The Art of Manliness - The Rise and Fall of Athens

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in a period of

00:00:11.640 only about 100 years athens went from relative obscurity to becoming an influential empire

00:00:15.740 to collapsing into ruin my guest day will guide us through the dramatic arc of the city-state and

00:00:20.140 the larger-than-life character that contributed to it his name is david studdard he's a classicist

00:00:24.180 and the author of phoenix a father a son in the rise of athens and nemesis alcibiades in the fall

00:00:29.480 of athens we begin our conversation with the rise of athens and why its aristocratic families decided

00:00:33.560 to institute a radically democratic form of government david then walks us through how the

00:00:36.900 persian invasion catapulted athens to power in greece along the way david explains how a father

00:00:41.140 and son named miltides and cimon led athens to power we then shift our attention to the fall of athens

00:00:45.820 and how it's precipitated by the peloponnesian war with their one-time ally sparta david introduces us

00:00:50.380 to the made for hollywood character that play a pivotal role in athens fall the handsome and

00:00:53.980 charismatic aristocrat and serial traitor alcibiades we enter conversation with the lessons we moderns

00:00:59.000 can take from the rise and fall of athens after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:03.220 slash athens

00:01:04.100 all right david studdard welcome to the show thank you very much lovely to be here and then so you've

00:01:20.560 written a pair of books about the period that covers about 500 bc to a little after 400 bc

00:01:27.720 the first book is called phoenix which is about the rise of athens and sort of sort of a zenith

00:01:32.940 of power where we think of athens today right we think of like temples and philosophy and the greek

00:01:39.120 the greek tragedies and then the second book part of the series is called nemesis which is about the

00:01:45.440 fall of athens and you look at you look at the fall of athens through a really he's just i mean you

00:01:51.060 you can't make this guy up uh alcibiades and we'll talk about him yeah let's talk about what

00:01:57.780 you cover in phoenix so like i said earlier we typically think of athens at its zenith of power

00:02:03.200 when it's you know commanding the seas it's making great art producing philosophy commerce but before

00:02:10.680 the persian war athens was really just one of many greek city states kind of existing in the shadows of

00:02:17.200 sparta you know sparta was sort of the big dog but then it kind of started growing in influence can you

00:02:22.280 give us a big picture overview of the state of athens before the persian war i mean like where did

00:02:27.380 the athenians come from what was their government like etc sure well what's very interesting is in the

00:02:34.340 hundred years before the persian wars really a huge amount of stuff happens up until let's say 20 years

00:02:43.500 before the the persian wars athens is ruled by aristocrats it's ruled by one particularly

00:02:50.180 aristocratic powerful family but because of one thing that all partly because those aristocrats had

00:02:58.160 other aristocratic rivals and we'll be talking about that i'm sure quite a lot in this podcast

00:03:03.520 one of that family was assassinated a chap called hipparchus which left his brother hippias in control

00:03:11.460 of athens he became very unpopular indeed and there was a popular uprising well when i say popular

00:03:18.760 uprising it was an uprising which was really spearheaded by a rival aristocratic family called

00:03:24.880 the alcmionids and they enlisted the help of the spartans to drive hippias out of athens but then 0.99

00:03:32.920 what the pain alcmionid peter really realized was that in order for him and his cohorts to retain power

00:03:44.140 in athens they needed to enlist the support of the ordinary people so this chap a chap called the

00:03:52.240 cleisthenes introduced a system of a government called isonomia which effectively means equality under

00:04:00.380 the law but he also sort of reorganized the way in which athens was administrated he organized the

00:04:08.800 way in which each individual belonged to a sort of a geographical group so that the power of the

00:04:16.940 the the ancestral families became gradually diluted and the influence of the the state as a whole became

00:04:26.780 greater and this was the system which eventually we don't know how eventually we don't know how

00:04:32.460 rapidly this happened but translated itself into something which the greeks called people power

00:04:38.580 demokratia and we call democracy of course so this democratic situation had really only been in

00:04:46.120 in place for around about 15 years before the persians invaded first of all but the democratic

00:04:54.840 constitution the fact that it is a democracy seems really to have caused the athenians to coalesce

00:05:02.660 under this new cause and almost immediately attica which is the region of which athens is the

00:05:10.580 main sort of conurbation attica was attacked by the spartans and by other neighbors and within a

00:05:18.620 period of a very short while athens has managed to beat off these invaders so she's proving herself

00:05:26.760 to be illiterally extremely strong as well as politically innovative well i think an interesting

00:05:33.840 point there is that the democratic government that athens got was started by aristocrats it was just

00:05:39.900 basically a beef between aristocrats exactly exactly and it's a way it's a way in fact that those

00:05:46.400 aristocrats very cleverly realized that they could as i say hold on to power without necessarily all

00:05:54.780 the problems which had been there in the hundred years before because previously there had been you

00:06:01.800 know a lot of fighting between those aristocratic families as each of them thought that they should be

00:06:08.320 the ones in control of athens somehow involving the people allowed that to be the people having the power

00:06:17.660 those individual strong families become much more sort of subsumed into the the government as a whole

00:06:25.660 they still remain important as we will see oh and before the persian war there's a lot of you know

00:06:31.660 contention between the greek city-states themselves like there's a lot of just infighting amongst greeks

00:06:36.440 and the the big one like sparta seemed to be like they're invading everyone all the time they invaded

00:06:41.600 athens around 506 what was the nature of the contention and i think this is important to talk about because

00:06:47.400 this contention it's still there like under the the radar even during the persian war when spartan athens

00:06:54.380 were allies you're absolutely right i mean they were very i think they were very anxious about what was

00:07:00.860 happening politically in athens they saw this isonia this proto-democracy as a little bit of a threat

00:07:08.120 and also a few of those indian aristocrats including hippias the guy who'd been expelled

00:07:14.620 by the spartans were asking the spartans to help them so you have people from athens you know who

00:07:22.740 aren't happy with this new political regime who are trying to have it uh you know sort of overturned

00:07:29.300 almost immediately and they call on the spartans for help spartans being the most powerful illiterally

00:07:35.520 you know at that period were the spartans threatened by democracy because their whole

00:07:42.320 government or their whole way of life depended on keeping the helots yes like in check so they thought 0.98

00:07:48.140 it would it would spread like well man if these athenians think that their rabble can control things 1.00

00:07:53.000 maybe the helots will start thinking that too i think what we've got to remember is that when the

00:07:57.520 spartans did invade attica you know democracy was very much in its infancy i mean it had only been

00:08:03.480 around for about 18 months i suppose so i don't i don't suppose the spartans or anybody had any idea

00:08:10.360 what what it would become so perhaps what they're more interested in is really putting a puppet into

00:08:19.040 athens that they themselves can control but you know that they i'm i'm absolutely certain that they

00:08:24.940 are also looking at as you say at at this idea of people power very suspiciously i mean the spartans

00:08:33.680 are your ultimate oligarchs your ultimate aristocrats i guess in that you know in order to be a spartan

00:08:40.920 you have to own a certain amount of land you have to have a x amount of money as well and it's simply

00:08:47.680 to allow anyone to take part in political debate and political decisions i'm sure that even at that

00:08:54.700 early stage they could see that this posed a threat so you had one group of athenians the one group 0.92

00:09:01.720 of aristocrats who went to sparta for help but you also had another group that they went to persia

00:09:06.720 looking for help as for their side on their side well these are and and we don't actually know who

00:09:12.980 these people were but we do know that the the athenians as a whole the people of athens sent

00:09:19.540 uh an embassy off to persia i i think because they were so aware that you know the spartans were there

00:09:27.320 they could invade at any time they had other hostile hates all around them and because the persians were 0.57

00:09:34.140 beginning to be the most powerful horse in the east yeah you you had an embassy which went off to the

00:09:41.700 persians to ask them if they would help them illiterally if they could have an alliance with

00:09:46.860 them and the persians said yes of course you can as long as you give us amphoras with attic earth and

00:09:54.920 attic water the embassy the ambassadors evidently and and i i can't believe this is true but they agreed

00:10:03.740 without necessarily realizing that to agree to offer earth and water was to agree to be part of

00:10:10.840 persian empire and so according to herodotus the historian who records all these things those

00:10:17.960 ambassadors somehow agreed that athens should become part of the persian empire of course when

00:10:24.180 they returned to athens the people of athens were horrified they'd only just created this new

00:10:30.140 political regime of people power democracy and now they were agreeing to be part of the persian empire

00:10:37.700 so very rapidly this was kind of ignored just swept under the carpet as if it had ever happened

00:10:46.060 and did this deal that you know these these industries did would that in any way contribute

00:10:51.060 to the persia eventually invading greece well i think it made the people of athens very aware that

00:10:57.620 they didn't that that they valued their freedom and their independence and so when a string of greek

00:11:03.520 cities in the western uh coastline of asia minor these are ionian cities the people of athens are

00:11:11.680 ionians as well as a kind of an ethnic division of the greeks and when these ionian cities in asia

00:11:18.980 minor that had been taken over by the persians had become part of the persian empire rebelled they asked

00:11:25.660 athens if they would help and athens did indeed help and it was really because of that in the end

00:11:31.820 the rebellion was unsuccessful but it was because the athenians had helped that ionian revolt the

00:11:37.780 the persians were reminded of their existence and were determined to bring athens to heal and who was

00:11:44.920 the persian king at this i can't remember is it darius or cyrus this it is yes it's harris the first

00:11:49.600 and according to herodotus when he heard about the uh involvement of athens in this uh rebellion

00:11:57.440 he had a slave say to him every day in the morning and at night remember the athenians and he vowed his

00:12:06.840 revenge well yeah i thought that was interesting you talked about the the persians their form of

00:12:11.340 religion czarasutrism is right is that who it is what it is that's right yeah the world was black and 0.97

00:12:16.300 white and one of the things the persians thought was the most evil thing you could do was lie and or

00:12:21.800 backtrack and you had uh darius thinking yeah these you got to remember these athenians they're evil

00:12:28.040 they're one of the bad guys because they they went they they went back on their word against their oath

00:12:32.440 yeah yeah exactly okay so the persians invade greece that's kick starts the persian war

00:12:37.700 early on and this is where your book phoenix really starts picking up he's talking about something

00:12:43.460 the men who played a pivotal role in the persian war on the athenian side there was a guy named

00:12:49.700 miltides this guy came rose to prominence in the persian war tell us about him what role did he play

00:12:55.440 in the rise of athenian power during the persian war well he's a very interesting person really

00:13:01.060 because he had been appointed by the old regime by hippias the guy who's kicked out of athens you know

00:13:07.940 but he'd been appointed by hippias to look after athenian interests in the eastern aegean and

00:13:16.460 while he's there the area that he is in charge of comes under the power of the persian empire

00:13:24.480 miltides initially seems to have sort of been quite happy to help the persians and we hear about him on a

00:13:32.760 military expedition as as part of the persian army but then relationships with persia become

00:13:40.560 sort of hostile and so he has to return to athens when he's in athens of course he has enemies there

00:13:48.180 all these other aristocrats are not very happy to see miltides returning home this very powerful man

00:13:53.620 with a power base in athens as well but they they do realize that he's actually quite an important

00:13:59.200 person because he's he's the only real r figure in athens who has any real experience of the persians

00:14:05.720 and the persian army so he becomes one of the military commanders who lead the army out when

00:14:12.500 the persian army arrives in attica yeah and so he played a pivotal role in the battle of marathon

00:14:20.460 which you know we typically think of the battle marathon us the guys where the marathon was invented

00:14:24.540 right the guy who runs and then keels over and dies that's it so what was his role at marathon like

00:14:29.940 what did you do there well as i say he was one of the athenian military commanders that they had this

00:14:35.920 very strange arrangement whereby because they didn't want to put the power into the hands of one person

00:14:41.560 the military command actually rotated every day a new commander took over but a few of his fellow

00:14:48.740 commanders realized that he was the one who knew all about the persians and persian way of battle and

00:14:56.560 so on and so evidently they allowed him to take command on the days on which they were supposed to

00:15:03.260 take command and then for days the persians and the athenians are just holding off neither of them is

00:15:11.640 prepared to commit their army onto the field and they're just eyeballing each other over about a

00:15:19.480 mile of empty empty space now we don't know exactly what happened because even herodotus the historian who

00:15:27.460 records this and who haven't spoke to eyewitnesses of of the battle is quite vague but it appears that

00:15:35.700 early one day early one morning when the athenians woke up they realized that the persians were

00:15:43.280 embarking their army onto their ships probably with the intention of voyaging around the coast of

00:15:51.300 attica and attacking athens obviously because the army isn't in athens the army is in the east of

00:15:57.300 of attica and so the persian horses we believe have already been embarked now this is crucial because

00:16:04.940 the persian infantry is therefore on its own and when the greeks and when miltiades and the athenians

00:16:13.520 realized that the army was embarking that the horses were on board the horses were out of play

00:16:19.360 he seems to have ordered the attack and according to herodotus they attacked at a run across this long

00:16:28.260 empty pile of oman's land during that period of course the persian archers are able to get into

00:16:36.540 play arrows are coming raining down on the athenians as they make contact with the persian army the

00:16:44.140 athenians are outnumbered massively outnumbered but because of the element of surprise i suppose

00:16:51.760 to an extent although you know the persians as i say had had quite a while while the athenians advanced

00:16:57.720 to realize what was happening but the athenians had their their homeland i suppose on the side they

00:17:05.040 were really fighting for athens and for their families back in athens itself and very very quickly

00:17:12.800 the persian resistance collapsed and the athenians as you say won a phenomenal and quite unexpected

00:17:22.060 victory at marathon around 5 000 at least persians are slaughtered 192 athenians held at the battle of

00:17:32.460 marathon we know that it was 192 because they became heroized they became this this great elite

00:17:40.060 in emery of athens their bodies were hurried all together under a funeral mound at marathon and

00:17:47.800 honors were paid to them every year they became heroized because this this is a very important event

00:17:55.320 the persian fleet returns to asia minor and for 10 years the threat of invasion is hanging over them

00:18:05.940 but it hasn't materialized again for another as i say for another 10 years all right so yeah the battle

00:18:12.860 marathon held off the persians miltides is he's the hero of the battle of marathon but then he eventually

00:18:19.240 is put on trial for treason by the athenians like what happened like he about a year after marathon he

00:18:26.180 says that he can he'd like to take out the the army of athens on a military campaign but he refuses to say

00:18:33.100 where and why he does take them on a campaign the campaign is not successful and when he returns

00:18:40.060 home his enemies of whom he has quite a few as i said earlier put him on trial because they say that

00:18:46.020 you know he's he squandered the resources of athens they fine him a massive amount of honey in fact he has

00:18:53.660 been injured on campaign he's put in jail he's incredibly ill he doesn't survive and the money which

00:19:01.920 is owed this great sort of pine which is owed is inherited by his family who have to pay it off

00:19:08.420 and i i think really part of what i'll tidy the enemies are trying to do is to actually cripple his family

00:19:15.800 politically you know they have to pay off this huge amount of money so because of that they're not

00:19:22.640 they're not able to engage so easily in the you know the political life of athens so again you see

00:19:31.720 this theme uh just aristocrats fighting aristocrats going on in athens we'll talk about miltides son

00:19:37.920 here in a bit but at this point in the peloponnesian war is this when athens started really developing

00:19:42.760 their sea power like the trireme was that was this is happening right now you're quite right

00:19:47.820 there's a populist politician a man called themistocles and for a long time he's been

00:19:55.340 really saying that athens needs to take control of the ocean of the sea the way to do this is to build

00:20:03.280 these new ships this this new design of ships the uh the trireme and the trireme is basically a boat

00:20:11.500 with a a very strong uh reinforced ram the idea is that the oarsmen all row as fast as they can

00:20:19.980 against the enemy ship they hold it if they can they hold its hull so that the water pours into the

00:20:27.180 enemy ship then of course they themselves have to disengage as quickly as they're able to so that

00:20:32.860 you know they're not sort of involved with this enemy ship anymore they're not actually pulled down

00:20:38.780 along with it um and and that is what the trireme is all about it's almost like a spear on the sea

00:20:45.840 a spear which is being manipulated by all all these oarsmen so it just rushes ahead smashes into the

00:20:53.340 enemy ship pulls back and the people of athens were very very lucky indeed because in around 483

00:21:02.760 a massive that they had these silver mines in attica and around about 483 as i say a massive

00:21:11.540 bedrock of silver was discovered in attica and the politician themistocles said well look either we can

00:21:20.400 allow every man in athens to have a part of the revenue of this or we can all club together and with

00:21:27.800 it build as many triremes as possible and this was a remarkable idea and it was an idea which he was

00:21:35.820 able to persuade the athenians to accept and so just in in two or three years the people of athens

00:21:44.120 were able to build a couple of hundred of these new triremes and they would prove very very important in

00:21:51.860 the years to come and and what's interesting try you make this point trireme warfare was very suited

00:21:58.520 to the democratic government of athens because it basically when you're in the trireme every it's

00:22:04.560 like every the oarsmen right they're sort of these anonymous it's like the people who are making this

00:22:09.940 happen and so yeah for some reason i guess they took a lot of pride in trireme warfare because it

00:22:15.860 kind of it was like a corollary to their their democratic or everyone's equal government you're

00:22:20.980 absolutely right because up until then hoplite warfare had been the great thing and hoplites are 0.99

00:22:26.760 these when you think of a an ancient athenian army it's the hoplites you think of with their helmets and

00:22:32.540 their big shields and their and it's only those people with a certain income who are able to afford all

00:22:39.360 this but anyone without any income at all was able to be an oarsman this is the ultimate in sort of the

00:22:47.720 equality you didn't have to be a wealthy union to be able to hide and i'll protect athens

00:22:55.040 we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:22:57.680 and now back to the show okay so we got trireme warfare going on they're having a lot of success

00:23:05.600 with that miltides he fends off the persians at the battle of marathon but his political enemies

00:23:12.040 within athens another aristocratic family basically find them for it sounded kind of like almost trumped

00:23:18.080 up charges almost and the debt passed on to his family then you had miltides son akiman he picks up

00:23:25.500 where miltides left off like what happened what did he do after his father died well he's he is a very

00:23:31.440 he's an extraordinary man because really because of his energy and charisma he's able to attract allies

00:23:38.360 from other aristocratic families in athens he really seems to be a man who is able to make

00:23:45.800 important friends and one of the things he does he makes a friend who really helps him to pay off his

00:23:53.160 everything he owes and he also realizes that when the persians invade again in 480 bc with the persian

00:24:02.200 army coming marching over land and the persian of fleet sort of hugging the coast down towards

00:24:08.760 athens the aristocrats are very keen to take the hoplites out and eat them in in battle in in in 0.99

00:24:16.300 hoplite battle because they they say that this is how it ought how it's always been and how it how it

00:24:22.400 ought to be again but themistocles he says no no what we've got to do is we've got to put everybody

00:24:29.240 into the triremes who've got and the fleet we've got to evacuate athens and if necessary allow the 0.99

00:24:36.800 persians to overrun athens as long as we can defeat them with our our triremes we will be all 1.00

00:24:44.120 right because of course the persians relied on the triremes to bring in supplies bring in you know 0.91

00:24:51.720 control the aegean so that they could eat while they're on campaign and cimon is able to really 0.84

00:24:58.820 see that this is a very good idea and so there's a pivotal moment which we we hear about there are

00:25:05.940 some historians who say the actual event never happened but i i i don't really see any reason why

00:25:11.860 it shouldn't have happened in which cimon and his aristocratic friends make a procession through

00:25:19.020 athens and up onto the acropolis and into the shrine of athena where cimon presents to the great

00:25:27.540 statue of athena his horse's bridal and the point which he's making here is that he's he this elite

00:25:35.720 cavalryman is handing over that element of himself his of his aristocracy of his eliteness of his

00:25:43.920 horsemanship to athena because what he then does he comes out of the temple and with his friends walks

00:25:50.840 down to the harbor and onto the ships and he's making this point i may be an aristocrat but i know

00:25:58.540 that our future lies in the ships at sea and because of that the tide turned among the aristocrats

00:26:06.900 everybody decided yes we must evacuate athens and that is indeed what they did a few sort of very old

00:26:13.540 school people remained on the acropolis and when the persians did indeed overrun athens they were

00:26:21.260 all slaughtered but the rest as i say went down to the sea a few days after athens had been overrun

00:26:29.240 the greek navy hit the persian navy and defeated them and the persian threat again although the persian

00:26:38.140 land army remained for another year it also was beaten and the persian threat again is removed from 0.91

00:26:44.940 the mainland of greece and the persians thereafter they don't ever come back again

00:26:52.220 all right so keeman was there he decided i'm going to go all in on this democratic trireme warfare

00:26:56.640 and that exactly turned the tide but okay so he he people looked to him as a leader and but then

00:27:03.180 eventually he's ostracized from greece like what so what happened how did how did he go from

00:27:07.060 from i'm gonna do whatever this guy does to persona non grata well again we're having to

00:27:13.200 race now through through quite a lot of history because just to condense all this is after after

00:27:19.560 the uh the persians have been removed from greece keeman really leads uh an alliance uh based in athens

00:27:27.900 athens and her allies and that is really constituted in order to remove the persian threat altogether so they 0.98

00:27:35.140 get the persians out of any aegean islands any other greek owned if you like uh areas of the 0.97

00:27:41.880 world there and they begin to take the the battle to the persians as well this alliance by the way

00:27:49.460 very very quickly turns everyone in the alliance is supposed to be equal but athens is more equal than

00:27:57.180 the rest and what begins as an athenian alliance turns into an athenian empire pretty pretty quickly

00:28:05.660 keeman is phenomenally you know successful he wages many campaigns he defeats the persians and of course 1.00

00:28:14.260 because of this a lot of persian honey and booty comes into athens but there's one thing that the

00:28:21.980 athenians won't forgive uh keeman for and that is that he rather admires the spartans

00:28:28.220 keeman is an old aristocrat at heart and he does rather like the way in which the spartans do things

00:28:36.460 and so when in there was an earthquake in sparta and the spartans asked everyone they knew for help

00:28:45.260 because they were very afraid that the helots the helot slaves would rebel which indeed they did 1.00

00:28:51.240 keeman leads an army from athens to sparta to help them against the helots but something goes wrong

00:29:02.800 again we don't really know what it may be that members of keeman's army behave in a way that the

00:29:09.860 spartans don't approve of it could be anything we just don't know but the athenians are

00:29:14.740 asked to leave and go back to athens and this is really seen as a great disgrace in athens and

00:29:22.760 keeman is blamed for this and because of that again his enemies are able to rise up against him in

00:29:30.140 athens and they resort to this mechanism called ostracism whereby the people can vote on whether

00:29:37.880 they'd like to expel someone from athens for a set length of time you know to remove his political

00:29:43.480 power from and this is what they do and keeman is ostracized and in his absence ericles begins to

00:29:52.240 rise to power and he really taps into the the hood of athens which is very anti-spartan very bellicose

00:30:00.300 as well and he sort of you know proposes and leads a large number of campaigns that athens and

00:30:08.360 sparta case off one another illiterally there are athens is badly defeated by the the spartans and

00:30:16.300 and things don't go terribly well it's not until keeman returns from ostracism that peace is made with

00:30:23.300 sparta keeman himself then goes off on campaign again against the persians and wins victories

00:30:31.160 against them but he passes away while on campaign but just about a year after that another athenian

00:30:40.300 embassy goes to persia it's very different from the embassy which had on earlier that we spoke about

00:30:47.460 because on this occasion the athenians seem to make peace with the persians and the persians agree

00:30:54.640 that they won't be involved in any more hostilities against the greeks and it's this peace which allows

00:31:03.000 pericles in the middle of the fifth century bc to begin his great building project in athens it's now

00:31:10.420 that the parthenon is we're built and all this other and and athens really does become this great

00:31:16.740 hub that we were speaking about earlier yeah so this is like where it was about 460 450

00:31:23.820 bc yeah just yeah 450 ish let's let's really say yeah so pericles begins this big public works

00:31:31.460 project builds all these templates basically this is like when athens becomes the athens that we know

00:31:35.720 exactly we think of but so they're at the zenith of their success the zenith of their power

00:31:40.640 but what's going on like is there still all that just aristocratic contention within within athens

00:31:45.560 that's going to eventually sow the seeds of its downfall there is i think there is always that

00:31:51.360 the greeks as a whole and aristocrats in particular lived by the uh idea which is

00:31:59.400 really raised in homer's iliad he has a line i n aristue in kyoparikon m and i alone always to be

00:32:07.060 the best and to surpass all others now the greeks as a whole believed that that was what they should do

00:32:14.920 and individually they believed that as well that's that's why they they have all this competitiveness

00:32:21.280 and things like the olympic games they have competitiveness in the arts they're battling

00:32:26.820 against one another all the time to be supreme and it isn't a way to create harmony really

00:32:33.100 and in fact just at that very period that we're talking about just as peace is being

00:32:39.180 made with the persians and you think that everything could could really turn out quite harmoniously

00:32:44.840 in the end a child is born in athens who i think we were speaking about possibly for the rest of

00:32:53.840 this interview alcibiades and uh he really encapsulates that idea that homeric idea always 0.99

00:33:01.760 to be the best because that's what he wants to be and he will do everything to achieve it

00:33:09.640 okay so let's talk about alcibiades so he's like again i don't think you make this guy up

00:33:13.520 you read a story and it's like this is like some sort of hbo game of thrones succession drama going

00:33:19.400 on so he's born around you know 452 bc so the sort of the the zenith of athenian cultural power

00:33:25.940 and influence and economic might what's his story like who were alcibiades parents was he from an

00:33:31.140 aristocratic family what was he like as a kid yes he he is he is from the alchemyanid family the

00:33:39.120 family we heard about the family who introduced isonomia or democracy into athens so he's from

00:33:44.800 this very powerful family he's incredibly well off he's orphaned as a child and his father had

00:33:51.800 already made this arrangement that if he should be killed alcibiades should be looked after by

00:33:56.840 pericles the most important man the leading man in athens so alcibiades you know his his childhood

00:34:04.360 is spent in the household of pericles so he can really get an idea of what power is all about

00:34:10.660 pericles is household we hear from ancient sources it's quite austere though pericles likes to think

00:34:17.260 of himself as aloof from human emotions and human tailings and so on he is it's a household where

00:34:24.080 there's a lot of um philosophy art and so on are there but young alcibiades proves himself to be a

00:34:31.160 bit of a rebel even at an early age there are lots of anecdotes about how he behaved when he was young

00:34:37.300 there's an anecdote about how he and his friends were playing a game in the streets which involved

00:34:43.100 throwing the bones of animals on the on the ground to see how they land and just exactly how they land

00:34:49.360 you get points depending on on how the bones land as they're playing this alcibiades has just thrown

00:34:55.380 his hand and a ox cart comes trundling down the street that the driver of the ox cart says out of

00:35:01.800 your out of my way out of my way but alcibiades refuses because he wants to see how these bones

00:35:07.120 that he's been playing with have landed in the street and so he pies down in front of the ox cart

00:35:11.880 and says drive on if you like but you'll have to drive over me and of course the at the driver

00:35:17.420 reigns in the oxen and alcibiades proves his power but he's also his love of competitiveness

00:35:24.820 at that early age at some stage in his adolescence he comes under the auspices though of one of the

00:35:35.240 most influential people in athens the great philosopher socrates and this was a relationship

00:35:43.240 which puzzled a lot of people because here was he was um alcibiades is very handsome this this also

00:35:50.160 has to be said he's supposed to be the handsomest man in athens and the philosopher socrates who was

00:35:56.520 notoriously ugly also though notoriously into leading a life of virtue contemplation if you like as well

00:36:06.080 and alcibiades is completely the opposite and how these two sort of attracted one another was was

00:36:12.240 really something which interested the ancients very very much we knew that socrates and alcibiades

00:36:19.060 were on campaign with one another as soon as alcibiades became an adult athens and sparta

00:36:27.520 come really into a major conflict with one another this is when the the peloponnesian war breaks out

00:36:36.220 just before the peloponnesian war there's a little sort of sort of overture hostility it's up at a

00:36:42.860 place called hot idea up in the the chalcidese right up in the highest part up there in the aegean

00:36:49.580 and alcibiades and socrates are on campaign with one another we hear that socrates was able to save

00:36:57.440 alcibiades in when he was being attacked by the enemy rescued him from the the battlefield and looked

00:37:03.920 after him supposedly alcibiades a few years later returned the favor when they were on another campaign

00:37:12.080 and socrates was being harassed by the enemy alcibiades on his horse rides down and protects his old friend

00:37:20.080 socrates as they're being removed from the battlefield and they head off to the athenian camp

00:37:27.440 so that there is a real relationship between those two no yeah and it seems like the way you describe

00:37:32.920 it socrates you know likely saw the potential for alcibiades potential to be either a really great great

00:37:42.000 man but had to be tempered with philosophy tempered with virtue or he could just end up being just a

00:37:46.880 terrible like he said nemesis like just bring the downfall of athens yes yes so okay alcibiades

00:37:53.580 he's this good-looking cocky confident man of great will in athens he eventually steps into public

00:38:01.520 life this is like right before kind of in the lead-up of the peloponnesian war did he play any

00:38:05.620 role in the lead-up to the peloponnesian war between sparta well this is now when he becomes old

00:38:11.320 enough to take public office we're actually right in the middle of the peloponnesian war that episode

00:38:18.020 which i was talking about in fact both of those episodes in which involved alcibiades and socrates

00:38:22.800 happened in the earlier stages of the peloponnesian war but in when alcibiades was reaching as i say

00:38:30.600 an age to be appointed a military commander the age of 30 peace all of a sudden breaks out between

00:38:37.920 athens and sparta which for alcibiades is not a good thing at all because he wants to make his mark

00:38:45.300 as a general and so he frets during this peace period and he does his best to involve sparta's

00:38:55.580 enemies in a proxy war with sparta places like argos which is in the peloponnes and has been an old

00:39:05.240 enemy of sparta so alcibiades gets the the people of argos to get their army together go out and fight

00:39:13.600 the spartans and he's doing everything he can to poke away at the spartans and to try to pomemant

00:39:20.300 hostilities again he eventually does but in a in another theater of war entirely again envoys arrive

00:39:30.440 from israeli who are being attacked or being treated badly they say by these citizens of

00:39:36.600 hieracus and they ask the people of athens if they could possibly send small army in a small fleet

00:39:43.740 to help them to counter the threat of the hieracusans alcibiades is all for this and when 0.94

00:39:53.600 he addresses the popular assembly at athens they're all for it as well because they think it's going to be

00:39:59.460 a great adventure again however personal animosities come in the way because there's an older politician 0.99

00:40:07.100 an older general at athens who hates alcibiades and who says gosh this is a this is a totally stupid 0.70

00:40:14.060 idea we couldn't possibly do it in order to be able to conduct such a military campaign we'd need 0.68

00:40:20.720 twice as big an army as alcibiades is proposing and the people of athens the the union assembly is so

00:40:29.440 excited about the idea say yes all right well we'll send twice the size and because of this

00:40:36.420 because this great armada then is designated to go off in this campaign against hieracusans

00:40:43.300 the whole flavor of the military engagement changes and what could have been quite a successful

00:40:52.120 enterprise eventually turned out because athens allies in the field there when they saw the size

00:40:58.640 of the army that athens was was actually sending believed that what they were aiming to do was

00:41:06.080 actually annex the whole of the island of sicily and the whole of the south of italy as well and so

00:41:10.740 they became very anxious about it and they refused to help and so it was a disaster but before it was

00:41:18.320 a disaster alcibiades himself had ended up in pretty hot water too because before the expedition was

00:41:26.620 allowed to set sail something happened in athens which would really impinge on his career from then on

00:41:33.160 in because outside every house the major buildings in athens there were things called herms and these

00:41:41.400 statues of statues of the god hermes which were supposed to well believed to protect the houses and

00:41:49.640 protect the whole of the city of athens and one morning before the fleet actually set sail it was

00:41:57.220 discovered that the majority of these herms had been smashed now nobody knew who was responsible to

00:42:03.480 this day we have no way of telling who was responsible for smashing the herms but alcibiades

00:42:09.500 these enemies claimed that he was behind it and they claimed he'd also done something else which

00:42:16.460 was very impious and that was to page a pastiche of the eleusinian histories which were the most or

00:42:24.960 one of the most sacred initiation rites in athens and because alcibiades is implicated in this

00:42:33.780 his enemies organized that once the fleet had sailed and of course the army which was alcibiades

00:42:41.360 main support base was out of athens alcibiades should be recalled to athens and put on trial

00:42:49.000 and he knew that if he was to return to athens he would be in grave trouble indeed so instead of

00:42:57.620 accompanying the the people who've been sent to arrest him back to athens alcibiades gives them

00:43:05.420 the slip yeah and he he goes to the enemy he goes to sparta and uh convinces the spartans to uh take

00:43:14.620 him in like i mean he was formenting war against the spartans like he wanted to fight these guys

00:43:18.720 so how did he convince how did he convince the spartans yeah um take me in i want to be on your

00:43:24.220 guys's side now we know that he had posates in sparta there there were people there he knew and that

00:43:30.740 he had an old ancestral relationship with but we also know that one of the things which he said to

00:43:36.080 the spartans was if you take me in i will help you to defeat the athenians again i think this is

00:43:43.300 really something which he has learned from the iliad because when achilles is slighted by agamemnon

00:43:50.280 he goes off and refuses to take part in the trojan war anymore homer says that achilles was hoping

00:43:57.500 that the greeks would do so badly that they would ask achilles back again to their army i think this

00:44:04.920 is partly what alcibiades is hoping that if the spartans appear to be doing really well the athenians

00:44:10.660 will ask him back again and all these things about the herms and the eleus indian mysteries we can

00:44:16.900 forget all that we want you back and i think that's what he's sort of campaigning for for quite a long

00:44:22.740 time now so he offers to help the spartans he gives them advice which they'd already been thinking of

00:44:29.200 anyway here's another thing we hear all about uh what uh alcibiades offers the spartans and later

00:44:36.740 offers the the persians when he goes over to them but how do we know about this who is it that we

00:44:44.100 hear it from well we hear it from the historian thucydides who's the great historian of the

00:44:49.600 peloponnesian war but who does thucydides get this information from i think he probably got the

00:44:54.980 information from alcibiades himself because we know that thucydides interviewed all the key

00:45:00.660 of players in the peloponnesian war and there are quite a few times when we we get slants on we get

00:45:07.940 little insights on the story which presented as if alcibiades is able to trick people is able to

00:45:14.380 it's a lot smarter than anybody else and i wouldn't be at all surprised as i say if the person that

00:45:21.960 originated this version of the story was indeed alcibiades so we hear that he arrives in in in

00:45:30.440 sparta there for a little while he he does quite well and he manages to persuade the spartans who

00:45:37.640 are thinking as i say about it anyway of sending a fleet of their own to the eastern aegean to open

00:45:44.020 up a new front in what has now re-emerged the new phase of the peloponnesian war to to try to attack

00:45:52.820 athens athens allies in ionia in the eastern aegean alcibiades is able to take control of this

00:46:02.060 expedition he actually leads the spartans out to the eastern aegean and it's just as well he's left

00:46:08.320 sparta at the time he does because one of the queens of sparta there are two royal families in sparta and

00:46:16.140 one of the queens has had a child whom her household slaves overhear her calling alcibiades

00:46:25.160 and when the queen's husband chap called agis begins to do his arithmetic he realizes that he's

00:46:33.760 not actually slept with his wife for quite a long time certainly longer than you know would appear

00:46:42.080 that it was his own child so he thinks that the child is alcibiades child and so he becomes very

00:46:49.800 angry with him he manages to persuade the spartans to put a sentence of execution on alcibiades and so

00:46:59.620 here alcibiades is out in the eastern aegean with the spartan army the people of athens are his enemies

00:47:06.120 the spartans are now his enemies so what can he do who can he go to well there's only one powerhouse

00:47:13.280 that he can now go to and that is the persians the the old enemies of greece and alcibiades does

00:47:21.620 precisely that he goes over to the persians he does the same thing there he offers to help them

00:47:26.760 to defeat not only athens but sparta as well to play one side off against the other to exhaust greece

00:47:35.700 and eventually he says with greece exhausted the persians can come in and take over the mainland

00:47:42.520 of greece which is what they tried to do all those years before there's a lot of political

00:47:47.740 to-ing and fro-ing going on in athens the people the aristocrats particularly are so disillusioned by

00:47:56.940 the way that the war is going that for a little while they take over the running of athens so that the

00:48:04.520 constitution the democratic constitution is actually suspended for a little while but the fleet

00:48:12.060 the athenian fleet remember the fleet is powered by the common people the fleet which is out in the

00:48:18.860 eastern aegean is looking for really someone to inspire them and to to take over and to lead them

00:48:28.420 to help them not only against spartans but against these oligarchs at home in athens and so who do

00:48:35.940 they turn to they turn to the man who is just a few miles away in asia minor alcibiades and so we get

00:48:43.900 this bizarre situation whereby the the fleet asks alcibiades to return as their commander and alcibiades

00:48:56.400 of course is delighted this is what he's been trying for for quite a long time he returns to the fleet

00:49:03.840 he leads the fleet to a string of amazing victories over the persians and eventually once the oligarchs in 0.95

00:49:12.200 athens have been overthrown a democracy is returned to athens alcibiades returns in triumph to athens and is

00:49:20.640 welcomed as a great hero this is his highest point and after a month or so in athens he again he decides

00:49:30.980 to take the army of the fleet back to the eastern mediterranean to do battle with the spartans and then

00:49:39.120 it all goes horribly wrong again because he leaves the fleet in charge of a friend of his who engages

00:49:44.640 cages with the enemy when alcibiades has told him not to it's a disaster the athenian fleet is defeated

00:49:52.580 alcibiades realizes that if he hangs around any longer he'll be in great trouble so he takes himself

00:49:58.520 off he's already built himself some strongholds right up in the northern aegean and the that kind 0.78

00:50:06.640 of area there and he lives for the rest of the peloponnesian war as a kind of a bandit king a

00:50:14.540 bandit warlord offering his advice when he thinks it's going to be useful but his advice is ignored

00:50:21.840 and within a very short while without him there athens fleet is completely destroyed without the

00:50:31.340 fleet athens can't survive athens is besieged its people have nothing to eat they hold out for about

00:50:38.780 a year and a bit and eventually because they're so hungry and starved they offer to sue for terms

00:50:45.200 and the spartans defeat the athenians alcibiades is ill alive however but not for long because the

00:50:57.440 spartans are just as keen to really see the end of him as anyone else's and some kind of a hit squad

00:51:06.540 i think uh is is really sent out against alcibiades he tries to curry favor again with the his his old

00:51:16.320 friends in persia he offers to go and help the persian king if only he can go all the way inland to see

00:51:24.120 the persian king he says he's got very important information for him but the permissions that he's

00:51:30.380 looking for which will allow him to travel through persia don't come in and he discovers himself one

00:51:37.680 night in a cottage or a house of some sort in the hills in the west of the persian empire and he hears

00:51:47.220 people all around the house he realizes the house has been completely surrounded burning arrows are

00:51:55.420 hired into the into the the halls and the roof of the house which begins to catch a light he and

00:52:02.680 his comrades try to put out the fire but they realize that there's nothing really they can do so

00:52:08.360 alcibiades we hear wraps a cloak around his left arm holds a sword in his right opens the door of the

00:52:18.880 house and rushes out into the blackness and it's like the ending of butch cassidy and the sundance kid

00:52:27.340 it all ends there in a hail of arrows and this is a very romantic and sort of hollywood ending for a

00:52:34.860 very romantic and hollywood individual yeah when i read the story of alcibiades he just seemed like

00:52:40.820 yeah he was a guy who had that homeric ideal of be the best of the best but it was he was in a 0.98

00:52:48.020 democratic society so he would use democracy to serve that purpose like he i don't think he might

00:52:53.720 have not really cared much about democracy but hey as long as help me be the best of the best then

00:52:57.540 i'll i'll go along with it sure i i think he would use anybody to serve his purpose

00:53:02.580 anybody anything yeah so i mean after you after you readers read these books phoenix and nemesis

00:53:09.920 are there any big lessons about life or politics or warfare that you hope people walk away with

00:53:17.100 after reading them well i think one of the things obviously is that things and and people have not

00:53:22.980 changed in two and a half thousand years and we shouldn't underestimate the fact that athens

00:53:28.540 one of the reasons that it ended up by being defeated in the peloponnesian war was that it

00:53:35.740 began to believe its own propaganda athens became complacent athens every year in athens they had

00:53:43.920 this big military event where bodies of the remains of those who'd fallen in battle the year before were

00:53:50.100 buried in a public sort of burial place and the the most powerful politician of the year or the leading

00:53:57.360 general made a speech and that speech appears to have been you know pretty much the same every year

00:54:04.740 in that it remembered athens history and it stretched its history back into mythological period and

00:54:11.720 everything that it that people of athens were reminded about was athenian military success how the

00:54:19.400 athenians were the best of all the people in greece you know how they were really the ones who were

00:54:25.520 chosen to lead greece to spread freedom democracy all these great ideas and the more the athenians

00:54:34.340 heard this the more that they believed it i think the more they believed that they were invincible

00:54:38.700 and this is really a very salutary story for us all that we can't rely on our past glories our past

00:54:49.400 successes we can't rely just because we tell ourselves that everything's great we are we're

00:54:55.360 wonderful we we can't really believe everybody else to believe that to this idea of hubris that as i say

00:55:03.760 you believe your own propaganda and it generally ends in tears i'm afraid another way i've heard don't

00:55:11.860 believe your own propagandas don't like the smell of your own farts you got to be careful of that

00:55:17.920 and the other takeaway too is as i was reading this is a reminder of how quickly things can change like

00:55:24.640 this conversation we've had just covered about a hundred years yeah and all this stuff happened and

00:55:29.600 i think for us in the modern world we're so accustomed to things being relatively stable you know

00:55:35.020 for us history kind of has been everything's kind of been the same since world war ii and we think

00:55:40.960 well this is normal if you look at most of human history the norm is constant change and constant

00:55:46.220 turmoil this is absolutely right and we've i mean we only need to see how you know unprepared we've been

00:55:52.120 for the pandemic as well as if as if that was a thing which you know could not possibly impact on us

00:56:00.220 because we were so scientifically advanced and you know this is again it's it's like the athenian thing

00:56:05.460 and of course what we didn't speak about was that right at the beginning of the peloponnesian war

00:56:10.600 there was a plague hit athens and a third of the population of athens was annihilated by this plague

00:56:17.300 again the athenians believed that you know if they behaved in a pious way they would be above such

00:56:25.320 things they because they thought that things like the plagues were sent by apollo to punish people

00:56:32.300 for behaving in a an impious way so they they thought i suppose that their sort of exemplary way

00:56:40.280 of life would protect them from plague and disease just as we i think were slightly held into believing

00:56:48.480 that our medical advances so on would be so strong that anything like a pandemic would not affect us

00:56:56.340 in the way it has and and the economic impact of these things too if history teaches us anything it

00:57:02.320 really teaches us how vulnerable we are no for sure well well david this has been a great conversation

00:57:08.560 where can people go to learn more about your work well they can go onto my website which is

00:57:15.680 www.davidstutter.com they can read any of my books as well i have an email if anybody would like to get

00:57:24.920 in touch also and that's uh that's on my website fantastic well david stutter thanks for your time

00:57:30.820 it's been a pleasure thank you very much indeed thank you bye-bye my guest today was david stutter

00:57:36.600 we talked about two of his books today phoenix and nemesis they're both available amazon.com and

00:57:40.880 bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website davidstutter.com

00:57:44.760 also check out our show notes at aom.is athens where you find links to resources where you delve

00:57:49.020 deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out

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The Art of Manliness - January 19, 2022

The Rise and Fall of Athens

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