The Real History of Ancient Greece: Empire of Extremes | The Odyssey

Divide and rule. Its great writers founded Western literature. Its great philosophers transformed our lives. And its great princes conquered the known world. Ancient Greece was an empire of extremes. Revolutionary ideas spread by blood and conquest. Next on Empire Games. At the end of the 6th century BCE, Ancient Greece, a region situated at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, is ruled by city-states. They are often bitter rivals, but they're united by Greek language and writing, powerfully expressed in the epic poems of Homer. For the Greeks, Homer was a poet with a capital P. He was the yardstick against which all subsequent writers, poets, and philosophers were measured. His works became the standard for all philosophers, poets, and writers. He was known as a popular poet, who knew how to convey the highest Greek ideals. So his works also served as a sort of textbook, a type of schoolbook for every Greek person. The Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer's poetic tales of the mythical Trojan War, will inspire generations of Greek soldiers. The Trojan War is a kind of mother of all battles. For the Greeks, the formation of an identity is really important and is built in opposition to other cultures. The fact that the Greeks are better than the others is constructed in opposition. The others are the barbarians. Who are they? Those who do not speak Greek. So this Trojan War is like a clash of civilizations between the Greeks that are the true civilization and the barbarians. The Iliad opens at the end of the war as King Agamemnon lays siege to Troy. His greatest weapon is Achilles, the son of a human father and an immortal nymph. Achilles is the embodiment of Greek warrior ethos. Achilles is a demigod, the son of a goddess and a mortal, the son of Thetis and Peleus. Why almost immortal? Because when he was born, his mother plunged him into the waters of the river Styx to make him immortal. But to do it, she holds him from the heel and that little part of the body is then vulnerable. This has also become the expression Achilles' heel. For much of the Iliad, Achilles refuses to fight, bickering with King Agamemnon, but soon events force his hand. Achilles returns to battle only because his great friend, his best friend Patroclus, dies in battle wearing his weapons and he is furious and wants to avenge his death. With his great spear and armor forged by the god Hephaestus, Achilles enters battle. Homer revels in describing the gore of battle. So as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hooved stallions trampled shields and corpses, the axle under his chariot was splashed with blood, blood on the handrail sweeping round the car, sprays of blood shooting up from the stallion's hooves and churning, whirling rims, and the son of Peleus charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms. The Trojans are driven back inside the city walls by Achilles' divine slaughter, but King Priam's son Hector stays behind. Hector knows he must face Achilles or see his home destroyed. Achilles knows it is Hector who killed his friend, Patroclus. Here is his opportunity for vengeance. After some divine intervention, he understands that he must accept his destiny and then confronts Achilles in the open field in front of the walls of Troy with the only weapon available to him, a sword. But it's useless. He loses in the first clash. He doesn't plead for his life. That would be dishonorable. Instead, he begs Achilles not to ruin his body because keeping the body intact was crucial to a warrior. And so Hector dies, but not before warning Achilles that he too is fated to die. Achilles refuses and instead swears he'll desecrate Hector's body as vengeance for the death of Patroclus. He hooks Hector's body by the heel to his wagon and drags him through the field, destroying it. The violence is shocking to a modern reader, but for the Greeks it made perfect sense. Achilles is a Greek hero par excellence. This idea starts with the Iliad and crosses all of Greek history. Achilles will remain an example for everyone. He will be an example for Alexander the Great and then for the Roman emperors. Achilles is the incarnation of courage, virtue, and heroism. Homer's second great work, The Odyssey, takes place just after the Trojan War. In it, the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, journeys home to his wife, Penelope, who believes he is dead. After years at sea, encountering strange foreign lands, people, gods, and monsters, Odysseus returns to his great love. Odysseus was seen, was regarded, as the archetype of the explorer, of the sea man who was traveling around the Mediterranean in search of adventure, in search of new opportunities, exactly like the early Greeks were doing when they were exploring the Mediterranean in search of new lands where to settle down and establish their colonies. Achilles the warrior and Odysseus the explorer were mythic inspirations for ambitious Greeks. By the close of the 6th century BCE, Greece could look beyond its shores and dream of empire. When we think of Greece and we think of the main cities, probably the most common names that come to our mind are Sparta and Athens, and in fact both of these cities were already powerful in the 6th century. But let me add that at this time there was at least another third city that was part of this picture, and this was the city of Corinth. Corinth was a port city that had not just one but two ports, one looking toward the Aegean Sea, the other one facing the Ionian Sea. By 510 BCE, the Athenian named Cleisthenes provides a revolutionary new form of government, democracy, literally translated as power to people. He has been labeled the father of democracy because what he did was a very in-depth rearrangement of the social system in Athens. He split the ancient tribes based on the blood, based on the birth within certain families, and completely rearranged the population into new artificial tribes. These ten tribes were made by taking people from different regions within Athens and Attica and putting them together, totally disregarding their birth affiliation or their aristocratic or non-aristocratic birth. And this is really the element that changed how then Athenian politics worked. This stands in stark contrast to Sparta, ruled by kings elected from just two families. Sparta's society is built upon its warrior culture and the brutal suppression of a peasant class known as helots. They had an entire region with the entire population working for them, producing agricultural products, supporting the Spartans, and allowing the Spartans themselves then to be free from these more manual, more productive activities, and instead focus on war. In 490 BCE, Athens and Sparta are the main military powers in Greece. They will soon face an existential threat. A new empire has risen in the east, Persia. The Greeks must put aside their differences and fight for their homeland, or be trampled by an unstoppable army. In 490 BCE, loose confederations of city-states held sway in ancient Greece. But in the east, a conqueror unlike anything the Greek world has seen is on the rise, the Persian Empire. The Persians conquer and assimilate old kingdoms in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt. It is a huge empire, a crucible of languages and cultures, and is administered very well. It is centered on the king of kings, that is, the Persian king, who controlled the whole empire from the capitals of Persepolis, Susa, and Ecbatana. What was their vision of the Greeks? For them, compared to their gigantic empire, Greece was like a small province. The Persian king is Darius I. He bears a grudge against the city of Athens for aiding Greek cities on the coast of Turkey when they rebelled. In 490, Darius assembles an armada and sets sail. He believes if Athens is taken, the rest of Greece will fall like dominoes. After raiding the Cycladic islands, including Naxos, they direct to Athens, where they disembark on the coast. And at this point, the Athenians find themselves alone with the enemy on their territory. On the Persian side, an Athenian exile named Hippias acts as a guide for the Persian generals. Hippias was the son of the former tyrant of Athens, Peisistratus, and Hippias himself had been sent away from Athens with the help of Sparta. After his exile from Athens, he had sought refuge among the Persians, and now he was helping the Persians, sharing with them important strategic and logistic information about Attica and their territory. The Athenians are commanded by a group of ten generals, or strategi. Command rotates amongst them, but one stands out. Miltiadis. Miltiadis was himself the descendant of an important Athenian family who had been for several generations in charge of a satrapy in Thrace. So under Persian rule, they had controlled an important region in northern Greece, but when the family sought independence and tried to break away from the Persian control, they lost their kingdom, and Miltiadis went back to Athens, where he covered the important role of strategos. Miltiadis' father was murdered by Hippias and his brother, so for him, there's a personal stake in the battle. On the fields of Marathon, 10,000 Greeks face a massive Persian invasion force, 25,000 infantry and tens of thousands more in support. Miltiadis and other strategi know they need allies. They send word to Sparta, the chief military power in Greece. The courier, Philippides, runs 150 miles in two days to deliver the message to Sparta. The response is disappointing. The Spartans responded that they were involved in a very important religious festival, and for a religious taboo, they had to wait until the new moon before they could undertake any form of military action. At Marathon, the Athenians face a difficult choice. Wait for the Spartans to arrive to even the odds, or attack now and seize the initiative. The strategi really deferred to Miltiadis on this decision. Herodotus recounts a lot of discussion of when to attack, but eventually Miltiadis prevails upon his fellow generals, and the decision is made to attack before the Spartans arrive. Miltiadis gives the order to attack. The Persian center initially had a lot of success and pushed the Greeks back, but as the battle wore on, some key advantages took effect. The bronze armor of the Greek hoplites was extremely effective against the spears and arrows of the Persians. The Greek flags crush the Persians and envelop the center at which point they break. Without pity, the fleeing Persians are cut down. Over 6,000 are killed in the rout. The Greeks lose just 200. The fate of Hippias is unknown, but one thing is clear. Miltiadis is the great hero of Marathon. We must ask ourselves, how is it possible that such an army as large and armed as the Persian has been defeated by an army like the Greek one that was so outnumbered? We should think of the Persian army as a conscripted force. These soldiers fought because they were forced to. The Greeks fought for their freedom. They fought not only for their life. They knew if they were defeated, they would become slaves. The victors send word to Athens. Philippides, the same courier sent to Sparta, is once again given a message. According to legend, a person called Phidipides, or Philippides, there are different versions, is sent to Athens saying, We won! We won! He gets there, reports the victory, and dies. But this is a legend. The distance between Marathon and Athens is 26 miles, so the origin of the Marathon is here. The victory at Marathon is a turning point for the Greeks. Suddenly, their military prowess rivals that of the greatest empire on earth. Militate's moment of glory is brief. Following a failed campaign in 489 BCE, he falls from favor. In the vacuum, Themistocles rises to prominence. Themistocles does not come from an aristocratic family. In the Archaic Age, politicians come from aristocratic families. But we must remember that in 509 BCE, a new system is introduced in Athens, democracy. Themistocles is on the side of the lesser classes. Today it could be said he was from the far left. He defends the people. Themistocles pushes Athens to build up its navy, the surest way to repel foreign invaders from across the sea. Conservative Athenians lobby for maintaining their power on land. Chief among them, Themistocles' bitter rival, Aristides. In public, they debate military policy. But Plutarch records a private grievance, All this great enmity between them arose from a very boyish occasion, both being attached to the beautiful Stesalaus of Ceos. In 485 BCE, Themistocles wins out and Aristides is exiled. He carries through his policy to massively expand the Athenian navy. At this point, he convinces the Athenians to equip themselves with a fleet, and so they build 200 triremes. Themistocles' strategic decision is soon put to the test. In 480 BCE, the Persians return. Ten years after the Battle of Marathon, Xerxes I, who is the new king of Persia, succeeds his father Darius. He decides to avenge the defeat suffered by his father, so he organizes a great expedition with a huge fleet and an enormous army. Xerxes crushes opposition in Thrace and Macedonia. The fleet naturally follows the course along the coast, but the army has to march through a narrow pass. At Thermopylae, only a few soldiers at a time could pass. The Greeks understand this is a crucial point where they can not defeat, but slow down the army. It's the best Themistocles can do while a meaningful defense is organized. He calls on the Spartans for help. The Athenians convince the Spartans to join the war, saying, this danger is not only a threat to us, but a threat to all Greeks. Leonidas is one of the two kings of Sparta, and is sent. The Spartan government sends Leonidas with a group of 300 chosen soldiers, which could be called the royal guard, the Spartiates, who are the best of the Spartan army. They are not alone. Other soldiers, about 7,000, are sent to Thermopylae to slow down the passage of the Persian army. Their destiny is set. On this tiny strip of land, the 300 Spartans are destined to take part in one of the most famous battles in history. In 480 BCE, a small force of Greeks led by 300 Spartans face a massive Persian invasion force. The Spartan king Leonidas knows the mission is perilous. He cannot hope to defeat the Persians in pitched battle, but he can hold them off while their allies prepare a bigger defense to the south. We could actually look at this episode as a sort of a late attempt by the Spartans and Spartan tradition to wipe off what was perceived as a black mark in their record, because it was very well known that they had missed the opportunity to help the Greeks or the Athenians in a marathon. So in a certain sense, they underline their contribution, probably not exaggerating, but surely reinforcing the point. The Persian king Xerxes is cautious at first. It isn't until he learns of a secret path through the mountains that he commits his forces in full. Leonidas sends most of his army away. He and his personal bodyguard of 300 will fight to the bitter end. It is said that the mothers of the Spartans, when they went into battle, said with this or on this when giving them their shield. That means come back with this or on this, which means dead. At some point, a traitor named Ephialtes reveals to the Persians an alternate route. It's a kind of little path that allows them to almost surround, to surprise the Spartans and the rest of the Greek army. When Leonidas realizes that the Persians have discovered this passage, he understands they will not survive. The only thing they can do is slow down the Persian army. True to their warrior ethos, Leonidas and the 300 Spartans fight till the last man. To this day, a plaque at Thermopylae immortalizes them with a poem by Seminaris. Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie. From Thermopylae, Xerxes gains access to southern Greece and Athens. You have to imagine the Persian army marching through Attica. Once they defeated Leonidas, there was nothing to stop them from this march. And it was Themistocles who convinced the Athenians to abandon the city to the rage of the Persians and seek refuge on the island of Salamis. A frontal assault on entrenched Greek defenders will be costly. He opts for a naval battle, hoping to destroy the Greek fleets and force surrender. The majority of the Greek force was more in favor of a regular land battle at the Isthmus of Corinth to prevent the land invasion. Themistocles, with his ability, persuaded the Greeks that it was better to instead invest in naval defense. And what he managed to do was to provoke the Persians, kind of invite them into this very straight, narrow sea between the mainland and the island itself, where the smaller and more agile triremes could be more easily maneuvered versus the instead heavy but hard to command large Persian vessels. The battle is joined the following day. The Persian fleet suffers devastating losses. Xerxes watches the battle from a hill, very angry, while sitting on his throne. He sees the defeat and goes back to Persia, leaving his general, Mardonius, in charge of his ground forces. The following year, they are defeated again in the Battle of Plataea. After that, the Persians will never dare to invade Greece again. This second victory over the Persians ushers in a period of unprecedented prosperity for Greece, a Golden Age. The Golden Age of Greece is understood to be the period starting after the Persian Wars until the end of the Peloponnesian War. It's referred to as the Golden Age mainly because it encompasses the rise and also the fall of Athens. After the Persian Wars, Athens rose to particular importance by building the largest fleets the city could hold. Athens was able to maintain this fleet mainly through collected levies. These came from various Greek cities conquered by the Athenians, which therefore constituted an important economic, military, and political foundation. Pericles championed Athenian democracy. Using the strength of the navy, he expanded the city's influence in the region and brought many cities under their control. It was the world's first empire of democracies. The year is 336 BCE. A new power in Greece is on the rise, Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Macedonia is located to the north and northeast of Greece. In the 5th century BC, it was a comparatively minor to medium-sized power with a merely subordinate political role. However, in the 4th century, following the defeat of Athens and also the fall of Sparta, the power relations changed. Alexander is the son of Philip, a fierce warrior. He is a very smart boy. His father sent him to be educated by one of the best scholars of the time, Aristotle. So he received extraordinary education, including physical training and excellent military education. Legend has it that as a boy, Alexander made a wager with his father. Philip was offered a horse, but because no one could tame it, he refused. Alexander stepped in and swore he would pay for the animal himself if he failed to break it. The young Alexander surprised everyone by taming the horse, giving it the name Bocephalus, or in Greek, ox-head. Philip admires his son and according to Plutarch, gives him one command. O my son, look thee out a kingdom equal to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee. Philip gives the 16-year-old Alexander an army and takes himself. Together they subdue Athens, Sparta, and the other city-states of Greece and absorb them into a new alliance. It is Alexander's first taste of military campaign. In 340 BCE, Philip enlists the 16-year-old Alexander to help subdue the rest of Greece and bring it under his control. The war culminates in a battle just north of Athens. With the battle at Charoneia in 338 BC, the expansion of Macedonia had been completed for the time being. Philip II not only held an important position in the Amphictonic League, the Delphic religious community, but foremostly, he also governed the League of Corinth, which empowered him to present himself as the leader of all Greece. Alexander returns with his father to Macedonia. They begin making preparations for an ambitious new campaign, the conquest of the Persian Empire. But at a wedding feast, an argument over succession boils over, and father and son are at each other's throats. Luckily for the young Alexander, Philip is drunk and falls to the floor. Alexander reproachfully insulted him. See there, said he, the man who makes preparations to pass out of Europe into Asia overturned in passing from one seat to another. For a time, Alexander is forced into exile, but soon returns. He resumes his role as successor and helps prepare the invasion of Persia. But fate intervenes. In 336 BCE, Philip is assassinated. Philip is the one who set up the invasion of Persia, but he never accomplishes it because he is killed. While Philip is coming into a theater where a wedding will take place, one of his seven bodyguards, Pausanias, stabs him to death. We do not know the reasons why. Some people say the reason was personal offense. Some others have thrown suspicions on Olympias, the fourth wife of Philip, Alexander's mother. But these are speculations of the historians. What we know is that Philip leaves a huge kingdom in the hands of this young boy. He was about 18 years old. At first, the cities of Greece reject the rule of this boy king. Philip they feared, but Alexander is young and untested. He delays the Persian invasion because first he wants to make things right internally. The Greek cities miscalculated because he crushes them all, showing again what he is capable of doing. With his rule in Greece secure, Alexander turns east to Persia. Alexander wanted to march against the Persian Empire, officially for two reasons. On the one hand, he wanted to claim the cities in Asia, in other words, free Asia Minor. And on the other hand, he wanted to take revenge for the destruction caused by the Persians in 480 BC. These were his basic motives, but there were others too. Personally, Alexander was mainly interested in appearing like a second Achilles and winning glory as a hero. In 331 BCE, Alexander the Great marches east, ready for a final showdown with Darius, the king of the Persian Empire. Darius has been defeated twice, but still commands a very large army. It was estimated that 150,000 men stood against 50,000 Macedonians, Greeks and auxiliary troops. On October 1st, at a place called Gogameda in northern Iraq, the armies take the field. Darius deploys a broad plane, hoping this will favor his larger army. Parmenion, Alexander's second-in-command, bears the brunt of the first assault. Parmenion was strongly pushed into the defensive. It seemed the tide of battle had now turned in favor of Darius. For a moment, the battle is in doubt, but Alexander and his cavalry come to the rescue. Alexander managed to push through into the center of the Persian army with his cavalry in a courageous attack, and he made Darius take flight yet again. All things together appeared full of terror to Darius, who had already long been in a state of fear, so that he was the first to turn and flee. Darius is on the run, but his days are numbered. Alexander was determined to chase Darius because he was convinced that without physically eliminating Darius, he couldn't claim to be the legitimate king of Persia. And this is what pushed Alexander farther and farther to the east. When the local satrap, Bessus, felt that Alexander was so close, he ordered some of his other assistants to get rid of Darius because the situation in a certain sense was getting embarrassing. In 330 BCE, Darius III is killed by his own men. Alexander becomes the king of Persia, but the restless conqueror is still not satisfied. He pushes his army ever eastward, leading to conflict within the ranks. Many of Alexander's veterans have grown restless. In the summer of 338 BCE, the different parts of Alexander's army had united again at Samarkand, where a great feast took place. During the feast, mocking songs were sung about the recently deceased members of the companion cavalry. This agitated Clytus, Alexander's friend, so much that he reproached his leader. He criticized him for behaving like the son of Zeus Amon and not like the son of Philip. He concluded his criticism of Alexander with a verse from Euripides, which was a clear reference to the fact that Alexander was behaving like a tyrant. Alexander and Clytus, both drunk, turn on each other. In the chaos, Alexander runs his friend through with a spear. When the dust settles, he grieves for Clytus and regrets the killing. After this murder, Alexander himself repented and fell into a sort of long, desperate mourning. The killing troubles Alexander, but still, he drives his army onward. He wants to make a big empire that goes from west to east. Unlike his generals, who were tired of fighting, they wanted to take this huge booty and return to enjoy it in Macedonia. No, Alexander pushes forward. He reaches the Indus Valley, almost reaches India, and gets defeated. They meet animals they had never seen, but this is an Indian king who uses elephants. Eventually, there is an insurrection against Alexander. He faces the fact that his generals do not intend to follow him anymore in his adventure. Alexander has no choice. He withdraws from India and returns to Susa. But when he returns to Persia, he finds his grip on power more tenuous than he thought. Taking an empire is one thing. Ruling an empire is something completely different. Alexander embraces a revolutionary idea for the ancient world to purposely mix two cultures and forge a wholly new identity. His idea was to mix the races, something that was shocking and not accepted by the other Macedonians. Alexander stages a mass wedding at Susa in 324 BCE. In a spectacular fashion, he married off around 80 of his closest comrades to Persian princesses, including, among others, the female relatives and daughters of Darius. This celebration lasted for five whole days. A more than nine-meter-high tent was erected at its center, where the main ceremonies took place. Various actors, jugglers, and poets performed during this mass wedding and entertained the invited audience, which was comprised of the close group of companions and soldiers. Alexander takes the eldest daughter of Darius as his wife. He gives another daughter of Darius to his close friend, Hephaestion. In all, 80 weddings took place. They were celebrated according to Persian custom. The conservative generals did not see it as a good thing. Indeed, they would like to marry between aristocrats and Macedonians, with aristocratic women. After the wedding, Alexander takes up residence in a palace in Babylon. He was not fated to rule his empire for long. In June of 323 BC, he falls ill. He fell victim to his own restlessness because he had no regard to his own health or that of his soldiers. Another contributing factor was his excess consumption of alcohol and drinking sessions. After one such drinking session, Alexander developed a high fever, a fever that grew. Even calling on numerous doctors didn't help. A few days later, Alexander was moved from the outer premises to the interior of the palace in Babylon. It was here he received his soldiers for the last time and, in his very last days, the officers. Alexander made no plans for succession and his empire is thrown into immediate turmoil. The brutal struggle for power within his kingdom reshapes the ancient world. After lingering for ten days, Alexander dies, leaving no successor. When asked who his successor should be, Alexander supposedly answered, the strongest one. Alexander's empire splits into competing kingdoms, but his legacy and that of the Greeks is about much more than territory. He saw these two worlds merging their cultures, both refined cultures. Some say Alexander the Great is the end of Greek freedom and the end of poleis, but it is the extension of Greek culture to a territory that had never been exposed to the Greeks before. Ultimately, Greece becomes a small province of a much larger empire, Rome. But its significance to even Roman rulers is greater than its territory. Roman religion, science, and literature emulates that of the Greeks. Through them, Greek ideas are spread even further, to Europe and North Africa. The Greeks, descended from mythic heroes, had played the game of empires and laid the foundation of the Western world.