Ancient Greece in 18 minutes

[Music] we might think we already know everything about ancient Greece the Parthenon the 300 Spartans and blind Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are familiar to all yet there were far more than 300 Spartans the Parthenon was actually built as a kind of central bank and no such unified state as ancient Greece with Athens as its capital ever existed the Trojan War was as distant in time to Alexander the Great as the Vikings are to ourselves so let's try to get our heads around ancient Greece and hopefully a little quicker than in 2000 [Music] 3716 years ago the pyramids of Egypt were already standing and Babylon was the world's first mega palace home to a prototype of the Tower of Babel on Crete however a mysterious civilization was flourishing it had three storied palaces and all this with no defenses the Cretans apparently led a relatively peaceful life admiring flowers blue monkeys and beautiful women walk around topless while the men preferred loin cloths or skirts the cretins had a navy and their own writing system and nobody has yet succeeded in deciphering them until one day on the island of Tara the modern day wedding paradise of Santorini all this ended in the greatest volcanic eruption in European history part of theorists sank beneath the waves presumably giving rise to the myth of Atlantis tsunamis hundred metres high and vast ash clouds stretching for thousands of miles around Crete never recovered from this eruption and invaders soon swarmed in the once peaceful island then filled with bronze weapons and tablets written in a new strange language which turned out to be the earliest known form of Greek spoken by warlike tribes which had settled the nearby Greek mainland building such cities as feeds Atlas Mycenae and pilots but these cities already sheltered behind 6-meter walls life here was not peaceful at all a few centuries later the Greeks themselves explained them with legends of cyclopean builders and were no longer aware that any other civilization had come before them on crete by this logic even the half full mine at all was half greek nobody batted an eyelid at the fact that games with clothes were a purely Cretan form of entertainment Greeks appropriated everything they met on their way with great virtuosity in conquering Crete they had conquered the seas marine trade saw them grow even richer almost all the inscriptions found among the heaps of gold in the tombs of Mycenae are financial accounts Mycenae took the lead in the fight against Troy and Homer's Iliad as recently as 150 years ago the story was considered a fairy tale until a millionaire and amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated Mycenae and Troy a replica of the legendary Trojan horse now stands here archaeologists have indeed found traces of firing destructions at Troy but this was accompanied by the decline of virtually all regional settlements unceasing attacks by barbarian tribes turned the whole Mediterranean into a war zone [Music] the next 400 years were a Dark Age literacy fell into oblivion leaving us with nothing to read about the event then taking place fortunately what we do have is Homer everybody has heard about the blind poet the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey in actual fact we don't know what Homer looked like or when he lived whether he was one man or many but even though the Iliad and Odyssey were written down after the dark ages the daily routines of its characters take us right back to this time but this years for instance was only King by virtue of his larger flocks of pigs and jokes his father slept on the ground in ashes with his slaves Thurman's characters were illiterate and used heads of cattle in place of money a far cry from creature Mycenae with their three-story palaces what had happened and Mycenae in civilization was destroyed by the Dorian's who no Greek were totally savage the earlier population hide ahead in the mountains are fled to the east of all the achievements of the previous civilization the Dorian's left only the essentials the sailing ship and the potter's wheel it took a further four centuries for them to start adding the most primitive depictions of animals and people at around the same time the turn of the ninth and eighth centuries BC the Greeks in Ionia borrowed a completely new alphabet from their Phoenician neighbors this bore little resemblance to the linear writing styles of Cretan mycenae do you recognize the modern Greek letters the fog of dark ages had started to clear [Music] only here do we begin to recognize ancient Greece the country that never actually existed this was no state with an established border or capital but rather a multitude of distinct and completely independent cities Tauruses how did this come about Greece is a land divided by sea and mountains into separable parts of which only a handful was suitable for agriculture even grain had to be important but why not grow it yourself over there across the sea thus the great colonization began if the first historians are to be believed Miletus alone founded 90 colonies the heel of the Italian boots was colonized - followed by the alphabet that was formed the basis for Latin and take over the world Greek civilization spread from the modern-day rostov-on-don to Marseilles laying the foundations of the French wine industry fragments of amphorae eye scattered from Gibraltar to Georgia these were containers for grain and wine the latter was diluted with water in proportion to one two three only barbarians were drinking me for training purposes coins appeared like the alphabet these two were borrowed from their neighbors according to Plato a few centuries so the Greeks settled around the Mediterranean like frogs around a pond and yet two cities Athens and Sparta almost did not participate in colonization the Spartans descended from the warlike Dorian's that had destroyed the Mycenaean civilization they solved the land issue by conquering their neighbors in the broad flat out region of Messina the locals were declared helots something midway between slaves and serfs and greatly outnumbered the Spartans proper Sparta transformed from an ordinary polis into a military camp whose main task was the prevention of any uprising things were quite different in Athens land hunger there had forced the aristocracy and the people to come to terms and from this democracy was born but first the tyrants took power a Greek tyrant did not necessarily terrorize people rather the opposite typically he was an aristocrat who had quarreled with his peers holding our promises of a better life he used the common people's support to seize power by force from then on all his energies were focused on retaining power the tyrant therefore made no reforms and simply drove any rival aristocrats from the polis to divert the attention of the populace tyrants introduced and fostered new festivals and cults the dissatisfied who perished in the brazen bull but you can't roast everyone the tyrants were overthrown and the suppressed are a stock recei attempted to negotiate with the people giving birth to Greek democracy if an ancient Greek were to see modern democracy he would just say one word oligarchy ancient democracy was direct with no representatives if a polis had six thousand citizens they could all freely participate in the assembly immediately the number of citizens was less than a quarter of all residents excluding slaves women and the migrant workers called metics by the middle of the sixth century the Ionian cities were most advanced eclipsing Athens and Sparta they were the first to master such eastern innovations of the alphabet coinage mathematics naval fleets and complex trade logistics meanwhile a sudden threat appeared to the rear the vast Persian Empire Miletus still hoped to preserve its independence and with the Fenian aid attempted to resist unfortunately this was in vain and the Persians torched the city and pressed on their attempts to subdue Greece lasted 20 years we owe our knowledge of this to the first historian Herodotus according to his account as many Greeks fought for the Persians of supported Athens and Sparta how did they win the first reason was military innovation at the Battle of Marathon the Greeks used the phallus a body of troops fighting in close formation the Persians allegedly lost 6400 men and the Athenians a mere 192 plus the messenger who ran the 42,000 192 meters to Athens to announce the victory after which he dropped there the second reason was already becoming a meal at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae King Leonidas led 300 Spartans who held back hundreds and thousands of Persians for three days sure a few thousand Greeks from other cities and their helot subjects were a big help yet the Spartan spirit was key not for nothing they'd be live in barracks even during times of peace and the third reason was the peak several years prior to the invasion silver deposits had been found near athletes this windfall might have been spent on anything but it was decided to put towards a construction of 203 Rome's fast and maneuverable warships were three rows of oars thanks to this new naval force the Greeks broke the Persians in a decisive naval battle counter-offensive began the Greeks of Sicily defeated their old rivals Carthage a scattered array of poses thus defended the Territory in which classical Greek culture was worn to permanently defeat Persia and liberate the cities in Asia Athens founded a maritime union finally Athens have become the center of the Greek world 150 cities agreed to make annual payments for the maintenance of a common army in need the treasure was kept on Delos the sacred island of Apollo shortly afterwards however patronage was passed to a teeny motivated by greater fiscal reliability of course little imagination is required to suppose which polis was chosen for her headquarters the most elite real estate in the fifth century BC was the Parthenon it was constructed not so much as a temple but as a kind of central bank I was in all the allied Treasury without these funds the Greek classics wouldn't have existed at all no sculpture drama philosophy the strategists and orator Pericles became the head of this new financial center he concluded that 30 years peace with Sparta restored the Acropolis that had been sacked by the Persians and extended fortress walls to the city hall this was rebuilt to a grid layout a forerunner to new york while the sculptor Phidias was immortalized in greece in stone the philosopher anaxagoras expressed an outrageous idea that the Sun was not the God Heelys but a burning body equal in size developer needs a whole great culture was created in half a century [Music] sparta and its allies grew jealous of athens prosperity a cold war had spoiled it between them ever since the victory over the Persians and things warmed up in 431 BC the Spartans and their allies besieged impregnable athletes to cover behind the walls the grain supply from Africa was cut off and those shipments that may brought either typhus or the plane even Pericles himself perish he was replaced by demagogues whoever promised the most was elected strategist so our sub IDs the unscrupulous nephew of Pericles became the heads of the Athenian armed forces he proposed a short but victorious war let's pack it all in and sail for Sicily as if the altercations with Sparta weren't enough the fleet was ready but something inexplicable happened the night before the voyage all around the city is someone smashed off the most prominent parts of the Hermes statues Alcibiades was accused of provocation but he fled to struck to beg political asylum the chief strategist then proceeded to advise the enemy the Allies began to drop out one by one Athens agreed to a humiliating peace with the condition of demolishing its defensive walls they had hugged it Hermes and the micro battles was crushed on the bright side this was the heyday for Greek tragedy and comedy Aeschylus Sophocles and Euripides the three great resilience and the comedic playwright Aristophanes created plays that are still relevant today and yet they penned them in the fall confidence that the first production would be the last as was the way in theatres at the time classical drama was always about current events and while things may have been getting worse in the city culture flourished there was no winner in the Peloponnesian War all Greek cities fell into decline on the other hand unexpected surprises would come from the Macedonians distant relatives of the Greeks who had always been regarded as semi barbarians and then even the great philosopher Aristotle went to work in Macedonia as tutor to an extremely talented boy the boy's father was Philip the second it was he who built up the Macedonian Kingdom defeating a Greek coalition he almost managed to unite Greece in order to fight the Persians but Philip was killed his son known to us as Alexander the Great blazed his way through Asia broke the army of the Persian King Darius but still refused to turn back rich in India thus a new world was born the Hellenistic world Greek and Eastern culture blended to form a new hope as cities by the name of Alexander II sprang up in almost every land though without any democracy all officials in Asia spoke Greek and knew oriental gods became neighbors with the old Greek once at Mount Olympus Alexander was proclaimed that God himself in Egypt protocol obliged all to follow Eastern tradition and fall at his feet [Music] we can only wonder on how this might have ended Greek decrees have been found urging the spread of Buddhism but Alexander died young Babylon the place of his death had become the capital of an empire which immediately began to crack at the seams while the successors of Alexander Ward with one another a new ambitious power was growing in the West in 146 BC the Romans conquered Greece and in 30 BC they conquered the last stronghold of Hellenism Egypt but Greek culture was victorious even here spread by the Romans that finally conquered the world Romans began to read The Iliad and Odyssey in Greek followed by the Greek New Testament - in 330 Emperor Constantine built a new city on the site of the old Greek colony of Byzantium Constantinople this was the starting point of the history of the Byzantium Empire which extended the life of Greek culture another thousand years leaving us the weird Russian alphabet for instance did you like our video we have another one this time about ancient Rome or you can watch the shortest history of Russian art of the 20th century we've squeezed a hundred years into just 25 minutes and that's not all subscribe to the Arthur Maps channel and you'll be sure not to miss out anything

Channel: Arzamas

Views: 1,506,517

Rating: 4.9216585 out of 5

Keywords: arzamas, арзамас, Greece, Ancient Greece, history, Ancient history, culture, Troy, Athens, Homer, Odyssey, Parthenon, Iliad, philosophy, Plato, Babylon, Sparta, 300, 300 spartans, democracy, Alexander the Great, Crete, Tyrant, Macedonia, horse, Moschophoros, education, crash course, Brian Cox, European History, Socrates, Egypt, Persia, Pericles, Aristotle, Antiquity, classical age, civilization, Santorini, polis

Id: gFRxmi4uCGo

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Suiradnase]

Very good, but ruined a bit by describing the events at Thermopylae as a meme with a picture of Gerald Butler.

[u/andreysolovev]

Homer, The Minotaur, 300 spartans, Greek theatre, Parthenon, democracy — everything that you once knew, but forgot, in a crash course video by Arzamas.

Narrated by Brian Cox.

"Ancient Greece in 18 minutes" is an English version of a Russian video by Arzamas. We also have a few other projects in English: