a golden parasol Plut Them 16 2.
“Then from the Hellene ships” Aesch Pers 386–400.
plucky Artemisia Her 8 87–88.
“My men have become women” Ibid., 8 88 3.
“The Hellenes seized” Aesch Pers 424–26.
the Phoenician contingent See Burn, pp. 467–68.
the sacred chariot Her 8 115 4.
oath of fidelity See Burn, p. 512ff. Diod 11 29 1–2, Tod 2 204 lines 21–51. The exact wording may not have come down to us, but the event is authentic. It is known as the Oath of Plataea.
Modern archaeologists For an account of the destruction of Athens, see Camp, pp. 57–58.
“It was worth seeing” Her 9 25 1.
omens stayed resolutely unfavorable Plut Arist 17 6–18 2. Some modern scholars believe that Pausanias manipulated the sacrifices to ensure that the Greeks, or at least the Spartans, attacked at just the right moment. But Greeks took their religion very seriously and barefaced trickery of this kind in public is unlikely.
Hellenic losses amounted to a modest 1,360 According to Plut Arist 19 4. A plausible number.
“spread out through the whole camp” Her 9 80 1–2.
“That is an act” Ibid., 9 79 1–2.
“What a fool Mardonius was” Ibid., 9 82 3.
with his 110 ships One source says that the fleet now numbered 250 ships. If so it could be that the Athenians sent their triremes to join the allies at Delos after the Spartans had begun their march to Plataea.
“to deliver the Ionians from slavery” Ibid., 9 90 2.
“remember freedom first and foremost” Ibid., 9 98 3.
a chain of beacons This after all is how the news of the fall of Troy is conveyed in Aeschylus’s drama Agamemnon, first performed in Athens in 458.
the unarmed Samians and other Ionians Diod 11 36 4–5.
a state of shock Ibid., 11 36 7.
“The Athenian people” Thuc 1 89 3.
“attached the city to the Piraeus” Plut Them 19 3.
“I will not rebuild” Lyc 81. Some modern scholars do not accept this citation as historical, but it is certain that the Athenians did not rebuild the temples and shrines for a generation after the Persian Wars.
13. LEAGUE OF NATIONS
The literary sources dwindle with the creation of the Athenian Empire. Herodotus has finished, Thucydides takes over with his abrupt summary of the next half century, the so-called Pentakontaetia. Plutarch’s life of Cimon helps, as do a growing number of administrative inscriptions. An explosion in the number of these inscriptions throws light on the workings of the Athenian democracy.
“Go tell the Spartans” Her 7 228 2.
the head and torso of a Greek warrior The excavation was conducted in 1920 by the British Archaeological School.
“Did not forget their courage” Dillon and Garland, 11:48 (Simonides Elegy 11).
Serpent Column Meiggs and Lewis 27. The Roman emperor Constantine took the column from Delphi and installed it in the courtyard of the Hagia Sophia at Constantinople. It was later moved to the Hippodrome, now a public square, where, albeit damaged, it survives to the present day.
“If the greatest part of virtue” Sim Ep 8.
a statue of himself A good Roman copy has been found at Ostia.
“can’t stand Themistocles” Plut Them 21 2–3.
Themistocles felt for himself the ingratitude Successful war leaders are often discarded by ungrateful democracies—for example, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.
various scratched opinions Forsdyke, p. 155.
Pausanias, the victor of Plataea His downfall and death are recounted in Thuc 1 128–34.
killed a Byzantine woman Plut Cim 6 4–5.
Themistocles became entangled The story of his escape to Persia and death are told in greater detail in Plut Them 24–32 and Thuc 1 136–38.
“secret hoards” Thuc 1 137 3.
his father had been assassinated This is my interpretation of the odd account in Arist Pol 1311b36. For a different version, see Diod 11 69.
“For the past you owe me a good turn” Thuc 1 137 4.
“A man who showed the most unmistakable signs of genius” Ibid., 1 138 3.
“there you look down” Plut Them 32 5.
“to stay at home” Plut Cim 11 2.
“the quality which makes a real general” and“suited a money-box” Plut Arist 24 4.
“the Athenian people are thought to act” Xen Con 1 16.
“He earned himself a bad name” Plut Cim 4 3–4.
“Plain and unadorned” Ibid., 4 4.
he transformed…the Academy Ibid., 13 8.
a handsome colonnade For this paragraph see Camp, pp. 68–69. The Stoa and four of its paintings were seen six hundred years later by Pausanias.
“He was not such a scoundrel” Plut Cim 15 3.
the chief reasons for these defections Thuc 1 99 1.
“This was the first time” Ibid., 1 98 4.
“not a single Persian soldier” Plut Cim 12 1.
Cimon sailed out For the battle of the Eurymedon, see Diod 11 60 5–6.
“These men lost the splendour” Sim Ep 46.
Theseus, the national hero of Athens For the story of the discovery of Theseus’s bones, Plut Thes 36 1–4 and Plut Cim 8 3–6.
“no sense of shame” Thuc 1 5 1.
“And now he lies buried” Plut Thes 36 2.
14. THE FALLING-OUT
The main sources are Thucydides and Plutarch’s lives of Pericles and Cimon, with help from Diodorus Siculus and, regarding constitutional reforms, Athenian Constitution. See Barnes for pre-Socratic philosophers discussed below.
a series of tremendous earthquakes We have no firm dates and scholars place the earthquakes at different times during the decade. I follow Cambridge Ancient History 5, p. 108.
Some young men and boys Plut Cim 16 5.
twenty thousand deaths according to one source Diod 11 63 1.
“all the ephebes” Plut Cim 16 4–5.
“when Pericleidas the Spartan came here” Ar Lys 1137–40.
“put Sparta’s interests” Plut Cim 16 8.
persuaded the assembly to send out an expeditionary force It is possible that there were two Athenian expeditions—ibid., 16 8.
four thousand hoplites Ar Lys 1143.
“grew afraid of the enterprise” Thuc 1 102 3.