500 years. After it, the historian
Pausanius called the Battle of Luktra the most decisive battle
ever fought by Greeks against Greeks.
But what did? Catelyn Tully Stark say so
memorably after hearing of Rob's victories in the West early in
the War of 5 Kings, she said. Did he beat?
Lord Tywin. He was the one that mattered.
The Spartans, at least. Unfamiliar with the Song of Ice
and Fire took heart in the concept, which is to say that
their version of Tywin King Agis Allows wasn't president.
The battle he hadn't lost, it was the younger King Cleombrtus
in command. And frankly, as we saw, his
decisions were terrible, especially considering he comes
from this military society where the top of the top spend all
their time fighting and thinking about how to fight.
Thus, Agisilaus was now more motivated than ever to regain
the just recently lost Spartan supremacy, while Thebes under
Epaminondas and Palopitus was suddenly the spear point of a
new Greece. Hundreds of years of.
The status quo had changed in one afternoon, or morning even.
This certainly disrupted the expectations and plans of the
biggest players who have been involved in our story, people
like Jason Ephiri and great King Artaxerxes of Persia.
They've been reckoning with what's going on in Greece and
planning around it this whole time.
They didn't necessarily expect this battle to even happen, let
alone who won. So they had some adjustments to
make they would have to figure out.
How to twist this to their advantage as was their?
Want but both of these two are going to face internal threats
that's going to make capitalizing on what's going on
in Greece more difficult, which might open the way for other
people to get their. Finger or foot in the door or
what have you. Most deaths in battle occur when
one side breaks and runs. This is well established in The
Song of Ice and Fire. In the real world, etcetera.
It's been said many times, right?
And it's true. It like that Maxim.
This episode follows that pattern a bit, which is just
after a major battle. We're going to have a lot of
deaths, but not because they're running away.
In fact, they for the most part, won't see it coming.
Today is a day of assassins, the unseen hands of the gods.
Timely death that would be hackneyed and convenient if
written by anyone other than that.
Most random of authors. Reality, right?
Reality is the only author that can get away with this sort of
thing truly right? This is the storm.
Of swords of the series so far because yeah, lots of people are
going to die history is cooperating with us as well by
turning. Giving us a different look.
We go from this big battle and then we get to switch to
intrigue. That's kind of how it goes a lot
of times, right? Power changes and shifts.
People got to fight for IT. People fight on battlefields.
People fight in the halls of power, but also the halls of
power. Let's not forget what that
means. That means families.
The halls of power can just mean within the House of a certain
last name, a certain dynasty. And what's interesting about
this time period in particular is how many dynasties are new.
Yet we also still have ancient dynasties that track themselves
back to the gods. So yeah, crowns are claimed on
battlefields, but they're also claimed on family estates.
And there's nothing like a big, unexpected battle to shake
things up. The unbeatable mystique of
Sparta was gone, but that doesn't mean they're suddenly
weak, right? Thebes is suddenly the top
power. That doesn't mean they can hold
it. That doesn't mean.
Much of anything, if they can't capitalize on that right, it's
just a blip in history. Otherwise, we'll see.
Now that's made worse for thieves because most of the
regional powers don't really want the thieves to have this
top spot. They didn't really want anyone
to. Hold it, but Thebes even less so
because most people prefer the enemy they know Athens and
Sparta had been the 2 powers all along.
They kind of like, well who, what's this new guy going to do?
You know it's the enemy you know versus the new one, right?
So it should be interesting and filled with the unexpected as it
was. For ancient Greece at the time.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
Podcast. Hello and welcome back.
Everybody, I'm well prepared for today wearing my Don't Make Me
Repeat Myself History shirt. Yes, history does not like
having to repeat itself, yet it does so all the time.
Anyway, here we are repeating history by being here at 3:00.
O'clock on a Sunday? That's our usual time.
Unless it's ATV season, in which case we're streaming at 6:00 on
Mondays. You can find every episode of
History of Westeros Podcast on any podcast platform out there.
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All our video catalog is there as well.
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Patreon. If you have questions for us,
hit us up at westeroshistory@gmail.com and
you can also hit us up on any social media platform.
We're pretty much on all of them.
This episode of course is is different than our usual and we
have been going. This is the episode 5 of the
Game of Thrones of the At the End of Ancient Greece series aka
Tale of Three City States, Athens, Sparta and Thieves and
we've got a ways to go still. This episode will cover a couple
years and having fun with this. I'm glad to get the feedback
from those of those of y'all who are enjoying this if this is in
your bag. Well, luckily we have a huge
catalog and there's lots of other things you can listen to,
lots of other great Song of Ice and Fire content, and of course
we'll be. Hitting the hitting the bricks
for House of the Dragon in just a month or two here.
But before we get started, we have an announcement.
Shay and I are very. Pleased to announce Very honored
to announce that we have been nominated for a Hugo Award in
the Best Related Work category. Which is related to this episode
in that it is one of our history of Westeros history and Westeros
episodes rather than a straightforward A Song of Ice
Fire episode. It's our Long Night versus
Ragnarok episode. That is the one nominated.
And we thank all of those of you who helped nominate us.
And we're going to be going to world.
Con We would have gone to World Con anyway.
But it's at the end of August in Anaheim.
But now we'll be going as nominees instead of just fans
and people who love World Con so.
Anything to add to that a share? Did I catch everything or miss
anything? Yeah, you got everything except
that if you're thinking about going to World Con, get extra
value if you decide to go this year because then you'll be able
to vote for us. But also it's just a really fun
con with like a really deep paneling, a lot of panels, wide
variety academic presentations. Yeah.
So I, I, I recommend World Con in general, if you're the kind
of person who goes to cons looking for panels, education,
stuff like that. It's not so much of A cosplay
con. So if you're looking for a con
for that, then you want to go to Dragon Con or something like
that. But I love World Con.
I'm excited to go back to California and really excited
about the nomination. We'll be talking about it more
in the months to come, especially because we'll, you
know, remind you all when voting opens and stuff like that.
Right on. Yeah.
So that's that. We're very excited.
Thank you all for the support. And like a Shia said, we will
keep you abreast of developments and more news.
Related to that, let me read you all these section headers for
today. Get a little advance on what
we're going to be talking about. We're in the year 371 and we'll
be going to the aftermath of. Lutra, then, dark hooves, dark
words, Thebes rising. Then we'll move to the year 370
and the Sword of Damocles. That's right, the Sword of
Damocles. You all have heard of that
anecdote, that thing. We're going to have it in
today's episode. Cecily will be next, followed by
Macedon, Persia, The Great Satrap's Revolt.
Fallout. Greece.
And then we'll take our outro and discuss what's to come in
the next episode. Let's get to it. 371, the
aftermath of Lucra. In fact, we even know the day,
July 6th, the day Sparta lost their some 300 year old mystique
and they were scrambling. They hadn't necessarily accepted
they had lost it. Some of them still wanted to
fight. At the end of last episode, I
pointed out that that was going to be difficult for them because
their allies were really quite excited to take advantage of the
situation and be like, hey, Sparta.
You're weaker now. You just lost.
We don't have to fight for you right now, or perhaps at all.
So we're going to head out. See ya.
And that was something they could do comfortably because the
way the battle played out, Epaminondas was thinking ahead.
He's like, yeah, I don't want to fight Sparta's allies.
I want to fight Sparta. So let's avoid any sort of
contact during the battle as much as possible.
And that played out and that paid off because after the
battle, the other commanders who hadn't really been attacked by
Thebes despite being on the other side, were like, you know,
Thebes didn't really come after us, even though we were standing
right there. You could see very clearly that
they. Focused on the Spartans and that
enabled us to get away. So actually thanks Thebes, you
know they so they're a lot of them were probably just waiting
to see where the next shoe fell. You know maybe Sparta gets it
right back. We're not going to piss them off
too much because they might just force us to fight for them
again, and we don't want to be punished over much.
But we might be a facing a new world order here, a new grease
here, and we don't want to piss off Thebes either.
So they did the smart thing and kind of just waited to see what
was happening. So see.
There were plenty of Spartans you still wanted to fight, but
could they? Would they be able to?
Well, let's see what happened. Thebes went and set up a trophy.
That is normal, right? You win a battle in the ancient
world. In ancient Greece, you set up a
trophy. And you set the trophy up at the
spot where you think the battle turned, like the spot where you
think the enemy's lines broke, and the moment at which the spot
at which the tide turned, where you basically started winning,
right? Maybe it was a tie before, maybe
it wasn't undecided. But at some point something
happened, and it's usually the turning of a line and there in
this case, that's exactly what happened.
It was when Palopolis took the. Initiative after Epaminondas's
great strategy and charge the Spartans right as they were
trying to reform their lines to adjust to the strategy that
Epaminondas had used they were like oh oh, this isn't what we
were expecting we better make a change and while they're
changing Palapitus charges and boom success what's.
Crazy too is this is normal to set up the trophy as I said but
this was such a big deal that Thebes went against traditional
little bit by coming back later. I don't know when exactly, but
later. And making it permanent.
Trophies are supposed to be temporal.
They're supposed to be, yeah. Battle happened here, but you
know, battles aren't necessarily something that we want to
remember forever. Forever.
That's not how Greece. Thought about it because, well,
there's going to be more battles.
Right. And you can't just have trophies
everywhere. But this one was so important
that thieves decided to memorialize it forever.
You can still see the base of it today.
Most of it's gone. But this was three years short
of 2400 years. Ago.
And you can still see the base of this trophy.
Now, if you're a fan of The Expanse, which Ishaya and I are
big fans of The Expanse, you may recall the.
Battle of Point Lutra, which was in Book 7, I believe one side in
the battle was the Laconians, which is the, you know, it's the
region Sparta lives in now and you know, and then so that tells
you something about this Expanse faction.
They're naming themselves after the Spartans and the book this
takes place, and I said Book 7 is Persepolis rising.
Persepolis rising is the capital or not rising.
Persepolis is the capital of Persia in this current era and
will be for maybe 60 more years or so.
It's not it's it's gonna, it's on its wind down.
But it's been that way for 200 years so far.
So it's got a bit longer now. Epaminondas never stops.
Thinking never stops. Strategizing never starts, never
stops pondering what's next. He's a guy that really thinks
ahead. Now.
Jason de Feria is the one that gets the nickname Prometheus,
and we'll talk about him more later, of course.
But he, Pam Anandis really could have deserved a nickname like
that as well. And of course he's.
Thinking sort of along the lines of Doran Martel, meaning he's
really wants to undo Adis allows, although more about
Sparta than Adis allows in. Particular although at this
point the 2 are inextricably connected so when the time comes
to collect the dead, which is very normal right Greek
commanders, Greek politicians, Greek citizens always expect
this. We talked about how important
it. Was it's the it's a matter of
life and death to collect the dead.
So both sides tend to allow it to happen.
Like you want to collect your dead, go for it.
We, you know, we both swear a little oath to obey, to not
fight. It's like a little mini truce.
The gods are watching, etcetera. All of my Greek historical.
Fanboying throughout the years, I've never seen this violated
SO. They they held.
True to it pretty well so, buddy.
Pam Anand has had an alteration to the plan.
Yeah, normally say go ahead, collect your dad, do your thing.
No big deal. You Pam Anand has said OK, but
one change. Spartan allies, guys, that hey,
remember, I didn't try to kill you during the battle.
Remember that? Well, also, some of y'all did
die, even though we weren't trying to kill you too much.
You go ahead first. You pick your bodies up first.
I want to let you guys go first. Now, why would he do that?
Well, because the Spartans had also, for a very long time used
the collecting of the dead. They sort of manipulated a
little bit. They would pick the dead up all
in a certain way to hide their casualties.
It's like the stormtrooper from Star Wars.
They March in single file line to conceal their numbers.
Well, Sparta would conceal their casualties by collecting the
dead in a mass like while everyone else was doing it.
Epaminondas knew that he's like, yeah, so he said yes, Sparta's
allies collect their dead, then Sparta's other allies and
Sparta's allies basically left it so that the only bodies.
Left on the field would be Spartans, so it'd be very clear
how many died. And this is important because a
very unusually high number of Spartan full citizens died.
He wanted to see everyone to see that, because he wanted to drive
home the point. Hey, Disparza didn't just lose,
they lost decisively. And their ability to get it
going again is. Hanford, if not severely
handicapped by the loss of these important citizen soldiers, not
to mention a king, died on the field and people like Spodrios
and Clayonymus, guys who are basically villains in the eyes
of Thievans. But not so much in the eyes.
Of just these allied cities who were kind of pulled into this
whole mess so that worked really effectively a bunch of people
saw it wasn't just a rumor because.
It's easy to he be told. That a bunch of Spartans.
Died, but you see it in front of you.
You're standing there on the battlefield hanging out and
they're the they're the only ones left.
And this is an interesting point too.
Sparta, Thebes, none of these nations had like uniforms.
They didn't even really have uniform Shields.
That was a thing that came along pretty soon after this, like
less than 10 years after this battle, is what we're told by.
Historians that that's when that trend started, when they
realized that maybe one too many times people on the same side.
Have attacked each other. Especially when you have like 10
different allied cities all fighting in one battle when you
might have been on the opposite side of them two.
Battles ago, right? Like we fought for Athens in
this battle, we fought for Thebes in this battle.
Athens was on the same side as Thebes in that battle, but they
had allies on other side, blah blah blah.
You can easily be fighting someone that you were on the
same side with two battles ago, 1 battle ago, yet they had very
little way to distinguish. Themselves from each other.
You think of course of of Norsemen, the comedy show.
We've brought this up before, but there's a great bit where
one of the guys is, he's fighting, he's killing and
someone's like, how do you know who's who's on your side and who
isn't? He goes if they're on the other
side of me, if they're facing me, if.
He's coming out of me. He must be my enemy, right?
We're like. That works.
It's like you never kill someone on your own side.
Like why? I don't know.
I mean, I how would I know? Like after the fact the guy's
dad, he's not complaining. You.
Know I don't remember who I killed even like.
It's all so fast. Yeah.
So it really is kind of amazing to think about that.
Like, how did they tell? Like they they're all Greek.
It's not like it's not like when it's Greece versus Persia, the
style of dress. Even though you have like 20
different nations on each other, well, probably like 100 nations
on the Persian side. They're all fighting for Persia.
The skin color is at least different, in some cases even.
When when that isn't the case, you at least have different
clothing. But these are like guys that are
neighbors of each other. They're my city's 10 miles away
from yours and this is 20 miles away from that.
Like they aren't that. Different.
So yeah, it's funny to think about.
So yeah, this is. These.
All these You might have thought they'd figure that out sooner,
but now Sparta was a little more uniform in their dress.
They had the red cloaks and so they.
Did stand out. That's why I bring this up now.
It's a lot of the Allied armies didn't have that uniformity, but
Sparta did and that's. Why Epaminonda's play here was
so effective? Because the Spartans were very
distinct. What Sparta wanted was to win
another battle quickly, to make everyone kind of forget about
this, be like, oh, that was just a blip.
Yeah, Sparta's unbeaten streak was broken, but they went right
back to winning, OK, So it really wasn't that big a change.
Meanwhile. Thebes is like, we got to, you
know, prove that this wasn't it wasn't a blip.
We got to show that this is the new thing where we can beat them
multiple times. We got to, we got to follow this
up with another victory or something to show that.
Our advantage is real, you know, And then make, maybe make that
advantage larger. So the remaining Spartan armies
in a bind, some of them saw the writing on the wall and decided,
yeah, we can't fight again. But wait, what happens if we go
home? We got to go home and tell
everybody we lost. Uh oh.
Like, we got to bring the news. That that our unbeaten streak is
broken. Truth be told, a horseman or two
had already rushed home back to Sparta to deliver the news.
So they're going to find out anyway.
But still there's they're still going home and being like, yeah,
sorry, we're the losers. We're the guys that shamed
everyone like such. This weight fell on them big
time. Worse, the ones who didn't want
to fight and go home, the lesser of two evils, were concerned
that they'd get attacked on their way back because they
managed to get back up onto a hill.
So they're hiding up on this hill, it's defensible, but they
can't stay there forever. Is time on their side or not
though? They're like, well if we leave
we could get attacked, but it what's Sparta going to do in the
meantime? What are they going to do back
home? It can't be that long before
they find out, right? We're only like 3 days March
away from home. Will they send a relief army?
Maybe if we stay here they'll send help and then we can fight
again. So they really didn't know what
to do and there was a lot of disagreement and their king was
dead so they didn't have like the one guy who could make the
decision. So there's just a it's a real
rock and a hard place for them. If they leave, they risk getting
attacked if and blowing their opportunity for a follow up
battle if they stay. Well, they could get starved
out, their position could get worse, they could get the hill,
could be put under siege rather than just this sort of iffy
situation they have. So the.
Best thing they might. Think well, if we're going to,
if we're in this tough position. Maybe we should just.
Try to fight it, you know, 'cause at least we die fighting.
But the problem with that means a.
Second loss. That means it shows that
Sparta's loss. It kind of justifies the first
one. So it they really didn't know
what to do and they lacked leadership.
And of course that was part of Epaminondas's plan in the 1st
place. Get rid of their leadership and
they're going to be the headless snake.
It was working. Even after the battle worked
during and it was working. Afterwards.
So thieves. Their battle, their victory
comes quickly in terms of the news because this battle
happened in Seben territory and once.
Again, this is a small place, so the families of the victorious
heard the news almost as quickly as we in the modern world would
hear. It's almost like the cell phone
era was there for them temporarily, because they
learned almost immediately the family of Epaminondas.
We know his parents were alive. Still at this point.
So they would have been like, Oh my gosh, our son led the.
Victory over Sparta. Oh my goodness.
Give thanks to the gods, all that now he had a brother,
Kafisa Doris, who was. Probably in the battle too, we
don't really hear about him. But now Ipam and I just
celebrated with the rest, you know, they had a little party or
what have you. I don't know exactly what they
did. I don't know how they celebrate
these sort of things. Probably wine and and stuff.
But the next day he looked downcast and bedraggled.
Like you hungover or something. Do you drink too much, man?
Like, no, that's not. Of it, he was like, did you did
did someone die? Did we find out about a death
after the fact that, you know, you didn't learn about and you
know someone died close to you. You didn't hear about it during
the battle. No, that's not either chastising
myself for immoderate joy. Like what?
Yeah, he celebrated too much. And I don't mean drank too much.
He just let himself feel quote UN quote immoderate joy.
He's like, Nah, we got to be more balanced.
I got to, I got to be more centered.
You know you can't get too mad. You can't get too happy either.
That's his thing. Like if you get too mad, you get
vindictive, you get bloody, you get bloodthirsty, what have you.
If you get too happy, you get. You get LAX, you get.
You know you get, you don't. Push yourself as hard your
discipline slips. This is a guy that's, again, I
believe I brought this anecdote up when I introduced this
character, maybe even in episode 1.
This is who he is. This is this is some kind of
dude just punishing himself for getting too happy.
Who does that? Well, he does.
And it might sound silly, but it's going to come up kind of
big because, yeah, Thebes is going to start to act a little
bit like they deserve to be in power.
Power corrupts. Pam Menander was already looking
ahead to power corrupting his own people in the moment of
victory. He's starting to think about
that already. Talk about thinking.
Ahead. So you can't allow yourself to
think, well, hey, just 'cause we won this battle, we're the best
now. He knew.
He knew that over celebrating would lead to slacking off and
he was like I can't allow that to happen and it starts with me.
Right, if I'm the. Leader or a leader?
Well, I got to. Set the example.
And he also knew, as I just said, it's part, It's not an
army sitting right there. It was a beaten army, but it was
a Spartan army. And as the Spartan.
Army was wondering and hoping maybe reinforcements would come.
Biebs was concerned about that as well.
So Sparta, as I said, they learned of this about two to
three days later because. That's about how long it takes a
horse to get there. And you can you best believe
that some horses were speeding off to Sparta to bring that news
as quickly as possible. And that's exactly what
happened. And that's.
Exactly where we're going next. Dark hooves, dark words.
Yeah, you know what I mean. Dark wings, dark words.
Well, they didn't have Ravens delivering messages, but they
did have these horses. What else?
Could I have said there dark manes?
Dark words, as Shea and I were talking about it.
What's dark hooves? Dark nays?
Dark nays instead of dark words. That's a good one.
So Greece. Made a point of dramatizing, and
I mean that. Literally in actual stage plays
because Greece. Loved dramatic stage plays and a
lot of them were tragedies. They would dramatize the moment
news arrived, usually bad news 'cause that's more dramatic than
good news, right? We all know that we we watch TV
and movies and read books. It makes sense, right?
But it makes. Even more sense when you put
yourselves in their shoes or their clogs, whatever footwear
they had, because we. Even in the modern world, we
know what it's like to wait for. News, right?
Like all this? Well, did we get the deal?
Did I get the job? Is she going to accept my
marriage proposal? Just lots of infinite examples
out there. When it comes to things like
modern war, yeah, we don't get like the top secret information,
but we find out when battles happen.
We usually find out when bombs are dropped.
Not always, but usually. And when we do find out, it's
usually pretty quickly. But what we don't usually have
in the modern world, some people do.
We don't in like America, for example.
Europe does cause Ukraine exists and there's stuff happening
there but like. You might be waiting on.
News of something like the biggest victory in our history
just happened, or the biggest loss in our history just
happened and an army is now a few miles away coming to
enslave. Us all.
I cannot fathom that level of anxiety right and well it, but
it did exist and the reactions. And Sparta to this loss we're
anywhere from Oh my God, the sky is falling to well, time for us
to step up and and do our best, right.
And the but the cultural reaction is very odd.
And let me talk a little bit about that.
Because it's super unique and, and interesting.
We're not just talking about nations here.
We're not just talking about, you know, your nation may fall
because you lost a battle. We're talking about your way of
life, which can span nations or not.
Sparta thought their way of life was superior because it was
working. They were the dominant power.
And they believed themselves to be the most moral, so that those
two things went together. We're the most moral in Greece,
therefore we're in charge. They thought those two things
were deeply connected. We're the most moral army.
You've heard that term before in modern times.
The most moral army. Yeah, that's an oxymoron.
And they and they thought of themselves as the most pious.
Which maybe was true. I don't know that it mattered.
But they thought it did. So they thought all these things
were self-evident. We're the most moral.
We're the most, we have the best society.
That's why we're number. One, you know, it all adds up.
It's very straightforward. Don't overthink it.
So wait, what does this mean? Now we've lost?
Are we no longer the best nation or what?
What does it mean? Like they they they had this
attitude or this belief in themselves that was so old, so
long standing, it'd spanned entire life spans of many
Spartans that they just never had chance to think about.
It and why would they? Well, let's let's think about
what it would life would be. Like if we were losing all the
time. Yeah.
And then they just, they just don't go there too often, at
least not in public. Right.
So they they have all these hundreds of years of being the
top dog, top lion in Greece and the results proved it right.
The results backed that up. And can you just how modern all
this is for a minute? Here we have the the Thebans,
with their literal pairs of gay lovers in their elite unit, the
one that did the most damage, The most famous unit.
Meanwhile, Sparta. Has plenty of homosexuality in
their culture but they don't like it in the military.
So you have a side that doesn't like gays in the military that
just lost to the side that openly has them so that they
don't like that they don't like losing because it's A to them,
it's morality. The the less moral army beat
them. It's so, so modern and they're
like, what? What does that mean?
We're not the most moral? Or does it mean that they the
other the other? Side must have cheated or
something like that. They come up with all these
excuses. Xenophon, the Athenian warrior,
author, historian who was a fan of Sparta and a friend of a just
allows personally wrote that Clam Brodus and his inner circle
were drunk the night before that battle.
No other source writes this. No other historian puts this
down. There's no other evidence for
it. He just, he pretty much probably
just threw that in there because he was a Spartan fanboy and it
just allows his buddy and so he's just trying to like.
Let me, let me, let me. Float some propaganda out there
that'll mitigate some of this. So the country that was
accepting of. Gay relationships as long as
they're on the down low that just lost to the country that
has open gays in the military. What were the Spartan E Fours,
the five guys who are in charge of Spartan culture?
One step down from it just allows.
All of them. All six of them it just allows.
And the 5E Fours were all attending a performance at the
time. The news arrived in Sparta.
What was this performance? Yes, it was naked boys dancing.
Yes, the the the city that doesn't want gays in their.
Military it is. Definitely hypocritical to see
it this way. Anyway, they have a pattern it
but. Kind of a order of effects here,
like a standing order. Don't just spread the news to
everyone you go. Tell the leaders and they decide
who knows next, especially the time like this, which was
unprecedented. So the news arise and they're
like, you know, you can just picture, just allow us to
sitting at the play watching the boys dancing.
And someone whispers in his ear and he's like, takes a deep
breath. Nods, you know, Waves the
messenger away, acts like nothing happened.
He tells the other E fours like maybe during a break in the
performance. They just keep watching the
performance. They sit there, let it end up.
They are not going to let anyone get any sort of clue as to
what's happening. They will not poker face.
That's what they're doing here. We just got news, but you guys
can keep going about your business.
They came up with a plan. All right, We're not going to
tell everybody. There's people here, there's
foreigners watching our performances there.
We've got a a big. Festival going on right now we
can't have. All these people going.
Home two or three days from now when the festival ends, telling
everyone that we lost. Let's let the festival end and
then we'll tell everybody. So that's what they did.
They they told just who needed to know.
And then once the festival ended, then they started
reacting like they held it in. For a few days, the whole city.
I mean, surely there were some exceptions, but this is an
unbelievable amount of citywide discipline.
They just told who needed to know to keep it secret, to make
sure no one else found out, and then spilled the secret.
Then they reacted, but they reacted backwards.
What does that mean? Yes, it's bizarro Sparta.
Or perhaps it's bizarro grease, because maybe this is normal for
Sparta. We don't know what normal for
Sparta is in this case because. Normal losing.
Well, that's not normal. But what they did was the
families of the slain, the ones who fell in battle.
They would walk around cheerfully, acting like
something good happened. And the ones whose son or sons
or fathers or uncles or whatever survived, they wept.
They walked around receiving comfort from their neighbors.
The ones whose people survived, the soldiers that survived, were
the ones that got the sentiment. The sentiment and the empathy.
Like, wait, what? Because that's just their this
is how they decided to face it with their They face this
enormous set back. It is more than a set back
because they thought the gods favored them.
It was like, wait, do the gods not favor us anymore?
We're really pious. That hurts.
Right. Is is this really the new
normal? Are we just on our own?
Even the gods don't favor us. Or is this something we can get
back? Because if we can get it back by
acting a certain way, we're starting right now with that
behavior. If it's discipline, we're going
to be very. Disciplined.
A number of authors, Greek or not, have written that grief is
the ultimate. Maybe love, maybe hate, but
grief might be the hardest. Thing to to keep internalized,
to not let out, to keep hidden from other people.
So Sparta's state discipline, something they made such a big
deal out of was really tested here.
And from their perspective, they seem to have passed.
They held it in. They rewarded the people whose
sons fell in battle and looked down on the ones who survived
because it was a loss. So it's shameful to survive a
battle that you lost, right? And the Spartan system doesn't
just this isn't just a cultural thing.
This is like law. Some of it is anyway.
They have a a rule for anyone who flees from battle is marked
forever as a trembler, and this is a legal state.
You are a trembler. That means anyone can beat you
up. They cannot give you shelter.
No fire, no guest right. The equivalent of guest right.
They had a version of. That.
No guest right to a trembler. They can only shave half their
beard. They can only wear bedraggled
clothes. Again, a warrior first culture
really being a coward, even though you aren't necessarily a
coward because you ran away this one time.
But that's how they see it. There's they have no except
there's no it's a 0 tolerance policy except that here's a time
where they needed to tolerate it because what are you going to
do? Just designate the entire army
as tremblers, all of them. What do you do?
Like this is already a Spartan system that's collapsing under
its own weight because there aren't enough people that live
up to these ideals like they they're, they don't have the
noble, the birth status or the ability to accomplish the
Marshall tasks that are necessary.
This is the bar is too high. And the people that aren't
making it, they fall to lower status, lower status, lower
status, and they get people getting killed who are above the
bar. Their society is shrinking.
So it's, it's really bad. And what are they going to do?
Like you're going to just throw away all these other soldiers
too? So it just allows his rule was
more important than ever. They look to him as a leader
more than ever, You might say, well, weren't they already doing
that? Well, yeah, they.
But they had two kings, right? Well, oh, well, what about the
dead king? Who's the new king?
Right. There's a new king, right?
Yes. Agispolis the second.
So we have Agisalaus the second and Agispolis the second.
Agispolis the second, however, is 10 years old.
So 2 kings, Yeah, but really one king.
Because this 10 year old ain't doing anything.
He's not issuing orders. No one's listening to him
anyway. They might eventually.
But not at this point. So Sparta's two king system
really comes down to 1. And this decision comes to just
allow us, what are we going to do?
What are we going to do? About the law, he says Spartans.
He calls the assembly. He announces his decision.
He says, all right, it's good that we have these laws.
It's good that we keep. Courage at the head of.
Our virtues that it's the most important thing and by that same
turn that cowardice is at is the biggest sin.
We will not abandon our laws. We will let them sleep for one
day, however. So you didn't see that's just
weasel words or lying words, whatever he's like.
Yeah, we're not going to. And the law, but we will not use
it today, the only time it's ever really come up.
We're just not going to enforce it.
So we're going to enforce it starting tomorrow.
You better believe it. And anyone else runs away, they
will face the full extent of the law.
But this time, no. We're just going to, I don't
know exactly. I would really love to to know.
Exactly what words he used to to get this across to people who
were probably like. Whatever you say man, we're all
just paranoid and scared now because it's like, is thieves
coming? For us, that's that was on the
minds of many. You know, a lot of them are
ready to get back out there and fight, but a lot of the others
are like, I'm not. Used to this feeling of being on
the losing side, of being in danger.
Like I maybe I wasn't as brave as I thought because I'm always
just on the winning. Side and I can only take heart
in the fact that we haven't lost in 300 years like what was I
worried about now they're worried it just allow us says
not just are we suspending the. Laws, but we got to take action.
So he immediately tests some of the allies.
Some of the allies kind of abandoned the army up there.
But remember what I said? They weren't fully leaving
Sparta because they didn't want to test it too much.
They were like, well, maybe this is a new world order, maybe it
isn't. It hadn't all set in yet.
Nobody knew exactly where things were headed.
Were only a couple of days after the battle was over here maybe a
week or two. So a lot of these other Greek
city states were still going to toe the line.
They weren't going to do anything too out of the
ordinary. They weren't going to get too
bold yet until they saw where things lay.
So it just allow us knew that or at least sussed it out.
He kind of, he kind of knew how they were going to think, so he
immediately called for soldiers. For some of from some of those.
Allied cities to test them to see if they do it A&B because he
needed some men to send N he wanted to send a relief army.
He had not yet given up. He was of the same mind as many
of those soldiers still sitting on that hill.
And Boisia were thinking like maybe we can still win a follow
up battle here and that's it and that'll erase Luktran.
Well, it'll look like we can just act like it was a couple of
running days of battle. But in the end Sparta came out
ahead. There was a little bit of a set
back but but but you know, just call it all one big battle.
You know, that's kind of their angle here.
So he sends his son Arcademus. Prince Arcademus.
Goes out with this with this relief.
Army and it heads N it's heading as quickly as it can to go to
Boesha to link up with the other army and and maybe start things
back up again. But before they got there we got
to see what's happening in the meantime.
Oh, but wait one last thing Arcademus let's not forget
that's this is just allows his son he was the lover of
Cleonimus. Cleonimus was the son of
Phodrius. Phodrius and Cleonimus were just
killed at Luchtra, so Arcademus may want, might be, might have
been pretty happy that his father sent him there 'cause he
might have been looking for some payback.
So Thebes is doing their thing. In the meantime, let's check in
with them. This next part is called Thebes
Rising. So they sent to Athens, also not
very far away. This didn't take very long.
And they say, look, we beat Sparta.
It really happened. How cool is that?
Yo, Yeah. Athens's response?
Was Chirp chirp crickets. They loved to hate Sparta.
They didn't love to love Thebes, despite them being closer.
They're a democracy. They got more in common than
Sparta. It's that old thing.
It's that old thing that we humans do.
Politics, religion, everything else people often hate.
What's more similar to them than something is the polar opposite.
How many? There's plenty of like ancient
Christians or Muslims that hated the other side.
But. They hated other Muslims or
Christians even more because they're a different.
Denomination, you know, and it doesn't have to be about
religion. Like I said, it could be
politics. There's how many Democrats in
America hate other Democrats as much or more so than they hate
the Republicans or vice versa. There's a lot of that right?
We all know this. I think there's like two ways
that that happens in particular. I may may more ways than that,
but in some of the ways I think of is feeling threatened because
they're in your same sphere, right?
You know, like they're kind of they should have more power over
you. Yeah, yeah.
And so one feel well, feeling threatened like if they could
fill your slot, you know what I mean, because they're so similar
to you. But also there's the other idea
in terms like politics is that you like have higher standards
for this. Right.
That's a good one. And that comes up here because
Athens just thinks it's better than Thebes.
They just they don't want to be subordinate to that.
They're like subordinate to Sparta is one thing because,
well, Sparta beat them. You know, they had a whole
thing. They had a Peloponnesian.
War and then Sparta won. So Athens is like, well, they
beat us, We haven't lost to you and we don't really want to
fight you. And we also don't really want
you to be that close with you because that's the enemy.
We know you're similar to us. We don't want to prop prop you
up. It might make everyone think
that your version of democracy, your version of all these things
is the superior version, whereas we think our version, it's very
much what a share was saying just now, but it's goes farther
than that. There's another angle here that
I'm trying to get into, which is, yeah, Athens just didn't
like Thebes because they look down on them culturally.
They thought they were like bump country bumpkins.
They're the equivalent of. Of the redneck or something like
that. The way a city person looks at a
country person or something like.
That, you know just. Using terms that are somewhat
similar. Clog wearing the oceans, that's
what they called them. They wore clogs, which was like
a a rustic thing, you know, I don't know, maybe that's like
saying someone wears Crocs. Or something like that, which I
don't have a problem with, but some people looked.
Out on that right so Athens didn't really want.
Thebes in charge either they're like, well, yeah, we don't want
Sparta in charge, but that's not that doesn't mean we want you in
charge. We want us in charge so.
And arguably Sparta was preferable because Sparta was so
concerned with land armies and land empire where Athens is
like, we're a naval empire bro. They're not really even
interfering with us that. Much only with that blip when
they had that Lysander. Guy who's been dead for.
Decades. That was the only time they
really gave us a challenge at sea.
So they're so focused on land and all this other stuff.
They're so conservative. They never change.
We're not really worried about them adapting to beating us out
there, you know? But thieves, they're like, they
might adapt. They might be able to do these
things. And we don't want to be
subordinate to country bumpkins that we look down on.
Was this short sighted on Athens's part?
Yeah, absolutely. Just like all these examples
I've given of similar. It's short sighted when there's
infighting in political parties. It's it's short sighted all
these things. Yeah, this is just as short
sighted, partly because thieves said OK well.
That's kind of surprising, but we have other options.
We can call one of our other friends.
We got other possible friends. Hey, we we just gained leverage.
We just beat Sparta. A lot of people are going to
want to be our friends. We offered you first.
OK, You said no. Let's see who's next.
How about how about that? Jason of.
Fear eye guy. He's looking pretty strong right
now. Maybe we should make friends
with him. Again, this gets into the
weirdness of fellows, allies who have very little in common
fighting, teaming up against people that they do have things
in common with. Jason is a military dictator.
He's more like a Sparta than in Athens or a Thieves.
But go. Figure, you know an enemy of my
enemy is my friend kind of situation maybe that's not what
this was like Athens was friendly with Jason.
They didn't want to be an enemy of his, but they saw how they
were kind of competing for the same things Jason openly talked
about building his own Navy from the same timber forests that
Athens was getting theirs Athens didn't own these forests.
Neither did Jason. They were owned by Macedonia.
And Jason's like, well, what if we're, well, we're next door to
Matt. That's our next door neighbor in
Macedonia. Athens.
You're farther away. You're not next door to.
Either of us. You're a little farther away.
You're not far, but you're not as close as we are.
So what if we get that timber, either through force or by
offering more money? Then we build a Navy and you
don't have timber to build ships anymore.
And we don't even have to beat you at sea.
We just take your resources away and all your ships are going to
rot and fall apart. Never mind that, Jason, it comes
from horse country. They don't have sailors.
But this is still a fear that Athens had.
They're like, huh, that's not good, we don't want that.
And now Thieves is going. To team up with them maybe.
We were short sighted. But anyway, Jason's young, so
like all these things about, well, maybe he's not a sailing
guy, these are. I wouldn't, but you wouldn't put
it past him either given all the other adaptations and
advancements he had made. So again, this guy was nicknamed
Prometheus and his reputation for thinking ahead was well
known. So when he talks about things
that are coming, you take it seriously because he has a
reputation for being right when he talks about what he's.
Going to accomplish. You take that seriously too,
because this is a guy that has accomplished everything he said
he was going to accomplish. And then some.
He had been talking openly about Persia as the common goal of all
Greece. Like, hey, Persia attacks us all
the time, right? Why do why not turn the tide?
Why not let's they're always hiring our soldiers.
Why not go after them? So thieves and Sparta grinding
each other down. He doesn't like that.
He wants thieves and Sparta to be part of his team.
His go gets Persia team, you know, don't fight each other,
right? It's the same sort of thing.
This is a different level of infighting.
You know, thieves and Sparta may seem like diametrically opposed
in a lot of ways they are. But from Jason's perspective,
they're all Greek. They're all not Persian.
They could all be a weapon against the bigger common enemy,
right? So they ask for, hey, buddy,
what's going on? Can you help us out here?
Do you want to be our ally? Jason does more than say yes.
He gets 1500 of his best troops and rushes South.
And we've talked before about how quickly this guy moves.
He when he wants to get somewhere quickly, he'll camp
for just a few hours, wake up. Go.
Right. And that's what he does.
He saw the opportunity. And he wanted to show.
Off and he's like hey they're inviting me to like put myself
in the middle of things and maybe broker a piece or broker
whatever I love to be in the middle of things that's where I
am all the time that's they're inviting me to be where I want
to be so he jumped at this chance brought 1500 soldiers,
which is like OK, 1500 soldiers that's a lot but it's not enough
to like conquer something he can't like take a city well,
maybe he could but that's not enough it's not an invasion
force. You don't look at that like an
invasion force, but you also can't just like.
Ha. He's weak.
Let's get him not with his 1500 of his best soldiers.
And part of the reason he moved so quickly was to show that he
could. He had that reputation.
I think he, I bet he turned on The Jets even more to prove that
it was true when people were actually watching.
He got there fast. And let's not forget he was a
friend of Thebes. His wife was Theben.
His first kid, a daughter named Phoebe, now, he got there and he
encouraged him to make peace. So he says now, I believe that.
I believe that he encouraged him to make peace.
The part I'm not so sure about is he takes a lot of credit for
it. After the fact.
He's like, yeah, I got Sparta and Thebes to calm down.
Without me, they might have just gone right back at it again.
You know, it's all. That's exactly the sort of thing
he would do. He puts himself in the middle or
gets put in the middle and then claims credit for whatever
happens unless things go wrong. But they didn't go wrong.
So he nothing to do but claim credit.
He's he said I, I went back and forth between both camps.
I went up to the hill, talked to the Spartans, showed them the
folly of fighting right now, talked to the Thebans, told them
it was magnanimous and manly to hold back.
You know, show that worthiness, show that you were.
Sure that you're the bigger city, that you don't need to
punish these guys, that you're you've made your.
Point, you know, and someone like Epaminondas, Palapas,
they're all, they're like, yeah, 'cause you, as we'll see in the
future, Epaminondas and Palapas are a different sort in, in
terms of how they deal with defeated enemies.
Even Greeks in this era and later very commonly follow the
the whole battering ram rule if the battering ram touches the
gate. All bets are off.
We're going to. Do whatever we want with your
people. And when we take your city,
which usually means pillaging and enslaving, Palapas and
Impanas weren't about that. They're like, no, no, no, no,
you can't do that. We're never going to get after
this cycle if we don't treat our neighbors better, Sparta.
Didn't care about that. They're like Nah, Nah, we're.
In charge, we do what we want now, we won't go too far.
We have some restraint, you know, we're not executing people
left and right, but we will kill a few people here and there to
because it needs doing. So that's different.
So, so that's a long. That's what Jason wants.
He's like, yeah, don't kill each other, 'cause I want you all to
work for me. So he didn't want Sparta to lose
too much glory or supremacy either, 'cause he wants that
supremacy in glory. He wants that, that people
afraid of Sparta. He wants Persia to be afraid of
Sparta. He doesn't want them to lose
that. He just wants it pointed at
Persia. He wanted Persia to fear a
united Greek army that included the mighty Sparta, right?
So there's no more undefeated Sparta, but they can still scare
people. They can still scare Persians.
So it it's sneaky, right? He's acting like he's doing all
this. He's putting it, he's centered
here, but he isn't necessarily changing anything.
He's taking a lot of credit for it.
I'm not sure that anything would have gone differently here.
But his charisma was so potent and well known that it's hard
not to give him some credit. He was saving Greek lives.
He was saying, yeah, I'm, I'm, this is, I'm leadership
material. Look at what I'm doing here.
I stopped the fighting. Did he?
We're not really sure He he definitely presented it that
way. So he said, hey, thieves, leave
it at that. You know, one victory, leave it
at they did not leave it at that.
And This is why I'm not so sure Jason really did a whole lot
here, even though he claimed for it.
Because Thieves is. Not really going to stop.
They just are going to start with what's closer to home.
They're going to start shoring up their region, Sparta.
When Sparta had the upper hand, they were able to insert some
garrison's here and there. That's.
Going to be Thebes first task is getting Thebes and Boisha to be
purely theirs. Get rid of all the Spartan
influence. That's their first priority and
the Spartan army, their first priority is getting out of the
pickle they're in. So Jason says he arranged a
truce here, right? He wants all those dudes now.
Persia also likes this because Persia doesn't want Persia's and
we want Greece fighting each other a little bit 'cause we
don't want this unified Greece thing.
We don't want that unified Greece thing that Jason's
talking about, but we don't want them too.
Deep in the trenches or there won't be any mercenaries for us
to hire. And we do love those Greece
Greek mercenaries, right? So stack all that together.
Persia wanted peace and Greece to buy soldiers to attack Egypt
and elsewhere. Jason wanted peace and Greece to
lead them to attack Persia. He's like, why take their pay
when you can take their pay, right?
Give me that. So Persia's position is top
paymaster for unemployed Greek soldiers was wavering because
other power brokers in the Greek world had figured out that
blueprint and headed to implementing it.
Jason wasn't the first, although he was taking it farther,
perhaps than anyone else had to that point.
So he goes home and he starts telling people.
What a great job. He did.
He's like, yo, I'm even stronger than I was.
They invited me down there 'cause they needed me, and I
delivered. I stopped the bloodshed.
I got them to agree to a truce. And oh, by the way, on my way
home, I passed through Thermopylae.
You guys know Thermopylae? That's the movie 300.
That was the big pass that was guarded to keep the Persians
out. It's hard to get into Greece
without going through Thermopylae with an army.
So Jason said I'm probably coming back.
And even though his words were I'm coming back, I'm a peace
broker, I'm going to, you know, I'm a leader.
When he passed through Thermopylae, he ordered his 1500
soldiers to destroy the city of Heraclea, which was the northern
defence point. Now Thermopylae, he could just
walk right back through if if he if Greece wanted to fortify it
to keep him from coming back in, they wouldn't have enough time.
Because he well, unless he didn't.
Come back for a while, but everybody knew he'd be back and
in fact, he might be back pretty soon.
In fact, he was definitely going to be back pretty soon, if you
believe what he said. So he's telling everybody how
well it went in his country. He's like, look, he hasn't fully
gotten control of Thessaly. It's a big country, very
disunited. A lot of still, parts of it are
still sort somewhat tribal. So he's got most of it, but he's
trying to lock down the rest and he's using this as lever.
He's like, look, I did all this stuff there.
Look, Thebes thieves just won that battle, y'all?
I didn't tell them this, but they're bumpkins.
Like Athens agrees with me, you know?
So they're not fit. They're not fit to be #1 they're
Athens and Sparta. Their time is done and Thebes
isn't fit. It's our time.
Thessaly should be #1 And I'm number one in Thessaly.
So he's selling them on. Hey, wasn't it great?
Don't you? Wouldn't you want to be in that
position like the leaders of Greece?
Like that's a serious trickle down for everybody.
Yeah, I'm number one. But you guys will all be
elevated. Every noble's going to have more
land. Every peasant's going to have
more esteem. Everything's going to be better.
It's very, very, very encouraging, very, very tempting
for the Thessalians, many of them, not all of them, but a lot
of them. He's very charismatic.
He's very good at this. On top of that, you got people
like the Athenian philosopher Isocrates.
Very confusing. Not Socrates, Isocrates.
He has been in and out of our story as a man who.
Looks up. To these charismatic, powerful
leaders and says you should take over.
Unified Greece is a good thing. We want that.
We're better off that way. Look how much we fight.
Each other. Of course he's not.
Thinking ahead. He's not thinking.
Whoa. If he were really on top of his
game, he'd be thinking bigger nations still fight each other.
Just because it's a bigger nation doesn't mean it's immune
to war. It just has bigger wars.
It's bigger civil wars. Yeah.
So he's. He's imagining one leader can
hold it all together. Yeah.
Not really. Maybe for a time.
Yeah. It's just pie in the sky.
Sorry. I, Socrates.
I Socrates. It came 2400 years before Frank
Herbert warned us all about charismatic leaders.
You know, dunes, Jason Efira is definitely Paul tradies here.
And yeah, I think a Socrates would have encouraged Paul to
follow the golden path. He's like, yeah, we need you, We
need you to take over everything.
And yeah, anyway, yeah, I don't. I'm not with you there.
I Socrates. So this partner army on the hill
is another reason why I'm not so sure that Jason didn't
exaggerate his role because Sparta either didn't trust him
or like I said, Jason was exaggerating because they he got
them to agree to a truce, as he said, or maybe a truce was
agreed to. Maybe he didn't do that.
Either way, the Spartan officer said OK, They told their men,
hey, we've got a truce now. We've got a truce with thieves.
We have every, we know we're going to leave in the morning,
so get ready. But instead they left at night.
They left before the morning, like 5-6 hours ahead of that.
They didn't tell anyone except themselves, and they just
changed their plans at the last second.
They knew they were going to change those plans, they just
didn't tell anyone because they were afraid of word getting out.
They kind of hoped word would get out that they were leaving
in the morning because they wanted their enemies to find
that out. They wanted thieves to think
they were leaving in the morning.
They wanted maybe Jason to think they were leaving in the
morning. But they left at night.
They were so wary of being attacked on the March, they used
deception. They didn't even go the most
straightforward path. They took a circuitous route so
they'd be less likely to be followed, a route that their
enemies would not guess they'd take.
And when morning came, the Stevens and Jason were like, Oh
yeah, OK, they're gone. Interesting it the plan worked,
sort of. I don't think thieves was going
to attack them from behind, so it maybe didn't matter.
Jason probably wouldn't have either or anything like that.
But they were trying to be safe. They wanted to be sure the last
thing they needed. Was another loss to report as
they got home. It was already going to be
difficult enough to get home and be like, yeah, we're the guys
who lost, hey, what's going on? Even though they took a
circuitous route, even though they took an unusual route home,
less than a day after leaving, they encountered the relief army
sent by a just allow us under his son, Arcademus.
One day too late and they were already gone.
They'd given up their fortified position too late now.
So Arcademus said, The gods really aren't on our side right
now. One day.
If we had shown up a day later like this, you guys had waited
12 more hours to leave, we would have shown up, and then we could
have maybe attacked. And too late now, so they went
back home. Now, there's no doubt they'd be
back. But when?
So again, when news of that came, Jason was able to just
brag even more. He's like, yeah, see, look what
I did. I stopped that from happening.
Like, it was my timing. Like as much as the the timing
of all this is so fortuitous in a superstitious society, even
people who don't believe in the gods or in omens are going to
go, the gods favored me here. Look at that.
You know, it's just too
straightforward to the the rank and file people out there that
do believe in these superstitions.
Yeah, pretty bad. Now we move to the year 370.
We are in the year 370 from 371. And that's cool because we get
to say a few fun things at the beginning of the year.
But to start off though, I want to point out how we've kept
track of various kings in the states north of Greece, but
only. But the only family we've kept
track of outside of Greece is the Persian royal family for the
most part, and a few of the other noble families in Persia.
Now we need to look at a few of the other families because,
well, as these kingdoms are growing, the temptation for
internal strife or assassinations, for seizing the
crown from your father, your brother, your uncle, whoever
becomes greater and greater. The things that we're very
familiar with, the type of intrigue we're very familiar
with, not just from the real world, but very much from A Song
of Ice and Fire. As one family member leverages
its house's power to increase that power, the internal strife
potential goes up because the temptation to seize that power
which is increasing is all the greater.
The sculptor Praxitelli's his career began around this time
with 370 BC. He was the.
First ever person in the world known of to carve a full size
female nude sculpture, which clearly that means that men had
been carved fully nude. Sculpted before that that was
not that was not written in this article I read but clearly that
must be the case unless the full female full male statue came
later. Well maybe that's the case.
Kind of doubt given the way these Greeks were.
Interesting thing about him is they scholars and art historians
and regular historians, they're positive that some of these
ancient world statues that we still have are his.
They just don't know which ones because a lot of these ancient
sculptures, we're just not sure who made them.
But this guy was so famous, so influential, they're sure
mathematically speaking, like the odds of none of these being
his are tiny, but they don't know for sure which ones there
are. So it's kind of funny.
We have, we definitely have the work of Praxitelli's still
around in this world. We just don't know which ones
there are. There's no just like anything
else. Like a lot of these infighting
things we talked about go to an even more micro version of that
the community of art historians. I wouldn't go so far to say they
hate. Each other and some some of
these factions within. Art historians hate each other
as much as certain Christian denominations hate other
Christian denominations or what have you.
But yet again, there is not agreement.
And then some of these arguments are probably not violent, but
like, they probably get pretty mad, you know?
And at some point, like, no, you look at this evidence.
This is not 3rd century, blah, blah, blah.
You know, I don't know what kind of the arguments take.
But. I'm sure they get pretty fierce,
right, Udox? Now we'll come back to
Praxitelli's because his, some of his other stuff is going to
pop up here and there. But we're introducing him now,
and I think throughout the rest of our series there'll be some a
moment or two where we can bring him up.
Because statues matter. Statues come up a lot.
They're they're the province of the wealthy and the successful,
and Greeks loves its statues. A guy named Udoxas of Kinetas.
I probably said both the name and the place wrong there.
The mathematician he was, he figured out the formula for
determining the area under a curve.
I don't know how he did that, but well done you Daxus of
Kinitas. That's a lot of you.
Who know math pretty well or like might have known that or
not and you're like, well now you know 2 to be mad at for all
those difficult math questions. Or for making the world a better
place because of his calculations.
He was also a doctor and an astronomer and a lawmaker and a
student of Plato. So.
Boy, his resume was fat. Arguably he was the most
successful, most influential mathematician in ancient Greece.
Period. Next.
To Archimedes, who will be born in 287, so Eudoxus during his
life for a long time was the most.
Until Archimedes came along. Archimedes, like I said, came
along in 287. That's 83 years after where we
are now. But Archimedes was born in
Syracuse or Syracuse. I don't know how they said it.
Both is probably right. And that's where we're going
next. The sword of Damocles.
That's right. You all have heard of this
anecdote. Thing, but just in case you need
a. Refresher Dionysius the tyrant
of Syracuse. Good example of a popular leader
who seized power and used the wealth of his city to pay
mercenaries. And thus hold.
Power. He was also a poet.
Not a very good one. I think I may have told you
about his poetry in a past episode.
If not, we'll come back to it because it's going to come up in
a very humorous way in a couple of years from where we're at.
So he's kind of the opposite of Jason in that he build his power
base the same way, Take money, buy mercenaries, keep paying
those mercenaries. Hold power, blah, blah blah.
He was just much farther down that road at this point.
He's in his 60s and it held power for a long time using this
method and but he was the opposite of Jason in that he
was. Very not immune.
To the pleasures of the flesh. Maybe in the long term, Jason
would get this way, but right now Jason is, you know, he's
like. Adonis or something.
The guy goes exercises every day and makes his soldiers keep up
with him and says, hey soldier, you can't keep up with me,
you're not in my army, Dionysius is.
Wow, overweight like he's illyrio, drinks and eats all the
time. Very lavish, very Persian in
that regard. Some people look down on him
because his lifestyle was very Persian and Greeks don't like
Persians, so he had a poet at his.
Court. He was a poet, so he surrounded
himself with other poets and philosophers.
Plato was there for a while. He wants enslaved Plato and then
let him go. And yeah, this guy was a real,
real piece of work, this Dionysius he.
Really lived up to his name. He.
Really.
Did Damocles once, well not once, many times would praise
Dionysius court like how? Lavish your court is, how nice
how? The vintage of your wines, the
nice gold, the. The purple cloth, all the nice
stuff, he's like, he's would praise it all the time.
Diana just got tired of the flattery one day.
And he's like, look, man, I don't think you get it.
Let's trade for a day. You be me for a day, and I'll be
you. And this is how you're going to
understand what it's like. Above your head will be a sword
hanging by a single horse hair. And here it comes from that
quote to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king, though
having much fortune, always having to watch an anxiety
against dangers that might try to overtake him, whether it is a
jealous advisor or servant, A slanderous rumor, an enemy
Kingdom, a poor royal decision, or anything else put in other
ways. You can't enjoy anything because
you're always worried that someone's going to try to take
it from you or that you'll screw it up yourself.
One could lead to the other. It's kind of similar to what
Stannis said about, you know, you can't really relax.
You have to be. King, You know you have to be
king all the time. You can't have friends, you only
have subjects, that kind of thing.
And others have interpreted this anecdote differently because
it's been around for 2400 years. It's a it's a really interesting
philosophical point. For example, some people say
it's a good reason to enjoy life as best as you can because death
looms over everyone. You could die at any moment.
So just enjoy yourself. Do the make the most of what you
have. It's in Shakespeare.
It's very similar to the phrase uneasy lies, the head that wears
the crown. Very similar.
Canterbury Tales gets deep into it.
JFK said nuclear war. The threat of nuclear war is the
sword of Damocles, A flaming sword held above the world.
Lightbringer. That's the concept here.
It's been in a lot of songs. The rock Rocky Horror Picture
Show has a song has a song called The Sword of Damocles.
Lou Reed has a song about it. Trivium Sleep Token.
Probably the most reason to do a song about it was them.
They did one last year about it. 2025 rap.
It comes up a lot in rap. The concept because the concept
of kings is very common in rap. Well, not very common.
It's it's frequently found in rap music, people talking about
being the king and how it's acknowledged that staying king
is really hard. The Fugees have a song called
Zealots that. Refers to the Sword of Demacles.
I really wish it was a concept more would be tyrants would be
people who seize power would learn before they do that 'cause
then they might not do that. They're like, you know, this
isn't all it's cracked up to be. You seize that power and then
you can't let it go because then you got then the people who you
stepped over to get to it will kill you or get their revenge.
And so, yeah, it's kill you. You put yourself in a kill or be
killed situation you thought you would enjoy.
You thought it would be the best thing ever, but it actually
sucks. Yeah.
So, yeah, that would be a good thing for more people to learn.
Don't, don't become a tyrant, y'all.
You won't like it. You won't enjoy it yourself.
You know, if you did it, you you made yourself a tyrant so you
could be the one guy that got to enjoy everything.
Well, you won't you won't like it.
You won't have fun. You won't have time to have fun.
You'll be too worried about who's coming to get you.
Perhaps what isn't said enough is that the sword of Damocles
hangs over families, especially powerful families.
Now. Dionysius at this point was 62
years old, as I said, so his fears would also include just
I'm old now and I'm I eat and drink.
A lot. I could just drop dead any
minute from my lifestyle, let alone murder.
Now this is a guy that was able to handle fear.
This wasn't some paranoid man in general.
It just goes to show how heavy. The crown is.
This is a guy that was a military commander like Jason.
He was a military leader that grew his esteem, his reputation
by being good in a fight. So he wasn't a coward.
He was, in fact, very much the opposite.
I mean, it's just another thing he used to gain power, though.
He used his soldiering career to make himself a hero.
And then he put himself into politics, and then he staged an
attack on himself. This is when he was very young,
when he was in his 20s or so, after his successful military
career, where they defeated Carthage.
Carthage was the enemy of Syracuse.
On and off for, well, forever. The Carthage is still the enemy
long after Dionysius goes and was before.
He had more success against Carthage than most Syracuse and
rulers. He got about 2/3 of Sicily for
Greece for himself, where the Carthage held on to that other
third and. You all know.
Rome, when Rome comes around, which is, you know, another 100
years or so, give or take, they fight Carthage for Sicily in the
First Punic War. And yeah, it's a.
Big. It's a big whole thing.
Anyway, what did he do to gain power after his heroism?
Heroism in the military. It's very normal in the modern
world for someone to have a military career, a brief one,
just so they can put it on their resume because they want to go
up in politics. This guy actually saw combat, so
it's a little different. Was actually a leader, but still
he leveraged it just the same way.
As I said. What did he do as a political
figure? He was attacked.
He survived. Then he went crying to the
assemblies, like, look, I'm this important political figure.
I got attacked. I need bodyguards.
The city should pay for my bodyguards.
He pushed, he pushed. They agreed.
Well, turns out the attack was staged.
He was never attacked. He faked it.
Have you heard of such a thing? A leader staging a fake attack
on themselves. No, never.
That's never happened in the real world.
He gained further popularity. He was already popular.
He gained more popularity by being the guy that survived the
hit. You know, they're coming to get
me. But I beat it.
I survived. I toughed it out, and now I've
got bodyguards. What did he do with those
bodyguards? Got them to be real loyal
treated them real well like Jason was doing, you know, 50
years later and then once those bodyguards were real loyal he.
Used them to. Seize power.
He had our he. He got the city to give him
soldiers and then use those soldiers to take over the city.
Pretty clever actually. He elevated his station like
Lysander did decades before. He actually had divine honors in
his name while he was alive, usually.
That's the thing that. Happens after you're dead or
usually doesn't happen at all. But during his life he was
worshipped as a God, which is pretty wild.
And, you know, he was actually very successful.
Most powerful city in the Greek world by most accounts.
And partially because Sicily is so far to the West.
It's on the fringes of the Greek world.
You go a little farther West and you're in Italy or Spain or
that's. Not what it was called then, but
you get the point. He conquered a lot of the boot
of Italy, right? And he wasn't just a great
military leader and a tyrant and a great.
Economic leader. He was an innovator like a
ficker teaser. Jason, he was he he built
things, designed things that were used in war.
He you he actually popularized slash created the first Western
crossbows in the Greek world. They'd already existed over in
China for a while. But they called them belly bows
'cause you reload them like on your belly, like you push it
like that to reload it. And then he took it farther and
made big ones like ballista, like modern, well, what would
have been modern in the medieval times, many hundreds of years
later. He was making them then, and he
also was. A big wall builder.
The walls of Syracuse were really, really well designed and
really used new techniques. And he was a guy that had been
directly involved with that too. In fact, Rome, when they do,
come 100 years from now. They're going to have a hell of
a time taking it thanks to those walls and thanks to Archimedes,
the inventor, mathematician who we mentioned that will be alive
at the time when Rome conquers the city.
But all that success, man, he had all that success.
He made Syracuse the most powerful Greek city he had.
No one ever killed him. You know, he had poets and
philosophers and acclaim and all this other stuff, but he was
paranoid about everything. And he knew that his own family,
the only reason his family didn't get him or a reason his
family didn't get him was because he was worried about
that. And so he kept his son,
Dionysius the Younger. He kept him cloistered.
He wouldn't let him like out to do things.
He would kept him locked down, which isn't good for the guy
who's going to take over after you.
Like this guy wasn't out there learning.
He doesn't know how the city works.
So yeah, now Dionysius the Elder had a.
Brother-in-law named Dion, who was his most trusted advisor.
And Dion was a real like, I'm a firebrand, like a real guy who
had. Big hopes for making Syracuse
into a great city of democracy and and center of Greek
learning. And that didn't really work out.
We'll come back because Dion is still around despite Dion and
Dionysius not getting along anymore in terms of their
political vision. Dion was not killed or anything.
And well, Dionysius might regret that.
So we'll come back to Dion. But I will point out that Dion
was a lover of Plato. They were probably lovers.
It's it's not 100% certain. Plato also had high hopes for
the city of Syracuse and had gone there.
And of course I pointed out Dionysius threw him in jail or
threw him in the not jail, but the send him to the quarries as
a slave for a while. So yeah, anyway, so this is this
guy's been. Around like he's been doing
stuff, but he's mostly been work working in his own region, which
just overlaps with the region we're talking about, even though
he's fully greased. So, yeah, Jason.
Probably learned from him by watching his rise and doing some
of the things he did. Now here's but he's going to
start getting a little more involved as he's more powerful
and his sphere of influence grows.
Something I mentioned, I think it was last episode, maybe it
was 2 episodes ago, is that he teamed up with the Illyrian king
Bardillos, the coal miner king. The guy that formed a Kingdom.
He had been a coal miner. Literally.
It's like something out of the Faceless men's mines in Valyria.
This guy becomes a king from the mines.
He and Dionysius teamed up to try to loot the Temple of
Delphi. That was a little while ago, but
in between now and then, remember, Delphi has a crazy
amount of wealth. And well, actually let me give
you a a little brief moment on that.
The wealth at Delphi is like this bizarre game of chicken.
And what I mean by that is it's so much money.
There's literal Kingdom building amounts of money stored.
They're given to the gods. There's 10s of thousands of.
Talents stored at Delphi at this time.
Do you remember how much a talent is?
I I told you a while back, I don't blame you if you forgot.
It's 57 lbs or 26 kilograms of gold or silver. 57 lbs of silver
or gold. One talent. 10s of thousands of
talents of gold and silver sitting there unguarded because
who would steal from the gods? Oh yeah?
So something like well over a half, 1,000,000 lbs of gold and
silver, probably 1,000,000 lbs of gold and silver there just
sitting there. And some of that stuff was it's
such as blocks, such as ingots, it's such as coins.
You got things like like artifacts, like the crown worn
by some king. You got like Olympic laurels,
you got statues of Zeus. You've got things believed to
have curses or, or magical powers, like jewelry worn by
Paris, jewelry worn by Agamemnon.
I mean the crazy wealthy valuable stuff that only the
gods are protecting. So you can see why someone like
Dionysius and Bardellus would be like, let's just take that.
But Sparta, remember Sparta just allow us and other people teamed
up to stop that. Like Nope, do not do that.
Well, let's remember what happened in the last episode.
There was an earthquake. There was an Atlantis like event
where that city sank and Delphi was also damaged by either the
same, I forget if it was the same earthquake or a different
or a related one. Delphi was destroyed and it's
not going to be rebuilt for a long time.
So it's also kind of damaged right now.
So it's not even in its best state.
So the question is what what have we been saying?
This blueprint that exists that Persia's followed, that
Dionysius has followed, that other people can quite clearly
see that Jason seems to be following lots of money.
Buy mercenaries, use those mercenaries to get more money to
keep paying them. Kingdom £1,000,000 of gold and
silver to sit in there. How sacrilegious is it exactly
to steal that? Would soldiers fight for a
sacrilegious 'cause that's the big question, isn't it?
Who's going to find out? Who's going to test this?
Who's going to take this money and try to figure that out?
Well, Dionysius and Bart Dallas almost did.
They tried and they were thwarted.
There's a point at which the answer becomes yes, they will
fight for a sacrilegious cause. And that, yes, point aligns
with. Well, it's the question Bron
asks Tyrion. Remember, Tyrion was like, would
you kill a child if I ordered you to do it, Bron?
He's like, well, the question isn't wouldn't I do it?
The question is, how much would you pay me?
I was like, if you pay me enough.
Yes, that's his. That was his answer.
He's like, there isn't an amount that you could pay me.
He's like, it won't would not be cheap.
Have me kill an adult. That's cheaper.
Kill a baby. Yeah, I'll do it.
I'll do it. And then Tyrion's like, what
kind of man do I have in my employee here?
He's like, well, you just found out, Tyrion.
So yes, that's what we're dealing with here.
It's just a matter of that's why I called it a game of chickens.
Someone is going to break and be like.
I got to do it. I'm going to take this money and
it's either going to work or it's not.
Who's going to do it? Who's?
Going to do it Well let's. Let's get let's move a little
farther here, Hippocrates of costs, before we move on.
The father of medicine himself, he died this year.
He was a great man. He did his best to separate
religion and superstition from medicine.
I just, he, he wanted to focus on prognosis data, not on
beliefs. Right now, if you're curious,
cost is about 4:00 on the Aegean clock that I pointed out before.
It's near Rhodes, the island of Rhodes.
Not, you know, Rhodes. So important guy, father of
medicine, but a lot of confusion around him because there was a
lot of Hippocrates is very traditional for your grandson to
be named after you. So there were.
He came from a tradition of doctors, so some of his deeds
may have been actually the deeds of.
His grandson or his grandfather or his great great grandfather,
But either. Way.
Two thumbs up, Hippocrates, Father of medicine.
Shay and I will be attending the Mad King play in the UK the
weekend of it. We are going August 14th and
15th, is that right? Yeah, we are going both the 14th
and the 15th. We're going to see it down in
the stalls, like the same level as the stage, and then up in the
circle so we can get kind of a view from a little bit further,
which we thought would be nice if we're making that trip all
the way there, might as well see it a few times.
But yeah. So we will be there the week of
August 14th, 15th, our days. We aren't set yet, but you know,
to our UK fans, to our fans who live near Birmingham, who live
in London, because we will spend time in London, hit us up.
Yeah, this somewhat replaces the trip we had been talking about
planning a group trip last year to go to the UK or Ireland.
We we'll still do something like that a different year, but this
came up and we just can't do 2 Europe trips in one year like
that. So we can't afford that.
But we will have another opportunity or other
opportunities to visit filming locations or the Game of
Thrones. Spot in Belfast, so those of you
who had been curious about that. This has taken its place for
now, but we will of course be making future announcements when
we have other trips planned. Hopefully some of y'all can join
us in the UK for this. So as I told you, let's go to
Cecily. Jason has his theben wife and
his daughter named Phoebe. And I told I told you a little
while ago, we need to Start learning a little more about
these big players families because, well, this is the
direction things are heading. If you're establishing a
dynasty, we got to know what sort of family culture is here.
Are they with him? Are they against him?
What's the what's the situation? What's the deal yo?
He's still relatively young. He's got his daughter Phoebe and
he had three sons to Sophonis look like a Fran and Paithalaus.
Now they're all pretty young at this point.
They're not doing anything. He had two brothers named Polly,
Doris and Pollyfron. There was also an older son of
Polly Doris named Alexander. So Jason's nephew Alexander, he
was an adult as well and significant.
So none of these family members of his are really like.
Him other than, you know, they like money is a it's a rich
family, very wealthy family. Phoebe actually is.
We're going to see in the long run is probably the bravest of
the group. Besides maybe Jason himself,
we'll see. So the Pytheon games were coming
up. The Pytheon games happen in the
summer like August, September. So we're they would be happening
roughly a year after Lutra. So because Lutra was July of
371, so the Pytheon games were scheduled for August, September
of 370. So Jason is doing all this talk
about how he's going to preside over the games, how he's going
to show up and be a leadership figure.
He puts it out that he's going to be offering sacrifice.
He's going to be leading sacrifices at the games, which
is a big deal. It's cost a lot of money.
That's what heads of state do. This, this, this, this is head
priest stuff. So he's basically nominating
himself as a head, head of state.
He is a head of state, but he's inserting himself into it
regardless. Because he wasn't officially
invited, no one's going to say no to him.
But he takes the step further. He says, hey, everybody, whoever
brings the best sacrificial bull, whichever city, you all
have some friendly competition amongst each other.
Whoever brings the best sacrificial bull, I'm giving
that city a golden crown. You can take that golden crown.
Put it in your city center. Take pride in that.
Once again, he's just putting himself at the top, saying, hey,
I'm going to give you rewards for doing stuff that I dictate.
But the rumor starts that he's not just going to preside over
Delphi. He's going to take that
treasure. There's all that loot we just
talked about. Why would wouldn't he do that?
Doesn't it make sense? Like this is a guy that has held
fake sacrifices before. He stole his his mother's
servants and made her pay ransom to get them back.
This guy has done maneuvers. Before.
This is a scammer, right? He can scam, but still, seizing
the Temple of Delphi's treasures would be audacious.
No one's done that. So it's unthinkable.
But people are thinking about it like they're thinking through
the unthinkable. So maybe it's not so
unthinkable. The Pytheon games, in case I
wasn't clear, take place right here at the Temple of Delphi.
Like, they're right next to each other, are they?
Like, is he really going to do that?
Could he do that? Like, just by himself?
You know, like, you need an army to do that.
Like, you can't just walk down here with like, your squad and
carry off 1,000,000 lbs of gold. And so like, the logistics alone
come on. But he did destroy the defenses
of Thermopylae. So maybe he's going to bring an
army. Maybe like, why would he do that
unless he wanted to make sure he could get back into Greece?
So there's a lot of evidence that he was going to do
something, right? Maybe it was maybe it was the
money. Like that's an obvious target,
right? This is a guy who needs money.
He's got to pay his mercenaries. And he's done things like this
before on a smaller scale. And we just got, I just got to
tell you just how absurd the amount of welfare is.
So the idea was out there, people are thinking about the
unthinkable. And Dionysus had tried for it.
So it was even less unthinkable because, you know, we had two
other kings from outside trying to do it.
This is like the remember, we're in, we're in Westeros, 100
kingdoms, period, right? Stealing this amount of money,
this would be enough to change the fortunes.
Of of Westeros, let alone a single city state.
Like the amount of money it's. Just really weird to imagine
that This is Money is just sitting there.
But it was, it really was. It makes this era very unique.
The the level of superstition and belief in the gods is
something that's a little hard to fathom for so many.
People like you. We've all run into people.
That have that kind of sincere belief, but to have so many.
People think that way. That's I don't know.
I don't see that very much. So the threat was apparently
enough out there, imagined or not, that the temple priests
were like they They went for a reading.
They went for a. Hey temple priestess, what do we
do about this? And the answer they received
was. Apollo can take care of himself,
said. All right then.
All right. We won't worry about it too
much. However, there was definite
confirmation that he was bringing some kind of army.
Maybe not a big one, maybe it was about the same size as that
last one, but that made people even more nervous.
Something was coming. He destroyed the Thermopylae
defenses. He's putting himself in the
center. He's talking about being first
man in Greece. Other people are talking about
him being first man in Greece. He had been throwing lots of
parades and military demonstrations because that's
what military dictatorships do. You demonstrate your power, you
March in front of people and over all of them with your
strength. You say, look what I got here.
Look at all these horses. Look at all these men.
Look at all their fancy gear. Look at their look how straight
their Spears are. Look how shiny their swords are.
You don't want to fight that. I want to throw right in your
face so you know what you're up against.
The nobility of Thessaly are shown this over and over.
He throws these demonstrations. The people line up and watch,
but it's really for the nobility.
It's really for the people that can.
That are a threat. To him, people, he wants to be
cowed, so he does it a lot to, you know, drive the point home
and to remind them of how strong he is and to let word spread.
So they sit there. These families have to watch him
demonstrate and he hears petitions.
He's not a king. He doesn't have the title king.
It's Tagus first, you know, first military officer,
commander in chief of Thessaly, right?
Even back then they were very diplomatic about the titles.
The word king isn't something you do lightly, especially in
Greece that hate where a place that hates kings.
So one of these demonstrations, one of these petitions he's
hearing petitions what the parade is happening etcetera. 7
younger nobles are start fighting.
It's kind of strange. Or why are these guys fighting,
you know? Like nobles are bored.
What's this parade they have to sit through?
It wasn't clear why they were. Fighting.
Before anyone could discern what the deal was, one of them
shouted out a word, a signal word, and they all stopped
fighting and attacked. But Jason's bodyguard were
ready. They're always ready.
Even though, you know, this kind of thing happens a lot in terms
of these parades and standing around and all that.
Well, the bodyguards were not enough.
Jason's prowess was not enough. The assassins got him.
They killed 2 of the bodyguards, but Jason was killed.
I just got through telling you the whole world changed because
of the Battle of Lutra. Then this happens.
The one guy perhaps poised most to take advantage of it all.
Now he's gone too. If you thought Thebes and Sparta
created a power vacuum, we haven't even gotten to that yet
because it's just happened. Now we have another power vacuum
on the northern border by someone who amassed more power
than either Thebes or Sparta had on their own.
But this isn't some state military that just passes to the
next leader, necessarily. These are mercenaries.
Who's going to hire them? Who's going to pay for them?
Will it be the next the Thesalian leader to take over?
Will it be somebody else? This is a big power vacuum.
Persia might have been happy about it.
They're like, well, maybe we'll hire these guys.
Maybe Persia did it. Maybe Persia paid these guys.
Maybe they were in on it because this guy's talking about
invading. Persia, right the the the motive
is very straightforward there. So they might have even been
culprits, they might have even been involved.
The thing is, we don't know. It's a little bit unsatisfying,
isn't it? We do not know who killed Jason.
Five of the the the five survivors.
We are told that they may have done it for fame.
Probably not probably not. You don't take that risk just
for fame. Maybe you will.
I mean tyrant slayers in ancient Greece were genuinely seen as
heroes often. But we don't know these guys
names so I don't think they gain that much fame from it.
Like we literally don't have their names.
Not one of them and he, but they were apparently treated very.
Well across Thessaly like they would go into they wouldn't pay
for their own drinks. People like them.
So this goes to show you that. Maybe Jason's hold on power
wasn't as strong as we thought. Maybe he, maybe some as many
people weren't as bought in as we might have thought.
It was just he was just so effective at what he did.
He his rise to power was so well executed.
His strategy was so top notch. Except for this part.
There's always that the sword of Damocles right?
It's it's a perfect demonstration of what Dionysius
was talking about. He managed to avoid that at
least to this point. He's 62 for all for all you all
know, unless you know the history already.
He gets stabbed tomorrow, but Dionysius outlived Jason and
freaking Artaxerxes is still alive too.
This guy's in his 70s. It just allows us as well.
But this young man, this up and Comer Nope gone.
So the fact that these murderers, these assassins were
genuinely. Generally slash well received
yet not popularized is a little odd.
Right. It it seems like if they were
celebrated, we'd know them, but apparently they were treated
well. So yeah, it kind of does speak
to they were agents. They weren't the ones who came
up. They were paid.
They were offered something. I mean, it wouldn't be the first
time a bunch of 20 somethings did something to change
politics, but considering what went what followed up it, it's a
little suspicious that I think there was something behind them.
We just don't know who it is. So if if Thessaly thought
getting rid of Jason would help the country as a whole, well,
they if you're. Thinking they're wrong, then
you. Are thinking correctly.
Let's find out together more specifically, however, what's
going to happen next. Let's go to their neighbor,
however, their neighbor, Macedonia.
Macedonia was growing. They were growing as well.
I told you a lot of these kingdoms of the north were
growing in part because they were emerging from tribal status
to Kingdom slash monarchy slash dynasty slash noble houses type
stuff. And this country in particular
was rising because it was doing a good job of at last making use
of its natural resources, had a lot of great natural resources.
That it just wasn't using to stuck in its.
Endless cycles of violence, I suppose.
Remember the guy that we've had in charge here for a while was
Amintas the Third. He in particular was the one
making the timber profits that we were Speaking of, that Jason
might try to take over or at least abscond with one way or
another, either through conquest or just trade deals.
So Amintas was making lots of money selling timber to Athens,
using that money to upgrade his military, upgrade his defenses
and doing other stuff. Right.
Now their leadership wasn't exactly Jason Efirai level.
He wasn't some Paula Tradies type charismatic leader, but he
was unusually successful for Macedonia because most
Macedonian kings died the way Jason Efirai did.
They were assassinated, King Amontos, he died as well this
same year. I told you this was a Storm of
Swords. He died at age 50, but it wasn't
murder as far as we know. He just died regular old, died
of unnatural causes which is now.
You would have guessed he was murdered because most Macedonian
kings get murdered and based on what happened after his death it
seemed like a murder but to the way people reacted.
But we're told him anyways. Sort of.
Damocles was just as present over him and it just picked an
odd time to strike now. He may have even helped avoid
his fate earlier. He may have been invaded by an
outside power. Maybe Jason would have come for
him. Maybe someone else would have
come for him if not for his timber profiteering because that
wealth made his country stronger and may have forestalled some
sort of outside invasion. I told you that he didn't get
assassinated by his wife. You're you're Idiki did try.
That was an episode or two ago. The plot was foiled and he
spared her because they had kids together.
He didn't want to kill his kids mother so he just apparently was
just kept away from her. He had multiple wives so.
You know, he just, he didn't go celibate or anything.
But he died as we sat here at age 50.
And his children, his oldest son, one of the kids with.
Yuridici became Alexander, the second king of Macedonia.
Meanwhile, Yuridici began a liaison with one of the top
officials at court, a certain Ptolemy of Alaros, who had been
the chief envoy to Athens, The chief ambassador to Athens.
He himself was descended from Macedonian royalty.
So this is quite a dramatic set up here.
We've got an envoy, top power, big player Guy Ptolemy, who's
now back. He's not in Athens anymore.
He's back in in Macedonia doing his thing there.
He starts a relationship with the queen, the queen Dowager,
and there's a new young Alexander the Second as king.
Now he immediately faces a challenge.
He's already got challenges around him because Vasily is his
neighbor, and who knows what's going to happen next there.
And he's got Persia far to the east.
He's got, you know, Athens and Sparta.
And thieves aren't his direct neighbors, but they're certainly
involved. And now he's got a challenger.
The second he gets the throne, this guy named Passenius pops
up, Passenius the pretender. And he's coming from the West.
He's trying to get the Macedonian throne.
It's chaos in Macedonia. So we got potential chaos in
Thessaly, definite chaos in Macedonia, and we still have the
very dangerous King Bardillos of Illyria, who's not actually
doing anything right this minute that we need to talk about, but
he's there, he's dangerous, he's someone to consider.
And we have the Thracian king Kautis the first, whose daughter
married if thicker Tees, the innovator.
So, so many entanglements. Who's next?
What's going on? Like how is everybody else going
to react? Who even we who's the big player
we haven't talked about yet that's hanging over all of this?
The Sword of Damocles, of nations.
Well, that would be Persia, of course.
What's going on there? This is a nation that was going
through all the things Greece is going through 200 years before
when they were a bunch of city states forming into an empire.
Well, or at least a bigger Kingdom.
They're like, look at. These children look at these
sweet summer children with their city States and their
democracies. Well, Persia never had
democracies. They just they just saw that as
another growing pain towards an eventual Kingdom because that's
how they thought. They thought that they're more
of an end state. This is where you go.
We're the more advanced version. We're more civilized, surely.
So while some northern Greek regions returning into kingdoms,
Persia had was old hat at this sort of thing, they.
They're busy conquering old places and making them their.
Old crown, old hat, old crown, old deodem.
Yeah, but empires and city states alike, size doesn't
matter when it talk, when when you look at what it the biggest
internal threats are. Internal struggles happen
whether you're a city state or the biggest empire ever.
In fact, arguably the bigger the more likely that sort of thing
is, whether it's within the ruling family or a similarly
powerful family close to the top.
So let's remember the character Kira Bazis he had a great career
under Artizerxes. He earned the hand of a Princess
in marriage 1 of Artizerxes daughter.
But then Artizerxes said Nope actually I want to marry her
myself. Then he said OK but chill man
let me give you a different daughter of my of of from my
wife and I mother the main queen of a true born daughter both
royalty royal on both sides. You know not a daughter or one
of my comments. I'll give this daughter to you.
Oh well, that's cool. That makes up for everything.
Thank you. Actually, no, I'm taking her.
We've been through this. So that's that's a recap.
He took he offered two different of his daughters to her to to
her. Baz's reneged on both counts and
married them himself. His mother encouraged that to
push the limits of powers like look, I'm above thing.
It's one of the things that people in power do to prove how
powerful they are. When you're at the top, you you
go further by. Proving you can do things, no.
One else can do. I'm the exception.
Rich people in the real world do this all the time.
How many rich people in the real world think they're above the
law? They think they can do things
that are completely unacceptable to the rest of us, yet they do
it anyway because they know they can get away with it.
They know that. The the the hand of justice will
not touch them, or if it. Does it will just tap them
lightly on the wrist and go hey, don't do that at most right.
So Artiserx, he's gotten away with all this.
Remember then as well. He offered his concubine Aspasia
his favorite. He had her for so long and he
and he nominated his heir, his oldest son Derias to be air and
Derias using the Carthene marriage custom that Persia.
Had at the time. Which was you get to ask your
dad for anything when he names you air.
He asked for Aspasia if you recall and Artaxerxes was like
ah damn I don't I don't like that at all but it's the law.
But wait, Aspasia, you pick. She picked Dorias because he's
the next king, so she wants to get in good graces with the next
king. But Artuzerxes was still in
power, and what did he do? If you recall, he sent her off
to be a sexless priestess who couldn't live, couldn't sleep
with anyone, unless he was around, of course.
Because of course, again, Artuzerxes is above all the
rules, even his own rules. So what I told you is that
Dorias and Terra Bazis got together and started plotting
last time. Here's where he picked that up.
It wasn't just a plot, it was kill Artuzerxes and since Darius
was next in line he could get away with it right?
If he kills his father, he can then forgive himself.
He can forgive Tirabazos because he's the guy in charge now.
So. Seems like a good plan, right?
But. These guys aren't very good at
what they're doing. These aren't experienced
plotters. These aren't people who have a
lot of military experience. Tirabazos did, but Darius
didn't. Once again, as it had in
previous Persian intrigues, things hinged on a eunuch.
I don't know the name of the eunuch this time.
It's like what Ario Hotas said, though to to Arianne when
everything went haywire. She's like, how did I was so
careful? And Ario said somebody told,
someone always tells. In this case, it was this
nameless eunuch who told guards came to arrest Tira Bazis.
But Tira Bazis made like the Sergeant who was caught
cannibalizing in Santa's army. Rather than be burned to death,
he provoked them to kill him first.
He attacked the guards that came for him and they killed him.
I was probably smart because. We've saw some of the horrible,
horrible methods of death that Persia used on people.
That were treasonous. And Terra Bazzas was very much
afraid of that. Happening to himself, probably.
Smart move, Darius. Well, he, Darius didn't really
have to fear that sort of killing because he was royal,
but he begged for clemency. And anyway, he begged for the an
easy death, which he got. He was given an easy death, a
simple beheading. In some version of the story,
Artaxerxes did the deed himself and others.
He had to almost threaten the executioner because it's just so
unthinkable to kill a Prince of the blood.
They're, they're, it's just drilled into them that these are
not normal people. They're not even really people.
They're gods come to live among us.
They're chosen by the gods. There's some other species.
They're not people. You don't touch them, everything
they want is law. So killing someone like that is
a big reversal, even though it's your job as executioner.
So it was difficult for him to do that.
But yes, even though he wasn't tortured or treated cruelly
during his execution, it was ruthless.
His whole branch of the family was killed.
All of Darius's children, his wives, just about all of them as
well. Only a few of the really young
ones. There's a kid named Arbu Palace
who was. Left alive and he's going to
reappear as a commander about 35 years from now.
So yeah, yeah. Drives was in his 50s.
He had lots of kids this whole nearly his whole branch his wife
got including some of his half brothers, like people who he
didn't father them or but they were killed anyway.
Probably some of them were involved in the plot.
That's probably why. Some courtiers were as 2.
So the new heir, You need a new heir, right?
So Artaxerxes had to pick a a new guy to succeed him, and now
he's just the next eldest son, a guy named Ariaspes.
Now, what do you suppose Ariaspis's odds about living
Artaxerxes are? Artaxerxes seems to outlive
everybody. He's got to go at some point,
doesn't he? Well, it it wasn't today.
One of those daughters that Artaxerxes took back from
Tirabazzis before he married her and married himself was named
Atasa. Now Atasa was.
Adding to the intrigue in court drama by Yes, she's married to
Artaxerxes and Artaxerxes really liked her.
Creepy guy that he was, she was also sleeping with the next guy
in line. The the air.
The air behind Ariaspi's a guy named Akas.
August was second in line behind Ariaspi.
So she's sleeping with August and she had been pushing for
August before Darius was. Killed.
She had been pushing for August to be there when Darius was
still alive, so she just kept that up.
She's like well it should be August, not Ariaspi's.
Now I don't suppose our Xerxes knew that she was sleeping with
August because if he did, that would have caused problems
because he's jealous just like he was with Aspasia either.
Way. This was not Darius's only
problem. Let's not forget the last
episode. After six years of preparation,
Farnabez's finally attacked. Egypt got into all sorts of
arguments with Aficretes about strategy.
Aficretes was probably right about nearly all of it.
And Farnabez. 'S.
Attack on Egypt was a big failure.
The Great Satraps revolt. So yeah, Farnabazzis failed in
Egypt. Farnabazzis the paymaster.
But he was just allowed to retire.
He had to distinguish enough career.
They just put him out to pasture shed, you know, no
embarrassment. Just go home, do your thing,
retire, live on your estate. It's all good.
He was replaced by Datamines. Who was fearsome, esteemed, very
clever leader who began preparing another invasion.
He took over and was like, OK, we're going to get started on
this a lot quicker than Farnabazzis did.
It's not going to be another six years.
Before we attack, he also had a better approach.
He was not arrogant about it. He understood that Nectoneebo,
the rebel pharaoh, was not an easy mark.
This was a a. Good leader he the Egyptians
were behind him. He had done a lot of building
and fortifying so Egypt was in a stronger position than it had
been a 5 or 6 years ago. He also didn't have as many
Greek mercenaries to work with, Datamese did, and he didn't have
ethiquities on his side either. And if he probably would have
listened to ethiquities if he did have him anyway.
He's making his preparations, planning on doing things
differently. He's what he's going to.
He's not sure what he's going to do is going to work, but he's
had so much success in the past and he's not going to repeat the
mistakes of his predecessor. But he's a powerful,
high-ranking noble. He's got his own sources and
spies. Persia is that type of place.
It's huge. So he's got, while he's in
Egypt, he's got his own people back at court keeping him
abreast of things, right? They're listening, they're
collecting rumors, they're hearing what's being said.
You know what? What?
What is being said about datamines in the Egyptian
campaign, people, there was a pattern of helping is that they
would speak of datamines negatively, even though he's so
accomplished. And the reason was, well, you
don't want to. You can't say great.
You can't imply that he's better than the great king.
You got to Artie Zorksi has to be the best at everything.
The type of leader that has to be recognized as the number one
for everything. Sound familiar?
Yeah. How many?
Yeah, great. A leader out there that can't
handle not being the can't handle, not only can't handle
being criticized, has to be told how great he is all the time.
So Datames is being insulted and dishonored semi regularly, not
because of anything he did, but just to not offend the king.
This starts to really grate on him.
And then frankly, we're playing the game of telephone here.
We got some 18 hundred 1500 miles between Persepolis and
Egypt. By the time the insults spoken
at court are repeated to datamines in Egypt, it's
probably grown a little bit, might be grown a lot.
The insults might sound a little bigger than that, sound a lot
more flagrant, a lot more insulting.
Doesn't really matter. At one point, Artaxerxes orders
Dynamis to take a quick. Detour and attack this other
rebellious smaller Kingdom. And then he's then he maybe a
couple weeks later, because remember how slowly these things
move and how much time spaces between these two locations, he
sends out another message, like, actually don't do that.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have ordered Datamis to do that.
It's beneath him. He's a high-ranking guy than
this belay that order. But by the time the belayed
order got there, Datamis had already done it because he's
just that effective. He's like, oh wow, I mean, I
can't call it off. It's done.
And he's #2 he has this guy Mithridati's with him.
Mithridati is one of the more common names in this region for
Persian nobles and, and other related cultural nobles.
And don't forget about this Mithridati's guy.
He's pretty important, so it backfired.
Datamis did the job that he. Was above.
But that just resulted in the court insulting him even more.
They had to talk bad about even more to make up for Art Dzerks.
He's kind of looking bad for all this.
You don't, you can't inflamed his very, very thin skin there,
right? So Datamis finally had enough.
He's like, I can't, this is, this is too much.
I can't handle this dishonor. I can't be given this important
job by the king because it needs an important person, yet behind
is my back. They're calling me names,
telling me I'm weak and I'm not as good as this.
Like it can't they? This is too much.
He couldn't take it anymore, so he just left.
He gathered his closest men, went to Paphlagonia, which is
his territory, and started fortifying and start spending
money on building his army. And he didn't openly rebel, He
didn't attack Persia. He just, I just seceded without
telling anybody. I just, I just waited for the
inevitable. Eventually, they're going to
figure. This out.
And they'll come for me. But by then, hopefully I'm well
prepared. Now.
I called this the Great Satraps revolt.
This is only one satrap, isn't it?
Yep, it is only one. There is more to come, but the
Great Satraps revolt because of the great amount of time,
because of the great amount of space phrase I keep repeating
here. It sounds like we're talking
astronomy here. Not all the satraps are going to
jump on board right away. In fact, it's going to be
There's going to be years in between some of these.
This satraps revolt is not going to be short.
Now arguably Egypt is already a satrapy in revolt.
Certainly Persia sees it that. Way but I I don't.
Because it had been like more than 20 years that they've been
independent, you know, they've been operating on their own.
So it's you can't really call it a satrapy in rebellion.
I think when they've been independent for so long and
there's been. A large cessation in any sort of
violence. So whatever, that's semantics.
Either way, we will shift our focus to another region and come
back to this later because. It's.
Going to take a while to play out but one last thing before we
move away is datamines was about to go up against neck to Nabo
and then he turned so neck to Nabo all of a sudden this guy
was about to attack him. He's like, hey bro, need some
help? Enemy and my enemy.
So he started sending money to Datamis.
And then you can predict what's next.
We haven't gotten there yet. But when other SAT traps start
revolting against Persia, Oh yeah, neck to Nabo's like hey,
need some help? Need some help?
I got money. I got chips.
What do you need, bro? I got food.
We got a lot of food. This is a bread basket here.
You need armies. Need food.
We got that for you. So he is very ready to find
allies against Persia and hopefully topple the whole thing
maybe maybe become into maybe a whole lot of independent
nations. Maybe the whole empire can come
down, if not at least a chunk of it, at least push them back
right now today about says all right, well, it's not just these
nations under the Persian yoke. Let me go talk to Sparta and
Athens and figure out what's there.
Maybe we can work with them. Notice who was not included just
now Thebes. He he began re establishing ties
with Sparta and Athens, not Thebes.
He couldn't re establish ties with Thebes.
He didn't have any, but he didn't establish them either.
So it goes to show that yeah, not everyone looked on the
battle of Lucdra as just everything's different now.
They may have looked at it as a maybe things are going to
change. But inside Greece, it it was
having a bigger effect than outside.
Even though it was having effect outside, it was definitely not
as potent. So how about that crazy, right?
The very old Artaxerxes escapes assassination so far at least,
while the young Marshall Jason did not.
And while Jason had nothing to do with Persian palace intrigue,
I have my suspicions that maybe Artaxerxes gave the order or
permission to make Jason's death happen.
Definitely not a sure thing. But the motive is pretty
straightforward, right? Jason talked about attacking
Persia and it was a popular idea in Greece.
It wasn't just something that people talked about talked about
in hushed whispers. And Persia has spies everywhere.
So it's a lesson in human power. The end of Jason and possibly
the end of Amontos and some of these other spots.
The chaos building, it shows or is about to show an example.
I talked about it. What happens when a man with all
these mercenaries just is taken off the playing board?
He's gone. He's no longer in the Game of
Thrones, but his army is still just sitting there.
Who's going to take it over? Who's going to use it?
Will it be one person, multiple people?
No one has his charisma or force of will.
So even if they get the whole thing, they don't necessarily
have the buy in that Jason had. So this is a real dangerous
thing and it's not going to take very long to matter.
Let's move on to that immediately.
This section is called Fallout Grease.
Yeah, it's predictable in some ways.
That when there's a lot of deaths, or even one death of a
powerful monarch or power broker, tyrant, whatever title.
Things happen, there's a big shift.
Vacuums fill, then vacuums may cause new vacuums.
Lutra was the center of all this, right?
The Battle of Lutra kicked so much of this off, but there were
more meaningful deaths outside of Lutra than in it More.
Total. That's that, Lutra.
It was a whole. Battle right.
Hundreds of nameless soldiers died.
Lots of real people died, but we don't know who they were.
They weren't the people commanding other than Clean
Brodus. Who was?
Commanding badly. So let's go to Thessaly.
What happened with the fallout of Jason's death?
Polly, Doris and Pollyfron, his two brothers, I don't think they
were twins even though their names are really similar.
But they inherited his office and said hey, let's let's work
together. Let's be Co monarchs.
That's not going to work. This is not Sparta.
That's what that's probably what Pollyfron yelled at Pollydoris
when he murdered him, because that's what happened.
Pollyfron and Pollydoris started together with some of the
mercenaries and headed to Larissa, which was the most
powerful city in Thessaly. And you know, they're like.
Let's shore up our new rule. Right bro?
Yeah, let's do that.
But Polyfron started the shoring up a little bit early by
murdering his brother. I mean, yeah, whoever heard of.
Yeah, it's two Taguses. Yeah.
This is not Sparta. So he gets to Larissa and
immediately starts doing very unjacen like things.
He's not like I'm the best, follow me, we all win.
No, he's like, I'm in charge, follow me or I kill you.
And it's a much more expected, standard way of doing things,
one that we've all seen in a variety of ways, where Jason's
way was the new and interesting and different one.
This is old hat, and we know what's going to happen.
This guy, he's not going to last, right, Right.
Yeah, right. So he starts getting people
killed. He executes leading citizens.
That's always going to go well, right?
Some of the citizens seem to have resisted his new edicts.
He was like, I want more taxes, I want obedience, I want people
to bend the knee, etcetera. People pushed back gently, had
them killed. He had a guy named Polydamus
executed. Polydamus was from the leading
family. He had been an envoy to Sparta,
if I remember correctly. That was just a big thing to do
to kill someone like this. So this is the this is the bar,
right? This is a big problem in the
real world. You got a guy who's only
interested in himself, creates this power structure that only
he can manage. And when he's gone, well, he
doesn't care. He doesn't care what happens to
the rest of the world when he's dead, he's dead.
But that left behind power structure is just it's a flaming
sword held above the world. It's bad.
It's it's just a a series of atrocities waiting to happen.
It's a series of injustices waiting to happen.
This also creates the opportunity for someone to be
hero. You don't have to be a hero, but
you can pretend to be hero. What I mean by that?
Is well, this evil Polyfron guy, I had to think for a second
which you know, or Polydorus guy rather, I mean which of them it
was that was still alive, still a very much a Macedonian.
And what I mean by that is Macedonians love.
Drinking Macedonians love drinking contests.
They would drink uncut wine in these drinking contests quite
often. What?
Which means like water. No water in the wine.
It's just defermented grape juice only They don't add
anything else to it. It is real strong.
So Alexander was the son of Polydorus, and he challenged
Polyfron. To a drinking bout.
He was like you killed my father, I challenge you to a
drinking bout. A pretty standard.
Reaction, right? You killed my.
Father, it's like Princess Bride.
I am Alexander. You.
I'm I'm son of Polly. Doris, you must drink with me.
What? Anyway, so this drinking bout
happened and there's one source that says that Alexander
poisoned Polly Frond at this bout, but I don't think that's
what happened. It it's he definitely killed him
though. He killed him with a spear.
He stabbed him in the back with a spear.
And the reason this is much more likely version is that Alexander
then took the spear and set up a shrine for it.
He gave it a name, Ticon, and worshipped it.
He made sacrifices to the spear. He was like, hey, y'all, I'm a
hero. I killed this evil guy that was
trying to seize power that my Uncle Jason had built up.
You know, he was awful. But I'm the good guy that just
put a stop to that. So he want a little bit of
acclaim, short term acclaim for that I guess.
But it didn't take very long for him to be called tyrant because,
well, the Alludia Alludae. It's an 8 letter word with six
vowels. Y'all.
I don't know what to do with it. They were descended from
Heracles, who is of course the Garth Green Hand of Greece.
It's bajillion different families connect themselves to
Heracles. They were worried that this
Alexander guy was going to kill them all because he started
killing people kind of like his uncle had.
So they hot. Footed it West and asked for
help from the new king of Macedonia.
That's right, Alexander the second, they said, hey,
Alexander the second, we need help against Alexander of Farai.
That's right, Alexander versus. Alexander, the bout is set.
So Alexander Fierai has not shored up his power by any means
at this like Tesla, as I told you, is a very large place, much
larger than Greece, the Greece, Greek, Peloponnese and and the
areas of Attica and Boesha combined.
So he gathered what mercenaries and supporters he could and sort
of buckled. Down like sort of hunker down a
bit, but. The Alidae had left some
supporters behind in the city, and those supporters opened like
a side gate to let Alexander of Macedon in along with the
refugees who fled, and they took the city and then put the
citadel under siege. The Alidae had two branches.
The other is called the Scopodi of Crannon.
So there's the Alidae and the Scopodi there.
It's like a cadet branch. So Alexander of Macedon then
brought his army to Crannon to shore that up.
So the ally day had the king of Macedon now holding their
capital and their sub capital, their other important city.
This is kind of similar. If you remember way back earlier
in the series, Alexander the Second's father, Amintas the
Third, the one who just died, he had loaned some of his territory
away and then it would that they wouldn't give it back.
This is very similar here. You invited Alexander the second
of Macedon in to hold these things and they're like, will
you give it back now that we've settled things up?
He's like, no, I don't think so. Instead, I'm going to bring more
troops over and fortify them even more, keep keep my hold on
them even firmer somehow. Alexander Fira, I don't know how
it's not recorded. He got out, He escaped the siege
or something and ran back to Fear I with what followers he
still had, all the while shouting you haven't seen the
last of me like some cartoon villain, and indeed we have not
seen the last of him. This guy is a real piece of
work. I told you when the series began
that there would be a Ramsay Bolton.
Well, here he is. Alexander Fear I is Ramsay
Bolton. Yep, he sure is.
And by the way, I never did it, but I think Jason Efirai was
Mance Raider. Yeah, I think that was his.
I think that's who he was. Charismatic, but also a strong
leader, United a bunch of people.
Stuff started to fall apart. And when he was killed, Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, moving on.
So Sparta had to deal with a number of their allies and
subjects using this opportunity to break free.
So like I said, thieves first first goal was to shore up their
territory, get rid of the Spartan influence.
Sparta's first task after losing at Luktra was to make sure they
didn't lose more allies. Like like this is the time where
allies are going to jump ship. We got to stop that from
happening. We got to shore up our power
too. So both sides are shoring up
their power before the inevitable next conflict, which
is coming. But Persia's no longer excited
about helping Sparta. Big blow to Sparta's hopes
because Persia was always kind of like you guys are our
enforcement arm. We'll, we'll give you a little
strength. You're our bulldog in Greece.
We'll give you some money here and there and you guys enforce
things and kind of make sure our will is at least somewhat
enforced there. You know, you hold peace
conferences in our name, do things like that.
So that made Sparta kind of nervous.
They were already nervous. Now they're more nervous.
They're like, wait, are they number one?
Does Persia just think we're weak because we are weak?
Are we actually weak or wait, what or what?
Or are they going to give it to somebody else?
Are they going to give their backing to somebody else?
They're really afraid of that. They were really afraid of that.
Athens or even Thebes would get the backing of Persia because,
well, they would probably give it to somebody if not them.
That's not actually what happened in the short term.
In the short term, Persia just stayed out of it for a little
while. Like, we got our own problems.
We got palace intrigue, we got Egypt.
So they were a little distracted, but Greece didn't
know that. And Sparta wanted to strike back
quick, quickly to, you know, maybe diminish.
The effect of their loss, which meant it just allows had to go
back to the field. Yes, he had his son Archodamus.
Archodamus was capable but it just allows his wounded leg the
one that he had a like a strange cyst that burst and he almost
bled to death that almost killed him that was healed and I
remember his other leg was already shorter than than the
right like he had. So both his legs were damaged in
a way, one from birth and one from battle or just.
Disease. But he was ready.
He in his 70s, but he was finally ready to go back out
again. It's like just when I thought I
was out, they pull me back in. But he couldn't go right for
thieves. He hates thieves.
He hasn't stopped hating Thebes for decades.
But he had to do this allies thing.
He had to work. With them first.
So he had to take either bring your allies back into the fold
or Thebes. The threat of thieves becomes
much more dangerous. But to add insult to injury,
Agissepolis the second, this new 10 year old king, he just up and
died. Now there's no foul play that we
know of here. And why would there be?
There's no point in killing the 10 year old king unless it puts
an adult in charge. It didn't.
It put a younger tank, a younger brother in charge.
Now we have like an 8 year old brother.
Another of the second. We go from Agislaus, the second
Agissepolis, the second Cleomenes.
The second SO. There you go.
That's pretty wild, right? So again, yeah, no reason to
suspect foul play. Why would you kill the 10 year
old king who's not doing anything anyway, right?
So but it just and it. Just from a religious
perspective, though, it's just another thing that the the
Spartans are nervous about or anxious about like.
God are the gods on our side. Our 10 year old king just
dropped dead, man, that is not a good sign.
That's not a good omen, right? And they knew as well.
The threat wasn't just to their lives, but to their power
structure, their way of life, their culture.
They knew that Epaminondas had his sights set on Messini.
Messini is Spartest biggest abuse.
Sparta's enslaved neighbor. They are Greek, just like
everybody else in this area. And Greeks, yeah, they're
hypocritical. They're willing to enslave non
Greeks. A lot of them are, but not so
much other Greeks. That's a seems to be a
distinction. So Sparta has had Messini
enslaved for hundreds of years, so long that some people kind of
just kind of go along and they're like, yeah, they don't
even really think of them that way.
It doesn't, it doesn't. They're not perceiving it that
way. But EPA MENA just like restarted
that conversation saying, hey, remember, This is why the Battle
of Lukra happened. Remember, they would not, they
were not allowed to sign for all of Oisha.
Like, yeah, we signed the peace treaty and on behalf of all of
our region, Sparta wouldn't let them.
It just allows, wouldn't let them.
And he's like, well, but you're signing for all of Sparta, which
includes Masini. How can you sign for Masini if
we can't sign for the rest of Boisha?
Very hypocritical, huh? It just allows got so.
Mad then in the war happened right and here we are.
It just allows nose. That's what he pan man has had
his sights set on because he brought it up at the conference.
That hasn't stopped. He knows that's their next
target. He knows they're going to come
and try to free Messini and that's a whole nother group of
soldiers potential that will fight for thieves and or at
least for themselves against Sparta.
This Spartan system isn't just collapsing from the inside, it's
collapsing from the outside. But let me tell you folks, it
just allow us is not going to go down easy.
And there's a lot of other Spartan nameless Spartans who
are willing to give their lives on the battlefield or elsewhere
to stop this result, even if it. Might seem somewhat inevitable.
Is it inevitable? Well, we'll just have to see.
So Pam and honest, he's not like, I'm not trying to wipe out
Sparta. I'm not trying to kill Sparta.
I'm just trying to get rid of their slave army.
I'm trying to get rid of the source of so much of their
power, which is a very unjust source of power.
You've got Greek slaves doing your farming so that you can
spend all your time fighting. That's why you're so good at
fighting, because you don't have to farm, right?
That's not fair. It's not only unfair in terms of
your military supremacy is unearned because you're using
slavery, but it's also you're using your military supremacy to
to as leverage to show that you're the best.
Yet you didn't earn it the proper way.
You earned it through slavery of your fellow Greeks.
They see all this argument coming.
They don't agree with it. They've obviously been engaged
in this for hundreds of years, but they can see the weakness,
the moral weakness in their structure that people like the
Pam Anandis will hammer away at, in addition to him hammering
away at in more traditional military means with, you know,
armies and stuff. We haven't had a second.
Battle yet, but you know it's coming.
And 3rd and if we yeah, more battles are coming you all this
is that moment where the two boxers have retreated to their
corner to get the blood wiped off the sweat wiped off the
Reese discussed strategy. But they're going right back
forward very soon. So now they could negotiate with
greater leverage. Thieves could That's the other
thing. Sparta is now negotiating with
lesser leverage Before when they're talking to their allies,
they could be a bully. They'll be well, if you don't
join with us, you know what's going to happen.
They don't even have to say it. If you don't join with us
willingly, then Plato O plomo, right?
The old Spanish drug cartel line.
You know, silver or lead. You either take our money or you
take our bullets. Same thing.
That's what Sparta would do. You either take our alliance or
you take our Spears. And now thieves could
renegotiate. Thieves could say, hey, so Evan.
Said no to us. But we get to go back to every
single ally we had and some that we didn't and say hey before you
rejected us or hey before we agreed to this deal.
But let's tear that deal up and have a new deal because we're
the bosses now. That is not how he, Pam Anandis
wants to do it. But he's only one man.
He's only one Theban leader in a proto democracy.
He's not a king. He doesn't have the power of him
to just allow us. He may have the clout.
I mean, it just allows his word carries a lot of weight because
of he's proved himself both in his behavior and in his
decisions. But this is the cusp of a new
thieves. Everything is different and they
have to deal with all the problems that humanity always
faces when they when people gain a lot of power, especially when
people gain a lot of power, all of a sudden, is it going to ruin
them? Is it?
Are they going to be corrupted by their own power, or, thanks
to their rather unusually moral leadership, will they actually
do some things differently? Are they going to be bullies?
Are they going to be? True leaders, or are they?
Going to be little of both, we'll see.
We said kings and tyrants would alter their plans in the wake of
Thebes victory at Lutra, but the ground kept shifting.
Who can make plans when more kings and more leaders keep
dying right afterwards? So the smoke hasn't cleared.
We had a whole battle and I was trying to get to the smoke
clearing after the battle, but the smoke just got thicker, my
friends. But that's it's a very
interesting, fun type of smoke. If we recap a little bit,
Macedon saw the death of their king, Amontos the Third.
His son Alexander the second takes over.
Sparta lost a king in 371 before this episode and then their 10
year old king dies in this episode of natural causes less
than a year later. Jason is assassinated, then his
brother kills his other brother, then his nephew kills that
brother. Prince.
Darius and Tirabazzis failed in their coup and lost their lives.
Darius whole branch of the family lost his lives.
But Tirabazzis family I didn't mention that anything else
didn't happen to them. They will continue to do
interesting things. Darius may.
Some Persians may wish that Tirabazzis whole family was
wiped out too. That's a lot.
That's a lot of power vacuums. And those power vacuums are
still happening. Some of them are big power
vacuums, like the one left behind by Jason.
Some of them are kind of uncertain, like Prince Darius,
and some of them are very much ongoing, like Mintas the Third.
And As for those deaths of Kings and Sparta, well, we'll see what
kind of difference that makes. We'll see if that's just a blip
for them or something that proves to be a much bigger
problem than they thought because, well, just allow us in
desert. Our desert seas are still
somehow alive, but they're old. That could go any minute.
That we're not just waiting on an assassin.
We could be. We could just be waiting on
Father Time, Mother Nature. Right there.
Stuff is happening and Artiserxes is facing a revolt.
Just because Darius's assassination plot didn't work
doesn't mean there won't be another one, right?
Similar issue, different scale. Both Sparta and Artiserxes, the
authoritarian leaders of this era, have lost substantial
ground and are having to deal with those that were former
subjects. But just allow us to hates
thieves. No, friend of you, Pam Anandis,
that there is some respect there.
If you're expecting a showdown between those two.
Good, good, good. It's coming.
Palopitus is the one that's really going to react the most
strongly to this Alexander Fierai guy and well, we'll see
what happens there. It's going to be interesting.
I'm excited to tell you about Ramsey Bolton versus Brendan
Stark because yes, as I've said before, that's my pick for
palapa. This is parallel.
So we'll see Ramsey begin ramseying and we'll see what
Brandon Stark does about it. Like a song, the vice inspire.
We have so many nations and players and interesting figures
that we can go ours without some of them being heard from.
We barely heard from Athens today, for example.
They mostly sat on the sidelines.
But that can only last for so long, right?
Right. Exactly.
By the next episode, they'll be right back in the swing of
things. We didn't even mention Cabrius
or Focion or Timotheus. I did mention Plato, but he's
not exactly a military leader. Important guy Athenian.
They will return to take part in what can only be described as
barely controlled chaos. Very interesting and fun.
Barely controlled chaos. Barely controlled.
Barely controlled as BCC. It's almost.
BCI told you this episode will resemble A Storm of Swords.
I hope you agree. I hope it lived up to that.
Well, after A Storm of Swords is a feast for crows indeed.
That is what I think this next episode will feel a lot like.
Power vacuums taking a lot more lives.
Crows feasting on the dead and dying, Kingdoms being pickings
for someone stronger. Our trivia question was what was
used to barely hold the Sword of Damocles aloft?
A single horse hair. Did anyone get that Dom said a
hair? He didn't say the horse hair.
close enough. That's definitely close enough.
Yeah. Good job, Dom Shout out to
Folkwise. Twitch channel their most
Tuesdays episodes. Are they on hiatus right now?
Yeah, they're working on a conference that they're doing a
Folk wise event, so they're throwing all their energies
especially into that. I had an occasional stream still
cool. Well, check out Folk wise.
Look at their Twitch page. They'll have it.
I'm sure there's a we'll be back on type notification there and
if not, you'll just subscribe or something and you'll get the
notification when they come back on.
Thank you all very much for hanging out today.
I had a. Lot of fun with this, as I
always do. I spend honestly more time with
this than a lot of some of these Song of Ice and Fire topics
because I have more to learn. I have more to learn about.
This, you know, there's. Just things that I just don't
know. Whereas of course I've been
studying A Song of Ice and Fire for for 12 years as a podcaster
and 10 years before. That as a fan.
So anyway, someone here, apparently Ashea, put a note
here for me that says the channel called Fig Tree.
There's a channel called Fig Tree that is being recommended
to me. Well, I'll say that out loud
because if it's a good recommendation for me, it might
be for you all as well. Either way, I will report back
on that because I'm always interested in new content along
these lines. We'll be back with more, more
thieves and Sparta and Athens and Persia and some of the other
nations we haven't heard from in a while.
Some big entanglements, some tough philosophical and moral
situations, and of course, a lot more blood.
A lot of cities are going to take their opportunity to throw
off what they perceive as the Spartan yoke, and it will not
be. Peaceful.
Until next time, my friends will certainly be returning with more
Song of Ice and Fire content and before the next.
Episode of this. But there will be lots more
coming. Until then, you know what to do,
my friends. Valar Riritis.