The confrontation between the Persian Empire and the communities of the Aegean world, and particularly the expedition of King Xerxes, has become, very soon after the events themselves, a cornerstone for the self-understanding and boundary definition for individuals and groups well beyond those who directly participated in the events. [1] Accordingly, its (mnemo)history has generated a by now almost impossible-to-manage body of scholarship. Yet, perhaps paradoxically, our knowledge of the events is considerably shakier than many experts, as well as laymen, are usually prone to assume or admit. Most glaringly, it is still a contentious matter just why did Dareios and Xerxes chose to invest (material and ideological) resources in such an ambitious campaign. As pretty much no evidence from the Persian side of the confrontation is available - an interesting, relatively overlooked, and perhaps significant fact in and by itself - modern narratives are almost entirely reliant on Herodotus (and his sources), with the obvious consequence that whatever rationale one may claim to have retrieved for the Great Kings cannot but - at best - be deemed speculative; at worst, it is likely to be little more than Herodotus' (sources') projection of their understanding of who the Persians were and what they wanted onto a (highly reworked) literary portrait of a historical figure - Xerxes, Dareios and their generals. [2]

Xerxes against Hellas. An Iconic Conflict from Different Perspectives is a recent attempt at bringing new light to the topic by approaching it from a wide range of methodological angles. The volume comprises 19 contributions divided into two sections. The first one is devoted to Graeco-Persian Wars, Diplomacy and Acculturation. [3] The papers making up this first part of the volume seek to shift the attention from the traditional, antagonistic narrative (Greece vs. Persia) which the Greek sources are so fond of, to the broader, more proper imperial context to which the campaign(s) belong. [4] Three contributions are worth mentioning. John Hyland's chapter (33-50) taps into the history of royal narrative from previous Near Eastern Empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of the campaign goals as well as the intellectual strategies available to monarchs to cope with setbacks. Thus, he convincingly shows that the expedition was likely conceived from the start as, quite literally, a tour de force, a performative spectacle of royal prowess targeting the imperial élites as much as, if not more than, the supposed victims. Such a perspective significantly nuances our understandings of non-Greek categories such as "success" or "failure": contrary to modern nation states and their military doctrines (on which scholarly understandings of ancient imperial logics are often, though not always explicitly, molded), Empires set for themselves significantly lower - and safer to manage - benchmark for claiming "mission accomplished". At the same time, Hyland does recognize that the setback at Salamis represented a problem to deal with, and in his contribution, he skillfully explores how Persian worldviews and their mental maps changed to accommodate underwhelming performances of power without tarnishing the King's figure (or at least by exerting the highest possible degree of - intellectual - damage control).

Hilmar Klinkott's paper expands somewhat on this topic by investigating the concepts of diplomacy and legality from the Greek and the Persian side as a way to account for the seemingly unreconcilable perspectives from which the actors involved in the conflict looked at each other and at their relationship. He rightfully emphasizes that, from the standpoint of a world Empire, no treaty or diplomatic agreement could be signed by the King, and thus, strictly speaking, no diplomacy ever existed (according to the Persian view) between any of the (claimed) imperial subject and their masters. If anything, the King could accept submission in return for peace and the blessings of participation in the (economic, cultural, and political) network the Empire provided - the practicalities of which, however, were dealt with by his representatives on the ground, in the form of the satraps, who could, if necessary, always be held accountable for mishaps. [5] Steeped in entirely different traditions of social organization and inter- (as well as intra) community interactions, the Greeks could - or would - not understand such a view of politics, instead emphasizing peer-to-peer agreements and reciprocity. Such misunderstandings played a significant role, Klinkott argues, in escalating tensions, which eventually morphed into full-blown confrontation. The extent to which élite Greek groups chose to ignore or pretended not to understand the King's demands (as part of a strategy of social construction of the enemy for reasons of self-understanding) may deserve further investigation, the theoretical foregrounding of which, however, cannot do away with insights such as those provided by Hyland and Klinkott. Finally, Edina Gradvohl presents a compelling overview of, as her paper implies, the Fruits of Persia, parsing Greek and Latin specialized texts (Pliny and Theophrastos) for descriptions of edibles that may have entered the Aegean world as a consequence of Persian acculturation dynamics. This is a fascinating contribution: yet, it is significantly oblivious of recent scholarship on the subject carried out from the perspective of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. [6] This carries the significant drawback of ignoring the ideological (political and even religious) implications of gardening and fruit-related culture in the Ancient Near East and the Īrānian world. Thus, what may rightfully be interpreted as further evidence of the imperial footprint across Afro-Eurasia (or a case of ancient globalization) is reduced to a mechanical transfer of inert objects, depriving things and humans alike of their agency in co-constructing, paraphrasing Irad Malkin, A Small Persian World. [7]

The volume's second section turns to Commemorating and Remembering the War. The papers collected in this part of the book range from the visual evidence (or the lack thereof) related to the naval victory of Salamis (Marion Meyer, 177-209) to a fascinating case study from rural Boeotia (John Bintliff, 395-407) reflecting on (Nation State) Greece's culturally and linguistically layered past and the challenges faced by minorities - variously defined - to find a spot in the sun in national(istic) histories focused on a selected range of lieux and œuvres de mémoire - of which the Persian wars are, of course, a cornerstone - at the expense of pretty much everything else. Of special interest is Ian MacGregor Morris' contribution (235-280) on Xerxes' image as it emerges from the comparative study of Herodotus and the Book of Esther. His analysis makes a compelling case for exploring what may be called literary traditions in the Empire as traditions of the Empire, as their thematic overlaps (and their differences) may offer an unexpected window into the interplay of Achaemenid self-understanding and reception thereof which eventually brought about, not least through the vagaries of textual transmission, what we currently understand "Persia" to have been. This is a (surprisingly) innovative approach which may go some way in vindicating the claim that not only Persia did, after all, develop some form of historical thinking, but - more importantly - that such imperial historiographies proved an intellectual template powerful enough to be adopted, adapted, and distorted, by (some members of) the audience they targeted. [8]

The book is thoughtfully arranged and carefully edited. Only a few minor typos could be detected. Regrettably, however, no index is provided: the absence of a list of sources is particularly missed, as it would have helped specialists and laymen navigate the volume and the literature it rests upon. Nevertheless, Xerxes against Hellas offers much to think about on a topic on which much, but clearly not everything, has been written.

Notes:

[1] Cf. Giorgia Proietti: Prima di Erodoto. Aspetti della memoria delle Guerre persiane, Stuttgart 2021.

[2] Hilmar Klinkott: Xerxes. Der Großkönig in Griechenland, Stuttgart 2023 (on the Persian intellectual and cultural framework for the expedition and its aftermath).

[3] Cf. Sebastian Kühne: Kommunikation, Konsens, und Konflikt. Neuere Untersuchungen zu den persisch-griechische Beziehungen, Stuttgart 2024.

[4] Robert Rollinger: The Persian Empire in Contact with the World, in: The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East. Volume 5. The Age of Persia, ed. by Karen Radner / Nadine Moeller / D. T. Potts, Oxford 2023, 887-948. At pp. 887-891, the author frames Thucydides' narrative of the plague that ravaged Athens in 430 BCE (Thuc. 2.47-56) as one outcome of the "small world" brought about by the establishment of the Empire a century prior.

[5] The universalistic outlook of the Achaemenids appears somewhat overlooked in Kühne's treatment of the subject, despite the author's acquaintance with Klinkott's work.

[6] Wouter F. M. Henkelman: The fruits of Pārsa, in: Paleopersepolis. Environment, Landscape and Society in Ancient Fars, ed. by Silvia Balatti / Hilmar Klinkott / Josef Wiesehöfer, Stuttgart 2021, 133-168.

[7] Irad Malkin: A Small Greek World. Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean, Oxford 2011.

[8] Cf. Samantha Blankenship: The Persian Charts of the Greek Historians, Syllogos. Journal of Herodotean Studies 1 (2022), 65-115 and Ead. Persian-Style Historiography in Ezra-Nehemiah, Journal of Biblical Literature 143.4, 623-642.

Marco Ferrario