non-Greeks were better off than Greeks, was bitterly indignant about it and dismantled one passage after the other.
The victory of Greece found its first and for a long time only observer in Herodotus, who tried to clarify. For everyone else, the matter was clear: being Greek was the benchmark. And those Hellenes who did not fight against or even support the Persians were quickly suspected of being barbarian friends and enemies of the Greek cause. They tried to whitewash their role in retrospect, to change the events, for example in monuments in the memory of the Greeks. The Macedonians were also on the side of the invaders in the Persian Wars. They never get rid of their reputation of being half barbarians, although it is they who ultimately provide the kings of the Hellenistic empires.
For Persians, Egyptians, Scythians, Thracians, Jews and all other »foreign peoples «The rule now was that they either had to educate themselves in Greek and live according to Greek principles & nbsp; – or accept their place at the lower end of the hierarchy.