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Notes on video lecture:
Xerxes and the Second Invasion of Greece
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on July 21, 2015 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
uncle, incomprehension, Herodotus, hegemony, Mardonius, games, polis, wooden, repents, straits, careful, ships, traditional, Hellespont, defeat, escape, armada, enormous, Darius, invade, kill, enough, psychological, annihilated, flogs, Salamis, despair, Marathon, die, mountain, Thermopylae, boundry, Corinth, Demaratus
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Xerxes I (519–465 BC)
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486 BC: took over Persia on the death of his father,             
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capital in Perseopolis
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determine to get revenge on the Greeks for the              that they inflicted on his father's troops
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begins his rule with                  power
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                   gives up a remarkable psychological portrait of the young king
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in a debate as to what he should do
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Mardonius
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commander
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encouraged King Xerxes I, Darius' successor, to              Greece
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"strike back, get glory, live up to Persian standards"
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Artabanus, Xerxes'            and advisor
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not so fast
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there is so much that could go wrong
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we have much to lose and little to gain
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we should just consolidate our powers
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Xerxes
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flies into a range
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says to Artabanus, if he weren't his uncle he would kill him
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then               , says he's sorry, he's a hot head and young man
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has a dream
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figure appears and says to attack the Greeks
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second dream
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figure comes back again and says that he should not ignore his advice to attack the Greeks
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a combination of advanced thinking and                        thinking
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characterizes so much of this era
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uncle says that dreams are just representations of what you've been thinking about during the day
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a modern                            theory
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Artabanus then wears Xerxes bed clothes, sleeps in his bed, same dream figure comes and threatens him with burning hot irons
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Artabanus then changes his mind, tells Xerxes that he should attack Greece
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but be                how you do it
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Herodotean pattern
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κόρος
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having just             
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ύβρις
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breaking some kind of               
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by boundry of the bedroom wall for Gyges [Γύγης] and Candaules [Κανδαύλης]
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the river Halys for King Croesus [Κροῖσος]
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landing at                  for King Darius's army
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Xerxes decides to go all out
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has a bridge built over the                     
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a storm comes up and breaks it
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he becomes so angry, he            and has chains thrown into the Hellspont waters, and decapitated the overseers
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bridge is finally built
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had a large              accompanying them on the seaside
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a storm occurs of the island of Euboea
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Persian land army is making good progress
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Athens is very concerned about the large, advancing army
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there was the idea to make a wall near                and move everyone down to the Peloponnese
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there are still remanents of the beginnings of this wall
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instead, the Spartans send a force up
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make their stand at the Battle of Thermopylae
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traveling with the Persians is a Spartan king in exile,                   
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Xerxes sends a spy out to see what the Spartans are doing
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the spy reports that the Spartans playing           , exercises, combing out their long hair
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Demaratus warns him that this is how Spartans behave when they are preparing to       
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highlighting the cultural                                that Herodotus is so interested in
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480 BC: Battle of                       
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Spartans have blocked narrow pass
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here we see again: quality vs. quantity
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Spartans hold off wave after wave of Persian attacks
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finally a Greek traitor leads the Persians around on a                  pass to the other side
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Spartans are caught from behind
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Spartans are                        down to the last man
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epitaph: "Traveler, you who pass by, go tell the Spartans that, faithful to the end, here we lie"
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Thermopylae has become a great battle in the imagination of the West
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the evacuation of Attica
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Persians continue progress down into Greece
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the              walls prophecy
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Delphi says that the Athenians should trust their wooden walls
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Themistocles interprets it correctly, meaning: "our           "
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a decree that ordered the Athenians to evacuate
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unclear if this was planned or a panic
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Persians enter Athens,          the few who remained there, and sacked and burned the city
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Spartan King Leonidas had died at Thermopylae
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480 BC: The Battle of               
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Themistocles sends message to Persians: Greeks are about to escape, you should cut them off
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thus lures the Persians to fight in the                near the island of Salamis
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the battle proceded exactly as the Greek command expected
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smaller, faster Greek ships punch apart the Persian fleet
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Xerxes watched in               
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the Greek victory here sealed the Persians fate
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Tthemistocles lets Xerxes             
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Persian army stays in Greece
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under command of                   
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479 BC: Battle of Plataea
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north of Athens
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Greeks win
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the Persian military threat was now effectively ended
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Sparta and Athens have risen to a position of                 
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now these two were first among equals in the Greek           

Spelling Corrections:

remanents ⇒ remnants

Ideas and Concepts:

Greek word of the day via this morning's Ancient Greek History class: "Kairos [καιρός] in classical rhetoric meant "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved". Kairos was central to the Sophists, who stressed the rhetor's ability to adapt to and take advantage of changing, contingent circumstances. Isocrates, for instance, uses the concept of kairos in indicating that educated people are able to manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely miss the expedient course of action."
Hesiod's Creation Myth: Theogony
The Spartan Way of Life
600 BC Tyrants and Sages: Cypselus and Periander
800-700 BC: Athens Before Solon
Solon Against Political, Economic, and Moral Decline
Peisistratos: Tyranny and Civic Identity
The End of Athenian Tyranny and the Democratic Revolution
508 BC: The Democratic Reforms of Cleisthenes
Herodotus and The Histories
The First Persian War and the Battle of Marathon
Themistocles, Silver, and Greek Naval Policy
Xerxes and the Second Invasion of Greece
The Delian League
From Delian League to Athenian Empire
Pericles: Aristocrat, Orator and Democratic Citizen
Sophocles' Antigone: Tragedy and Athenian Civic Life