Secret History #20: The Hellenistic World

good morning so let us review what we learned last class and then we will discuss the Greeks today so as I discussed last class there are three major principles to geopolitics and once you master an understanding of these three principles then you will see the world much more clearly okay the first idea is that the competition within states is greater than the competition between or amongst states okay and this is idea of elite overproduction so the historian Peter Turchin he looked at the father Roman Republic the French Revolution he looked at many similar events in human history he discovered that what drives crisis is effect we have too many in least computing for limit position of status and power and that's what drives a lot of conflict within the nation -state an small way of framing this is that the conflict in states is not between rich and poor but between the have a lot

and have some but what more ok so usually between the upper nobility and the lower nobility and we see this throughout human history so next class we will discuss the Rome okay and we'll discuss that and we will understand that a lot of conflict was between the upper nobility and the lower nobility so Julius Caesar did what he did because he was of the lower nobility and was trying to reach the upper nobility okay so this is the first principle that you need to understand that what drives a lot of conflict is elite overproduction okay that's number one number two is the elite has no loyalty this is really important principle to understand the elite don't have loyalty to their people or to their state or even to the families they will do whatever is necessary for them to accumulate power okay and this idea of Game of Thrones right so I'm not sure if

you've seen a television show or read the book series Game of Thrones but the world is Game of Thrones and these people who love power they will kill their parents they will kill their brothers they will kill their own children in order to amass power from themselves okay so the Game of Thrones is a very nasty affair the third thing is that war is often about maintaining that status quo okay or the idea of equilibrium if you look at World War I tens of millions of people died okay and you cannot possibly understand what happened or you have problems explaining what happened because the military strategy in World War I was so idiotic right you just threw millions of people at each other but if you understood that war is really about maintaining the status quo that maybe you have excess population of males and if you don't get rid of them then they will

engage in the revolution okay you understand that war is really about maintaining a status quo then World War I makes a lot more sense okay so these are three major ideas that I want you to understand and once you understand these three ideas it's a lot easier for you to understand the movement of history okay so we're so we will use an example from China's history so you have you have a clear understanding of how this works okay so let's talk about the warring states period this is something that hopefully you all know really well okay so during the warring states period you had lots of really powerful states okay you have the Zhao you have the Wei you have the Chu okay and um at this point in history you could believe that any one of the three would become the Empire they would unite the entire um Middle Kingdom because they had access

to rivers so it's easiest for them to support soldiers and do good they have a large population and they were on fertile ground okay and then over here is this poor backward and isolated people called the Qing and these were Barbarians okay so how was it possible for the Qing who are these Barbarians not very advanced very poor limited population to eventually cover all of China okay well once you understand these three principles three principles we cannot explain it because what's happening is that the jow the Wei and the样 are pretty stable states okay and so the major problem is labor production the conflict between the upper nobility and the low nobility and the way that we resolve the issue is by waging war against each other but waging war against each other not to conquer each other but in order to reduce the domestic conflict within their nation states and as such war became

a ritual in which it was like a chess game okay the point was not to destroy each other the point was just to maintain equilibrium maintain the status quo and as a result these states became stable but in other words for stable is stagnant and now what's happening is first of all the Qing Qing is being recruited into the wars because the Qing is poor therefore they can provide mercenaries okay once they do that what happens is that these mercenaries learn all the innovations of the Zhao Wei and Chu in terms of military strategy okay so you have this massive infusion of innovation into the Qing all right so the Qing is being energized we call this energy right innovation energy and ideas but not only that but you have talented people of the low nobility right they want to become officials they want to become generals but there's opportunities for them so where do

they go guys they go to the Qing okay now you have people coming in as well and now what's happening is that the Qing has this massive infusion of energy innovation talent and so now they can just bulldoze everyone okay and now you're like wait a minute here surely the Zhao the Wei and the Chu recognize the danger of the Qing and they will respond by uniting together and then destroy the Qing okay that never happens why the reason why is that um once you enter an equilibrium you understand the world through this equilibrium so in their perspective the Qing became stronger but that's okay because all we'll do is we'll just bribe them to become part of this system why would they want to take us over why can't we just live happily ever after okay so it is impossible for the Zhao the way the two to imagine that a Ching would one

day overtake them okay another way of saying this is that once we come once you reach an equilibrium the people inside the equilibrium become lazy stupid and arrogant okay and that's and that's why the Qing is easily able to destroy all three together okay and that's why the Qing is easily able to destroy all three together okay and then pack during ups In fact, the lower nobility in all three states probably supported the takeover, right? Because now they have opportunities to rise within their societies, okay? And that's the pattern of human history. And we see this over and over. All right, so now let's move on to the West, okay? Yeah, yeah?

So the equilibrium means that the war made the status competition within the countries more stable?

Yeah, equilibrium just means they've reached a balance point, okay?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, and things are just staying the same. And so people think that things will stay the same forever. So they can't imagine change happening. But the thing about human society is that things always change, okay? So remember the pattern of the warring states. Well, guess what? This repeats over and over. So look at Mesopotamia. So as we discussed about Mesopotamia, you have the first city, Uruk. And what they will do is that as they expand as a city, they will develop colonies along the Tigris and the Euphrates. And then these become warring states as well. And as we discussed, what will happen is that over time, they will reach an equilibrium. Basically, a status quo or rules to make sure that the elite stay in power, okay? And one important rule that they have is we can do this. We can go to war against each other, but we cannot destroy each other's temple. Why?

Because the temple is the house of your patron god. If you kill the patron god, then the god will be very angry and will kill all of you, okay? So this creates an equilibrium because where do they put all their gold and wealth? The temple. So you can go and conquer people, but you can't touch their gold and their wealth. And therefore, you cannot expand. Okay? So this creates the idea of equilibrium. But as I discussed, what happened is that because of the equilibrium, energy will flow into a poor isolated area called Uma. And from Uma will emerge a man named Lugazagi who's like, you know what? Screw this system. I'm going to go for it all, okay? So he dares destroy a temple. And before, this was unimaginable. Because if you destroy a temple, the gods can come in from heavens and destroy you, right? That didn't happen. But now Lugazagi has destroyed the equilibrium and now he has access to wealth.

And so he's very quickly able to overwhelm the other city -states. At this time, the other city -states call for help from mercenaries, the Akkadians, who will come and conquer the entire region, okay? And establish an empire called the Akkadian Empire led by Sarga. But now that they are an empire, they will now also reach an equilibrium. And this talent will flow somewhere else, energize another region, okay? So now what will happen is that the Babylonians will come. The Assyrians will come. Eventually, from the Zagos Mountains, a new people called the Persians, remember the Persians have a religion called Zoroastrianism, will come and conquer all this area. And then they will expand outwards and conquer both Anatolia and Egypt, okay? And at this point in history, now there's a new border area called the Greeks, okay? The Athenians, Athens and Sparta. And Athens and Sparta, the Greeks encounter Persia because they will send in mercenaries to help Persia.

And these mercenaries will learn Persian war tactics and bring them back to Greece. But not only that, but with an empire, the Greeks have an opportunity to get wealthy. How? Through piracy, right? Piracy. And then this will force the Persians now to invade the Greek mainland to stop this piracy. Again, this is a pattern throughout history. The Margins will get wealthy by committing piracy because why not, right? Okay? And so now the empire is forced to go invade Greece and guess what? They lose. This is unimaginable. How is it possible that some barbarians, the Greeks, are able to defeat a vast empire? The world's largest empire, the first great world empire called the Persians. Well, this happens all the time, okay? Why? Well, the pattern is this, okay? So let's look at empire. Let's look at borderlands, okay? Borderlands are just, you know, the barbarians.

Alright, the empire has three major advantages. Mass, organization, and death. And what this means is that empire just has a lot of people. It has a centralized bureaucracy. So the centralized bureaucracy is able to conscript these individuals. And it doesn't matter if they lose a lot of battles. They can keep on firing soldiers at the enemy, okay? But the borderlands have three advantages that counteract these three other advantages, okay? And they are energy, openness, and cohesion, okay? Meaning that the people work really hard. They're not afraid to die. They're open. So they want to learn from other people. And they are united as a people. And this defeats an empire because in an empire, the people are not that energetic. Most of them are slaves, actually. The empire is a bureaucracy, so it's very stagnant. It's very insular. It's close -minded. And an empire is not united. It's often divided, okay? And that's why throughout human history, the borderlands are able to conquer the empire, okay?

So, okay. So the Persians invade Greece. They get defeated. And now Greece becomes the center of the world or a major power, okay? So let's now discuss Greece. So in Greece, remember that we discussed Greece before when we said that Greece becomes the center of innovation in the world because of three factors. The first is Homer, who is probably the greatest poet, prophet, and humanist, okay? We read the Iliad together. He also wrote the Odyssey. And these are the two founding texts of Greek civilization. The alphabet, right? They're now able to, using the alphabet, write down all their thoughts and quickly transmit their thoughts throughout time and space. The last, of course, is the polis, okay? The polis is their system of government where all the citizens are involved in politics. And the polis, there's like thousands of them. And they're often small, like maybe 1,000, 10,000 people.

But the two major polises are Athens and Sparta. And Athens and Sparta are both Greek, but they're different societies. In fact, they're nothing alike, okay? So let's go over why. Well, first of all, Sparta is on flat land, the Peloponnese. And if you're on flat land, you can use agriculture. But to use agriculture, you need slaves, okay? So Sparta became a war society. They conquered the surrounding people and turned them into slaves, called helots. So these helots were serfs, slaves, who farmed. And so Sparta became a war society based on military dominance. The entire society was centered around how to take young boys, turn them into great warriors, so that they could defend their land, okay? The Spartans were also very conservative. Why? Because your concern is to maintain control over the helots. If you went over to conquer other places, the helots could rebel against you, okay?

And so if you want to know what this place is like, think China, okay? This is very similar to China. And as a result of this system, Sparta was an oligarchy, meaning ruled by the few. So only Spartans who were born to both a Spartan father and a mother. Everyone else was not a citizen. So even if your father was Spartan, but your mother was not Spartan, you were not a citizen, okay? So there's a massive class hierarchy in Sparta. And the reason why is, for them, the priority was to maintain the status quo, okay? The Athenians are a different people. The Athenians don't have good farmland, but they have a good harbor, okay? And the territory around them, it's mountainous. So they can't really grow crops. But they are able to grow a crop called olives, okay? So they have a lot of olive trees. And so what happens is the Athenians have no choice but to be expansionists, okay?

So they develop a really strong navy, and they focus on trade and piracy. And that's how they sustain themselves over time. So whereas the Spartans are conservative, the Athenians are both open and expansionists. And also, what's really important to understand is that if you're a navy, you have to be a democracy. The rule in Greece is that if you fight for us, you can vote. You can speak in public. You can participate in politics. Now, Sparta was a land army with hoplites. Hoplites are elite soldiers. And as a result, they were an oligarchy, okay? Because only a few of them fought. But Athens was a democracy because it had a navy. In a navy, everyone could row, okay? To be a hoplite, you had to buy weaponry. You had to train for, like, decades. But the Athenians had a navy where anyone could just row, okay?

And so they were a democracy, alright? And so over time, because Athens is a democracy that's expanding, Sparta is a land power. Athens will start to increase in power. Sparta will decrease in power. And eventually, these two will come into conflict with each other, okay? It's something called the Peloponnesian War. Eventually, this gives rise to Thebes. And eventually, over time, these three states, Athens, Thebes, and Sparta, will reach an equilibrium, okay? So similar to the warring states where they intermarry each other and they use war as a way to resolve their domestic tensions as opposed to trying to conquer each other. And this gives opportunity for a new power to arise. That was previously thought of as backward, poor, and isolated. And this power is called Macedonia. So what Macedonia is going to do is, they're going to take all the major military innovations of Sparta, Thebes, and Athens to create the world's most powerful army, okay?

And what else they're going to do is, they're going to recruit a lot of talent from these places. And then what's going to happen is that Macedonia is going to come and conquer the entire Greek mainland. The Macedonians will be the first to unite Greece, okay? Now, who's doing all this? His name is Philip II, okay? Philip II is probably the greatest military genius, one of the greatest military geniuses in human history. But we don't remember him because he has a son who's actually more famous than he is. And his name is who? Alexander the Great. Why is Alexander the Great more famous? Because Alexander the Great will take everything that Philip II built, and he will use it to conquer Persia, okay? And then what will happen is that as this system reaches another equilibrium, a new power will arise that will overflow this entire system, and this power is called Rome, okay?

Which we will discuss next class, okay? So you see how this pattern works, right? It's a consistent pattern throughout human history, alright? Okay, so what happened is that Alexander the Great will conquer the Persian Empire, alright? Where's the Persian Empire? Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, this is Persia, okay? So this is like the entire world. And like this small army, okay? It's not even the entire Greek army, it's basically the Macedonians only. This small army, the Macedonians, they're able to come, and they're able to conquer all of it, okay? And the question then is how? Well, the same reason why the Qing was able to conquer the Zhao, the Wei, and the Chu, right? Because of elite competition, elite overproduction within these areas, because the elites have no loyalty, so a lot of these elites were switching sides over time. So what probably happened was that these certain elites invited Alexander to come over, and then they switched sides.

So he was very quickly able to bulldoze. Also remember that when you reach an equilibrium, you become lazy, stupid, and arrogant, right? So this guy Darius, he is now the king of kings, okay? He's leading the Persians. And he always believed that at some point, Alexander would stop, okay? He'd be like, you know what, you have Egypt, you have the Levant, you have Anatolia, you have parts of Mesopotamia, you know what I'll do? I'll give you all this territory, plus I'll give you half my treasury. So Darius thought he could just bribe Alexander, and his father, Philip II, would have been like, that's a great deal, I'm happy. Sure. But Alexander was not like that, okay? Alexander is considering himself the son of God. And you will discover that all these great conquerors believe that they are divinity, that they are the son of God, and they came on earth in order to unify the world, okay?

Genghis Khan was like this, Julius Caesar was like this, Napoleon was like this. All these great conquerors are unlimited. Like, their appetite for conquest is insatiable. So, and this was unimaginable for these people. Like, we're giving you all the money in the world. And Alexander's like, that's not enough, okay? We'll give you the entire world. That's not enough, man. I want it all. So he kept on going. And he killed Darius, sorry, and then Darius died, and he conquered the entire Persian empire. The problem, though, is that Alexander was being co -opted by the Persian elite. Remember, it was part of the Persian elite that invited Alexander to come over, and a lot of the Persian elite were switching sides. So Alexander was incorporating more and more of the Persian elite into his army, as well as into his administration. And so his Macedonian army is unhappy about this. So they get together, and they assassinate him, okay?

And now the world is divided among his generals, okay? And this creates what we call the Hellenistic Age, okay? The world of the Greeks. And what is special about this world is now all three major cultures that came after the collapse of the Bronze Age, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Persians, come together in what we call syncretism. Syncretism just means a combining of religions to create the basis for Western civilization, okay? The syncretism will also give birth to a new religion that forever changes the world, and it is called Christianity, okay? So Christianity comes from a merger of these three major worldviews, okay? Now, once the Greeks conquer the world, they have a problem, which is there's not that many of them. Okay? So how do they control the world? Well, they control the world through religion, through culture. So what they will do is, a man

named Aristotle, who is a Macedonian, and like, this is something that you do not learn in history class, and it is such an important fact, okay? But the important fact is this. For the second, the man who conquered Greece, an Aristotle, considered one of the most famous philosophers in human history, they were childhood philosophers. Best friends, okay? They grew up together. And it's something that you will never ever learn in school, okay? But it's a very important fact that you need to understand. So another way of saying this is that the Macedonians had to plan to conquer the world for a long, long time. So what would happen is that Philip II would go to Greece to learn all the military innovations, but Aristotle would go to learn all the intellectual innovations of Greece. So his teacher was Plato. Okay? So he learned from Plato at the academy. And what Aristotle will do is he will take Greek knowledge and will systemize it into a knowledge of empire.

Okay? So what do I mean by that? All right. So we discussed Plato. We discussed how for Plato what matters is the spirit, the mind, okay? The soul, the immaterial. So this is the good or the god, the good. And the good emanates and creates the shadow world, which is the world that we live in. But our goal in life is to return to the good by seeking knowledge, by learning truth, by learning something called sacred geometry. So for Plato, sacred geometry are these shapes that underpin reality. Okay? So once you're able to master sacred geometry, you're able to master the fabric of the universe. And so that's what Plato taught. Now, if you're an empire, you don't want this crap. Okay? Why? Because as an empire, you want to maximize the energy of each individual. You want the person to work

as hard as possible to make as much money as possible because that energy then can be sucked up by the empire. Okay? If you're just sitting around reading books, we don't want that crap. Okay? So now what Aristotle has to do is create a new philosophy that counters Plato. Actually Aristotle probably didn't create this. He probably stole it from someone else. Okay? But the philosophy is very simple. For Aristotle, he doesn't talk about the spirit world. He only talks about the material world. Okay? For Aristotle, what makes the world move is cause and effect. So I push you, you move forward, you move forward, you bump into someone else and that person bumps into someone else. Okay? Cause and effect. Now, this theory implies that there must have been a god called a prime mover. Okay? Because someone must have been the first to move things. And that person must have been God. Okay?

But what's important in this idea is the prime mover doesn't matter because if the prime mover is the first to move, we don't have to worry about him anymore. Okay? All we have to worry about is the goal. The end. Okay? We don't have to worry about the beginning. We have to worry about the end. What is the end? The end is something called telos. Telos. Okay? Purpose. Okay? And what this means is that we're all here to achieve our purpose in life. Okay? So, you are students. What's your purpose? To learn. So, if you learn, if you learn, you become a good student because you're fulfilling your purpose. I'm a teacher. My purpose is to teach as well as I can. Okay? So, work hard and produce energy for the empire. Okay? So, this is the Aristotle idea. And this is important because this conflict between Plato and Aristotle is really the underlying conflict of philosophy.

Okay? We'll see this all the time. We will see this emerge in Europe. And so, Plato becomes what we call the rationalist. So, Descartes. And Aristotle becomes what we call the empiricist. Okay? So, please remember this conflict empiricist. All right? Plato believes in mind over matter. Aristotle says mind doesn't matter. Let's focus on matter. Okay? That's all that matters. I don't know mine. Let's just focus on matter. Okay? And the British Empire will adopt this idea. In fact, all empires will adopt this idea, including the American Empire. All right? Okay? Any questions before we go to the PowerPoint? Okay, this is all clear. Okay? All right. So, let's go to the PowerPoint. The Greek Legacy. Okay. All right. So, as I discussed the geography of Greece is really important. So, Greece is a very poor place that is mountainous and hilly. So, it's almost impossible for an empire to develop in Greece because there's not enough wealth, there's not enough resources to support an empire.

So, during this time, there are thousands of policies that are in conflict with each other and this allows for massive innovation. What's also important about Greece is that it is by the sea. Which allows Greece to access different parts of the world. Okay? If you cross the Aegean you get into Persia which is the wealthiest part of the world. The Mediterranean gives access to Egypt as well as to Northern Africa as well. Okay? So, Greece really benefited from this geography and that's why Greece was so innovative because it can actually steal knowledge from Egypt. It steals a lot of knowledge from Egypt. Okay? It's something that is not really knowledge but you can see how close Egypt is. Okay? So, the Greeks stole a lot of knowledge from Egypt and from Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia. But they also steal knowledge from Northern Europe as well.

Okay? So, remember that the two major city states are Sparta and Athens. Thebes is the third major city state. Macedonia is up here somewhere. Sorry, where's Macedonia? Around here somewhere. And, the thing about Macedonia is that throughout most of this history it doesn't really matter. And, throughout most of this history it's actually a subject of Persia. It's a very mountainous area and so it was poor backwards for the longest time. Okay? Okay. So, this is a map of Sparta. Now, Sparta becomes the military power of the Greeks because as you can see the Peloponnese it's pretty flat which allows the Greeks to take over So, the Peloponnese had to conquer the people and turn them into slaves called the Helots. And, their main concern in life became how do we keep the Helots under control because they're outnumbered ten to one. Okay? So, the Helots were both the major resource of Sparta but they're also the major danger to Sparta and Sparta didn't really care about anyone else.

So, the Spartans were concerned first and foremost about how to turn their boys into warriors. And so, the first thing they did that's most important is they took the children away at age six or seven or five. Okay? Because remember we discussed this previously if you want people to be great warriors you have to create anxiety in them. Okay? If they are loving people they don't want to kill other people. But if they are divorced from their parents they have conflict with their parents they don't really like life they're really good at killing. Okay? So, these boys were taken away from parents at age five or six and then they were put with other boys where they were beat up every day. They were beat up every single day. When they were 14, 15 they had a mentor who was like maybe 30 years old and they became lovers.

Okay? They built a real camaraderie fraternity in the army. And then in 1819 the initiation ceremony where at night they would hide in the fields and wait for a helot a slave to break curfew. Okay? If you stay outside if you stay outside beyond sunset then you broke the law. And so what these soldiers would do is they would hide wait for a helot to break curfew and then go and slit the guy's throat. Okay? And that was basically the graduation ceremony for the Spartans. This is a brutal brutal people. But guess what guys? The Romans were the same thing. The Aztecs were the same thing. The Americans are the same thing. Okay?

All right.

So what's important to understand is that at this time in history the Greeks are developing massive innovation in military warfare because they're always at war with each other. And the major innovation is called the hoplites. Okay? The hoplites is basically to create a wall together so you can bow those over your enemy. Also in this time in history the Persians are developing horse archers. And this is a major military innovation for them. What's really important for us to understand is that they these two innovations happen because of their distinct geography. You couldn't have horse archers in Greece because the land is too hilly. The land is too poor to support horse archery. Okay? You couldn't have hoplites in Persia because the land is too wide. Okay? So what this means is that yes Persia is the dominant empire in the world but when they go to Greece to attack the Greeks they cannot use their horse archers which is their major military innovation.

And as a result the Greeks are able to use hoplites and bulldoze over the Persians. So this is the Battle of Marathon which is the first great military engagement between the Greeks and the Persians. The Greeks again the Athenians especially the Athenians they're going and causing a lot of problems for Persians. They are committing piracy. They're also going around and encouraging Greeks under the Persian rule to not pay taxes. Greeks do not like to pay taxes. It's still true even today. Okay? Greeks hate paying taxes. And so this is the first major military confrontation between the Athenians and the Persians called the Battle of Marathon. And this is 490 BCE and the Athenians won because as I told you the Persians use horse archers. They can't use horse archers in Greece. They're forced to use infantry. But when it comes to infantry versus infantry the Greeks are the best at that.

So avoid head -on collisions with the Greeks. Okay? All right. So this will lead to a series of wars between Persia and Greece. And what will happen is that there will be two major invasions and they will both fail. Okay? The one that I'm most interested in is the purple. Okay? This is the last major invasion of the Persians into Greece. What will happen is that they will create this land bridge okay? On the Bosphorus and they will they basically have ships as a land bridge and they will cross over and this leads to the famous battle of Ferberpili. Okay? You may have seen the movie 300 where 300 Spartans stood against like you know a lot of Persians. Well the Persians eventually crush the Spartans and what they will do is they will take Leonidas who's the king of the Spartans and they will cut off his head and put him on a pike.

Okay? And that this is considered a major insult to the Greeks. Then what they will do is they will go to Athens which is here and they will burn down Athens. And at this point the war should be over right? But what happens is the Athenians are like you know what we're a polis. A polis is not a place it's a people. So what we'll do is we'll get another ship and sail off. And the Persians are like you can't do that man. Athenians are like yeah we can man. So Athenians are sail off and the war continues. Okay? Athens should have been destroyed but it's not destroyed. And at this point the Persians have won the war. And all the Persians have to do is stay where they are and lend their navy okay? They have a massive navy into Sparta because Sparta has a weakness right? Sparta has helots.

So all they do is lend in Sparta and the helots will rise up and the war is over. Game over. Okay? The problem with empires is they are lazy stupid and arrogant. Okay? So Xerxes who is leading this invasion he thinks that you know what this strategy of winning the war through attrition is not honorable. Because I want to go back and build a monument to myself. Okay? So I want to face the Greeks in a major confrontation. And this confrontation is called the Battle of Salamis. Okay? The Battle of Salamis. And as I where is Salamis? Um yeah right here. Okay? And this is considered the greatest naval battle in human history because it forever changed the course of human history. Now at this point I keep on saying this the war is over. You don't have to do anything. Just lend troops into Sparta the Peloponnese and the helots will rise up and destroy the Spartans and the war is over.

You've conquered all of Greece. Okay? Do not risk your navy in a military confrontation. So of course the Persians decide we're going to risk our navy. And so this leads to the Battle of Salamis which ever again forever changed the course of human history. All right? Um so this this is another map showing you what what happens. Okay? And now we are in the Battle of Salamis. Um and we know about the Battle of Salamis Salamis because of a name named Herodotus uh uh Herodotus who wrote a book called Histories and he's considered a thought of history because he wrote the first historical work. What he did is he basically went around Greece and collected memories of the Persian Wars um a few decades after the fact and he wrote it all down. Okay? Um if you read the histories it's really funny it's really interesting but we have to take it with a grain of salt.

Okay? So he writes about the Battle of uh uh Thermopylae. Okay? And again at this point in his history the war is over. You don't have to do anything. Ah but again Xerxes says I want a monument. Okay? I want to witness a great clavic battle between my navy and the Greek navy. Okay? So he sends his navy into battle and of course they get destroyed because again it's really important to not do that because the Greeks are heavily armored and you're not. Okay? So um this is a Greek uh trireme. Okay? So Greek trireme the thing to recognize about is it's mainly soldiers so they're really fast. They have some uh soldiers on top uh marines on top. Okay? So they're really good at ramming you and destroying your ship. The leader of the Athenian navy his name is Femescicles. And Femescicles is one of the greatest generals in Athenian history.

He's actually the guy who proposed that Athens build a navy. Um Athens discovered a silver mine and they used all the silver to build their navy to prepare for the Persian invasion. Okay? And it was Femescicles who led the Athenians against the Persians. Okay? And this is what the battle looks like. Okay? So you have you still have this massive Persian army converging against the Athenians. But again guys don't fight the Greeks head on. Okay? So they're like you know we're going to fight them head on. So you see this massive army converging against the Athenians. And now they're they're they're converging against each other. Okay? And the Athenians destroy them. Okay? Yeah. Don't fight the Greeks head on. All right? And now the entire Persian navy is scattered. The war is over now. Because now the Persians have lost the navy which means that they cannot resupply.

They have no more mobility. And so what will happen next is that the so yeah the Athenians destroy the Persian navy. What happened next is the Spartans will not will not destroy the remaining Persian forces in Greece. Okay? This is why you don't do I can't I'm sorry. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Okay? They won the war and they screwed it up. Okay? Once you lose the navy you can't resupply. Once you can't resupply you've lost the war. All right? So this is from Herodotus. All right? So what's going to happen is the war the battle of Salamis is lost. And but you know the Persians still have this huge army in Greece. And so the Athenian sorry the Persian king Xerxes he's like I'm out of here man. You know I came here to burn down Athens. I've done that. I'm going to go home now. And I'm going to let my general Mardonius take care of the Greeks.

Okay? So Mardonius is like you know I don't really want to fight these guys anymore. So Mardonius sends an envoy to the Athenians and said you know what the king of kings Xerxes says this we're really sorry we burned down your city. Really sorry we burned down your temple but we'll give you a lot of money. So please stop fighting us. Okay? And this is what the envoy says to the Athenians. Okay. Can you read please?

Why are you so mad as to love your war against the king? For neither can you get the better off him nor can you resist him forever. You are acquainted with the multitude of Xerxes' army and their achievements. You have heard of the force that is even now with me so that even if you should get the better of us and conquer of which however you can have no hope if you think soberly another much more numerous will come against you.

Okay. So this is the idea of empire right? Just mass organization and death. We are infinite in our resources. We are infinite in our wealth. We can just throw army after army after army against you. Athenians you're like this small little city. Okay? Give up already. And the Athenians

we ourselves are aware of this that the power of the medes Medes.

Medes is Persian okay?

Oh medes is far greater than ours so that there was no need to insult us with that but nevertheless being ardent for liberty we will defend ourselves in such manner as we are able but do not you attempt to persuade us to come to terms with a barbarian for we will not be persuaded. Go then and tell Mardonius that the Athenians say so long as the sun shall continue in the same course as now we will never make terms with Xerxes but we will go out to oppose him trusting in the gods who fight for us and in the heroes whose temples and images he holding them in no reverence has burned.

So these two passages show you the difference between empire and the borderlands right? The empire is about mass organization death. The borderlands the Greeks are about openness The Athenians say to the Persians we know you're bigger than us we know you're stronger than us but we believe in liberty we believe in each other we believe in our gods and therefore we will fight you to the end okay?

Alright

so what will happen is that now that Xerxes is gone now that the navy is scattered Mardonius is kinda screwed okay? And so what will happen is the Spartans face off against Mardonius in the battle of Paltia and they will destroy Mardonius Mardonius is killed and so one of the soldiers says to the king of the Spartans Pausanias Pausanias your uncle Leonidas was killed by the Persians and they put his head on a spike why don't you return the favor and put the head of Mardonius on a spike on a pike and show it to the world and show how great the Greeks are and this is Pausanias' response to this okay? Can you read?

Pausanias answered I admired your good intentions and your foresight but you have failed to form a right judgment for having highly extolled me my country and my achievement you have thrown all down against me to nothing by advising me to insult a dead body and saying that if I do so I shall increase my fame which is more fit for barbarians to do than Greeks who are poor even in them I cannot therefore in this matter please the uh

uh Agenitai

Agenitai nor those who nor those to whom such things should be pleasing it is sufficient for me to please the Spartans by doing and speaking what is right as Leonidas whose death you exhort me to avenge I affirm that he has been amply avenged both he and all the others who fell at this day have been avenged by the countlessness of these men however do not you hereafter come to me with such a proposal nor give such advice and be thankful that you escaped unpunished okay

so what he's saying is that we won because the gods favor us why do the gods favor us because we are virtuous because we are loyal to the gods we're loyal to ourselves we are not the barbarians we are not the Persians we are the Spartans okay so you can see at this time in history how for the Greeks what matters is their virtue their faith and their loyalty okay but guess what this all changes when they become an empire okay so I want you guys to remember this and what we're going to do now is we're going to compare contrast this when what happens when they become an empire okay um okay so the Persians are scattered and they're never they're never going to come back and now it's the Athenian empire and so what the Athenians propose is you know what it's always possible that the Persians will want to return so we

need to set up an alliance to defend ourselves against the Persians okay and they call it the Delian League why because they agree that they will pull the resources together as a defense fund against the Persians so think of like NATO okay the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and they agree that they will put all their gold in a place called Delos okay an island in Delos somewhere um yeah it's somewhere yeah it's right here it's a small island in Delos right here okay you guys see it and so no one's no one's allowed to touch this so what happens is that the Athenians are like you know what it's probably safer with us so the Athenians basically steal all this gold it's not it's no longer a alliance but a empire the Athenian empire where everyone now has to pay tribute to Athens okay so all that's happened is before these Greek city -states had

to pay tribute to the Persians and now they have to pay tribute to the Athenians okay it's probably a worse deal for everyone and what do the Athenians do with all this gold they spend it on this okay it's called the Parthenon it's still there in Athens if you want to go visit it it's lost it's former glory okay but this is what the Parthenon looked like during the age of Pericles during the age of the Athenian empire okay this is a statue of Athena it's pure gold they didn't have to do this but they were like you know what we're going to enjoy our empire they built the Athenian statue okay and so at this time in history the Athens is beautiful it's wealthy and what that does is it makes you lazy arrogant and stupid okay all right so this is Thucydides and he wrote um the Peloponnesian war um and he discusses

why Athens went to war with Sparta okay and what he says is what's because Sparta is the hegemon and Athens is the rising power and therefore they were bound to clash okay that's not what happened Athens was the hegemon Athens was the empire and its allies were rebelling against it and it would drag Sparta into the war okay that's what that's what what really happened all right so this is what the war looks like the Athenians have their empire the Spartans have their alliances the allies are going to try to break out of the Athenian empire okay and they're going to drag Sparta into the war Sparta does not want to fight Athens but Athens forces Sparta to fight it because Athens is very expansionist okay so you can see how this red is now encroaching on the Peloponnese which is historically uh Spartan uh territory right now the problem is that remember Sparta has

a weakness the helots if the Athenians ever choose to land forces on its coast the helots would all rise up together and overwhelm Spartans okay so Sparta must protect its periphery from uh Athenian encroachment so this is what leads to the war okay this doesn't make sense okay Sparta does not want this war the Athenians are extremely aggressive they're expanding everywhere and Sparta is forced into this war and the allies use this opportunity in order to try to break out of the Athenian uh empire and so most of the Peloponnesian war is actually between Athens and its former colonies and allies okay because Athens is a mafia state now what's important for us to understand is that because of the nature of this war the way they fought the war was strange okay so Sparta is not trying to destroy Sparta it's really easy for Athens to destroy Sparta right all Athens has to do

is land forces in Sparta and let the helots rise up but Athens doesn't want to do that because they want to destroy the equilibrium okay you don't know what would happen the helots were to take control of Sparta they might come after you Athens okay so Athens is a status quo power therefore it wants to maintain the equilibrium now let me ask you this question how could Sparta defeat Athens very easily right they could just free the helots right now their army rises 10 times they can now overwhelm Athens but Sparta doesn't want to do that because it would destroy their equilibrium okay it would destroy their social order it would destroy their oligarchy it would create a democracy basically and they don't they don't want that okay so they're trying to fight the war in a way that allows to maintain the equilibrium and that's why the war is fought in a very strange

way okay they're not trying to destroy each other they're trying to maintain the balance of power what happened is that Sparta will eventually defeat Athens but it's just not to destroy Athens because if you destroy Athens then Thebes and other powers could arise which could challenge Sparta okay all right all right so the leader of Athens at this time is Pericles and Pericles is famous for oration which is considered like the most famous speech in um western civilization and I I'm sorry uh but in university they will teach you that the funeral oration is a speech about democracy it's not a speech about democracy if you actually read it it's a speech about empire okay um for whatever reason the British and Americans believe that Athens was the greatest democracy in the world and they can do no wrong no no no it's an empire and it's concerned only with maintaining its empire okay so

we're going to read from the funeral oration and the thing to remember about funeral oration is that Athens is not at war lots of Athenians are getting killed in this war and the custom is for uh there to be a massive state funeral to celebrate the war dead and to give a a speech to commemorate the war dead okay so we can't read all the speech but we have a very important paragraph in the speech okay all right

comfort therefore not condolence non

condolence okay

is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here numberless are the chances to which as they know the life of man is subject but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot of lot of death so glorious that which has caused your mourning yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their steed stead not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost but will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security okay

so he's talking to these uh parents whose sons are now dead okay and remember like during the Persian wars the Athenians were like we're a virtuous people we believe in liberty we believe in our gods we believe in each other and that's why we'll win this war okay now what Pericles is saying to these parents is you know what your sons were useless anyway but now they died for empire which is good right now you can be proud of your sons who are worthless but now that they died for empire we can celebrate them so what should you guys do you should have more children so that you can protect the empire okay all right that's what he's saying he's also saying to um the Athenians listen I know these men are dead and they have children but don't worry because what we're going to do is we will put these children into an into

an orphanage and raise them to be soldiers so that so that they can go and fight for the empire and die like their fathers okay this is now empire guys all right so um this is the plague of Athens so again what Pericles should be doing is embarking on a massive war of expansion against Sparta and Sparta would lose very quickly Pericles doesn't do that because he doesn't want to fight the Spartans if he defeats the Spartans it creates an imbalance of power in the Greek mainland okay so what he does is he forces everyone to seek shelter within Athens because remember Sparta is a land power so he's going to face the Sparta on land so he forces everyone to go into Athens and hide behind the city walls guess what happens if you put a lot of people in one place you get the plague guys okay this kills a third of the

Athenian population including Pericles and his two sons all right so uh can you can you read this so what's happening is that you have these these different islands who are either rebelling against the Athenians or who say the Athenians we don't want to be part of this stupid war okay Thelma says too bad guys okay keep on going

Athenians for ourselves we shall not trouble you with spacious specious specious pretenses either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Medes or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us and make a long speech which would not be which not be believed and in return we hope that you instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the

Lacedonians these are the Spartans okay

Lacedonians although they are colonists or that you have done us no wrong will aim at what is feasible holding in view that holding in view the real sentiments of us both since you know as well as we do that right as the world goes is only in question between equals and power while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must okay

so you know the Persians when they went to the Athenians basically said we are a vast empire you can't defeat us and let's just be friends and now that the Athenians have defeated the Persians now they are the empire basically what they say to everyone else is we are not going to bother trying to be your friends we are not going to bother trying to convince you that we are right and you are wrong we are just stronger than you so shut up and obey okay this is the entire point of the Athenians the Athenians are even worse than the Persians okay remember the Athenians fought the Persians for liberty once they become an empire and others want liberty too bad because the Athenians are stronger might makes right okay alright um so this war will drag on and because as an empire you become lazy stupid and arrogant the Athenians will do stupid things

like go invade a people that don't even not even a part of this war okay Sicily so remember um the Athenians it's a mafia state what they do is they collect tribute from the allies but as this war is striking on they need more and more money so they decide to go conquer conquer more and more people so they decide let's go conquer Sicily because it's very wealthy they send a massive expedition against Sicily they get they lose they drag Syracuse which has a navy into the war now Sparta Syracuse combined against the Athenians and the Persians come in as well okay and the allies turn against Spar Athens and what they will do is they will blockade Athens from uh Phrase which is where Athens gets most of its wheat okay so now Athens is going to starve so Athens surrenders and this ends the Peloponnesian war and this time remember the Spartans they

don't choose to because they're not interested in winning the war they're only interested in maintaining the status quo equilibrium okay and of course this gives rise to Macedonia okay now remember this is really important for the second what he will do is he will go into the Greek mainland and learn all the major innovations of the Thebans the Athenians and the Spartans and he will create something called the Macedonian Phalanx which becomes the most dominant military force in history at this point he has a childhood best friend Aristotle who will go to Athens and learn from Plato and he will systemize all Greek knowledge so that he can take this knowledge and turn it into a tool of empire okay okay so um Philip II will focus on military conquest of the world but Aristotle will focus on cultural imperialism okay all right so what makes Philip II such a genius is to understand listen

the Persians have their horse archers the Athenians and the Spartans have their hoplites okay I'm sorry but what I can do is I can take all these major innovations together and combine them into one military package and that allows me for coronation okay so I can have flexibility and mobility in my army the problem though is like for that to happen you need to make sure that every soldier is highly motivated that every soldier wants to fight now traditionally um if you have an army different sections of your army get special privileges okay usually the cavalry because these are aristocrats they get all the privileges and everyone else their life sucks but what Philip II understood is like no no no I need to make sure that everyone is happy so he focused on increasing the morale of his soldiers and it's very easy guys okay all you do is be meritocratic if a soldier

is doing a good job you promote him if a soldier is doing a bad job you demote him and you think that's easy but it's not because what it means is it will overturn the social hierarchy okay because the aristocrats are just used to like doing whatever they want but Philip II was insistent no no no every soldier will be treated fairly this is going to be a meritocracy and this is what allowed him to create the world's greatest army okay now once you have these different forces in place you can now have major military innovation and what is major military innovation was something called the anvil and hammer okay basically what would happen is like your infantry will lock with the other infantry in place okay it's called the anvil and then what will happen is your cavalry will sweep in from behind to smash the enemy cavalry it's called the hammer and this

is what allowed Alexander the Great to conquer all of Persia because no other army had witnessed such a powerful force and you can't possibly escape once the infantry locks you in place you can't escape then the cavalry comes in and smashes you apart okay the anvil and the hammer so what happened is that um Philip II will go conquer Greece because remember at this time Greece are divided into city states they're all fighting each other they're not interested in actually conquering each other they're just interested in maintaining equilibrium so Philip II is like you know what screw the system I'm going to come break all the rules and I'm going to conquer everyone so this is the battle of Charania which is where he defeats a combined force of the Thebans and Athenians and now he controls all of mainly Greece and now he's ready to do what is what he really wants which is

to conquer Persia why because Persia is where the money is right Greece is poor Persia is wealthy therefore I'm going to take this army and go conquer Persia um so this is the year 336 when Philip II has conquered all of mainland Greece and he's now ready to invade Persia in fact he has also spies throughout Persia he also has diplomats throughout Persia negotiating with the local elites okay so he's now ready to go and conquer uh Persia uh unfortunately he gets killed okay so he goes to the wedding of his daughter and his bodyguard kills him there's a little debate as to who killed this but the answer is pretty simple okay his wife his wife Olympias why would Olympias who is the mother of Alexander the Great kill her husband it's really simple um if you're a king you marry a lot of foreign women for alliances Olympias is not Macedonian and um

so there's a lot of people in the Macedonian court who dislike her Alexander the Great is here to the throne but as a young man he was notorious for being a thug okay he's not like Philip II Philip II is very deliberate he's very strategic Alexander the Great is basically a thug so Philip II was worried about about Alexander the Great so later in his life he married a Macedonian woman and they had a son together okay what this means now is that this son is now here to the throne and not Alexander the Great Olympias taught Alexander the Great from day one that you are special Alexander you are not the son of Philip II you're the son of God son of God okay and so Olympias when she felt that Philip II was about to steal the throne from Alexander she had him killed and we know because after the Philip Philip II

was killed who else did she kill the wife the new Macedonian wife as well as the son right okay so this is a nasty person Alexander the Great will take Philip's great army and he will go conquer Persia with it okay and this is what his conquest path looks like he will do this in like 10 years time he'll conquer like the entire world basically in 10 years time what's important is the way that he moves okay he moves really quickly with small army which tells us that he needed cooperation from local elites okay remember at this time in history Persia has reached an equilibrium it's stagnant there's no innovation going on there's a lot of competition between upper nobility and lower nobility okay so the lower nobility part was probably helping Alexander conquer Persia two things I want to keep you to understand about this map first of all is like the moment that

Alexander reaches Persia he goes to Troy why does he go to Troy because you know because Achilles went to Troy so Alexander saw himself as the new Achilles okay in fact he had memorized the Iliad and he took the Iliad with him wherever he went okay so that's the first thing I want you to appreciate also what he did during the war was he took one of his enemies tied his enemy to the back of his chariot and rolled the guy around okay just like Achilles did to Hector the other thing that's really important he conquers Egypt and then he decides to go all the way over here to Ammon okay why does he do that because there's an oracle at Ammon and he spent a few days with this oracle and this oracle told him his secret the secret is this you are not the son of Philip II you're the son of God

which who is Zeus Ammon okay so Zeus is the king of the gods in the good tradition Ammon is king of the gods in the Egyptian tradition so in other words Alexander was born to rule the world he was destined to conquer the world and this explains why when he conquered most of Persia and Darius said to him you know what here's a billion dollars go away Alexander's like no screw you I want all of this okay not only that but even after he conquered Persepolis which is the capital of the Persian Empire he kept on going to India okay the only reason why he stopped is his soldiers got sick of fighting um the other thing about Alexander that's really important is he was known for his atrocities so he burned down the city of Thebes and he burned down the city of Persepolis why would he do that well um if you understood

that he saw himself as son of God then it's possible we will never know okay it's possible like burning down Thebes and burning down Persepolis were ritual sacrifices necessary to prove that he was the son of God so yeah he did a lot of like bad things but there's really nothing um random of what he did he thinks he the things he did were for diplomatic military purposes okay

all right

so um this is a map of his conquest okay um this is the burning of Persepolis you can actually still visit Persepolis uh today in Iran okay um what he was doing towards conquest was that he was slowly killing off his father's most loyal man so Parmenion who was um Philip II's top general Alexander killed and then Cletus who was also not top general he killed as well okay now historically we remember these events as um random acts of violence but they're not okay Alexander slowly needed to kill off his father's man so that he could create his own empire okay um and so what happened was that eventually the other generals were like you know eventually Alexander's gonna kill us as well so they conspired and poisoned him and now what they will do is they will fight amongst themselves and create the Greek world okay it's divided into um four major parts and

the four major parts are Ptolemy takes Egypt which is the wealthiest part of the empire um then you have Macedon then you have Anatolia okay all right so the problem though is like once you conquer most of the world um you have to rule over the world and there aren't that many Greeks so what they will do is they will build Greek cities to settle their veterans and invite more Greeks to come help them govern um um the empire but they also need to recruit bureaucrats okay so um they recruit these Persian bureaucrats because they're very effective at bringing Jews as well into the empire okay because Jews are a foreign people okay because remember the because these people the Greeks need to um to control and manage their empire okay all right so what I want you to focus now is on Egypt okay because historically Egypt was the center of the world it

was the cultural capital of the world and Egypt helped to help give science and math to Greece okay now the Greeks are like controlling Egypt and Egypt was like wait a minute here you guys were barbarians now you're controlling us why is this happening so now the Greeks need to explain what's happening and so what they do is they create cultural imperialism all right okay uh this is um the Greek world so they're building Greek cities all around um the world and these cities are very similar there's an amphitheater sorry uh this is a better map okay this is program on okay so you can see what it looks like you have an amphitheater which is where they stage Greek theater you have a gymnasium you have um an agora like they're like if you go to these cities they're all very similar to each other okay and this is Greek art which takes over

the world as well all right let's just tell them in a second and he and his father tell them in the first they will create something called the Library of Alexandria okay the Library of Alexandria what what it will do is it will take all the Greek knowledge in the world it will systemize it and systemize it as textbooks to be taught throughout the world okay so this is really a university um to show you how wealthy the Egyptians are the uh when they built the Library of Alexandria they um needed original manuscripts and so they said to the Athenians hey can we borrow some original plays and the Greeks are like no you can't uh because we really love our Euripides and our Ishlas and Sophocles but you can't just take this stuff this stuff this stuff is priceless and the Egyptians said you know what we'll do we'll give you like a billion

dollars as a deposit and the Athenians well that's a lot of money oh sure okay all right so the Athenians lend these scrolls to the Egyptians um in Alexandria to copy and then after some time the Athenians said said to uh Ptolemy hey man give give us back the scrolls and then Ptolemy's like keep the money that's how wealthy they were they had all the money in the world they didn't care keep the money ten million dollars keep the money man and the Athenians were pissed okay they were really really pissed about this don't ever trust uh uh yeah anyway this is the library of Alexandria it's part of something called the Museon okay so what's really important for us to understand is that a university is not really about education it's not really about literacy culture it's really about a tool of empire to um create a cultural understanding of the world that allows

the empire to rule over people okay so the library of sorry the library of Alexandria is an example of this because remember the Greeks are ruling over the Egyptians and the Egyptians are like why are you ruling over us and the um Greeks are like because we're culturally superior to you and how do you prove it by uh censoring Egyptian culture okay by by um downplaying Egyptian culture and by uh upplaying by promoting Greek culture okay this is cultural imperialism now this is really important as part of the cultural imperialist project um the Egyptians uh under Ptolemy they also started to work with the Jews okay why because Egypt Egypt needs to control the Levant as well okay who's the Levant the Jews the Jews are problematic because they were loyal to the Persian Empire okay so how do you make them loyal to you well you bribe them how do you bribe them by

getting their priest by saying to the priest you know what we love your tradition we love your culture let us translate your bible into Greek so that we can celebrate your bible and spread it around the world and this is what we call the Septuagint the Septuagint okay it's really important uh in our history um and so the Jews were like yeah that's a great great thing but not only that but because um of the library of Alexandria a lot of Jews were going to Alexandria to help contribute to the scholarship there okay so eventually a third of the people of Alexandria will become Jews and the Jews are spreading throughout the Greek world and so now what you're seeing is a massive syncretism between all three major religions okay the Greeks the Jews and the Persians because the Persians are are administrators in this empire uh the Greeks are ruling this empire and the

Jews are helping build this empire okay so this will merge worldviews and this will give us Christianity okay all right so that is the Greek world all right um any questions was was this clear okay so what will happen is like next class we'll discuss Rome okay because Rome will now conquer this um empire and then this will allow for the rise of Christianity and we will do this next week okay so everything was clear today right okay