Mardonius biography examples
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HERODOTUS vii. XERXES ACCORDING TO HERODOTUS
HERODOTUS
vii. XERXES ACCORDING TO HERODOTUS
Bad advisors. The young king inherited a solid empire, which was greater than any before in history. Subsequent events come beneath the curse of the great war of the years 480 and 479, which Herodotus describes as an immense struggle and to which he devotes a third of his work. Xerxes’ venture was indeed not only directed against the whole of Hellas, but against the entire part of the world which had so far remained ungoverned. Xerxes had already been prefigured in his essential features bygd Aeschylus’s tragedy Persae (Gammie, 1986, p. 183; Hutzfeld, 1999; Harrison, 2001). In that work too there were already mentions of arrogant plans and bad advisors. In Herodotus’s work, the role of bad advisor is assumed by Mardonius. As soon as the intention was expressed to put down the rebellion in Egypt, Mardonius insisted on marching against Athens (7.5.1-2; cf. Van Ophuijsen an
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Mardonius
Mardonius (Old Persian Marduniya): name of several Persian noblemen, a.o. the commander of the Persian troops during two expeditions to Greece (492 and 480/479 BCE).
Youth
Mardonius was the son of Gobryas,note[Herodotus, Histories 6.43.] a Persian nobleman who had assisted the Achaemenid prince Darius when he claimed the throne. Darius, Gobryas and five others had killed the Magian who had usurped the throne, Gaumâta, on September 29, 522 BCE. As usual, the alliance between the new king and his friend was cemented by diplomatic marriages: Darius married Gobryas' daughter,note[Herodotus, Histories 7.2.] and Gobryas married Darius' sister.note[Herodotus, Histories 7.5.] That Mardonius was the last-mentioned couple's firstborn son is very likely, because he has the same name as Gobryas' father (which is known from the Behistun inscription).
From a cuneiform tablet known as Persepolis Fortification tablet 684, we know that Mardonius was married to a w
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SECTION 2
Herodotus and the Persian Wars
Herodotus is the "Father of History" and—according to some—also the "Father of Lies." As a discipline, history begins with Herodotus' Histories, the first known systematic investigation of the past. Explicitly, The Histories deal with the Persian Wars, the Greeks' double defeat of the formidable forces led against them bygd the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes, but Herodotus' work includes much more than just the narration of that conflict. It encompasses geography, gossip, gods and even a bit of arithmetic. A master storyteller, Herodotus won an audience for history not only in his day but for all time. Since he invented history, no century has passed without a historian to record it. |
People, Places, Events and Terms To Know:
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