Listed 2 sub titles with search on: History for destination: "IRAN Country PERSIAN GULF".
Symbol of surrender in the ancient Achaemenid empire.
The Persian custom to demand "earth and water" from subject people
is known from the Histories by the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus.
It is tempting to think that those who surrendered gave up everything: their land
and the liquids they needed. In other words, surrender was unconditional, and
the Persian king was able to grant life to his new subjects. After the exchange
of earth and water and the acknowledgement of Persian superiority, negotiations
could begin about obligations and benefits.
Herodotus mentions several nations and towns that gave earth and water
to representatives of the great king: e.g., during Xerxes' campaign of 480 BCE,
the Thessalians and Boeotians. Xerxes proudly wrote in the Daiva inscription that
he ruled "the Yauna (=Greeks) who dwell on this side of the sea and those
who dwell across the sea".
No less interesting is the surrender of the Athenians in 507. At that
moment, they were besieged by the Spartans and their allies, and in a desperate
gamble, the Athenian leader Clisthenes surrendered to the Persian satrap of Lydia,
Artaphernes. When the envoys returned, however, the Spartans had been defeated
and the Athenians started to pretend that they had never surrendered.
The Macedonians surrendered to the Persians on two occasions (513
and 492). King Darius could truthfully state in the inscription on his tomb at
Naqs-i-Rustam that he had conquered the Yauna takabara, the "Greeks with sun hats",
a reference to the Macedonian headwear. The Macedonians were willing participants
in Xerxes' campaign against the Greeks, and it comes as some surprise that a century
and a half later, Alexander the Great could launch a crusade against Persia as
revenge for the Persian occupation.
It must be noted that Herodotus uses the expression only in Greek
and Macedonian contexts. (The exception is 4.126-127, which belongs to a part
of the Histories that is probably almost completely fictional.) It is therefore
impossible to know for sure whether the demand of earth and water was a common
Persian practice, or was only a mode to deal with the Yauna.
Jona Lendering, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Livius Ancient History Website URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks.
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