Xanthippus

Military leader

Born: Sixth century b. c.e.; place unknown Died: Fifth century b. c.e.; place unknown Category: Military

Life A member of the aristocracy with strong democratic tendencies, Xanthippus (zan-THIHP-uhs) married Agariste, the niece of the Athenian reformer Cleisthenes. About five years before the Greeks’ first victory over the Persians at Marathon (490 b. c.e.), Xanthippus and Agariste had a son destined to become one of the most important figures in Athenian his-tory—Pericles.

Xanthippus, a political ally of Cleisthenes, secured the impeachment of Miltiades the Younger, the hero of Marathon, shortly after the latter’s ill-conceived and catastrophic attack on Paros (489 b. c.e.), charging the general with defrauding the Athenian people. Ironically, although Xanthippus opposed the return of the oligarchs and desired to protect the state from the danger of tyranny, he was banished as an enemy of democracy (485/484 b. c.e.). Four years later, the Athenians recalled Xanthippus because the Persian king Xerxes I was invading and the Athenians had abandoned their city to take refuge on Salamis, Aegina, and Troezen.

In 479 b. c.e., Xanthippus was elected strategos, or general, succeeding Themistocles as the commander of the Athenian fleet that fought at the Battle of Mycale—a decisive encounter that liberated the Asiatic Greeks from Persian rule. In the spring of 478 b. c.e., Xanthippus stormed the fortress of Sestos on the Hellespont, while the Spartans, content with their part in the victory at Mycale, sailed home to Greece. The Persian army scattered. Xanthippus captured Sestos and slaughtered many of the Persians at Aegospotami. He nailed their leader, Artayctes, to a plank for the atrocities he had committed, especially against Greek women, when he was governor of Sestos. Later, Xanthippus carried back to Athens as trophies two cables—one of flax, the other of papyrus—that had supported the bridge that Xerxes had had constructed across the Hellespont joining Asia to Europe.

Influence Xanthippus, as commander of the Athenian fleet, led the Greeks in a battle that won the Asiatic Greeks liberation from Persian rule.

Further Reading

Burn, Andrew R. Persia and the Greeks: The Defense of the West, 546-478 B. C. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984.

Green, Peter. The Greco-Persian Wars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey De Selincourt. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

Podlecki, Anthony J. Pericles andHis Circle. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Robert J. White

See also: Aegospotami, Battle of; Cleisthenes of Athens; Greco-Persian Wars; Marathon, Battle of; Miltiades the Younger; Pericles; Themistocles; Xerxes I.