Who's Better Though, Greeks or Persians? There's Only One Way To Find Out... WATCH VIDEOS!

 I spotted this board game in the window of a charity shop in Clapham back in - let me check... September. Wait, September? That is... That's only two months ago! But it feels like... - 2020 has seemed so long, yet the days have seemed so short. Anyway... I had often wondered where the concept of "Western Civilization" came from, given it seemed to refer to influences from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and what I'll call the Bible Lands, all of which as shown in the map above lie to the North, South and East of the Mediterranean. My confusion however was lifted by the following short, computer-game-sponsored video from "Extra Credits" (and its sequel). I've a lot of time for "Extra Credits". Apparently it's the Greek historian Herodotus who first spun the idea of a pan-Greek identity in his account of the battle of Thermopylae against Persia, the battle depicted in the film 300, the battle the Greeks actually lost. In fact, as the video goes on to explain, the Hellenic alliance would be incredibly short-lived, and Sparta would turn on a rebuilt Athens before the century was over...

 

 In this short window between invasions however, the city-state of Athens would produce the Parthenon, the plays of Aeschylus (the Oresteia), Euripides (Medea) and Sophocles (Oedipus!), the philosophy of Socrates, the sculpture of Phidias, and a culture war between the rule of law and contrarian personality cults whose models bring us pretty much bang up to date.

 

Thanks again, Larry Gonick. 

 

 The influence of the team on the left hand side of the map, in other words, has not been overstated. But it's worth remembering that this fight against "Oriental despotism" (as the Persian Empire is described below in a Sunday Times publication from 1960 enigmatically titled Mainly For Children) fought for at Thermopylae and more successfully a few months later at Salamis, masterminded by Greeks who would later seek comfortable retirement themselves in that same Persian Empire, was a fight for freedom only inasmuch as it was a fight for self-determination, the freedom to, among other things, keep slaves, a model that again brings us pretty much bang up to date.

 On other pages: "Why Bother About Space?" by Colin Ronan, "The Chronicle Of The Great Carp" by Clifford Parker, and "Australian Animals I Have Met" by Axel Poignant.