he thought to be luxury, which he considered trivial, since he
and his class had it in abundance.
Th e last great chance for German freedom came with
Armin (18? b.c.e–19 c.e.). He was a chief of the German tribe
of the Cherusci and served in the Roman army as an aux-
iliary. He became an important Roman ally and was given
the wealth and status of a Roman knight, the second-high-
est position in Roman society. But he rejected all of this to
turn on his Roman overlords and used his position to destroy
the Roman army occupying Germany by ambushing them in
the Teutoburg Forest (near modern Bremen). He fought other
successful campaigns against the Romans also, until they
abandoned all hope of conquering Germany as a province.
According to Tacitus, Arminius boasted of fi ghting for the
freedom of the German nation rather than for his own fame
and power.
Tacitus contrasts Armin with Armin’s father-in-law, Se-
gestes, another German prince, who remained loyal to the
Romans, claiming that this loyalty was in the Germans’ inter-
est since it brought peace and prosperity, if not freedom. Taci-
tus defames Segestes by pointing out that, acting as a coward,
he handed over Armin’s wife and son—his own daughter and
grandson—to the Romans as hostages. Tacitus also relates
how Armin fought against other German chieft ains who were
attempting to establish a united monarchy over all of Ger-
many for the purpose of becoming a satellite of the Roman
Empire and how still others off ered to assassinate Armin out
of servility to the Romans. Finally, Tacitus gives an account of
Armin’s death in a battle with other Germans who opposed
his plans to become king of a free Germany.
While much of Tacitus’s information may be factually
correct, his interpretation of those facts served his purpose
of criticizing his own culture. His writing tells more about
what he considered scandalous in Rome than how the Ger-
mans themselves thought about the excesses of their political
leaders.GREECE
BY PAUL MCKECHNIE
Th e national myth of Greece began with scandal—namely, the
corruption behind the Trojan War. Th ree goddesses, quarrel-
ling over an apple labeled “for the prettiest” that Eris, goddess
of discord, had rolled into a party where she was not invited,
decided to parade for a beauty contest. Zeus wisely refused
to judge, and Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite were forced to se-
lect a mortal judge. Th ey chose Troy’s king Priam’s son Paris,
a foolish young man who was alone in the hills keeping his
father’s fl ocks.
When they appeared before him, each goddess proposed
a bribe. Hera off ered to make Paris a great king, Athena
promised to make him a celebrated hero, and Aphrodite,
goddess of love, pledged to reward him with the most beauti-
ful woman in the world as his wife. Paris accepted the last
off er and judged in Aphrodite’s favor. Th e most beautifulwoman in the world, Helen, however, was already married to
Menelaus, king of Sparta. When Paris visited Sparta on his
father’s business, Menelaus was out of town; Paris, captivated
by Helen, whispered, “Run away with me,” in her ear, and she
did not hesitate.
Homer’s Iliad, written in (probably) the eighth century
b.c.e., is the tale of the 10-year war fought by Menelaus, his
brother Agamemnon, and their Greek army against Troy to
get Helen back. Th ere, the personal is the political with no
dividing line between politics and war. But Hesiod, another
Greek poet, perhaps aft er 700 b.c.e., refers to a more recog-
nizably “political” scandal in Works and Days, his long poem
about how to succeed as a farmer. He and his brother, Perses,
were supposed to divide the land that their father left them,
but (Hesiod claims) Perses took it all—and Hesiod’s court
case against him went nowhere because of the “bribe-devour-
ing basileis” judging it. Th ey expect presents from both sides,
he says, but giving a present is no guarantee of a favorable
result—though failing to give a present guarantees that you
will lose. Reading Works and Days, we can hear only Hesiod’s
side of the story. If Perses could give us his version, we might
look at the matter diff erently.
In his Histories the Greek historian Herodotus of the
fi ft h century b.c.e. wrote about many stories of bribery and
corruption, both successful and unsuccessful. He insists that
the Alcmaeonidae, a noble Athenian family exiled from their
home, caused the Spartans to march to Athens in 510 b.c.e.
and expel Peisistratus, an Athenian tyrant. Th e Alcmaeoni-
dae accomplished this by bribing the priestess of Delphi to
give oracular answers to the Spartans in which the supposed
voice of the god advised them to liberate Athens. Th e Del-
phic oracle was so deeply respected that any advice it gave
had a good chance of being accepted: It was a matter (the
Alcmaeonidae found) of ensuring that the right advice was
dispensed.
Less successfully, in 499 b.c.e. Aristagoras of Miletus
went to the Spartan king Cleomenes (r. ca. 521–490 b.c.e.)
and tried to talk him into supporting the Ionians in their re-
volt against Darius I (r. 522–486 b.c.e.), king of Persia and
their overlord. He showed Cleomenes a map and explained
the campaign to him, but foolishly admitted that he was ask-
ing the Spartans to travel three months’ march away from the
sea. Cleomenes told him that this was an unrealistic request;
but Aristagoras came back and tried to change his mind
with cash, eventually off ering 50 talents, which would have
been a large sum of money. According to Herodotus, when
Cleomenes hesitated, his eight-year-old daughter, Gorgo,
said, “Get up and go, father, or the stranger will certainly cor-
rupt you.” He took her advice, and the Ionians had to fi ght
without Spartan help.
In other scandalous stories, Herodotus links the politi-
cal with the personal. Periander, tyrant of Corinth from 627
to 586 b.c.e., once lost something he had borrowed. Hoping
to fi nd it, he sent to the oracle of the dead in Th esprotia to
ask the ghost of his wife, Melissa, where it was. Th e ghostscandals and corruption: Greece 9150895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i915 915 10/10/07 2:30:25 PM