The Modern Scholar: History of Ancient Greece

The Modern Scholar: History of Ancient Greece by Eric H. Cline

The Minoan people of Crete appear to be the first cultural Greeks. The people spread to Greece and later spread to other areas with "colonies". Turkey and Sicily all had Greek connections. Sparta and Athens were connected to different areas. Many of the stories we hear of Greece have some basis in truth. Troy was uncovered and found to have many layers. (However, we likely guessed wrong at first.) There are still a number of guesses we have made regarding ancient Greece. What new things will we discover?

Looks like I also listened to these lectures a decade ago

The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins

Greece has been the economic basket case of Europe. This book looks at the situation, with a mix of anecdotes and big picture analysis. 

There seem to be a lot of parallels with the American south. Greece is poorer than the northern neighbors. It is the recipient of much of the EU largess, yet it is not a fan of EU regulation. The rule of law is not front and center, with the rule of "connections" more important. Greece is a gateway country for many immigrants seeking European asylum. There are strong racist and nationalists elements with Greece. There is also a call for reparations. 

Greece was "fast-tracked" into the Euro-zone. As the birthplace of democracy, there was a special feeling among Europeans for Greece. They appeared to get close to meeting the economic targets. However, it turned out that there were a lot of fudged numbers. Greece was put in a position they were not ready for.

There is endemic corruption throughout the system. The higher one is in the government, the more opportunities for corruption. The military is rife with overpriced contracts and bribes. Even regular businesses and workers are not immune from the corruption. It is so prevalent that it is hard to crack down on anyone without seeming biased.

The government workforce is bloated and inefficient. Working in front of a computer is considered a hardship and entitles workers to extra time off. Greek government workers cannot easily be fired. This was done to prevent "patronage sweeps" by an incoming government. However, it now means that workers are often paid while not working. One anecdote in the book describes workers who were in jail for murdering a government official - yet still collecting their salaries. 

It is interesting to see Greeks adopt arguments from both black and white southerners. They think Germany owes them reparations. Politicians will use the reparations request to help win votes. (They will often in sprinkle in lies about other reparations.) They obviously haven't seen the Finnish example where paying reparation helped them boost their economy. Do reparations from the distant past ever help? 

The racist element is the other side of the coin. Immigrants come through Greece. The Greeks don't like them. They have many arguments about why they are bad. (A few of those arguments may have truth.) However, since asylum seekers are allowed to stay while awaiting their case, they end up staying a long time. If Greece actually had a functioning bureaucracy to hear the cases, they may have fewer immigrants in their midst. Instead, they end up with nationalist parties forming groups to try too cleanse the areas. And don't even get Greeks talking about the Turks.

Would Greece be better off outside the European Union? I can't help but think they are just not ready. 

  

Power Ambition Glory: The Stunning Parallels Between Great Leaders of the Ancient World and Today...and the Lessons You Can Learn

Steve Forbes read a book by John Prevas and eventually got together with him to a write a book combining biographies of ancient leaders with business leaders of today. The ancient leaders had many positive traits as well as weaknesses that led to their downfall. In some cases, the traits made them good for building an empire, but not so great at running it. The stories of modern leaders include some born in the 1800s, though have had their heyday in the past few decades. Some of the contemporary cases are intriguing. The positive leadership empire building of GE and Chrysler don't look so great right now. This does show that even great "empires" can crumble shortly after the tenure of the seemingly great leaders. The impenetrable foundation that was set up may not be so great after all.
Corporate leaders also feel like better comparisons than political leaders. The "path to the top" of many of the ancient leaders seemed to more closely resemble what is needed to get to the top of a major corporation. Empire building and conquests was also a key part of the activities of ancient leaders. This is done much more in business than in countries these days. The important of "employees" vs. mercenaries is also a key concern. (However, you can also see many similarities between Agustus and pandering to the masses and current populism and Trumpism.)

The Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World

The Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World covers Greece from early civilization to Alexander the Great.

The Greek society has been an important base for modern western thought. These lectures start with early Greek thinkers from the "archaic" age. We get the originator of democracy. He did not necessarily create it out of some high-minded ideal, but merely thought it was a could we to keep order and reign in some of the problems in his current society. It didn't really hold, but was eventually restored.

We also get the origins of "Draconian" law. The law was finally written down. However, the punishment for nearly everything was death. Well, at least that was what was going to happen without the law. At least now, there is some support of the state.

Then we have the history of Sparta. They evolved into a warrior state. Even the women had to be strong in order to birth strong babies. They were able to keep their warrior state going by enslaving some of the neighboring communities.

There are many details of Greek history that we just don't know for sure. We do have plenty of records, but they tend to be very opinionated. You could easily argue both sides of an issue and find some support.

The Persian wars were a dividing line between archaic and classical Greece. Athens got a little too cocky in the end. Greece had a very slave-driven economy, thus giving people free time to engage in things like arts, war and democracy.

Ian Worthington had a very personable opinionated style of lecture delivery. He would present the "common" historical view, but also give balanced weight to his "heresy". His views often run somewhat counter to historical consensus, but are well supported. He also presents them in such a way that makes it easy to pick to believe in either view (or adopt one of your own.) He tends to view people like Alexander the Great as being overrated, while some others as underrated. It makes for a very well done series of lectures that not only teaches that facts but also gets you thinking.

Gates of Fire

Gates of Fire attempts to make history "come alive" by novelizing the Greek battle of Thermopylae. Unfortunately, it does so by attempting to inject 20th century vulgarity in to the life B.C.-era Sparta. It just doesn't jive together. Instead of making the Spartans seem like real, modern people, it just makes them feel like modern frat boys acting out. Perhaps it just needs an editor to clean up the book, and shorten the tedious parts. Then, it may just be the root of an appealing story.

Hebrews, Greeks and Romans: The Foundations of Western Thought

Hebrews , Greeks , and Romans : The Foundations of Western Civilization ( Course Guide ) (THE MODERN SCHOLAR)

It starts out good, but my interest faded when he started going in to details about the Greeks and Romans. I had recently heard a lot of the similar material and was hoping for more details putting everything together. Instead it was a big narrative of the Odyssey, Illiad, Socrates, Aneid, and how they are all important. That is all nice, but more useful would be how they all built upon each other and how the different areas combined to give us our modern western thought. For that, we do have bits and pieces such as descriptions of how some Greek philosophical views are the root in communist arguments. However, we really didn't get much more until the last lectures where he finally ties everything together. If the middle lectures kept up the quality it would have been much more enlightening.

History of Ancient Sparta

A History of Ancient Sparta: Valor, Virtue, and Devotion in the Greek Golden Age, 7 Cds [Complete & Unabridged Audio Work]
Sparta never seems to get the credit of Athens. Sure, there are plenty of Spartan sports teams, but you don't have colleges in towns called "Sparta". Spartans are more the Republicans of Greek history. They survived for a while, were conservative, and had a great military. However, Athens is what gave us all the intellectual basis for our modern democracy. (Ok, so a lot of the Athenian culture came from Sparta, but, hey, at least Athens made some cool stories.)

These lectures provide some nice background of Sparta. They were truly the "jocks" of the ancient world. They exercised like crazy, and were well-prepared to take on any foe. However, their preferred method of engagement was to intimidate the enemies and let them peacefully leave. (Rather than the then common custom of slaughter.) When were well respected, especially in childbirth. Unfit human "specimens" were discarded so that only the strongest continued to propagate.

For some reason, however, the Spartan's began to die out. And eventually, they fell by the wayside. It makes for an enchanting history, though the records are alas, somewhat lacking, especially compared to their neighbors form Athens.

Ancient Empires Before Alexander 3

This is the final episode of great empires. These empires are of the "much more well known" variety. This is primarily about the Persia and Carthage and a few of their "pretenders". Carthage is perhaps the most fascinating because so little is known of them. They set up a great empire, and were doing great when they just happened to fall on the bad side of Rome. What would have happened if Hannibal had sacked Rome?

The Persians are more historically known. However some of their compatriots are equally mysterious. And the life of Persia that we know tends to be very Greek-centric (since it is the Greek records that we have today.) Again, it begs the question of what we are missing in the history that we know today.

Ancient Empires before Alexander

It starts with the fall of Egypt, covers the Minoans, then goes on to Myceneans.
The Mycenians collapsed around the same time as many other empires. The "sea peoples" were part of the reason for the collapse of these empires. However, he postulates that excess "testosterone" in the age of heroes was also a big reason for the fall. They later ended up as "Philistines" - thus Goliath would have been the descendant of a veteran of Troy.

The knowledge and sources for different areas tend to very significantly. Some areas discussed, such as Israel, or based almost entirely on biblical accounts. Other areas (such as the Minoan civilization) are based almost entirely on archeology. The lecturer, however, does a good job of presenting a narrative, tieing together the available sources in to a coherent narrative. He does occasionally mention the source of the information. At times, however, I found myself wishing for more accurate details.

In this section, the Assyrians get most of the coverage for the millennium-long empire. He has some sympathy for the alleged brutality of the Assyrians (they were after all punishing disobedience to the gods, and were fair in the way they handed out penalties.) However, he also gives the brutality as one of the reasons for the eventual fall of the empire. After Assyria over-extended itself, the Babylonians were all too eager to give them everything they thought they deserved.

While the delivery often sounds as if it is poorly read from a script, the content is quite interesting and well organized.