32 The Rebellion of the Lydians and Its Aftermath (§§153.3-161)

Perhaps the whole condemnation of the marketplace is but prologue to the tale of Lydia’s rebellion, the story of which begins as Cyrus divides command of Sardis and the Lydians between two persons: the Persian Tabalus, put in charge of Sardis, and the Lydian Pactyes, put in charge of Croesus’s gold and the rest of the Lydians. Cyrus then takes Croesus and marches to Ecbatana, planning to attack Babylon, Bactria, the Scyths, and Egypt, and leaving another general to take on the Ionians, whom he apparently does not think worthy of his own effort. But no sooner has Cyrus left Sardis than Pactyes incites a revolt and uses some of Croesus’s gold to hire mercenaries to help. When Cyrus hears of the revolt (155), he summons Croesus and consults him on whether he should enslave the Lydians or leave them to govern themselves. “I have carried off the father but spared the children,” he says, quoting a Greek proverb.

Croesus is afraid that Cyrus will actually destroy Sardis and pleads on its behalf: “Don’t yield to your wrath,” he says. “I was responsible for the former problems and now it is Pactyes who is to blame. Punish him, and, as for the Lydians, let them no longer carry arms, make them wear tunics and soft slippers, order them to play the lyre and flute, and compel their children to be shopkeepers. Thus they will be women instead of men and will cause no further threat.”

The advice is extraordinary on many grounds. First, we recall that Cyrus’s moral outrage was only moments before stirred against the Spar­ tans and Greeks generally because they were shopkeepers; now Croesus is asking that Lydia join in the disgusting practice of buying and selling. Moreover, we shall learn later, in the important final narrative of the entire History, that the worst possible insult for a Persian is to be called worse than a woman (9.107). Here Croesus, just called by Cyrus “the father of his people,” is proposing that his own people be given the very lowly status of woman. So it is here, perhaps, that the stories come together. A Greek member of Herodotus’s audience would think to himself: “To the Persians I am as effeminate as the Lydians and as morally shameful as all who have marketplaces.” The effect would be to elicit hostility in him toward the Persians. Whether such a practice of effeminizing would have been successful in the case of Lydia over the long term is of course impossible to say, for it was not many years later that the Athenians burned Sardis.

Why, if Croesus really thought that a life of shopkeeping would make his people a nation of women, would he recommend this course to Cyrus?^[1] One cannot but recall the later passage in Book Two, when King Sesostris of Egypt goes up and down the east coast of the Mediterranean, conquering city after city, and where cities fought bravely he grants some glory, but where they surrendered or fought weakly he put up pillars with female genitalia on them to show that these were weak, effeminate cities (2.102). We might also recall Atys’s chagrin at being kept from manly pursuits. Or we might think of Croesus’s own conquests, when he brought Lydia to the greatest power it would have in all of history. Has there been a change in Croesus’s attitude toward glory and the meaning of life? Like the Achilles of the Underworld in the Odyssey, does he now believe it better to serve the enemy than rule in Hell? Does he now think that a commercial, non-warlike life is superior to no life at all? Such an attitude would be consistent with his remarks to Cyrus that no man is so foolish as to prefer war to peace. Yet we must remember that the advice is being given to Cyrus, who is about to step up his war-making. What is in Cyrus’s mind? Perhaps Cyrus thinks that Croesus is now acting wholly in his (Cyrus’s) interests and is willing therefore to accept his own people’s ignominy in order to please his new ruler. On the other hand, perhaps Cyrus thinks these views are attributable to Croesus’s new status as a slave: now that he has been defeated, he thinks like a slave, preferring the merest of insignificant woman-like lives to death.^[2] It is, of course, impossible to know exactly what Herodotus’s point is here, but it cannot but stir such reflection by his Greek readers, who must ask themselves whether a commercial life is in fact effeminate and whether it is superior to life as a warrior. In short, the passage leads to just the sort of debate going on in the fifth century about the kind of life a human being should live.

Cyrus is persuaded by Croesus’s argument (1.156) and orders the Mede Mazares to deliver a proclamation to the Lydians with his decision. He also orders Pactyes to be brought alive into his presence. When Pactyes hears that an army is coming after him, he flees to Cyme. Mazares, obedient to his orders, forces the Lydians to do what Cyrus demanded and sends messengers to Cyme to demand Pactyes. It is amazing that Herodotus reports the entire change in their style of life in one short clause: ἐκ τούτου δὲ κελευσμοσύης Λυδοὶ τὴν πᾶσαν δίαιταν τῆς ζόης μετέβαλον. This is very like the understatement in Thucydides’s report of the Athenian slaughter of the Melians. For what Herodotus has described is a revolution in a way of life. Such a change is surely one of the great and wonderful events in human history, and it is brought about simply by an order from the king. As a result, Sardis no longer figures in the History as an agent. The city is mentioned as a seat of Persian administration and as such is burned by the Athenians. But the Lydians themselves cease to be a political entity. If, as Gibbon says, history is simply the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind, perhaps Croesus’s advice had been a blessing to his people.

The people of Cyme, receiving the order from Mazares, ask the oracle of Branchidae what they should do. The oracle tells them to surrender the suppliant, but a prominent Cymaean, Aristodicus, does not believe the oracle. It is not immediately apparent why he distrusts the oracle, but we learn that he cannot believe the oracle would sanction the surrender of a suppliant. A second embassy is sent to the oracle, and this time Aristodicus himself asks what Cyme should do with Pactyes. The oracle gives the same advice. But now the persistent Aristodicus drives all the birds of the oracle’s temple from the shrine. The oracle protests angrily that Aristodicus is wickedly driving its suppliants from the shrine. “Why, then, do you ask Cyme to surrender her suppliant?” he asks. The oracle answers most remarkably: “In order that you do a wrongful deed and be destroyed so that you will no longer ask the oracle about the surrender of a suppliant.”

It appears then that the oracle has sanctioned evil in order to bring the perpetrators of the evil to their doom.^[3] Had it not been for the incredible persistence of Aristodicus, Cyme would have transgressed the laws of sanetuary.

What are we to make of the story? The moral seems to be that some rules of behavior are so basic and universal that even to consider not abiding by them is to err. Later, in Leotychides’s story about Glaucus (6.86), the oracle says that to tempt the god and to sin are exactly the same thing, and though Glaucus does not carry through with his sin, for the initial attempt alone he is rendered sterile and his family line dies out. One cannot rely on the oracle for helpful advice if one is contemplating the violation of a basic law of humanity, for the oracle may practice deceit in its attempt to punish the contemplator of unethical behavior. The gods, then, at least in the History, punish thoughts as well as action-a substantial refinement of their moral authority.^[4]

Cyme decides not to surrender Pactyes. At the same time the city does not wish to.be destroyed and so it sends him to Mytilene. Mytilene does not share Aristodicus’s scruples and agrees to surrender the suppliant for a sum of money. But the Cymaeans, still virtuous and taking very seriously the matter of the suppliant, convey him to Chios. There, however, the Chians tear him from a shrine of Athena and give him to Mazares in exchange for a piece of territory called Atameus. The Persians keep Pactyes under guard. Herodotus concludes the story by reporting that the Chians would not make a sacrifice of any grains from Atarneus nor give such grain to their sacred animals. This behavior is the only sign of their guilt over their violation of the rule of sanctuary.

The contrast in the behavior of Cyme and the impious cities of Mytilene and Chios could not be more marked. Chios and Atarneus are implicated in two other stories of cruelty and betrayal in the History, first in Book Six, when a man from Atameus puts some confidential letters into the hands of Artaphrenes, and later, in Book Eight, in the horrifying story of the eunuch Hermotimus’s revenge upon Panionius, a man from Atarneus. Perhaps Chios and Atarneus, in Herodotus’s mind, breed evildoers such as those he describes in the History. But no punishment of Chios for turning over the suppliant is ever mentioned. Perhaps the very recording of this foul deed and of her wicked sons serves as Herodotus’s punishment of the city. (It would serve us well to keep in mind Herodotus’s acute observation [7.152] that all mankind’s peoples are guilty of atrocities and would not wish to trade another’s for their own.) Similarly, Cyme is not singled out for any special rewards, and the persistently noble Aristodicus is not mentioned again in the History. His only reward is the glory Herodotus has given him.

Once Pactyes was surrendered, Mazares proceeded to fight those who had besieged Tabalus, the Persian to whom Cyrus had entrusted Sardis. He also enslaved the city of Priene and set his army to ravage other Ionian lands. But the principle of vicissitude exists for him too: he suddenly becomes sick and dies (161).