How not to Appease Athena: A Reconsideration of Xerxes' Purported Visit to the Troad (Hdt. 7.42–43)

Abstract

Summary: This article investigates the topography in Herodotus' account of Xerxes' visit to the Troad in 480 BC, which consists of Mount Ida, the Scamander river, the temple of Athena Ilias at Troy and the tumuli in the surrounding landscape. It suggests that this episode, rather than taking us back to historical events of 480 BC, may (partly) be a product of Greek imagination in the ca. fifty years between Xerxes' invasion of Greece and the publication of the „Histories“, with the landscape of the Troad functioning as a catalyst. To this end, the article traces the Iliadic associations of these places, exposes several topographical problems, and explains how the stories frame Xerxes' visit as hubristic. While the article is not concerned with the historicity of the episode per se, it suggests that this historicity cannot automatically be accepted, as has hitherto generally been done.