(PDF) Death

414 DAULIS (Δαυλίς, ἡ) DAULIS (Δαυλίς, ἡ) JEREMY MCINERNEY University of Pennsylvania Small Phocian town in the eastern foothills of PARNASSUS (BA 55 D3). In 480 bce, as the Persian army marched down the CEPHISUS val- ley, on the north side of Parnassus, XERXES contingent to seize DELPHI. Their route took them past Daulis, which they burned (8.35.1). Though never an important place, the town is strategically located, lying close to the of the upper Cephisus valley with the plain of Chaeronea and overlooking the SACRED WAY to Delphi. see also: Phocis FURTHER READING McInerney, Jeremy. 1999. The Folds of Parnassos: and Ethnicity in Ancient Phokis. Austin: of Texas Press. DAURISES (Δαυρίσης, ὁ) GIUSTINA MONTI University of Lincoln Son‐in‐law of DARIUS I (5.116), brother‐in‐law of XERXES, and Persian commander during the IONIAN REVOLT (499–493 bce). Daurises is only mentioned by Herodotus. He must have been a leading figure of the Persian aristocracy, since the MARRIAGE with one of the king’s daughters was an extraordinary honor (Briant 2002, 309). His parents’ and wife’s names are unknown. The Greek version of his name derives from Old Persian *dahyu‐, “land,” plus an uncertain second element (Schmitt, IPGL 184 (no. 142)). Together with HYMAEES and OTANES (2), Daurises attacked the IONIANS who had burned SARDIS and defeated them in battle, after which the three commanders shared the CITIES out among themselves and plundered them. Daurises then headed for the HELLESPONT and subdued DARDANUS, ABYDOS, PERCOTE, the verbal forms ἀποθνῄσκειν, τελευτᾶν (and σφαγιάζεσθαι, SACRIFICE, 7.180). Death can be indicated by semantically broader terms, such as πάθος (2.133.1), πίπτειν (“fall,” (5.20), διαχρᾶσθαι (1.24), the (“destroy,” 2.133.2, 8.140.3) and φθορή tion,” 2.161.4, 7.18.3; cf. φθορά, φθόρος in THUCYDIDES). Among the less straightforward expressions is a negation of return (nostos) home (4.159.6); only two young men returned home (ἀπενόστησαν) to CHIOS from a chorus of 100 sent to DELPHI, while an outbreak of illness car- ried off (λοιμὸς ὑπολαβὼν (6.27). Loss of human life in war‐related contexts becomes more consistently present as the narra- tive focus sharpens on the Greco‐Persian conflict from Book 5 onwards. Herodotus reports on losses either by providing NUMBERS of fallen (e.g., 6.117, 9.70.5), or by using more abstract qualifiers, such as “the WALLS were stoutly attacked, and for six days many fell on both sides” (6.101). Both combatant parties suffer losses, but in general the losses of the defeated are heavier: the killing of men is accompanied by the enslave- ment of women and CHILDREN; destruction of CITIES (ἄστεα ἀνθρώπων), conflagration and desecration of sacred places (e.g., 5.101–2, 6.19, 8.53); and relocation of survivors (6.20, with Hornblower and Pelling 2017, 108–9). Armies trying to return home may also suffer heavy losses: after the Battle of SALAMIS men in XERXES’ retreating army are reported (perhaps exaggerat- edly) to die from dysentery and malnutrition (8.115, 117); after the Battle of PLATAEA, retreat- ing Persians are caught by Thracian tribes and killed (9.119). In contrast to the graphic descriptions of wounds and deaths of HEROES in Homer’s Iliad, Herodotus does not normally describe the fatal wounds of the warriors on the battlefield (Marincola 2018; Strid 2006; Boedeker 2003; Darbo‐Peschanski 1988). The heroic deaths of the Spartan king LEONIDAS and the 300 men around him at THERMOPYLAE are reported in an un‐ Homerically terse way (7.224; cf. 7.222). On the other hand, using the Homeric technique by which the narrator zooms in and out of action on the battlefield and describes battles around 416 DEATH eponymous and anonymous deaths, and does not contain descriptions of wounds except for the famous vignette of the death of CYNEGEIRUS (6.114), brother of the poet AESCHYLUS. The episode was visually commemorated on the Stoa Poikile in the Athenian AGORA, available to Herodotus and other visitors of his day. (A vignette similar to that of Cynegeirus’ death is found on the front panel relief of the Roman Brescia sar- cophagus (second century ce, Museo di Santa Giulia), depicting a naval battle considered to be a later visual representation of Marathon.) At Plataea, CALLICRATES was wounded by an arrow as he was sitting in position before the actual battle and “died a lingering death” (9.72). For all men death, like birth, can happen only once. But for the victor of Marathon, MILTIADES THE YOUNGER, Herodotus uses the remarkable and illogical expression “double death” to refer to Miltiades’ two escapes from death, from enemies within and outside of his city (ἐκπεφευγὼς διπλόον θάνατον, 6.104.1)—a ascribing an almost predetermined mission to this individual’s life and career, whose pinnacle was his election to GENERALSHIP by the Athenian people, which in turn led to a sort of a preordained or supernatural victory at Marathon. Later Miltiades died of gangrene on his thigh as a result of a wound incurred in an offensive mission against Greeks involving impiety (6.132–36). The Persian king CAMBYSES (II) died of a thigh wound too (3.61–66), and the narration of his story bears moral, scientific, and narratological analogies with that of Miltiades (Munson 2001, 57): the challenges of leadership; impiety and man’s inability to deflect his destiny; medical vocabulary; and choice between different versions of the story. MADNESS (the “sacred disease” (epilepsy) according to some: 3.33) is a feature that contrib- uted to Cambyses’ end, though we are told that it was cured before the king’s death. Madness is also present in the case of CLEOMENES, king of SPARTA. Like Cambyses, Cleomenes is said to have been “a little mad” before, and when his madness got worse he took his own life by muti- lating himself and cutting the flesh off his body (6.75). Consistent with his practice of providing variant versions about the death (and birth) of sig- nificant individuals (cf. CYRUS (II) 1.95.1, 214.5), divine signs correctly and control his own fortune, and the limitations of PIETY and wealth in secur- ing human happiness. The brevity and instability of human happiness and the grudging divinity which allows only “a taste of the sweetness of living” to man (7.46.4) recur in the scene between Xerxes and ARTABANUS, another monarch‐and‐wise‐ADVISER scene, rem- iniscent of that between Croesus and Solon (cf. Turpin 2014). Just before the crossing of his forces from ASIA to EUROPE, the Great King admires the size and magnificence of his army from the heights of ABYDOS. While doing so, his eyes are filled with tears when he contemplates that none of his men will be alive in a hundred years’ time (7.46.2; cf. 9.16.3). Xerxes’ hubristic inability to acknowledge his own mortal nature stirs Artabanus’ advice that illness and other disastrous misfortunes (συμφοραί, 7.46.3) often make the short life of a human being unbearable, so that death becomes “the most pref- erable shelter from a painful life” (7.46.4). The idea of death being a relief from the toils of life is also echoed in the custom of a Thracian community to laugh and rejoice at funerals and mourn at births, seeing death as the start of real happiness (5.4.2). The constitutional dimension of Xerxes’ inabil- ity to acknowledge death as common to all men becomes clearer in the Greeks pointing out that the Asian monarch, being a mortal, is liable to misfor- tune after all (7.203). Xerxes himself is unable to understand the Spartans’ attitude to death, who exercise naked and comb their hair as they prepare to kill and be killed in battle (7.208.3), and laughs at it (7.209; cf. 7.104.5–105). Cyrus, who thinks of himself as being something more than a mortal (1.204.2), is another Persian parallel. Constitutional and other differences aside, oligarchic Spartans and democratic Athenians, as leaders of the Greek resistance against PERSIA, are united by their attitudes to life and death and their resilience in defending Greece and its FREEDOM. An Athenian example is the stoning to death of the Athenian LYCIDES and that of his family by fellow Athenians, including women (9.5; cf. 5.87 for Athenian women stabbing to death with their brooch‐pins the only Athenian man who returned to ATHENS alive from the war with AEGINA). Stoning as a form of punishment was associated with treason, and this episode of collective cruelty and abuse emanates from what appears to be a 418 DEATH set of eschatological beliefs (including reincarna- tion), mystic cults, and texts. Beliefs of afterlife were found also among the GETAE, a Thracian tribe, who practiced a RITUAL of immortaliza- tion (ἀθανατίζειν), broadly associated with the Pythagoreans and the “more profound” and sophis- ticated customs (ἤθεα) of Ionia (4.95.2). With his usual critical spirit Herodotus records the custom, but remains agnostic about its provenance and potential association with PYTHAGORAS (4.94– 96; cf. 4.13–16, on ARISTEAS OF PROCONNESUS, another supernatural figure). The information about the human body after death can be rich, especially in the context of Herodotus’ recording foreign customs. Suffice it to think of the Egyptians’ embalming techniques (2.86–89), where anatomical details are included too (Darbo‐Peschanski 1988, 45), or the inhabit- ants of INDIA who eat their dead parents and find the Greek funeral custom of cremation appalling (3.38; cf. 4.26 and 1.216, 3.99 for customs ing sacrifice of human beings in old age and endo- cannibalism, with Corcella in ALC, 600–1). Relics (that is, remains such as bones) of heroes and significant individuals were thought to have apotropaic qualities, protecting the community possessed them from harm, evil, and misfortune. Herodotus has an eye for recording the and use of relics, such as the Spartans’ retrieval of the bones of ORESTES (1.67–68), a significant move of inter‐state politics within the PELOPONNESE (cf. 8.64 for the physical presence of the AEACIDAE, Aeginetan heroes, at the Battle of Salamis). One possible categorization of WOMEN IN THE HISTORIES is the kind and degree of their involvement in contexts of death, whether as objects/victims, agents, or causes (cf. Dewald 1981, for more categories). The most famous rep- resentative of the latter category is undoubtedly HELEN, to whom Herodotus devotes a good amount of attention, in connection with either the theme of abduction of women as reason for war and large‐scale destruction (1.3) or the famous problem of her never getting to TROY (2.112–20 The RAPE of the virgin daughter of ZOPYRUS (1) becomes the reason for the death of her violator, SATASPES, an ACHAEMENID, by impalement (4.43). The severity of the punishment is justified by the status of the girl’s father (3.157.1, 160). One of the most brutal sex crimes in war whose victims were women is reported briefly, namely Hornblower, Simon, and Christopher Pelling, eds. 2017. Herodotus: Histories Book VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marincola, John. 2018. “Ὁμηρικώτατος? Battle Narratives in Herodotus.” In Herodotus: Scientist, Historian, edited by Ewen Berlin: De Gruyter. Munson, Rosaria Vignolo. 2001. Telling Wonders. Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Pelling, Christopher. 1997. “East is East and West is West—Or Are They? National Stereotypes in Herodotus.” Histos 1: 51–66. Reprinted in ORCS Vol. 2, 360–79. Pelling, Christopher. 2006. “Homer and Herodotus.” In Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the Epic Tradition presented to Jasper Griffin Pupils, edited by M. J. Clarke, B. G. A. M. Lyne, 75–104. Oxford: Oxford Strid, Ove. 2006. “Voiceless Victims, Memorable Deaths in Herodotus.” CQ 56: 393–403. Turpin, William N. 2014. “Croesus, Xerxes Denial of Death (Herodotus 1.29–34; 7.44–53).” CW 107.4: 535–41. FURTHER READING Garland, Robert. 2001. The Greek Way of Death. 2nd edition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ogden, Daniel. 2001. Greek and Roman Necromancy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sourvinou‐Inwood, Christiane. 1995. “Reading” Greek Death: to the End of the Classical Period. Oxford: Clarendon Press. DECELEA (Δεκελέη, ἡ) DANIELLE KELLOGG Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY Small Athenian DEME located in the foothills of Mt. Parnes, at modern Tatoi. Decelea is included in Philochorus’ list of twelve locations united by THESEUS during his synoecism (BNJ 328 F94). Archaeological remains in the vicinity begin in the late Bronze Age. They include the remains of a fourth‐century bce Athenian fort and WALLS which may be associated with the Spartan occupation between 413 and 404 (Thuc. 7.19, 27–28). The site commands extensive views over the Attic plain to the north of ATHENS, making it ideal for FORTIFICATIONS (Ober 1985). LAMPSACUS, and PAESUS: one city each day, Herodotus claims. Upon receiving news of a Carian REBELLION against Persian rule, he marched against them, defeating them twice in battle around the MARSYAS RIVER. Later, how- ever, Daurises died in a Carian ambush at PIDASA, along with two other Persian generals, AMORGES and SISIMACES (5.116–21). sent a see also: Caria REFERENCE intersection Briant, Pierre. 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, translated by Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. FURTHER READING Osborne, Robin. 1988. “The Ionian Revolt.” In CAH2 IV, 461–90. Land University DEATH MARIA FRAGOULAKI Cardiff University There is not a single book of the Histories devoid of death, as one would expect from a story pri- marily concerned with war. Death offers an excel- lent lens for the study of a number of aspects of Herodotus’ work: universality and locality; inter- action with HOMER and other poets; MYTH; cult; aetiology. Groups and individuals of differ- ent social statuses, ethnic and cultural back- grounds, ages and genders die in an astonishing variety of (war‐ and non‐war‐related) manners: ARMIES on the battlefield or in retreat, commu- nities under SIEGE and attack; conspiracy; inter- nal strife (STASIS); DISEASE; hunger; cannibalism (ANTHROPOPHAGY); drowning; SUICIDE; torture and MUTILATION. Events and stories of death in the Histories are often explored in con- junction with theological, moral, and psychologi- cal questions and a range of emotional states. Herodotus’ vocabulary of death is rich; a brief sample includes θάνατος, φόνος, and the EPIC φονή (“massacre,” once, 9.76); νέκυς (“corpse”); DEATH 415 τεθνάναι, τεθνεώς, corpses of dead warriors, Herodotus provides a used of HUMAN brief description of the battle (ὠθισμός) around Leonidas’ corpse (7.225). Excellence in fighting (ARETĒ) and a brave death on the battlefield are 6.114), διεργάζεσθαι central to the heroic ethic of kleos (FAME) and poetic φθείρειν further points of connection between Herodotus (“destruc- (and Greek historiography at large) and Homer and other poets (Boedeker 2002; Pelling 2006). Like the Achaeans and the Trojans in the Iliad, in Herodotus too both Greeks and Persians fight val- iantly (9.62.3). But the otherness of the mythical Trojans is not quite the same as the otherness of the historical Persians. The skill of the ἀπήνεικε) the rest Lacedaemonians is reported to be greater than that of the Persians, and the Persian losses greater than those of the Lacedaemonians, both at Thermopylae, a Greek defeat, and at Plataea, a Greek victory (7.211–12; 9.62.3). The narrator reports that on the third and final day of the battle of Thermopylae, when “the Greeks around Leonidas made their death sortie” (7.223.2), the “BARBARIANS” continued to die in large num- bers and ignominious ways: whipped by their commanders they fell to the sea and died or were trampled by their comrades (7.223.3). The absence of free will here is typical of the effects on individuals and groups of Oriental DESPOTISM as system of political administra- tion, a deep theme of the Histories. Naming and non‐naming of the fallen in battle is part of Herodotus’ handling of collective MEMORY and heroic ethics. The reporting of the Persian losses in large numbers at Thermopylae is contrasted with the individual deaths of the Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 “famous” (ὀνομαστοί) Spartans (7.223–24). Of the Spartan dead only Leonidas is named; although the narrator proudly states that he learned the names of all 300 fallen Spartans, he does not name them. Independently of whether Herodotus was (cf. Paus. 3.14.1) or was not in a position to provide the list of the 300, this statement is a display of the author’s superior KNOWLEDGE (reinforced by the tour‐de‐force on two named individuals of the many “famous” (ὀνομαστοί) Persians who died at the same bat- tle); at the same time the collective and anony- mous immortalization of the Spartan dead is also a means of bringing to the foreground Leonidas’ individual eponymous kleos. Herodotus’ account of the Battle of MARATHON similarly combines Herodotus presents four different versions of the facts that led to Cleomenes’ madness and death (6.74–84), three of which involve impiety and some form of divine retribution (tisis), which is the explanation Herodotus himself favors (6.84.3). But the greatest story of tisis known to the narra- tor is the revenge that HERMOTIMUS of PEDASA, a EUNUCH, took upon the man (see PANIONIUS) who had castrated him when he was a young boy, by inflicting the same—or per- haps graver and lethal—PUNISHMENT on him and his sons (8.104–6; Hornblower 2003). The drowning of Persian troops at the siege of POTEIDAEA in northern Greece is presented as another instance of divine retribution (though the actual word tisis is not used), caused by “barbar- ian” impiety (asebeia) and ignorance, according to the inhabitants of the city, a religious explanation which is again endorsed by Herodotus (8.129). Ignorance of the SEA and of swimming were thought of as “barbarian” features (cf. Thuc. stylistic means of 7.30.2; Pl. Leg. 3.689d3). Having desecrated the cult statue in the temple of POSEIDON, the epon- ymous deity of the city, the Persians were “destroyed by the sea” (8.129.3): the element per- sonified in substitution of its god. In 492 bce MARDONIUS lost 20,000 men, who died at sea from various causes, when their ships were wrecked around the ATHOS peninsula: drown- ing, eaten by sharks, dashed upon the rocks, or perishing from the cold (6.44, 7.188–90; cf. Eur. Hel. 1209, “the most pitiful death, in the watery waves of the sea”). Death in the Histories is closely intertwined with central questions of human HAPPINESS (ὄλβος or εὐδαιμονίη) and “what counts as a wor- thy life” (Dewald 2011). In the famous and pro- grammatic encounter of the Athenian SOLON and the Lydian king CROESUS (1.29–33), a “glo- rious finish of life” (τελευτὴ τοῦ βίου λαμπροτάτη 1.30.4), like those of TELLUS and CLEOBIS AND BITON, is a safer criterion of happiness than sta- tus and WEALTH, since the latter can be lost. Solon expresses the idea, prominent in Herodotus, of the divine being envious of excessive human prosperity. A good part of Book 1 is then occupied with Croesus’ career and the way death affects his own life and that of his family and his subjects, affording the exploration of moral and theological questions, such as man’s limited ability to interpret DEATH 417 violation of the community’s established ethics. On the Spartan side, we can think of PANTITES, one of the 300 who survived the Battle of Thermopylae, against the expectation of his community: back in Sparta he was met with such dishonor and SHAME that he hanged himself (7.232). Brutal ways of death, involving torture, mutila- tion, crucifixion, impaling, decapitation and so on, and maltreatment of the corpse, are construed as characteristically barbarian (including both male and female agency), though the divide is not rigid, since Greeks too can be the agents or the objects of such deaths (as with Lycides, above). The Histories finish with the crucifixion of the Persian ARTAŸCTES and the stoning of his son before his father’s eyes, as punishment for his des- ecration of the tomb and precinct of the Greek hero PROTESILAUS in ELAEUS (9.116–20). The atrocity is committed by none other than the Athenian XANTHIPPUS, father of PERICLES; once more the ethnographic boundaries are blurred and the narrator provides a forward‐look- ing hint, outside his own narration, at the despotic face which the ATHENIAN EMPIRE was to acquire in the following decades (Pelling 1997). The treatment of the body after death differs from one society to the next. While the Greeks who fell at Thermopylae and Plataea receive bur- ial on the spot and/or memorials and epigrams commemorating their bravery (7.228; 9.85), a very different sort of burial is reported for the Persians who fell at Thermopylae, as part of Xerxes’ post‐combat mis‐en‐scène, aimed at con- cealing the extent of Persian losses from those who could believe it (γελοῖον, “ridiculous,” 8.25) and creating a false impression of power: of the 20,000 Persians who were killed, 1,000 were left lying on the ground and the rest were buried in mass graves covered with earth and leaves so that they were not visible by the fleet (8.24); this would have been a frightening and demoralizing sight. Yet the funeral customs surrounding kings of Sparta (the most “exotic” of the Greeks) present similarities with “Asiatic barbarians” (6.58.2), espe- cially concerning excessive mourning (6.58–59; cf. 7.220.4). Elsewhere Herodotus refers to the initi- ates of the ORPHIC and Bacchic (i.e. Dionysiac) rites (orgia), noting another parallel between their funeral customs and those of EGYPT (2.81). Orphics and Pythagoreans were associated with a the gang‐raping to death of a number of Phocian women by Persian troops (8.33). Although women are often passive victims, they can also be the agents of brutal deaths, in particular non‐Greek women (though not solely; see above for Athenian examples, 5.87 and 9.5). As has been pointed out, the Histories are framed by stories of royal Asian women (the wives of CANDAULES, 1.8–10, and Xerxes, 9.108–13) who are involved in stories of sexual passion, internal strife, and destruction, including MURDER, administered by them. Other examples include TOMYRIS, queen of the MASSAGETAE, responsible for Cyrus’ death and the defilement of his body (1.213–14), and PHERETIME of the royal family of CYRENE who tried to exact too harsh a revenge for her son and suffered a horrible death herself, being infested and eaten alive by worms; Herodotus is open to viewing the story as one of divine VENGEANCE (4.200–5; Harrison 2000, 116–17). involv- see also: Burial Customs; Disaster; Ethnography; Gods and the Divine; Medicine; nomos; Reciprocity; Warfare who REFERENCES transferral Boedeker, Deborah. 2002. “Epic Heritage and Mythical Patterns in Herodotus.” In Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, edited by Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, and Hans van Wees, 97–116. Leiden: Brill. Boedeker, Deborah. 2003. “Pedestrian Fatalities: The Prosaics of Death in Herodotus.” In Herodotus and His World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest, edited by Peter Derow and Robert Parker, 17–36. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darbo‐Peschanski, Catherine. 1988. “La vie des morts: représentations et fonctions de la mort et des morts dans les Histoires d’Hérodote.” AION 10: 41–51. Dewald, Carolyn. 1981. “Women and Culture in Herodotus’ Histories.” Women’s Studies 8.1/2: 93–127. Reprinted in ORCS Vol. 2, 151–79 (lightly revised). Dewald, Carolyn. 2011. “Happiness in Herodotus.” SO 85: 52–73. ). Harrison, Thomas. 2000. Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hornblower, Simon. 2003. “Panionios and Hermotimos (Hdt. 8.104–6).” In Herodotus and His World: Essays from a Conference in Memory of George Forrest, edited by Peter Derow and Robert Parker, 37–57. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DECEPTION 419 Herodotus (9.73) reports that the inhabitants of Decelea had a special relationship with SPARTA, as they had revealed to the Spartans where Theseus had hidden HELEN after he abducted Narrator, her; since that time, Herodotus claims, the Bowie, 3–24. Deceleans enjoyed FREEDOM from dues at Sparta and important seats at FESTIVALS there, and the Spartans spared Decelea from harassment during their invasions of Attica in the first years of the PELOPONNESIAN WAR. The passage has traditionally been used to formulate a terminus ante quem for Herodotus’ completion of the Histories, though a recent re‐reading argues that it shows Herodotus’ knowledge of events near the end of the fifth century (Irwin 2013). by Former An important inscription known as the Decrees F. Currie, and R. O. of the Demotionidai, which probably details the University Press. regulations for an Athenian phratry, was discov- ered at Decelea (IG II2 1237; Hedrick 1990). and the see also: Apaturia; Date of Composition; Myth REFERENCES Hedrick, Charles W. 1990. The Decrees of the Demotionidai. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Irwin, Elizabeth. 2013. “‘The hybris of Theseus’ and the Date of the Histories.” In Herodots Quellen—Die Quellen Herodots, edited by Boris Dunsch and Kai Ruffing, 7–84. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Ober, Josiah. 1985. Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier, 404–322 b.c. Leiden: Brill. FURTHER READING Arvanitopoulou, Theophano A. 1958. Δεκέλεια. Athens: En Athēnais. Lambert, S. D. 2001. The Phratries of Attica. 2nd edition, 95–141. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. DECEPTION ALEXANDER HOLLMANN University of Washington some other Deception is often used by figures in the Histories in order to turn a situation to their own advantage. Herodotus frequently signposts these episodes using the verbs μηχανάομαι (e.g., 1.9, 59.3, 60.3, 123.4; 3.85.1–2; 6.62.1–2; 7.239.3), διαβάλλω