Bret Devereux is a military historian at North Carolina State University and author of the recent viral article "Spartans Were Losers: The US Military's Admiration of a Proto-Fascist City-State is Based on Bad History." He joins us to explain why he thinks that the traditional image of Sparta as an egalitarian society of warrior badasses is a lie. You can find his blog, where he writes extensively on Sparta, here: https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/
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This episode is available in video format on the Lantern Jack YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/VngbinpNGIE
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Support Ancient Greece Declassified on Patreon: patreon.com/greecepodcast
Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast
AGD is going back to Greece this fall (Oct. 11-19) for another epic adventure! This time we'll be exploring areas that in ancient times lay in the shadow of – or in direct conflict with – the Athenian hegemony.
Check out our video from the first tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g-w7u6aQz0
To reserve your spot, email us at greecepodcast@gmail.com
For the itinerary visit https://greecepodcast.com/tour
This time we're taking a little break from Greece to explore the broader history of democracy. Was democracy really a Greek invention? Historian David Stasavage, author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy, thinks it was not. And in today's episode he explains why.
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Support Ancient Greece Declassified on Patreon: patreon.com/greecepodcast
Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast
Polybius' theory of anacyclosis is the most sophisticated theory of political (r)evolution to have emerged from ancient Greek and Roman political thought.
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To watch the highlight real from the last AGD tour in Greece, click here.
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To read the passage in Polybius where he discusses anacyclosis click here.
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If you'd like to read more about the theory of anacyclosis, I've written a few blogs on the subject:
Anacyclosis, Act 1: From Monarchy to Tyranny
AGD is going back to Greece this winter (Jan. 3-11) for an epic tour of Greece's northern regions, focusing on mountains and oracles. For more information or to reserve your spot, email us at greecepodcast@gmail.com
An update on the AGD Tour happening in Greece from August 16-24
For an outline of the itinerary click here.
An announcement about the upcoming Ancient Greece Declassified tour in Greece this summer.
Was Alexander the Great really that *great* on his own? Or did he owe much of his success to the work of his father Philip II of Macedonia? Joining us to discuss the matter is Adrian Goldsworthy, military historian and author of the new book Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors.
A video version of this episode is available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/zZwyvimmX3k
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Support Ancient Greece Declassified on Patreon: patreon.com/greecepodcast
Or make a one-time donation: paypal.me/greecepodcast
Sappho is one of the first song-writers we know of in history, partly because she was one of the first singers to write down her songs, in around 600BC. We still know about her because she was considered the best song-writer for about a thousand years after her death. While best known as a singer of female desire, her lyrics were so powerfully felt by men and women across the centuries that she became known as the tenth muse, joining the ranks of the 9 divine muses – the goddesses of art and inspiration. But after a millennium of celebrity status, Sappho's works were almost completely lost. Of the nine volumes of her songs that once graced the shelves of libraries at Alexandria and elsewhere, only a few pages survive today – most of it scattered bits and fragments of different songs.
Andromache Karanika, professor of classics at the University of California Irvine has written extensively on Sappho and early Greek poetry. She joins us to talk about the tenth muse, her life, and works, and why they were lost.
Andrew Ford of Princeton University joins us for a conversation about the Iliad. What makes it so...epic? And what kind of vision of the world does Homer provide his audiences?
Archaeologist Eric Cline on what caused the simultaneous collapse of the Mycenaeans, Hittites, and most other major civilizations at the end of the second millennium BC, thus ushering in the world's first dark ages. Hint: it wasn't just the Sea Peoples.
Four astonishing archaeological discoveries that extended our knowledge of history back into the mythical past: Champollion and the Rosetta Stone, Grotefend's cuneiform breakthrough, Schliemann digging for Troy, and Michael Ventris' deciphering of Linear B.