Persians & Greeks: A Journey through Ancient Civilizations

1️⃣ The Persians and Greeks were two contrasting civilizations.

2️⃣ The Achaemenid Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great and expanded its control over a vast region, including Babylon.

3️⃣ Darius the Great further expanded the Persian Empire eastwards and westwards, including Egypt and Anatolia.

🇮🇷 The Persian Empire allowed local kingdoms to keep their rulers as long as they paid taxes.

🌠 The Persian Empire improved infrastructure and had a reliable postal service.

🌐 The Greeks made significant contributions to architecture, philosophy, literature, and democracy.

🏛️ The playwright Aristophanes is still well-known today, even though only 11 of his 40 plays have survived.

🎭 Students don't enjoy reading Aristophanes' plays in school, despite their clever translations and humor.

💩 Aristophanes often used real feces in his jokes, like when he had a character throw it at a disliked poet in one of his plays.

💰 Aristophanes criticized wealth and advocated for the sharing of all property, but students still view his works as dull and hard work.

🔗 On the positive side, Aristophanes' plays contributed to the abolition of slavery, albeit after 2,000 years.

📚 Ancient Greece was not just Athens, but a collection of city-states with different forms of government.

⚔️ The Persian Wars, including the battles of Thermopylae and Marathon, united the Greeks against the Persians.

🏛️ Athens became the capital of ancient Greece after the Persian Wars and experienced a golden age.

The Persian and Greek civilizations played crucial roles in shaping Western civilization.

The Peloponnesian War highlighted the power struggles and the cruel treatment of slaves in ancient Greece.

The Athenians' imperialistic actions and their disregard for democracy during the war demonstrated their pursuit of resources and power.

💡 Realism theory in international relations revolves around who holds power.

🗡️ The Athenians killed the Milians and enslaved the women and children when they politely requested not to participate in the war.

🌍 The legacy of ancient Greece is ambiguous, especially with the ultimate victory of dictatorial Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

🔑 Under Persian rule, the Greeks could have avoided the devastating Peloponnesian War and subsequent conflicts if they had accepted defeat. This would have preserved their democratic way of life.

💡 The key question in human history is the meaning of life and how we should organize ourselves to achieve a longer, more productive life. The Greeks could argue that losing the Persian Wars was necessary for this pursuit.

🌟 These are profound questions that we will explore further in the next video, when we discuss Buddha.