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 among states. Okay.

And this is the idea of elite overproduction. So the historian Peter Turchin looked at the fall of the Roman Republic, the French Revolution. He looked at many similar events in human history, and he discovered that what drives crisis is the fact that you have too many elite competing for limited positions of status and power. Okay. And that's what drives a lot of conflict within the nation state. Another way of framing this is that the conflict in states is not between rich and poor but between the have-a-lot and the have-some-but-want-more.

Okay. So usually between the upper nobility and the lower nobility. We see this throughout human history. So next class we will discuss Rome. Okay. We'll discuss that, and we 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. Okay, this is a really important principle to understand. The elite don't have loyalty to their people or to their state or even to their 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 the 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 for themselves. Okay, so the game of thrones is a very nasty affair. The third thing is that war is often about maintaining the status quo. Okay? Or the idea of... 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 an excess population of males and if you don't get rid of them then they will engage you in revolution. Okay, you understand that war is really about maintaining the 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 will use an example from Chinese history so 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 had the Zhao, you had the Wei, you had the Chu. Okay.

At this point in history, you could believe that any one of the three would become the empire. They would unite the Middle Kingdom because they had access to rivers. So it's easy for them to transport soldiers and goods. They had a large population. They were on fertile ground. Okay. And then over here is this poor, backward and isolated people called the Qin. And these were barbarians. Okay. So how was it possible for the Qin, who are these barbarians, not very advanced, very poor, limited population, to eventually conquer all of China? Okay. Well, once you understand these three principles, we can now explain it, because what's happening is that the Zhao, the Wei and the Chu are pretty stable states.

Okay? And so the major problem is elite overproduction. The conflict between the upper nobility and the lower nobility. And the way that they 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 a status quo, and as a result these states became stable.

But another word for stable is stagnant. And now what's happening is, first of all, the Qin is being recruited into the wars because the Qin 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 and Wei in terms of military strategy. Okay. So you have this massive infusion of innovation into the Qin. All right? So the Qin is being energized. We call this energy, right? Innovation 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 are no opportunities for them. So where do they go, guys? They go to the Qin. Okay? Now you have people coming in as... And now what's happening is that the Qin 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 and the Wei, the two, recognize the danger of the Qin and they will respond by uniting together and then destroy the Qin. Okay, that never happens.

Why? The reason why is once you enter an equilibrium, you understand the world through this equilibrium. So in their perspective, the Qin becomes stronger, but that's okay because all we'll do is we'll just bribe them or we will have them become part of the 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 Wei or the Chu to imagine that the Qin would one day overtake them. Okay. Another way of saying this is that once you reach an equilibrium, the people inside the equilibrium become lazy, stupid and... Okay.

And that's why the Qin is easily able to destroy all three together. In fact, the lower nobility in all three states probably supported the takeover, right? Because now they have opportunities to rise within their... 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. So the equilibrium means that the war made the, like, the status competition within the countries more...

Okay. And one important rule that they have is 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 happens is that because of the equilibrium, energy will flow into a poor exit area called Umma, and from Umma comes a merchant named Lugalzagesi who's like, you know what, screw this system, I'm going to go for it all. Okay, so he dares to destroy a temple, and before this was unimaginable because if you destroy a temple the god's going to come in from the heavens and destroy you, right? That didn't happen. But now Lugalzagesi 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 Sargon. But now that they are an empire, they will now also reach an equilibrium. And this talent will flow somewhere else to energize another region. Okay. So now what will happen is that the Babylonians will come. The Assyrians will come. Eventually from the Zagros Mountains a new people called the Persians.

Remember the Persians have a religion called Zoroastrianism. They 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. 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? And then this will force the Persians now to invade the Greek mainland to stop this piracy. Okay? 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 that 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. All right, the empire has three major advantages: mass and death. Okay. 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 throwing 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 the 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 is close-minded and the empire is not united. It's often divided. Okay, that's why throughout human history the borderlands are able to conquer the empire.

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. Okay. So in Greece, remember that we discussed Greece before and 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, in human history. 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, using the alphabet, to 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 poleis, there's like thousands of them and they're often small, like maybe a thousand, 10,000 people, but the two major poleis are Athens and Sparta.

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 that 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 and 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? So 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 were citizens. 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... Okay. So 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 expansionist. Okay? So they built 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 expansionist. 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 have to buy weaponry, you have to train for like decades. But the Athenians had a navy where anyone can just row. Okay? And so they were a... All right? And so over time, because Athens is a democracy that's expanding and 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. In 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 fight 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... So Macedonia is 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... Okay. Now, who's doing all this? His name is Philip.

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 Alexander the Great. Why is Alexander the Great more famous? Because Alexander the Great will take everything that Philip built and he will use it to conquer Persia.

Then what will happen is that as this system reaches another equilibrium, a new power rises that will overflow this entire system, and this power is called...

Okay. So this is like the entire world, and this small army. Okay, it's not even the entire Greek army. It's basically 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 Qin was able to conquer the Zhao, the Wei and the Chu, right? Because of elite competition, elite overproduction within these, because these 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 he 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 would have been like, "That's a great deal. I'm happy." Sure. But Alexander was not like that. Okay. Alexander considered himself the son of God.

And you will discover that all these great conquerors believe that they are divinity, that they are a 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... So, and this was unimaginable for these people. Like, we're giving you like all the money in the world. And he said 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 not happy 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... 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... Okay.

So Christianity comes from a combination of these three major worldviews. Okay. Now once the Greeks took over 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 Macedonian, and 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. Philip the Second, the man who conquered Greece, and Aristotle, considered one of the most famous philosophers in human history.

They were childhood 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 a plan for the world for a long long time. So, what would happen is that Philip 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 and the Academy.

And what he will do is he will take Greek knowledge, he 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, 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 bump 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. That person must have been God. Okay? But what's important about this idea is the prime mover doesn't matter because the prime mover is the first 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. Okay? Purpose. Okay? 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, 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. This is important, because this conflict between Plato and Aristotle is really the underlying conflict in all of Western philosophy. Okay, we'll see this all the time. We will see this emerge in Europe with... And so Plato becomes what we call the rationalist.

So Descartes becomes what we call the empiricist. Okay. So please remember this conflict. 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, mind, 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.

Okay. Any questions before we go to the PowerPoint? All right. So, let's go to the Greek legacy. 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 poleis 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 you access to Egypt as well as to northern Africa as well. Okay, so Greece really benefited from this geography. That's why Greece was so innovative, because you can actually steal knowledge from Egypt. They stole a lot of knowledge from Egypt. Okay, that'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 stole 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. So where's Macedonia? Around here somewhere. Okay. And the thing about Macedonia is that throughout most of this history it doesn't really matter, and throughout most of this history it is actually a subject of Persia. It's a very mountainous area and so it was poor, backward for the longest time.

Okay. So this is a map of Sparta. Now, Sparta becomes the military power of the Greeks because as you can see it's pretty flat, which allows for agriculture. With agriculture you need slaves. So the Spartans had to go 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 10 to one. Okay. So the helots were both the major resource of Sparta, but they were 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 really got killing.

Okay? So these boys were taken away from their 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, and that's how you build comradery and fraternity in the army. And then at 18, 19 they had an 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 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 bulldoze 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 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.

All right. 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 Athenians, they're going and causing a lot of problems for Persians. They're 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 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 they basically have ships. It's a land bridge and they will cross over, and this leads to the famous Battle of Thermopylae. 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 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 on our ships and sail off. And the Persians are like, you can't do that, man. The Athenians are like, yeah we can, man. So the Athenians 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 land their navy.

Okay, they have a massive navy, into Sparta, because Sparta has a weakness, right? Sparta has helots. So all they do is land in Sparta and the helots will rise up against Sparta and the war is over. Game over. Okay. The problem with empires is they're lazy, stupid, and arrogant. Okay. So, Xerxes, who's leading this, he thinks that, you know what, this strategy of winning the war by 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 where's Salamis? 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 land 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... So of course the Persians decide we're going to risk our navy, and so this leads to the Battle of Salamis, which, again, forever changed the course of human history.

All right. So this is another map showing you what happens. Okay. And now we are in the Battle of Salamis. And we know about the Battle of Salamis because of a man named Herodotus, who wrote a book called the Histories, and he's considered the father of history because he wrote the first historical work. What he did is he basically went around Greece and he collected memories of the Persian Wars a few decades after the fact and he wrote it all down. Okay. 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 Thermopylae. Okay. And again at this point in his history the war is over. You don't have to do anything.

But again Xerxes says I want a monument. Okay. I want to witness a great climactic 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 you don't fight the Greeks face on. Okay, you don't do that because the Greeks are heavily armored and you're not. Okay, so this is a Greek trireme. Okay, so Greek trireme, the thing to recognize about it is it's mainly soldiers. So they're really fast. They have some soldiers on top, 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 Themistocles. And Themistocles is one of the greatest generals in Athenian history. He's actually the guy who proposed that Athens build a navy. 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 Themistocles who led the Athenians against the Persians.

Okay? And this is what the battle looks like. Okay? So 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... And now 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 their navy, which means that they cannot resupply. They have no mobility. And so what will happen next is that, yeah, the Athenians destroy the Persian navy. What happened next is the Spartans will not want to destroy the remaining Persian forces in Greece. Okay, this is why you don't... I can't, I'm sorry. It's just the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Okay, they won the war and they screwed it up. Okay. Once you lose a 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 Battle of Salamis is lost, but you know, the Persians still have this huge army in Greece, and so 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 gonna go home now and I'm gonna 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 wage your war against the king? For neither can you get the better of 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.

All right. So, what will happen is that now that Xerxes is gone, now that the navy is scattered, Mardonius is kind of screwed. Okay. And so, what will happen is the Spartans face off against Mardonius in the Battle of Plataea 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 pike and show it to the world and show how great the Greeks are?" This is Pausanias's 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 again 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, and which we abhor even in them. I cannot therefore in this matter please the Aeginetans, nor those to whom such things should be pleasing.

And what we're going to do now is we're going to compare and contrast this with what happens when they become an empire. Okay? All right. So, the Persians are scattered and 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 pool the resources together as a defense fund against the Persians.

So think of it like NATO, okay, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They agree that they will put all their gold in a place called Delos, okay? An island, Delos, somewhere. Yeah, it's somewhere. Yeah, it's right here. It's a small island right here. Okay, you guys see it? And so 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 steal all this gold, and now the Delian League is no longer an alliance but an 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 its 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, 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 the Peloponnesian War and why Athens went to war with Sparta. Okay. And what he says is, well, it'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. It happens with the empire, and its allies were rebelling against it and it would drag Sparta into the war. Okay, that's what really happened. All right, so this is what the war looks like.

The Athenians have their empire, the Spartans have their alliances, and what's going to happen is 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 Spartan 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 the Spartans.

Okay. So Sparta must protect its periphery from 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. The allies use this opportunity in order to try to break out of the Athenian 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 Athens and Athens 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 will destroy the equilibrium. Okay? You don't know what would happen if 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 want that. Okay, so they're trying to fight the war in a way that allows them to maintain 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 a balance of power. What will happen is that Sparta will eventually defeat Athens. But choose not to destroy Athens because if they destroy Athens then Thebes and other powers could arise which could challenge Sparta. Okay. Right.

Okay. So, we're going to read from the funeral oration. And the thing to remember about the funeral oration is that Athens is not at war. Lots of Athenians are getting killed in this war and the custom is for there to be a massive state funeral to celebrate the war dead, and they give a speech to commemorate the war dead. Okay. So we can't read all the speech but I want to show you a very important paragraph in the speech. Okay.

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, 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 a death so glorious as 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 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 Okay.

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 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 orphanage and raise them up to be soldiers so that they can go and fight for the empire and die like their fathers. Okay, this is now empire, guys.

All right. So, 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. He doesn't want to face 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 can you read this? So what's happening is that you have these different islands who are either rebelling against Athenians or who say to the Athenians, we don't want to be part of this stupid war. Okay? And the Athenians go to them and say, "Too bad, guys." Okay, keep on going. Athenians, for ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses, either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us, and make a long speech which would not be believed.

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 Athenians are stronger. Might makes right. Okay.

All right. 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 are not even part of this war. Okay, Sicily. So remember the Athenians, it's a mafia state. What they do is they collect tribute from the allies. But as this war is dragging on, they need more and more money. So they decide to go 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 lose and they drag Syracuse, which has a navy, into the war. Now Sparta and Syracuse combine against the Athenians and the Persians come in as well. Okay. The allies turn against Athens and what they will do is they will blockade Athens from fric, 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 could choose to destroy Athens.

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 Philip 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. 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. So Philip the Second will focus on military conquest of the world but will focus on cultural imperialism. Okay. All right. So what makes Philip such a genius is to understand, listen, Persians have their horse archers, the Athenians and the Spartans have their hoplites. Okay. So what I can do is I can take all these major innovations together and combine them into one military package, and that allows me coordination. Okay? So I can have flexibility and mobility in my army. The problem though is that for that to happen you need to make sure that every soldier is highly motivated, that every soldier wants to fight.

Now traditionally 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 the Second understood is, 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 you have to overturn the social hierarchy. Okay? Because the aristocrats are just used to doing whatever they want. But Philip 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 was this major military innovation was something called the anvil and hammer.

Okay. Basically what would happen is your infantry will lock with the other infantry in place. Okay. This is called the anvil. And then what will happen is your cavalry will sweep in from behind to smash the enemy cavalry. This is called the hammer. And this is what allowed Alexander to conquer all of Persia, because no other army had witnessed such a powerful force and you can't really possibly respond to it. Okay, 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 will happen is that Philip the Second will go conquer Greece, because remember at this time Greece is divided into city states. They're all fighting each other and they're not interested in actually conquering each other. They're just interested in maintaining equilibrium. So, Philip the Second 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 Chaeronea, which is where he defeats a combined force of Athenians and Athenians. And now he controls all of mainland Greece.

And now he's ready to do 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 gonna take this army and go conquer. So this is the year 336 when Philip II has conquered all mainland Greece and he's now ready to invade Persia. In fact, he also has spies throughout Persia. He also has diplomats throughout Persia negotiating with the local elites. Okay? So, he's now ready to go and conquer Persia. Unfortunately, he gets killed.

Okay. So, he goes to the wedding of his daughter and his bodyguard kills him. And there's historical debate as to who killed him, but the answer is pretty simple. Okay. His wife. Why would Olympias, who is the mother of Alexander the Great, kill her husband? It's really, really simple. If you're a king, you marry a lot of foreign women for alliances. Olympias is not Macedonian. And so there's a lot of people in the Macedonian court who dislike her. Alexander the Great is heir to the throne, but as a young man he was notorious for being a thug.

Okay, he's not like Philip. Philip is very deliberate. He's very strategic. Alexander the Great is basically a thug. So Philip was worried 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 heir 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 the Second. You're the son of God. Son of God. Okay. And so Olympias, when she felt that Philip the Second was about to steal the throne from Alexander, she had him killed, and we know because after Philip the Second 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 a 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 the upper nobility and lower nobility. Okay, so the lower nobility was probably helping Alexander conquer Persia. Two things I wanted you to understand about this map. First of all is that the moment that Alexander reaches Persia, he goes to Troy.

Why does he go to Troy? 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, even more important, is you see what happened when he visits Egypt.

Okay? 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. You're the son of God, who is Zeus Ammon. Okay? So Zeus is the king of the gods in the Greek tradition. Ammon is king of the gods in the Egyptian tradition. So in other words, Alexander was born to rule the world.

Who 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." He'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.

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, if you understood that he saw himself as a son of God, then it's possible, we'll never know. Okay, it's possible that burning down Thebes and burning down Persepolis were ritual sacrifices necessary to prove that he was a son of God. Okay. So yeah, he did a lot of, like, bad things, but there's really nothing random about what he did.

He thinks the things he did were for diplomatic military purposes. Okay. So this is a map of his conquest. This is the burning of Persepolis. You can actually still visit Persepolis today in Iran. Okay.

What he was doing during his conquest was that he was slowly killing off his father's most loyal men. So Parmenion, who was Philip's top general, Alexander killed, and then Cleitus, who was also a top general, he killed as well. Okay, now historically we remember these events as random acts of violence but they're not. Okay. Alexander slowly needed to kill off his father's men so that he could create his own empire. Okay. And so what happened was that eventually the other generals were like, you know, eventually Alexander is going to come and 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 four major parts. And the four major parts are Ptolemy takes Egypt, which is the wealthiest part of the empire. Then you have Macedon, then you have Anatolia, and then you have the Seleucid Empire. Okay. All right. So the problem though is that once you conquer most of the world 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, invite more Greeks to come, help them govern the empire, but they also need to recruit bureaucrats.

Okay? So they recruit these Persian bureaucrats because they're very effective, but they also recruit Jews as well into the empire. Okay? Because Jews are a foreign people. Okay? Because remember, because these people the Greeks need to omit to control and manage their empire. Okay. All right. So what I want you to focus on now is Egypt. Okay. Because historically Egypt was the center of the world. It was the cultural capital of the world and Egypt helped give science and math to Greece. Okay. Now the Greeks are controlling Egypt and the Egyptians are 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. This is the Greek world. So they're building Greek cities all around the world. And these cities are very similar. There's an epitheater. Sorry. This is a better map. Okay. This is Pergamon. Okay. So you can see what it looks like. You have an epitheater, Greek theater stage. You have a gymnasium. You have an agora. 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 taught him the first. They will create something called the Library of Alexandria. Okay. The Library of Alexandria, what it will do is it will take all the Greek knowledge in the world and it will systemize it and synthesize it as textbooks to be taught throughout the world. Okay. So this is really a university. To show you how wealthy the Egyptians are, when they built the Library of Alexandria, they 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, because we really love our Euripides and our Aeschylus. You can't just take 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 in Alexandria to copy. And then after some time, the Athenians said to Ptolemy, "Hey man, give us back the scrolls." And Ptolemy is 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. $10 million. Keep the money, man. And the Athenians were pissed. Okay, they were really really pissed about this. Don't ever trust. Yeah. Anyway, this is the Library of Alexandria. It's part of something called the Museum. 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 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. The Egyptians are like, why are you ruling over us, and the Greeks are like, because we're culturally superior to you. And how do you prove it? By censoring Egyptian culture, okay? By downplaying Egyptian culture and by promoting Greek culture. Okay, this is cultural... Now this is really important as part of the cultural imperialist project. The Egyptians under Ptolemy also started to work with the Jews.

Okay? Why? Because Egypt needed to control the Levant as well. Okay, who's in 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 priests, by saying to the priests, 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 in our history. And so the Jews were like, "Yeah, that's a great thing." But not only that, but because 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. Okay? But Jews are spreading 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 administrators in this empire.

The Greeks are ruling this empire and the Jews are helping build this empire. Okay. So this will merge all three major worldviews and this will give us Christianity. Okay.

All right. So that is the Greek world. All right. Any questions? Was this clear?