Simonides On The Persian Wars

This book considers what evidence the "new Simonides" fragments offer for Simonides' elegiac compositions on the Persian Wars. The current orthodoxy is that they represent three separate elegies on individual battles, one on Artemisium, one on Salamis, and one on Plataea. Kowerski evaluates what evidence these fragments provide for these compositions, and in doing so, questions the validity of the current interpretation of the "new Simonides."

In his examination of the public life and poetic career of Simonides, Molyneux has provided a thorough examination of all the documentary evidence available with respect to one of history's major choral lyric poets.

Scots translations of epitaphs by the ancient Greek poet Simonides, composed for civilians and soldiers killed during the Persian Wars, coupled with black and white photographs.

The Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE is one of world history's unjustly neglected events. It decisively ended the threat of a Persian conquest of Greece. It involved tens of thousands of combatants, including the largest number of Greeks ever brought together in a common cause. For the Spartans, the driving force behind the Greek victory, the battle was sweet vengeance for their defeat at Thermopylae the year before. Why has this pivotal battle been so overlooked? In After Thermopylae, Paul Cartledge masterfully reopens one of the great puzzles of ancient Greece to discover, as much as possible, what happened on the field of battle and, just as important, what happened to its memory. Part of the answer to these questions, Cartledge argues, can be found in a little-known oath reputedly sworn by the leaders of Athens, Sparta, and several other Greek city-states prior to the battle-the Oath of Plataea. Through an analysis of this oath, Cartledge provides a wealth of insight into ancient Greek culture. He shows, for example, that when the Athenians and Spartans were not fighting the Persians they were fighting themselves, including a propaganda war for control of the memory of Greece's defeat of the Persians. This helps explain why today we readily remember the Athenian-led victories at Marathon and Salamis but not Sparta's victory at Plataea. Indeed, the Oath illuminates Greek anxieties over historical memory and over the Athens-Sparta rivalry, which would erupt fifty years after Plataea in the Peloponnesian War. In addition, because the Oath was ultimately a religious document, Cartledge also uses it to highlight the profound role of religion and myth in ancient Greek life. With compelling and eye-opening detective work, After Thermopylae provides a long-overdue history of the Battle of Plataea and a rich portrait of the Greek ethos during one of the most critical periods in ancient history.

Publisher description

The two great Persian invasions of Greece, in 490 and 480-79 B.C., both repulsed by the Greeks, provide our best opportunity for understanding the interplay of religion and history in ancient Greece. Using the Histories of Herodotus as well as other historical and archaeological sources, Jon Mikalson shows how the Greeks practiced their religion at this pivotal moment in their history. In the period of the invasions and the years immediately after, the Greeks--internationally, state by state, and sometimes individually--turned to their deities, using religious practices to influence, understand, and commemorate events that were threatening their very existence. Greeks prayed and sacrificed; made and fulfilled vows to the gods; consulted oracles; interpreted omens and dreams; created cults, sanctuaries, and festivals; and offered dozens of dedications to their gods and heroes--all in relation to known historical events. By portraying the human situations and historical circumstances in which Greeks practiced their religion, Mikalson advances our knowledge of the role of religion in fifth-century Greece and reveals a religious dimension of the Persian Wars that has been previously overlooked.

Over the course of his life (550-460 BC), the Greek poet Simonides produced poetic work of every kind then extant. Unfortunately, Simonides' corpus has survived only in fragments, though classical scholars have been studying his work for generations. The 1992 discovery of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri revolutionized the study of Simonides, casting particular light on the epic of Plataea. This edited volume gathers the best of the recent research on Simonides' newly expanded oeuvre into a single collection that will be an important reference for scholars of Greek poetry.

This book covers one of the defining periods of European history. The series of wars between the Classical Greeks and the Persian Empire produced the famous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, as well as an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Persian king in 400 BC, which helped to inspire the conquests of Alexander the Great.To tell the story of these momentous events, of the lives of great men and women, of the societies and cultures that produced them, and to explain how and why they came into conflict was the aim of Herodotus, 'the Father of History', whose account of the wars is our principal source and the first book to be called a 'history'.