Garrett Ryan - Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants: Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans

W riting a book, even an odd little one like this, is a daunting process. But thanks to my friends and family, it was much less agonizing than it could have been. Janet Dant, Martha Dowling, Emily Ho, Blake Nicholson, Cait Stevenson, Kelly Williams, and Steven Yenzer read drafts of individual answers. Along with Anya Helsel, Emily and Kelly also provided sorely needed guidance through the labyrinth of social media. My siblings Courtney, Conor, Quinn, and Austin were constant sources of encouragement (and agreed, along with my brother-in-law Rich and sister-in-law Shannon, to appear in a promotional video on ancient drinking games). I also was lucky enough to have the support of my grandparents Adrian and Marianne Ryan and Joe and Shirley Dowling (special thanks to my grandmother Shirley for her proofreading help). Finally, I have to thank Jean and Garrett Ryan, my parents, for tolerating their unemployable son as he wrote something ridiculous in the backyard. This book is dedicated to them, with deepest gratitude.

Author: Soyoure looking for a crash course in Greek and Roman history?

Reader: I guess so.

Then buckle up, hypothetical reader, for an irresponsibly short survey of the whole grand narrative: who did what, why they did it, and whether it all matters.

OK so why were the Greeks such a big deal?

Why, you mean, do we still study the writings and doings of a bunch of squabbling city-states that flourished two and a half millennia ago?

Sure.

In short, century after century of cultural elites have decided that the Greek heritage matters, and weas heirs or voyeurs of the Western traditiontend to follow suit. There are a whole host of historical reasons, but it boils down to the fact that the Greeks produced a durable canon of literary masterpieces and an impressive array of philosophical and political concepts. In fact, our word political derives from the Greek polis.

A polis was a city-state governed by and for its citizens, the free adult men who made up its political and military class. Although the typical polis was quite small (many had fewer than a thousand citizens), every polis aspired to autonomy. As a result, the Greek world was divided into hundreds of mutually suspicious little states. This fragmentation sparked endless skirmishes and petty wars. But it also encouraged competition, creativity, and innovation.

There was a constant struggle for supremacy, so it varied over time. In the decades leading up to the Persian Wars, Sparta probably had the most clout, at least on the Greek mainland.

Early in their history, the Spartans conquered a large territory and effectively enslaved most of the inhabitants. Thus freed from the need to work (and finding themselves outnumbered by their serfs), the Spartans had the means, motive, and opportunity to become Classical Greeces most professional soldiers.

Like Sparta, Athens was a large, wealthy, and powerful polis. There, however, the similarities ended. Sparta was located in a mountain valley; Athens stood beside the sea. The Spartans shunned commerce; the Athenians lived by it. Sparta retained a conservative oligarchy; Athens evolved a radical democracy. You get the idea. Despite their differences, however, the Athenians and Spartans were sometimes firm allies, most famously during the Persian Wars, the greatest crisis in Greek history.

What happened during the Persian Wars? In 490 BCE, the Persian King of Kings Darius launched a punitive raid against Athens. To everyones surprise, the Athenians defeated the Persian expeditionary force at the Battle of Marathon. The Persians returned ten years later under the personal leadership of Dariuss son Xerxes. Faced with the largest army the world had yet seen, many Greek cities capitulated. A coalition led by Athens and Sparta, however, decided to resist. A small allied force under the command of the Spartan king Leonidas failed to hold the Persians at the narrow pass of Thermopylae. But a few weeks later, the Athenians crippled the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis, turning the tide of the war. The allies destroyed the Persian army the following year. After this victory, the Athenians embarked on an unprecedented golden age, which would define what we call the Classical period (thats Classical with a capital C)the century and a half of Greek history between the Persian Wars and the death of Alexander the Great.

Because Classical Athens was responsible for most of the cultural achievements we associate with the ancient Greeks. Tragedy became a sophisticated art form, capable of plumbing the depths of human motivation and divine indifference. Philosophy, in the person of a chronically unemployed stonemasons son named Socrates, began to shed new light on questions of human ethics and knowledge. Sculpture scaled new heights in the marble reliefs of the Parthenon. Last but not least, the first true work of history, a sprawling account of the Persian Wars, was composed by the genial and uncritical Herodotus.

On the most fundamental level, because they had the time and money. After the Persian Wars, the Athenians acquired a lucrative little empire centered on the Aegean Sea. The revenues from their subject cities financed the development of a direct democracy, in which every male citizen was allowed and expected to take part. Under the guidance of Pericles, a gifted statesman and orator, the same flow of money under-wrote the construction of the Parthenon and drew ambitious intellectuals from every corner of the Greek world.

For the most part, brutalizing their serfs and resenting the Athenians. The Spartans always had regarded the Athenians as rivals; as Athenian power grew, so did their anxiety. Within a few decades of the victory against the Persians, mutual distrust had hardened into cold war. The inevitable open conflict between Athens and Sparta, which we call the Peloponnesian War, broke out in 431 BCE.

Because it destroyed the Athenian Empire, and because it inspired the work of Thucydides, arguably the greatest ancient historian. Originally an Athenian general, Thucydides traced the grinding cost and growing brutality of the Peloponnesian War with coolness and precision. He lived long enough to recount the Athenians disastrous attempt to conquer Sicily. He died, however, before he could analyze the final years of the war, when the Spartans, now taking money from the Persians, built a fleet and dismantled the Athenian Empire. The war effectively ended in 405 BCE, when a Spartan admiral executed the rowers of the last Athenian fleet on a lonely beach.

Only for a few decades. Then Epaminondas, a general from the second-tier polis of Thebes, shattered the Spartan army and freed the Spartans serfs. Epaminondas, however, was killed in battle before he could consolidate his position, creating a power vacuum that would be filled by Philip II, the talented and ambitious king of the Macedonians.

Northern Greeks, who ruled a large but usually anarchic kingdom. Philip II was the first Macedonian king to unify his realm and intervene decisively in the affairs of the Greek city-states to the south. By the time of his death, Macedon was indisputably the greatest power in Greece.