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To: SunkenCiv
When the Persians decided to add Greece to their already enormous Empire at the beginning of the fifth century BC, the Greek city states obviously objected violently. They formed an alliance under the double leadership of Sparta and Athens.

Not hardly. Essentially all the Greek states north of Athens collaborated, even fighting for the Medes.

6 posted on 05/26/2010 6:39:51 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (When buying and selling are legislated, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.)
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To: Sherman Logan

One thing not widely taught is that the Greek Golden Age coincided / overlapped with the Golden Age of the Persian Empire. The Persians twice bridged the strait into Europe by building pontoon bridges to enable a massive movement of land forces, and maintained a substantial presence in the north of Greece; meanwhile it occupied Anatolia, which had a large Ionian Greek population. Sparta has been made much of in recent years, but it never worked for the good of Greece until it was humiliated by its failure to join the Greek effort at Marathon; the lame excuse (still given by advocates today) about some otherwise unknown ceremony masked the true intent, which was to act as the proxy for Persian rule in the Pelopponnese. During the next invasion it sent a whopping force of 300 (which fought alongside a force of 700 Thespians, soldiers from a city Persia had sacked) as a PR move, then again let the brunt of the invasion fall on Athens. Again, Athens prevailed, and again Spartan plans were thwarted. The final victory for Sparta came as a result of AGAIN taking Persian money during the Pelopponnesian War, using the money to build a fleet, hiring away the best Athenian rowers, and defeating the Athenian navy. Then, within a generation, most of what was left of the Spartan pedophiles were destroyed by the Thebans at Leuctra, thousands upon thousands of enslaved Greeks were freed in the valley of the Eurotas and freed the Messenians, ending Sparta’s ability to maintain its sick, depraved, revolting, elitist system.


7 posted on 05/26/2010 7:49:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv ("Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others." -- Otto von Bismarck)
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