# Athens loses at Marathon. How does the Western World change? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 19, 2013, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768 "2013-02-19T04:05:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/81 "2013-02-27T05:15:04Z")
> [@Kepler1571](#): > > One thing that might gum it up _a little_ is if the Persians learn enough from the Greek occupation that it significantly affects the way they do business, and hence their longevity. It’s possible; the Romans did. Captives can capture their captors. **China** alway captured its captors. But, what did the Persians actually learn from other nations they conquered? My impression was that they preferred just to install a satrap – preferably the local hereditary king, political conditions allowing – and post a garrison and collect their taxes, and otherwise keep their distance. They never tried to Persianize the locals, nor did they let the locals localize the Persians. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/82 "2013-02-27T05:22:36Z")
> [@Kepler1571](#): > > (Maybe a Neoplatonic intellectual tradition that germinates in the east rather than the west actually makes it far stronger…) Come to think of it, Platonism, with its concept of “two horses” pulling the same chariot, representing a person’s (well, really, a man’s) human/intellectual and animal/instinctive souls, might mesh well with Zoroastrian moral dualism. [cue Richard Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” aka the theme from _2001: A Space Odyssey]_ ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/83 "2013-02-27T06:14:12Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Read carefully, you can see he’s been completely misunderstood. He’s not saying small changes balloon into large historical changes. He’s saying small changes balloon into a whole bunch of other small changes. “Tiny details like individual humans.” Exactly. It’s much like the difference between predicting climate and weather; I can confidently predict it’ll be hotter on average in summer than in winter, but I can’t predict that a particular raindrop will hit my nose next December 18th at 6:48 pm. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/84 "2013-02-27T08:51:18Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > I’m sorry but that is just ridiculous. > Persia had a huge fleet in the mediteranean, that makes them a maritime power, period. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But if they had control of the Greeks as well as the Phoenicians, they **would** be a maritime power. The point isn’t that they had the ships and crew, it’s that they didn’t _think_ like a maritime power. _Real_ (Scottish?) maritime powers don’t decide that the _best_ use of your decimated fleet is to hold up bridges. _Eventually_ they may have gone the Roman route of changing their attitude (a direct response to Carthage and piracy, it seems) but they certainly weren’t showing any signs of it after Salamis. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/85 "2013-02-27T17:47:53Z")
> [@Kepler1571](#): > > One thing that might gum it up _a little_ is if the Persians learn enough from the Greek occupation that it significantly affects the way they do business, and hence their longevity. It’s possible; the Romans did. Captives can capture their captors. Ah, but they had _already_ conquered half of Greece - Greek Asia Minor. And according to Olmstead at least it was “the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced half of the Greek world.” What difference would, to quote Olmstead again, “the more backward Greek states,” have made ;)? What couldn’t the Persians get from Ephesus, site of the Temple of Artemis ( one of the Seven Wonders of the World ) or Miletus, birthplace of Thales of Miletus ( one of the Seven Sages of Greece and the first traditionally acknowledged Greek philosopher ) and the largest and wealthiest city in Greece, that they could have gotten from Athens or Sparta? Because of the literary/intellectual tradition handed down to us we tend to lionize the likes of the Athenians and Spartans because of their greater prominence later in classical history. It tends to be forgotten that at the time of the rise of Cyrus they were far, far less dominant culturally and politically. We also seem to forget in esteeming those freedom-loving mainland Greeks that some of them ( the city of Thebes in particular ) fought as allies of the Persians :D. ---
**Author:** ![Kepler1571](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/db5fbb/32.png) [@Kepler1571](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kepler1571)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768/86 "2013-02-28T21:17:13Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Ah, but they had _already_ conquered half of Greece - Greek Asia Minor. And according to Olmstead at least it was “the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced half of the Greek world.” What difference would, to quote Olmstead again, “the more backward Greek states,” have made ;)? What couldn’t the Persians get from Ephesus, site of the Temple of Artemis ( one of the Seven Wonders of the World ) or Miletus, birthplace of Thales of Miletus ( one of the Seven Sages of Greece and the first traditionally acknowledged Greek philosopher ) and the largest and wealthiest city in Greece, that they could have gotten from Athens or Sparta? > > Because of the literary/intellectual tradition handed down to us we tend to lionize the likes of the Athenians and Spartans because of their greater prominence later in classical history. It tends to be forgotten that at the time of the rise of Cyrus they were far, far less dominant culturally and politically. We also seem to forget in esteeming those freedom-loving mainland Greeks that some of them ( the city of Thebes in particular ) fought as allies of the Persians :D. Great post. Ionia was were where the cerebral action was for a long time, and there was tremendous cross-fertilization between all the ancient empires (“build a better slave trap and the Eastern Med will beat a path to your door”). I don’t know enough about the Persians to know whether they were already in the process (like the Greeks) of evolving from the militarist-clan environment of _Agamemnon to the juridical-political environment of The Eumenides_, but it’s a pretty good bet that their enemies’ propaganda, from which we have derived most of our Western knowledge of them, was suspect. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/athens-loses-at-marathon-how-does-the-western-world-change/650768.md?page=4)