Greco-Persian Wars

Athens was at the peak of its history.

It had won in the Persian Wars and they felt like they were in the top of the world.

And that's when they started creating this amazing culture and wine played a very important role.

It's very interesting to know that the way Plato was describing Socrates, he was describing Socrates as the one who was able to drink a lot, and of course never being drunk, and keep a high level of intellectual clarity at the same time.

You'd definitely need a translator, since English wouldn't even be a thing in that timeline.

Hell, the influence of that timeline's entire Western world would be Greco-Persian instead of Greco-Roman.

Oh yeah, that's what I'm looking for.

In fact, it would probably be my whole season as we cover millennia.

So far with these bonus episodes, we have been following somewhat of a chronological path through events, delving a little deeper into certain topics that was covered in the main series.

For this episode, we are going to take a more general look timeline-wise, though our topic generally fits into this period from the Greek and Persian Wars through to the Peloponnesian War.

This is because the men pushing the oars of the Athenian navy would become increasingly important to Athens, beginning with the decisions made just before the second Persian invasion, continuing through Athens' growing influence in the decades following the victory over Persia, and then into the struggle of the Peloponnesian War.

So for this episode, we're going to take a look at the forgotten men who powered the Athenian fleet.

A battle that some have described over the eras for the existence of Western civilization.

By the way, if those are the stakes, whose side are you rooting for? What was it the Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi supposedly said when someone asked him what he thought of Western civilization? Didn't he say something like, I think it would be a good idea? nonetheless the way this story is framed from the get-go is designed to have you affiliate with one side over the other one side is like the plucky little republic with luke skywalker and star wars and they're beleaguered and you know they're good and they're under pressure and they're trying to survive against darth vader and the empire that will snuff out all freedom and hope and happiness and you know all those kinds of things that's the way the ancient story is handled of what are called the greek and persian wars a moment that has sometimes been portrayed in apocalyptic like terms for what has sometimes been called the west once upon a time christendom so already many in the west are going to feel like it's a sporting event and we're the home team right we're all homers when it comes to the greek and persian wars unless of course you're more like the people who were portrayed as the persians back then remember this is not just an ethnic thing this is a values thing and in the narrative sometimes called the grand narrative by some greece is fighting for things like liberty and freedom and democracy and artistic i mean everything that the evil empire isn't the evil empire will snuff it all out and make slaves of everyone so who are you going to side with right the story of thermopylae is one of those that is absolutely dramatic beyond anything you get in earlier history and it's because you have a master storyteller imparting the story to you when i started in news reporting an editor said to me your job is to relate the facts of the story the true information and do so in the most compelling way you can if you imagine the battle of thermopylae as written by say the scribes of babylonia it might sound like this In the fourteenth year, the king of lands, by the will of Marduk, overcame the Spartan army at a place called the Hot Gates.

297 of the enemy were counted.

The Spartan king went to his destiny.

I'm not sure, but I don't think.

but I think they'd crush the ancient Greeks of Athens and Sparta.

And so maybe if the past of Thermopylae and the Greco-Persian Wars really was a war for Western civilization, we should be thankful that there were people like the Medes to take down the people who I think would have been the odds-on favorite in any Vegas betting pool.

to take down the ancient greeks in 480 bce they weren't around in 480 bce in part because of these people the medes who in the 700s when this story really heats up and gets strange were a people on the periphery of the known universe at the time To the Assyrians, the Medes are sort of the eastern edge of the known galaxy.

So everything I'm going to talk about now all comes from primarily four historians.

And the first three, Herodotus, he wrote about the history of the Persian Wars.

Thucydides, he... wrote about the wars between Athens and Sparta.

Xenophon, same situation.

I'd been thinking about it a lot.

I'd been looking at other things about triremes, you know, the Greco-Persian Wars and even into Roman history.

And, you know, I was just looking for different games.

One of the things I like about historical games, war games, also two sides of the same coin, is that I treat them almost like books.

So just last week, against the iconic monumental backdrop of the Acropolis in Athens, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech framing the current global inflection point not in terms of geopolitics or realpolitik, or even defense of democracy, freedom, or the rules-based order, but as an existential struggle to save the Western civilization.

Harkening to the Greco-Persian Wars, Rubio urged Europe to awaken from its long slumber, embrace the unapologetic pursuit of national power, and join Washington in a grand defense of Western identity.

To the casual observer or those enchanted by the populist Trumpian post-liberal right, this rhetoric sounds quite revolutionary.

It presents itself as a decisive break from the liberal internationalist paradigm and discredited globalism of our past decades.