As cool as it would have been for master Ajhumvacto to be from South Asia, he's not quite as far-flung as all that. The sound changes of his native language are key here, as illustrated in his name's elements- Ago>Agu>Ajhu and -mbactos>-mbactu>-mvactu (-o in his name is deliberately archaic, like somebody IOTL keeping the more classical Latin elements of their name vs those you'd expect in modern vernacular).
Μηδίζω! The World of Achaemenid Hellas
- Thread starter Daeres
- Start date
Ahh, I see. Still, those lingistic changes alone are interesting enough.
Against all my expectations this timeline has won Best Ancient Timeline in the Turtledoves this year. I'd never expected that would ever come about, particularly given that I've not been able to post an update in several months, to my great regret.
Given that this was always a fairly personal vision for an alt history piece I've always been astonished and grateful for everyone who has been reading and replying all this time, and I wanted to make sure that anyone getting to this point in the thread knows that. It almost goes without saying but, just to be sure, this is also not an abandoned timeline or thread. Updates are coming. My full time job continues to make this extremely difficult, but it is going to happen.
I made something a little while ago, as I've been trying to stretch my visual art muscles a bit, and I think now would be a rather good time to post this as a little celebration for the occasion; a title/logo for the timeline.
Given that this was always a fairly personal vision for an alt history piece I've always been astonished and grateful for everyone who has been reading and replying all this time, and I wanted to make sure that anyone getting to this point in the thread knows that. It almost goes without saying but, just to be sure, this is also not an abandoned timeline or thread. Updates are coming. My full time job continues to make this extremely difficult, but it is going to happen.
I made something a little while ago, as I've been trying to stretch my visual art muscles a bit, and I think now would be a rather good time to post this as a little celebration for the occasion; a title/logo for the timeline.
Congratulations. This is well-deserved indeed!
As much as this is a personal project for you, it's also an inspiring and intriguing look into an alternate world for all of us. Thanks for sharing it.
As much as this is a personal project for you, it's also an inspiring and intriguing look into an alternate world for all of us. Thanks for sharing it.
The trouble with me and Turtledoves is I freeze up, afraid to have forgotten some beloved TL. And so I try to sort through my entire history of posts and watched TLs over the past year and this is too big a project and I get distracted and don't want to go in and vote and forget someone...so I totally blow it in the nominations phase then typically am disgusted by what wins.
Or occasionally not! Congratulations on a well deserved reward for a favorite TL of mine, that I hope to see go live again.
@TheScottishMongol , have you read all the back posts? If not yet, pace yourself for close reading, this is great stuff and worth taking the time. Also there are little guessing games we are challenged to play-"see if you can recognize the heavily butterflied ancient and modern peoples named from a very different perspective!" Or even "can you guess where on Earth the subject of this post might possibly be located?" I think you'll appreciate it a lot!
Or occasionally not! Congratulations on a well deserved reward for a favorite TL of mine, that I hope to see go live again.
@TheScottishMongol , have you read all the back posts? If not yet, pace yourself for close reading, this is great stuff and worth taking the time. Also there are little guessing games we are challenged to play-"see if you can recognize the heavily butterflied ancient and modern peoples named from a very different perspective!" Or even "can you guess where on Earth the subject of this post might possibly be located?" I think you'll appreciate it a lot!
This is why I nominated your timeline for the awards this year: I think your timeline has a unique flair, a sense of immersion rarely found elsewhere. At the time of the nomination, I thought you abandoned it completely, so I felt such beautifully crafted piece should not fade into obscurity.
Now, I'm delighted you still plan to update it.
Against Xerxes
Μηδίζω! THE WORLD OF ACHAEMENID HELLAS
CHAPTER 8: KAKIA or ZURA
Against Xerxes by Pseudo-Agathetykhos, c.*450s BCE
‘The Great Despoiler of Asia’
CHAPTER 8: KAKIA or ZURA
Against Xerxes by Pseudo-Agathetykhos, c.*450s BCE
‘The Great Despoiler of Asia’
That in your seized dominion not only have poleis been victim to rapacious seizure and desolation but also tribes, cultures, peoples, entire nations, and that by its very form your station and office, an affront to the natural order and to the Gods, are established and sustained by rapine and subjugation. Let us not forget Sparta and the desolation of Lakedaimonia, a polis and a people that had surrendered to the so-called Great King in good faith after an entirely proper struggle in favour of their continued independence and the independence of all Hellenes. Was this vanquished people not given over to fire and wanton because they had displeased the vagaries of the King of Persia’s whims, because they had not danced this way or bowed in the correct angle? How many cities and their teeming masses live daily in fear that to upset their King on trivial matters is to risk utter annihilation? Athenians living in fear that, through vague justification of their notable past resistance to the Mede, they might be wiped from the face of the earth through tardiness, or a lack of sufficient grace, or overcooking a piece of meat. Yours is a kingship founded upon the basest forms of hubris, and is maintained by such means, contemptuous of the divine or the sacred. Your wetnurse would surely profess to having greater powers on this earth than sacred Apollo in having imbued such a despoiler with his powers and upbringing, so too your royal tutors, each of whom can justifiably claim that they encouraged such a state of mind that it resulted in this people being subject to slaughter versus this other people experiencing temporary clemency through personal whim. It is not enough that swathes of the world suffer at your hands through your hubris, a chain of hubris binds those who enable you also, and those who envy your position come to believe that such obscene, swollen pretensions to command the earth’s peoples as slaves are to be sought after. Your very maintenance of office breeds yet further sacrilege and outrage beyond even your own considerable reach, as teeming masses of avaricious men clamour to become the next Great Despoiler of Asia. By all sacred power with which judges are empowered, with all of their righteously dreadful insight, it is not possible that you, Xerxes, King of Persia, shall not be found guilty of the most egregious crimes against both gods and men.
Against Xerxes by Kratistoleos (c.120 BCE)
On Temples
On Temples
It is in a King’s nature, and among their rights, to chastise those who are gathered under their leadership for crimes and insurrection, both as individuals and as bodies of men. But there must, in accordance with the majesty and potency of the king in question, be considerations of proportionality so that such chastisement consists of true justice. There are punishments that can be, and have been, out of all concord with the ill or ills that have been wrought. We may speak specifically of the desecration of the houses of the Gods as a punishment that cannot be considered symmetrical with any given offence that a people may have committed against the King. The theft of holy treasures, ornamentation, or pieces of the temple, deliberate damage to the temple on the part of sword, fire, or mass labour, the full destruction or erasure of the sacred space, none of these acts can be regarded as anything other than offences against the Gods, no matter by which name those Gods are known in the lands to which these matters are applied nor by which ancient wisdom and forms the ceremonies accordant to that God take place. In this matter we must fully accuse King Xerxes of such outrages, such as the theft of the statue of Mardukhaios chief God of Babylon, the destruction of the temples of Athenai upon that city’s first occupation by his assembled arms in addition to those of Plataiai and Thespiai and Eretria, and more besides. It is a methodology explained by past behaviour of his forebears in the execution of their chastening of their subjects, but not excused. Indeed, by replicating such impious behaviour Xerxes provides yet another appalling example to those who follow as Kings of Asia, or indeed kings of potency, for who in the world is not familiar with the might and fame of Xerxes of Persia? A king is set above others by the will of the Gods, but in maintaining that lofty perch must maintain also principles of just government, and thus Xerxes’ powerful insights and talents must not shroud these misdeeds. If anything at all by the breach between talent and application they become all the more egregious.
Strategemata by Laukhma of Catania (558 CE)
On Xerxes
On Xerxes
Is it not marvellous that such a man as Xerxes of Persia, conqueror of Hellas and among the most celebrated monarchs of elder times, never himself actually led his men to battle? His repute as strategician, tactician, and general is in the present times rarely questioned, even among those who claim descent from his blood enemies, men who would have slit their own throats if it meant splattering the King of Persia’s fine cloak. Yet we can clearly see, from all accounts of his deeds, that he never actually took up a sword and shield in his own name, or on behalf of others. Now, let us be assured that I am in no way impugning those who have led an army to battle and has not themselves seen direct combat over the toings and froings. My particular objection to the illustrious Xerxes is threefold. The first is that this avoidance of combat was, to all knowledge, lifelong, in the course of a long reign and life, which speaks to a particular avoidance more specific than accident, especially with the frequency of war and conquest that occurred under his rule. The second is that in the winning of such conquests he declared himself the sole achiever and champion of such things, as though he were not blessed with a surfeit of competent generals executing strategy and legions of finely arrayed troops. The third is that the grandeur of the title he claimed, King of Asia, is such that one would assume an equally grand man to occupy that office. A man who claims the title conqueror without every risking themselves in battle cannot possibly be equal to that grandeur. Let us be sure that these are not shortfalls exclusive to such a man as Xerxes, indeed, one can point to great numbers of such people in the wars of my time. But few among them, few among all men, have the swollen reputation of a Xerxes as a near-perfect king, equal to his bloodline’s prominence and the majesty of his rank. This absurdity must be rejected, and most especially in the field of war. If such a mind was so rarely accomplished, such a warrior was rarely equalled, where are Xerxes’ words of wisdom on the proper disposition of a field army, or the disciplining of cavalry, or the construction of fortresses, or the breaking of city walls, or the methods by which one’s advantages may be enhanced whilst minimising one’s disadvantages? It’s because all such wisdom was contained within the minds of Xerxes’ generals, those who actually risked life and limb on his behalf and conducted the most expedient means of achieving his goals. Would that we had their words, such a college would have been a rare assemblage of military talent and insight. But let us grant Xerxes this good word; he very well understood the art of appearing to be of high bearing and of magnifying the scope of one’s deeds, a genuine art and legitimately useful. Here, however, such an art is put to the service of concealing an entirely absent military career of many decades. By such arts are the manners of winning wars, and the evaluation of reasoned objectives, concealed through the notion that one need only aim one’s spear at the stars and follow its flight as presented by the so-called histories of Xerxes that have arisen in my day. War is not a matter of declaring the horizon a conquest and waiting for the firmament to catch up to one’s demand. Wars must be won through craft, endurance, and decisiveness, and in precisely no cases can we attribute these qualities to Xerxes, or a pretense of their exercise, on the field of battle.
Atsamanstallan by King Alabalther (1103 CE)
Against Xerxes
Against Xerxes
Kingship must only be regarded as an honourable institution, and righteous office, where the holder acts as advocate and arbiter for those people that lie under their stated authority, as fierce protector for their people guarding against the circling wolves, as wise father of the folk, as the shield of the righteous and the spear of the weak. A charge of dread responsibility is levied upon that individual by the gods upon their coronation, not as their price for the elevation to a crown or throne, nay it is the very royal office itself. So we must find that King Xerxis, King of Parsika, was in his time in egregious breach of the sacred oaths between anointed and the divine. We must firstly establish that the declaration of royal dominion over land, and those that dwell therein, is more than the proclamation of conquest like such land was a ruby to be set upon a diadem. It is to announce custodianship and responsibility over those of such lands, to defend the communes and tribes that compose its body and to preserve them. To announce rulership over the land of Sparta, upon the utter defeat of all opposition no less, only to eradicate those who constitute Sparta’s people is an act of craven wickedness with few parallels. If one has brought new demesne into royal responsibility, and one feels that breaches, impieties or crimes remain unanswered then this is for specific and proportionate justice to intervene, at the King’s direction. Wanton erasure of the very folk one claims lordship over is a spit in the eye of the very gods that have raised such a king to their position, and such a king we must find Xerxis of Parsika to be. He did not become King of Sparta, he simply made a wilderness and then replaced the vanished people with his own preferred creatures and supplicants. Neither can we say that a king can call themselves the king of such a land or such a people when they can profess no knowledge of that people beyond their name, location, and the doutiest burgs contained therein. A king must receive petitions from their people, pass judgement upon them, lead them to the dreadful cries of war if necessary. How could one in good conscience profess that one’s decisions in these matters are toward their benefit, or demonstrate sincere wisdom, if one is as familiar with their lives as an earthworm is with the depths of the briny waters? Such a King as Xerxis, professing to be overlord over teeming nations beyond count, is not in truth king over such nations. He is instead a distant magistrate, or an itinerant quartermaster, for whom nations are little more than granaries and treasure hoards. What true insight could Xerxis possibly have over the affairs of the fair horsemen of Skitheka or timeless Egupet or marbled Korinthos? These subjects, to Xerxis, were not in truth men but bushels of wheat, their customs, languages, and histories alien to him. It is part of a king’s responsibility that he might have power over life and death for men under his rulership, perhaps for a great deal of men, but those put in such positions must be accounted for and known as men to the King that professes to make such decisions, otherwise it is a violation of the most sacred oaths between monarch and the gods, the oaths that you are a king and not simply a slinger for whom the lives of others are bullets. King Xerxis is not a model of royal bearing or countenance but a warning across the ages that kingship is not merely the collection of power, that those who are not shepherds but merchants of their people are damned.
Against Against Xerxes by Amvebryg Amvewenyo (1658 CE)
The genre of ‘Against Xerxes’ speeches is one with a prolific, perhaps even fecund history stretching back almost two millennia. It is a genre that consists of the author, regardless of culture or station, hawking their rhetorical gifts by intimating that by such manner as they have written so the mighty ancient King Xerxes, master of Asia and conqueror of Hellas, have been brought low in a court of law to, presumably, his humiliation, though realistically we might instead consider it a mild irritation. The greater part of such specimens of persuasion seem principally concerned that Xerxes is both foreign to Hellas, of course being otherwise indistinguishable from the other hundreds of nations under his command, and that he in fact possesses such vast resources as to keep hundreds of nations under his command and prevent his territories from being conquered by others. These hideous flaws are not to be taken as resentful towards the man who first brought Hellas towards the circles of Asia, or suspicious of situations in which peoples become governed by one who is not among their particular kind, or indeed resentful at the power that mighty Empires have borne through history have continued to bear. In addition to such grievous faults Xerxes is often identified by many such speeches as, in fact, being a King and sole monarch of his realms, a fact that will of course be previously unknown to the reader and which will doubtlessly persuade them of Xerxes’ ill character and maliciousness, as though such individuals that disapprove of kingship would not automatically be inclined towards such snap judgements of the Great King’s position and bearing. More than a few such speeches regale us with the wickedness of comfortable living, the perfidy of enjoying such things as fine clothes, well prepared meals, or soft pillows, while others still have accused Xerxes of an abundance of grooming, as demonstrated by those monuments and engravings that have survived the passage of time and by which Xerxes’ appearance has remained known to us. Whilst I have known barbers to be personally accused of scandal and vice I must confess myself, among many such others of Iberian stock, to be somewhat unfamiliar with the notion of evil grooming, and I fear my people and I must adjust our behaviour forthwith, lest the gods punish our impious moustaches and beards, or the active maintenance of hair.
We can credit some authors of accusations against Xerxes of taking a somewhat different approach, in which they levy specific charges of overly cruel behaviour, impiety, or poor decisions, and acknowledge that such accusations strike a different chord. These rare creatures are all the more striking for the utterly gormless sight of the rest of their kind, moving in great herds across the rhetorical and literary circles of the world like bearded cows on migration. The great conceit that remains unchallenged, that such speeches would convince an arbiter or arbiters that King Xerxes should suffer the full force of the law, is precisely that which renders most such speeches farcical. For one, many of their authors seem to believe that waffling and packing sentences as full of words as possible are a rhetorical device, and indeed that such techniques elevate a good speech to a grand one. For another, consider the force of will that one has ranged one’s self against, Xerxes the Great, survivor of dynastic conflict and revolt and multiple extended campaigns across what was at that time the known world. The notion that somebody might accuse him of somewhat grandiose bearing or pretensions to command swathes of mankind would not, I think, cause him to tremble in his great throne, or his diadem to wobble. The distance and remove from such a figure’s active presence as an opponent is most certainly a great part as to why this genre is so prolific, it’s rather easy to make great faux-swings at a picture of a bear and significantly safer. But the safety of such a position is precisely why so many would-be rhetoricians have somehow decided that an accusation of luxuriousness on the part of the King of Asia would manifest as a serious rebuke, with Xerxes aghast as though Zeus himself had thrown lightning to the earth at his feet. Those few invectives against Xerxes that hit home do so in part because the author understands the enormity of the task and the gravity of treating an anointed King, however removed in time or countenance from present circumstances, as a criminal to be accused of misdeeds. We can only conclude from this that a good deal of those who would profess to partake in the body politic are as unprepared for real opposition as the average human being is to be slapped across the jowls by a particularly moist tuna hefted with great force by an experienced fisherman.
Great to see this continuing. Insulting the long dead Xerxes as a genre of writing unto itself is a wonderful thought.
What a lovely surprise! I might just have to reread this since I've forgotten so much. Also might be a cool idea to post your Goth map from the Map Thread here @Daeres.
Worry not, I was just finishing eating before I shared the map here.
For those who haven't read the TL in a while, the map in question is in the time of Gothic (and pals) intrusion into the Balkans around the late *3rd century AD which has been mentioned on a couple of occasions. I made it for a map contest on reddit but it's part of what helped me get over creative block that had lasted.. well over a year. I'd been planning the first update of Chapter 8 to be 'Against Xerxes' since 2018 at least...
Let this be a lesson, everybody. Never give up hope that a favorite timeline might update. Unwatching is for suckers.
Interesting that one of these treatises is written by a "King Alabalther"; is this his Anti-Machiavel, his grand statement on how a prince ruling by mercenary interests and taking as much advantage as possible of the resources at his disposal is totally wrong and totally won't be the foundation for his own power down the line?
I wrote Alabalther's perspective as sincere, but absolutely intended as a swipe to contemporaries more so than random whimsy. His main criticism of Xerxes is that he diverges from his personal model of the relationship between king and governed, and I intended this to be based on a somewhat romantic, legendary ideal of early Germanic/barbarian kings who rule justly by the consent of the governed whilst also still being a part of the governed community in some capacity. By this time we are fully into Central Europe having complex states, and doubtless few of the rulers of those states resemble Alabalther's vision of what it means to be a king. The passage itself comes from a work that means 'Composition' and is intended as instruction on good governance for Alabalther's descendants, hence him via Xerxes taking a swipe at what he considers to be bad kings as they have zero relationship with the governed or consideration as to the gods-given responsibilities a king must fulfill. That this private document became a matter of intellectual and academic interest is as a result of both its surprising candour in places but also because it became central to later European arguments over the nature of kingship and statecraft, with Alabalther's Against Xerxes in particular being taken as an example of a King who did not believe that Kings should be autocrats, or that they had full license to act however they wished in the service of maintaining their position.
