The Persians & Greeks: Crash Course World History #5

In which John compares and contrasts Greek civilization and the Persian Empire. Of course, we're glad that Greek civilization spawned modern western civilization, right? Maybe not. From Socrates and Plato to Darius and Xerxes, John explains two of the great powers of the ancient world, all WITHOUT the use of footage from 300.

Chapters:
Introduction 00:00
The Persian Empire 0:39
An Open Letter to Aristophanes 3:33
Ionian Greek City-States 5:04
The Persian Wars 5:44
The Peloponnesian War 7:21
Did the Right Side Win the Persian Wars? 9:09
Credits 11:09

Resources:

Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

[somewhat-blue]

Coming back to this after 11 years — I was 14 when they came out — it’s fun to get to think about the bigger questions in this video with an adult mind. Thanks for saying things that went over my head in 2012 so that in 2023 I can get really absorbed in thinking about the historical implications of the Greco-Persian Wars.

[EM-tifk]

I came for the history cause I was bored. now I'm lying on the floor thinking about life. thanks for the existential crisis.

[squishyturtles]

Nobody:

Highschool Ap World students: Time to binge 500 minutes of John Greene.

[wasup]

I don't have an exam I just enjoy history

[TripSeibold]

Hi John,

My daughter loves your crash course history shows. She wants to say thank you for teaching her.

I hope that you're staying safe and healthy in these challenging times.

I wish you and your family prosperous, long lives,
Trip Seibold

[rockwiththeuniverse]

At university I noticed the persians, the greeks and turkish students naturally were pulled towards each other and they felt closeness and at home with one another.

[slangyung]

"Through wars comes peace, but peace is merely a pause between wars."
- Ancient Persian Philosopher Arman é Forouzan

[shawndunn]

Man absolutely love these videos. I hope 2000 years from now there’s a crash course universe history with an episode on crash course world history.

[iamseamonkey]

Karl marx: invents communism
Aristophones: but that was my idea

[xoxojday]

I totally forgot about Persia now I'm doing an all nighter looking at all the crash courses

[devindelgrego]

"the slaves" "oh..." hahahah nailed it

[TechTubeCentral]

who's watching this because they're bored and wanna learn about history and not just an AP World Student.

[rozitaghazalbash]

if we forget about the wars, we kind of owe part of our knowledge to Persians and Greeks

[VilcxjoVakero]

Just noticed that "Greek" ΜΩΨΣΦΚΗ - whoa. The transliteration of that to Latin would be M-O (but the wrong O)-PS-S-PH-K-E (but the right E). "Mawpssfke." The letters you want are ΜΟΥΣΙΚΗ.

[db.sarvestani]

And you must know many of the Greek philosophers spend their time in the East, in the former Persian Empire. Because Within Persian Domains there were generally a more of an open atmosphere for free debate. Like Herodotus himself and  Pythagoras  . The Persians held to the ideas of women and men being equal and worked to abolish  slavery these ideas don't just emerge out of a vacuum but derive from a great source of learning an understanding. Lets not also forget about Vedic and Zoroastrian sources of knowledge that has defined millennia of Indo-Iranian and Aryanic heritage.

[watchmen]

Some notable persian historical figures:
Omar Khayyam: Inventor of Algebra and the Jalali calendar which is more accurate than the Gregorian calendar.
Al kharazmi: Inventor of algorithm  which is the foundation of the modern computer
Cyrus the great: Cyrus cylinder, First declaration of human rights.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina): One of the most influential philosophers.
And there are many more.

[tyrantunchained]

Got my AP world exam TMR time to watch all 42 videos

[legateelizabeth]

I know I am EXCEEDINGLY late, coming back to this series since it was first released years ago; but it sucks to me that we talk about equality and treatment if people's in Athens and Persia, but don't mention the most gender egalitarian of the peoples in quite possibly the entire world at the time: The Spartans.
While they had a duarchy (a two-king system) and did keep an entire underclass of people, the Helots, amongst Spartan citizens, women were treated incredibly equally. Both boys and girls got an education, with women even being expected to be just as physically active as their male counterparts, women could own property (a very big deal in nearly any era of history), when men died their widows, not their sons, inherited their belongings, and when a Spartan woman died her inheritance was split equally among her children - regardless of gender. The other ancient greeks of the time note that Spartan women wielded remarkable wealth and, thusly, power and political influence. Women were even allowed to go out and drive chariots on their own - women in some parts of the world TODAY, up until very recently, still weren't able to drive. When Pyrrus attempted to invade Sparta, Spartan women were the ones who dug the trenches, built the defences, and gathered the equipment so men could fight in the morning fully rested, and they really clearly knew what they were doing militarily, a shocking idea to the world at the time.
While women couldn't serve in the military or (openly) hold power, this was the society that buried women who died in childbirth with warrior's writes; who when an Athenian asked a Spartan Queen what Spartan women knew that Athenian women didn't, she responded "how to be free". If you were an able-bodied citizen, Sparta was one of the best places to be as a woman for millennia before... And arguably millennia after.

But then, this is also the society that killed any children born with disabilities. But it does show that in history, nobody is ever just good or evil. Just wish this video had given the Spartans more than a single line about the Helots and Kings when a good amount of the video is discussing how we'd morally judge a society today and the treatment of women in Athens is touched on; especially with how the popular perception of Sparta is that of manly men doing manly things.

[THB]

This comment thread is pretty awesome. I actually see people complain about this video in a reasonable manner, and actually source things! People held legit discussions! Everybody, welcome to Nerdfighteria!

[sedoskovelha]

_"The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous Achaemenid Empire of Persia began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to rule the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and Persians alike."_


The rebellions that Athens supported were in Ionian Greek cities, one of them being the home of a great mathematician: Thales of Miletus. The Persians later conquered/burned these cities, and Athens sent help, therefore triggering the Greek-Persian wars. It is wrong to think that the Persians did not hold slaves, just because of their de facto religion, many conquered states would be source of slaves, and that the Persians treated(different from the Greeks) their conquered territories with grace, freedom and all happiness and harmony is just one of the greatest bullshits I've ever heard. The greeks considered the Persians to treat their own population as serfs. If this whole video was about the American independence against the British, it would be equivalent to say that the Americans were a slavist people, who different from the British(who abolished slavery way before) hold slaves and inequality, and were wrong to declare independence against the so nice and gentlemen english, who treated their conquered territories so well.... 

Its not hard to imagine that an empire consisted of almost 50% of the world's population and more than 60% of the known world would not have slaves, not only because they would not be able to contain the numbers and masses of enslaved peoples, but simply because by all its resources, they didnt needed it. Even then they at some point in history had slaves, and continued to do so, like *all* ancient civilizations, and because their religion denied it, its not an excuse to elevate them as _superior_ among other civilized nations, many of wich because of the Persians being warmongers, had been annexed/subjugated/enslaved.

It is estimated that 50 million people lived in the Achaemenid Empire, which at its peak ruled over 45% of the world's population, the highest such figure for any empire in history. The empire had a centralised, bureaucratic administration under a King and a large professional army and civil services, inspiring similar developments in later empires. The delegation of power to local governments eventually weakened the king's authority, causing resources to be expended in attempts to subdue local rebellions. This accounts for the disunity of the region by the time Alexander the Great invaded Persia in 334 BC.


Its funny because one of the peoples that modern "historians" consider as the most brutal, dictatorial(JG even used this word) and slavist were the Spartans; they answered this to the proposal of the Persian empire, asking them to join the Achaemenids in the fight and to raze their rivals, Athens, to the ground:  

_"A slave's life is all you understand, you know nothing of freedom. For if you did, you would have encouraged us to fight on, not only with our spear, but with everything we have."_ 

Sparta while an “evil slaver state” was the main reason why Greece won in the Persian wars and remained free.

John Green loves to stop all his history videos and to change his focus to talk about women, racism and slaves; So why dont we look at the supposed most patriarchal, xenofobos and slavist state of all Greece?  Sparta.

Sparta had most of its population composed of slaves, the Helots,  Helots were tied to the land and were officially the property of the Lacedaemonian government.  As a result of at least one revolt, they were regarded with increasing suspicion and subjected to ever harsher laws.  In fact, the Lacedaemonian government regularly declared war on the helots to enable quick retribution against any "unruly" helot without the tedious business of a trial. Helots were not, however, routinely murdered or raped by the Spartiates, as some modern commentators claim and many novelists depict.  No economy can function for an extended period of time on the basis of brutal coercion – certainly not an economy in which the elite is tiny in comparison with the oppressed.  Sparta enjoyed the prosperity it did over hundreds of years (at the least from the 7th to the 5th century BC) because a high degree of internal harmony and a system of mutual benefit for all segments of the society had been established.   It was not until the second half of the 5th century, when the Spartiate population shrank to roughly one-eighth of what it had been at the time of Thermopylae, that serious incidents of brutality against helots are reliably recorded.  There is only one recorded incident of an organized mass murder of helots without due cause, and this incident resulted from a crisis in Spartiate society.   In fact, the deteriorating relations between the Spartiates and the helots can be seen as both a symptom and a cause of the disintegration of archaic Spartan society.

Many of the ancient commentators who remarked on the exceptional harshness of the Spartan system not only date from this later period, but are engaged in outright political propaganda.  The only Spartan source for the status of helots is the 7th-century poet Tyrtaios, who describes the helots ‘like asses exhausted under great loads to bring their masters full half the fruit their plowed land produced.’  This statement tells us two significant facts often overlooked in shock at the image.  Namely, that helots only surrendered 50% of the fruits of their labor – slaves all over the rest of the ancient world surrendered 100% – and that even half the harvest was a heavy burden; i.e., Lacedaemon's agricultural land was so productive that even half the yield was a burden.  The latter element is further underlined by the fact that no less than 6, 000 Spartan helots were able to save up so much money from the 50% of the harvest they retained that they could pay the enormous sum of 6 Attic minas to buy their freedom in 223/222 BC, when the slavery was somehow "abolished" by the king Cleomenes III.

Helots could also engage in cottage production to earn extra money, and hence helots could accumulate wealth and spend it as they pleased. They could achieve freedom in many ways, being the two most common through military service or money. Slaves would get their freedom and be recognized as "Neodamodeis", they were loyal supporters of the Lacedaemonian government and could even be trusted to provide logistical support to the army.

Women is also a bit of a bitter discussion, but Sparta is also an example of this; Women in Sparta had free will, and overall freedom; They could own land, wealth, political powers(yes, and Arachidamia is an example of this) and were free in general.


But back to the Wars;

Meanwhile, the Persians under the "Great King" Darius had sent a fleet of "six hundred triremes, " with countless transports filled with horses and provisions, to attack Athens and Eretria. The commanders had orders to reduce both Greek city-states to slavery and bring the slaves before the "Great King." On their way they destroyed a series of smaller cities, enslaving their populations as well, this resulting in the lost of independence in Macedon and Thrace(As the persians started invading via the hellespont). Athens, seeing the juggernaut coming, sent diplomats to Sparta for aid. "The Spartans" – not more closely identified by Herodotus – agreed to send troops, but declared they could not march "before the full moon." This lack of decisiveness, may rather have reflected an internal power struggle.

The task force sailed on to Euboea, and to the first major target, Eretria. The Eretrians made no attempt to stop the Persians from landing or advancing and thus allowed themselves to be besieged. For six days, the Persians attacked the walls, with losses on both sides; however, on the seventh day two reputable Eretrians opened the gates and betrayed the city to the Persians. The city was razed, and temples and shrines were looted and burned. Furthermore, according to Darius's commands, the Persians enslaved all the remaining townspeople.

Sparta then made itself ridiculous – in the eyes of the powerful Persian monarchs – by warning them against enslaving Greeks. The Persian Great King, as the master of an empire stretching from modern India to modern Turkey, had never heard of Sparta. He asked who these people were who dared "warn" him. He was even more astonished to learn that they came from a city-state that controlled only a portion of the mountainous peninsula of the Peloponnese. When the Persians later sent ambassadors demanding submission to Persia, the Spartan Assembly responded by throwing the ambassadors in a well – an unprecedented breach of diplomatic immunity. When the invasion of mainland Greece finally came, Sparta was elected by the informal alliance of anti-Persian cities to take command. Sparta sent one of her own kings, Leonidas, with an
advance guard of three hundred citizens and larger contingents from other members of the anti-Persian alliance, to try to halt the invasion at the pass of Thermopylae. When a traitor betrayed their position, King Leonidas released the other allies to return to their homes; but he and his Spartans, supported voluntarily by 700 Thespians. Less than a year later, Sparta fielded an army composed of what must have been every able-bodied man in the city-state and sent it north of the Isthmus. This army met the significantly superior Persian land forces still threatening Greek independence despite the defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis the previous fall by the athenians. Together, the Spartans and Athenians, managed to defeat the much larger Persian forces and end the direct threat of Persian invasion, later liberating much of the conquered greek territories, such as northen Greece and Byzantium.

Altough I dont think I need to mention all Greek-Persian battles, since overall we can conlude that the Hellenic forces were victorious, the two most important battles were Plataea(the final and most sucessful greek defence) and Marathon(fun fact: The construction of the Parthenon is originally devoted not only to Pallas Athenea, but to the 192 fallen Athenians in the battle, containing 192 figures of fallen hoplites, all of which have its own history being told).

What this video forgot to show, and what many pro-persia fans dont see, is the fact that the greeks were brave enough to challenge the worlds superpower to defend its people, to defents its democracy and ideals, philosophy and art, culture, justice and all that later originated western civilization, all that inspired the renaissance, the humanism and illuminism and literacture movements. Were are so good and selfish to put the finger at our ancestors and shout "they didnt had a true democracy" or "they had slaves and women didnt vote", but without realizing that it all had to start from scratch, it all had to start from something, even if this "something" wasnt perfect, it was there and these greeks died in beaches, seas, coasts, walls, and poleis to defend their territory and their people, serving as the gates between western and eastern worlds, and perhaps if the Persians were sucessful, we would have a world domination by their dinasty, they would continue to expand to the west and Rome would also not have existed. By no means the Greeks or the Persians were better people than one another, like this annoying clown appoints in his video, but to be true no culture, philosophy, art, ideology, people, civilization, race, sex or point of view is "evil" or "saint",  "better" or "worse" ; A good historian who prizes himself of his work and duty, is one who can look at the past without judging, who can look at civilizations and analyzes them according to the viewpoint of the time, putting everything in its proper historical perspective being sensible enough to do not let his opinion be more important than the actual history.


Pretty much all ancient civilizations had slaves, and were tainted by inequality, and men in power, but with time man started to fix his previous mistakes.

I really respect this youtube channel, but of all videos this one is full of manichean ideals about who should have won against who. Of all the historical videos JG did, this was by far the worst, where he actually did not teach anything but his opinion on who he thinks is the "good" guy. And seriously, you just said that the greeks should let themselfs to be conquered, what kind of resonable and even decent argument/opinion does this reflects? Why did you even uploaded this? Anyway....