The Old and the Restless - The Egyptians and the Scythians in Herodotus' Histories by Robert J. Hagan

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seen, towards the end of Book Nine, Herodotus introduces the truly appalling Persian governor
Artayctes, who, aside from extorting land and treasure from his superior Xerxes, takes women
into Greek temples on Greek land to have sex with them. He meets the appropriate end for such a
character when the Athenians push back against the Persians, laying siege against his domain in
the Hellespont. When the situation inside the town grows desperate, he and other Persians flee,
but they are eventually taken prisoner by the Athenians under Xanthippus. After unsuccessfully
trying to manipulate a portent in his favor, Artayctes is crucified where Xerxes’ bridge across the
Bosporus once ended, and he is made to watch as his son is stoned to death (9.116-121).
The Athenians’ brutal execution of Artayctes at the closing of the Histories provokes the
idea we have been examining so far with respect to the Persians; now we might ask, are the
Greeks changing also? We have seen the Persian excesses in violence, going against their nomos
of abstaining from summary executions, but with respect to the Greeks, Xanthippus’ choice to
crucify Artayctes seems pointedly cruel, given his unconvincing rationale of vengeance for the
original owner of the plot stolen by the Persian governor. Artayctes’ fate evokes Cambyses’
taunting of Psammetichus at Memphis, where he parades the Egyptian king’s son, being led to
his execution, in front of the city walls (3.14). With this story, Herodotus seems to be warning
his fellow Greeks, in his tacit way, that they too might fall into the trap of degraded laws and
customs.
As the pattern we have examined tells us, those who conquer soft peoples are themselves
consumed by the riches they obtain in doing so. While the Greeks stop short of conquering the
Persians, they do push them back from their island possessions in the Aegean with considerable
success, and they achieve hegemony over the eastern Mediterranean. In the close contact they
have had (and continue to have) whilst warring with the Persians, they have become entangled in