scandals and corruption: Greece he thought to be luxury, which he considered trivial, since he and his class had it in abundance The 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 auxiliary He became an important Roman ally and was given the wealth and status of a Roman knight, the second-highest 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 fighting for the freedom of the German nation rather than for his own fame and power Tacitus contrasts Armin with Armin’s father-in-law, Segestes, another German prince, who remained loyal to the Romans, claiming that this loyalty was in the Germans’ interest since it brought peace and prosperity, if not freedom Tacitus 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 chieftains who were attempting to establish a united monarchy over all of Germany for the purpose of becoming a satellite of the Roman Empire and how still others offered 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 Germans themselves thought about the excesses of their political leaders GREECE BY PAUL MCKECHNIE The national myth of Greece began with scandal—namely, the corruption behind the Trojan War Three goddesses, quarrelling 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 select a mortal judge They chose Troy’s king Priam’s son Paris, a foolish young man who was alone in the hills keeping his father’s flocks When they appeared before him, each goddess proposed a bribe Hera offered 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 beautiful woman in the world as his wife Paris accepted the last offer and judged in Aphrodite’s favor The most beautiful 915 woman 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 There, the personal is the political with no dividing line between politics and war But Hesiod, another Greek poet, perhaps after 700 b.c.e., refers to a more recognizably “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-devouring basileis” judging it They 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 differently In his Histories the Greek historian Herodotus of the fift 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 The Alcmaeonidae 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 The Delphic 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 revolt 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 asking 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 offering 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 corrupt you.” He took her advice, and the Ionians had to fight without Spartan help In other scandalous stories, Herodotus links the political with the personal Periander, tyrant of Corinth from 627 to 586 b.c.e., once lost something he had borrowed Hoping to find it, he sent to the oracle of the dead in Thesprotia to ask the ghost of his wife, Melissa, where it was The ghost