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Well, what we're going to do now is just work through a few possible reasons for why the Greeks won these wars.

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Now, they're not mutually exclusive that we could have them alongside each other.

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And the first one I'm going to throw out there for Lynette is just this idea, which we've touched on already,

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that the loyalist Greeks won because they were more determined and they had more to fight for because they were defending their own lands.

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What do you think about that, Lynnette? Well, I think that, as has been seen across history, that this is an important point.

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And I think it was a significant point that the Greeks, they would have lost so much if they had lost.

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I mean, that that the idea and even though it was sort of rhetorical, the idea that they were as a people free still mattered to them.

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And you know, we can see that in various some of their poetry.

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The nominees for example from the from cull often talks about the slavery and of being under a tyrant,

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you know, the Lydian King in the in the Lydian Empire.

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So it was an idea that was around, but it wasn't really acceptable.

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And the attempt had been made simply to bring the Greeks or various Greek cities

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into Persian submission at various points when the Persians first even sort

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of entertained the thought that it might be interesting or might be quite important

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to to make inroads into the Greek world or into the central Greek world.

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And they sent envoys to Athens and Sparta, and they got very short shrift there.

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I mean, the the the Spartans caused themselves a bit of a problem by throwing the envoys into a well.

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And then they had to sort of later on they had to sort of make up for that.

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But in Athens, the response was pretty much the same, that it was just something that was sort of unacceptable.

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And so the resistance to it was also actually sort of important in sort of very hard wired

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into sort of the Greek psyche or at least into the Greek psyche of some Greek states.

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And as we said before, there were some Greek states who clearly thought that being on the Persian side, if the Persians won, would be advantageous.

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But there were there were other Greeks who were prepared to really fight and that the Athenians did abandon Athens and let it be burned.

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Also, they were able to use it quite effectively in their own propaganda later on.

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But it it was still quite a significant thing that they were prepared to do because abandoning your

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city was giving away so much and that they were prepared to do that in order to at that stage,

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only possibly make the greater gain of getting the Persians out of the Greek world actually was very significant.

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So I think, you know, that's as a possibility.

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That's something that we shouldn't underestimate, that they they were fighting for their freedom of thought, which was something that they valued.

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So I think it's really important to remember for our students that there is that difference

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where the Greeks are fighting to defend their homes and there is an invading force.

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And we do get that sense in Herodotus of really trying to defend your homeland.

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So let's have a think Roel. Let's have a think about Persian military tactics.

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The idea that we do get in Herodotus is that they don't really fight effectively.

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And there's a couple of possible reasons here. One is that the Greeks managed to neutralise the threat of that cavalry.

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They managed to fight in the advantageous places.

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So Thermopylae is a narrow parcel. That's a Greek defeat flotilla that managed to effectively get to fight when and where they want to.

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And then something else that Herodotus just tells us at Plataea, he says specifically,

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actually, the Persians fought just as bravely as the Greeks, but their armour wasn't as good.

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And so when it got to close combat, rather than firing bows and arrows, they really struggled.

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So really, this is your expertise, this area. So talk us through this.

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Can we can we take this as a reason? Well, it's difficult, isn't it?

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I mean, the first point on the cavalry is certainly relevant because according to Herodotus himself,

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the Persians really did try to find battle ground where their cavalry would be effective.

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So they tried to find these long open plains where they would be able to manoeuvre and decide battles with their cavalry,

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as they had done during the Ionian revolts and had been very effective.

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And the Greeks were obviously very aware of that, and were trying to prevent that from happening.

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So we're told that they specifically chose to fight at Thermopylae and later in the hills at Plataea than in the plain,

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because they were afraid that otherwise they would be overrun by Persian Cavalry.

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So in those cases, they very deliberately tried to counter the Persian Advantage at Marathon.

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They managed to overcome this by somehow fighting the buffalo in a way that left the cavalry unable to influence the events.

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And it's been, you know, a question that historians have fought over for two and a half thousand years, how they managed to achieve that,

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because there is no hints of it, really, in the ancient sources,

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how the cavalry managed to or how the cavalry was was somehow not involved in the battle of marathon.

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But later on, they very deliberately tried to make sure that they would not have to fight cavalry in the open.

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And this remains a constant thing throughout Greek history. I mean, they're terrified of cavalry.

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Cavalry is very easily able to roll up these heavy infantry forces.

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And so they always have to try and fight in places where those those cavalry kind of operate.

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And they get lucky because a flotilla or simply the Persians don't have a choice.

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It's only one way through. So they have to confront the Greeks in their chosen ground.

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And at Plataea, they actually are lucky in the sense that the enemy commander who was at that point,

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Mardonius, not Xerxes is kind of fed up with the whole thing,

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wants to have his one decisive blow,

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and so attacks them on their chosen ground rather than fighting them in the open where you would have the advantage.

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So the cavalry side is definitely something that where the Greeks are making very deliberate tactical decisions.

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Now, as for the fighting thing, this is or the infantry fighting aspect, this is something that Herodotus brings up several times.

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He says that the Greek infantry is more effective in the fight than the Persians.

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And particularly, he says, it's not because they're the Persians or weaker or cowards.

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They are they find very bravely, but they just they just have very bad equipment.

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The problem is that statement contradicts his own statements about Persian equipment.

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He describes Persian armour. He describes there weaponry and shields.

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He describes them as heavy infantry, which are easily as well-equipped as the Greeks themselves.

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He also describes the many other peoples fighting in their army who have equipment that he says is basically like the Greeks.

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I mean, when you have troops that you're levying from Greek states in Asia, minor, but also from Libyans,

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Phoenicians and Cypriots, Egyptians, Assyrians, Medes, they all fight this heavy infantry.

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So there are many people who could stand up to Greeks in hand-to-hand combat.

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So there's no reason to believe that he's being truthful when he says that they had a disadvantage because they didn't wear armour.

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We know they wore armour. We have images, we have descriptions.

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We have archaeological remains of fish skill caresses that the Persians wore.

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We know they wore helmets. We know their cavalry was heavily armoured. So what's going on here?

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There have been a few different suggestions. One is that it's actually just a reference to the fact they didn't have these big round Greek shields,

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these hoplite shields, which are very protective in close combat.

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Persian didn't have those. They may have carried smaller shields or no shields at all because they were also serving as archers.

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So maybe that versatility is a disadvantage when the Greeks are already in your face.

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But another argument that's been made is that possibly by this point in the campaign at the battle of Plataea,

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these same troops had been in the field for two years. Their equipment was deteriorating.

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Fewer and fewer of them would have had an intact piece of body armour on them.

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So this was kind of slowly going away or either being discarded because of the demands of the campaign and because of the weather,

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or it was simply wearing out. And so when the Greeks confronted them, many of them may have already lost the armour they initially had.

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And so the fight was a lot easier for the Greeks because this army was starting to show wear and tear, essentially.

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So there are different reasons to to to try and explain this,

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but we do have to explain it because it doesn't work within Herodotus, his own narrative.

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He's contradicting himself when he says that. Which is, I get to tell you.

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But if we bring that back to Thermopylae if we believe Herodotus' account,

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essentially we get a small number of great chiefs just slaughtering thousands upon thousands of Persians,

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and there is a sense there that it's only by encircling the small number of Greeks at Thermopylae that they manage to win.

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So how would you explain the Greek success at Thermopylae for those two and a half days?

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That's an interesting way to frame it as a success. Yes, for two and a half days.

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But this is the thing about Thermopylae. I mean, it is one of the great geographical bottlenecks of the Greek peninsula.

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And so any invader who wants to enter mainland Greece, that's where you stop them.

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And this continues to be true afterwards. I mean, there are several further battles of Thermopylae in antiquity and even into modern times.

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I think this is just where you can easily stop an enemy army.

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And the terrain is so heavily in the favour of the defender that, you know,

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it's really hard to do this until the enemy figures out that the past can be turned,

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as the Persians did, and as every other attacker who went through that area also eventually discovered.

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So it's not really a testament to Greek superiority in infantry combat that they held the pass at Thermopylae.

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I mean, that's expected. And in fact, I mean, the defender usually holds that place until, you know,

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you hold that place until you are surrounded and then you have to withdraw.

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But in that situation, actually and this is interesting with regard to what I said about deteriorating equipment paralysis there

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actually only says that the problem of the Persians was that their spears were a little bit shorter.

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He doesn't mention that they wear no armour or have no shields or anything like that.

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So we're they're we're not talking about this kind of problem with body armour or anything like that.

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He's just talking about some marginal difference, which obviously works to their disadvantage because they have no room to manoeuvre

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because they can't get around and they have to advance directly into the Greek spears.

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But even then, whether that's actually been so effective, I mean, Herodotus says that they, you know,

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kept pushing back the Persians and that they they held this against all attempts to to to drive them out of the position.

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But at the end, it tells a very suspect story of how many losses the Persians actually suffered.

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And it seems quite likely that Persian losses were not that high because they were

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mostly weren't actually engaged in continuous hand-to-hand fighting for that pass,

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but kind of held off and tried to bombard the Greeks with arrows until their encircling force could strike them from the rear.

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And so we have to kind of visualise this battle not as a continuous melee in which the Greeks have this consistent advantage,

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but rather as Herodotus says there was a wall across the pass.

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The Greeks were defending this wall. So this is not an open battle, but a siege battle in a sense.

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And the Persians were at liberty to hold off and not attack that very strongly because

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they were already manoeuvring around their position and time was in their favour.

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You know, the longer they could wait and hold and keep the Greeks busy, the greater the chance that that position would eventually be turned.

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So this is something where Herodotus is glorifying the Spartan achievements and making them seem like these indomitable warriors.

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But actually, when you look at the details of the story, it's really not that simple.

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I love it. Give a bit of a revisionist of Herodotus and challenging ancient historians.

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And this is really interesting. Thank you. So I think that that idea of the weaponry and armour having deteriorated by Plataea

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is a very interesting one and something perhaps for our students to hold on to. Well, Lynnette, let's come to another possible reason.

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And if you read Herodotus, it seems that he thinks that the Greeks also had better leadership.

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So we have the foresight of Themistocles advising the evacuation from Athens,

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for example, and sending the message across to Xerxes to make him attack in the bay of Salamis.

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We have the example of Leonidas at Thermopylae like we have the sort of calm overall hand of Eurybiades

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We have pausanias achieving so much to tell you.

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And then on the other side, we have Xerxes. You have Xerxes as a sort of megalomaniac with an anger management issues.

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Mardonius gets sacked after 492 and then gets brought back again.

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Are we able to even work out what the quality of leadership was like, or are we just guessing?

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Well, I think to say that Mardonius was sacked and he's part of the royal family, so he can't really be sacked.

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And he was a very important personage in the Achaemenid court.

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I think one of the things that is significant in terms of the leadership and it's quite

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interesting is the fact that the Persian Kings didn't tend to lead from the front.

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There was a very different style of kingship, which meant that they were apart.

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They were always apart. It changes later on in the fourth century, when the Persians come up against Alexander to a certain extent, that changes.

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But it was still fairly typical for the Persian king to sit on the hill.

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I mean, I think that's how it's described it. So on this and watch what's going on so that he's able to reward.

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He's got it. He's got his list, what's called the daybook,

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where he's able to take account of who's doing well and who's doing not so well so that he can reward them later on because that's his role.

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It's not his role to be in the thick of it, whereas in the Greek world it's a very different sort of thing where actually being a king, being a ruler,

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meant leading from the front and, you know, displaying your charismatic quality by being in the middle of battle,

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of being seen to be in the middle of battle. And that's the sort of the role that Leonidas plays in the Spartan King with your shield, on your shield.

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And so very much part of Spartan ideology was that the glory of dying in battle was worth something, it was worth dying for.

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So it's not so much that it's better leadership.

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It's a very different kind of leadership that we see and people playing very different kinds of roles.

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And the role that Themistocles plays, for example,

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is a very interesting one because he seems to deliberately propagate a kind of Odyssean sort of character about him,

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sort of the trickiness and sort of that lack of straightforwardness and playing behind the scenes.

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He's willing to play behind the scenes in order to get the kind of thing

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The outcome that he wants will get people to do what he wants.

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So it's I think it's a it's a different kind of thing rather than the necessarily good or bad leadership.

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It's just a different kind of leadership. And decisions are being made in different kinds of ways.

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So in a Persian context, the King would make the decision with his court around him,

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but he ultimately makes the decision, whereas in the Greek context,

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it's much more about debate and different people having different views, which means that you get different sorts of outcomes.

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And it's why Themistocles can sort of play the game in the way that he does at various points to get the kind of result that he wants to get.

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And I think it's quite interesting and quite important to remember that Themistocles ends up in the end in Persia.

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I was just going to I was just going to say that that the the great irony is that it's not just themistocles

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because Pausanias saying it exactly goes kind of native when he's over in the Persian territory as well.

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And so you have really the two great war heroes from the Greek side, the two great leaders,

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Themistocles at salamis and Pausanias at Plataea, and they both end up working for the Persians.

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So what does that tell us?

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I think there was something quite attractive to the Greeks or to some Greeks about this Persian leadership style where there was power.

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They just want power is coming back to this competitive and this question of competitiveness and where themistocles loses out in one way.

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So he gains in another way. Pausanias is the same, you know. They like that.

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I mean, Pausanias gets accused of holding Persian parties and all sorts of things, which just sort of got to be a bit of nonsense, really.

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But there is a sort of there is. The Greeks were always fascinated.

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I mean, that's that's how I think what Herodotus is writing about and talking about is the the Greek fascination with Persian leadership styles.

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And, you know, they find it endlessly interesting.

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They want to say, well, we're not really like that. We're quite different in that we're not secluded and we're not you know, we don't hide away.

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We we put our leaders out on display. So we've got a different way of going about things.

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But they're still very interested in it and very interested in exploring it in very different kinds of ways.

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You know what and how Persian leadership might sort of become adaptable to a Greek context,

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which is in the end, that's what Alexander the Great becomes interested in.

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You know, how can he become a Persian king?

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And it's just this sort of same kind of thing being played out in Xenophon in the fourth century talks about how actually,

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you know, we've we've got to be really careful going to Persia because we might like it too much and we may forget to come home.

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So there is this sort of play with Persia as a, as a sort of society, which on the one hand represents all these values that they don't like.

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That, on the other hand, has some attributes which the Greeks find also deeply appealing, even if very problematic.

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Okay. Fascinating. Thank you. Well, that's the issue around leadership.

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And sounds like it's hard to tell really whether the Greeks have better leadership. Roel if we come across to you.

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And a very technical one, again, a little bit like the on the logistics.

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We do have hints in the sources, suggestions and sources really that what did for the Persians was the poor supply line.

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So of course they head out in probably early 418 having me based I think in

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Sardis and then although some of them return at the end of the summer for 18,

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but many of them then winter in northern Greece and they come back and try and finish the job in full.

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Some nine in the suggestion is in facilities in Herodotus and in Aeschylus in places that it's the land and the sea.

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I think in both the land and the sea in Persians, in other words, that they just don't have the supplies to to keep this army going.

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How about that? As a possible cause of Greek victory and Persian defeat?

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Yes. The latest sources actually highlight this as perhaps the reason why the way the Persian invasion failed.

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And while we have to suspect them, because those those statements occur like in a rhetorical context.

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So you have to imagine that they're trying to kind of overplay one aspect that appeals to them,

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while underplaying other reasons that may have been in play.

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Even so, it's clearly something that people were talking about, like maybe this just failed because they ran out of food, essentially.

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And it's also very clearly important in the way that Herodotus tells the story of this invasion.

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So he makes the point that this is the largest army that's ever been gathered.

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He also makes the point that there is actually a huge logistical apparatus supporting it.

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It gives all these details about the great pontoon bridge that they constructed, the canals they dig,

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and the supply dumps that they set out throughout thrace and Macedon to be prepared for their arrival,

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you know, to make sure that everything is that this army can be fed and that they can continue to advance.

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But when they get into Greece, they essentially have to get into a sort of mainland, sort of northern and central Greece.

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They have to live off the land. And the problem they run into there, which is something that Herodotus really likes to play up,

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is that Greece is not that abundant in the resources that it can grow natively.

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So some areas of the ancient world provide a great surplus of basic staples like, you know, Egypt or Sicily.

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Other parts like mainland Greece generally don't or they don't produce much more

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that much more food than the population consumes that already lives there.

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And so it becomes very difficult for a very large army to suddenly essentially move into

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this area as if this massive new city has appeared out of nowhere and then to feed itself.

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And so it's quite possible that this was a problem for them, especially when you consider they're also bringing this fleet along.

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These fleets, these warships have very large crews. They all have to eat.

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They all have to drink. Where are they getting all this foodstuff from?

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It's quite possible that they were just running out. And you can see some concern for the Persians in, you know, wintering in Thessaly,

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sort of retreating back north to try and find somewhere where there is food for the winter.

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And then as they advance back out, there are some debates in Herodotus over whether they shouldn't retreat maybe to Thebes because there will be

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food there and concern that they're going to run out of food if they if they don't force a decisive battle.

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This may well be one of the reasons that forced Mardonius's hand and compelled him to engage the

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Greeks in ground of their choosing because he knew that he couldn't stay in the field much longer.

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He would just run out. Yeah.

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There's a couple of interesting passages that I'd like to focus on from Thuycidides actually.

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The first one is to prescribe sources from Book one, Section 69,

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and we have a Corinthian speaker at the Conference of Peloponnesian Allies in Sparta in 4 three two.

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And he says this, in fact, you know that the chief reason for the Persian invasion was the mistaken policy of the Persians themselves.

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And then he goes on to say that the Athenians will make mistakes as well and what have you.

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So we have a Corinthian in four, three, two. And according to thucydides, actually, it's the Persians, their poor policy which cost them.

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And then later on in book six, section 33, we have a Syracusan and he's awaiting the Athenian armada, warning his fellow citizens.

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And he says this There have certainly not been many great expeditions, either Hellenic,

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Greek or Foreign, which have been successful when sent far from home.

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They cannot come in greater numbers than the inhabitants of their country and their neighbours, all of whom will unite in fear.

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And if anything goes wrong with them because of lack of supplies in a foreign country, even though they,

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they themselves are chiefly responsible for their failure, they nevertheless leave the honours of war to those against whom that made.

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So it's very interesting, obviously, that thucydides is giving that speech to someone and perhaps that person said it.

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But we have that sense even in the Greek world and the Greek sources, that the Persians brought about their own defeat.

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And it may have been the supply lines, which was the main cause.

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Yeah, although we do have to be careful with those passages because firstly, as I already said, I mean, they are rhetorical in the sense that,

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for instance,

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Hermocrates in Syracuse is essentially trying to convince them that they can beat the Athenians who are coming to invade their land.

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And so obviously saying like, you know, even a very daunting and massive invading army can come to grief just by,

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you know, being defeated by the distance and by that by the terrain. So that's obviously a sort of morale boost as well.

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But the other thing is that Thucydides in general is heavily invested in a project of downplaying the importance of the Persian War,

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because it makes the war that he chose to describe seem all the more sort of glorious and grand.

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And so for him, it's important to constantly stress that the Persian War I mean, he says at one point,

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like, oh, it was decided in two naval battles, in two land battles, like what a big deal.

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Boo hoo. Like this war. My war took 27 years.

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And this is a whole project that he has obviously to try and say no.

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I describe the biggest and most important war ever. And so when he says something like, Oh, the Persians, I mean, they ruined themselves.

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We barely had to do anything. He's obviously that fits his program,

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so we have to be quite careful about whether we should believe that or whether he's

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just trying to make you believe that so that his own project becomes more worthwhile.

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That's very interesting, given the scepticism there on the great sceptic thucydides these himself.

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Okay. Well, what's it seeming like to me is that it was really crucial that the Greeks pushed the campaign into the second year.

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So we're talking about the armour at plataea wearing down and not being such good quality.

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We're talking about the difficulty of supplies.

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And so it's starting to feel like to me that that victory at Salamis has become so important because it holds things off into the the following year.

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I don't know if either of you got a thought on that. I think that is quite important.

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And it's also, again, thinking about the Greeks sort of choosing where the battle would be.

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One of the things I was in Athens earlier this year and it just struck me how how narrow those straits are.

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And it's just not a good place to be trying to fight a major naval battle.

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And so that the Greeks got a victory there is not entirely surprising, I think,

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because Themistocles is able to it's at least if we believe the story that he wrote

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it that tells us we were able to wangle it so that that's how it happened,

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even though some of the other Greek commanders thought that that wasn't the best thing to do.

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But it's an incredibly narrow strait when you're talking about the numbers of ships that would have been in there.

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It must have just been chaos, really. Okay.

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Thank you. Roel Let's come back to you for another possible reason.

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Then again, it's talking about the, ah, absence of knowledge about the Persian Empire.

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But we talked earlier about the fact that in the forties that already been revolts in Egypt and Babylon.

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And towards the end of right to the end of the histories,

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Herodotus suggests that there is a revolt either happening or about to happen in Bactria, which is roughly modern Afghanistan.

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So should we keep a perspective here that we don't really know what else was going on in the Empire?

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And Xerxes may have needed to withdrawn to look after other things?

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It's always possible. I mean, the problem with the rest of the Persian Empire, this place is vast.

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The Western, the Greek frontier is only one sort of border area of that of that enormous empire.

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And the other ones, we very rarely get any good information about them, especially the Far East, essentially.

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So this area of Central Asia, bordering on modern Pakistan and also sort of the steppe countries,

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it's very rare that we hear anything about what's going on there. We can or can basically never draw up any kind of narrative history.

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So if we get a hint like this, we're like, yay, let's go.

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I think we see something, a glimpse of what's going on over there. But it also doesn't let us really elaborate on that and establish what was

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going on or how important this was or how much of a crisis we're dealing with.

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But certainly it's very plausible that there were crises breaking out elsewhere in the empire.

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This was already a couple of years into his reign. So usually that's not really when these things happen.

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Usually they happen when when a new king comes to the throne. But even so, at any point, of course, one of these satraps, these regional governors,

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can just decide to try and make it on their own or try to or become afraid of some consequence

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of something they've done and therefore decide to to make a bid for independence.

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Or, you know what? If for whatever reason, these things can happen or states can try to shake off like already pre-existing states,

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like like Babylon or the city states of Mesopotamia can decide to try and shake off the Persian yoke while the king is distracted

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because his election campaign in the far west and who knows what goes on over there because it's the fringe of the known world.

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So there are good reasons to assume that this is likely.

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We just rarely get any details. But in this period it seems like Xerxes also had to deal with yes, firstly a revolt in Bactria,

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but also in Babylon, which has been very, very difficult to date.

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So we're not exactly sure when whether that's before or after the invasion of Greece,

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but it's quite possible that we should connect that with his his withdrawal,

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that he was basically called back because there was a crisis much closer to home with something

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that was already part of his domain and therefore much more urgent for him to deal with.

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And that was potentially a much bigger threat because Babylon had, you know, a Mesopotamian empire in recent centuries,

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whereas the Greeks had never been anything, you know, there's no reason to worry about them necessarily from the Persian perspective.

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So that that is both plausible and we get some hints that that was going on.

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But we cannot really tell very many details except some unreliable later indications that

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Xerxes may or may not have destroyed a temple or moved some some cult statues in Babylon,

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which he later had to atone for. But I don't really want to pretend that we can draw a narrative of this revolt.

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Okay.

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But it's still really good for students, again, to be aware of the possibilities there in the absence of sources and to be able to talk about that.

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That's a really strong way of approaching this.

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And then the last possible reason, I mean, I guess there are many, but then the last one we're going to think about just the idea of of luck in war.

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And the Greeks just got luckier.

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One example would be they found the silver at Laurium in the Athenians just before the Persians about to invade, and that allowed them to build a fleet.

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The storms we've already mentioned reducing the Persian fleet.

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Is there an argument that the Greeks you need luck in war and the Greeks have more luck?

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Well, I think they did have more luck. I mean, but the and the Persians also got a bit unlucky.

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I mean, it sort of goes both ways. But I think also, too, it's a combination of all the things that we've been talking about,

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that it's a luck that sort of generated out of the occasion.

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In a sense. They were able to take advantage of some things that went their way and capitalise them in a

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way that the Persians were not able to do because the Persians were such a long way from home.

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Whereas the Greeks, you know, they were there on the spot, they were fighting for their country, and they were able to,

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in a sense, respond to some of the things that worked out for them in a much better way than the Persians were able to do.

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And they were able to take advantage of some of the Persians, lack of luck or unlucky ness,

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for the same reason, because they they were on their home ground.

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And so they were able to capitalise on things, on advantages that happened to come their way.

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Okay. That's a good approach, I think, to take that you have to make your own luck as well or may take advantage of it.

329
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Well, before we try and summarise where we've got to, I guess we've already talked about this idea of was there one state, Athens and Sparta,

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which was more crucial to the loyalist victory in Herodotus 7.139 says, Oh,

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it was definitely Athens, even if I'm going to be really unpopular for saying that.

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Do you think that's even a good way of thinking about it, or is it just to say that they needed both Athens and Sparta and plenty of other allies?

333
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Is it worth us even thinking which state was more important to the victory?

334
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I mean, you get these debates about the Second World War, isn't it? It's always completely futile, like, oh, it was the Russians.

335
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No, it was the Americans. No, it was this or that.

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I mean, it was very much an interlocking of different allied strengths and interests that created the events as they happened.

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And it's impossible to say whether one state deserves to have all of the credit

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when in fact it was never a single state doing all the work or anything like that.

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So I don't think that's necessarily very helpful to try and determine or try and decide this after the fact.

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Certainly the Greeks themselves, as we already mentioned,

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had this sense in which you can also divide it into and say the Athenians did the most on the sea, but the Spartans did the most on the land.

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Conversely, you could make all these arguments about how each state contributed less, or it could contributed more to the disunity than to the unity.

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How no one wanted to follow the Athenians into battle.

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Or conversely, everybody was really disappointed with the Spartans after Thermopylae because they failed and they,

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they didn't commit to the defence of central Greece after that.

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So there are lots of reasons to, to, to try and balance these things and try and try and try and keep this parlour game going.

347
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And I don't think it necessarily gets us anywhere.

348
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Yeah, in a sense, we probably don't want to buy into their intercity debates that are going on for them at that time.

349
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We can step back and not have to choose a winner, I guess. Okay.

350
00:33:19,950 --> 00:33:25,550
Well, this has been really fantastic. I've enjoyed it so much. Let's try and summarise then that.

351
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Let's start with you. Why did the Greeks win the Persian wars?

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I think they won the Persian wars pretty much for a combination of a number of the

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things that we've been talking about is that they were fighting for their homeland,

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that they were able to amass an army that could realistically fight a Persian army.

355
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They did get some luck. The Persians were unlucky.

356
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The Persians were a long way from home, and things were starting to get a bit shaky and start to fall apart.

357
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And there were other things going on in the empire. So I think it's there's not just one reason.

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I think if we put all of these things together,

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if how we come to a sort of an answer to the question of why the Greeks won, it was I think it was very unexpected.

360
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It was unexpected for the Greeks that they'd win.

361
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And as we've already said, there were a lot of Greeks who thought that the Persians would win and must win,

362
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but that was just not the way it turned out.

363
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But I think we have to try and resist the Greek narrative of sort of Greek superiority to a feminised Persians,

364
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because that's not an accurate reflection of what was going on either.

365
00:34:40,530 --> 00:34:45,360
Roel, you've been nodding a lot there. And you've got something to add, though. Do you want to give your own view?

366
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No, I very much agree with that. I mean,

367
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it's definitely something that we're we need to avoid the idea that this was somehow inherent or that there was something

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about the Greeks that allowed them to do this sort of by nature or by by the sheer sort of way in which they did things.

369
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It's much more contingent,

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which is to say it boils down to the way that things fell out on the spot based on the specific decisions that had been made.

371
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The specific conditions that happened to be happen to me met at the time, including random events.

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I mean, storms, the luck of certain commanders dying and morale collapsing and things like that.

373
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On the Persian side, these kinds of things are hugely influential and cannot be predicted or controlled.

374
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But one thing I would say is that I would make a case for a sheer, almost death defying tenacity on the Greek side,

375
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which has almost been described as they just refuse to accept that they'd already lost,

376
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which certainly in the case of places like Salamis or plataea,

377
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seems to have been the factor that brought that that that got them over the line in the end is that that ultimately all of

378
00:35:46,440 --> 00:35:51,659
the conditions had been against them the whole time and they had been almost completely outmatched in every possible way.

379
00:35:51,660 --> 00:35:55,170
But just by refusing to give up, they eventually managed to wear the enemy down.

380
00:35:55,530 --> 00:35:59,790
And that is certainly something that you cannot you can almost cannot credit to anything but luck,

381
00:35:59,790 --> 00:36:04,500
because that much more easily would go the other way. That would lead to the total destruction of the Greek side.

382
00:36:04,920 --> 00:36:09,810
So those are just things that, contrary to exactly his line,

383
00:36:09,830 --> 00:36:15,690
that's contrary to everyone's expectations spelled out in favour of the Greeks, nobody could have seen that coming.

384
00:36:17,370 --> 00:36:22,800
And just finally, how might Xerxes have spun this back in Persepolis or Susa or whatever?

385
00:36:23,260 --> 00:36:32,760
How might he have spun the campaign? We actually do get that from one Greek source who hypothesises a Persian spinning this story where he just says,

386
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,299
well, I mean, what do you expect of a king like Xerxes?

387
00:36:36,300 --> 00:36:42,160
I mean, he goes to war to avenge to avenge himself on the Athenians for their support in the Ionian Revolt.

388
00:36:42,180 --> 00:36:48,210
Well, he goes over, he wins a battle at thermopylae. It kills an enemy king, and then he burns off to the ground.

389
00:36:48,660 --> 00:36:53,100
So it was already a victory. He just goes home at that point and tells everyone, I won.

390
00:36:53,100 --> 00:36:56,340
I did. I did what I set out to do. What else should he have done?

391
00:36:57,180 --> 00:37:03,650
It's just that we expect Conquest to involve, you know, the imposition of a governor in tribute on the on the conquered peoples.

392
00:37:03,660 --> 00:37:07,520
But in some ways, Xerxes achieved what he set out to.

393
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:12,589
Fascinating. Goodness me. Thank you both so much.

394
00:37:12,590 --> 00:37:16,430
I've really enjoyed this. I've learnt a lot and I'm sure that our students will as well.

395
00:37:16,700 --> 00:37:20,749
So. Roel, Lynette a huge thank you for your contributions.

396
00:37:20,750 --> 00:37:26,690
And I hope that all our students will be going away and thinking hard about everything they've listened to today.