States of Memory

The Persian War was one of the most significant events in ancient history. It halted Persia’s westward expansion, inspired the Golden Age of Greece, and propelled Athens to the heights of power. From the end of the war almost to the end of antiquity, the Greeks and later the Romans recalled the battles and heroes of this war with unabated zeal. The resulting monuments and narratives have long been used to elucidate the history of the war itself, but they have only recently begun to be used to explore how the conflict was remembered over time. In the present study, Yates demonstrates (1) that the Greeks recalled the Persian War as members of their respective poleis, not collectively as Greeks, (2) that the resulting differences were extensive and fiercely contested, and (3) that a mutually accepted recollection of the war did not emerge until Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great shattered the conceptual domination of the polis at the battle of Chaeronea. These conclusions suggest that any cohesion in the classical tradition of the Persian War implied by the surviving historical accounts (most notably Herodotus) or postulated by moderns is illusory. The focus of the book falls on the classical period, but it also includes a brief discussion of the hellenistic commemoration of the war that follows those trends set in motion by Philip and Alexander.