História da Grécia Antiga #13 com Donald Kagan, de Yale

The period in which the Greek police were left essentially to their own devices came to an end with the clash between the Persian Empire and some of the Greek city-states but which came to involve Athens at the famous Battle of Marathon in for 90 and I'd like to tell you today about the the rise of the Persian Empire and its conflict with the Greeks in concluding with the account of that battle the Persians first and Terminology the Persians were what the thanks very much but what the the Greeks called them and that was appropriate they

were very close cousins of the people who lived right next to them or among them called the Medes in fact the Medes were the first of that group of I guess we could call them Aryan people's again that's a term that has been abused throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century applying to as though it was a racial group the term is a linguistic One and they spoke a branch of the indo-european family of languages which is designated as Aryan and that's all that that really means but they're very very close in fact the Greeks really

couldn't distinguish between the Persians and the Aryans and so they call them sometimes needs and sometime between the Medes and the Persians I mean and sometimes they call the Medes and sometimes they call them Persians it really doesn't matter because although The Medes took the lead in forming a national kingdom out of a tribal society and were the first to be the dominant family on the Iranian plateau where these people finally settle down the Persians then overthrew them and establish themselves as the ruling group in that family under cyrus the great as he was called

back probably in 559 he was called cyrus the great because he was a great Conqueror first making his tribal associates the Persians the dominant force in Iran and then expanding the extent and the power of what we can now call the Persian Empire an extraordinary distance if we look at the end of the lifetime of cyrus one man's lifetime is when this extraordinary expansion much of it most of it takes place if you look at the Near East in the year 550 BC what you find is the kingdom of media the kingdom of Babylonia which

is the most powerful one in the Tigris Euphrates valley what Is now Iraq the kingdom of Lydia occupying sort of the western portion of Asia Minor excluding at first the coast which was occupied by Greeks but which the Lydians then conquer the Greeks in the 5 40 s that but that's the picture and then there is the the people of Persia the Persians themselves who are not much account but when Cyrus becomes king in 559 he is a member of the dynasty which is the a kamina dynasty and he conquers his fellow Aryans the Needs

in about 550 and very swiftly conquers Babylonia Armenia Syria Cappadocia which is another Kingdom in Central Asia Minor and has already expanded this kingdom to something pretty much unexampled up to that time now meanwhile in Lydia the dynasty that began back in the seventh century finds that the King Croesus is the monarch in at that point you will have remembered of course that Herodotus is for his book Pretty much begins its story with King Croesus and his decision to attack the Persian Empire which is now on his frontier and you all remember the story that

harada Herodotus tells so charmingly the story of how increases decides he wants to conquer the Persian Empire consults the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi to see how he's going to make out the Oracle gives a characteristically enigmatic answer but he doesn't recognize the enigma the the answer he Says what will happen if I cross the halles River that's the boundary between Lydia which had been I'm sorry between Lydia and the Persian territory the Oracle answers a great Empire will be destroyed and of course he had in mind destroying the Persian Empire instead the Persians destroyed

his empire and of course that shows you got to ask the right question and keep answering until you get an answer you understand well Croesus attacks in 547 his capital of Sardis falls into the hands of the Persians in the next year and so now the Persians are in control of the Lydian Empire and in on the frontiers of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor and the conquest of those cities takes place in the years 546 2 539 539 is a very big year for the Persians because in that year they conquer

the city of Babylon and thereby gain control of all of Mesopotamia another one of the major expansions of this vast and pie The successor to Cyrus is can be seized and in the years between 5 30 and 522 he conquers amazingly enough the Kingdom of Egypt perhaps the oldest but certainly if not almost the oldest of the kingdoms of that region fantastically wealthy and in its own right formerly a great empire now if you stop in 522 when can buy seized eyes you see that the Persian Empire extends on the west from the Aegean Sea

and the Mediterranean Sea to the west all the way to the Indus River In what is now Pakistan and from the south to really to what is now Sudan at the southern end of the Nile River and up north to include the European coast of the Hellespont in the region and the waters are at the Straits and the European coast of the GNC and he comes right up as far as the Danube River and nor is that the end of what he would like to do can buy sees launches an invasion of the territory beyond

the Danube which was not in the in the shape Of any kind of a national kingdom yet just an area filled with different kinds of tribes which the Greeks called scynthians pushing all the way back into Russia all the way back to the Caucasus Mountains and perhaps beyond these horse-riding tribal people call decipiens who didn't even really engage in agriculture but was still in the business of Ray of living off herds of animals well the expedition goes forward it ends up gaining the Straights and mastodons as I told you before or I should have told

you those names anyway the story is told that one of the generals of the Persian army is a certain Milt IDs multi DS was originally an Athenian but his family had been expelled in the time of the tie rather they had been sent to govern the gallipoli peninsula the Thracian curse' nice as the Greeks called it and so he lived up there and then when the Persians came and took that territory he Became a subject of the Great King and he became a general in the great king's army he and some others were given the

task of guarding the bridges across the Danube while the King was chasing a Scythian on the other side well he was unable to defeat the cynthians who used Scythian tactics which is to say on cavalry state away avoided a direct conflict and did damage on with missiles at a distance and ran away when they couldn't when they were about to face a Great Persian army which could defeat them so he was gone a long time and while he was gone pudding Mill tidy said he'll never come back why don't we just break down these bridges

to make sure he never gets back and then we'll be free of the Persians well it didn't work out that way and the system campaign didn't succeed but the Persian army came back and Milt IDs had to run off and escape because there was certainly a price on his head and he ended up going back to Athens where we will run into him again so that is the situation when we get to the turn of the 5th century the Persians are in control they have gained mastery of all the Greek of Asia Minor the typical

relationship between those cities and the king of Persia was the same as all of his subjects he insisted in every case that the defeated States who came under his power should give earth and water to him as a symbol of their complete subjection To him there was no kind of relationship to the Great King except of one complete subjugation the Greeks regarded that relationship as one of slavery but as a matter of fact the Persians were not harsh rulers for the most part all they required of the subject people's was that they should pay a

tribute to the king and it was obviously not one that couldn't be met obviously nobody likes to pay a tax especially to a foreign conqueror but it wasn't something that Destroyed the economy and to do military or naval service at his command and under his command as well so those if you did that they lift you along at this point of the the characteristic regime was to have a tyranny appointed by the great king of Persia in each Greek city but you should remember use that word in its original concept doesn't mean they were harsh

it doesn't mean they were particularly cruel they were the satraps the representatives of the king in that Region and they had absolute control but we don't hear about any specially harsh treatment of anybody that's the situation when we will come very shortly to the beginning of conflict between the Greeks of the mainland and the Persian Empire when the Ionian rebellion breaks out but before that happens we need to go back to Greece and see what's going on there remember in Athens the Kleist enok revolution has taken place the new hoplite democracy that I have described

To you is brand new and very insecure fearful that there are enemies within some of them friends of the the aristocratic families that have been defeated and fled some of them friends relatives of the tyrants whose loyalty to the new regime is not clear so that's one fear another fear is that the Spartans will not accept their expulsion and the expulsion of their friends but will come back again with an army to try to Conquer Athens in turn it over to the aristocrats and you're the third problem Athenian neighbors with whom the Athenians have old

quarrels may take advantage of their beleaguered situation and attack them so that has to be remembered Athens is in a very insecure spot and Herodotus tells us excuse me that in these circumstances the Athenians attempt to get help by sending a mission to the king of Persia asking for an alliance with Persia as a way of Fending off these troubles and of course the King only knows one relationship with other states he doesn't know anything about alliances that have any equality associated with them he asks the ambassadors of the Greeks sorry of Athens to give

him earth in water and then they can be friends The Ambassadors say ok we'll do that but when they come back to Athens the Athenians are outraged that they have done so they punish the embassy and there is no Relationship between Persia and the Athenians and indeed what they feared happens the Spartans invade Attica and as they are doing that they are joined by other states who have their own grievances with Attica be OSHA led by Thebes kalki switch is a city in Euboea just to the east of Attica and Corinth just down the road

on the isthmus they are all going to attack the Athenians but it turns out that the Corinthians bought at This idea and what they don't like they say is the notion of installing some kind of a tyranny in Athens they have had the experience of tyranny they'd have expelled the Tyra tyranny not so very long ago they claim and they are not about to join anybody in doing the same thing so that's one source of division that prevents this coalition from attacking the Athenians but there's also a quarrel between the two Spartan Kings Cleomenes who

has been there Before and who very much wants to take Athens and return it to his aristocratic friends and King Demaratus who for whatever reason is not willing to do that Demaratus loses the argument he is finally charges are brought against him and he flees and next we will find them Demaratus in the Persian Empire at the elbow sometimes of the king and giving him advice as to how to deal with the situation well because of these things there is no invasion the Athenians are Now free to turn against the other their neighbors who have

threatened them against the be ocean city's led by Thebes against cal keys and the Athenians defeat their opponents in cal keys on the island of Euboea the Athenians take away a chunk of land from the child Citians and plant four thousand affinion settlers on that land and they do so not as a colony in the traditional sense not as an op boy kiya but as what the greeks call a claro key Which is this these four thousand Athenians who take the land settle their firm but they remain Athenians they are still Athenian citizens they are

really functioning as an Athenian garrison to see to it that things in be OSHA are okay in this way they very closely resemble the Roman idea of a colony which was typically a collection of veterans after putting after conquering some other town in Italy they would take Some of that land give it to Roman legionaries and let them settle permanently there as a garrison on behalf of the Romans well that's what the Athenians do in the case of Cal keys Herodotus sort of sings an aria at this point about the wonders of freedom in which

he says the Athenians were no better than any other Greeks at warfare before they became free but once having liberated themselves from tyranny in establishing this new Kleist antic Regime they were able to defeat all of their opponents and so so much for Herodotus is prejudice but of course as you read his history will realize that in one sense at least the history of Herodotus is AP on to the the wonders of freedom and the greatness of freedom and the centrality of freedom as the story of the Greeks by the way he also praises not

just freedom allu Theria is the Greek word but in the case of Athens he praises it's esa goriya that word really Means equality of speech he characterizes this new Kleist enok regime not by the word democracy which has apparently not really been coined yet but rather as what characterizes it is that all citizens are free equally able to address the populace in the assembly and thereby to take an active role in their own government so he's really praising autonomy self-government not merely freedom from an alien people but freedom Within the city for all the people

to govern themselves he thinks that's one of the reasons why the Athenians have become so good at warfare because of these changes now a new coalition emerges also hostile to this new Athenian regime it includes Athens old enemy the island of China which sits in the ceramic Gulf right opposite the Athenian coast and it as I say they have been fighting each other now for more than a century and quarreling about this And that so the agent Eaton's join with the Spartans and now they are openly attempting to destroy this regime and to replace it

with a return to the tyranny of hippies hippies has also fled to the Persians and is protected by the King so that you have the notion of having even if the Persians get involved they too and they will get involved will want to put Hippias on the throne in Athens but the Spartans want to do the same thing and again the corinthians will have none Of that because their their attitude towards tyranny now threatened even more severely the Athenians send a second mission to Persia and this time the Persian King makes it very clear that

will require that the Athenians put down their newly established democracy and restore hippias to his tyranny in Athens which would make Athens like the other Greek city-states the ones that are on the coast of Asia Minor part of the Persian Empire and Hippias in his Relationship to Persia would be the satrap of the Great King governing his own city which was I think commonly what was happening in Asia Minor on the Greek Coast too that's where we are when the Ionian rebellion breaks out in the year 499 the start comes in the city of my

lettuce which was of course a leading city of the Greeks of that area for some long time a place you will remember that was filled with new ideas where we first Hear about the kinds of quasi-scientific but in any case rationalistic revolution that challenges the traditional Greek way of thinking based largely on mythology and on theology with pure reason I don't want to suggest that the milesian philosophers were without religion I'm simply saying they're introducing something new that stands us on the side of religion and when it comes to their attempt to explain what they

are trying to explain the physical Universe for the most part it really does put aside religious concepts and replace them with observation and reason as the way to do things so what we are seeing of course in my latest is the birth of philosophy at the same time as we are seeing the birth of Natural Science and these do not get separated until many many many years later on they are together that's the city where the rebellion starts has nothing to do with philosophers it has to do with the Tyrant of my leaders am I

lesion by the name of erised a giris who gets into trouble with the great king he has talked the Great King into an expedition that he wanted to launch against the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea he says naxos is a cinch it's a nice fat place they're not ready if we sail now secretly I'll be able to quickly take the island and the great king will have another expansion of his empire and of course our stag Would benefit both financially and also by the presumed honor that he would gain from the Great King

unfortunately their intelligence purposes they secure the security procedures were inadequate and what he was up to got to naxos before he did and then Axion's were ready he was defeated and the Great King was not pleased eres tiger is new he was in a lot of trouble and so he decided that this was the time for the Greeks of Asia Minor to acquire their freedom from the Persians and he was obviously a very persuasive talker and went around to the various Greek cities and was able to persuade most of them to join in the rebellion

which is indicative of course of the fact that they were not happy in their position as subjects of the great king so they rebel against the tyrants who have been collaborating with the great king and this is an interesting point they established democracies now since as far as we know there is no Democracy in the world and it never has been before the one established in Athens just a few years ago I think there's a lot of reason to think that the idea of doing that came from Athens and that is easily believable when you

realize that Athens as I've told you before is an Ionian city just as these cities my lead us and the other towns that they get to join them at first are Ionian cities and the Athenians are recognized by the other own Ionians as The leading Ionian city so that all of that makes me think that it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's Athenian democracy that is the model for these rebellious Ionian States but eros-dallas knows that he's going to be facing a formidable enemy in the forces of the Persian Empire and so he goes

back to mainland Greece to seek help for his undertaking and the first place you're going to go you want military assistance in the Greek world of course is sparta and there indeed he goes again charming stories that Herodotus tells about it he goes to King cleomenes and he tells him he would but he's trying to do and he tells them how rich the Persian Empire is and how if they are successful in this rebellion they will be able to see some of the wealth in the territory of the Persian king and won't that be nice

for cleomenes and perhaps with the Spartans as well cleomenes says well I Don't know he so scratches his head and he says how far is the capital of persia from your city on the coast of the Aegean Sea and Paris tigress is shocked shrewd cooking and so he says I'm glad you asked me this question and he pulls out the first recorded map in all of Greek history and presumably unrolls it and it shows you see here's my lead us and then there's this royal road and if you take it down here here is souza

the capital of the Persian this is how far Is that how long would it take me to march from the coast of theirs is three months clean money says stranger get out of town by dark the idea of suggesting to the Spartans that they should launch an expedition across a sea which will then take them army they take their army three months march away from the coast not to mention from Sparta leaving the city of course open to hell out rebellion all the time they're gone that is not a very welcome suggestion so eres Eggert

says well you know it's not really so bad they got this good road besides I have here some several mine I of silver that are glad to give to you might want to think again and he keeps raising the amount that he's prepared to bribe cleomenes at a certain point cleomenes little daughter Gorgo has been sitting there all the time and being a Spartan girl she gets to up to her father and his father asked this man to leave at Once or he will corrupt you cleomenes accepted the admonition from his nine-year-old daughter and sent

era stagger asst away so the effort to gain Spartan support in this rebellion failed well eres aggres says okay I'll go I'll try athens now Athens of course he's got a much better shot in the first place Athens is an Ionian city unlike the Dorian Spartan the second place Athens sits on the seashore closer to Persia right on the Aegean Sea and obviously Can feel that there is a certain danger that might be coming from Persia in any case just because the Persians keep expanding and they're now sitting right on the GNC so for these

reasons and perhaps others maybe they were already I was going to suggest maybe they were already involved with Eris Tigers and the rebels of the the Greek cities of Asia Minor because of the democracy idea that gives me the suggestion that has been some communication anyway whether That's true or not the Athenians vote to send a fleet and soldiers to assist my leaders and the other cities in their rebellion and they send well I'll come back down which is what they send in a moment Herodotus decides it's time to make a point he says this

shows how much easier it is to deceive many people rather than one because by his account and this count has got to be wrong there were 30,000 Athenians who were involved in this decision that's certainly far Too many and they were fooled by eros tigress whereas King cleomenes the one man was not however that may be what the Athenians wrote it was to send 20 ships now scholar some scholars who said only 20 ships the only is really I think a mistake they are led to that by knowing that later in the fifth century the

Athenians will end up having 400 triremes but that's many years later that's after a victory over the Persians That's in a totally new world the best guess I would have now is that the all the ships the Athenians had were maybe 50 so sending 20 was not a trivial contribution why do they do it well for all the reasons I've suggested they care about the Ionians they are their relatives in their own mind moreover they are not very friendly to Persia after the exchanges they have had with the Great King in which it's clear the

only way to deal with the Great King is To become his subject something they're not eager to do another thing that we need to take into account is that the Athenians remember at least back to the time of so long and possibly before have been increasingly engaged in trade with the east that is to say with Asia Minor with the Hellespont sea of marmora the Bosphorus beyond that into the Black Sea in other words into territory bordering on the Persians so that they have to feel that if the Persians are unfriendly Or if if the

Persians just do what comes naturally to them they soon may be interfering with things that we need we increasingly need the Athenians will be increasingly dependent on grain and fish from those waters so the all of that can explain why the Athenians are willing to take this enormously risky decision when when the Spartans of course wouldn't think of doing it Herodotus has this wonderful phrase to describe the athenian decision these ships were the Beginning of Evil's to the Greeks and the barbarians I guess what he's really saying is here we have the beginning of the

Persian Wars my subject the Ionian rebellion is one thing theoretically if the Athenians had minded their own business and not assisted the rebels then there need not have been a Persian War heaven knows would have come but would have come next but in any case I think erotic is the same once the Athenians decided to Participate assist the rebellion of their relatives in Ionia this was the beginning of the Persian Wars for Athens well the 20th aenean ships land in my latest key and their soldiers march inland very swiftly and reach the city of Sardis

which is the capital of the satrapy of lydia which is now a persian province and are successful in defeating the forces that come out against them and set fire to the city of Sardis so they've done real harm having done that The Athenians oh I'd forgive me I've left out a small but important point the Athenians were joined by a few ships provided by the city of Eritrea another town in northern euboea an old-time rival an enemy of what side of the town up there just mentioned it a moment ago it's gone right out of

my head what didn't remember what town that is Calchas thank you very much they're old enemies of calculus and that may account for why they are eager to help the Athenians because the Athenians have defeated calculus and are keeping the child Citians down in any case they do a few Aryans 20 ships of Athenians accomplished this deed of doing considerable harm to the great Kings position there and Lydia well now the Persians launched a thoroughgoing expedition with the intention of subduing their Ionian subjects and bringing them back to subjugation well it's not all that easy

This rebellion takes place in 499 the war against Persia doesn't end until 494 what the Persians are doing is laying siege to the city's one by one and taking them one by one and then attacking from the sea and that was critical if they could defeat the fleet's of the Greek cities having already surrounded them on the land side those cities were out of business and would have to surrender and in 494 the fleet that the Persians gathered the Persians of course were landlubbers they had no Navy of their own but they had a very

considerable Navy provided by the Phoenicians who were among the earliest of the sailors of the eastern Mediterranean whom the Persians had conquered and the Egyptians who had a naval tradition as well so there was a big Egyptian contingent a big Phoenician contingent and when they were under Persian rule the Ionians provided ships for the Great King to they weren't Available right now that we're going to be fighting against the Great King but that's where he got his forces from they were numerically superior and there were very good sailors and the oarsmen so finally at the

Battle of la de that's la de off the coast of the coast that is on the coast of Asia Minor near my leaders the Persians destroyed the fleet of the Greeks and put down the rebellion and then they took vengeance for the whole thing by laying waste the city of my Letus entire burning it to the ground as best one could do that in those days so the Ionian rebellion has come to an inglorious conclusion what next what next is determined in considerable part by the internal affairs of the city of Athens the Athenians are

going to be the most troubled by what has happened and also they have a reason to be troubling the Great King like I this is true of most any great Empire any great power That has been attacked or even insulted by some smaller state you just can't let that go by you must punish that action to deter similar behavior in the future so the Athenians had every reason to fear an invasion or some sort of attack from the Persians in the future I think that is critical for understanding what's going on in Athens in these

years and we do have a few glimpses just a few glimpses that are difficult to interpret but may possibly make a certain amount Of sense it is interesting I think that in the year 496 5 which is to say before the Battle of latte while the rebellion is still on the man who was elected the eponymous Archon for that year is hipparchus the son of karma's a relative of the paisa strategy and he is precisely the man who tradition says the the first ostracism was alleged allegedly aimed at what is going on here why is

the the by sister to the hipparcos being elected at this point When in fact we know that the Persians have said that they wish to put his relative Hippias back on the throne why would the Athenians elect this guy well the only interpretation makes any sense to me is that you remember that fairytale I told you last time about the law and ostracism at about how I mentioned cleisthenes telling Hipparchus that he could avoid a lot of trouble if he would join up with Cleisthenes I think he did and I think his election to The

Archon ship demonstrates that it's still cleisthenes regime that is in power if at parkers get selected Archon it must be because he's on board all of this is hypothesis but it seems to me to make sense the next event that we hear about in Athens that's relevant to our story is that in the year for 90 c 493 the athenian tragedian phrenic asst presents his play called the capture of my Letus we don't have the play but we have stories about it including one Narada tha's and what the stories say is that the the play

showed the scene of the taking of my leaders and the destruction of the city by the Persians and that the play was so moving the Athenians were made so unhappy by seeing this story that they took measures against the playwright from making them so miserable and find him heavily for doing so what's that all about well there are various possible interpretations but I think the one That's most persuasive to me is that friend cos knew perfectly well that when he put on this play it would cause great unhappiness and Athens and great anger I I

think he hoped it would raise anger against the Persians and it would support the idea of the Athenians preparing for war against the Persians either in the likelihood that the Persians would invade or that the Athenians would have to do something aggressively against Persia somehow That's I think that's interpretation that strikes me as being more plausible than other possibilities but again it's only a hypothesis in the same year Milt IDs comes back to Athens having traveled from his home in the gallipoli peninsula and he is think of it for a moment what's his position going

to be visa V Persia it has to be anti Persian because he has betrayed the king of Persia he's obviously got a price on his head if the Persians succeed in putting hippias on the throne and making Persia boss of Athens his life isn't worth a nickel so he's got to be anti Persian and I think the what happens next has to be understood in terms of the political struggle in Athens in which by no not by ona by no means for all Athenians convinced that it would be a good thing to go to the

war against Persia I mean it's crazy what I want to communicate to you is the idea of fighting against Persia now is insane the Persians have conquered most of the known world as far as the Greeks are concerned they have just bashed their fellow Greeks without a lot of trouble in Asia Minor why would you want to take these fellows on what you would want is to avoid conflict with them to try to find some means of coming to terms with the Persians I'm sure there must have been Athenians and Herodotus says there were who

would have preferred accepting Hippias back as Tyrant and having the Persians be the real rulers of their land rather than all getting killed when the Persians decided to come after them so you've got these two factions one pro version one anti persian and the fact is apart from hypothesis that Milt IDs is brought to trial in Athens the official charge against him is of having been a tyrant in the gallipoli peninsula when he was in charge of it there and he is in fact Acquitted of the charge which may suggest if the jury was influenced

by popular opinion and had a political view that the majority of athenians were not willing to take the tyranny back in any circumstances and what prepared to fight now that the interpretation again is hypothesis the fact of the trial and the acquittal are there another interesting event is that in the year 493 to that was one big year that year 493 some mystical ease is elected the Archon the Eponymous Archon for the year and we shall see that Themistocles will play a very large role in the great Persian invasion of for Haiti and he will

be a participant in the Battle of Marathon two and two mystical ease is a great champion of the Navy he has concluded four varieties of reasons that Athens must have a much larger Navy then she already has and he also is obviously a member of that faction that thinks the Persians will be coming and that wishes To be ready and is eager to fight against the Persians so simister cleese is on the scene and one of the things he does that looks forward to the rest of his career is that he wants to move the

naval base of athens from faller on Bay which is just a beach unfortified completely open to attack if anybody comes so the Athenian fleet presumably would be drawn up on the sands of the beach at the faller on where you can go swimming to this very day ad and if Those ships are up there on the sands the Persian fleet come sailing up there stuck what he wants to do is what he begins to do to make pireas about five miles the road into the port of Athens a naval base of Athens it has three

of its own harbors readily protected if you build walls around them if you four to five the Pirates then you have a port that will be secure against an attack and also be a very good base for moving out Of so Milt IOT excuse me sir mystical ease demonstrates what will be his policy for the rest of his life in regard to Athens and he the fact that he's chosen our cotton may be indicative of the mood in Athens which is increasingly unwilling to accept the idea of a return of hippies and the Persian rule

and is ready to fight about well by now the king of Persia has decided that he must avenge all that has happened and he must go after the people Who have done him harm Athens number one the little town of Eritrea number two he takes a great Persian fleet a company by a great Persian army and starts marching along the aegean coast first the wet of the east coast and then crosses the Hellespont and goes over onto the northern coast and his he himself is not doing it as his general mardonius is in charge he

conquers the regions of Thrace and Macedon on the north shore of the Aegean Sea but in 492 while his fleet is Lying off the peninsula that contains mount athos one of those terrible Aegean storms that can come up very suddenly does indeed come up very suddenly and pretty well Rex the Persian fleet so serious is the damage that the Persians have to abandon their invasion of Attica of Greece and heading for Athens at this time this I should point out is precisely the route the Persians will take for their major invasion in or 80 but

for the time being that has Been put off thanks to the intervention of the storm or as the Greeks might put it of the gods now as the Persians have actually begun to make their invasion the Greek cities are aware the Persians are coming the Persians are coming and the question is what to do well the island the vagina which is unfriendly to Athens you remember from way back they decide we're not going to be swept away with the Athenians when the Persians get here and they give earthen water to the King they have in

fact become Persian subjects at this point cleomenes changes his mind he does not want to sit there quietly while the Persians come and invade Greece and so he now goes to the island of Aegina takes hostages delivers the hostages to the Athenians and in so doing he creates a rapprochement between Sparta and Athens and now the Spartans and the Athenians are allies that doesn't mean the Athenians have joined the Peloponnesian League they just Established friendly relations after being at odds for such a period of time and there is a quarrel between the two kings as

I've told you and it's at this time that Demaratus is sent into exile and cleomenes himself comes out very badly so both Kings will be in some degree of disgrace at the time of the battle of marathon well let us turn then to the Persian invasion that culminates in the battle of men of Marathon the purpose is very simple sorry to punish Those cities that have insulted and damaged the Great King Athens and a retro to restore Hippias to the tyranny in Athens and where from where he can serve as the Kings cetera and surely

also to gain a foothold in Greece on the way to conquering all of Greece why should he want to conquer all of Greece Herodotus tells a story about his relative who tells him for God's sake what do you want to go to Greece there's nothing there but a lot of rocks What is the point of conquering the place it's one thing to conquer all it is rich places Egypt Babylonia that's fine there's welfare this huge populations is a lot of good stuff it's just Greeks and rocks why in the world you want to go there

and the answer I think in part would be Sir Edmund Hillary's answer because they're there and that's part of the answer because you know we must understand that the ancient idea in fact I'm willing to say The idea that dominated thinking about such matters right down probably into the 19th century in many cases but certainly before the advent of Christianity was this that conquest is good it's good to be strong it's good to be rich it's good to be powerful therefore it's good to be stronger richer and more powerful if there's somebody on your frontier

take them over and that by the way will make you still more glorious because conquest is glory Now we in the West that's not our natural attitude our natural attitudes shaped in considerable part whatever your religious association may be by Christianity which has been the dominant force in shaping people's thinking in the West whatever as I say whatever religion you belong to and that aspect of Christianity that it violates is the one that's increasingly the one that's emphasized by Christians and that is the Sermon on the Mount that the one that Says the meek shall

inherit the earth it's not the strong and the tough and so on and the one that says if your enemy strikes you turn the other cheek so he can strike you there too now if the Greeks had heard that they would have said these people are lunatics send them away quick morality said be good to your friend do good to your friends and harm to your enemies and the second part is just as important as the first part so you need to understand That the sort of the ethical underpinnings to all of our natural thinking

in in the West are as odd and strange and crazy as they can be for everybody else in the human race so far as I can see there are exceptions I'm missing some Eastern religions which have ideas that are not altogether and asked Matt to what I'm saying but what I'm trying to say is nobody in the ancient world would have ever had such an idea of course if you can conquer Somebody who's your neighbor you do and so there was every reason to know that the the Persians were coming how many we don't know

the estimate that most people would accept is somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand infantryman so for the sake of splitting the difference I always assume something like 25,000 infantryman and some cavalry that's very important even though the cavity does not play any part in the actual battle of marathon but Herodotus makes it very clear that There was a Persian cavalry that the Persians picked the site of Marathon to fight in in part because it was a good place for cavalry to fight so there's a Persian cavalry on board the ships anyway alongside the infantry the

two Persian generals are datos and art ofertas they have with them hippie asst Hippias of course must have been all these years urging the Great King to make some such campaign and he probably would have said and marathon is the Place to land you remember that's the territory of the paisa strategies that's where prices TARDIS landed on his last return to Athens when he made himself tyrant that we're his people were that's where his forces would gather I'm sure hippie has said what all such exiles always say all I need do is set foot on

the beach at marathon and my people will rise up as one and join me you won't even have to fight in Athens because they'll be so Glad to see me back this is what King James I'm sure told Louis the fourteenth about getting back to England and one here is that all the time but it's a very important part of this story I don't think we can understand what happens at marathon if we don't know that everybody thought it was highly possible that there were Athenians who were eager to restore hippias to the throne and

would be willing to engage in treasonous activities or to defect from The democracy and join hippias if the circumstances were appropriate so that's in the back of everybody's mind or in the front I think when the Persians got there their strategy included the belief that there would be treason in Athens that would turn the city over to them if the circumstances were right so that force starts this time not not not along the coast as I told you last time it takes the shortest route directly across the Aegean Sea hopping from island to Island stops

at Naxos member and access annoyed the king by successfully resisting eros digresses invasion and they destroy naxos next they come to the island of Delos in the middle of the Aegean the islands sacred to apollo and his sister artemis a very sacred place indeed for the Greeks what do the Persians do they treat the Ark I'm not the article but they treat the dillians and the priests of Apollo athelas with great respect do them no harm this is Typical persian conquest they do not impose religions their religion is different from that of most of the

others in this area they are zero estrogens they are sun worshippers of us it in kind and but they don't impose their religion they don't interfere with the religion they get a very nice write-up in the Old Testament if you remember because they don't mistreat the Hebrews and they particularly don't do them in compel them to abandon their own Religious practices as the other invaders do so what what is a what are the Persians saying by these actions they are saying we are not at war with the Greek gods we're not even at war with

the Greeks we are simply punishing these two miscreant ounds that have attacked us they then turn to the southern tip of the island of euboea to the town of kerastase the Persians maybe not at war with the Greeks but they expect all Greeks or along the way to Behave the way they're supposed to to the Great King and so they asked the Corinthians to give earth and water the Corinthians refuse and the Persians obliterate but their City and take their people into slavery now they push their way take their sail along the coast of Euboea

to a ret rhea in the north and now here are a 4000 athenians settle there you remember in a cleric e so right they get their armor on and they stand in front and prepared to die Fighting for the freedom of eritrea because of their wonderful friendship to Athens wrong the 4,000 Athenians go home to Attica why well I suppose the immediate answer is why not Thank but the it's an embarrassment and Herodotus I think we have to realize is very friendly to happiness all throughout his own history I doubt that there's I mean there's

no doubt that he spent time in Athens he seems to have been a friend of Pericles in later years he was kindly Although he himself comes from Halicarnassus in Asia Minor but he did he did spend a lot of time in half and there seems to be a pro Athenian cast one thing also is that many of his sources were Athenians who told the story their way so their answer was if these were ready to fight to save Eritrea but the arete rien said is no point why should you get killed too it's not your

town why don't you go home if you can believe that you can believe Anything but I don't I think Athenians realized there was nothing but disaster if they stayed and they could believe if we get back to Attica we might be able to make a contribution to defending our city okay so now here they are at a ret Rhea the Athenians are gone it's time for the invasion the site of the battle where do they go well they pick marathon as I say in part because it's very near Eritrea secondly as a Herodotus says because

it's a good place for cavalry Thirdly as I've already told you because it's the stronghold of paisa Stratos the place which would be natural for an army trying to establish hippias on the throne of Athens that's why they're there and they're plan i think is to go to marathon if the nians come out and challenge them to a fight they will crush the athenians but they didn't expect that they thought the Athenians would be afraid but and that what would happen is they would stay there in Marathon until they got the news that there was

a revolution in Athens prepared to turn the city over to them that's what hit me is I think led them to believe and that's what they hoped for they were prepared to fight of course but they thought it wouldn't be necessary so on august the 4th they land in the year for 90 at marathon we know these dates because there are as in eclipse associated with this which allows astronomers to fix it pretty Precisely the athenians of course when they knew that the Persians were coming and that news would have come to them the minute

they got to naxos then ships would have come to Athens so the Athenians were well worn went to their new friends Sparta to ask them for help of course and this is where their wonderful stories they sent the great runner whose name comes down to us in the manuscripts as five birdies chances are his real name was Philippa Tease but there was an error in the manuscript but will call him fight dipa tease because that's what the manuscripts say and he he races to spar as fast as he could go took him less than two

days where he came to the Spartans and he said the Persians are coming the Persians are coming please help us Spartan said we would love to come and help you nothing would please us more unfortunately we are in the midst of our holy religious ceremony That carnea and we are not allowed until to leave our home town until the next full moon which as a matter of fact is the night of August eleventh twelfth in other words a whole week after the the Persians are going to land I I can't go speculating as to what

are we to make of this is this me is this just an excuse of the Spartans serious about this our tendency I suppose being modern and cynical would be to say it's only an excuse I'm more inclined to think that They were sincere about it it's not that they couldn't find ways to get round such things but they really took their religion quite seriously and it may be that you know that did play a role be that as it may two things that the Athenians now know they know the Spartans have promised to come but

not for another week both of those things should be on your minds as you try to understand now Herodotus says that the Athenian army marched out from Athens And went to marathon and then they had an argument about what they should do but I don't think that's right there must have been a debate there had to be a debate in Athens you couldn't take an army out of town without having an embley to argue the question should we send an army and if we should send an army how big should the army beat and having

that decided that who should be in command all those things had to be settled by the assembly in Athens so That's where the debate took place some favored defending the city of athletes now we don't know how well the city of Athens was walled defended by fortification at this time in its history it may not have had any wall but I would be surprised but it certainly did not have a wall that was guaranteed to be effective against an attack and so I think people should understand that is not going to be successful to stay

home and defend Athens means to allow the Persians to run all around Attica doing anything they want causing all the harm they could remember something over seventy-five percent maybe as many as 90 percent of the Athenians had farms out in the country now houses out in the country that would have been exposed to the Persians and so there was good reason for them not to think that was a great idea the alternative was to send an army out to allow the Persians to land because they couldn't stop it they Didn't know where the Persians are

going to come but as soon as they heard that the Persians had landed to send an army there and meet them at the place of landing mill tities emerges as the leading figure here not because I mean he isn't general but that's not the only reason it's because everybody knows Milt IVs is the resident Persian expert he has been a general in the Persian army and so that gives him a reason to be listened to but he's obviously also a Person of great merit and quality proves it at the Battle of Marathon he must have

been an impressive fellow so for all these reasons whatever his formal position was and i think it was simply one of the generals de facto he had much more influence than others for these reasons and his argument was let us go out and meet the Persians where they land and the reasons were we don't want them to be able to get to the Spartans but beyond that there was fear That if we stay home and wait and let the Persians do whatever they're going to do every day that passes increases the danger of treason from

those people who want to turn the city over and it's also so completely against the ethic of the Greek warrior and I would say more specifically the hoplite warrior you don't let your enemy ravage your country side you don't let them destroy your farm this and in a way goes all the way back to to Homer the notion of rha a man Must have courage he must stand up against an enemy who invades his country and then again beyond that you move to the world of the hoplite and you're talking about defending your homestead all

of that argued for going out there so the terminology i would use for modern terminology to explain what the Athenian that strategy was to go out and to contain the beachhead go out confront this Persians where they are don't let them get inland from where they landed So they do land at marathon with about 2,500 infantry now remember their infantry are not hoplites they do not have heavy armor there are pictures on wonderful paintings on vases yes sir I meant thousand I hope I yeah thanks very much there there are vases that showed the Persian

soldiers at marathon and they are wearing pants as I told you but they're not carrying any they're not wearing any armor and that their their shield is a kind of a wicker shield so That their armament is much inferior to the hoplites and keep in mind too that the Persian army is at always made up of a collection of subject people's yes there will be some Persians but there will also be lots of folks who are not Persians in there so they lack that unity that the Greeks will have the excuse me I got this

thing a little backwards well nevermind Milt IDs plan is this there are something like 10,000 Greeks about 9,000 Athenians about a Thousand Aryans against let us say 25 thousand Persians and so as the thing begins the map here shows you the rough picture the field at marathon here the Persians landed right here and had their ships drawn up at this place they have their camp behind here this marshal to be a little bit more over this way it's a very serious March it will play an important role in what happens the Greeks come out they

probably ballet came marching in through this way and Here we have mountains this wavy line indicates the line of the mountains here you have a really flat plain but here you have mountains and somewhere up on the hills here there was the Greek camp near the modern Church of st. Demetrius this little dot reflects the mound where the dead the Greek did at marathon will after the battle be buried and that is likely to be about the place where the main fighting took place which helps us the place where the actual battle took Place so

the idea of the of the Athenians was to try to hold them there as long as they could but the Greeks have the upper hill the Persians are down below you if the Persians want to start a fight then they to come that they will have to come running up the hill well that is not a very attractive proposition and so the Greeks feel let them come for us it's our country they're sitting here on the other thing they've got to do something We don't meanwhile the Persians are waiting for treason so that the city

will be surrendered to them a week goes by with the two sides looking at each other and doing nothing I always like to compare the Athenian strategy to an old-fashioned football strategy which i haven't seen done now in decades which used to be kick on first down and wait for a fumble in other words let give the ball to the Persians and let them make a mistake I think that's what was in Milton he's mine well finally time passes and the Persians realize we can't sit here forever for one thing they're going to run out

of food and water for another thing the Great King will want to hear something well how'd you do what did you do we SAT there and watch the Athenians no good so the plan that the Persians made I think was this that they would take let us say for the sake of argument 10,000 troops put them on the ships load up the cavalry with onto the Ships to and send those ships around Attica to come up to Fowler on Bay straight into Athens and meanwhile take the 15,000 that are left March them up to close

as close as you could get to the Greeks and fix the Greeks there so that they can't go back and defend Athens so there's no army to protect Athens so if those guys get off the ships come sailing into the harbor walk up to town it's theirs if the Athenians are crazy enough from the Persian point Of view to come running down the hill or walking downhill whatever into to be outnumbered three to two by us and anyway we're Persians we always beat Greeks got nothing to worry about then let him do it so they

come now Milt IVs is in charge on the day of the battle he's got the problem that they have five thousand more troops and he has he's worried about being outflanked so what he decides to do is to weaken the depths of his line because he must cover the Length of the Persian line well the danger with that is of course that when they hit each other the Persians will break through the Greek line so instead of making it even he loaded up the wings and left the center even weaker than it would otherwise have

been his hope and strategy was that the Athenians would win on the wings before the Persians could break through the middle and then the Athenians could turn on the center of the Persians and defeat them and just Barely that's what happened the Persians did break through the center but they were too late by that time the Greek wing the Athenian wings were successful and drove the Persians before them the Persians ran away like mad but they ran into the Great Swamp and that made their escape much more difficult so the Athenians were able to kill

great numbers of them and finally that that battle was over now the battle is over let's imagine that it took a couple of Hours that would be a long time the Athenians had time now to have a meal take a little rest and marsh back across to Attica which had before the ships could get there and I like to imagine the scene when it all happened the Persians coming around the last bend of the bay as they coming to fowler on expecting to see a nice empty beach and seeing the Athenian army I like to

imagine with their left foot in the breakers and their shields up and their Spears up with the Sun gleaming off their shields and blinding the Persians as they came and at which point you can't force a landing against an army this can't be done in the ancient world these guys had it go home and start thinking about what they're going to tell the great king the Athenians won the battle a very large very large casualties for the Persians only 192 Greeks killed in the battle and allowed the extraordinary honor of being Buried on the field

where they have fought next day two thousand Spartans come marching into Attica that proves they were serious and we're told what had happened they ask permission can we go to the battlefield and look at it and there they saw all these dead Persians and no one had ever seen anything like that no Greeks had ever beat Persians before and great was the glory of the Athenians so I've described very inadequately and too swiftly the battle So what what is the significance of this silly little battle 10,000 Greeks against fifteen thousand Persians back a billion years

ago what does it matter and the lots of folks will tell you that especially these days but i remember in 1936 there was a wonderful conference of pacifists who met in england at which the dominant theme of the speakers was no war ever made any difference what i like about that was that the place of the meeting was hastings The battle was seen throughout the rest of greek history first of all is a great victory for hoplites as opposed to their opponents in in later greek history when the navy when it's in history when the

navy becomes a big thing it is the the party the old-fashioned the more conservative party that thinks about marathon as the great victory the day that those hoplite farmers saved greece the navy guys the poor like to think about Salamis the naval battle in for Haiti it was seen as a victory for democracy it was the Athenian Democrats later on I'm sure they were glad the PERT the spartans never got there because they could claim it as their own and as a victory for democracy as well it was also the first as I say Greek

defeat of the Persians as Herodotus says for up until then even the name of Persians was a fearful thing for Greeks to hear it was the source of tremendous national pride and glory for Athens and Scholars have compared the impact of the Battle of Marathon on the Athenian image of themselves with the defeat of the Spanish Armada by Elizabeth's English fleet and the beginning of the glory of the Elizabethan era it was seen as a victory for freedom because the price of defeat would have been slavery in every sense as they understood it Greek civilization

and I'll come back to this in a minute could have been strangled in its infancy because it is in its infancy But again we ought to pay attention to those people who suggest that people like me are over embellishing the significance of all this one English statesman said war Wins nothing cures nothing settles nothing speaker was Neville Chamberlain in 1936 Bertrand Russell philosopher declared disarmament and complete pacifism is indisputably the wisest policy and he urged the gradual disbanding of the British Army Navy and Air Force as Hitler was moving into the Rhineland does victory in

war make a difference i would say ask the losers the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust ask the descendants of the slaves in the American South remember this if the Athenians had lost at marathon aescalus had just begun his career as a playwright Sophocles hadn't written a play Euripides of course hadn't either nor had Aristophanes Socrates forgot this right yeah Socrates wasn't born yet Much less Plato Aristotle fidius there was no barson on none of those glorious buildings that we make us think about the greatness that was Greece had been constructed there would be

no democracy because this was the only place where it had any existence the Scientific Revolution which was almost in BO beyond its infancy in terms of being new would have been wiped out there would be no memory there would be no record of any of this and therefore no Western Civilization no political freedom for all these have occurred in no other culture in all the years since that time that's why I wanted you to know a little bit about the Battle of Marathon because I think all of us alive today here Oh a very great

debt to the ten thousand marathon Oh McCoy the fighters of Marathon who fought for Greek freedom and for ours too