Bill Fawcett - 100 Mistakes That Changed History

This created a very serious problem for Aristagoras. In exchange for the use of his fleet, the tyrant of Miletus had promised the brother of the emperor a large portion of spoils from Naxos. He had also agreed that after he conquered Naxos, he would use the same army to assist in the conquest of the city of Euboea and the area around it for the Lydian satrapy. But having failed to conquer Naxos and with his army crippled, Miletus was in no position to conquer anyone else, and he had no loot to divide. This put Aristagoras in a very difficult situation. He had made these promises to Darius’ brother, not just another local leader. The probable result of his military failure on Naxos was going to be, at the very least, exile and most likely execution—in a very unpleasant manner.

Aristagoras must have been a tremendously persuasive speaker. Knowing he was going to suffer at the hands of the Persian empire, he convinced the people of Miletus to revolt against Persia. Cultural differences and distance may have helped. The people of Miletus were culturally Greek and had more ties to and trade with the cities of Greece than to distant Babylon. Then the soon-to-be-former tyrant of Miletus was able to convince a few of the other former Greek colonies ruled by Persia, also on the eastern Aegean coast, to join in and follow his leadership. His success in persuasion was even more impressive considering that the whole situation followed from Aristagoras’ being unable to crush an identical revolt by the Greek-speaking people of Naxos.

As the new leader of the Greek revolt, Aristagoras then looked for allies. He offered gold and trade rights in order to entice assistance from cities on the Greek mainland. Sparta turned him down, but Athens and Ephesus decided to support the revolt. There had to be some element of pride or financial benefit for this, considering that the Persian empire was unrivaled in power and size at that time. It is the equivalent today of Italy offering military support to the residents of Bangor, Maine, in a revolt against the United States. A tremendous mismatch at best. Still, two of the leading cities of Greece sent ships and soldiers to Ionia.

Even though he wanted to assist his brother, there was nothing Darius I could do quickly. It took time to gather an army and even more time to march it halfway across his empire. A joint Ionian, Athenian, and Ephesian army marched on Sardis, the capital of Lydia, ruled by Artaphernes, the emperor’s brother whom Aristagoras had stiffed after his failure. The Greeks and rebels managed to surprise the city and were inside before an effective defense could be offered. Artaphernes and his soldiers retreated into the Citadel, a castlelike area in the center of the city, and held out. The Greek and Ionian army then pillaged the rest of the city. The Greeks set Sardis on fire, and the brother of the Persian emperor could do nothing but watch as his capital burned around him.

Not long after Sardis lay in ashes, Darius I’s army arrived to assist his brother. It managed to catch the retreating Greek army and quickly defeated it. They killed or enslaved most of the rebels, including Aristagoras. Only the Athenians were able to escape this fate by hurriedly boarding their boats and sailing back to Athens.

The Persian emperor and his family never forgot what the Athenians did. Up until then, the Greek cities had been considered too poor and too remote to be worth conquering. The burning of Sardis had dramatically demonstrated that the Greeks should be considered a threat to the Persian empire, and the Persian empire could not and did not tolerate threats.

If Aristagoras had not overreached himself, insulted his admiral, and then led a revolt to save his own hide, it is quite possible that Persia would not have paid much attention to the relatively poor and small Greek cities beyond that empire’s border. If Athens had not meddled in another country’s revolt, then the world would be most different. The mistakes Aristagoras made, from insulting his admiral to starting a self-serving and hopeless revolt, began the Greco-Persian wars that included the Battle of Marathon, the famous stand of the 300 Spartans, and eventually Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia. Without the impetus of the Persian threat, Philip of Macedon might never have been able to unite Greece. Western culture might never have been forced to grow to greatness. The much greater Persian empire could have continued to dominate the Western world for centuries longer than it did, and the world today would look very different. It would have been a world in which the Persian values of subservience to the state and a strong central ruler were more important than the Greek values involving personal rights and pride in individual accomplishments. The world is as it is today all because a local Persian politician, ruling a city at the far edge of the empire, got too ambitious.

Some great thinkers are years ahead of their time, whereas others are millennia ahead of theirs. Pharaoh Akhenaten proved to be the latter when he took on Egypt’s most powerful icons, the gods. Had he succeeded, the world might have experienced a large-scale movement of monotheism a thousand years before the Hebrew Bible was written. Instead, his overzealous tendencies virtually buried his newfound faith. This was a time when the pharaoh was considered a god, so it took a lot of effort for the Egyptian’s living god and messenger to the other gods to alienate almost his entire population, but somehow Akhenaten managed to do just that.

Akhenaten inherited a vast empire when he came to power in 1390 BCE. His father, Amunhotep III, set up diplomatic relations with the surrounding kingdoms and created an era of peace and tranquility. This golden age in Egyptian history gave rise to the cult of Amun-Ra, who was praised above all other gods because he brought great abundance to the Fertile Crescent. As Amun-Ra’s status increased, so did that of his priests. They controlled one-third of the country’s wealth and soon became as powerful as the pharaoh himself. Amunhotep must have recognized the threat because he started showing interest in the god Aten, and when the pharaoh favors a god, the people generally follow suit. This is probably just what Amunhotep hoped for. Whatever his plan, he would not see it come to light. When he died in 1352 BCE, Akhenaten took up the reins under the name Amunhotep IV; however, in just a few short years, he turned the Egyptian world on its ear.

The first noticeable change that occurred after the succession came in the form of art. Depictions of the royal family at this time have a surprisingly realistic look. The pharaoh and his wife, Nefertiti, were shown with full, shapely bellies and thin torsos. They were also seen playing with the royal children and kissing them. In every way, she was shown to be his equal. Compared to modern times when members of royal households have their own talk shows and presidents spend nights on late-night talk-show circuits, this seems rather minuscule. But in ancient Egypt, this was sheer vulgarity.

This was only the beginning. Next, the pharaoh changed his name from Amunhotep, meaning “Amun is satisfied,” to Akhenaten, meaning “one who is beneficial to Aten.” This slap in the face to the priests of Amun-Ra was a direct challenge. Akhenaten began closing the temples to Amun and redistributing funds given to them by the government. Like the priests who said only they could communicate to Amun-Ra, the pharaoh said he was the son of Aten and had a direct line of communication with him. He went one step further by abandoning the old gods and declaring that Aten was the only god. The plural form of the word “god” was no longer used. Put in perspective, this would be like today’s Congress passing a law forbidding people to watch television.