Umm… it’s supposed to be about Persia. Isn’t it?

So I’ve been reading ‘Persian Fire’ by Tom Holland. The first couple of chapters were a bit shaky, nothing like the smooth, engaging read of ‘Rubicon’ – I was concerned. It all seemed a bit higgledy-piggledy, and I was finding it difficult to follow. In fact, it reminded me of the final chapter of Bryson’s ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, where his narrative breaks down a little and he seems to keep distracting himself.

Luckily, the crisis passed, he’s hit his stride now. Ironically, it’s in a section which isn’t even about the Persians. But I can’t fault his language -

“There, where they might no longer shame the city that had bred them, the weak and deformed would be slung into the depths of the chasm, condemned eternally to its tenebrous oblivion.”

I found myself reading that passage a few times, drinking it all in. It’s such a dramatic and redolent way of describing the ditch into which the Spartans chucked their disabled or funny-looking kids. Also -

“That the Athenians were content to ascribe their origins of their city to a discarded toss-rag speaks eloquently of the significance that the myth possessed for them.”

It’s a wonderful way of expressing a concern that I’ve always had. For the uninitiated, Hephaistus (crippled blacksmith god) lusted after his sister, Athena (warrior goddess). One day, he tried to grab a hold – she pushed him away but not before he got so excited that he came on her. She wipes it off with a scrap of wool, drops it down to earth where it fertilises the plains of Attica, which subsequently give birth to Erechtheus (some kind of dinosaur, see below) which she set up on what would be the Acropolis in Athens.

Aside: with stories like that, can anyone still wonder why I studied Classics?

I did learn something interesting, actually. Archaeology and palaeontology may not really have been known as a subject until recent times, but that doesn’t mean stuff wasn’t being found. According to Holland, the Spartans used to assert their status by digging up fossils of Pleistocene mammoths and passing them off as the bones of ancient heroes. And that Erectheus thingie is described as a man with a snake’s tail. Totally insane on the face of it, but sounds awfully dinosaur-shaped to me. Who’s to say that the myth didn’t spring from the discovery of a dinosaur fossil? How else are they to interpret such a ludicrous body shape other than to decide that the gods had something to do with it?

Fascinating stuff. Ok, Tom, I was unsure about this book, but I’m hooked now. Bring on Xerxes.