Quotulatiousness

October 11, 2021

City Minutes: The Athenian Empire

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Jun 2021

Deja Vu? Only slightly! I’m re-imaging City Minutes, and this time the plan is to *Actually Make It Good*! With MULTIPLE CITIES per episode, and HORIZONTAL VIDEO!

I heard your feedback on the first run of the shorts loud and clear — City Minutes Good, Shorts Bad — so this will be the format going forward: networks of cities, with each getting a minute of spotlight.

We’re starting where I always start, in ancient Athens (I wanted to give you the proper version of the pilot), but we’ve got tons of other City Minutes planned!

SOURCES & Further Reading: Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, World History Encyclopedia (https://www.worldhistory.org/Athens): “Athens”, “Piraeus”, “Sounion”, “Delos”, “Corcyra”, “The Delian League” parts 3 & 4, and my degree in Classical Studies

Cities by timestamp:
00:00 — Athens
1:00 — Piraeus
2:01 — Sounion
3:03 — Delos
4:05 — Mytilene
5:03 — Korkyra
6:03 — Conclusion

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From the comments:

Overly Sarcastic Productions
43 minutes ago
Fun linguistic shenanigans: The island of Korkyra (commonly spelled Corcyra when referring to the ancient city) is known today as both Kerkyra and Corfu. The name Corfu comes from an Italianized version of the Byzantine name Korufo.

I use the pronunciation of “Korkyra” with an O because it reflects the more common version of the name as listed in ancient accounts — adherence to the original ancient version is also why I’m using Ks in place of any Latinized Cs.

Essentially: I’m spelling everything the ancient way, but using modern Greek phonetics to sound out those words. It’s an uncommon way to go about, but it feels like the right balance of ancient authenticity and modern linguistic continuity.
-B

July 16, 2021

QotD: Thebes

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

John Stuart Mill rated the Athenian triumph at Marathon as more important in English history than the battle of Hastings. Did he mention the almost immediate humiliation, by the Athenians, of their victorious general Miltiades? After his brilliant victory at Salamis, ten years later, Themistocles was banished from Athens and ended serving the Persians whose fleet he had destroyed. A tough house to play, old Hellas. The Athenians did the chat; the Spartans the silences. And Thebes? Supplied settings and plots, mostly in the form of awful warnings.

Paul Cartledge makes the case for a central historical role for Oedipus’s home town. As scholarly as he is revisionist, his handsomely garnished Thebes is neither freckled with footnotes nor fancy with Gibbonian phrases. The Thebans’ exceptional capacity for disastrous decisions begins in mythology with the rejection by king Pentheus of the androgynous divinity Dionysus, dramatised in Euripides’s Bacchae.

There followed the king’s death at the hands of his own raving, Bacchanalian mother and the seismic ruin of the city. Homosexuality has no place in Cartledge’s index, but Oedipus’s father Laius, mythical king of Thebes, is the first man said to have swung both ways. The Sacred Band, in classical times, was a select Theban formation of pairs of male lovers, all full citizens.

However gay ancient Hellenes were (not all that, some say, certainly not all), the Sacred Band’s reputation suggests that a zest of scandal accompanied its bravura. Sexual aberration was integral to their city’s fame. Oedipus’s inadvertent marriage with his own mother, Jocasta, led to the mutual slaughter of their sons, as well as to the refusal of his daughter Antigone to marry Haemon, the prince chosen for her by King Creon. Creon then walled her up, the original ochi (NO!) girl. It needed the Athenian Sophocles to make a play out of it. Modern Greeks celebrate ochi day every 28 October, anniversary of the date in 1941 when their dictator, Ioannis Metaxas, refused to surrender to Mussolini and so refurbished himself as a national hero.

Thebes and the confederation of Boeotian states it headed figured on no honours board during the fifth century BC, presumed, until recently, to be the Golden Age of ancient Hellas. When Xerxes marched into Greece in 480 BC, the Theban oligarchs took advice from the Delphic oracle — they may well have leaned on it first — and so had a divine excuse for not offering any obstacle to the barbarian invaders.

Half a century later, the Thebans’ levelling of plucky little Plataea, the Athenians’ sole ally at Marathon, was a lowlight of the Peloponnesian war. It was matched only by their vindictiveness after defeating an Athenian army (including infantryman Socrates and the subaltern Alcibiades) at Delium. They left the enemy dead to rot rather than hand over the bodies.

[…]

Mythical Thebans figure again and again in the work of the great Athenian dramatists, almost always as bad examples. The city and its neighbours may have originated political federation, but it produced no remarkable artist, no Demosthenic orator, no great dramatist. As far as the arts are concerned, Cartledge cites only Pronomus, the pied piper whose mastery of the aulos (not so much flute as “double-oboe”) won wide renown. Nostalgic seniors may recall Danny Kaye’s line, “The oboe, it is clearly understood / Is an ill-wind that nobody blows good.”

Thebes specialised in wrong turnings. During its two decades of ascendancy in the fourth century BC, it sought to keep Macedon in its place by holding the young Philip II hostage. Having learnt the military skills of his captors, the unforgiving outsider returned to chasten them. His son Alexander finished the job by literally flattening the city, save for the house of its greatest poet, Pindar, and the temples of gods whose favours he hoped to enjoy when he set off to purge and pillage the Persians. No second Pindar hymned his conquests; the Greeks never took him for one of their own. His death in his early thirties prompted an immediate rebellion against Macedonian dominion.

Frederic Raphael, “Thick as Thebans”, The Critic, 2021-03-25.

July 10, 2021

History-Makers: Aristophanes

Filed under: Europe, History, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 9 Jul 2021

He told the Athenians they were a disaster and they gave him a prize. Aristophanes wrote in the new Theatrical genre of Comedy during the golden age of Athens, and used his plays to viciously satirize Athenian society. They create a fabulously clear portrait of ancient Athenian life, and they have the corollary benefit of being funny as hell.

SOURCES & Further Reading: The 11 plays of Aristophanes, with particular focus on Clouds and Women at the Thesmophoria, Britannica’s “Aristophanes”, Crash Course Theater #2 & 4.

Partial Tracklist: “Sneaky Snitch”, “Marty Gots A Plan” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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From the comments:

Overly Sarcastic Productions
2 hours ago
While we’re here, one subject I cut for time is the relationship between “The Clouds” and the trial of Socrates.

It’s commonly assumed that Aristophanes’ satire played a part in Athens’ decision to charge and ultimately kill Socrates, but that interpretation doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.

The Clouds was performed over 20 years before Socrates’ trial. If the play had that strong an effect on Athens, we can assume Socrates would have been charged far sooner. And Plato’s own writings paint Aristophanes rather favorably — if Plato blamed Aristophanes for the trial, he does not make that obvious.

There IS one snide line in Socrates’ Apology that seems to a modern reader like it’s referring to The Clouds, but really we can’t be sure. Aristophanes was not the only comic playwright in Athens, and certainly not the only person who disliked Socrates. Did The Clouds contribute to a negative public perception of Socrates? Sure, in part, at least when it was performed in 423. But it’s faaar more likely that Socrates’ trial and death in 399 owe more to his persistent habit of being a Colossal Pain In The Ass to whomever he was speaking with.

Reading The Apology makes it clear that nobody had the power to make Athens hate Socrates more than Socrates.
-B

June 4, 2021

The Peloponnesian War

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Epimetheus
Published 21 Oct 2018

The Peloponnesian War (extended Video)

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From the comments:

Epimetheus
2 years ago (edited)
On Spartan society I left out the council of five ephors who were elected annually and shared power with the two kings. This video is a little less edited and recorded partially earlier this year and this evening — sorry if the audio sounds a little all over the place — but I thought some of you may enjoy a finished video rather than one that does not get released — let me know what you think of this longer less polished style of video in contrast to the shorter version of this video

I have increasingly committed to using most of my time on this channel writing researching editing drawing and narrating these videos by myself, I love doing it and would not like to go back to working full time in a cubicle (doing boring stuff) if you want to help me out with upgrading my software and equipment (I use a slow old computer and a tablet) you can do so on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776
Even if it is just a single dollar I greatly appreciate you taking the time and your generosity

January 27, 2021

Misunderstood Moments in History – The Spartan Myth

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Invicta
Published 27 Oct 2017

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The Spartans are immortalized in history as super soldiers bred for war. However most of what we think we know about them is a lie. Today we will unmask the truth behind the Spartan Myth.

The Great Courses Plus is currently available to watch through a web browser to almost anyone in the world and optimized for the US market. The Great Courses Plus is currently working to both optimize the product globally and accept credit card payments globally.

Documentary Credits:
Research: Dr Roel Konijnendijk
Script: Invicta
Artwork: Milek J
Editing: Invicta
Music: Total War OST, Soundnote

Documentary Bibliography:
Paul Anthony Cartledge, The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-heroes of Ancient Greece
Nigel Kennell, Spartans: A New History (2010)
S. Hodkinson, Property and Wealth in Classical Sparta (2000)
J. Ducat, Spartan Education: Youth and Society in the Classical Period (2006)
S.M. Rusch, Sparta at War: Strategy, Tactics and Campaigns, 550-362 BC (2011)
E. Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (1969)
S. Hodkinson & I.M. Morris (eds.), Sparta in Modern Thought (2012)

December 9, 2020

Historical Models Summarized: The Military Expedition

Filed under: Asia, Europe, France, History, Humour, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Feb 2016

Today, Blue discusses recurring themes in history! This one’s the Military Expedition, aka what happens when a powerful military juggernaut gets too big for its britches and starts saying stuff like “too big to fail” unironically.

Blue: If you’re curious about the weird chart/graph thing blue showed during the Napoleon segment, look up Charles Joseph Minard [mentioned here and here], the guy who made it. It’s a really cool chart that shows the size of the army as it traveled across Russia (tan) and back (black). You can see how perilous the journey was based on how narrow the line gets. Graphs are cool.

August 22, 2020

History-Makers: Thucydides

Filed under: Books, Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 21 Aug 2020

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Ahh ancient Greece, it has been entirely too long. Today we’ll take a look at the foundational work of my entire career path — Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, a book that almost single-handedly set the standard for how we engage in historical inquiry. Also it has the added benefit of being about Ancient Greece so win-win!

SOURCES & Further Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, Histories by Herodotus, Hellenica by Xenophon, and the 4 straight years I spent studying this in university — Boy do I love doing a video about a topic I’m specifically trained in.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/
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August 17, 2020

Alcibiades, the Peloponnesian War, and the Art of Intrigue

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 27 Dec 2019

Intrigue has always been a part of both diplomacy and war. In ancient Greece, one enterprising politician and general took the art of switching sides to the extreme. The History Guy remembers Alcibiades, a general who had an out-sized effect on the Peloponnesian War.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.

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March 1, 2020

The Black Death of the 14th Century

Filed under: Europe, Health, History — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ed West looks at what we know of the spread of the worst plague to hit western Europe in the 1300s:

Map showing the spread of the Black Death in Europe between 1346 and 1353.
Map by Flappiefh via Wikimedia Commons.

There had never been a terror like it, and the “Great Mortality” as it was known — and much later, the “Black Death” — has seared itself in the European imagination. It changed the culture and tested the institutions of the time, and as we anxiously await the arrival of another — thankfully far less deadly — contagion from Italy its legacy and impact are worth remembering.

Epidemics have been around as long as civilization. Plaga — from the Greek for “strike” or “hit” — devastated classical Athens in the 5th century BC, when the historian Thucydides nursed sufferers; the Antonine Plague — probably smallpox or measles — killed as many as five million Romans at the empire’s peak. Far more deadly was the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century, which had a toll of 25 million and emptied whole regions of the eastern (Byzantine) Empire. Only in the 21st century did researchers confirm that this was the same illness that would appear eight centuries later — the Bubonic Plague.

Empires were particularly affected by these horrific epidemics, because empires are a form of globalisation — bringing different people into contact with each other and, more dangerously, into contact with other mammals, who act as disease vectors.

Another danger is climate change, which might turn a mild virus into a deadly one, or cause disease-carrying animals to migrate. This is what happened during the 14th century when the northern hemisphere became considerably cooler, soon after the Mongols had created the largest contiguous empire in history.

Genghis Khan’s people have generally received a historical bad press — people are more likely to recall the pyramid of skulls and the Tigris flowing black and red — yet their rule had opened up trade routes, allowing goods and people to cross Asia. Whether brought at the point of a sword or a trade deal, globalisation always brings the new: new cultures, new ideas, new languages and new pathogens.

Yersinia pestis had been living on gerbils and other rodents in central Asia, but unstable climate conditions in 1330s caused the disease to jump onto the rat flea. It was killing people by 1339, and in the mid-1340s Christians first heard of a disease raging in the Islamic world, which some at least took as divine punishment for the crusades.

After two centuries of Holy War this was understandable, yet hatred was not universal and during these conflicts Italian merchants had continually done business with Muslims, much to the Church’s fury. Now this trade, once the source of prosperity and peace, proved deadly: plague reached Europe via the Genovese colony of Caffa on the Black Sea (now Feodosiya, in the Ukraine). In October 1347, four ships escaping the diseased city had turned up in Sicily, condemning Italy to its fate.

February 17, 2020

Sieges and Siege-craft

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Lindybeige
Published 2 Jun 2016

Sieges in the ancient and medieval worlds were on quite different scales. 10,000 men can do things differently from 500.

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Castle illustration by Mathew Nielsen.

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September 24, 2019

QotD: Conditions for the rise of tyrants in the Greek city states

Filed under: Greece, History, Politics, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The central problem of almost every society before about 1950 has been how to reconcile the great majority to distributions of property in which they are at a disadvantage. Only a minority has even been able to enjoy secure access to abundant food and good clothing and clean water and healthcare and education. Whether actually enslaved or formally free sellers of labour, the majority have always had to look up to a minority of the rich who are often legally privileged. How to keep them quiet?

Force can only ever be part of the answer. The poor have always been the majority, and sometimes the great majority. Armies of mercenaries to protect the rich have not always been available, and they have never by themselves been sufficient to compel obedience on all occasions in every respect.

Force, therefore, has always been joined by religious terrors. In Egypt, the king was a god, and the privileged system of which he was the head was part of a divine order that the common people were enjoined never to challenge. In the other monarchies of the near east, the king might not actually be a god. But all the priests taught that he was part of a divinely ordained order that it was blasphemy to challenge.

In the Greek city states until about a century before the birth of Epicurus, securing the obedience of the poor had not been a serious problem. There had been some class conflict, even in Athens. But most land was occupied by smallholders, and excess population could be decanted into the colonies of Italy and the western Mediterranean. There were rich citizens, but they were usually placed under heavy obligations to contribute to the defence and ornament of their cities.

Then a combination of commercial progress and the disruptions of the war between Athens and Sparta created a steadily widening gulf between rich and poor. There was also a growing problem of how to maintain large but unknown numbers of slaves in peaceful subjection.

The result was a class war that destabilised every Greek state. The sort of democracy seen in Athens could survive in a society where citizens were broadly equal. Once a small class of rich and a much larger class of the poor had emerged, there was a continual tendency for democratic assemblies to be led by demagogues into policies of levelling that could be ended only by the rise of a tyrant, who would secure the wealth of the majority — but who could secure it only so long as the poor could be terrified into submission. Once they could not be terrified by the threat of overwhelming force, they would rise up and dispossess the rich, until a new tyrant could emerge to subdue them again.

Unlike in the monarchies of the near east, no settled order could be maintained in Greece by religious terrors. During the sixth and fifth centuries, the Greek mind had experienced the first enlightenment of which we have record. There had been a growth of philosophy and science that revealed a world governed by laws that could be uncovered and understood by the unaided reason.

Now, enlightenments are always dangerous to an established religion. And the Greek religion was unusually weak as a counterweight to reason. The Greeks had no conception of a single, omnipotent God the Creator. Instead, they had a pantheon of supernatural beings who had not created the world, but were subject to many of its limitations. These were frequently at war with each other, and so they could be set against each other by their human worshippers with timely sacrifices and other bribes. They did not watch continually over human actions, and beyond the occasional punishment and reward to the living, they had no means of compelling observance of any code of human conduct.

And so, when the intellectual disturbance of philosophy and science spilled over into demands for a reconstruction of society in which property would be equalised, there was no religious establishment with the authority to stand by the side of the rich.

Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Englightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.

March 7, 2019

History Summarized: Thebes’ Greatest Accomplishment Ever

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 25 May 2017

This story, this ludicrous, insane story, is near and dear to my heart. It also conveniently explains what went on in the century between the Peloponnesian War and Philip II conquering Greece — this story is pretty much it. Speaking of, I hope to cover all that Macedonian shenaniganery at ~some point~

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February 20, 2019

History Summarized: Ancient Greece

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 26 Jun 2017

What’s that? Blue already did a video on the Athenian empire? Uh… well… um… LOOK, OVER THERE, A DISTRACTION!

For more Greek goodness, check out the following:
History Summarized: Alcibiades: https://youtu.be/kRLkjBUgB2o
History Summarized: Thebes: https://youtu.be/L1x9np5fys8
History Summarized: Athenian Empire: https://youtu.be/cNWDkFkcuP4

This video was produced with assistance from the Boston University Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

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August 20, 2017

Thucydides again

Filed under: Greece, History, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren found a dip into Thucydides was at least as informative on political issues today as any current “reporting”:

What a week it has been, at least in the yellow world of journalism and politics. I have had nothing new to say on anything — at least I hope to have said nothing new, for my intention in commenting on passing events is simply to repeat the old gnomes which they freshly illustrate. Thucydides, into whose works I privately dipped last Tuesday, was as up-to-date as anything I found “breaking” on the Internet.

Consider, for instance, the career of the Athenian general (then Spartan, then Persian, then Athenian again), Alcibiades — more sinned against than sinning, and more sinning than sinned against, by turns. A large man, persistently underridden by the mean and small; a hero and no saint. Loved to the point of worship by the crowds; hated by the umbrous, to the point of madness; and always “in the news.”

A polarizing figure, as we’d say today; who, for his impieties, was finally run down by a mob. They set fire to the cottage where he’d retired with his mistress. (The Spartans commissioned the mob by one account; the young lady’s parents by another.) Boldly emerging from the flames to confront the whole tribe of his adversaries, he died in a hail of arrows. The gods let only Stalin die in his sleep. (Or so we thought until we got more information.)

November 22, 2014

What Thucydides can teach us about fighting ebola

Filed under: Africa, Europe, Greece, Health, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:43

In The Diplomat, James R. Holmes says that we can learn a lot about fighting infectious diseases like ebola by reading what Thucidides wrote about the plague that struck Athens during the opening stages of the Peloponnesian War:

Two panelists from our new partner institution, a pair of Africa hands, offered some striking reflections on the fight against Ebola.

Their presentations put in me in the mind of … classical Greece. Why? Mainly because of Thucydides. Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War isn’t just a (partly) eyewitness account of a bloodletting from antiquity; it’s the Good Book of politics and strategy. Undergraduates at Georgia used to look skeptical when I told them they could learn ninety percent of what they needed to know about bareknuckles competition from Thucydides. The remainder? Technology, tactics, and other ephemera. Thucydides remains a go-to source on the human factor in diplomacy and warfare.

But I digress. Ancient Greece suffered its own Ebola outbreak, a mysterious plague that struck Athens oversea during the early stages of the conflict. And the malady struck, perchance, at precisely the worst moment for Athens, after “first citizen” Pericles had arranged for the entire populace of Attica, the Athenian hinterland, to withdraw within the city walls. The idea was to hold the fearsome Spartan infantry at bay with fixed fortifications while the Athenian navy raided around the perimeter of the Spartan alliance.

[…]

That’s where the parallel between then and now becomes poignant. Thucydides notes, for example, that doctors died “most thickly” from the plague. The Brown presenters noted that, likewise, public-health workers in Africa — doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers — are among the few to deliberately make close contact with the stricken. Relief teams, consequently, take extravagant precautions to quarantine the disease within makeshift facilities while shielding themselves from contagion. Sometimes these measures fail.

Now as in ancient Greece, furthermore, the prospect of disease and death deters some would-be healers altogether from succoring the afflicted. Selflessness has limits. Some understandably remain aloof — today as in Athens of yesteryear.

Teams assigned to bury the slain also find themselves in dire peril. Perversely, the dead from Ebola are more contagious than living hosts. That makes disposing of bodies in sanitary fashion a top priority. As the plague ravaged Athens, similarly, corpses piled up in the streets. No one would perform funeral rites — even in this deeply religious society. Classicist Victor Davis Hanson ascribes some of Athens’ barbarous practices late in the war — such as cutting off the hands of captured enemy seamen to keep them from returning to war — in part to the plague’s debasing impact on morals, ethics, and religion.

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