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