Sophia Elahi RPC Blog

This week in class, I learned about the Persian War (also known as the Greco-Persian War).  It lasted fifty years.  Starting in 499 BC and ending in 449 BC.  In this essay, I am going to be talking about how the war started and why it is so important to Western Civilization.

The story of how the war started begins in the late 6^th century when Sparta tried to interfere with the Athenian’s political affairs.  As expected, the Athenians were not pleased by this.  They feared the Spartans might be trying to conquer them, as Athens and Sparta were the two most powerful Greek city-states at the time.  In 507 BC, the Athenians sent representatives to the Persian Empire, asking for an alliance against the Spartans.

The Persian king at the time, Darius the First, did not know who the Athenians were or where they came from, but accepted the alliance.  What was surprising, however, was that their agreement was beneficial for both parties.  All of Persia’s alliances with other countries were always arranged so that Persia would be dominant over the other country.

Years later, in 499 BC, the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor rebelled against the Persian Empire with the assistance of Athens.  The Athenians tried to convince Sparta to join, but they were involved with a religious ritual at the time and declined the ‘invite.’  The rebellion led to a five year long battle, with Persia emerging victorious.

The new ruler of Persia, Xerxes, started to try to create alliances with the other Greek city-states against Athens with the idea of ‘punishing’ them for breaking terms of the alliance.  However, this fails, and the majority of the Greek city-states, including Sparta, sides with Athens.  This is where the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League is formed.  These alliances will be important in the next Greek war.

The Greeks and Persians then engage in a series of battles in the span of fifty years, with the Greeks winning the war in 449 BC.

Why is this war important?  Personally, I think that there are two main reasons.  One, if the Greeks lost, the Persians would have conquered and absorbed them.  This would have caused a lot of Greek culture to be lost and Western Civilization may not have as much Greek influence as it does today.  Two, despite Persia burning Athens to the ground during this war, Athens gained more power and money because of their allies from the Delian League.  This will eventually contribute the start of the Peloponnesian War.

As you can see, the Persian War is not ‘just another war.’  If it did not end the way it did, Western society as we know it may not exist.

Thanks for reading!

This week in class, I spent a lesson learning about Sparta and their culture.  In Ancient Greece, Spartans were thought of as the fiercest and strongest warriors, and I am sure you will agree when you hear about how society worked in Ancient Sparta.

Sparta was centred on having a strong military force.  The society did not approve, or allow, weakness of any kind.

At the age of seven, boys would be separated from their families and placed into military schools.  Usually, this would be the last time the boy would ever see his family again.  At the schools, they were provided with the bare minimum.  They had enough food to survive, but not enough to feel full.  They had enough clothing to cover themselves, but not enough to keep them warm. 

Once they reached adulthood, the government chose wives for them, but they were not allowed to live with them.  The men were forced to live in military barracks to remind them that their fellow soldiers were their real family, not their wives.  However, if the men managed to sneak out of the barracks to visit their wives, and were not caught by a superior, no one would persecute him.  This principle was taught to them as children.  If they got caught stealing or sneaking out, they would be punished not for doing the crime, but for getting caught.

Spartans were tough people.  Unlike the Athenians, they did not have much care for literature or art unless it was about war.  Spartan soldiers would train hard every day, and were the only civilization to ever treat war as a holiday and not as a terrifying and life threatening event.  Spartans also believed that any kind of profession that was not in the military or contributing to the wellbeing of the nation was low level work and were left for the slaves.  However, despite all of Sparta’s strict rules and merciless regiments, they gave their women more rights and respect than any of the other Ancient Greek city-states.

As you can see, the city-state of Sparta was not one to be trifled with.  They valued discipline and toughness.  If a child did not show these qualities by the age of five, he or she would be killed!  In Sparta, there was no room for the weak.

Plato was an avid follower of Socrates before his death.  After Socrates’s execution, Plato’s passion to join the Greek government diminished and he instead became a philosopher.  In one of Plato’s works, he talked about what he considered to be an ‘ideal’ government and society.  In this essay, I am going to be summarising his ideas.

Plato believed that the best government has to be based off of the best soul.  He also believed that the soul has three parts: spirit, rational, and appetite.  He considered appetite to be the worst part out of the three.  It always had to be tamed by the spirit and rational parts of the soul.  Plato also thought that there are four cardinal virtues of the spirit: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.

In Plato’s perfect society, there would be three classes: the guardians, auxiliaries, and everyone else.  The guardians would represent the ‘wisdom virtue’ of the soul.  The auxiliaries would represent courage.  Temperance would be the social classes and the justice of the state would be that everyone keeps to themselves and solves their own problems.

While the lower class would live a relatively normal life, the guardians and auxiliaries would live a life that we would consider to be odd.

Auxiliaries would not be allowed to own private property and should live with their fellow auxiliaries.  This would be so the lower classes would not have to worry about their superiors overthrowing them.  The highest two classes would not be able to have families in a way that we would consider ‘normal.’  They would reproduce at appointed times with a person chosen by the state (for eugenic reasons), then once the child is born, he or she will be placed in a government nursery and raised there.

As you can see, Plato’s idea of a perfect society seems quite alarming compared to the lifestyle and society we live in today.  I believe we should consider ourselves lucky that modern-day Western Civilization did not follow Plato’s idea of a perfect society.

This week in class, I spent a lesson learning about Socrates and his views.  He had a very unique teaching method of going up to strangers and asking them questions, somehow educating them in the process.  One of Socrates’s opinions, that Mr. Woods focused on what his disagreement with the Sophists’ worldview.  In this essay, I am going to be talking more about this disagreement and how it eventually led to Socrates’s demise.

The Sophists believed in a worldview called relativism, which is a worldview that states there is no absolute truth and that one standard law should not be enforced on everyone. 

To demonstrate this, here is an extreme example.  I am opposed to murder, like the government, and I will never do it and I think those that commit the crime should be punished.  But another person believes that murder is okay and it is not a crime.  Therefore, the state (or government) should not be allowed to enforce punishments on those who believe murder is not a crime because there is no absolute truth.

I am sure you can see how twisted this worldview can become and also how it contradicts itself.  If there is no absolute truth, then how can we know that this worldview is the correct one?

Socrates was strongly opposed to this worldview.  In fact, his own worldview was the exact opposite of the Sophists’.   Socrates believed that everyone had a soul, meaning that there have to be absolute rights and wrongs.

Eventually, enough people, mainly the Sophists, complained about Socrates to the government and he was trialed for “tainting the minds of the youth.”  The government eventually decided that he should be sentenced death by poison.

As you can see, Socrates and the Sophists had two very different worldviews.  In today’s society, we follow Socrates’s worldview.  We were raised knowing that there are absolute morals, unlike what the Sophists’ believed.  But if we were raised in a Sophist worldview, what would we think of Socrates’s ideas?

This week in class, I spent a lesson going over the incidents of The Odyssey by Homer.  The story is about a man, Odysseus, coming home from war and the trials he faces on the way.  One of these trials is his encounter with a Cyclopes.

Judging by the description of the Cyclopes (plural), they did not have a civilization formed.  In fact, it seemed like there was zero interaction with one another.  They were described as tough and mean creatures, only taking care of their animals and keeping to themselves and their caves.  In my opinion, the cyclopes were stupid, for lack of better verbiage.  They did not have the mental capacity for our definition of civilization.

The story of the incident between one of the Cyclopes and Odysseus is very interesting.  If you are a fan of Percy Jackson or a Greek enthusiast, you may already know this story.  But for those that are neither, like me, here is a quick summary of the story.

It begins with Odysseus and his men arriving at the island where the Cyclopes live.  Every night, Odysseus would lose another man from his crew to one of the Cyclopes’s insatiable appetite.  Tired of losing his men, Odysseus and his remaining men come up with a plan to escape the island without losing another man.

Odysseus offered the Cyclopes a glass of wine, and right before the monster fell asleep, he asked for Odysseus’s name.  The latter then told the beast that he was “Nobody” right before he fell into a drunken slumber.  Once asleep, Odysseus’s men plunged a heated wooden stake into the Cyclops’s eye, blinding him.

The Cyclopes, furious and in pain, tried to find Odysseus and his men, but they were escaping to their ship by tying themselves to the underbellies of the Cyclops’s sheep.  After all, why would the Cyclopes hurt his animals?

Enraged, the Cyclopes calls upon his father, Poseidon, god of the sea, to curse Odysseus and men with a rough and stormy journey home because of what they had done to him.

As you can see, the tale of Odysseus and the Cyclopes is very interesting.  There are more details to the story, which I left out to keep the summary brief.  If you find the story intriguing, I recommend going online to find the full version, which is a lot more entertaining than my brief summation.

Thanks for reading!