(time index set to the Delphi segment)Mysteries of the Ancient World - Myths and Legends (at 43:15)
March 13, 2016 | Questar Entertainment
Posted on 12/25/2013 4:36:42 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Gods.
Resolved by the Boule and the People.
Themistocles son of Neocles of Phrearrhioi made the motion.
The city shall be entrusted to Athena, Athens' protectress, and to the other gods, all of them, for protection and defense against the Barbarian on behalf of the country.
The Athenians in their entirety and the aliens who live in Athens shall place their children and their women in Troezen, [to be entrusted to Theseus ?] the founder of the land. The elderly and movable property shall for safety be deposited at Salamis. The treasurers and the priestesses are to remain on the Acropolis and guard the possessions of the gods.
The rest of the Athenians in their entirety and those aliens who have reached young manhood shall embark on the readied two hundred ships and they shall repulse the Barbarian for the sake of liberty, both their own and that of the other Greeks, in common with the Lacedaemonians, Corinthians, Aeginetans and the others who wish to have a share in the danger.
Appointment will also be made of captains, two hundred in number, one for each ship, by the generals, beginning tomorrow, from those who are owners of both land and home in Athens and who have children who are legitimate. They shall not be more than fifty years old and the lot shall determine each man's ship. The generals shall also enlist marines, ten for each ship, from men over twenty years of age up to thirty, and archers, four in number. They shall also by lot appoint the specialist officers for each ship when they appoint the captains by lot. A list shall be made also of the rowers, ship by ship, by the generals, on notice boards, with the Athenians to be selected from the lexiarchic registers, the aliens from the list of names registered with the polemarch. They shall write them up, assigning them by divisions, up to two hundred divisions, each of up to one hundred rowers, and they shall append to each division the name of the warship and the captain and the specialist officers, so that they may know on what warship each division shall embark.
When assignment of all the divisions has been made and they have been allotted to the warships, all the two hundred shall be manned by order of the Boule and the generals, after they have sacrificed to appease Zeus the All-powerful and Athena and Victory and Poseidon the Securer. When they have completed the manning of the ships, with one hundred they shall bring assistance to the Artemisium in Euboea, while the other hundred shall, all around Salamis and the rest of Attica, lie at anchor and guard the country.
To ensure that in a spirit of concord all Athenians will ward off the Barbarian, those banished for the ten year span shall leave for Salamis and they are to remain there until the people decide about them. Those who have been deprived of citizen rights are to have their rights restored.
MOLON LABE
Second the motion. The difficulty with Athenian democracy was that it was so very subject to ridiculous passion in time of war. Nearly all of the major Athenian strategoi - generals - were eventually stabbed in the back by the passions of the mob: Miltiades, Themistocles, the historian Thucydides, Pericles' own son, even, arguably, Socrates' disciple Alcibiades - stupid, wasteful behavior that cost Athens the war. The objective historian cannot avoid the conclusion that they deserved to lose.
Themistocles, however, was a military figure of the first rank. What Persia was attempting was a massive combined-forces campaign that was unprecedented in warfare. Themistocles appreciated that the defeat of either the land or sea arms would be fatal and managed to scrape together a strategic opposition on both land and sea. The land opposition took Leonidias and the Spartans (and the Thespians and the Thebans) to Thermopylae; the sea opposition a mostly Athenian fleet under Themistocles just offshore of there at Artemisium. When Themistocles was finally forced back by the superior numbers of the Persian fleet he sent a boat to inform Leonidas of the fact. They found only the dead.
Themistocles got their collective revenge at Salamis. Athens by then had been burnt twice. Had the latter not happened the apparently sincere Persian offers for peace might have been accepted. I think that the Athenians might not have been quite so insistent about building their city on Delian League money, but that's only speculation. A year later Plataea, the death of Mardonius, and the end of a truly remarkable Persian campaign.
Did you hear the one about the man with torn pants who went to a Greek taylor.
After looking at the pants, the Greek said, “Euripides?”
Said the man, “Eumenides?” :-)
;’)
Hey, it was fun while it lasted.
Most of the Athenian hoplites were captured, rather than killed, and death was preferable.
(time index set to the Delphi segment)Mysteries of the Ancient World - Myths and Legends (at 43:15)
March 13, 2016 | Questar Entertainment
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