Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Civilization #8 - Rat Utopia and the Peloponnesian War

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Civilization #8 - Rat Utopia and the Peloponnesian War

Okay, so we are starting an overview of Greek history. Remember the story so far? We talked about the Bronze Age and where Mycenae in Greece was trading and fighting with the rest of the world. And then the Bronze Age collapsed happened and Mycenae Greece came in an end. And because of its destruction, this allowed for massive innovation for throughout Greece. So we saw the introduction of the Polis, the city-state. Okay? We saw the beginning of the use of the alphabet, and so literacy rates increased radically throughout Greece. And we saw Homer, who gave us the Iliad and the Odyssey.

So today I'm just going to go over the overview of Greek history. mainly focusing on the pollus, okay? So one thing to understand about the poll is is that geography is destiny, okay? Geography is destiny. And this basically means that your geography will determine the culture, the economy, and the political structure of your society.

And we see that with the Greek polis. The Greek geography is very diverse. There are mountains, there are rivers, there are plains, and there are coastlines, okay? And depending on where you are, geographically in Greece, you will have a different type of polis. And so the two classic examples are Sparta and Athens. Sparta and Athens are the two most dominant polis

in about the year 500 B. So let's first talk about Sparta. So Sparta is located on the Pelanese, this is Sparta, and the land around Sparta, it's basically plains, which makes it ideal for agriculture. So for most of its history, Sparta was an agricultural nation. And because it is ideal for agriculture, it needs people to work the land. And through its conquest, Sparta developed a slave system. And these people are called helots.

And helots are just slaves in Sparta that work the land. They're farmers. And these are people who have been conquered by Sparta. And because there are so many hellots, okay, the ratio is about 10 to 1. So for every one HALOT, sorry, for every one Spartan, there's 10 Helots. Sparta had to become a military society in order to control the Helots. So it created an education system in order to train its citizens to be soldiers. So the system worked like this.

about eight seven, about eight seven, you left your family and you were put into a born in school where you watched over by kids who are older than you, okay? Maybe 11 or 12. And obviously if you put young kids with older kids, the older kids will beat the crap out of these young kids who are about seven or eight. And this instills the idea of emotional discipline into the children. Now when these children became teenagers, they were paired with a mentor who was maybe 25 to about 30, okay, an older adult, and they became lovers. The Spartans did not consider this homosexuality, we were considered homosexuality, but they

themselves did not consider this homosexuality, okay? They just considered this as a way to build emotional cohesion, love. among its soldiers. And about age 18 or 19, the students would graduate and they would go on to marry and have their own families. But the Spartan soldiers were all required to eat together. So the soldiers, even though they had families, they were still required to train together and to eat together.

Spartan had no private property. everything, including the Hellots, belong to everyone. So it's basically communism or proto-communism. They had no money system, they had no wealth. Everything belonged to everyone. And it was a brutal state, okay? The Spartans were notorious for being brutal people. So an example is the Hellots.

So they had a campaign of terror to maintain control over the Hellots. So young soldiers would often be required to patrol at night. They would maybe lie in the fields because now and then some Helots would break curfew. They would at midnight try to sneak out and have some fun. And if you as a Spartan young man saw a helot be out at night, well, they would kill you. They would take on a knife and stab you in the neck.

And this was meant to instill terror in the Hellots to prevent them from rebellion. But the problem is because there were so many Hellots and the Spartans were so brutal, rebellions and revolutions would break out often. So this created a society which focused on maintaining control in the Pelanese. So the Spartans were not at all interested in foreign policy, okay? They had actually no interest in the world outside Sparta. The Spartans were, as a culture, was very conservative, okay? They liked the way that they wanted the things to stay the way

they are, okay? So it was a very conformist culture. Now and then you had some kings or individuals who tried to change society, the Spartans would kill those people, okay? You were not allowed to question authority. You were not allowed to promote change in Sparta. The Spartans were also isolationists, okay? Their entire policy was, if you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. And so that was the society.

of Sparta. When you think about it, in many ways, it's very much like China throughout its history. Okay? So the analogy is China, which China has always been brought to its history very conservative and very isolationist. China is just not interested in the outside world. Why? Because it's focused on maintaining control over its peasantry, okay? There's too much internal chaos. chaos, China just is not interested in the outside world. So China for its history has both been conservative, does not like change, okay? And very isolationist. Is that concern about the outside world?

Does that make sense, guys? Any questions so far about Sparta before I move on to Athens? Okay, so Athens was a completely opposite society to Sparta. And the reason why, again, it's geography. This is Sparta. Sorry, this is Athens. And Athens is in Attica, and it's by the coast. And Athens, the countryside is very hilly.

So it's bad for growing crops. But Athens has two major advantages. The first major advantage is it has a very good harbor. Okay? And also it's hilly, but the hilly terrain is actually good for growing olive trees, okay? Olives. It's also very good at pottery.

So because of this, Athens, for most of its history, focus on trade. Right? It was a trading nation. And because they are traders and merchants, they have a very different culture to the Spartans. So the first thing is, they're very expansionist, okay? aggressive. And the idea here is the Athens will go and seek out new markets. They also plant new colonies throughout the Aegean. This is to the west is the Aegean Sea. The south is the Mediterranean, okay? And they will plant colonies throughout this area. And they have to encourage their citizen to go out and explore the world.

in order to find new markets in order to bring goods and ideas back to Athens. Okay? Because Athens was expansionist, its cultural system, its cultural beliefs was very different from the Spartans. So whereas the Sparans were very conservative, the Athenians had a policy, had a belief in the idea of eudaimonia. Eudymonia. So eudaimonia is a Greek word and it means human flourishing. And the idea here is to be the best that you can be. So the example of eudaimonia, the most famous example of eudaimonia is this.

In Homer's Iliad, the main character is Achilles. And Achilles is the best warrior of the Greeks against Troy. And Achilles says this in the book. He says, before I came to Troy, I saw a prophet, I saw a fortune teller, and he told me my fortune. He said I could choose to not come to Troy and live a very long, healthy life. But I'd be a nobody.

If I came to Troy, I would die young, but I would die as a hero. I would be remembered by everyone. Everyone would sing of my glory and my triumph. So that was my choice. I could live for a very long time and just be a nobody, or I could be a hero and die young. And he said, well, for me, that's not a choice. Okay?

For me to be alive means to achieve new daemonia. I have to be the best that I can be, and therefore my only option is to come to Troy and die a hero. And that's the mentality in Athens. It is much better to die young as a hero than to live a long time as a nobody. Whereas in Spartans, with a complete opposite, okay?

It's just better to be a nobody, and get along with everyone, than it is to die as a hero. So very opposite societies. And what this did, this idea of eudaimonia, it made Athens into a very competitive society. Because if everyone's trying to achieve eudaimonia, then you're going to have a lot of competition, okay?

Because they're going to be one hero. Everyone cannot be a hero. They're going to be one hero. So again, the example is Homer's Eliad. And when Achilles got into a fight with Agamonon, Achilles basically says, I don't like you, you're a dog, I'm not going to fight for you. And Agamon says, I don't need you.

What Achilles did was he went to his mother, who was a goddess, and Achilles said to Thetis, his mother, could you please get the gods to help the Trojans so that Agamaran would have to come beg for my help against the Trojans? He was basically committing treason. And in the Greek world, you're allowed to do that because the most important thing is eudaimonia, to achieve eudaimonia. Does that make sense? It's a very weird world, but in Athens, it's extremely competitive.

where everyone's trying to back-sab each other in order to become the hero. And because of this, because of this, there's so much competition, Athens created a new system called ostracized. Okay? So the idea here is because the Athenians were so at each other's throat, if someone was breaking the rules or if someone was being too competitive in the pursuit of eudaimonia, the Athenian people could choose to ostracize this person. And what this meant was you'd be banished, okay, banished or exiled from Athens for 10 years.

And this was considered even worse than death. Okay, this punishment was worse than death. The reason why is in the police system, the only people that mattered were citizens, okay? And the Greek world was very chauvinistic or clothes, which meant that you could not be, you could not earn the right to be a citizen. You have to be born to become a citizen. You understand. You have to be born into citizenship. You could not become a citizen for your own hard work and for your merit. Does that

make sense? So in other words, if you were banished from your Polish, you became a nobody. You were basically dead to everyone. These only citizens had rights. in the Greek world. If you were a slave or you were a foreigner, you had absolutely no right. You cannot own land, you could not even speak in public. Does that make sense? All right. So Athens was a democracy where everyone had the right to speak and to vote, okay? But really, when we talk about democracy in this world, we're not saying like everyone could become president or everyone could become a leader. Really, political power can only be held by people of nobility, okay? So democracy usually was a battle between different factions of the nobility, usually between the upper nobility and the lower nobility.

Okay? And this is a lesson that's true throughout history, okay? So remember, usually we think history, society, the conflict is between the halves and the half-nots, right? The poor and the rich, all right? Halfs versus half-nots. What I would teach you in this class, one important thing I would teach you in this class is this is not true, okay?

When you look at history, the conflicts in society are usually, you know, between the half a lot and half somewhat more. Does that make sense? Okay? It's usually between the half a lot versus the half sum, but I want more. Okay? And throughout history, we call these people different names. So, um, in this society, these are basically the lower nobility, okay? These are people, the nobility who have, money but they want more okay and in the French Revolution we will call them the petite bourgeoisie and today we call them the middle class okay does that make sense the poor people do not rebel they might riot but they do not

revolt it's usually the middle class or the lower nobility or the petite bourgeoisie that revolt does that make sense all right so Athens is a democracy and it's usually conflict between the upper nobility and the low nobility. Sparta is an oligarchy, which is basically, means ruled by the few, and they hate democracy. So these systems, these cultures, Sparta and Athens, are diametrically opposed to each other. They hate each other. They're always in conflict with each other. Does that make sense?

Any questions so far about Sparta and Athens? Are you guys clear about this, these two different cultures? All right, so this is about the year 500 BCE. Around this time, the Greeks are colonizing the Mediterranean and the Aegean, okay? And this territory belongs to Persia. The Persian Empire is considered one of the greatest empires ever in human history. We will do the Persian Empire later this semester. But I want to focus on the Greeks for now.

All you need to know is the Persian Empire spread throughout most of the world, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and we're called Iran today. It was a huge, huge empire that was extremely enlightened for its age. It was really considered the best empire at that time. And there were Greeks who lived in Anatolia. Anatolia or what they called Asia Minor back then. The thing about the Persian Empire is if you were a subject city, you could do whatever you want, but you have to pay taxes.

And these people did not like to pay taxes, so they revolted. And they went to Sparta and to Athens and sought help. They basically said, look, we're all Greeks, we're being oppressed by the Persians, could you please help us? What does the Spartan say? What was the Spartan response? No, because we don't care, okay? Your problem, not my problem.

And what did Athenians say? Yeah, sure. Let's achieve eudaimonia, man. Let's be Achilles. Let's go over and help them and maybe make a lot of money for ourselves, okay? So because of Persian Empire were so powerful, they destroy the rebellion, okay? In 490 BCE, the Persians decided to attack Greece to teach the Athenians a lesson. This was called the Battle of Marathon.

In the Battle of Marathon, we actually don't know that much about it, okay? The sourcing is very limited, but what they say, okay, is in the Battle of Marathon, there are about 10,000 Athenians versus 25,000 Persians. a huge advantage for the Persians, right? Well, the Athenians destroyed the Persians. The Athenians lost about 192 men. The Persians lost about 5,000. It was a slaughter. And a lot of the reason why is in military tactics. So the Persian Empire is huge, okay? Lots of flat land. And in this geography, your main advantage is cavalry, right? Horse archers. That's what the British were known for. Men on horses

who would run around and shoot arrows at you, okay? The geography of Greece was different. It was hilly, so you didn't really use cavalry. It was more, mainly infantry fighting against each other. What the Greeks did over 100, 100 years was developed a new military tactic called hoplights. Hoplites. So hoplight comes from the word hoplin. Hoplin is Greek for shield. So these are men with large shields and spears, okay? The way they thought was using the phalanx formation, phallings. And the innovation of phallens innovation was it was basically a wall. So men would stand together and behind each other so that they made a wall. And because at the shield and spears, it was a moving wall. Okay, and the Persians didn't have armor. So when men of armor went to battle with men without armor, usually armor wins.

So the Greeks, the Athenians, destroyed the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. That made the Persians even more angry, okay? So in about 480 BCE, Persia organized a massive invasion force against Greece. And this massive invasion force, again, the numbers, the data, we can't conform it, but we think it's about half a million people, half a million soldiers. That's huge, okay? But not only that, you had a huge navy. And basically, Persia called on every nation of its empire to fight against Greece, which included Egypt,

which included the Phoenicians, which also included Greeks who lived in the territory of Persia. And these Greeks are called the Ionian Greeks. was a massive invasion force and Sparta and Athens became allies to resist the Persian invasion. But there were also some Greek polices that sided with the Persians, including thieves, okay? The Macedonians to the north was also siding with the Persians. So the invasion came north from Macedonia down here. And you may have heard of the battle of Thermalai, okay? The Thermalaii.

This was made famous by a movie called 300. I'm not sure if you've seen the movie 300, okay? But basically it was about 300 Spartans, about 5,000 other Greeks who tried to make a stand against the Persian invasion and they got destroyed. So the Spartan, so the Persians came in and the Greeks decided, okay, you know what, Their numbers are so much bigger than ours, let's retreat, okay? Back to Sparta. And here, at Corif, they decided to build a wall

to stop the Persian events. The problem though is Athens is here, okay? So the Persians came in and burnt down Athens. Now, what's important to understand is the Greeks have, the concept of Polis, it's not a place, it's a community, okay? A Polish is wherever the, the Greeks choose to be.

So what happened, that's very interesting, is even though the Athens came to destroy, sorry, even though Persia came to destroy Athens, the Athenians just got into their ships, okay? They just boarded their ships because Athens is a naval power and they just sailed away, you understand. So Athens was not destroyed, the city of Athens was destroyed,

but not the community, the Polis of Athens. And so, But now the Greeks aren't a lot of trouble, okay? Because what the persons can now do is basically take their ships and sail around and attack Sparta from behind. And there's a huge problem for Sparta because why? What is Sparta's ultimate weakness? Why is it so easy to defeat Sparta in a war? What's the problem?

Do you guys remember? What are the Spartans really afraid of? The Hellots, right? Okay? The Hellots. Remember, there's 10 Hellots for everyone's Spartan. And the Hellots hate the Spartans because the Spartans are terrorizing, have terrorized them for centuries. So all that person has to do now, okay?

Very easy is kick their ships, land and Sparta and build forts, defenses, and the Hellots would run to them. And the king, King Zerzzi of Persia says, I, the benedict king of Persia, declare the Hellots be free people now. Now you have a revolution, okay? The Hellots are now armed by the Persians. And guess what? The people are going to, the Hellots are going to kill the Spartans. Game over, okay?

You understand? The war is over. That's all the Persians have to do. Take their ships, sail around to the coast of Sparta, build forts and defenses so that the Helots can run. to them give the helots weapons and then let the helots run loose against the spartans and the war is over Greece is forever destroyed okay you understand very simple right the persians did not do that okay the Persian king king Xerxes had a war council and there were a lot of general his generals who said to

king Xerxes king we've won the war okay we're We're all over Greece, we have a half a man in Greece, there's nothing that Greeks can do about this. Okay? So the Persons were feeling very confident. And the Greeks, the Greek Navy was on an island called Salamis, okay, Salamis. And everyone was freaking out, okay? And what the Spartans wanted to do was say, let's take our Navy and defend the coastline of Sparta. Because we know the persons are going to invade Sparta at some point.

they're going to land their ships on Sparta. Let's take our Navy and defend Sparta. There was one in athene in general, okay? His name is Famicthes. Famastiklis. And he said, you know what? That's great for you guys, okay? But remember, our city, Athens, has been destroyed.

We need to take on the Persians head on. We can't wait. And Spartans are like, yeah that's fine but they outnumber us three to one they have three more ships they have three ships for every one ship we have there's no way we can get them in a naval battle and the message he says we either fight the person now and achieve eudaimonia or we Athens we'd be like screw you Spartans we're gonna go take our ships and sell off west to Sicily or Africa who cares okay but we're

going to go away and we're going to leave the Persians to kill you guys. So Spartans saying that we don't have a choice but to listen to Athenians and fight. Then what Femmescu's did was he sent a spy to King Xerxes and King Xerxes was having this war council about what to do and most of his generals were like my great king we've won the war. Let's just take our ships and attack Sparta and the war is over. Then a spy said by Faviscusis says to King Xerxes, Oh, great king, the entire Greek navy is stuck in Salamis. But they want to run away.

Now is your chance to attack them and destroy the Greek Navy once and for all. Okay? And at this point, King Xerxes made the decision to send his entire navy, okay? They destroy the Greek Navy at Salamis. And the generals were like, don't do that, man. That's a risk you don't have to take. Why do that? Why take the Greeks on, why if they fight the Greeks head on when we can just starve them out?

And King Sturichy said, no, I came to defeat the Greeks. I'm the great king. I want to defeat the Macellimus and build a monument to celebrate my great victory over the Greeks. My father, King Darius, set an army in 490 BC, and the Athenians killed or destroyed his army at Marathon. I'm going to prove I'm a greater king than my father by defeating the Greeks at Salamis. I don't want this war of attrition, this slow war.

I want one great battle so that history will remember me forever, okay? So he sends his entire force, about a thousand ships, to Salamis. And Salamis is a straight, okay? It's very narrow. So the ships have to line up and attack the Greeks one by one, okay? And at Salamis, in a headlong battle, okay? The Greek ships were heavier, and the Greek ships were mened by hoplets with armor. And in this battle Salamis, the Greeks destroyed the Persian Navy.

Okay, you understand? The Persian army had won the war. And As Salamis, they lost the war. Okay? Now the problem is, now that the Virgin Navy has been destroyed, supply lines are in trouble, okay? You understand? Because Greece is very poor.

Greece is a very poor nation. You cannot resupply yourself in Greece. How do you feel of half-million people? Well, you need to bring in supplies from Persia. But now your Navy has been destroyed. So now King Xerxes freaks out, and he goes, He's like, you know what, I burned down Athens, that's good enough for me, okay? And he leaves his cousin, General Mardonis, to fight the Greeks, okay?

And at this point, Mardonis could have chosen to not fight the Greeks, right? Because Athens has been destroyed and Sparta is still under threat. So all Mardonnus had to do what he was in Thebes, okay, he was in Thebes. All we had to do was stay in Thebes and wait out the war, okay? This is what we call a war of attrition, where you wait out the other enemy, because the other enemy has basically less resources than you. Okay, does that make sense? Again, really easy for the forces to win, but Mardonas chose to fight the Greeks at the Battle of Palatia. And here, it was about equal forces, 100,000 Greeks versus 100,000 Persians, and the Greeks destroyed the Persians.

The Persians lost five times more men than the Greeks, okay? And General Mardinus was killed in this battle. So this war that the Persian should have went very easily, the Persians lost and were completely destroyed. Okay, doesn't make sense. Okay, any question so far about the Persian invasion? Okay, and because of this war, Greece now became extremely wealthy. The reason why is Persia is forced to retreat from Asia Minor and the Greeks were able to capture a lot of treasure, okay?

Now, after this, Persia switches strategies, okay? Persia never again invade Greece because they think this is stupid to invade Greece. But the Greeks don't know this. The Greeks think, okay, the Persians will come back at any point, okay? So the Athenians say, let's take the battle to Persia. And what do the Spartans say? The Spartans say, no, we're going to go home and that's it, okay? So to battle against the Persians, the thing is to create something called the D. Dalyan League. The Dalyan League is a defensive alliance between Athens and these colonies and islands in the Aegean.

The idea is if the Persians come back, we will master forces and fight the persons at sea. The problem is that only Athens had a navy. Everyone else didn't have a navy. So everyone else is like, we don't have a navy, but we'll contribute money, okay? they agreed that this money this treasury would could be only be used against Persia if Persia invades okay so they put all this money on a place called Delos okay and the island called Delos that's why it's called the Dalian League right doesn't make sense so basically Athens would put up a Navy and everyone else

would put up money and this money the Treasury of the Daily League can only be used in a war against Persia. Okay? Does that make sense? Okay, so while this is happening, Athens is the rising power in this world. And in 461 BC, a new political leader called Pericles comes into power. And as you should know from your research,

Pericles is considered the father of Athenian democracy. He is the one who spreads democracy throughout Athens. And historians today worship Pericles. Pericles is considered one of the greatest leaders ever in Western history. I'll talk more about Pericles and democracy in future classes, okay? But I want to show you that Pericles was first and foremost a politician. who was concerned about amassing and keeping power. Does that make sense?

So he did a lot of wonderful things for Athens, but I want to show you these things that he did, even though they seemed great, they really were about him amassing power for himself. Okay? So the first thing he did was he spread democracy to everyone, okay? He basically gave every citizen the right to vote.

And you're like, okay, that's great. Direct democracy. Athens creates democracy. This is great, right? But the reason why he did that was to change the balance of power in Athens. So he basically represented the lower nobility versus the upper nobility, right?

Usually the upper nobility has more power because it has more money. Okay, that's more prestige. So the way for the lower nobility to defeat the nobility, the upper nobility is by allying itself with the people okay doesn't make sense you do that by giving people the right to vote and so by doing this Pericles basically made himself king of Athens doesn't make sense in fact he

stayed in power from 461 to 429 okay doesn't make sense all right and to please the people even more he basically made corruption official what he did that was very important was he basically took the money from Delos and brought it to Athens basically perically said to the Delian League you know what this money in Delos it's a lot of money I'm afraid that the person's come and steal it so let's take it to Athens okay when he brought to Athens the next to me he did was he spent all of it okay he built a lot of really impressive buildings, including something called the Parthenon.

The Parthorn is this great temple to Athena, which is a patron goddess of Athens. They made the Athenian statue out of gold, okay? They spent billions and billions of dollars on this temple. The reason why is when you do that, right, you give people jobs, and you give people jobs, give people who support you money okay so this is basically official corruption now there are people in the upper nobility who fought what pericles was doing was terrible for

Athens and basically in meetings they wanted to ostracize pericles right they want to they accused pericles of corruption of basically bribing the city of Athens and they said you are corrupting our morals okay you are hurting our democracy Therefore, we want to ostracize you. And there was just vote against Pericles. And what happens? Do you guys know? The people voted to exile Pericles' opponents.

Okay? Those who criticized Pericles were now exiled from Athens. Therefore, Pericles no longer has any political opponents. And Pericles can do whatever he wants. And so the two big innovations of Pericles is democracy, okay? Right? Let's give people the right to vote and let's give people more money, okay? But also empire. The reason why is after Pericles specifically stole the money from the Dealing League, the

allies were obviously angry, right? You store our money. So we are out of this league. And Pericles said, well, if you leave our league, we're going to come and invade you. So Athens start this expansionist. campaign in order to maintain its empire. So the Dealing League basically became the Athenian Empire. And now Athens got basically 20% of its revenue

from its allies, okay? Doesn't make sense. So that's what Pericles was doing. He was promoting democracy in order to make sure people voted for him. He was promoting empire in order to maintain the easy money flow into, to Athens. Empire is important because remember, Athens has a culture of eudaimonia. So empire makes the rich extremely wealthy. You understand? Empire makes everyone rich, but it makes

the wealthy even more so. And so the lower nobility, okay, the lower nobility became very jealous and so the way to resolve this issue is the lower nobility could choose to invade other places okay and if they win they can make a lot of money money for themselves so one place they chose to invade was Egypt but that failed okay so throughout this time you had a lot of Athenian expeditions throughout the world in looking to conquer a new territory and sometimes they succeeded but a lot of times they failed as well okay does that make sense all right so As Athens is expanding and becoming much wealthier, other Greek colonies, other Greek policies start to get angry at Athens.

Athens is basically the big bully. They were afraid of Persia before, but Persia didn't really bother the Greeks. Whereas Athens was a big bully. They wanted to control all of Greece. They basically were a mafia organization that was forcing these islands in the agency to pay tribute to Athens, and they were trying to take more territory from other Greek polices. So in 431, the Greek polices united around Sparta

and started something called the Peloponnesian War. Okay? And historically, what most historians will tell you is this war was started because Sparta was afraid of an emerging urging Athens, okay? Sparta was a hegemon, Sparta was the most dominant power in Greece at that time. And now that Athens was rising,

Sparta felt threatened by Athens and therefore declared war on Athens. That's not true, okay? That's not the reason. The reason why is because Athens was an empire and it was going around and bullying everyone, and so you didn't have a choice in the matter.

You got to fight Athens now or wait for Athens to invade you, okay? So it was because Athens was an imperial power. And so other nations had to, other Greek forces had no choice, but to stand against Athens, okay? And Athens was an imperial power because of its theory of Unimonia. So the great irony here, and you will see this pattern repeated itself throughout history is,

the thing, the culture that allows a nation to rise, nation to rise, unless you're unimonia, will also cause it to decline. Doesn't make sense, okay? Because it's because of the Pelican War, which lasts from about 431 BC to 404 BC, to 404 BC, 27 years, that Athens loses its empire, okay? So the culture, eudaimonia that causes Athens to rise

will ultimately lead to its decline as well. All right. So are you guys clear so far? Please let me know if this is clear to you, if you have any questions. Before I continue. Okay. So even though Sparta and Athens are now at war with each other, this war, again, should have been pretty easily won by Athens.

Why? What can Athens do to destroy Sparta? Do you guys know? What can Athens do? Really easy to destroy Sparta. Hellots, right? The Athenians have ships. They can choose to do what the person should have done, but they didn't do. Which is to basically take its navy, land its navy on the coast, and support the Helots in the rebellion, okay? If that would happen, Sparta would have been destroyed very quickly. The Athenians didn't do that.

Right? Do you understand? The Athenians didn't do that. Now, Sparta, to counter this threat against Athens, what should it have done to counter this threat from Athens? Exactly, thank you, okay? Its only option in this scenario is to free the Helots and save the Hellots, if you fight for us against Athenians, we will give you your liberty, okay? And the Helots would have been, yeah, let's go fight for the Spartans, okay? So Sparta would have increased his army 10 times and it could have destroyed Athens. Sparta didn't do this either, okay? You understand?

So from a military strategy perspective, the way the public division war didn't make any sense. The only way to understand what happened is to understand that the very basis of conflict in society is between the upper nobility and the lower nobility, okay? Okay? You understand? The upper nobility is only interested in maintaining the status quo. They're very conservative. They don't like wars because you could lose wars and also because if you win wars, you

have people who are now richer than you are. Okay, do you understand? So the upper nobility is very conservative in both Athens and Sparta. Lowellibility can only become upper nobility for war or revolution, okay? they're always looking to upset the status quo. So even though this war is going on, internally, there's still conflict between the upper nobility and the lower nobility, okay?

And that's why, if you look at the palisputing in a war, a lot of the military strategy doesn't make any sense. Because Sparta isn't really trying to win a war against Athens. Sparta is trying to maintain the status quo in Sparta, Athens is not really trying to win a war against Sparta. Athens is trying to maintain a status quo within Athens. An example is Pericles, the war starts in 431 BC. And a lot of people are saying Pericles,

hey, let's go invade Sparta. And what Pericles says instead is, oh no, no, no, the Spartans are the greatest warriors in the world. We have no chance against Sparta. So what we'll do is, we have these walls, okay? We have these walls, we'll hide behind our walls.

and let our navy protect us in the sea, okay? That was the defensive strategy of Pericles. And so what the Spaniards could do was they could come to Attica and destroy all the farmland. And the Athenians could only watch as the Spartans destroy the farmland. This was a disaster for the Athenians because if you think about it, over time,

the Spartans could starve out the Athenians, right? The other problem is you have too many people in one place, what happens? You have too many people living in a city, what happens usually? Disease, right? Disease. So because the population in Athens, they had the plague, which killed one-third of the Athenian population. Okay, you understand?

One-third of the Athenian population. If the Athenians went to war against Sparta and they lost, they would have at most lost about 10% of their population, okay? But because they chose not to fight and hide behind the walls, not only did they lose their farmland, but they lost a third of their population, including Pericles who died because of the plague. Pericles died as well as his two sons. Okay? Doesn't make sense.

So again, this strategy makes no sense. If you think of from a military perspective, it only makes sense if you understand there's an internal conflict in Athens between the upper nobility and a low nobility, okay? Pericles represents the upper nobility. He wants to maintain a status quo. There's a war going on, but he doesn't really want

to fight this war, okay? He just wants to wait it out because he does not want to change the status quo. It doesn't make sense. So after, Pericles dies, the low nobility become ascendant. And because of this war, they proposed an aggressive strategy against the Spartans.

Basically it's like, let's go attack the Spartans and cause a revolution in Sparta. And this was the, this was proposed by Cleon. Who after Pericles died, became basically the de facto leader of Athens. And he was considered a demagogue. If you look at the history, everyone says bad things about this guy, okay?

But really, what he is, he's lower nobility who's trying to achieve eudaimonia. And he's basically like Fremesca's Cleves. And he's a great military strategist as well. So Cleon proposes this aggressive strategy against Sparta and guess what happens? Athens is now destroying Sparta. Okay, now Sparta is under a lot of pressure.

It's losing the war. So now what Sparta does is, it picks a new general, Bracidus, and says to Brassadus, listen, we're losing the war, what can we do? So Brassadus goes north and he starts to win these victories against Athens. And his policy is this.

this listen we need to change our social structure in order to win against Athens so so what he does is he tell the hellots if you fight for me I'm gonna give you your freedom and so a lot hellots fight for Bracidus and Brassus wins a lot of wars and this is and and how and how does the Spartans feel about this Brassus who's a Spartan is now winning wars against Athens and so how do the Spartans feel about this are they happy about this no they're really I happy about this okay because it's changing their social structure you understand they don't want this crap they want the hellots to be slave they don't want the

hellots to be free citizens who helps them win wars okay so what ultimately happens is even though Cleon and Brassadus have both proposed strategies that allow Athens and Sparta to win the war ultimately what happens is Cleon and Brassus get into a battle with each other and they both died in this battle. That's extremely convenient guys, okay? That's really, really convenient. So I'd be very surprised if they actually did both die in battle. My guess is what happened is they were both assassinated during the battle against each other. Does that make sense? Because ultimately, both were the bigger threats to the social structure of Spartan Athens

than losing the war itself. Does that make sense, guys? Okay? Any questions so far? Okay. Doesn't make sense. Okay. Okay, so now, so this war keeps on going. And then what happens is the Persia gets involved and gives Sparta a navy. Basically, Persia gives Sparta a blank check. And because Sparta is so conservative in insular, it doesn't really know how to have a Navy. He doesn't know how to fight with the Navy. In fact, Sparta is militarily, like in terms of strategy, it's actually very weak, okay? If it's like Spartan soldiers by themselves are very strong, but in terms of like overall military strategy, Sparta, because it's so conservative in insular, it's very weak again, it's very weak compared with Athens.

But Persia has a lot of money and Persia is bankrolling Sparta, okay? And eventually Persia says to Sparta, hey guys, what are you trying a new strategy? The strategy is this. If in general is winning against the Athenians, promote the guy, okay? And you're like, okay, well, that makes total sense. The Spirnans didn't do that, okay?

The Spartans were not concerned about winning the war, they were concerned about maintaining their social order. Do you understand? There's a social hierarchy in Sparta. That's what's important, not winning the war. And then there was a Spartan commander, Lysander, And he was really the only Spartan who knew how to win naval battles. The problem with Lysander was he was a half citizen,

which meant that his father was a Spartan, but not the mother. You understand? Only if both your parents are citizens, are you allowed to be a citizen? So Lysander was really looked down upon in Sparta, but he could win naval battles. So he was promoted. The person said to the Spaniard, listen, this is stupid, okay? Licentor is a great commander.

You have to promote him. The Sparians didn't have a choice in the matter. And so, Lysander, after he was promoted, single-handedly won the war against Athens. He laid siege to Athens in 404, B.C.E. And then Athens had no choice but to surrender because they were out of food. Okay? Does that make sense? Now, for 27 years, Sparta and Athens were at war with each other.

They were killing each other. Now Athens had finally been defeated. So what do you think should happen now? What should happen to Athens now? Okay, the answer is nothing happened to Athens. Usually if you lose a war, in this world, what happens is they come and kill all the men and enslave all the woman. And that's what the Persians want. Persians wanted, okay? That's what the other Greek cities wanted to happen to Athens.

The Spartans didn't do anything to Athens. They left Athens alone. Okay? And there are many different explanations for this. One explanation is Sparta wanted to maintain a balance of power in the Greek world, okay? They destroyed Athens, then Persia could come back and destroy Sparta, okay? But another explanation is, well, guess why, guys? The upper nobility of Sparta and the upper nobility of Athens, they're good friends with each other. Do you understand?

Rich people tend to marry each other. They tend to be good friends with each other, okay? So Athens and Sparta weren't really enemies, do you understand? They have to fight this war because of the internal pressures from the lower nobility. Because this war is killing off so much lower nobility, it maintained a status quo. Does that make sense?

All right? You guys understand so far? Any questions? All right. So I'm going to conclude with evidence for this theory. Okay? So what I just said, like, war is really about killing off internal dissent, not really about beating another enemy.

That's very controversial, okay? So I will give you some evidence for this theory, and it's called rat utopia. So in the 1960s and 70s, there was an American researcher, American scientist, his name is James D. Kahlane. Okay? And he was interesting to the question, what would it be like for humans to live in a world of abundance? What would it mean for humans to live in a world where everyone was perfect, where you didn't have to fight for food, where food was just given to you, okay? A utopia. What would it be like?

Well, he couldn't really experiment on humans, so he decided to experiment on rats instead. So he built this universe, basically this big house, and food was plentiful for rats. The food, the water was plentiful for rats. So rats can just play all day. Now, I'm not sure if you know about any of rats, but the thing about animals. And this is a very important idea, is that animals live, in a heavily ritualized and rules-based world. It doesn't make sense, guys.

We think of animals as chaotic. No, no, no. If you actually study their society's ants, monkeys, rats, they live in an extremely rule-based, heavily ritualized world, okay? So let me give you an example of this. So rats, when they mate with each other, what happens is this.

A female rat is interested in having sex, okay? So she's going out and then a male rat spots this. He sees the female rat in heat. So what he does is he gets on a mound, okay, where she can see him and he starts to dance. Okay, he starts to dance. And the female rat becomes interested and he sees she's interested,

so he comes down and they start chasing each other, okay? They're having fun together. And then what she does is she runs home and hides herself in her burrow. The male rat just stands outside and waits for her to come out. After some time, she comes up and they run together again, and then she runs back again. They do this many, many times until finally

she lets him catch him, and then they have sex. Okay, and then after they have sex, they have children and they start a family together. Does that make sense? That's how rats usually behave. When they often like to play with each other and they fight, but it's very playful, okay? So there's lots of rules, there's lots of rituals

in this rat society. But that's out in nature. In the world of James B. Kahoon, he creates rat to utopia, okay? Where everyone has enough to eat. And at some point, the society breaks down. Okay? These rituals, these rules all break down.

What happens is male rats, when they start fighting each other, they become very violent. They're no longer playing. They're actually trying to kill each other, and some actually die. And this mating ritual, it breaks down. So the male rats don't even try to dance. They're not dancing. They just see a female and they rape her.

Okay? And it's like gang rape. It's not one male, it's like lots of males raping her. These gangs of rats, they try to break into burrows, homes, and try to rape the wife, the mother. And at first the husband is fighting off these other rats, right? But eventually what happens is he gets tired and he just runs away, okay? He's just a badness of family.

Now the female rat is responsible for fighting off now the other rats. But she becomes so traumatized, she starts to beat everyone up, including her own children. So she kicks her children out of the house. It is a complete social breakdown. And after a few more months of this crap, the entire colony of rats dies. The entire society collapses. Doesn't make sense. All right?

So this is what we call rat utopia. It's been done many times. And each time they do this, this happens. At some point, this society will collapse. Okay, and this makes no sense to us. Everyone has enough food to eat, everyone should be happy, okay? Why does society collapse? Okay, so there are different explanations for this.

James B. Kahn, his argument is, if there's so much food, there's overpopulation. There's overpopulation, then that creates conflict. And the conflict causes the rules to collapse, okay? The problem though with this theory is the colony never became overpopulated, okay? There was space for everyone, but at some point everyone started to fight each other, right? So this is my theory and this and this goes back to the Peloponnesian War. It has to do with the idea of status. So in a world of abundance, in a world of wealth, who benefits the most?

so elderly, old people, okay? Old people can live a lot longer in a society that is wealthy and abundant, okay? Doesn't make sense. Okay? But then what happens is the status becomes locked in, which prevents younger rats, younger people, from ascending into power and status. Does that make sense? Okay?

So the idea is the metaphor is these rats are online, okay? I'm waiting for to climb the mountain, okay? This is the mountain top. You're waiting and waiting to climb the mountain and everyone's moving along. It's slow, but you're still moving along, okay? And eventually you'll reach the mountain top, which is where you want to be. But let's just say for whatever reason the line stops moving, okay? Everyone's stuck in place. then you get very anxious, you get very stressed out, you get very agitated. You're like, when is it my turn? And it's never going to come because the people at the top won't leave.

Okay? So what do you do? Well, you start kicking the people behind you, right? You start fighting with each other. You understand? This is what we call rat utopia. In a world of abundance, in a world of extreme wealth, all people do not die. die if they do not die it is impossible for young people to ascend into power and

status and so they have all these energies and because they cannot reach the potential they become violent and start attacking each other okay so that's rat utopia that's what rats do but if you look at the pelaginian war and what happened between Athens and sparta it's really no different Okay? It's really no different. They were killing each other for no reason. Extreme violence, which led to nothing. Okay? 431 BC, the political world was no different from 404 BC. The only difference is a lot of young people die, okay? In wars against each other. So that's my argument to you. If societies become too wealthy, you have a problem of

rat utopia. Okay? If rat utopia, societies will then engage in wars that will lead eventually to its collapse. And that's what happened to Athens. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. Any questions about this?

Does it make sense to you guys? All right? Any questions? Yeah? Okay. So the question is, in the real, Rat to Utopia, why do the mothers want to start attacking the kids? Okay?

Okay, so this is actually a complicated question. The answer is this. Humans are different from rats. So humans have the ability to reason and to adapt to new circumstances. Does that make sense? Rats don't. There are these rules in place, okay? And if these rules are broken, then the rats don't know how to adapt.

So if you're a rat mother, you have a husband, okay? Your understanding is the husband will protect you from strangers. Okay? Your understanding is if someone is violent towards you, you'd be violent against that person, okay? So in a situation where the husband leaves, the husband runs away or is dead, the mother does not understand this new order anymore. So the mother becomes, the word we use is traumatized. You're traumatized, you can no longer reason, okay?

You're so focused on protecting yourself, you attack everything and everyone, including your own children. Does that make sense? Yeah, this is an experiment because obviously this would not happen in real life, okay? There's no way the rats get free food in real life. So they have this experiment where the experimenters gave the rats free food every day, and this is what happened. No, no, so the experiment is the rats were left by themselves, okay?

The rest could do whatever they wanted. The only thing that experimenters did was feed them every day. Okay? If you do that, if there's a button in there's well, then you have complete social collapse. Okay, all right. All you need understand is this, okay? The entire society collapses.

How it collapses can be different from family to family, but the entire society collapse, everyone dies at the end, okay? Do you understand? Okay. Any more questions? Any more questions? So I know this is a lot to take in, okay? This is very confusing and this is very hard, but it's okay.

Just ask any questions or points where you want me to clarify. Okay, so next class we will do Greek theater. And then after that, we'll do Greek philosophy, which includes Plato, Socrates and arius and arizzar, okay?