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Almost everything you know about ancient Greece is half wrong. There were not 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, but 7,000. The Parthenon was built not as a temple, but as a repository for other people's money. Homer most likely never existed, and, most importantly, there Trojan War is as far from Alexander the Great as we are from Columbus. So, what really happened? We have 20 minutes to travel all over Greece. Aristotle would not approve, but Aristotle didn't have YouTube. 37 centuries ago, pyramids already stood in the Nile Valley. Babylon is the first true megacity on the planet, and on the island of Crete, a
civilization flourishes that we still barely understand. Three-story palaces, water supply, sewage, baths-and not a single protective wall. The Cretans apparently feared no one. Their murals depict flowers, blue monkeys, and bare-breasted women. They had a navy and a writing system that no one has been able to read to this day. Then the neighboring island exploded. Thera, today Santorini, caused the most powerful eruption in European history. Half of the island went under water. A wave 100 meters high, ash 600 miles around.
Most likely, this is where the legend of Atlantis originates. Crete never recovered from the blow, and then the foreigners came. Bronze swords and clay tablets in another language appear on a once peaceful island. They were deciphered only in the middle of the 20th century, and it turned out that this is the oldest known form of the Greek language. It was the language of the warlike tribes that spread across mainland Greece and built Thebes, Athens, Mycenae, and Pylos.
Only these cities are already surrounded by walls 6 meters thick. It was not a peaceful life here. Centuries later, the Greeks themselves would refuse to believe that their ancestors built such walls and would invent the Cyclopes. As for Crete, they will decide that no one has been there before them. The palaces are Greek, the ships are Greek, and even the Minotaur is half bull, half Greek. The fact that bullfighting was a purely Cretan sport will not confuse anyone. This is what the Greeks have always done. They took what belonged to others and called it their own.
Having captured Crete, they gained the sea and became rich. The tombs of Mycenae are filled with gold, and almost all of their tablets are warehouse inventories. Mycenae is the city whose kings laid siege to Troy in the Iliad. A century and a half ago, all of this was considered a fairy tale, until businessman and self-taught archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy and Mycenae. A layer of fire and destruction was indeed found in Troy, dating back to around 1200 BC. But at the same moment, every city in the region fell into decline. From Thebes to Knossos, from Troy to Ashkelon, a wave of barbarian peoples rolled across the Eastern
Mediterranean. Historians call the next three centuries the "dark ages." Writing disappeared. There is nothing to read about that era. All that remains is Homer, the blind poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Everyone knows this image. The problem is that we have no idea what he looked like when he lived, or whether he even existed. Maybe this name is just a label someone slapped on centuries of oral tradition, but that doesn't matter. The poems were written after the " dark ages," while the world in them dates back to that period. Odysseus is a king only because he has more goats and pigs than his neighbors.
His palace is a wooden shack behind a fence with a dung heap by the threshold. His father sleeps in the ashes alongside the slaves. No hero can read. Nobody heard about money. They pay with livestock. Doesn't look much like Mycenaean palaces, does it? So what happened? The Mycenaean civilization was defeated by the Dorians, also Greeks, but completely primitive. They descended from the Balkan Mountains, captured the Peloponnese and Crete, and reached Rhodes. The previous inhabitants either fled to the mountains or sailed east. Of all the older culture, the Dorians preserved two things: the sailing ship and the potter's wheel. It was only centuries later that the first pattern would appear on their pots. A century later, the first small figurines of
people and animals appeared. But here's the paradox. Culture went backwards, while the population grew. The barbarians brought iron, and an iron hoe cultivates three times more land than a bronze one. More food, more people, and just as much usable land in Greece as before. Everything that follows grows out of this tightness. And finally, at the turn of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, the Greeks adopted a new alphabet from the Phoenicians. It is not at all similar to the writing of Crete or Mycenae. Look carefully. These are the Greek letters you will recognize. The fog is clearing. Every Greek had the same problem. In Greece, perhaps one in five plots can be cultivated.
The rest is rocks, mountains, and the sea. There is a shortage of land, more and more people, and neighbors have been fighting over each other's throats for years for every scrap, and no one can finally win. There are only three ways out of this situation. The Greeks tried all three. The first was Sparta's idea. If you don't have enough land, take it from your neighbors. The Spartans captured Messenia with its fertile valleys, and then did what no one else had done. Instead of looting everything and leaving, they stayed and declared the entire population helots. Not quite slaves, but not free people either. People tied to the land, which has now become Spartan.
The problem is solved. They had land, but someone else was cultivating it. But there was a price. There were several times more Helots than Spartans, and from that moment on, Sparta ceased to be a city. It became a military camp whose sole task was to prevent an uprising. Warriors lived in barracks as a separate caste and came home only to conceive an heir. Sparta never had tyrants. It was always ruled by kings who sincerely believed in their descent from Hercules, and no one argued with them. A side effect: since the men were constantly in the barracks, the household was run by women. A Spartan woman could own a house, land, and participate in her own athletic games.
An Athenian woman could not even dream of such a thing. The second exit was the opposite. Don't take your neighbor's land. Find land where there are no neighbors. And so began a great colonization of incredible proportions. Miletus alone founded 90 cities, including present-day Theodosia and Kerch. The Greeks settled the " heel" of the Italian boot, and with them traveled the alphabet, which would later become Latin and conquer the world. At the end, the Greek world stretched from the Sea of Azov to Marseille, where, incidentally, they brought the grapevine and laid the foundations of French winemaking. And here are the colonies supply grain to the mother country.
The metropolis sends wine and oil in return, and all of this must be transported by ships. The amphorae, fragments of which are found from Gibraltar to Georgia, were not works of art. These were ordinary containers for grain and wine. Olives and wine were the basis of the entire Greek way of life. They cooked with the oil lit their homes with it, and rubbed it on their skin to protect themselves from the sun. Wine was always diluted with water, usually in a ratio of one to three. Drinking it undiluted was a sure sign of a barbarian. And to make it easier to sell all this, coins appeared. Like the letters, the Greeks simply borrowed them from their neighbors. As for holidays, there were about 100 of them a year, and a citizen could
afford them because he had a slave working in his field-at least one for even the poorest person. Plato said it best. Within 200 years, the Greeks had settled around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea like frogs around a pond. And this is what gave birth to the ancient Greece we imagine-the one that never existed. No borders, no capital, no government, no common army- hundreds of independent cities, policy states, each with its own laws, its own army, and its own gods. After all, a colony founded a thousand miles from the metropolis is subordinate to no one. This is a state in itself. This left a third way out. If you don't have enough land and don't want to go, you'll have to make arrangements at home. This is what Athens did.
The struggle for land forced the nobility to sit at the negotiating table with ordinary people for the first time. From this, two centuries later, democracy will be born. But first come the tyrants. A Greek tyrant is not necessarily a villain. Most often, this is an aristocrat who has quarreled with other aristocrats. He promises a better life to ordinary people. They support him, and he seizes power by force. An Athenian named Peisistratus did it three times. The first time he appeared on the square, beaten and bruised, and declared that he had been attacked by enemies. The people voted to give him
guards, and with these guards he captured the city. He was expelled. The second time he entered Athens in a chariot driven by a giant woman in armor, and announced that the goddess Athena herself was accompanying him to power. People believed him. He was kicked out again. This time, through ostracism- a vote for the worst citizen, where the winner goes into exile for 10 years. For the third time, Pisistratus came with an army, and no one argued anymore. In fact, he ruled quite well. Athens grew rich, developed, and attracted artists and teachers. Even Aristotle, who despised tyranny, acknowledged that Peisistratus was a good tyrant, and then added: "But we have had enough of such."
Everything collapsed after his death, when power passed to his sons. They quickly turned the state into a family business, and people said, "Enough. No nobility, no tyrants. "From now on, the demos rules." Thus was born Greek democracy. Just don't equate it with ours. If an ancient Greek saw modern democracy, he would have one word for it- oligarchy. The Greeks had no representatives. If there are 6,000 citizens in a policy, all 6,000 come to the meeting in person. The meeting is held every 9 days. If you don't come, they'll decide without you.
Almost every position is filled by drawing lots for 1 year on a rotating basis. This year you are a priest, the next you are a judge, and then you keep an eye on the prices of bread. There They are elected to only two positions: strategist and treasurer. And the treasurer must be rich so as not to steal. And the main element is accountability. The year ends, you appear before the assembly, and the citizens evaluate your work. Did it work poorly? Fine, prison, execution. Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, failed in the siege of an island and died in prison. Past merits guaranteed nothing. The people were also the judges. A thousand jurors, and every morning a draw would decide which
of them would judge that day. So no one could be bribed in advance. No prosecutor or lawyer. You are defending yourself and can present any arguments. Battle scars, a temple built with one's own money. There was one famous case. A beautiful woman named Phryne was tried for insulting the gods. Her defense attorney, seeing that words were ineffective, tore off her clothes and asked the jury, "Do you want to convict this?" They acquitted her. Citizenship could not be bought or earned, only inherited from one's father at birth. The baby was taken to the neighbors for trial. And if they decided that the child was weak, they would leave him in the forest. No sentiments. There were
n't enough resources for everyone. Even the word "idiot" comes from there. That's what they called a person who doesn't participate in city affairs. But here's what's important. Citizens made up less than a quarter of the population, not counting slaves, women, and metecs- foreigners who could live in a city for ten generations and never become one of its own. And then a man appeared who looked at this whole apparatus-the fees, the lottery, the audits, the sacred right to be a citizen-and sent it all to hell. Diogenes was an exile from Sinope, which made him a man without a polis.
No rights, no court, no protection. For a Greek, this was worse than execution. And when someone asked him where he was from, he replied: "I am a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world." Today, that sounds noble. Back then it meant a vagrant. He took the worst insult in the Greek language and made it his title. He lived in a clay jug, and one day he threw away the last cup when he saw a boy drinking water from his palms. He walked around the square in broad daylight with a lantern, and when people asked why, he would reply, "I'm looking for a person." Despite all these antics and insults, he was never executed or exiled. People laughed at him, fed him,
quoted him, and that's what's worth understanding about the Greeks. Not the lotteries or the audits, but the fact that a person could publicly call their entire system nonsense and get away with it. Until the day someone showed up with an army, and the army was already gathering in the east, among people who had a low opinion of Greek freedom of speech. By the mid-6th century, the most developed places were not Athens or Sparta at all, but the Greek cities of Ionia on the coast of modern Turkey. They were the first to adopt coinage, mathematics, shipbuilding, and the complex logistics of trade from their eastern neighbors. And they were the first to encounter the problem. The Persian Empire grew up right next door. In 499,
Miletus revolted. Herodotus tells the story of how the Ionian cities agreed to a simultaneous uprising. They shaved the slave's head, tattooed the date of the uprising on it, waited for the hair to grow back, and sent him from city to city with orders to shave him before each ruler. Whether this is true or not, Herodotus honestly warns that he is only retelling what he heard. Athens came to the rescue, but it didn't work. The Persians burned Miletus and moved on. The conquest of Greece lasted 20 years, and this is what Herodotus, the world's first historian, reports. No fewer Greek cities fought for the Persians than against them. So how did they win? Three reasons. The first is a new weapon. At Marathon, the Greeks
used the phalanx, a tight formation of eight ranks, where your shield protects not you, but the man to your left. Only the first two rows are fighting. The rest are pushed from behind. Such a system is based on trust. You should know that your neighbor will not lower his shield, even if his hand is pierced. There was no professional army. The people in that phalanx were the same ones who were shaping pots yesterday and would be back at it again tomorrow. Herodotus writes: "The Persians lost 6,400 soldiers. The Athenians lost 192 plus one runner who reached Athens with the news of the victory and fell dead on the spot. The second reason became a meme. 300 Spartans under the command of King
Leonidas held the Thermopylae Pass against the Persian army for 3 days. Except for the first 2 days, there were 7,000 other Greeks standing there with them. Only on the third day, when the others retreated, were the Spartans left alone. They were buying time while Greece gathered its armies. The king died with them, because in Sparta the king stands in the front row. But yes, it was also a Spartan temperament. For two centuries they had lived in barracks even in peacetime. The third is the navy. Silver was found near Athens. The money could have been distributed to the citizens, but the assembly voted for 200 triremes-fast warships with three rows of oars. It was this fleet that defeated the Persians in a decisive naval battle.
Next came victory on land. Meanwhile, the Greeks of Sicily defeated Carthage. The path was cleared, and classical Greece was to grow upon it. To finish off Persia, Athens assembles the Delian League-150 cities. Now Athens is the center of the Greek world. Union members pay contributions to the joint fleet. The treasury is kept on Delos, the sacred island of Apollo. But soon, for security reasons, of course, someone suggests changing the patron to Athena. Guess which city the treasury is moving to. The most expensive 5th- century property with the best view in Greece, the Parthenon, is being built not as a temple but as a safe for Allied money.
Historians have a name for this system-the Athenian Democratic Empire. The Allies pay, Athens spends. It was this money that paid for all of Greek classicism: sculpture, drama, architecture, philosophy. At the head of this financial center stands Pericles, a military leader and orator. He signs a 30-year peace with Sparta, rebuilds the Acropolis burned by the Persians, extends the city walls all the way to the port, and rebuilds the port with a rectangular grid of streets. Without this grid, there would be no Manhattan or Washington. Where there is money, there go the best minds. The sculptor Phidias translates Greece into marble. The philosopher Anaxagoras says something scandalous. The sun is not a god on a chariot, but a red-hot rock about the size of the
Peloponnese. Philosophy for the Greeks was entertainment. Gathering in the evening with wine and arguing about the structure of the universe until dawn. The word "school" itself comes from the Greek "scholē", which means leisure. Socrates would sit on a bench in the middle of the square and begin to reason aloud, while young people would gather around him. Socrates, by the way, was a good boxer and could out-drink anyone at a party. Meanwhile, medicine is stuck in the Stone Age. Anesthesia did not exist. At best, the doctor would hit the patient in the jaw to make him lose consciousness. The Greeks called their doctors butchers. This entire great
culture was created in half a century by people who couldn't cure a sick tooth. Athens was envied, especially by Sparta. The cold war between them had been raging since the victory over Persia, and in 431 it became hot. The Spartans laid siege to Athens. The citizens hid behind the walls. There was no famine, as grain was brought by sea from Africa. But along with the grain came plague or typhus. Extinction has begun Even Pericles himself died. He was replaced by demagogues who promised everything in a row. Command of the fleet passed to Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles, a man without any principles. His idea was a quick, victorious little war. Drop everything and sail to Sicily.
As if Sparta wasn't enough, the fleet was ready. But the night before sailing, someone walked through the city and took off the most prominent part of each statue of Hermes. Athens was furious. They accused Alcibiades and summoned him to court, but he fled to Sparta and asked for asylum. The commander-in-chief was now giving advice to the enemy. The allies scattered. The fleet was destroyed. Athens accepted a humiliating peace. Tear down the walls. They broke Hermes, and with him all Athenian power broke. And it is against this black background that theater flourishes.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes- their plays are still performed today, although they were written with the certainty that the first performance would be the only one. Ancient drama was always about the present, so that's how it turned out. The worse it got for the city, the better it was for its art. The same with philosophy. Socrates still found a golden age, while Plato and his student Aristotle worked among ruins. Every policy is in decline. The system, which for centuries was based on the principle that no city was stronger than the others, broke down. And immediately someone appeared who could gather them all by force. Macedonia came out of nowhere. Distant
relatives whom the Greeks always considered almost barbarians. Even Aristotle came there to work as a mentor to a gifted young man. The boy's father's name was Philip. He strengthened Macedonia, and in 338 he defeated the combined Greek forces and united almost all of Greece into a single alliance to finally put an end to Persia. His son, Alexander, took over. He invaded Asia, defeated the Persian king Darius, and, instead of returning home, marched all the way to India. Thus was born a new world-the Hellenistic one, where Greek mixed with the Eastern. The polis has become global. Alexandrias arose everywhere, only now without democracy. From Egypt to India, officials speak Greek. And back in Europe, new gods with oriental
faces settle on Olympus alongside the old ones. In Egypt, Alexander was declared a god. He liked it. From then on, ambassadors were to prostrate themselves before him, as was customary in the East. Where all this could lead-we will never know. Greek edicts were found ordering the spread of Buddhism, but Alexander died young. And Babylon, where he died, became the capital of an empire that immediately began to disintegrate. His generals, the Diadochi, divided the spoils and While Alexander's successors destroyed each other, Rome rose in the west. In 146 he conquered Greece. In 30 BC. BC he captured Egypt, the last stronghold of Hellenism. But here too, Greek culture won. The Romans read the Iliad in Greek. The Roman
nobility learned Greek and imitated Greek orators. And a few centuries later, the New Testament would be written in Greek. In 330, Emperor Constantine founded a new capital, Constantinople, on the site of an old Greek colony called Byzantium. Thus began Byzantium, which would carry Greek culture for another thousand years and leave behind another alphabet-the Cyrillic alphabet, which is used by half a billion people today. A country called " Ancient Greece" never existed, but its letters, theater, philosophy, and democracy- not at all like we imagine-have outlived every empire that has conquered it.
