{"id":438,"date":"2012-03-30T08:52:48","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=438"},"modified":"2012-03-30T08:52:48","modified_gmt":"2012-03-30T13:52:48","slug":"madness-or-magic-xerxes-and-the-hellespont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/30\/madness-or-magic-xerxes-and-the-hellespont\/","title":{"rendered":"Madness or Magic: Xerxes and the Hellespont"},"content":{"rendered":"

Herodotus relates a tale in his Histories<\/em> of how the Persian king Xerxes bridged the Hellespont that he might invade Greece.  Initially foiled, he does something that strikes modern historians as very strange:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026[A]fter these bridges had been built, a violent storm descended upon them, broke them up, and tore apart all that work.<\/p>\n

Xerxes was infuriated when he learned of this; he ordered that the Hellespont was to receive 300 lashes under the whip and that a pair of shackles was to be dropped into  the sea. <\/p>\n

–Herodotus, Histories<\/em> 7.34-35.1<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He goes on to send \u201cothers to brand the Hellespont\u201d (Ibid. 35.1), and to chastise it:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cBitter water, your master is imposing a penalty upon you for wronging him even though you had suffered no injustices from him.  And King Xerxes will cross you wheter you like it or not.  It is for just cause, after all, that no human offers you sacrifice: you are a burbid and briny river!\u201d<\/p>\n

–Ibid. 35.2<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s hard to say, as I\u2019m not up to the original Greek yet, whether Herodotus and his own audience interpreted this scene the way most modern historians I have spoken to interpreted it\u2014that is, as a sign of his barbarous idiocy, or possibly as tyrannical madness.  Given Herodotus\u2019s typical Greek disdain for foreigners\u2014which is slightly ironic, given that Herodotus, himself, was from Halicarnassus, which many Athenians would have hardly considered Greek\u2014this interpretation is plausible.  But it\u2019s also true that Herodotus, having travelled widely, was well and truly impressed by the works of many \u201cbarbarians\u201d, the Persians in particular.  And most modern historians wouldn\u2019t know an enchantment from their own assholes.<\/p>\n

As I re-read this scene today, after a few years of escalating magical practice and research into the way things were done in the Old Schools\u2026. well, this scene looks like a binding to me.  How about y\u2019all?<\/p>\n

\n

Herodotus, First. Histories<\/i>. Landmark Herodotus.  Ed. Robert B. Strassler, Trans. Andrea L. Purvis.  New York: Anchor Books, 2009. Print. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herodotus relates a tale in his Histories of how the Persian king Xerxes bridged the Hellespont that he might invade Greece.  Initially foiled, he does something that strikes modern historians as very strange: \u2026[A]fter these bridges had been built, a violent storm descended upon them, broke them up, and tore apart all that work. Xerxes … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","tag-art-of-magic"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-74","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}