um oh my God it is so so weird talk to yourself to a camera in the dark for an hour what is teaching in the 21st century [Music] [Music] this week we are going over and very important very centralized terms of power Empire in the region of what is modern-day Iran this week we are going over in this lecture the Persians and their neighbors very decentralized but no less culturally significant the Greeks to understand this history we have to first however talk about the beginning of history as a profession we need to start our story with someone who for a long time was called the father of modern history a Greek man living under Persian control and halocarnassus named Herodotus and his major text is the histories or if you prefer sound fancy the Historia the Astoria begins these are the researches of Herodotus of halacharnassus which he publishes in the hope of thereby preserving from Decay the remembrance of what men have done and of preventing The Great and Wonderful actions of the Greeks and The Barbarians from losing their due Mead of glory and with all to put on record what were their grounds of feuds according to the Persians best informed in history the Phoenicians began the quarrel this people who had formally dwelt on the shores of the urethraian sea have having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in Parts which they now inhabit began at once they say to Adventure on Long voyages freighting their vessels with the Wares of Egypt and Assyria Herodotus continues they landed at many places on the coast and among the rest at Argos which was then preeminent above all the states included now under the common name of helles that's going to be Greece here they exposed their merchandise and traded with the natives for five or six days at the end of which time when almost everything was sold there came down to the beach a number of women and among them the daughter of the king who was they say agreeing in this with the Greeks IO the child of inaucus the women were standing by the stern of the ship intent upon their purchases when the Phoenicians with a general shout rushed upon them the greater part made their escape but some were seized and carried off IO herself was among the captives the Phoenicians put the women on board their vessels and set sail for Egypt thus did IO pass into Egypt according to the Persian story which differs widely from The Phoenician and thus commenced according to their authors the series of outrages essentially what follows in these series of outrages leading to the Peloponnesian Wars is a bunch of Mediterranean people be they Greek be they Persian be they Phoenician running around the Mediterranean abducting women and taking them home until Alexander of Priam steals a woman from a Greek territory by the name of Helen this really angers the Greeks who sinned in an army and Herodotus tells us the following hitherto the injuries on either side had been mere acts of common violence but in what followed the Persians considered that the Greeks were greatly to blame since before any attack had been made on Europe they LED an army into Asia now as for the carrying off of women it is the deed they say of a rogue but to make a stir about such as are carried off argues a man a fool men of since care nothing for such women since it is plain that without their own consent they would never be forced away um the asiatics when the Greeks ran off with their women never troubled themselves about the matter but the Greeks for the sake of a single last daymonian girl collected a vast Armament invaded Asia and destroyed the kingdom of priyam henceforth they ever looked upon the Greeks as their open enemies for Asia with all the various tribes of Barbarians that inhabit it is regarded by the Persians as their own but Europe and the Greek race they look on as distinct and separate such as the account which the Persians give of these matters they trace to the attack upon Troy their ancient enmity toward the Greeks the Phoenicians however as regards IO vary from the Persian statements they deny they used any violence to remove her into Egypt she herself they say having formed an intimacy with the captain while his vessel lay at Argos and perceiving herself to be with child of her own free will accompanied the Phoenicians on their leaving the shore to escape the shame of detection and reproach from her parents whether this latter account be true or whether the matter happened otherwise I shall not discuss further I shall proceed at once to point out the person who first within my own knowledge inflicted injury on the Greeks after which I shall go forward with my history describing equally the greater and the Lesser cities for the cities which were formerly great have most of them become insignificant and such as are at present powerful we're weak in the olden time I shall therefore discourse equally of both convinced that human happiness never continues long in one stay Herodotus in understanding this history is incredibly important he's not just important for understanding relations between the Persians and the Greeks he's important for understanding a whole host of historical issues within the Persian Empire it is possible but not definite that he traveled to Egypt during his lifetime whether it's definite or not he is our first source of how mummification is actually done in the human historical record of course not the first source of mummification at all there is however something we might pause with Herodotus here just to say very quickly and that is that for a long time within the Western tradition Herodotus has been considered the father of history as a profession history is something one does history uh you know as a as a mode of writing and I think in this corner of the world that might be a fair claim Herodotus does a lot of things although he calls the Persians barbarians he's also very intent on demonstrating their military glories he's very intent on describing the greatness and Grandeur of their cities their works as much as anyone else so in that in that example there he's a very fair writer he also appreciates change over time cities Great cities come great cities go they rise they fall you'll notice that in the excerpts we read here which are just the first few pages of his Historia we open with no reference to Gods we open with no reference to the supernatural this is all uh you know sort of basic human world political stuff all that's great but I would say just if we want to think of him as the father of History writing as a profession at all that claimed to me at least he seems a little dubious and a little focused on the west I mean Herodotus is born in 484 BCE where he produces this Historia the significance of which I do not deny of course my God for understanding this time and place but you know Confucius for example is born 5 51 BCE and did he or did he not have a heavy hand in editing the spring in Autumn annals a history of the state of Lou where he is from so history writing I predates Herodotus despite the fact that there are certain elements of what he's doing that looks similar to the way a history might be written now of course we don't go around calling anybody barbarians anymore but there you have it okay so with that here is the man himself Herodotus roughly 485 484 2 425 BCE where is he from he's from what is now Southwest turkey in a city as you saw on the slide from its own text called halicarnassus now Bodrum uh this place is a large Greek speaking Community where he's from and he would have been despite living in a Greek speaking Community a subject of the Persian Empire ruled by a dynasty called the AKA minutes this Aquaman Dynasty would have ruled over a region that's incredibly diverse spans over parts of Eurasia the Eastern Mediterranean and parts has since we're mentioning Egypt of course parts of Africa and again that is that diversity is something that is so key to how Empires work and we let this theme fall a bit in this series of lectures but we need to bring it back for now an Empire is different than a modern day nation state to live in a nation-state one can reasonably expect that everyone basically follows the same core set of laws everyone basically speaks the same language everyone more or less has a similar culture this is you know less true in our modern world than it was in you know the beginning of the previous century but it still holds Empires don't work like this Empires are all about accumulation of surplus production through tax and as long as that accumulation is flowing and that accumulation is stable there's an enormous amount of diversity that is allowed now let's not be romantic nobody wants to go back and live during the Persian Empire or any other one it was hot there wasn't the internet it sucked but local places could have their own laws local people could generally speak their own local languages without having to you know carefully study and be fluent in the language of uh their government at the center of the Empire thus Halal carnassus is a Greek Place thoroughly culturally linguistically all of it and yet part of the Persian Empire as long as the tax flows and as long as that system is stable and we'll talk about that system shortly as long as there's homogeneity there there can be an enormous amount of heterogeneity going on within the territories of the emperor below it in any case her back to Herodotus he writes this Historia the histories which again is a history of his Persian rulers and many of their subjects this again is how we know things about Egypt for example Historia itself or history means inquiry or investigation and although Herodotus as you've already seen calls the Persians barbarians he does as I mentioned go through great pains to kind of treat their what he calls great and marvelous Deeds with as steady and an even of a hand as you're going to get in this time period if we can stick with the Astoria just a little longer this is a text that presents the history folklore geography the plants and the customs of people throughout what would have been herodotus's known World during his lifetime he visited Greece he may have visited Egypt he went through the Crimean Peninsula he went through Sicily Babylon and possibly North Africa he finishes his book this Historia in 431 BCE before dying in the town of Turi in Italy and indefinitely makes it to Italy much of the histories is devoted to explaining the power of again the Persians who ruled under as I've said the aquamanid dynasty from North Africa to the Indus River Valley so from North Africa Egypt Etc all the way over into what becomes Pakistan it is a massive Empire they ruled from the Arabian Sea to Samara kand in Central Asia they would have had at their height a total population not insignificant of 30 to 35 million people the numbers are getting big the Greeks are notable in this history and alongside this Empire because they are one of the few groups who are able to fight the Persians off in Athens instead of living under Persian Imperial control the Greeks develop a new political system called democracy this democracy however let's not get too romantic about it either we don't want to go back and live in an Empire or at least I don't and you know we probably unless you are a land owning Upper Crust Greek man you don't want to go back and live in Greek democracy either we're talking about say in Athens uh a political unit a city-state of about 300 000 people and to whom do they extend these Rites of democracy and decision-making well they don't extend them to slaves and they do not extend them to women and in fact only about 30 000 men out of this 300 000 total population would have taken a direct hand in political decision making now on the other side of this we have the aqua minutes and they're very flexible system of government which allowed them to rule many different groups of people for almost 200 years until they're finally defeated by the Macedonian King Alexander the Great Alexander's Empire however once he takes hold really he struggles to adopt and live in their system his answer to how to switch from conqueror to ruler is to Simply adopt the augmented framework he does so to some success but as soon as he is dead that project falls apart we have our main powers our main sort of geographic spaces for the lecture for this time period let's start talking about their early days and where they come from and let's start with the aqua minutes to understand where the aqua minutes come from we have to go back to those indo-europeans a folk we haven't talked about since we were talking about ancient India and the rise of Buddhism around about 1 000 BCE these indo-europeans arrive as Nomads as they did elsewhere in Iran and what they find when they get to Iran is a place where water flows from streams in tall mountains down into high plateaus ending eventually in Salt Lakes or deserts farming in this region is only possible through digging irrigation channels the first people to do this lived in a place called persis so the first Nomads to come in and develop irrigation and build a settled Agricultural Society live in persis in what is now Southwestern Iran and from persis of course my God we get the name Persia beginning sometime around 550 BCE the aquamanans created the world's largest Empire to date well to date in the narrative we are doing so so far in this world history the first one in their time it contained the world's most advanced cities and most Barren regions AKA deserts a key to the enormous territory was the use of what are called sat traps now the use of this satrap system started with the third ruler of the Persian Empire Darius after the Persians conquered a new area they would appoint local Governors AKA satraps who oversaw tax collection there there is the answer so the way the Persians rule is they go around conquering territory and leaving in place as often as they can local Elites do you want to die local Elite who has been defeated by our army recently or do you want to continue living in a place of relative power you're no longer absolute ruler but you are welcome to be governor for us if you continue generally keeping the piece generally overseeing how you had been overseeing but collecting taxes for us giving us that Surplus that keeps an Empire running most people take the satrap option I'll stay alive and collect your taxes thanks before we get too far into the Persian Empire and how it operated as a sort of structural level let's pause and go over the sort of belief systems of these early Iranian peoples the best source for understanding these early peoples of Persia is very much like the best source for understanding early Mesopotamia early Egypt early Hebrew culture and so on and so forth is of course a religious text and this time we get the avesta this is a text that is formed as an oral tradition sometime around 1000 BCE and is written down codified quite a many centuries later in 600 CE the avesta here means the injunction of zarathustra and zarathustra I'm going to mess that word up every time is our key Prophet this is the core text of a religion called Zoroastrianism the oldest religion on Earth still being practiced our prophet zarathustra would have lived in what is now modern-day Afghanistan he is our main prophet and he tells us the story of a supreme deity named ahura Mazda the Lord of Truth this ahora Mazda in the beginning of all things gave birth to two Cosmic deities a good spirit and an evil spirit and these Spirits the good and the evil Do not sit well together instead they are in a constant struggle throughout history good always getting the edge here evil always getting the edge there so what this does is this bakes into Zoroastrianism a core dualism there will always be good there will always be evil so long as history the human world is still unfolding but the human world history won't unfold forever a judgment day is coming we will all one day stand before ahora Mazda and then we will have to account for how we have behaved in our lives because we will be judged we need to prepare people get to decide according to zoroastrian beliefs whether they stand on the side of good or the side of evil and they demonstrate that decision through their actions doing evil allows the sort of evil spirit side of this struggle more victories and allows them to not to be too simple about it but they score more points when you're evil good scores more points when you are good so good actions have a direct impact your good actions in your life have a direct impact in your final outcome in Judgment Day and the final decision in this world did good win or did Evil win most ritual practices within this belief system surrounded the maintenance of altars of fire watched over by a hereditary male priest class called Magi so when I say hereditary I mean if you are a male Magi your son becomes a magi and so on so this is a role that people pass down through their families rituals involved reciting two core prayers stressing the importance of always speaking the truth and always searching for the truth something over which you as an individual in your lifetime have power but something that also has ultimately Cosmic results so this is a very interesting belief system as you know we've seen a bit with Buddhism the individual gets power over their final Destiny we a little not so much in Confucianism or taoism do you have any direct control but once we get to Zoroastrianism we get this idea return you don't necessarily need how to put it you have some say the individual matters you don't just need a ritualist to set the natural world in harmony so you can farm and have a safe pregnancy and things like that you the individual no matter who you are you have something to contribute to sort of battle between good and evil so it really personalizes spiritual beliefs burial rituals here become extremely unique in this sort of early Persia as Austrian tradition so austrians believe that dead bodies polluted the ground and my God can't they be forgiven for thinking that because they do you don't want to just be throwing all your dead bodies into or next to a river for example so zoroastrians is part of their burial practice left corpses out for Scavenging Birds to pick apart once your body had been cleaned of all the meat your bones had been dried in the sun then those bones themselves would be cleaned and would be buried and you would be able to rest until the day when we all of course meet a horror Mazda and are called to account back to the political and Military stuff about 612 BCE an Iranian tribe called the medies I'm guessing again m-e-d-e-s defeated the Assyrians the people we haven't talked about since we were talking about the Hebrew peoples after this defeat or after this Victory rather they begin expanding Beyond Iran into Western Asia by 550 BCE a leader by the name of Cyrus who is from our original location persis defeats then the medies and founds in their pre-existing territory the aquamanid dynasty so Cyrus is the founder of this all-important first Persian Dynasty as Cyrus's Army spread it grew from a self-supported force paid with The Spoils of War so the more you defeat the more you conquer the more you get paid that's the sort of incentive structure to full-time professional soldiers I will pay you a wage based off of the revenue I have through you guessed it tax collection the extraction of agricultural Surplus in a sustained and stable fashion this is the only way one can have professional soldiers if you were conquering and you're on the up those soldiers are amateurs they are winning Through The Spoils of War they're basically on a commission system but not once the Aquaman Dynasty is founded let's return quickly to our earlier assertion in previous lectures that pre-modern states are all essentially protection rackets you pay me I will protect you from outside Invaders I will offer a police system I will offer you infrastructure irrigation roads protected markets that kind of thing if you don't pay me we're coming for you so this this is how everything is sort of working this of course also includes as we see everywhere religious protections one must keep the gods happy in nature in harmony so rulers always have a ceremonial a supernatural element to their protection racket they are running and that's not to be cynical that's not to say that people didn't believe in these Supernatural things but it is a hundred percent part of the protection racket nonetheless when the Persians set up their protection racket their state they begin by building an enormous Road system some of these roads were dirt some near cities would have been paved government couriers used these roads regularly and here communication becomes incredibly quick and Incredibly important couriers along the Persian Road systems could travel as far as 90 miles per day allowing for what was at the time some of the most rapid communication across great distances available on Earth and what would they have been communicating they would have been communicating between various branches various segments portions of the military roads are a double-edged sword for the subjects of an Empire they allow you the subject to get your grain to the place where you pay your tax that's good for you so you don't get punished they allow you on the way to sell Surplus grain make a profit for yourself they allow for all kinds of transport but they also allow for the state to communicate with its military forces quite quickly and if there is a portion of the Empire that's getting a little bit out of pocket they allow the military to get there very very quickly so roads are double-edged sword our ruler Cyrus his Empire continues to expand north and west into Anatolia in modern day turkey and a wealthy Regent called Lydia about 600 BCE so this is before Cyrus the first metal coins in world history were actually produced in Lydia which flash flashing forward to our period where the occupants exist Cyrus Now controls and Cyrus moved through Syria Palestine and Babylon he left local cultures intact I'm not interested in changing your religion I'm not interested in making you speak one language or another I'm not interested in changing very much but some some about your laws what I want is your tax so Cyrus goes along and he's making offerings to local Gods I don't care what God it is it's your God that's good enough here's an offering he's allowing people to worship how they wished he just wants that tax he's just setting up a system for us extracting the Surplus he even and this is significant to earlier modules it is Cyrus himself who frees the Hebrews from their Babylonian captivity that moment when they had to rethink their own history and the end result was the Hebrew Bible or if you prefer the Old Testament Cyrus however was not Invincible in 530 BCE he loses a battle against the massagete in which he is killed he's not buried in zoroastrian fashion however instead he is buried it with finery in a building that looks much like a ziggurat one you can see in the slide on your screen there's possible evidence then this him not being buried that way him not being buried appropriately Cyrus not being left out for his bones to be paid that the aqua minutes as rulers as an Elite Class may not have been completely zoroastrian despite the fact that many of their subjects were I would be remiss here if I didn't point out something that I think is very interesting we have Cyrus King Cyrus not you will agree hopefully a man of the Hebrew God and therefore although Christianity is not yet exist in this history not a man of the Christian God uh Northeast nor a law right um here we're talking about the Hebrews not a man of Hebrew God and yet doing something that helps the Hebrews if I would be remiss if I didn't point out the ongoing significance of these events in world history to uh recent political events at least in the United States and our interpretation of them what I mean by this is a recent interpretation and this is no secret this is no conspiracy Benjamin Netanyahu himself publicly made this comparison and if you Google it yourself there's no end of the sort of essays you can read comparing the former president Donald Trump to King Cyrus this comparison being made by mostly Evangelical Christians of the conservative of course persuasion in the United States if we read from the book of Ezra in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible as you prefer chapter 6 verses 3 through 5 read in the first year of King Cyrus Cyrus the king issued a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem led the temple the place where sacrifices are offered be rebuilt and let its foundation be retained its height being 60 cubits and its width 60 cubits with three layers of huge stones and one layer of Timbers and let the cost be paid from the Royal treasury also let the gold and silver utensils of the house of God which Nebuchadnezzar I hope you remember him took from the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon this is the Babylonian captivity the ex the Exile this is exactly what we talked about in module two when we talked about the Hebrew peoples let all that be returned and brought to their places in the temple in Jerusalem and you shall put them in the house of God why am I stopping here well I find it incredibly interesting that as I said this story of King Cyrus who is obviously not I hope you agree a man of the Hebrew God in this story at least according to its logic is nonetheless doing the work of the Hebrews God he is freeing them from the Babylonian captivity he is as you can see in their own account in the Old Testament rebuilding their Temple at Jerusalem this man who is not of God is nonetheless doing God's work this logic was recently employed in U.S political thinking to sort of explain for people of a conservative persuasion on the Evangelical right how should we think about President Trump it's very clear that he is not a man of God he holds Bibles in strange ways for photo presentations and he has lots of divorces and and you know there's Stormy Daniels and all the old controversies of the Trump era right um there's a lot of people who support this so this is um although I might have my own criticisms this is not men as a criticism just men as a point of History finding new life in our current context there were a lot of supporters of Donald Trump who said do you know who he is he's our Cyrus you know look what he's done for example with the Supreme Court is he Evangelical Christian no is what he's doing in our favor yes so is Trump a man of God no does he do God's work according to these folk yes so I I mean I think that's super interesting to see all this come back to life so recently in in our world of political ideology I think that is an interesting aside but as the young folk or maybe middle-aged folk pretending to be young folk like to say please do not at me re recent U.S politics it's not my fault that that debate exists in those terms and it's always interesting to see characters in history get new life let's press forward in our history of the Persian Empire Cyrus is dead Long Live Cyrus who rules and instead his son cambisi's rules until 522 BCE once Cam bisces dies a priest in his court galmata covers up for a very brief period his death and tries to rule in his place this works for less than a year because that same year 522 BCE a gentleman named Darius the first leads a group of rebels six conspirators who succeed in killing galmata and according at least to Herodotus with whom we opened our lectures the conspirators begin a debate should our new system of government now that we are in power be a democracy an oligarchy rule by a few or a monarchy rule by one and it is Darius who wins the debate for the side of monarchy Darius makes the case that democracies oligarchies are inefficient ways of governing because who decides when no one can decide who decides when an intractable problem comes up who's the person at the helm there must be a monarch and while they cannot agree who the Monarch should be they agree that there should be a monarch they leave who should be the Monarch according to Herodotus to chance they say let's all go to bed the person whose horse Nays first at Sunrise that person will be selected to be the Monarch so Darius hires a hand or you know uses one of his already hired hands to make sure that it is in fact his horse that makes the first noise at sunup and therefore just politely following the agreements these people who already killed a man to take power just hand power over to Darius the first and make him King of Kings the title he takes some of that story probably doesn't hold up herodotus's job as an early historian was to tell stories not for academic import but as entertainment to Broad audiences who paid to see them so you know you get a little gossipy inflation to these kind of things nonetheless Darius the first major proponent of monarchy he becomes king now in power 522 BCE Darius commemorates his Ascension to the throne with an inscription at a place called the history and his inscription read there was not a man neither a Persian nor a midi nor anyone of our family who could have taken the Kingdom from galmata the magian the people feared him greatly then I prayed to hey guess who that is a horror Mazda the god of the zoroastrians Ohara Mazda bore me Aid that I with a few men slew gelmata Uhura Mazda bestowed the kingdom upon me isn't that a delight we've got a king coming in establishing his rule over a pre-existing system and guess what it turns out that the God of this system the god of the people remember Cyrus it's it's unclear house rosterini was but but our friend here Darius the first immediately it is through ahura Mazda that he takes power when Cyrus takes power the Empire over which he rules is genuinely enormous how does he rule it he keeps in place some of what Cyrus was doing and in some parts he makes reform it's a flexible administrative system and tax system that exists alongside a fairly uniform law code for everyone so how it's administered in the tax system that has some wiggle but there are elements of the law code that now everyone must answer to judges in this system are appointed for life and they were seen not just as legal figures or political figures but bear in mind the zoroastrian tradition here these judges deciding who was right or who was wrong in a certain case are doing the work of ahura Mazda on Earth determining the ultimate balance between Good and Evil now funnily enough Herodotus who has a lot to say about this tax system is not a big fan so again everything you'll get so tired of hearing me say it everything is about extracting Surplus in a stable sustainable way everything is about tax tax is the name of the game and of that tax Herodotus tells us in his Historia during the reign of Cyrus in cambyces there was no fixed tribute at all the revenue coming from gifts only that is uh probably not true and because of his imposition of regular taxes and other similar measures the Persians called Darius the huckster Canby sees a master and Cyrus a father the first being out for profit wherever he could get it to the second harsh and arrogant and the third merciful and ever working for their well-being that's a little too much uh Herodotus is overdoing it a bit here again this so these histories always have to be corrected with other sources Cyrus of course had a regular tax system he had his satraps um canvases also had a regular tax system but Darius does reform this system he makes it more he's extracting more resource although what that resource is exactly is flexible we can talk about what darius's saturapes what his tax system was actually like so he makes his sat traps just like Cyrus just like him bisces would have used recruiting locally locally important people local officials and things like that and bringing them into his system they would have submitted a fixed amount of Revenue each year we have to have our Surplus we have to have our tax most of this would not have been by this point grain most of this would have instead been silver but not all the time there are cases for example in Egypt the provinces in Egypt they paid their tax in a hundred and twenty thousand bushels of grain annually the Ethiopians on the other hand would have paid their annual tax and two courts of unrefined gold and 200 logs of Ebony and 20 elephant tusks so Ivory not everyone is paying in the same denomination Darius great and important though he is in stabilizing the Persian Empire is also not Immortal Darius the first dies in 486 vce and is succeeded by Xerxes in 465 BCE Xerxes younger son kills his father and older brother to take power over the throne power of the administrative structures allowed the Persians to keep power until 331 BCE and that is a major statement of the strength of the administrative structures the bureaucracy of the Persian Empire you can have people at the top just killing each other over and over again but as long as the government itself operates on stable principles it can survive that kind of turmoil and indeed the Persian Empire does for another Century after Xerxes assassination let's switch gears and talk about the Greeks so the Greek Peninsula was like Iran populated by indo-europeans this time indo-europeans are making it into the region about 2000 BCE both the Greeks and the Phoenicians who were both mentioned it by Herodotus earlier were active merchants in the Mediterranean area neither one of them however ever developed a centralized government to rule over these dispersed and diverse populations neither the Greeks nor the Phoenicians then ever developed an Empire instead what they had was a network of culturally connected but politically independent city-states this is a bit strange to think about in history if you've never thought about the history of Greece it means there's never one political entity never one for lack of a better word nation that you could point at in the ancient world and say there that is Greece people were culturally Hellenistic remember Greece is Hellas but there would have been citizens of whatever relevant city-state by 500 BCE Athens becomes the largest city-state in this world and this is a world of many city-states it's the largest out of over a hundred democracy famously associated with Greek Traditions is a product of Athens and Athens alone and as I mentioned earlier it is to the benefit of free men in Athens and free men in Athens alone so we're talking about a democracy that really describes the ability of about 10 percent of the Athenian population to take part in political decision making and in a correction to the sort of historical imagination Damage Done to some of you by hack comic author Batman comics aside that he did Frank Miller uh and uh even worse director Zack Snyder um if it weren't for whom I'd still be able to watch Batman movies I had to you know I've never seen bvs that's a dead letter to me and I I never will and now I can never watch another Batman movie again so bad is Zack Snyder's directorial Vision nonetheless what I'm coming to is when you think about this period the phrase this is Sparta and Sparta as sort of the great military power in ancient Greece comes to mind but that's not true Athens was not just the cultural hegemon of ancient Greece it was also indisputably the military power are indo-europeans who are first arriving in Greece would have found Rocky coasts that did not sustain the herds of mostly horses that they were using to survive nor are there any major rivers with any regular flooding like in Egypt they could have sustained agriculture so here as in Persia the name of the game is irrigated farming this is the key to civilizational development what are they growing they're growing barley in the lowlands they're growing olive trees in the Foothills and their growing grapes on the hillsides these are the major crops there is in this world plentiful evidence of interconnected trade as already suggested by Herodotus in his Historia between 201500 BCE on Crete there existed lavish palaces roads bronze work and an undeciphered writing system called linear a the people living in these lavish palaces walk talking on these roads using this bronze work and riding in linear a have been named by archaeologists Minoans after King Minos but we really don't know who they were because we can't read what they wrote minoan civilization ended in about 1500 BCE probably because they were conquered by the subsequent group to live in the region the Mycenaeans and the Mycenaeans use a script called Linear B which we do know quite a lot about because deciphered in 1952 when it was found out that it was simply a dialect of Greek this is also the period these very early days when we get from Homer both The Iliad and the Odyssey and the textbook that is used in reference to this class makes the very intriguing observation or assertion that a homer the author of these great two texts might himself not have been a person but perhaps at least According to some the name of an oral tradition which I think is very interesting in either case The Iliad and the Odyssey describe the Trojan Wars from centuries before The Iliad and the Odyssey would have been composed and it's unsure if these really happened or Not The Iliad in The Odyssey are the main source they're scant other evidence in either Case by 1200 BCE the Mycenaeans themselves fall apart and disappear out of the record and we know this because with them also disappears their language Linear B we got the Greeks but we also have the Phoenicians so while these Greek civilizations the Minoans the Mycenaeans as these are rising and falling the Phoenicians begin their own Societies in the Western Mediterranean their name the Phoenicians comes from the Greek for red men probably related to a Dye that they produced from snail glands and would have used a lot in the goods that they made and that they traded and trade is the name of the game if you're Phoenician after about 900 BCE the Phoenicians moved out of their Homeland somewhere in Lebanon and brought with them an alphabet of about 22 consonants and this is not just any alphabet The Phoenician alphabet listen friends is the first alphabet we've had weird writing systems some pictorial some phonetic it's the Phoenicians who give us our first alphabet proper by 814 BCE the Phoenicians had an outpost at a place called Carthage in modern day Tunisia this is going to be extremely important this Phoenician Outpost when we get to Rome please keep it in your mind they continue to Long Northern Africa into southern Spain slowly growing their own little civilization these masters of sailing on the Mediterranean new colonies were founded by sending men and women to new places along the Mediterranean to found little towns sometimes they would have been sent in groups as large as thirty thousand at one time there is also a claim that the Phoenicians might have circumnavigated Africa again the Phoenicians are excellent at Sea travel but this claim to circumnavigate Africa has never been fully demonstrated they definitely however transmitted Naval knowledge in their alphabet to the Greeks they would control western and southern Mediterranean until they're defeated by Rome in 202 BCE it's an interesting pattern of movement these sometimes thirty thousand men and women who were moving these Phoenician men and women one little city at a time they're not sailing around in raiding but they're moving by finding a new place finding suitable land and you stay there for a season you plant your crops you wait you harvest your crops and then you use the benefit of that Harvest to fund yet a further expedition of some of the people among you to yet another town so you establish a town establish farming with that farming send some people further establish Town establish farming with that farming since some people further and so on and that's how they move around North Africa and into Spain let's talk a bit more about the establishment of these Greek city-states there's no historical evidence no historical materials from ancient Greece between the fall of the Mycenaeans and their Linear B and 1200 BCE to 900 BCE we have no idea really clearly what happened over the course of these 300 years there's a new era however that begins about 800 BCE where various regions start to form these aforementioned city-states we get more intensive farming leading to better agricultural production and you should know by now what that means you get population explosion you get diversity and clear divisions of labor and things like that in this Society most people would have farmed a tiny minority of these people lived inside cities with markets for these Goods that were farmed and temples to various Gods you know the gods we're working up to each city-state was small would have had between five and ten thousand people of course Athens becomes massive but these city-states were nonetheless self-sufficient they had their own laws they had their own courts and each of them had their own distinct and independent military each would have had a guardian deity with a temple inside the city walls they would have had a Pantheon of gods headed by Zeus and Hera and these would have been generally shared but the guardian deities you get your own Athena for example is and I hope it you could have guessed this the guardian deity of Athens a goddess of wisdom war and weaving the Greeks communicated with the gods through animal sacrifices and oracles the Oracle at Delphi is probably the most famous among these people came to the Oracle Adelphi among others to ask priests what people ask priests everywhere in the world what's going to happen in the future when should I plant will I get die if I get pregnant who when will I die if I can't get pregnant these kinds of things people traveled from Temple to Temple praying for medical help or participating in the Olympic Games which were held every four years beginning in 776 BCE at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in all the Greeks established over 250 city-states in the Mediterranean and Black Sea areas connected many times to Mother city-states through trade so I said earlier all city-states are completely independent that's not totally true major city-states like Athens were able to establish little Colonial Endeavors elsewhere in that Colonial Endeavor would remain connected to Athens all city-states no matter who they answer to or connected through trade but for the most part we're still in a politically decentralized world most of these city-states are nonetheless politically independent this period this period while the Greeks are moving out into the world after 800 BCE we get the Greeks adopting that Phoenician alphabet and they make a major addition to that Phoenician alphabet vowels yes that's right Friends The Phoenician alphabet only consonants our first full inscription in Greek with this edition of vowels comes to us in 730 BCE after about 200 years of this ancient Greek development and about 600 BCE Greek city-states although still independent each find themselves in roughly a similar situation they are all of them ruled in their own independence by a few wealthy landowners reforms eventually however begin especially for example with Sparta which starts really parsing its citizens and settling out who can do what and who cannot do what Sparta Begins by granting extensive rights to its citizens but who its citizens are is fairly Limited Spartan citizens are soldiers if you want to be a Spartan citizen you have to be descended from the original group of Spartans and you had to be a full-time Soldier you're not allowed to engage in farming as a profession you're not allowed to engage in trade as a profession that's segment one now beneath these Spartans you have what the Spartans called dwellers around these are people that lived within Spartan territory but were conquered by the Spartans not originally born into them and dwellers around could own land and they could act as craftspeople as Traders but they did not have that all-important voting capacity that Spartans citizen soldiers had now below the peoples around excuse me the Dwellers around you had the helits the hellettes are going to be our lowest ranking folk these are full-time slaves who formed land for our citizens and that should although not it's not a great virus standards it does make some sense Spartans cannot Farm they are soldiers who forms their land who makes their food hellots the slave class Estates were mostly ran by women because Spartan men often were away at War so women in Spartan society are incredibly important in the sort of Economic and managerial realm because they are the ones overseeing these large Plantation scale Farms while their husbands are off in the military Spartan citizens joined this military very young and they could expect a quite austere upbringing you were a citizen only after you completed your military training and citizens had limited veto power over policies enacted by Council Elders who ruled alongside two kings in what is an oligarchical system so we have our two kings we have accounts of Elders and then we have our soldier citizens who have a sort of limited veto power over the decisions of that Council of Elders it took another Century for Athens to develop democracy its most famous reformer Solon was a civilian head of Athens in 594 BCE and Solon abolished an abhorrent tax in Athens which was one-sixth of all crops had to go to the state and also launched debt cancellation programs allowing debtors to then purchase land so you get out of your debt you're allowed to purchase land you get some tax relief you can establish yourself as a sort of self-sustaining farmer and that hope was upon that Foundation one could build a more sustainable and just economy staying in Athens by 508 BCE a group of Aristocrats established direct democracy all citizens above the age of 20 who were men could join the law making assembly and this has some pros and this has some cons what were the sort of political beliefs of these early proponents of direct democracy limited though it was in Athens well they were Fierce supporters of personal and political Liberty you should be able to do what you want with your body and your free time in your life you should be able to say what you want politically so that means they also believed of course in freedom of speech and for men above the age of 20 political equality one person one vote that sort of idea these ideas lasted until Athenian democracy itself collapsed in 322 BCE the best position for women in this Society in Athens was to be married to a citizen married to one of these men above the age of 20. children in this Society were only seen as legitimate if they were born within the context of marriage but Athenian men had many many many sexual partners both men and women they would sleep with sex workers they would have concubines that they had to support out of their own funds and of course they could force themselves on enslaved men and women that they owned but the children of any of these unions the children had with a sex worker a concubine or a slave these were not legitimate citizens these people were not open to becoming citizens you had to be married for that child to be legitimate to be a citizen and thus we sort of understand how well okay men over the age of 20 can join you know the law making assembly and yet only 10 of Athens population was part of it it's because there's a lot of illegitimate kids well partly because there's a lot of illegitimate kids running around Athens no you say you are incredulous friend listen Athens population the point we're speaking now was three hundred thousand people total its slave population was one hundred and twenty thousand people that's 40 percent of the Athenian population were enslaved people so yes I'm being very serious when I'm explaining how it is that only 10 of the population were those men over the age of 20 who were citizens who could engage in direct democracy slaves were of different types some were highly skilled some were low skilled the lower skilled ones work in the fields higher skilled ones work inside in different kinds of industry but no matter what it is you have no political rights so while there's lots of great ideas and things that we can favorably reflect on in Athenian and Greek history generally there's some massive qualifications to how how much we want to sing the Praises of Athenian direct democracy we come then to the greco-persian wars a main subject in herodotuses the Historia and we need to think how is it as already mentioned that the Greeks are able to defeat this far stronger Empire the Persians the first one is a bit feel goodie but I think is true nonetheless the Athenian Army was good because they were citizen soldiers they were on the defensive they are the ones pushing back against the sort of you know pre-modern imperialism they're the ones defending against the Conqueror so they've got more to fight for we can start from that that level there who were these soldiers they were called hoplites and they could defeat the Persians because they didn't just have that extra incentive of if we don't win You Will Rule us they also had better Shields better armor better battle formations in almost every capacity they were outperforming the Persians they operated in what are called phalanxes and many of you may have seen this before but if you haven't it's a sort of a front line of these Hop light soldiers that go back eight men and you can almost imagine if you've ever seen a shark's jaw the way the teeth work what happens is you the attacker you go to try to fight this Phalanx of men and what you find is as you knock one down as you kill one person there's another Soldier ready to move in much as a shark loses its teeth there's another tooth immediately ready to pop up that's how this is working so they find this an incredibly difficult formation the Persians they find it an incredibly difficult battle formation to defeat because it's just wave after wave of person and you can't gain any ground the first important victory for the Greeks is in 490 BCE at the Battle of Marathon Darius I hope you'll remember it hasn't been that long since I said his name attacked Athens for supporting Greek resistance within his territory Greek resistance within places like Halal carnassus where Herodotus is from in this battle we saw 12 000 Athenians pitted against 25 000 Persian soldiers and Athenians attacked while Persians were according to stories out gathering for food they took on the element of surprise and at least according to Herodotus this played into their Victory the numbers that Herodotus gives us are astounding he claims that on the Athenian side there were 192 losses and on the Persian side 6400 losses Xerxes eventually returns to avenge his father's defeat and when he returns he returns with a huge Army but by this point it's not just Athens which I will remind you again not Sparta is the military and cultural capital of Greece Athens however is teamed up by this point with Sparta they're United in their struggle against Persia for control of a mountain pass north of Athens called Thermopylae Greeks eventually lost and Athens was sacked by these Persian forces the tide turned however after Athenian Naval commanders scored a major victory at a place called Salamis Herodotus in his history emphasized the role of Artemisia a woman ruler from halicarnassus now she became Queen after her husband's death of this little greek area where Herodotus is from that is nonetheless part of the Persian Empire and because she's a Greek Queen Under Persian control she's actually fighting not for the Greeks but for the Persians out of a total force of 1207 of what are called try me's a three-story boat powered by rowers on each level Artemisia commanded five that's not insubstantial and and Herodotus is very clear about her sort of um military prowess despite eventually in these wars winding up on the losing side Greek Victory only set however the Western border of the Persian Empire it's important although the greco-persian wars Loom large in ancient Western history it's important to remember that Greece is just one small blip on a border for Persia their empire is huge and they have other concerns that means points to the Greeks no Persian ruler is ever able to defeat them and Rule what we think of now as Greece but it points to the Persians because they didn't lose anything from their empire either they just established a firm border with a different Force Greek Victory to defend themselves against the Persians marks about a century of intense cultural growth this Century after the greco-persian wars is the century in which we get lots of genres of drama we get tragedy we get comedy after about 472 BCE this is when the famous Greek author escalus writes his play the Persians this is the earliest surviving Greek tragedy escalus who was himself a veteran has an interesting strategy in his writing style he exaggerates Persian losses and the horrors of of Persian defeat the death and the violence and so forth to make the audience sympathize with the Persians themselves to reflect on the shared Humanity of Persians and Greeks it's a really interesting and nuanced look at at war that we're getting coming out of this Century after the greco-persian wars by the 5th Century BCE there were over a hundred of these tragedies written by escalis Sophocles and euripides among others most of them about coming to terms with the concept of Fate coming to terms with fate in one's own life in 478 BCE just a few years before we get the emergence of an attempt from Athens to politically unify parts of Greece it does not work the Athenians formed what they called the Delian League a group of city-states made to drive out the Persians from Greek territory after there was no threat some League members said well okay mission accomplished we're done here and they withdrew from the league Athens wanted to keep this league together and so it started invading those city-states that tried to withdraw by 454 BCE Athens had moved the treasury of the Delian League to Athens itself establishing full control over other city-states who were remained by force of violence or you know just influence from Athens part of the leak in 449 BCE Pericles who was a general in Athens most popular leader used the treasury to finance a building campaign in the city he used the monies of the Delian League to build the Parthenon a temple to Athena and Memorial to those who had died in those Persian Wars Sparta then emerges and Rises and challenges Athens desire to rule all of Greece from 431 to 404 we get what are called the Peloponnesian Wars Sparta got Persian aids to defeat Athens interesting once was enemies now Persia is happy for Sparta to throw Athens off and a man named thucydides writes a history of this war that is in a sort of new format for historical thinking in the human record because it focuses this history of the Peloponnesian Wars only on human actors sort of like Herodotus and the excerpt we read no Gods come into play there is no Supernatural element it is just a political military text so Sparta and Athens are at War over the fate of the Delian League Persia is funding Sparta but even with all of this conflict going on within the Hellenistic again that means Greek world Athens is still home to some of the most famous philosophers in the western tradition we've got Socrates teaching Plato teaching Aristotle like Confucius Socrates he has an interesting mode he writes nothing down his accounts instead come to us through his students Plato Socrates and much of his teaching stressed The Virtue or Excellence that humans could achieve by doing good in the world good actions he said came from developing wisdom Socrates was put to death by Athenian rulers for supposedly not believing in the gods and for corrupting the Youth of Athens he famously drank a poison hemlock common method of execution of the day and equally famously never apologized for anything that he had to say Plato continued the socratic tradition and the Socratic method of teaching by asking questions eventually getting students to drill down to the core assumptions in their thought Plato founded what was called the academy or the capital A which taught students many things but most importantly it taught them ethics reason was the most powerful tool in deciding between right and wrong and reason also determined that which was in your individual best interest at least according to Plato Plato's student Aristotle not a native of Athens but instead of Macedonian studied with Plato for over 20 years then returned to Macedon to tutor no less than Alexander yeah that Alexander Alexander the Great after Plato died he emphasized that being aware of starting points and moving logically from there was the source of a more reliable reason a more reliable logic it was he emphasized being able to explain yourself and all your assumptions as you begin thinking and emphasize the observance of the natural world it was Aristotle who figured out that the Earth was round something we don't not all of us agree on or indeed know today and he did this from observing the Shadows of the earth cast on the moon he's also credited with figuring out the dolphins and whales or mammals a scientific discovery that was lost for centuries I have now mentioned Macedon where Aristotle is from what and where is it Macedon is a region to the north of Greece it is nonetheless mostly Greek the people there would have spoke Greek and while they had no cities and they had little farming they managed to become powerful or at least one a ruler among them managed to become powerful under King Philip II whose rain dates are 359 to 336 BCE and Philip II reorganized his army into a professional fighting force Philip and his son Alexander built Empires by taking wealth from the people they conquered it's a pillage model and it's one that is in terms of conquering very successful so successful is this military under Philip II that when his son Alexander inherits the throne he inherits an army that is more powerful than any local Rivals Alexander's Army fought in tightly packed Phalanx formations those formations we've already discussed with 17 foot long Pikes he commanded an infantry of fifteen thousand and a Cavalry of 1 800. Philip was assassinated in 336 BCE and Alexander defeated Persia in 331 BCE by 330 BCE a satrap one of those old Tax Collectors remember those folks killed Darius III and Alexander took over the Persian Empire all in one chunk not piece by piece he just took it all at one time how is he gonna rule Alexander's been on the war path with this 15 000 infantry this one thousand eight hundred cavalry he has an effective conquering Force he does not have an effective ruling Force he does not have that thing that builds stability that ensures the Surplus will be collected he does not have that tax collecting effective reliable stable bureaucracy what is he going to do he adopts what the Persians were doing effectively Alexander Rules by leaving the satrapies in place Alexander's troops by this point had fought over 11 000 miles in what was an eight-year campaign in Egypt they fought in India but they could not expand Persian territory they inherited the borders of the Persian Empire and that's all they could get Alexander never fully figured out exactly how he should rule as a conqueror or as a Persian emperor that means that at Alexander's court there was sort of a dichotomy his military leaders would not bow to him the way Persian Emperors demanded to be bowed to he therefore made Persians behave in one way toward him as a Persian ruler and macedonians behave as they would to a Macedonian ruler we've got sort of a two-tiered system here Alexander also borrowed from Persian ruling practices by marrying a woman from a place that opposed his new Imperial rule Samora Khan so Persians had been using marriages as sort of uniting functions uniting rulers from this place that doesn't like us to our capital and Alexander takes over a similar practice but the more Alexander adopts these Persian ruling practices the more he alienates the Macedonian Elites who put him in power even Alexander who history and tradition tells us wept when there were no more worlds to conquer is not however immortal he dies in Babylon in 323 BCE the effects of his 13-year reign as Emperor were that thousands of soldiers stayed in places across Africa and Asia marrying with local people and introducing Greek culture this is traditionally understood as a process of what is called hellenization multiple times I've reminded you that helles is Greece so Hellenic culture is Greek culture hellenization is greekification if you prefer and it's a process that's thought to have unfolded during Alexander's rule in many places that were you know not yet that Greek there are I will just make you aware Scholars that argue against this as a one-way Street Alexander for example adopted more Persian culture in the way he ruled than he did impose Greek culture or Hellenistic culture on the court that he oversaw the borders of Alexander's Empire along with the tax system the way you ran the Army the administration these were all very similar to the way Persians were doing business this was not the Greeks imposing anything on the Persians it was adoption of Persian practices after Alexander's death the Empire breaks up it breaks into three major sections each Dynasty in each section continued then following Persian ruling practices not Greek Traditions or at least not strictly Greek Traditions without considerable Persian influence after Alexander's death his generals ruled the empire in three sections we have Ptolemy in Egypt and he's who's pictured in our slide and I will ask you re hellenization exactly how Greek does that bust of Ptolemy look the answer is not incredibly we have antigonus in Greece and Macedon and we have Solutions in Central and Western Asia and you hopefully have heard the name Solutions before because it's Solutions who sins magosthenes as ambassador to the maurians and so our world is becoming very close and connected Solutions Ambassador being a major historical Source on the mauryan Dynasty in ancient India Alexander founded the city of Alexandria in 332 BCE in Egypt and this became a major center of learning under Ptolemy this is a place this this North African sort of Hellenistic Persian mix-up mashup Zone becomes a place of enormous enormous scientific importance Euclid for example writes his text the elements in Alexandria and it is the first systematic explanation of the principles of geometry and it doesn't stop there in 240 BCE eratosthenes used Euclid's ideas to calculate the circumference of the earth at 24 427 miles with an error of only two percent the Greeks had known since Aristotle that the Earth was round but thanks to these scientific developments going on in North Africa in this weird hybrid place called Egypt that is North African but also Persian but also now ruled over by people from Greece and Macedonia you know a really sort of bizarre hybrid International place is also so intellectually undeniably significant it's fascinating fascinating though it may be there's lots of fun facts we can think of you know I I hope that you bore people at dinner parties reminding them that Athens not Sparta was the major military power in ancient Greece it's interesting that the Phoenicians invent the writing system that the Greeks use with only the addition of vowels and things like that but at a major world historical level the takeaway here is the same takeaway I tried to establish in unit 1 and that is how do you run an Empire this matters Empires are the main form of governance for most of the people who have lived in most of human history and the answer to that varies not every Empire is exactly the same they're all going to have that key protection racket because every state has that key protection Racket and some of them are going to lean more on religious elements of that protection Racket and some of them are going to lean more on agricultural production elements some of them more on the violent elements but they all have to do it because they all have to survive and build wealth and the way you build wealth is through tax that's how you extract the Surplus that means whether your protection racket is primarily religious military infrastructural whatever it is it has to be stable it has to be organized it has to leave enough diversity that you don't have people erupting against you all the time so at the bottom level of your Empire you need a lot of room for people to practice whatever religion was there before you speak whatever language was there before you have whatever laws were there before you but at the top levels of your Empire you need some systematization you need one language that all of your local Elites speak so they can get orders you need one tax collection system that is rational and makes sense and is regular and is ordered and is stable and is reliable and you need you cannot live without a system of bureaucrats that is Dependable at that Elite level to operate that tax system for you and Persia had it there people are killing each other left and right after Darius the first in Persia starting with Xerxes and the system is so stable it can continue the system is so stable that it survives Alexander conquering Persia and he looks around and says I don't have any better ideas than what you've already done that's the significance of these Surplus extraction schemes these tax systems built on these bureaucracies with more or less religious inflection that nonetheless despite their homogeneity allow local people to live as much of their life as they did before as is possible and that that's the whole point foreign [Music]