[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Within the ever-increasing panorama of scholarly production, it is common to find contributions devoted to a particular and diachronic subject, to a certain site, or to a precise historical topic. Yet, it is more difficult to come across publications focused on a brief span of time or directly on a specific event. In this sense, the release of the collective volume titled Jerjes contra Grecia. La Segunda Guerra Médica, 2500 años después is very appreciated, in that it offers a broad reassessment of a specific and relatively brief military episode, the campaign in 480-479 BC by Xerxes I against an alliance of Greek territories and poleis. In fact, having been published in 2022, this volume appears approximately 2500 years after those events occurred.
Jerjes contra Grecia is composed of five parts. The first (I. Introducción) provides a brief introduction to the 2nd Persian War, mainly offering a summary of the sources available and highlighting the principal problems connected with its study. Chief among these issues are that reconstructions are fundamentally based on a Greek point of view and that the majority of the extant texts were not meant to provide the audience with an exact recreation of the events. The following sections are respectively dedicated to: the contextualization of the Persian Empire at the time the expedition was launched (II. Persia y el Egeo en vísperas de la invasión); a careful narration of the events during the war and its aftermath (III. Narrativa: la campaña de Jerjes y sus consecuencias); a series of interrelated issues associated with the 2nd Persian War (IV. Cuestiones transversales: hacia una visión poliédrica de la guerra); and the memory and historical reception of this conflict (V. Consecuencias: la creación de la leyenda).
While the first and the second sections (Introducción and Persia y el Egeo en víspera de la invasión) successfully provide the readers with the historical context at the start of the conflict, the volume gets into the thick of things only with the third part, in which every phase of the 2nd Persian War is carefully dissected and analysed. The four contributions in the section Narrativa: la campaña de Jerjes y sus consecuencias examine the conflict with a methodology and a structure that are typical of the field of military history, inasmuch as they retrace—with a wealth of details—the main movements and strategies adopted by the two sides. However, these essays do not restrict themselves to narrating the events in a clinical and chronological fashion; on the contrary, they also delve into the topography of the conflict, frequently putting into discussion the accuracy of the version transmitted by literary sources and contrasting it with the data derived from the terrain. Following the organisation of the volume, the fourth section (Cuestiones transversales: hacia una visión poliédrica de la guerra), breaks with the linear account of the warlike events to restore an all-round image of the 2nd Persian War. In this sense, the chapter “La Guerra griega a comienzos del siglo V” could be read as a bridge that guides the readers from the military sphere towards heterogenous aspects that—despite being frequently overlooked—have been deeply influenced by this conflict (e.g., the impact of the 2nd Persian War on the practices of cult analysed by M. Valdés Guía in “Aspectos religiosos durante la segunda Guerra Médica”). Finally, the fifth section (Consecuencias: la creación de la leyenda) deals with the reception of the 2nd Persian War and adopts, once again, a chronological structure. As Laura Sancho Rocher notes within this volume (“La construcción de la memoria: el relato griego de la derrota de Jerjes”), the reinterpretation of this war and its battles already began in the aftermath of the conflict. Though the three chapters composing this last part are balanced and well-documented, the chronological gap existing between the reassessment of the reception of this conflict during the Imperial Roman Age (Chapter 14, by J.M. Cortés Copete) and that of the Modern and Contemporary Ages (Chapter 15, by C. Fornis) certainly strikes the reader’s attention. The choice not to cover also the centuries spanning from the 2nd up to the 16th AD (the chronological boundaries with which Chapter 14 and Chapter 15 respectively end and begin) creates a gap in understanding how the 2nd Persian War has been understood and discussed across this span. Though this is a minor shortcoming, it certainly results particularly evident in a volume that could otherwise be considered as comprehensive.
In the volume as a whole, the main question addressed is why Xerxes’ campaign against Greece (technically a military dispatch not much more important than others) ended up becoming such a historical milestone. The editors selected fifteen prominent Spanish scholars of ancient Greek history and related fields to grapple with this issue, and each has tackled a topic directly in their own field of expertise. Although the volume is entirely written in Spanish, the lack of involvement of Latin American scholars is notable, although perhaps it could be justified in light of the fact that the volume arose from an in-person conference. Nevertheless, the result is a collection that successfully breaks down the 2nd Persian War in order to analyse it in its different components: the events themselves; the impact that this war had on the political, cultural, religious, and military assets of the Greek society; the celebration of that conflict and the way in which—across time—the memory of the 2nd Persian War was interpreted and transmitted.
The topic itself is not novel in the sense that it fits into a long and prolific historiographic tradition aimed at critically reinterpreting the conflict involving Xerxes’s multiethnic army and the Greek forces.[1] However, the form in which the data are presented is new, at least as far as the Spanish scholarly panorama is concerned: as a matter of fact, this volume appears to follow the Anglophone tradition of the “companions”, i.e., authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering updated and accessible introductions to major topics or events. Whereas this format has received wide acceptance in the Anglophone world, it is still virtually unexploited within the Spanish-speaking context. From this perspective, this volume can pave the road for future works intended to reassess more critically and rigorously a selection of major historical events. Indeed, this collection succeeds in showing how, more than 2500 years later, new considerations can be gleaned from the reassessment of conflicts such as the 2nd Persian War.
Authors and Titles
Introducción
Gómez Espelosín, F. J., “La campaña de Jerjes: historias antiguas y modernas”
Persia y el Egeo en vísperas de la invasión
Velázquez Muñoz, J., “El Imperio persa antes del 480. Ideología real y organización política”
Sierra Martín, C., “El mundo griego antes del 480. Libertad o sumisión”
Narrativa: la campaña de Jerjes y sus consecuencias (480-450)
Domínguez Monedero, A.J., “La campaña de 480 (I). De Tracia a las Termópilas”
Quesada Sanz, F., “La campaña de 480 (II). Salamina y el invierno de 480”
Pascual, J. “La campaña de 479. Platea, Mícale y la retirada persa”
Antela-Bernárdez, B., “Tras la guerra: el Imperio persa y el Egeo”
Cuestiones transversales: hacia una visión poliédrica de la guerra
Echeverría, F., “La guerra griega a comienzos del siglo V”
García Sánchez, M., “La soberbia de Jerjes: un ejército plurinacional y multiétnico”
Plácido, D., “La idea del panhelenismo: la libertad de los griegos y la aparición del concepto de ‘barbaro’”
Cardete, M.C., “El contexto políado durante la Segunda Guerra Médica: acuerdos y desacuerdos domésticos”
Valdés Guía, M.A., “Aspectos religiosos durante la Segunda Guerra Médica”
Consecuencias: la creación de la leyenda
Sancho Rocher, L., “La construcción de la memoria: el relato griego de la derrota de Jerjes”
Cortés Copete, J.M., “La memoria de la invasión de Jerjes en el Imperio Romano”
Fornis, C., “La recuperación de la memoria de la guerra en época Moderna y Contemporánea (siglos XVI-XXI)”
Notes
[1] This tradition has its roots in the 19th century, when the publication of the volumes Geschichte Griechenlands (1856-1867), by E. Curtius, and The Greeks and the Persians (1876), by G.W. Cox, set the stage for a scientific reassessment of the available evidence. This field of studies is still vibrant today, as the publication of The Battle of Salamis. The Naval Encounter that Saved Greece and Western Civilization (Barry Strauss, 2004) and of Thermopylae (Chris Carey, 2019) undoubtedly prove.