07-16-2005, 10:28 PM
My personal opinion is that Inaro's rebellion was in fact supported by large Athenian fleet most of which was destroyed at in 454 B.C.E.
Issues you might want explore in your novel are such things as just how did the Persians dryout the canal so they could storm the island. This is quite a forminable engineering feat. The other issue is that on the island were Egyptians. What did they feel about all this and did they "betray" the Greeks?
Diodorus dresses up the disaster with, in my opinion, patriotic touches. The comparison with Thermopolye is a dead give away. Athough in fairness to Diodorus this was probably originally in Diodorus' sources, Ephorus and/or Hellanicus. It reads like spin.
It all seems to me like a effort to explain away the disaster, or dress it up as more than a disasterous failure.
In c. 449 B.C.E., the Athenians negotiated the Peace of Kallias with Persia. I find it fasinating that later Greek accounts give great emphasis on the Athenian victory at Salamis (in Cyprus) c. 450 B.C.E. Perhaps to distract attention from the disaster. These later writers talked about Athens imposing its terms on Persia and other such jingoism. Its all very dubious. I frankly think that since the Fleet withdrew after Salamis from Cyprus and its aim was apparently to conquer Cyprus, the Fleet failed. Salamis enabled the Fleet to withdraw unmolested hardly a overwhelming, crushing victory. But then Salamis had a fortuitous name oh so similar to the decisive victory at Salamis off Athens during the second Persian invasion of Greece. So it was easy to transmorgify it into a "crowning mercy".
Just some more thoughts.
Pierre
Issues you might want explore in your novel are such things as just how did the Persians dryout the canal so they could storm the island. This is quite a forminable engineering feat. The other issue is that on the island were Egyptians. What did they feel about all this and did they "betray" the Greeks?
Diodorus dresses up the disaster with, in my opinion, patriotic touches. The comparison with Thermopolye is a dead give away. Athough in fairness to Diodorus this was probably originally in Diodorus' sources, Ephorus and/or Hellanicus. It reads like spin.
It all seems to me like a effort to explain away the disaster, or dress it up as more than a disasterous failure.
In c. 449 B.C.E., the Athenians negotiated the Peace of Kallias with Persia. I find it fasinating that later Greek accounts give great emphasis on the Athenian victory at Salamis (in Cyprus) c. 450 B.C.E. Perhaps to distract attention from the disaster. These later writers talked about Athens imposing its terms on Persia and other such jingoism. Its all very dubious. I frankly think that since the Fleet withdrew after Salamis from Cyprus and its aim was apparently to conquer Cyprus, the Fleet failed. Salamis enabled the Fleet to withdraw unmolested hardly a overwhelming, crushing victory. But then Salamis had a fortuitous name oh so similar to the decisive victory at Salamis off Athens during the second Persian invasion of Greece. So it was easy to transmorgify it into a "crowning mercy".
Just some more thoughts.
Pierre
Pacal
