Milesian elite responses to Persia:: the Ionian Revolt in context
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[1] University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool
Reino Unido
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- Localización: Hermathena, ISSN 0018-0750, Nº. 204-205, 2018 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Elite responses to the rise of Achaemenid Persia), págs. 64-138
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This article applies concepts of agency, habitus, and postcolonialism to a close textual criticism of Herodotus’ narrative in order to construct a nuanced understanding of how the Milesian elite negotiated their relationship with Persia and the social context that resulted in the fateful decision to attack the Persian seat of Sardis and begin the Ionian Revolt. Herodotus portrays the earlier Milesian attempt to settle at Myrcinus as a pivotal event and, like the attack on Sardis itself, it can be can be understood to have been prompted by the Milesian habitus of gaining arête (‘honour’) through colonisation and war, a habitus that was already long-established under the preceding rule by Lydia. This article views habitus as a generative, rather than a restrictive, cognitive force, which is closer to Bourdieu’s original concept and provides a fresh perspective on the meeting of the Milesian elite and Persian imperial spheres. Taking a generative view, the Milesian leader Histiaeus can be seen to have leveraged Persian aid to gain arête for himself by founding a city, whereas his successor, Aristagoras, channelled Persian military power into an opportunistic raid on Naxos. When that failed, and perhaps inspired by Polycrates of Samos, he attacked Sardis in an attempt to regain his arête. The ‘Revolt’ he initiated, that we see as a functional behaviour within a specific social context, became a literary construct that served as a vehicle for colonialist and orientalist constructs of past events (including by Herodotus himself) which is it hard to disentangle from the originating context of the events themselves.
