Over approximately the past ten years research on the political and cultural interactions between the Aegean world and Persia (which, in a sense, could and should never be considered as an entirely oppositional, much less as separate entities) has been put on a significant new footing.Footnote ¹ On the Achaemenid side the ongoing publication of the Persepolis Archive has allowed for new insights into the imperial administration, the structure of its military logistics and the scope of its economy, as well as the opportunity to compare administrative biographies of mid-rank and at times even prominent officials with information known from classical accounts (particularly Herodotus).Footnote ² On the Greek front new approaches to the literary and material evidence, especially in relation to social context, intentionality and the audiences addressed, have contributed to raising new questions, most notably, perhaps, moving away from an exclusive focus on the events ‘as they actually happened’ towards issues of representation, reception, narrativisation and memory.Footnote ³ Even the apparently overcrowded world of Alexanderland has witnessed significant developments, in that scholars have begun in-depth explorations of the strategies of power-communication adopted by the Macedonian to address the cultural expectations of his subject people across the Empire by drawing on indigenous sources and framing Alexander’s rule within a broader history of imperialism and world-rule: one immediate and momentous consequence has been a thorough reappraisal of even the Greek and Roman accounts on the expedition which, cross-checked against Egyptian, Persian and Babylonian sources, cast unexpected light on several aspects of Alexander as a conqueror, statesman and diplomat.Footnote ⁴ The three volumes discussed here encapsulate these new scholarly trends.

Ancient Worlds in Perspective is a collection of essays resulting from a conference centred around the legacy of R. Bichler’s influential Herodots Welt (2000). The composition of the editorial team is indicative of the book’s approach, as many of them have been students of Bichler (and/or of his pupils) at Innsbruck, for a while now a powerhouse of interdisciplinary Herodotean scholarship.Footnote ⁵ The volume reflects this approach on several levels, as it gathers contributions by at least three generations of scholars expanding on many among Bichler’s lines of research: Herodotus’ craft as a narrator and the way in which it affects his account of Mediterranean and Near Eastern history, his intellectual agenda in relationship with Persian discourses on Empire as well as the never-ending question of Herodotus’ sources, the composition date of his work and reception history. This renewed attempt at Contextualizing Herodotus is also a testament to Bichler’s interest in shaping transnational academic networks capable of carrying scholarship forward across generations, academic traditions and disciplines. For these reasons alone, the volume is a welcome addition not only to Herodotean studies but also to the history of Archaic and classical Greece.Footnote ⁶

The book is partitioned into two sections of five contributions each (‘Herodotus’ World’ and ‘Herodotus and the Others’). Their titles reflect the volume’s overarching goal, to illustrate how only a careful close reading of Herodotus’ λόγοι compounded by the ability to zoom out from the text and bring it into dialogue with a wide array of not just other authors, but also different literary cultures offers a viable way to grasp the intricacies of the History both as an unprecedented literary feat and as a source of historical traditions on a world whose exact geographic contours still need to be investigated properly. A few comments on some particularly thought-provoking contributions will give a sense of the volume’s quality. E. Irwin’s ‘Reflections on Publication, Reception, and Interpretation’ builds on the scholar’s longstanding engagement with Herodotus to discuss several critical aspects of the Histories’ composition history, circulation and internal chronology (or chronologies), which Irwin shows entail significant consequences for the work’s agenda – particularly as to whether or not Herodotus alludes in retrospect to the unravelling of Athens’ imperial enterprise in the late fifth century bce – and the understanding of its philosophy of history. Particularly compelling is Irwin’s parallel with the dissemination of Aristophanes’ Clouds, which the author uses as a benchmark (pp. 28–32) to make a case for the Histories having circulated in several versions over a considerable time period, with the final version preserving traces of earlier drafts to hint retrospectively at the author’s far-sightedness and ability to ‘read the signs’ in contemporary events to anticipate future developments, a skill that in Herodotus’ narrative is critical in preserving individuals from doom while damning others. A conclusion of paramount importance follows. In the Histories ‘truth’ is not so much a matter of factuality; this view has significant consequences for how one can use Herodotus as a source for reconstructing Archaic Mediterranean history. Rather, his work may perhaps best be understood as part of a longer tradition of ‘wisdom expressed in signs’ (p. 42): Herodotus, in other words, is first and foremost a historian of traditions, which, from a methodological standpoint, need to become the primary focus of modern investigation of the work as they represent the main gateway to the intellectual and sociocultural background in which the work developed (as further illustrated in T. Harrison’s contribution on Herodotus’ theory of civilisational development). Intriguingly, Herodotus’ canvas of people’s contact with one another and mobility, dispersed as it is across the Histories, allows for detecting a picture of human societies against which it becomes possible to read anew the entirety of his ethnographic project as a forerunner of Polybios’ concept of συμπλοκή, which the Persians carried out across Afro-Eurasia some four centuries prior to the Romans.Footnote ⁷ Harrison’s contribution thus shows how some of the most crucial insights to decode Herodotus’ narrative goals and intellectual tenets may emerge from unlikely places, if the reader is equipped enough to read the signs. The point is further brought home by Degen’s dialogue on ‘walls’ between Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Aristophanes, which makes a strong case in support of Irwin’s contentious ultra-late date for Herodotus’ life, down into the Peloponnesian War and perhaps beyond its end in 404 bce.Footnote ⁸ By exploring the intertextuality of the walls’ description across the second half of the fifth century, Degen shrewdly argues that Herodotus’ interest in monumental building work across the monarchies of Asia is an oblique reflection on Athens’ naval power (also discussed in Ruffing’s paper), thus fitting into a broader thread of Herodotus’ historical reflection, namely the signs of imperialism, its psychological features and its ultimate destiny (failure). This case study shows how tricky it can be to approach the Histories, considering that often they provide the only, or the earliest, source available on a given topic, as just a historical source. Indeed, without proper consideration of the work’s contemporary context(s) for interpretation, the chances of getting lost in Herodotus’ game of shadows and intratextual allusion are much higher than what even the most sophisticated scholar may be willing to concede. Such a consideration may appear obvious: that this is not the case can be argued not just for Herodotus, even though scholarship has become increasingly aware of this crucial interpretative problem. More troubling, the point applies also to extra-Herodotean sources, which are often mobilised, in a rather positivistic fashion, as a corrective (or as a backup) of Herodotus’ account. Udjaḥorresnet’s biographical account as presented in the famous Vatican inscription is perhaps the most egregious case in point. As argued by S. Kubisch and H. Klinkott in one of the volume’s most fascinating papers, neglecting the social context and the literary background of the prominent Egyptian’s account significantly affects the conclusion one may draw on Cambyses’ conquest of Egypt. Both Herodotus and Udjaḥorresnet are shown to portray a deceitful and tendentious picture of Persian rule and of Cambyses (a madman in one case, ticking all the boxes of reproachful behaviour from the perspective of a πολίτης, a wise patron in the other, who, however, can only succeed thanks to Udjaḥorresnet’s careful advice) because the latter is principally meant as a foil for the two authors’ ideological stances and literary agendas. Accepting this reality comes with the conclusion that, to make sense of one of the Ancient Near East’s most dramatic political developments, namely the long-standing incorporation of Egypt into the political scope of the Iranian and Mesopotamian world, one has primarily to rely on local sources when available and, from the imperial perspective, on the Persepolis Archive. As Kubisch and Klinkott show, Herodotus’ literary craft is so powerful that even Egyptologists, well acquainted with native evidence, are not entirely ready to put Herodotus back in his proper place as (at best) a second-hand source or as the masterful author of an intentional history.Footnote ⁹ That a similar methodology applies to Ancient Near Eastern sources is a point scholars (particularly, but, as the paper demonstrates, not only Classicists) still have to grapple with fully, but it is arguably the only way to carry on innovative and truly interdisciplinary scholarship.

Indeed, a compelling testing ground for such a kind of approach is the campaigns of Darius and Xerxes against Greece, the subject of Hyland’s remarkable second monograph. Persia’s Greek Campaigns displays much of the very best of the author’s scholarship in an engaging style, dense in its argument but always attentive to readability and the needs of potential readers to be convinced by the solidity of the hypotheses presented rather than browbeaten into accepting claims ex auctoritate. Divided into twelve chapters, bookended by a short introduction, which sets the stage for what is to come by framing the scholarly need of yet another book on Persia and Greece with the sensible proposition that the time has arrived for a story truly foregrounding the imperial perspective (while never losing sight of the localities of events – one of Hyland’s many skills), and a shorter but stimulating conclusion, which sets Xerxes’ campaign into a wider world-historical framework and will stimulate fruitful debate, the volume is a study in the means and motifs of one extraordinary logistical and ideological feat gone (partially – cf. Chapter 12) awry. Hyland mobilises the broadest range of evidence available, from inscriptions to seals, from literary sources to archaeology, from climatology to clay tablets and statistics, to bring to life what it meant, in the world view of Ancient Near Eastern kings, to organise a royal campaign, at which costs, with what to gain in sight and at what risks. A decidedly comparative attitude with the Achaemenid predecessor in the endeavour (programmatic in Chapter 1, but visible throughout the book) achieves the important goal of ‘unenchanting’ Xerxes’ spectacle of kingship – demonstrating that it followed structural dynamics brought about by the tradition(s) in which he was steeped rather than being the flight of arrogance of a deranged tyrant, an enduring perception, despite much scholarly work trying to downplay it – while at the same time never giving up on the perception of the extraordinary nature of the effort, which was meant to shock and awe because this is what (divine) kings do. How such perception is conveyed is among the aspects that make Persia’s Greek Campaigns the foundational contribution it is. Chapters 5–8 dissect the practical and ideational aspects of Xerxes’ campaign by exploiting the ongoing publication of the Persepolis Archive to estimate, on a solid basis, the organisational practicalities behind the mobilisation, while maintaining a keen eye on the king’s strategies to stage these practicalities to convey the message, as Herodotus has it (7.56), that Zeus himself was moving war against Greece. This is military history at its very best, enhanced by an impressive palette of comparative ethnohistorical evidence, from Assyria to Ṣafavid Iran, to fill in inevitable gaps in the evidence on the one hand, on the other bringing into relief what Xerxes achieved, despite the Greek emphasis on the catastrophe at Salamis. Was it a catastrophe in the first place? A further merit of Hyland’s book lies in his ability to gently but resolutely push back against trends in scholarship that have sought to argue that, in the grand scheme of Achaemenid things, Greece was arguably not so important after all. Had that been the case, Hyland convincingly argues, Xerxes would never have embarked upon a project like the one so vividly described in Herodotus. Borderlands always matter in the ideological worldview of empires, ancient and modern, and Greece maintained significant economic importance on top of that. Surely enough, the Empire did not go asunder in the aftermath of Salamis, but the bruise was real, and strategies had to be devised to run effective damage control. One way in which this developed, Hyland argues in a final strike of analytical brilliance, was through the turn towards delegation and diplomacy under Artaxerxes I, who may well have learned the lesson from his father (before killing him) and realised that, after Darius had ideologically squeezed every possible drop of charisma from the royal campaign as a strategy of rulership validation, it was time to go past it. G. Dumézil memorably framed similar dynamics as a move from celeritas to gravitas, and recent anthropologically informed studies on the entanglements of politics and religion (or religion as politics) argue that they reflect a near-universal trend in attempts to stabilise ‘heroic’ into ‘cosmic’ kingship.Footnote ¹⁰ As Hyland has it, imperial rule matured, rather than declined, in the aftermath of Xerxes’ campaign – a contention that joins contemporary approaches to the fourth century as the heyday of Achaemenid power. The next time that a display of heroic feats was required came when Darius III faced Alexander. We will never know what would have happened had the last Achaemenid (by birth) succeeded, but we know the consequences of the reverse, namely Alexander’s incorporation and repackaging of the logics and trappings of the royal campaign, which he passed on to his heirs and competitors down to the Roman Empire to be picked up by those brave enough to dare to test the powers of celeritas.

As with the campaign of 480 bce, every new book on Alexander (himself or an aspect of his campaign and tenure as conqueror king) requires either an explanation, an apology or both.Footnote ¹¹ This is particularly true following the publication of Degen’s groundbreaking dissertation, which, despite the apparently familiar title – Alexander ‘zwischen Ost und West’ – provides a significantly new paradigm for rethinking the transformation of South-west Asia and the logics behind the new imperial dynasty of the Argeads’ negotiation of their political role as masters of the world.Footnote ¹² While nothing of the above is explicitly present in Vitale’s new book on Symbolhandlungen im Kontext von Alexanders Reichsbildung, the volume stands in for them, as it offers an interesting and well-argued angle to come back to a topic (how did Alexander understand his political role evolving with each step of the campaign and how was the same perceived by those with whom he interacted along the way) that may be considered as one cornerstone of Hellenistic scholarship that has received new impetus in the last two decades, particularly thanks to approaches to the question and its evidentiary base such as those informing Degen’s book.

It may be argued that the focus of Trankopfer und Speererwerb is the idea of universalism, which has become central to the comparative, world-historical oriented approach to empires, ancient and modern.Footnote ¹³ In the case of Alexander, defining this concept is particularly challenging considering the fascination that the Macedonian king exerted over generations of scholars (particularly in Western Europe), who often superimposed their own ideas and the Zeitgeist of their times, over the concrete practices adopted by Alexander as the campaign proceeded and the evidence reflecting his endeavour – in turn not free of perspectivism and literary agendas dictated by the cultural environment in which ancient historians of Alexander lived.Footnote ¹⁴ Accordingly, as Vitale remarks (Chapter 2), over almost two centuries of modern scholarship on the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire one has witnessed the rise and fall of Alexander the enlightened king (something already present in Plutarch’s De fortuna et virtute Alexandri), the practitioner, if not theorist, of racial purity and the creation of (eugenically understood) an ethno-classe dominante, the pragmatic Realpolitiker, the explorer-discoverer-cum-colonialist or the violent tyrant. A profitable way out of this game of shadows, in which the risk of endlessly moving in circles debating over each other’s opinions rather than on ancient perceptions of Alexander, if not on his own actions and the sociocultural and political effects they caused, Vitale argues, is to take seriously the fact that the conquest proceeded in steps, never following a masterplan; that its outcome was never granted, until it was; and that, as the campaign unfolded, Alexander and his inner circle were forced into a dialogue with a diverse array of imperial stakeholders across the Achaemenid world, to whose expectations, symbolic languages and cultural codes they had to adapt to secure, at a minimum, acquiescence; at best, engaged and interested support. This had been already Degen’s approach, mostly grounded in written sources from both the Greek mainland (the traditional literary testimonies and near-contemporary epigraphic evidence about Alexander’s role as hegemon of the Corinthian League) and the wider Persian cosmopolis, from which, since at the very least the fifth century bce, Macedonian rulers could drew inspiration for templates of royalty, whose impact on Alexander’s strategies of power display and projection have long been either underappreciated or misconstrued. In Vitale’s hands, the challenge is taken up by introducing material and visual culture as a proxy to investigate anew the idea of commixture, blending and incorporation, which the metaphor of the Greek κρατήρ conveys, to investigate how ideas of world rule were repurposed by Alexander and his councillors to adapt the newly emerging (post)conquest political reality to the traditions on which it built. This may sound suspiciously close to shop-worn images of Alexander’s grand projects of uniting mankind in (politically if not racially discriminating) brotherhood, as famously detailed in Tarn’s homonymous study.Footnote ¹⁵ However, as pointed out by R. Strootman, because, at least aspirationally, empires are built upon ideas of universalism and universal rule; they tend to elaborate ‘politics of difference’, one of whose core tenets is to present submission to the polity as a voluntary process by the subjects for their own betterment.Footnote ¹⁶ Accordingly, the two images of Vitale’s title, conquest ‘by the spear’ and the ritual offer of liquids, both of which are profoundly at home in the assumed polarities of Alexander’s Empire (Greece and Macedon on the one hand, ‘the East’, and particularly ‘Persia’, on the other) aptly encapsulate the ends of a spectrum – violence and negotiation, opposition and cooperation – that characterise any imperial enterprise, and which need to be studied simultaneously to make adequate sense of specific trajectories of empire-building.

After a short introduction presenting the volume’s topic and the approach chosen, followed by the already mentioned Forschungsstand, the three main chapters offer an annotated catalogue of instances in which Alexander and his followers (including the women of his Empire, from Olympias to Rhoxane) performed ritual offerings at different stages of the campaign, from the Istros to the Indus, and the ways in which such social acts constructed, reinforced or potentially undermined Alexander’s image as an authoritative sovereign in the eyes of the different audiences he needed to address as the conquest proceeded. Focusing on the materiality of the rituals allows Vitale to elaborate on the contextual significance of the act, reading the sources that report on them against the grain of comparative material from Egypt, Lydia and the Persian heartland, in the process teasing out ‘hidden transcripts’, which one or more groups within the steadily expanding circle around Alexander could use to advance their political interest, sometimes at the expanses of others. In the final chapter Vitale develops interesting thoughts on the philosophical and philosophical-political background of the concept of ‘mixing’ and ‘mixture’ as a strategy of community building, floating the possibility that Plato, rather than Aristotle, may have played a greater role in shaping the Alexander’s (councillors’) intellectual approach to the question of managing diversity in a world Empire – a question certainly in need of further discussion.

Taken together, the three volumes discussed present different but complementary approaches illustrating which future directions the ambitious but timely project of ‘global antiquity’ scholarship may take.Footnote ¹⁷ Besides the general common thread they share, which could be summarised under the moniker of ‘Greece in contact with the world’, the authors of and contributors to these works only substantiate C. Lévi-Strauss’ apophthegm: human societies are never alone.Footnote ¹⁸ Understanding how they dealt with each other, or not, and reflecting on how we think they did (not do) that, remains as important and timely an enterprise as one may think in a world that has never been as connected as ours and at the same time shows signs of violently drifting apart.