Ancient History Lesson For Me.

Factual Questions
1

A couple nights ago, on one of the educational channels, there was a show where the topic was about the great warrior tribe of the Spartans within the borders of Greece. Xerxes from Pelopenesia (sp?) had just formed the largest invading army ever, up to that point, with the intention of just walking right through Greece and destroying Athens and Sparta. Unfortunately, it was a two-hour program and my wife’s favorite show forced me to change the station right at that point.

So, what happened next? Did Xerxes with his force destroy Greece? Did the Spartans somehow survive?

I’m sure the program will be on again, but I cannot wait. I would like to know as soon as possible.

2

The Greek League under a Spartan general opened up a can o’ whoop-ass on Xerxes at Plataea (not until after he’d captured a burnt Athens though)

3

Don’t worry. The evil Xerxes will eventually lose the war, though only after a lot of epic battles on land and sea, some of them he will win.

But Xerxes wasn’t from Peloponesia (or whatever it’s called in english) , which is part of Greece (that would be Sparta). He was king of Persia (now Iran, just in case).

4

I forgot to mention that a Marathon race will be part of the entertainment.

5

Very briefly: after inital trouble to cross the sea, Xerxes invaded Greece, captured Attica, but then lost his fleet in the naval battle of Salamis. This forced him to retreat.

You can read it for yourself:
For the long version: the story is told by Herodotus in Books VII through IX of his Historiae.

Shorter version (summary of Herodotus on Xerxes): [from Herodotuswebsite.co.uk](http://www.herodotuswebsite.co.uk/xerxes.htm#Xerxes prepares for war)

Even shorter: Life and times of Xerxes

6

The Battle of Thermopolae - long version

Short version - Xerxes is coming. Greece’s city states unite their armies to meet him. Traitor tells Xerxes, who cuts around the back way. Leonidas of Sparta keeps 300 Spartan warriors and sends the rest of the armies off. Leonidas is going to buy the rest of Greece time to prepare. Xerxes arrives, sees the few soldiers and sends word that the heroism is noted, and all the Spartans have to do is give up their weapons and they’ll be spared. To which Leonidas sends the response, “Molon labe”. (Come and get them.) Big fight - blood, guts, gore, mayhem. All the Spartans die but they have succeeded in saving Greece.

7

Ack - forgot to say that I watched this program too and, in my opinion, they mispronounced the name Leonidas throughout.

It’s Leh-on-eye’-dahs not Lee-on’-eh-das.

Sorry to be nitpicky but if pronouciations change - there should be a memo!

8

Its Peloponnesian.

9

The Spartans sure had a knack for stoic comments - Leonidas’ “Come and get them” has made history, but one also has to admire Dieneces’ quip when was told that the Persians had so many archers that their arrows would hide the sun from view: “So much the better, it is preferable to fight in the shade.”

10

Actually it’s Pelloponisos, it’s the name of the geographical part of Greece where Sparta (being only a small city) is.

DeVena
I’m not quite sure that Leonidas’s brave last stand saved Greece, but it did gave Athens and Sparta a little more time to get ready.
The point is that his decision had nothing to do with “buying time” (if I remember correctly), at least as a major factor. What was a major factor in that decision was the fact that the Spartans considered running away from the enemy as cowardly action, and they wouldn’t run away even if it was perfectly clear that it would be a certain defeat. They were raised this way, it was a way of life for them, and certainly not a heroic deed (by our definition), since in their minds they had no other choice. They were bred this way. Of course this does not reduce the value of their last stand.

From their early days Spartan children were tought to fight, and they also were tought that there is only two possible outcomes in a battle they take place in : either you win or you get killed. their motto was “i tan i epi tas”, which translates to “either with it or on it”, and it refers to the soldiers’ shields. They were required either to carry it back (as winners) or be carried on it (slain). As you can see, it is fairly possible that they didn’t know words like “retreat” existed.

11

Oh, and although history only notes the 300 Spartans, there were also about 700 other soldiers with them.
(I’m at work right now, so I can’t be sure about the exact number, but I know they were greeks, but not from Athens).

And Leonidas pronunciation seems fine to me as Lee-on’-eh-das, at least in modern greek. I haven’t studied ancient greek, so I don’t know if it was pronounced differently, but if it was pronounced as in modern greek, then it’s ok.

12

The ancient Greek pronunciation would have been something like Leh - Oh - Nee - Dahs. The second and last syllable have long vowels, i.e. they continue for as twice as long as the others. Modern Greek pronunciation is considerably different from Attic Greek, and one cannot and should not pronounce words from one with the manner of the other.

UnuMondo

13

Another wonderful quote from the Spartans -

Xerxes sent a message to them, warning them that if he conquered their land, he would kill all the men, enslave the women and children, and sow the area with salt so that nothing would ever grow again.

They responded with a one word message -

“If.”

I used this to teach my eighth grade English class the meaning of the word “laconic”.

Regards,
Shodan

14

There was far more than one Greek-Persian war.

Probably the best place to start is the Ionian Revolt of around 499 BC. It was morally supported by Athens, but it failed in around 494 BC. It pissed Persian Emperor Darius I off royally, and he began planning a punitive expedition.

In 492 BC Darius sent his fleet against Thrace and Macedon in preparation for an invasion of Greece–and particularly Athens. The expedition failed when a storm wrecked the Persian fleet.

Two years later, in 490, Darius tried again, going more-or-less directly to the bay at Marathon, only 26 miles and change from Athens. The Athenians asked the Spartans for help, but the Spartans were in the midst of an extended religious ceremony and would not arrive until after the battle. In the event, the Greek coalition led by the Athenians won anyway, and Sparta was somewhat embarassed at having missed out on the big day.

Darius returned home to plan an even larger invasion, but he died in 486 before he could complete the plans. Xerxes took over and in 480 he invaded Macedon (which was not exactly Greek territory) and forced it to surrender.

Then Xerxes outmaneuvered the Greeks through the use of intelligence, confronted and defeated Leonidas at Thermopylae (and partially cleaned the slate for the Spartan absence at Marathon), and captured and burned Athens, only to then walk into a strategic disaster in the naval battle of Salamis.

In 479, the Greek coalition did pull off two important victories at Plataea and Mycale. That effectively ended the Persian wars in mainland Greece.

Athens rebuilt itself and continued to harass the Persians through the coalition known as the Delian League while the Spartans went home. Within ten years, Athens had turned the League into its own empire. That in turn led directly to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.

Thereafter, Persia got smart and started inserting itself into the various conflicts in order to fight its wars by proxy. Persia backed Athens and Corinth against Sparta in 395. By 387, Persia was giving naval aid to the Spartans.

Finally, in 337 BC, Phillip II of Macedon formed the Hellenic League which consisted of most of the Greek states except Sparta and… Thebes, maybe? One of the first things the League agreed upon was an invasion of Persia.

Why? One stated reason was to avenge the invasion of Xerxes 140+ years before, strong evidence that old grudges died hard in those days. It was Alexander the Great who would finish the job and finally destroy the Persian Empire in 330 BC.

15

I just couldn’t resist…
The actual meaning of the word “laconic” is “he who comes from Laconia”, where Laconia is the county which contains Sparta.
UnuMondo
I had a talk with a friend of mine who studies theatre and knows a lot of stuff about the ancient greek language. She says that there are two different theories about pronunciation, one put forth by the world and another put forth by the greek researchers alone :D.

The world theory is that indeed some vowels were long, but it is still difficult to determine when these long vowels occurred (even greek scholars, and believe me they’re good, can’t do it properly).
The greek theory is that the pronunciation has never changed and it’s the same as now.

There’s a whole lot of bunch of things in these theories, I can’t remember half of them, but I do remember the stuff that has to do with the name “Leonidas” (it only has single vowels, whereas if it had double vowels, like “ei”, it would be more complicated).
So according to the world theory it has long vowels, while according to the greek theory it’s like today (short vowels).
I’m not in the position of supporting any of the two theories, I just mention them.

I’d also like to mention that the only vowel that we can easily identify as long or short is the “o”, since there are two of them, the “omega” and the “omikron”. Translation is “o-grand” and “o-small”, so it’s obvious that “omega” is the long one. In “Leonidas” the vowel used is the “omega”.

(sorry for turning this thread to a linguistic lecture)

16

**Sofa King ** - You took the lesson right out of my mouth - nice to have another classicist on the Boards…

Repec-t.

17

I was referring to the descriptive form, rather than the name of the region…

18

dutchboy208 - No offence meant… I wasn’t actually correcting you, I just felt like pointing out the origin of the word…

19

Well they sure were stoic and the adjective ‘spartan’ is still going today.

20

And I’ve studied classical languages and am currently working my way towards being a lecturer. Are you trying to say I’m somehow unqualified and an (undergrad?) student in theatre is more knowledgable than me?

It’s not that simple. 100 years ago there were three theories. That of English universities, that of continental, and that of the modern Greeks. Over time, however, most reputable scholars have moved to a more unified position based on newer breakthroughs from Oxford.

Not true. Finding long vowels in ancient languages is easy because there is so much poetry. Here it is easy to find which are long syllables and which are short. Then, one can see if it must contain a long vowel. One can also compare Greek to other older Indo-European languages to be more certain on a phonetic issue.

I’d also like to inform you that the ancient Greeks themselves prepared guides for foreigners on how to speak Greek. They included phonetic information. That of Aristophanes of Byzantium is the most famous.

Well, this theory has long ruled in Greece because the Greeks for nationalistic reasons wish to believe they speak the exact same tongue as their forefathers, in spite of the fact that research from around the world soundly refutes this. This is easily proven false by the fact that words were transliterated in the Latin differently than they were pronounced in Old Church Slavonic (and subsequently Russian, etc) 1000 years later. It is easy to see that in that span of years theta had gone from being an aspirated t to a th sound like that of English “the”.

(And considering that ironically the most important study of ancient Greece has been done outside Greece, I wouldn’t be so quick to believe what Greek linguists assert).

UnuMondo, classicist