greeks
...ts, without the complete bias that becomes obvious when he speaks of other nations. In his histories, Herodotus often cedes certain accomplishments to the Egyptians that illustrate his views on their society, such as when he mentions their methods of astronomy “and in [his] opinion their method of calculation is better than the Greeks (Herodotus, Histories, p.87).” Another time Herodotus shows his unbias towards Egypt is when he discounts an old story that told of “how Heracles came to Egypt and was taken away by the Egyptians to be sacrificed to Zeus. (Herodotus, Histories, p.103).” He explains that this would be impossible because of their custom of only sacrificing animals, and admits that Greeks really do know nothing of Egyptian culture (Herodotus, Histories, p.103). This sort of unbiased attitude is a stark contrast to how other cultures, particularly the Persians, were depicted by Herodotus and Aeschylus. Although Herodotus strove to give objective accounts of the histories of many nations, his writings on Persia depict the enemy of the Greeks, and perhaps understandably. As they were the instigators of a war against the Greeks in which they had far greater numbers and yet still were defeated, the Persians were held in low esteem by most Greeks. Herodotus depicts Xerxes as a cruel king, and tells of Pythius the Lydian, who asks the king to let one of his five sons stay home and not fight in the war, to which Xerxes answers by cutting his son in half and putting the halves on the sides of the road for the army to march out between (Herodotus, Histories, p.388). This depiction of the king as a violent and cruel tyrant coincides with the Greek’s general view of Persians. Another Greek who wrote of Persians and their defeat at Salamis was Aeschylus. Taking place entirely at the Persian kingdom of Xerxes, Aeschylus depicts what he thought their reaction would be. Throughout the play, certain motifs begin to appear and it becomes clear what the Greeks thought the Persian weakness' were. Atossa, the Persian queen, tells of a dream she has in which two women, one dressed in simple Greek attire, and the other in luxurious Persian style, become enslaved by the king and the Greek woman overpowers the king, leading him to shred his clothes (Persians, line 281). This plainly illustrates the Greek opinion that the Persians were lush and ostentatious, and when the king shreds his clothes it is the sign of ultimate defeat, for his way of life is ruined by the tearing of his luxurious gown. According to the Greeks, the other fatal flaw in the Persian plan for invasion was their crossing the Bosporus, a mighty straight that had never been breached in war. It was the Greek’s view that by doing this, the Persians offended the gods and thus sealed their fate. It is clear that by their victory at Salamis, the Greeks considered themselves favored by the gods, for how else could they have survived such a mighty siege? The Egyptians and the Persians were certainly held under different lights by the Greeks, yet Egypt was not ...