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How did Herodotus Paint Aristagoras, Cleomenes, and Pisistratus?
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Authored by Frank Redmond, 2005
How does Herodotus paint Aristagoras?
Aristagoras is painted by Herodotus as a clever and deceptive man who will go to any length to accomplish his own ends. He also turns out to be the author of the failed Ionian Revolt as well as a personal failure. As Herodotus tells us, it is Aristagoras who first proposes the revolt against Persia.
The reason why Aristagoras revolts against Persia is a highly personal reason, namely that he was unable to pay back Artaphrenes for the supplies which he used in his failed attempt at Naxos. We are told that these various causes of alarm were already making Aristagoras contemplate rebellion (5.35). So to get himself out of a dire situation, Aristagoras gets the Ionians to revolt. At the conference which is held, Aristagoras finds like-minded people, as it is said that “his friends were unanimous in their approval” (5.36). These people become his greatest supporters for the turning over of power from tyranny to free society as they unwittingly fall right into Aristagoras' hands. Under Aristagoras' command, Herodotus says that “some [tyrants] he drove out; others [tyrants] he handed over to the cities to which they respectively belonged, hoping thereby to get the goodwill of their former subjects” (5.37). The next step in his deceptive quest is to acquire a powerful ally so he can adequately battle Darius. For this he turns to Sparta; however, he makes a huge error by failing to dupe the Spartan king Cleomenes into traveling a three month journey into Asia. Aristagoras keeps plugging away at Cleomenes, repeatedly trying to convince him to join, but Cleomenes will hear none of it and realizes that he is being taken advantage of. From Sparta, Aristagoras goes to Athens for support. Here he succeeds after making a long drawn out speech giving plenty of reasons why Athens should commit to this war. (Herodotus makes the point that the reason why the Athenians agree to this mission is that a crowd is easier to persuade than a single man). The Athenians decide to supply manpower and seapower to the enterprise. From there Aristagoras goes on to successfully raze Sardis, but he loses Athenian support soon afterwards and everything goes downhill from this point. Eventually the Ionian revolt is slowly quenched and Aristagoras feels compelled to abandon his enterprise. Herodotus rightly criticizes Aristagoras for this bailing out. After all the rousing he did in Ionia, it is disappointing, perhaps cowardly, to see him run away so quickly. The last thing we hear about him is his ignominious death in Thrace, the place where he coincidentally sought refuge from his Ionian disaster. In all, Herodotus does not admire Aristagoras, for he considers him to be cowardly and deceptive.
How does Herodotus paint Cleomenes of Sparta?
From the outset, it is easy to tell that Herodotus has little respect for Cleomenes. He says that Cleomenes succeeds his father “not by right of merit, but merely by right of birth” (5.39). It is obvious that Herodotus does not value Cleomenes' skills as a ruler. Moreover, Cleomenes is said to be a bit mad - not right in the head (5.42). So Herodotus not only thinks that he is not worthy of total respect, but he is like Cambyses in that he is a tad bit mad. However, no matter how mad he may be, he handles the request of Aristagoras prudently. He identifies the fact that Aristagoras is being partially deceiving and thus refuses to supply him with military might. He calls the proposal “highly improper” (5.50). The next we hear of Cleomenes is when Herodotus discusses how Athens won her liberty. We are simply told that he brings a force against Athens. Cleomenes here is painted as a tyrant who wants to populate Greece with other tyrants. He wants to stamp out the spirit of democracy which glows in Athens by setting up a tyrant. This makes Cleomenes a base character in Herodotus' eyes since Herodotus makes it no secret that he is a democrat. In fact, after he narrates the Athenian victory over the Spartans and their allies, he writes that “Athens went from strength to strength, and proved, if proof were to be needed, how noble a thing equality before the law is, not in one respect only, but in all; for while [the Athenians] were oppressed under tyrants, they had no better success in war than any of their neighbors, yet, once the yoke was flung off, they proved the finest fighters in the world” (5.78). This statement is a bold repudiation of the sort of person Cleomenes happens to be - tyrannical, mad, selfish - as these are qualities Herodotus does not admire in a person.
How does Herodotus paint Pisistratus?
We first hear of Pisistratus in Book 1 where Herodotus is describing the way in which Athens was split by two factions in the time of Croesus. Surprisingly, for a tyrant, Herodotus paints Pisistratus as a moderately good ruler. We are told that “he ruled the Athenians, governing in accordance with custom, and neither eliminating the existing magistracies nor changing the laws. And he adorned the city well and beautifully” (1.59). Obviously this is a different type of tyrant compared to Cleomenes. Nevertheless, Herodotus prefers to not have any tyranny in Athens at all. But for all of Herodotus' praise of Pisistratus, he has little praise for his ancestors. These children of Pisistratus, especially Hippias, became a burden on Athens and the family was eventually expelled by Cleomenes and a band of angry Athenians. This theme of sons not equaling their fathers in worth has been seen before in Herodotus. The best example is Cyrus to Cambyses; Cyrus is obviously the superior one of the two. The same seems to be the case here with the relationship of Pisistratus to his children. And so this is how Herodotus paints Pisistratus and his relationship to his offspring.
Why was the Ionian revolt evil for Ionia?
The Ionian Revolt turned into an evil thing since it failed to liberate the region. Herodotus concurs saying that the Ionian Revolt was “evil” for the Greeks and barbarians (5.97). The main reason why the Ionian Revolt was so unsuccessful was that it was so poorly organized. True, they did have Aristagoras as a sort of leader, but his leadership faltered after he saw how unsuccessful his campaign had become. Every campaign needs a firm, resolute leader for it to prevail. The Ionian Revolt became a leaderless mess. Their problems were also compounded when the Athenians decided to abandon the enterprise. The Athenians were the superpower behind the revolt and when they pulled out, Ionia was thrown into further chaos and destruction. Now Darius had little to worry about, for the Ionians became little more than a nuisance at this point. Their ultimate defeat is on the horizon (it happens in Book 6), especially after the fleeing of Aristagoras who was the sole, precarious pivot upon which this rebellion revolved.