Our next source brings us to the great struggle between classical Greece and East, the Persian Wars. Those same Ionian Greeks of Mycenean times, later depicted as mercenaries in the Amathus bowl, had by the 5th century B.C. fallen under control of the Persian Empire, based in modern-day Iran, and the largest yet seen in the Ancient World. When they revolted from Persian dominance, Athens sent aid. Ultimately the Persians crushed the revolt, and two successive Persian kings, Darius I and Xerxes, sought to punish the upstart Greeks while expanding their power west of the Hellespont. The bust depicts Themistocles, the architect of Athenian victory, who defeated the Persians at sea in 480 B.C. at Salamis, and ended any Persian attempt to conquer Greece. It might be expected that Themistocles and Persia would remain bitter enemies, and that their epic conflict would only reinforce the cultural opposition to each other.
In fact, the opposite occurred. After his ostracism from Athens, Themistocles sought and received refuge from Artaxerxes, King of Persia and son of his former enemy, Xerxes. There according to an ancient biographer Plutarch, Themistocles “learned the Persian language sufficiently to have interviews with the King by himself without interpreters.” (29) In addition to this remarkable feat, Themistocles “actually took part in the King’s hunts and in his household diversions…so far that he even had access to the queen-mother and became intimate with her, and at the King’s bidding heard expositions also of the Magian lore.” (29) Plutarch specifically writes that Themistocles and Artaxerxes did not confine their conversation to strategy or practical matters, but also engaged in explicit cultural exchange. In Mycenean times warfare led to the unprecedented diplomatic contact between A Greek and Hittite ruler. In Archaic times, mercenary service and other forms of warfare brought regular Greeks into everyday contact with peoples from all over the Near East. The Persian wars, however, combined these two, and led to the daily contact and cultural exchange between two giants of Greek and Persian Society.
Plutarch, “The Life of Themistocles.” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Themistocles*.html
https://greatestgreeks.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/themistocles/ (Photo)
