2.1 Beginning with Croesus
Directly after his refusal to comment on the accounts given by the Persians and Phoenicians, Herodotus states that he will start from the person ‘who I know first did wrong against the Greeks’ (1.5.3). This someone isn’t a Persian at all but a Lydian – Croesus, who was ‘leader of all the nations inside the river Halys, which flows from the noon sun between Syria and Paphlagonia and empties towards the north into the Euxine Sea’ (1.6.1). These next activities will ask you to explore the account Herodotus gives about Croesus, starting with why he begins his history proper with this figure.
Activity 7
Read the passage below. Then, using the map as an aid, answer the following questions, jotting down your thoughts in a sentence or two:
- Why does Herodotus start his history with Croesus?
- What relations does Croesus have with the Greeks?
- What territories do the Greek communities mentioned occupy?
Herodotus 1.6.2
This Croesus was the first of the foreigners [barbaroi, plural of barbaros] who we know rolled over [i.e. conquered] some Greeks and took tribute from them, and made friends with others. He rolled over the Ionians, the Aeolians and the Dorians of Asia, and made friends with the Lacedaemonians [also known as Spartans].
Discussion
You may have made some notes along the following lines:
- Herodotus starts with Croesus because he’s the first figure the Greeks know who conquered and ruled over them.
- Croesus conquered some Greeks but he also made friends with others.
- The Greek communities mentioned are on both mainland Greece and along the Asia Minor coast.
Three important points follow these observations. First, Herodotus starts with Croesus because, unlike the previous accounts (discussed in Section 1), he is a figure to whom knowledge can be attached. He’s known because of what he did to the Greeks: he conquered and ruled over those who lived along the Asia Minor coast. Second, Herodotus also notes that Croesus made friends with other Greeks, namely the Spartans. That is to say, Croesus is not an exclusively enemy figure, which should make us wary of conflating the term ‘barbaros’ with modern notions of ‘the barbarian’. He’s not all bad and, indeed, shares many things in common with the Greeks, as you shall see. Third, and related, an additional complexity emerges if we map the Greeks whom Herodotus mentions here. Figure 10 is an apt demonstration that the Greek world of antiquity was not limited to the mainland and islands of the Aegean that is now known as modern nation-state of ‘Greece’. There were Greek communities across the Mediterranean, as well as all around the Black Sea (otherwise known as the Pontus or Euxine).
As you have just seen, Herodotus starts with Croesus because, apparently, he is the first foreigner ‘who we know’ (1.6.2) conquered Greeks. But what might an ancient reader of Herodotus’ text already have known about Croesus? To answer this question, we can look at evidence from material culture – that is, physical objects which were produced in the ancient world. Figures 13 and 14 below are images of two pieces of material culture associated with Croesus. These pre-date Herodotus’ Histories, and can therefore help us to fill out the picture Herodotus’ contemporary reader might indeed have known. Interpreting visual sources like these requires analytical skills which are different from those which we use when we read an ancient text. A short audio discussion will help to guide your own analysis of these images.
Activity 8
As you study Figures 13 and 14, listen to the accompanying discussion.
Note: In the audio you will hear the speakers refer to Sardis, which is the capital of Lydia and the seat of Croesus’s power, and the god Apollo, with whom Croesus seems to enjoy a special relationship.
Using the audio discussion and the images, answer the following questions:
- What are the two types of evidence that are explored in the audio discussion?
- What does the decoration on each source depict?
- What did you learn about Croesus? Try to note at least one thing using each source.
Transcript
ELTON BARKER: Hello, my name is Elton Barker. I'm a professor in Greek literature and culture at The Open University. And I'm joined here today with my colleague Emma.
EMMA BRIDGES: Hello, Elton. Thanks for having me. I'm also in the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University, where I'm a senior lecturer.
ELTON BARKER: And we're going to be using the short audio discussion today to address what a reader might have known about Croesus. To answer this question, we're going to be exploring two objects from the period.
So let's take a look at this first object. Emma, do you think you can describe it for us and just to give a give a sense of what it is that we're looking at here?
EMMA BRIDGES: It's sort of not quite round. It looks like it's made of some kind of shiny metal. I guess I would say it looks like it's made of gold. It's got quite fine detail on it as well. But I'd like to know ideally how big it is before I speculate on what it actually is.
ELTON BARKER: So the diameter, you'll be interested to know, is only 16 millimetres. So this is really quite a tiny object. And its weight is 8 grams.
EMMA BRIDGES: Yes, so that gives us a real clue, doesn't it, as to what this might be used for? And given the shape and the fact that it seems to be made of metal, I would ordinarily guess that something of that size might be quite likely to be a coin?
ELTON BARKER: Yeah, I think that's right. It's definitely going to be something in your hand, something you could easily fit into a pocket, let's say. And I think you're also really spot on to say-- I mean, particularly given now that we've realised that this is a very small object that we're looking at, the fine craftsmanship on it. And I want us to home in on that for a second now. What can you see here?
EMMA BRIDGES: So it's not immediately obvious until you start to look more closely at what exactly we can see on the image. But there's an image of two animals facing one another in profile. One of those animals is a lion. We can see it with its jaw wide open. And the animal on the other side, I would guess, with the horns, is perhaps a bull. The lion in particular, I'm aware, is associated with royalty in this context. And so that might tell us something about the provenance of the coin, where it came from and who produced it.
ELTON BARKER: And that is something I think, again, I want to just to dig into a bit more detail. And for that, let's turn the coin over. If we think of modern-day coins, for example, you'd often have the figure of the-- a representation of the person or the institution who is minting the coin. And then on the other side, you have some kind of writing.
EMMA BRIDGES: It's notable, to start with, that there isn't any actual writing that I can see on here. And actually, what the writing on a modern coin does sometimes is it tells us the value of that coin. So this leads me to think that this is actually some kind of stamp perhaps, which perhaps indicates maybe the consistent weight of a coin or perhaps the purity of the metal or maybe both of those things.
ELTON BARKER: That's a really good point. So we have here the guarantee of the coin's value, essentially. This implies, I think, of a very sophisticated state machinery.
EMMA BRIDGES: So I think we're getting to the kind of sense here that this is a coin from the mint of Croesus. It was actually minted in Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia, where Croesus ruled. And it dates from around the middle of the sixth century. So it's actually a piece of evidence, an object, a piece of what we would call material culture that is contemporaneous with when Croesus was actually on the throne.
ELTON BARKER: I think that's a really important point, that this is evidence that Croesus as a historical figure and shows the kind of figure that Croesus was and what he was known for. And on that subject, I was wondering if we could move on to the second object and use this as a point of comparison with the coin that we've just been discussing.
EMMA BRIDGES: Absolutely. So what I'm seeing here is a large two-handled vessel, a painted pot, which looks like it would be made of terracotta. And it's decorated with black paint work over the top of that and very fine detailed decoration. A two-handled pots like this is known as an amphora. This is the sort of object that would be used for storing and transporting liquids like maybe olive oil or wine.
The other interesting thing about this is the level of detail and the decoration. It's very finely decorated with a detailed image showing two figures. And I wonder if, Elton, I could hand over to you to talk a bit more about who those figures might be or what they're doing in the image.
ELTON BARKER: Thanks, yeah. You've set me a good challenge there. I see two figures. One figure is seated and is on top of some kind of construction and looking a bit more closely, it looks like a wooden construction. I'm seeing logs. I'm seeing layers of wood.
And then I see another figure bended in front of that seated person with a couple of sticks that are connected to this wooden structure. That second figure I just talked about, the one bending down in front, is naked to the waist, is barefoot, and very simply dressed.
The contrast couldn't be greater with the other figure. The seated figure is very finely dressed. He's holding a staff. He's seated on a throne. This looks to be like a king. In his other hand, he seems to be turning something over above the head of the figure in front of him.
EMMA BRIDGES: If we look a bit more closely, we can identify that there's also some writing on this pot. It's quite hard to see from the coloured images, but we do have it rendered in black and white, which actually gives a clearer sense of what that writing might say. And if we look closely at the writing to the side of the seated figure, well, that actually says Croesus' name in Greek capital letters.
ELTON BARKER: That's brilliant. Yes, I hadn't seen that before from that first image, but you're quite right. Once you almost turn the pot around in your hands and particularly once it's rendered in black and white and you get rid of the colour and the shine, you can clearly see those etchings. What's going on there? What is this moment in Croesus's life?
EMMA BRIDGES: This is the point at which Croesus is sent to die on the pyre. And actually, again, we can see from the black and white image that what seems to be happening with the figure who's bending over is that perhaps he's got some objects in his hand, which looks like he's probably lighting the pyre.
I'm seeing a laurel crown on the head of the seated figure. And he's also got something in his hand, which he seems perhaps to be pouring over either the pyre or the figure in front. And I wondered what you think might be going on there, Elton.
ELTON BARKER: It's quite clear that something seems to be pouring down from that object in his right hand, some kind of libation perhaps. It certainly seems to be contrasting with what you might expect that figure to be experiencing. I mean, he's seated on top of this wooden construction that's about to be set on fire, and yet he's seated there very calm, making this libation.
And I think that's interesting here because you mentioned this crown or this wreath that that figure has around his head. And I think, knowing that Apollo is in the scene here, we can easily see that as one of Apollo's key artifacts. We have this image of serenity and a real sense that the gods are going to look after him, that Apollo is going to intervene.
And that is one of the myths that Herodotus will be dealing with when he comes to his own narration of the Croesus episode. And you'll see in that narration how Herodotus provides a rather different spin on that episode.
EMMA BRIDGES: That's actually really interesting that even not long after his own lifetime, there were these different versions of Croesus' story and that this was being sort of visualised and later written about in different contexts, almost as though this historical figure had become a mythical version of himself, with different people creating different stories about him.
ELTON BARKER: That's a really interesting point, Emma. And in fact, that's what I was going to ask next actually. Can we date this image?
EMMA BRIDGES: This pot was found in Vulci, in what we now know as southern Italy. But we know it was made in Athens. And it dates to the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, so sometime between 500 and 475 BCE. So we can date it relatively precisely.
Now what's interesting about that is that, in comparison with the coin that we looked at earlier, which was from a period contemporary with Croesus himself, this is from a later date and from a very different location. So we're getting that sense already that Croesus and his story have already begun to travel through space and through time. And Herodotus, of course, is also part of that storytelling and that reversioning of Croesus' story.
ELTON BARKER: That's brilliant. I really like-- really love that idea that we have here essentially a foreign king who is being represented on a pot that's produced in Athens, and yet that pot is then found in an entirely different community in what is now southern Italy. I think you're absolutely right that here we get a real sense of the currency of the story of Croesus, one version of which we're going to learn more about in Herodotus.
Thank you so much, Emma, for leading me through these images. I learnt a lot. And I think it really shows the value of taking some time to look through the material cultural evidence more closely and in dialogue with the textual evidence.
EMMA BRIDGES: Absolutely. Thank you very much, Elton.
Discussion
You may have noted down the following points from the discussion:
- One source is a gold coin. The other piece of evidence is a storage jar (for wine).
- The coin represents a lion and a bull facing each other, which is a mark of Croesus’s royal mint. The storage jar shows a finely dressed character seated on a throne on top of a pyre that is about to be lit by another figure. The figure on the throne is identified by writing alongside it spelling out Croesus’ name in Greek letters.
- We learn from the coin that Croesus was a rich Eastern monarch who had the power to mint gold currency. We learn from the amphora that Croesus was going to be burned alive.
Both sources, then, help us build up a picture of a Croesus the Greeks of Herodotus’ time would have known. Croesus is rich. So wealthy, in fact, that his name has become synonymous with wealth. (You may even have heard the expression ‘as rich as Croesus’.) One aspect of his wealth is the fact that he mints gold coins. Herodotus is alert to the importance of this, when he writes: ‘So far as we have any knowledge, they [the Lydians] were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coins, and the first who sold goods by retail’ (1.94.1). Minting coins is important: they literally demonstrate the circulation of power. Yet the other source provides a rather different picture. He’s still the regal figure seated on a throne, but that throne is on top of a pyre that is about to be set on fire! There’s a story here about the downfall of a king in spite of all his wealth. Moreover, it is a story well known enough to make sense to a Greek audience from as far apart as Athens and Vulci (a Greek community in what is now southern Italy) with very little help apart from the situation (a pyre) and a name (Croesus).