You know how a bunch of ancient Greek. Myths make a really big deal out of Hubris? When some ancient hero gets too full of himself thinking He's invincible and only realizes that he's not invincible when he's already been impaled and/or disintegrated? Well, Athenian history is a grade-a example of how hubris can make and break you so let's get into it Greek culture in its earliest forms has been around for a good long while Between Minoan crete and later Mycenaean Greece. In the 400 Years after the Bronze age came crashing down, people had forgotten what writing was so the Greeks kept themselves busy by telling each other stories out loud about how awesome the Trojan war was when they finally remembered What writing was in the seven or eight hundreds they decided to write it all down Around the same time, they also remembered how to build big shiny societies and a bunch of different villages and towns built themselves up and each became what's called a polis. A polis, or a city-state, is an autonomous society organized around a city and its neighbouring Farmland and has its own government and this government works by having all the rich adult male landowners get together to go in and decide on stuff. "Aha!" You may say "this is because Athens invented Democracy, right?" to that, I say no for two reasons: one, Athens had not invented democracy yet, but also two, they are a complete nobody at this point in history They're, like, barely a tier two polis on the coolest polis list the big boys at this point in time are places like Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes. Not Athens. but while every polis did have public voting, those systems looks much more like an aristocracy or an oligarchy than a democracy Democracy didn't come around until about 200 years later when, yes, Athens invented it and in a Greek Context this means that Athens drastically lowered the property qualifications for citizenship so a much larger share of the population could vote but even most athenians were put off by having so many people involved in the Decision-making process and they expressed it because athens was notoriously Self-Critical especially in the time around the peloponnesian war almost all of the famous athenian playwrights and especially the popular satirist Playwright aristophanes reveled in critiquing Athenian Society and addressing important social issues in dramatic and comedic ways but remember back to history at the turn of the fifth century athens is still pretty much irrelevant at this point things would change as A result of Persian expansion from, well, Persia into western Anatolia were a lot of ethnic Greeks lived and much like an excellent assortment of Ice cream there are a bunch of different flavors of Greek but you might be familiar with two Ionian & Dorian, like the Columns. Dorian Greeks mainly lived in the Peloponnese and considered Sparta their quasi mother city Ionian Greeks lived in, well uh, Ionia (aka Western Anatolia) and they viewed Athens as their quasi mother city So when Persia did what all empires do and expanded Outwards into Anatolia, the Ionians did what subjects do and revolted. the Athenians, being the good mother city they were, went to help. They failed to defeat the Persians, but they succeeded in making them angry. Which, now that I think about it, is probably worse. As a result the Persian King Darius decided "alright screw those guys I'm going to sail right over to Athens and deliver a strongly worded letter Expressing my disapproval" and to make sure he got the point across he also sent along his army which might be the more relevant factor at play here, so Darius sent 25,000 of his most heavily armed male men to the coast of Marathon where the Athenians meant them for battle by all accounts the persians Should have easily beaten the Athenians and gone over to take over greece But the Athenians played the waiting game and when the persian cavalry was away Probably playing Kola 15 ian's attacked enveloping the persians in winning the battle this came as a surprise to the rest of greece as next to no one was expecting a Dinky Little palace like athens to be able to be persia in a fight so a fenian prestige shot up massively overnight seven years later the Athenian silver mines on the tip of atTica struck it big and the general themistocles said um Let's use some of that silver money to build a fleet just in case the persians come back I have a feeling it'll come in handy And then the Athenians agreed to build a fleet then three short years later the persians marched across the Hellespont Into thrace and around to central and southern greece now greece had over 200 decent-sized polis and 500 smaller ones But only 31 allied to fight against the persians 31 That is not a lot most Greeks were happy to let the persons come on in and conquer greece probably on the basis that it's less exercise than fighting and Some states like thieves went above and Beyond to get on the person's good side and allied with them Fun the Spartans who load the resistance against persia because come on There's sparta used greece's mountainous geography to their advantage and look for a narrow place where the persians superior numbers wouldn't be able to help Them and that place was thermopylae which literally means the hot gate and with all those spartans in one place I have to say that's a fair assessment the Spartans fought their hardest, but ultimately lost because of mmM Jax but while the Spartans were fighting at Thermopylae Adams and friends were fighting a naval battle against the persians that artemisia just off the coast this is Important because the greeks needed to stop the persian navy too if the army breaks through that's game over But if the navy can just sail behind wherever the spartans are hunkered down all the Phalanx is in the world couldn't save them That's why it was super important to keep the persian Army and Navy Separated because the ancient trireme ships needed to talk regularly to remain in good fighting Shape the battle was ultimately a draw, but that was all they needed It had bought the Athenians enough time to evacuate their city which was promptly sacked And then all head to the isthmus of Corinth another Thermopylae type passage the Spartan Army camped out in the past and the Athenians took their ships to the island of Salamis the next battle was it for the Greeks if either the army or the Navy lost it was all over. again, the Greeks were saved by a combination of their home turf as well as the Athenians planning years ahead for this exact eventualities Greeks tactics of the Battle of Salamis led to a decisive victory on the sea and the entire persian fleet went on what I'll say was a 2,000 year scuba-diving trip to put it gently and the bulk of the persian army retreated the next summer athens and sparta fought thebes and persia in the battle of plataea just north of Attica and thanks to about a Third of the persian army just straight up bailing for reasons that completely elude me the greeks were able to win and kick the persians Out for good and remember this was the work of just 31 cities and even still most of that leg work was done by Athens and sparta It's after this that athens starts feeling pretty good about themselves and still congratulating themselves on excellent foresight and planning Decided to create a league of Greek states to fight the Persians in the event that they come back a third time Recognizing itself as a budding naval power Athens opted to ride the waves and collect all the various islands in the Aegean under its wing or Maybe its sail not wanting to do all of the work themselves Athens asked that everyone pay into a collective defense fund with either ships or money the money was kept on the sacred island of Delos Hence its name the Delian league this started out all nice and good, but athens started to feel a little too Good about itself and kept stretching its arms across greece groping in more allies in treating them increasingly harshly Forcing them to pay higher tributes establishing democracies by Force and confiscating large amounts of allied land oh, and Did I mention that they used the treasury money to fund the construction of shiny temple buildings that offered zero strategic benefit in the event of a Persian invasion? oh and also that they moved the treasury money into those fancy buildings that they spent the treasury money on Yeah, because they they did that also did I forget that they maybe might have Quietly struck a deal with persia to get them not to invade anymore invalidating the entire point of the whole empire. I mean alliance Why did I say that's telling me so yeah, this was pretty great for athens and its athenian Empire but pretty crap if you were anyone else Meanwhile Sparta was totally minding its own business honestly not caring at all about Athens' imperialistic Shenanigans up until the Precise moment that athens allied with argos one of Sparta's oldest enemies What got them a little bit annoyed and by little I mean very much so Athens and Sparta entered into a 15-year cold war of sorts after which they made a thirty year peace treaty that lasted only fifteen years again this war didn't happen because Athens was acting like an evil Empire, but they totally worked on Several counts Sparta didn't care about that it was that Athens was budding into Sparta's sphere of influence by aggravating Sparta and her allies in several ways. At this point, Athens had gone mad and war was inevitable. The problem was that, unlike in the Persian War, each city had no intention of directly attacking the other. Sparta was protected by how far into the Peloponnese it was and Athens, though somewhat exposed, had built long walls to the Piraeus harbor ensuring its maritime supply chain couldn't possibly be broken so each side pursued a different strategy Sparta wanted to draw Athens out into an open battle and crush them being the kickass Spartan soldiers that they were Athens, meanwhile, had no intention of fighting Sparta at all and was content to wait until the Spartans got bored and ended the war the difficulty for this strategy was that Sparta was really smart and every summer they went out to Attica and destroyed a bunch of farmland around the coast in plain view of The city hoping to bait Athens into a fight. Athens, I've got to give it to them, held really strong They watched farms that their families had worked for decades and generations get completely destroyed But they still didn't fight instead a lot of fighting took place on the periphery as both sides would poke and prod at each other's allies. There were a lot of small battles in the first phase of the war but I'll mention three in some detail because they're important as well as being good stories first is the Multi year long Theben siege of Plataea otherwise known as the Ninja Ramp or so when 431 Thebes decided to go stomp on innocent Little Athenian allied Putea And the story is a little ridiculous so bear with me first the Theben send in 300 Ninjas Yes, basically Ninjas into the city after dark tasked with bringing plataea into a Thievin alliance by Force if necessary the Ninjas were ultimately Discovered and the entire town errupted into a hilarious melee with those beavin Ninjas killing them all then thieves attempted to Seize the city Outright and built an earthen mound or a dirt ramp over the walls So the platoons cut a hole in their wall and dug out the dirt So the thebans threw on More dirt And then the platoons dug out the dirt from under the ramp and then the thebans threw one even more dirt and then the platoons Built a second wall inside the original wall and eventually the theban said alright screw this and brought over Sparta and the two of them built a moat around the town in an attempt to starve it into submission Latia ultimately appealed to history arguing that thebes was evil for siding with the persians of the battle of remember plataea at the end of the second persian war Sparta's Harsh pragmatism then took over and they asked the platoons well ok but what have you done for us in this war to which The platoons had no answer and in short order the City was razed to the ground after four long years of fighting Now that is cold if you thought sparta was a good guy in this war You are unfortunately mistaken if you also thought that sparta was any good at sailing you are quite Sorely mistaken there as well the battles have now packed us both illustrate how the Spartans Despite far Superior numbers are complete crap at Naval warfare in the first battle the Spartans adopted the ridiculous Formation and the Athenians beat them and in the second battle an athenian ship pulled off what amounts to a trick shot and the Spartan Rowers all dropped their oars in Shock allowing the Athenians to be the minions - and confusion Thankfully history makes at least this one easy for us Spartans are pretty much only good on land and athenians are pretty much only good at sea partially explains Why the war was so damn long and finally in 425 a series of basically? Accidents, led to athens winning a strategically important battle on Spartan soil So some athenians were tooling around on the west coast of peloponnese on their way to do something else and a storm forced them to Stop the general demosthenes who also later appears in the sicilian expedition insisted on docking in and camping at pilos Sparta panicking sent soldiers and ships to the bay of pilos and in attempts to kick them out athens won the naval battle obviously and thus part on land retreated Except for the poor sods who happens to be stationed on this island over here and had no way of escaping the Athenian shot arrows Of the Defenseless Spartans and famously took 120 of them as live captives this had a strategic effect on the war - as it gave athens the leverage to stop sparta from Running up to Attica every year to wreck their Farmland which was really helpful sparta recognizing their moment of weakness here offered peace athens of course refused on the basis of No, we want more stuff so much for peace a few years later sparta wised up and attacked athens where it mattered most their navy They headed up to the Northern city of m syphilis which was athens linked to their supply of timber and silver both of which were? Essential to shipbuilding athens tried to get it back, but they failed so they reluctantly agreed to a 50 year peace treaty, okay? Take a guess how many years do you think this? 50-Year Peace deal is going to last It's so stupid Three years that's it three not even kidding this was because athens allied with Argos Again and sparta got real angry about it again And this time they want a resulting battle so again so much for that peace, huh? Do us a favor and recognize my desktop then three short years later athens launched its wonderfully disastrous Sicilian expedition Which I discussed at length in this video about my all-time favorite historical troublemaker Alcibiades it also covers most of the rest of the war So I'm going to fast-forward through that for the sake of time in 405 Persia of all people allied with sparta because they were probably getting annoyed and a little Uncomfortable by how much athens was puffing about so close to persian territory? So they gave a spartans tons of money and tons of ships which allowed them to seal the deal and end the war in very short order after the war athens remained a cultural and academic center in Greece but politically militarily They never regained their relevance and given they've been coasting out for the parthenon for a good two and a half thousand years I think they came out of the fifth century all right following the war the brother of the persian King Led 10,000 Greek Mercenaries and Soldiers into the heartland of Persia And when that guy died those 10 thousand greeks needed to book it out of persia or die and they escaped amazingly that story told much better by the Athenian historian Xenophon than it is by Is called the analysis or the March up country and it's a genuinely unbelievable? Survival story after the screech history takes a 60-year breather before Alexander the late shows up, but if you want to know, what ridiculous Shenanigans happens in the mean time and give a look to this video on Thebes for now That's pretty much Athenian history for you, basically They were nothing until they were everything and their hubris for all of the shiny temples that gave them with the ultimate source of their Downfall
Age of mythology music in the background (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Compelling video. Quick learning while having a snack ;)