Certainly not these yahoos...
Posted on 06/21/2005 9:07:28 AM PDT by blam
bump for later read
Very interesting. This is one of the few times in history (there were others) that defined the western culture and ensured its ascendency over the east.
Lucky us. Unlucky them.
Ping
Not much of a secret that Xerxes got his ass kicked.
Some people think the scholars are looters, too.
Repel borders!
borders=boarders!
BTW, here's a good read: "Alexander, The Ambiguity of Greatness" by Guy MacLean Rogers, c. 2004, Random House, a bio of Alexander the Great. Revenge against the Persians for the wars of that earlier era, and to hold them back from re-entering the Greek World, was the justification for Alexander's campaign against the Persians.
The "comeliest of boys" had been castrated; the throats of the "goodliest" soldiers ripped out.
Not only does it just seem kind of randomly tossed in there, but I don't see why those terms are in quotes. The ancient Greeks didn't write in English (duh!) and I can't think of why that would be an accurate translation (e.g., "best" soldiers would surely work just fine and be accurate - and "most beautiful" is probably what the original Greek says about the boys)
What's purple and conquered the world?
Um, I dunno but I'm sure you're gonna tell us!
It is irony, IMHO, that every great history-changing event was preceded by a great sea battle. I.e. at Salamis, had not the smaller Athenian fleet whipped Xerxes' armada, the center of future western civilization would have been from Persia instead of Greece (hence no democractic tradition). Again, at Actium, Cleopatra and Mark Anthony were inexplicably defeated by a much less powerful Roman fleet that Augustus Ceasar had launched, thus saving Rome as the sphere of influence instead of Egypt.
Then, there was Elizabeth the Great's race galleons soundly whipping Philip II's huge force in the late 1500s and securing England on a road to an empire where the sun never set.
Napoleon's downfall came not at Waterloo or his long dreadful retreat from Moscow, but rather at the hands of Nelson and Trafalgar.
Our own history is full of similiar examples. The real reason that Cornwallis surrendered to Washington was because he was bottled up at Yorktown by Compte de Grasse's French fleet; and had the CSS Virginia prevailed at Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862 against the USS Monitor the South would have been immediately been recognized by both Queen Victoria and Louis Napoleon's governments as both had envoys in Virginia then to determine if the South could break the blockade on the James River and its capitol city of Richmond.
Again, at Midway, when we caught the four IJN carriers with decks full of planes and fuel, the Pacific war turned on its head; and, in the Atlantic, D-Day was an amphibious landing where one of its four beaches, Omaha, was saved only by a line of destroyer laying keels on the ocean bottom to pound German gun emplacements.
The Navy is now in the process of reducing its ranks--80,000 less sailors by 2008. Meanwhile, the Chinese are rapidly building a Navy and, IMHO, it won't be long before the Mideastern countries of Iran and Saudi Arabia do the same. Frightful!
is someone from San Francisco involved?
Alexander the Grape? I was 7 years old when I heard that one...
Certainly not these yahoos...
One of his galley captains (Artemisia of Halicarnassus) WAS a woman. She backed her galley out of the debacle, ramming/sinking a friendly in the process and incidentally perpetuating that whole, er, myth about woman drivers.
(To be fair Artemisia probably rammed the friendly just to convince the pursuing Greeks she was on their side.)
Fascinating article. Hope they get lucky.
I believe many of Xerxes "warriors" were conscripts and slaves, hardly trained for war. At the same time, the greeks had the training and a common vision that they had to fight for their way of life, and to lose was to be exterminated. They fought both this battle and the previous attempt by the persian king with such vigor that the persians were routed...
It's not always about sex.
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