This is a survey of ancient Greek history from the Bronze Age to the death of Socrates in 399 BCE. Along with studying the most important events and personalities, we will consider broader issues such as political and cultural values and methods of historical interpretation.
Persian Wars 1 - From the Ionian Revolt (499-494 BCE) to the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE)
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来自 卫斯连大学 的课程
古希腊
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从本节课中
Democracy. The Persian Wars
Module 4’s sessions will begin by focusing on the crucial decade at the end of the 6th century, when the Athenians instituted full democracy. In fact the development of democracy is one of the principal reasons to study Greek history. Athens was also the adopted home of Herodotus, who was the first author in the West to characterize his writing as history. Herodotus chose to recount the first great clash of cultures in the West, the conflict between Greece and Persia, and his story goes far beyond the war and its battles. He was deeply concerned with how societies define themselves. The breadth of his interests, his insight and his good humor all contribute to the appeal of his work. We will also observe how Athens, under the leadership of the brilliant general Themistocles, began to transform itself into a formidable naval power.
与讲师见面
Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, PhDProfessor
Classical Studies
Cyrus, the King who had conquered Creteus and taken over Lydia, was killed in
battle. There was a brief interregnum while the
Magi took over. They were kicked out.
And finally Darius the First became King. He ruled for a very long time, from 522
BCE down to the mid 480s around 486. And there survives in modern day Iran an
extraordinary relief and inscription called the Behistun Inscription, which
shows the King himself and some prisoners around him and then there is an extensive
text underneath and three different Eastern languages detailing Darius's
conquests at the beginning of his reign. He is a noble man indeed and he presided
over a massive empire. You'll see in this map that it extends
from Europe, from the Thracian coast here, all of the way over into the
western part of India. It was an empire as I say of massive
size, massive wealth and an extremely well developed bureaucracy.
There were local governors, there were well established procedures for
collecting revenues. The Persians amassed an enormous amount
of treasure. And it was this empire that was going to
come into conflict with the Greeks. And if you look at the map, you can see
the size differential between Greece which is here and Persia which is
practically all the rest. We talked about the establishment of the
Athenian democracy and the reforms of Cleisthenes, the first four years usually
da, dated to around 508. And this democracy immediately faced some
fairly serious challenges. You might remember King Cleomenes of
Sparta, who had been forced to withdraw. Well, he got ideas that he might want to
reassert his influence in Athens around 506.
Not only that, but Athens neighbor to the north, the Boeotians centered around
Thebes and, to the East, the powerful polis of Calcis on the island of Euboea,
just off the Attic coast, all had simultaneous designs on moving into
Athens. Perhaps because they had heard about all
of the political turmoil that was going on there.
Well the Athenians got lucky in one respect, which is that some kind of
internal dissention made the Spartans turn back.
And then the Athenians fielded the armies, Hoplite armies which drove back
the Boeotians and the Calcidians Legend has it that the battle, the two battles
occurred on the same day but the young democracy certainly proved itself.
And began to feel a certain pride in its own military prowess.
What drove the Athenians into contact with the Asians was in fact this threat
from the outside. Athenian ambassadors went to the court of
a Persian governor, Satrap, as he was called, and asked for some help,
financial help. The Governor agreed to provide some
financial help, but in exchange the Athenians had to give earth and water.
And what we may be seeing here, is an intercultural misunderstanding.
Because for the Persians, for another state to give earth and water, means that
they were giving themselves over as subjects, to the Persian King.
For the Athenians, it may have just been a ritual of exchange, a token of good
will, something like that. But what happens next brings the
Athenians into direct conflict with the Persians.
It began with a revolt. The Ionian cities had been brought under
the Persian umbrella, so to speak and it had to start to pay taxes.
More over, the Persians had installed their own vassal governments there, and
the Ionians, who had obviously gotten news of democratic developments, on the
other side of the sea were getting more and more restless.
Finally in 599, forgive me, 499, a tyrant of the city of Miletus, one Aristagoras
decides to rebel. He goes to Sparta and asks for help.
And when the Spartans hear how far away Ionia is from Sparta, they say no.
And in fact, get out of town before sunset.
He goes to Athens, and the Athenians agree to help.
Why would they do this? I think one of the principal reasons is
that their exiled tyrant, Hippias, the one whose brother Hipparchus had been
killed, assassinated, and then Hippias had fled.
Hippias was over in Persia, and was planning, it seems, a return to power in
Athens. So, the Athenians agree to help the
Ionian revolt. And they muster a fleet of 20 ships,
supplemented by four additional ships from another Eubean polis called Eretria.
And around 497 they make their way over to the coast of Asia Minor and they make
their way inland and they burn Croesus's ancient capital of Sardis which had
become a Persian outpost of course, Persian capital.
This was a tremendously bitter affair. The Persians felt, to some degree
rightly, that an alliance had been betrayed, this alliance of earth and
water. And Torata does tell us that Kind Darius
was so furious, that he had a servant whose only job was to remind him several
times a day, Master remember the Athenians.
The Athenians went back home with the Aretians, and eventually the Persian war
machine rumbled into action. And in 494 the revolution, the Ionian
revolt was crushed. And the city of Miletus was sacked and
burned revenge for the destruction of Sardis.
But this wasn't enough. Darius had in mind punishing those who
had gone against him from the mainland and he began a, an incursion, let's put
it that way. As he made his way across the island, he
demanded earth and water. And several of the other states, the
Greek states, thinking that the Persian empire was so huge and so powerful that
they couldn't resist actually gave it, and this came to be called medizing.
That is to go over to the Meed, to surrender your own autonomy so to speak.
Herodotus tells us, but way out of date, of an atrocity that occurred, a real
sacrilege. When the Persian envoys got to Athens,
they were killed. When they got to Sparta the Spartans
threw them into a well and told them to get their own earth and water.
It's grimly comic but it's also a fantastic breach of protocol.
Then as now, ambassadors travel under a sort of special protection, immunity
because otherwise you couldn't conduct any sort of negotiation.
This is a serious religious crime too and as we'll see, as always in Herodotus,
retribution occurs. The Persians, in 491, invade.
They make their way, by 490, over to the mainland.
Their first target is Eritrea, and they destroy it, they land there.
So they're just off the coast of Attica. The reaction, one can only imagine, is
one of stunned panic, all of these Persians, what are we going to do?
Herodotus tells us that Hippias was along with the Persian invading forces, and
this is also kind of interesting, as a dream.
Dreams and portents and oracles are very important for Herodotus, as ways that
somehow we can understand, we can look through that veil that separates us from
the future and Hippius has a dream. The dream is, that he makes love with his
mother. He's very happy because he thinks that
this means he's going to be restored to power in Athens.
But he's an old man and when the Persian troops finally arrive, on the shore at
Marathon, Northeast of Athens. He has a coughing fit, and he coughs out
a tooth, and it lands in the sand, and he digs around for it and can't find it.
And dejectedly acknowledges that, that is the only part of Athens that he is
destined to retake, or to reclaim. The Athenians mount a hoplite defense.
The middling men, men who buy their own armor, fight in close, close formation in
the phalanx, now go out from the city with a small group from Plataea small
Paulus, slightly to the north of Athens, in the territory of Thebes and they meet
the Persian invaders. The Athenian general in charge is one
Miltiades, member of a great old family. And what he does brilliantly, is to put
his best troops, not on the front line, as one might expect, but off to the side.
Where they can attack the Persian flanks. The battle works just as he had planned.
Herodotus tells us that the final casualties were 192 Greeks, and over 6000
Persians dead. Nobody could quite believe it.
This is the story of the famous runner Pheidippides, who runs from Athens to
Sparta to deliver the news and then dies. But at any rate, the Greeks versus the
Persians now becomes a real, I mean it's an overt a bloody conflict and the Greeks
win their first encounter. Really, one might say, against all odds.
Depictions of Greeks versus Persians start to show up in art work as in this
red figure vase, which shows a heavily armed hoplite and a Persian.
Why did the Greeks win? Partly it was because of hoplite tactics.
Their heavy armor was really much more effective than the Persian armor which
tended to be a kind of linen corslet and a shield made out of wicker that is
tightly bound together. Didn't stand much of a difference against
the brown shields and long spears of the Greeks.
Fighting in tight formation they also had a great advantage over the more loosely
organized Persian forces. And I guess more romantically they were
also fighting for the liberty of their homeland.
After this extraordinary battle the Athenian commander Miltiades dedicated a
helmet. At the temple of Zeus down in Olympia.
It still persists although, as you can see, it's a little bit battered.
But if you look very closely, perhaps you might see his name etched here in the
side, Miltiades. And in the Athenian imaginareun, Athenian
history Marathon became one of the great victories.
The marathonomachoi as they were called, the hoplites, had a sort of aura around
them of special courage, of establishing a fight for freedom against despotism.
It's almost, it becomes an ideological battle.
In the imagination of the west as well, Marathon has a special importance.
The, English philosopher John Stuart Mill said, that as an event in English
history, the Battle of Marathon is more important than the Battle of Hastings,
which was when the Norman conquest occurred in England.
So, whether we believe that or not of course is up to us.
But it is nonetheless the case that Marathon has an unusual status in world
battles. There's a 19th century photograph album
compiled by an anonymous traveler which has many pictures of beautiful monuments
and ruins and vistas. And it also contains this sort of blurry
picture. Sort of a boring picture of an empty
field. If you look closely you can see here, the
burial mound, the tumulus, that held the Greek soldiers that fell at this battle.
This picture is otherwise uninteresting except for the little handwritten caption
under it which says Marathon. Which suddenly infuses the image, with
all of the historical resonance of a great event.
The Greeks had gotten together, a few of them, and fended off the many.
But the Persians, were now angered, and were determined, to get their way.
And the Persian wars were by no means over, as we will see.
