Greco-Persian Wars

Neither side had destroyed the other, but both had learned where the balance of power in the Aegean now stood.

And so, if we're looking for an endpoint to the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peace of Kallias provides as good a place as any to draw the line.

The conflict that had begun with the Ionian Revolt more than half a century earlier had transformed the Greek world.

Persia still remained the greatest empire of its age, but its attempt to conquer mainland Greece had failed.

I'm searching for where we go next.

I'm going to look to the Persian War.

I'm pulling up what I need.

This is live streaming, so of course you're seeing me fuss, fuss.

in the use of myth he made bold to change the traditional version thus helen he declared never went to troy but the gods sent a phantom instead With Simonides of Seos, 556-467 BC, Greek poetry ceases to be local and dialectic and assumes a national character.

The Persian Wars had roused the Greeks to common action in defense of their country, and the patriotic verse of Simonides was a lasting memorial of their victory and of their mighty dead.

Most famous is his epitaph on the heroes of Thermopylae.

go tell the spartans thou that passest by that here obedient to their laws we lie simonides seems to have been the first to give literary form to the epigram which meant originally an inscription on a grave statue or votive offering he like others used the elegiac metre for this purpose But his many-sided genius showed itself further in all kinds of lyrical forms, among which his dithyrams, dirges, and odes of victory were preeminent.

thespis sixth century b c introduced an actor who answered the leader of the chorus their dialogue was partly in iambic metre which represented ordinary speech the actor could change his dress in a booth called scheni hence arsene in five thirty five b c public tragic competitions were established at athens under pisistratus any poet could submit a tragedy to the archon the three best plays or sets of plays competed at the festival the chorus were paid and equipped by some wealthy citizen nominated by the archon the poet was responsible for the music as well as the text and had to train the chorus and actors usually taking a part himself the accompaniment was played on the cithara and double flute the chorus wore costumes appropriate to the play and went through the motions of a stately dance the winning chorus sometimes put up a monument to its victory of thespis and his successors little remains they are known to have taken plots from all kinds of mythology Phrynicus, Floriate, 511-476 BC, attempted to use historical subjects, perhaps under the patriotic influence of Themistocles.

His play, The Capture of Miletus, is said to have moved the Athenians to tears, but they afterwards find the poet for reminding them of their misfortunes.

ascillus floruit four ninety nine to four fifty six b c fought in the persian wars and wrote it is said ninety plays he usually exhibited a set of three tragedies called a trilogy followed by a satyr drama his great improvement was the addition of a second actor so that the essential incidents in a drama could be represented on the stage his tragedies tend to become less choral and more dramatic thus in the supleices more than half the play consists of choral odes and the second actor is hardly needed while in the fourth extant play the prometheus the crisis is enacted before our eyes and the later plays need a third actor a skilless is said to have invented a regular tragic costume including thick-soled buskins and appropriate masks the stage arrangements were very simple probably the actors used the back of the semicircular orchestra behind them was a stage building with three entrances it was hung with some kind of painted scenery usually the front of a temple or palace a complete change of scene was very rare there was a device called a kind of turn-table by which any actor or object could be brought forward from behind the scenes an actor could appear at an upper window or a god could be swung forward by a crane and take his stand on a high ledge probably most of these devices were later than a skillis the imagination of the audience could remedy the deficiencies of the staging it is remarkable that the use of a raised stage above the orchestra was probably unknown until the third or fourth century b c Aeschylus was a deep religious thinker, and his tragedies are full of great problems that were beginning to force themselves on men's minds.

The power of destiny, the seeming injustice of the gods, both in legend and in providence, the inheritance of doom, and the suffering of the innocent.

And like you said, the, one of the things we tried to do was to make sure you don't have a merger of these wars in Ukraine and the black sea and the Cassian sea now merged with what's happening in Lebanon and And, of course, Israel and Gaza.

And now you've got Syria and you've got Iraq in it on the Persian War.

And it's in the Arabian Peninsula.

If you just look at the arc of instability and folks, once you combine the Balkans and Ukraine, you know, the bloodlands, they call Ukraine the bloodlands.

Yeah, it is.

And last but not least, there are two monuments which are directly related to the Persian Wars.

One, it's a statue base of Apollo.

It was dedicated in the early 5th century, immediately after the end of the Persian invasion of 480 BC.

And the serpent column of Platea is still preserved, but it is in Istanbul.

And recently they have placed a reproduction of the serpent column.

So having those monuments which are directly related to the Persian wars and the defense of the Greeks, for me, of course, I'm interested in military history, but also it's very important for the history of Greece and the significance of Delphi itself.

as the oracle who was consulting the Greeks and helped them take important decisions, both political and religious.

He can't mention, for instance, the Scythians without having a huge long digression about Scythian history, Scythian culture, and so on and so forth.

Thucydides is much more strict Well, I was going to say he's dealing with only one war, but then in a sense, Herodotus was also dealing with only one war, the Persian War.

But he puts in a lot, as I say, a lot of ethnographic and other digressions.

Thucydides is much more focused.

right?

So he's uprooted.

There were two basic sources of slavery in ancient Greece, either prisoners of war, uh or uh slaves being born within one's own household all right so say you're a prisoner of war you've been captured by so-and-so you know in in the near east and a slave trader has brought you to greece so you've been uprooted from your family from your culture from your religion And you're put in this place in that some rich persons, actually not only rich people, even poor farmers in Athens would have had one or two slaves.

But you're suddenly dumped into this household where you have no rights.