Hakluyt
12-28-2005, 03:50 PM
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051224/BKPERS24/TPEntertainment/Books
Beware of Persians Bearing Arms
By MARK GOLDEN
Saturday, December 24, 2005 Page D6
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West By Tom Holland, Little, Brown, 418 pages, $39
East is East and West is West, and the twain have been meeting for about 3,000 years now, ever since the Greeks tried to bring Helen of Sparta home from Troy. Few encounters have been as resonant as their struggle to ward off Persian power in the early fifth century BC. At first glance, the Persian Wars seem to feature the clear contrasts of a professional wrestling contest. In one corner, barbarian hordes whipped into battle at the behest of Oriental despots. In the other, plucky farmers fighting in defence of their homes, their temples and their fledgling democracy.
This story line inspired the first work of history (our version of the historiai, the "researches," of Herodotus of Halicarnassus), brought Byron to fight and die for Greek freedom from the Ottoman Empire, and led Tehran to bid for the 1984 Olympic games without a marathon race. (It recalls a Persian defeat.) An earlier British historian subtitled his own book on the Persian Wars "the defence of the West"; in his day, the Eastern menace came from the Soviet Union.
Yet, Persians and Greeks spoke related languages, Persian chic was admired and imitated by the Greek elite, individual Greeks and their cities sought their fortunes and made alliances with the barbarians and would do so until Alexander the Great finally brought East and West together under one ruler. Moreover, it was Darius and Xerxes, kings of kings, who mounted the first crusade, a holy war on behalf of the one true god, Ahura Mazda. Xerxes himself is now a street name in Minneapolis -- a westward expansion even he did not dream of -- and his multiethnic empire seems less strange today than the Athenians' unique and disregarded form of democracy.
The presence of the past is a theme of Persian Fire, British historian Tom Holland's riveting retelling of this clash of civilizations. Anyone who thinks the modern world began at Paris, 1919, is in for a shock. The echoes of history are amplified by striking turns of phrase. Subheads read "O brother, where art thou?" and "Stairway to heaven." Darius's royal roads make up "the original information superhighway," his ships overwhelm the island of Naxos with "shock and awe," the political reformers Lycurgus and Solon exemplify the Greek reliance on "one-man think tanks."
But there is substance here as well as splash: Holland is a very good historian. His book takes Herodotus as a model, beginning with an engrossing account of the rise of Persia and of the very different city-states, Athens and Sparta, which led the opposition to it. Holland underscores differences and tensions among the Greeks -- Athens' democracy, still new at the time of the wars, was established in the teeth of Spartan opposition -- and some surprising similarities they shared with their enemies. (Ancient leaders, Persians and Greeks alike, used false-memory syndrome as they reinvented their own pasts and took over others' to lend themselves legitimacy.) These worlds collided after the Persians defeated Croesus, the wealthy philhellene who had dominated western Anatolia, and replaced him as the overlord of Greek cities in the region. It was Athen's intervention in a Greek revolt that brought the Persians to their doorstep.
Only after 170 pages do we reach the Persians' retaliatory expedition of 490 and the Athenian victory over a superior force at Marathon. (Yes, it's about 26 miles from Athens.) Holland then goes on to recount the highlights of Xerxes's full-scale invasion 10 years after: the Spartan 300 die gallantly at the pass of Thermopylae, the wily Athenian leader Themistocles lures the king's navy to destruction at Salamis, Sparta's heavy-armoured infantry crushes the Persians at Plataea and forces them from Greece forever.
Throughout, Holland provides a sense of the sweep and scale of events and their consequences. (Xerxes' decision to order his fleet into the narrow straits marked the future course "of Europe and of Western civilization itself.") He also has an eye for the telling detail: So concerned were the Persians with status that even a duck being fattened for the royal table got a set allotment of wine -- several times that for a young girl. Nor is he a gifted narrator alone.
Holland worships neither heroes nor Herodotus, criticizing King Leonidas for not putting a Spartan officer in charge of his rearguard at Thermopylae and the historian for his unreliable numbers. (The two million plus Herodotus imagines in Xerxes' army were more likely 250,000.) Add in endnotes, a timeline, an up-to-date bibliography, 14 maps and excellent colour plates (including Holland's own photographs of important sites) and you have a first-rate work of accessible scholarship.
Even the best historians misstep at times. Readable though it is, Holland's racy tone is sometimes distracting. (Something may have been "rotten in the state of Athens" before the democracy, but it was no hamlet.) Some facts are debatable too. Unless he has found a papyrus copy of The National Enquirer, Holland should not attribute the assassination of the Athenian dictator Hipparchus to "a squalid lover's tiff." Sparta's restriction of political office to men over 30 was not distinctive; that was the rule at Athens too. Xenophon did not write an "Economics," a Spartan expedition during the Olympic festival would not violate the sacred truce. Some translations from ancient Greek are a little loose.
But I know nothing that brings this ancient history to life better than this book. Only 37, Tom Holland has already written five historical novels with a focus on vampires and Rubicon, a prize-winning account of the last years of the Roman Republic. Now he has made the Persians and the Greeks undead as well.
Mark Golden teaches Greek history where East really meets West -- in Winnipeg.
Beware of Persians Bearing Arms
By MARK GOLDEN
Saturday, December 24, 2005 Page D6
Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West By Tom Holland, Little, Brown, 418 pages, $39
East is East and West is West, and the twain have been meeting for about 3,000 years now, ever since the Greeks tried to bring Helen of Sparta home from Troy. Few encounters have been as resonant as their struggle to ward off Persian power in the early fifth century BC. At first glance, the Persian Wars seem to feature the clear contrasts of a professional wrestling contest. In one corner, barbarian hordes whipped into battle at the behest of Oriental despots. In the other, plucky farmers fighting in defence of their homes, their temples and their fledgling democracy.
This story line inspired the first work of history (our version of the historiai, the "researches," of Herodotus of Halicarnassus), brought Byron to fight and die for Greek freedom from the Ottoman Empire, and led Tehran to bid for the 1984 Olympic games without a marathon race. (It recalls a Persian defeat.) An earlier British historian subtitled his own book on the Persian Wars "the defence of the West"; in his day, the Eastern menace came from the Soviet Union.
Yet, Persians and Greeks spoke related languages, Persian chic was admired and imitated by the Greek elite, individual Greeks and their cities sought their fortunes and made alliances with the barbarians and would do so until Alexander the Great finally brought East and West together under one ruler. Moreover, it was Darius and Xerxes, kings of kings, who mounted the first crusade, a holy war on behalf of the one true god, Ahura Mazda. Xerxes himself is now a street name in Minneapolis -- a westward expansion even he did not dream of -- and his multiethnic empire seems less strange today than the Athenians' unique and disregarded form of democracy.
The presence of the past is a theme of Persian Fire, British historian Tom Holland's riveting retelling of this clash of civilizations. Anyone who thinks the modern world began at Paris, 1919, is in for a shock. The echoes of history are amplified by striking turns of phrase. Subheads read "O brother, where art thou?" and "Stairway to heaven." Darius's royal roads make up "the original information superhighway," his ships overwhelm the island of Naxos with "shock and awe," the political reformers Lycurgus and Solon exemplify the Greek reliance on "one-man think tanks."
But there is substance here as well as splash: Holland is a very good historian. His book takes Herodotus as a model, beginning with an engrossing account of the rise of Persia and of the very different city-states, Athens and Sparta, which led the opposition to it. Holland underscores differences and tensions among the Greeks -- Athens' democracy, still new at the time of the wars, was established in the teeth of Spartan opposition -- and some surprising similarities they shared with their enemies. (Ancient leaders, Persians and Greeks alike, used false-memory syndrome as they reinvented their own pasts and took over others' to lend themselves legitimacy.) These worlds collided after the Persians defeated Croesus, the wealthy philhellene who had dominated western Anatolia, and replaced him as the overlord of Greek cities in the region. It was Athen's intervention in a Greek revolt that brought the Persians to their doorstep.
Only after 170 pages do we reach the Persians' retaliatory expedition of 490 and the Athenian victory over a superior force at Marathon. (Yes, it's about 26 miles from Athens.) Holland then goes on to recount the highlights of Xerxes's full-scale invasion 10 years after: the Spartan 300 die gallantly at the pass of Thermopylae, the wily Athenian leader Themistocles lures the king's navy to destruction at Salamis, Sparta's heavy-armoured infantry crushes the Persians at Plataea and forces them from Greece forever.
Throughout, Holland provides a sense of the sweep and scale of events and their consequences. (Xerxes' decision to order his fleet into the narrow straits marked the future course "of Europe and of Western civilization itself.") He also has an eye for the telling detail: So concerned were the Persians with status that even a duck being fattened for the royal table got a set allotment of wine -- several times that for a young girl. Nor is he a gifted narrator alone.
Holland worships neither heroes nor Herodotus, criticizing King Leonidas for not putting a Spartan officer in charge of his rearguard at Thermopylae and the historian for his unreliable numbers. (The two million plus Herodotus imagines in Xerxes' army were more likely 250,000.) Add in endnotes, a timeline, an up-to-date bibliography, 14 maps and excellent colour plates (including Holland's own photographs of important sites) and you have a first-rate work of accessible scholarship.
Even the best historians misstep at times. Readable though it is, Holland's racy tone is sometimes distracting. (Something may have been "rotten in the state of Athens" before the democracy, but it was no hamlet.) Some facts are debatable too. Unless he has found a papyrus copy of The National Enquirer, Holland should not attribute the assassination of the Athenian dictator Hipparchus to "a squalid lover's tiff." Sparta's restriction of political office to men over 30 was not distinctive; that was the rule at Athens too. Xenophon did not write an "Economics," a Spartan expedition during the Olympic festival would not violate the sacred truce. Some translations from ancient Greek are a little loose.
But I know nothing that brings this ancient history to life better than this book. Only 37, Tom Holland has already written five historical novels with a focus on vampires and Rubicon, a prize-winning account of the last years of the Roman Republic. Now he has made the Persians and the Greeks undead as well.
Mark Golden teaches Greek history where East really meets West -- in Winnipeg.