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Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

Appearances

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1098.895

And of course, it's worth reflecting as well that... This is all make-believe, of course, on the part of Herodotus. He was not in the conference room, nor any other Greek was there. And this is a typical Herodotian motif of inserting himself as the narrator into these closed council meetings so that he can hear the deliberation. But of course, it's all scripted by him.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1176.438

Which is why Herodotus also interwinds ideas of dreams and omens into all of this as well. Xerxes is plagued by dreams, telling him to go forth and conquer, and he doesn't know what to do. And so Artabanus, he asks at one point, I'll go and sleep in my bed,

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1194.83

And like, you know, so in the royal bed and in the royal dressing gown, Atabanus gets exactly the same dream as Xerxes gets, you know, suddenly think, oh, yes, yes, that our fate, our destiny is to go over to Greece after all. So all of this is an integral part of the Herodotian system of creating these narratives.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1213.558

There's a bigger divine concept that's going on here, fate that can't be overlooked or can't be overcome.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1365.575

Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I also think that that splendid description we have in Herodotus of the kind of multi-ethnic army that's been put together and all this wonderful description of the clothing and armaments, I really get a feeling that what Herodotus is drawing on here is the visual propaganda that the Achaemenids put forward themselves.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1387.955

So, for instance, on his tomb, Xerxes shows himself on this takht or this kind of divan throne being uplifted by representatives of the whole empire. And underneath in an inscription, he says, if you want to know how many are the people who represent my empire, look at these people below and they are named, you know.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1409.086

I am from Macca, I am from Macedonia, I am from Sogdia, I am from Parthia, and so forth. And I think what Herodotus is doing is just picking up on a very popular Achaemenid motif of the display of the empire in that way. So I don't think it was as multi-ethnic as that, or if it was, they were bits and pieces, but not this vast force that Herodotus conjures up for us.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1480.271

You know, I've just had sent to me from a colleague in Iran who's been digitally photographing Bissetan relief right up high, right next to it, because they're scaffolding that for restoration at the moment. And I've been able to do some line drawings of them, real sort of up close and personal.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1495.345

And while Darius and his two Persian officers, you know, look handsome and beautifully chiseled, it's really interesting to see how they portray the foreign kings, the liar kings in front of them. They are really grotesque. Which we don't really see from far away. They've got snub noses and thick lips and big sunken eyes. And they're all wearing collars around their neck.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1517.548

And a little detail in this collar shows that there's a metal stud that actually presses into their throats as well. So it's quite remarkable, the detail, you know. So yes, just really that emphasizes the fact that the Persians were very observant about peoples and they liked to portray them accurately. And I think that's what Herodotus is picking up.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1631.399

Absolutely. In terms of like Persian theology, the idea is that Ahura Mazda, the wise Lord, is the creator of the world. He is the supreme creator God. And in the way that duality works in Persian theological thought, there is good, truth, arta, and there is bad, the lie, drauga. So because Ahura Mazda brings his world into order, which of course is by definition a good thing.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1658.274

It's a kind of proto-Zoroastrianism. There's elements of it, but I wouldn't want to go that far. But certainly this creator god, who is a good god, establishes the king. It's almost like he creates kingship in order to ensure that his goodness, his arta, continues on this earth. So you could say that every war fought by a Persian great king is a holy war. That's how they would have seen it.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1688.18

So it's actually bringing the world into its proper place. So these people who are outside of Persian control, who are forces of chaos, of drauga, therefore, for their own good, as well as the good of the whole world, need to be brought under the control of Persia and of, ultimately, its god Ahura Mazda. That's not to say they went out kind of proselytizing and converting. It's never about that.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1712.53

But for the sake of the harmony of the cosmos, everybody needs to be singing praises to Ahura Mazda, essentially.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1725.663

Yeah. So we have a lot of I mean, actually, all from Greek sources, these ideas that, you know, the king demands earth and water. And I do believe that if if that was the case, and this is probably symbolically given to a king by a diplomat, you know, we have all these scenes of diplomatic tribute being brought to a king.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1745.785

And I wouldn't be surprised that at an initial point when a diplomat first arrives, then as his kind of diplomatic calling card, he possibly would have brought a bowl of earth and a dish of local water. It is an important part of the ideology of it. We get spins on that as well. I think this story is in Herodotus. I might be wrong.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1767.0

But there's one occasion where Xerxes is proffered a dish of dates. And he said, oh, where does this come from? And he's told, oh, these are from Greece. And he says, oh, well, we will not eat them. not until we own it, and then I'll eat Greek dates. So there's something there about actually the produce of the land itself and the king's right and access to it.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1789.521

But I suppose in the theological term, then the idea of the land being under the control and the rivers being under control is important. There was a kind of like a strange nature connection between the great king and the earth. He was seen very often as a gardener king, you know, letting the earth blossom. You know, the Persian word for a garden is paradisa, from which we get paradise.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1816.583

But, you know, the earth itself is a paradise. When the Persian kings created their gardens at places like Pasagidae and Susa and Persepolis, they basically planted their gardens with the produce from across the whole of their empire, bringing the empire into miniature here. And also the same with waters as well, of course, which were paramount importance to this kind of nomadic desert peoples.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

1839.147

So I think there is something real in this demand for earth and water, which would have been played out in court ceremonial, I think.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2124.292

But I do think that in those stories, there is, if we scratch the surface, something of the Persian version that goes underneath as well. And that goes back to what I was just saying about the great king being in harmony with nature as well. It's kind of it's kind of set on its head by Herodotus and other Greek writers as well.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2143.785

So we get, for instance, Xerxes beating the sea with whips and chains and so forth, because it will not kowtow to him at all. But in fact, this is possibly a kind of reminiscence of a Persian water cult where gold and silver and precious metals were thrown into rivers and waters and canals and so forth.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2166.249

Likewise, there's a much later story, of course, very famously about Xerxes falling in love with a plane tree. This is how crazy Xerxes is. He falls in love with this tree and he puts jewelry on it and so forth. Well, it's no coincidence that one of the very rare images we have of Xerxes is a seal that was found at Susa, which shows him decorating a sacred tree with necklaces and jewelry.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2187.988

It was a Persian thing to do. It was a nature cult. It was a tree cult. So I think, you know, sitting behind some of these Greek stories, which are, you know, frankly, they're laughable because, you know, it's hubris, it's excess, it's just pure craziness, sits perhaps an element of a Persian original. And I find that really fascinating.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2245.213

Well, they didn't meet much resistance, to be honest. And that's because many of the Greek city-states in the north were pro-Persian and had been for some time. So the Macedonians, in fact, readily joined elements of their army and also entertained Xerxes and his generals. And we know that as they marched right the way down through Boeotia, past Thebes, again, no resistance.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2267.272

And in fact, in the heartland of a pro-Persian world there as well. Herodotus gives us some fascinating insights into how the army is sustained, because here we are thinking, you know, as Xerxes has made this journey down, I mean, we must have thousands of soldiers and thousands upon thousands of camp followers just maintaining this vast juggernaut. which is moving through.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2290.774

And there are great stories that, you know, if Xerxes settles for a night somewhere, then obviously it's the duty of the local inhabitants to feed him and his court and soldiers. And God forfend that he should like the place and stay for a second night because basically they will be stripped of their resources for the next six months.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2306.444

And I can see, you know, there's a lot of sense that's being said in that, you know. So here I think Herodotus, you know, understands the soldier's journey and tries to depict for us the scale of the invasion. I think it It's through those kind of anecdotes that it really comes across very clearly.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

2542.677

So nowhere is this really an East-West war as has been sold to us for generations now. It's simply not about that whatsoever.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

260.168

Well, we've got a new king on the throne of Persia, and that's an important thing to acknowledge. Xerxes had come to the throne, not ever guaranteed to be the heir of Darius. There was no premogeniture in Persia, so it was always a bit of a free-for-all. But I think what Xerxes had in his favor is that he had the blood of Cyrus the Great and of his father Darius in his veins.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

281.793

So I think that pushed him into the purple realm. And one thing that all Achaemenid kings needed to do at their accession, really, was first of all, bury their fathers and then show themselves to be militarily capable. So Xerxes is already up for a fight. The first opportunity comes, actually, with a sort of mini rebellion that goes on in Egypt.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

302.721

And straight away, I mean, within the first months of his reign, he himself leads an army into Egypt and crushes whatever events are going on there in the Nile Delta and then returns to Persia. with a kind of, you know, his battle spirit up, really. It was a successful campaign. Xerxes was clearly not never been afraid of wars.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3063.238

And exhaust the Greeks while they're doing so.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3082.608

It's also a literary trope, isn't it? Because, you know, way, way back in the siege of Sardis, for instance, you know, Sardis and the Acropolis there is impenetrable. And then suddenly, you know, some soldier drops a helmet down a path one day and then, ah, bingo, we can get into Sardis now. So there's also that going on.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3099.092

But I think I'm in agreement that probably the Persians knew about this a long time in advance.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

321.55

You know, he's been stationed, we know, as a young prince in places like Parthia on some of the border zones. Just the arrival of Xerxes onto the scene in itself is enough of a momentum to start thinking about change.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3241.45

It's quite remarkable that his death serves both his legend, but also I think for Xerxes at the time, it would have been mission accomplished as well, because for Xerxes, the killing of a rebel king one of these followers of Drauga, was absolutely what he needed.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3262.527

And it's sad that we don't have any written record of the Persian version of this, but I've no doubt that the propaganda would have traveled far and very fast as well. Ahura Mazda had triumphed again through Xerxes, and now the world was in a better shape than it had been a couple of days ago because one of those liar kings has also disappeared. It must have been an incredible...

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3299.644

Precisely. And we know from the Byzantine inscription of Xerxes' father Darius that the annihilation of rebel kings is what you're after. You don't keep them imprisoned at all. You lop off the head. So this is all done for him, really, and it's a great victory.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3375.081

It really does make more sense, doesn't it? When you're thinking about, as you described the geography, you know, we're going into this narrow past. There's no way the whole Persian force would have been brought down there. There's simply no geographic room for them.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

338.602

We have some cuneiform evidence now that he had been sent there by his father, probably as a satrap. Again, this is where kings learned their craft, really, was by doing jobs within the satrapies variously around the empire.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3429.634

Not at all. I mean, the success of the Persian military had always been about keeping the distance and letting the arrows do the work, really. Quite right.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3561.912

We have dozens of later Greek accounts of the Persian king showing his largesse and beneficence by giving humble peasants silver cups full of coins and so forth. It is part of the Persian mission as well to do that.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

362.756

Yeah, he would have been still quite young at that time. So now he's, you know, into his early 20s, mid 20s, possibly at this point. needing to show himself as a capable king. Because even though, as we said in the last episode, the empire itself was run as a kind of family affair. In fact, there was constant infighting within that family.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3621.206

But perhaps in narrative terms, you need the scapegoat, don't you? You need to tie it up somehow. You need the villain after all.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3751.305

And you really get a sense of The fear in Athens from the archaeological record in particular, it's amazing, you know, that all of those beautiful marble statues we have of Kourai, these beautiful sort of naked males and beautifully dressed female figurines, which were possibly grave markers.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3770.601

All of these were deliberately buried at the top of the Acropolis in order to save them from the Persian attack. The Athenians were just bracing themselves for the kind of annihilation that they'd seen elsewhere. And of course, this is why the population took ship, went over to the island of Salamis as quickly as they possibly could. And when Xerxes got there, yes, he did exactly as was forecast.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3794.628

I mean, he razed the city to the ground. And I suppose the the population of the city in exile on Salamis, they would have seen their city burn. It's quite clear.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3811.392

Yes, absolutely. But only a Greek could write that. I doubt if he ever sacrificed to Athena.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3816.456

But he certainly offered a sacrifice.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3829.905

You know, that's why I think in the long run, you know, it's often been presented as, you know, the sack of Athens is, And then the ultimate victory that comes after it over the Persians is the idea that we're saving democracy, we're saving world freedoms and all of this kind of thing. I don't think the Persians would have had any problem with the burgeoning democratic state there.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

384.915

And there were a myriad of brothers and half-brothers around Xerxes who were more than happy to take on the mantle of kingship and sit on the throne as well. So it was very important for Xerxes to get himself a family and get himself some victories.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3851.323

And in fact, some of the cities of Asia Minor were already sort of miniature democracies going on anyway. And I don't think there would have been the end of Persia. Greek culture, I think sculpture and art would have continued. Probably tragedy and comedy would have continued with slightly different themes, perhaps.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

3868.456

But this idea that Xerxes at that time threatened the entire beginnings of European culture is simply not true at all.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4118.319

What I find interesting about the narrative account of it is actually the use of the lie, liar, kings in this. So Themistocles, of course, tells a whopping great lie, which convinces the Persians that they can win this thing. And I do think that Herodotus is very deliberate in presenting it in that kind of way, because as we know, the whole Persian idea is about truth and lie, okay?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4144.46

So this is a complete distortion of the Persian version of things. And because they are tricked in that way by the lie, by the ungodly, they lose their position. So again, I think maybe sitting behind here as well, Herodotus has something of a Persian version going on too. I think it's just too much of a coincidence that the whole ruse is built on a lie of this kind.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4192.592

Yes. For me, I'm not doubting her historicity, but the role that she takes, I think, is created to weaken Xerxes, that, you know, women are more capable women.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4208.579

of military command than than he is and it's part then of the myth of anti-persian propaganda that goes on for the next centuries in which persians are molded into the figures of amazons and other sort of you know it's the effeminization of the east that we get going here so i don't want to i don't want to dismiss her as a historical figure or the fact that she might have

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4230.034

you know, certainly offered some support to Xerxes. But I think in the way that Herodotus creates the narrative, it's saying more about Xerxes than it is about Artemisia. And what is that narrative, by the way?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4324.986

And if you want to follow a kind of through thread with this, of course, his interaction with this woman, Artemisia, kind of heralds the interaction that he's going to have with his wife, a mistress, and with his mistress, Artemisia, in the last few books of the histories, which, of course, completely brings him down. We don't see...

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4345.367

Xerxes being assassinated in Herodotus, but we know that that's coming. And it seems to be that this kind of woven storyline of women and in Xerxes' world having his ear actually is all played out from the Salamis narrative onwards.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

441.656

At one point in one inscription, which we found at Persepolis, he actually states, my father had other sons older than I, but I was the greatest. Mathishta is the word he uses. So yeah, you're like my father, see what I'm going to do.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4471.109

What we can say, though, is that Salamis very quickly enters into the Athenian imagination, and it becomes a defining moment in the creation of Athenian-ness, really, because only seven, eight years after the battle is fought, Aeschylus, the great dramatist, puts that battle on stage, or at least a Persian messenger talks us through as an audience the narrative.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4498.2

And if you think about, you know, the old theater of Dionysus carved into the southern slopes of the Acropolis, there, there would have been, you know, Athenians who had been at that battle, or there would have been families who had lost fathers or brothers or sons at that battle.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4515.913

And it's really quite a remarkable thing that Aeschylus does in his play, Persi, the Persians, to basically create a tragedy out of modern history to begin with. This is not a fantasy mythical thing, even though we have ghosts and all of that kind of thing in it. But also what he does in that is create this sense of Athenian-ness.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4540.945

And literally these individuals sitting in the theater would have been able to see each other across the auditorium, basically. They would have recognized people and the names in there. But I think there's something even more remarkable going on in that incredible play.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4556.953

Edward Said, back in 1979, when he published his great book, Orientalism, which is all about this kind of East-West divide, said that Orientalism starts with Aeschylus in the Persians. I always wonder how much Said actually read the Persians. Did he read it very deep at all? Because what comes over in that play is actually simply nobody benefits from war.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4581.203

What's incredible is these scenes of Persian women and Athenian women weeping for their sons and their husbands. It is a great anti-war play. It's not the kind of table-thumping xenophobia we might have expected from an Athenian playwright writing about a victory over the dreaded enemy. It's a much, much more subtle war play than Said or many other people who have studied it have ever seen.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4609.782

Now, many centuries later, that morphs and evolves. In later centuries, we have a guy called Timotheus who creates this kind of narrative, which was probably sung like an opera aria about the Battle of Salamis. And there, he did all the voices, as it were, of the Persian soldiers drowning in the seas, of the screaming of the Persian soldiers on land and so forth.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4635.19

And that is far more kind of tub-thumping bit of propaganda. But I find it really remarkable that in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Salamis, Aeschylus presented his city and his fellow citizens with an image of the Battle of Salamis that in many respects contradicts what Herodotus was going to say about later on. It is a cautionary tale more than a tale of bravado and warfare.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4764.212

Yes, he does, but it's a very pragmatic return. That's because we know that there is a huge rebellion that breaks out in Babylon, and there is no way that Xerxes can afford to lose that jewel in the crown. And really, that means that he withdraws himself, and with a great many forces from the theater of war in the West, just moves it elsewhere.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

4808.012

Yeah, my book, Persians, the Age of the Great Kings, is available in all good bookshops and in paperback and in 15 languages. And my new book on Babylon, which includes a lot, obviously, on the Persian intervention in Babylonia, will be on sale early next year.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

699.718

I think it's also important to add to this that while our literary sources might not be as forthcoming as we'd like, we can turn to archaeology for a bit more evidence of the continued presence of Persia, at least in the Greek mind. Because from late in the reign of Darius, we found within Athens, hordes of Persian coinage, for instance. both gold, derricks, and silver sigloy.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

727.666

The Persians, of course, had minted coins in Asia Minor and parts of the Levant. And these were kind of being hoarded by wealthy Athenians for a rainy day, essentially. And they carried on them, of course, a very important image, and that is the kind of preordained Persian image of the great king as a warrior.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

746.24

And he often shows himself, you know, armed with his spear and bows and arrows, or even on horseback as well. There's that that goes on. We know that they're aware of the Persian king's image, but also we find in this period, and this really is thanks to the work of Meg Miller in Australia, she showed how from late in the reign of Darius into the reign of Xerxes,

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

768.368

we get Persianisms entering into Athenian culture. So we should think of these as kind of like the chinoiserie that entered into Europe in the 17th and 18th century. So elite Athenians were collecting Persian goods. So we find very, very stylish Persian-formed tableware, for instance, drinking cups, bowls, jugs.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

794.918

But also from this same period, we start to see Athenian potters emulating those precious silver metal tableware in clay as well. So there's a vogue for Persian things. So, you know, we should never think of the world in bipartisan terms as at war or at peace. there's always elements of the both swirling around, you know.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

820.421

And now Greece is very much within the orbit of the huge cultural sphere that is Persia. And to show that you were anybody in Athens, you wanted Persian things too. So that trade that Raoul talks about is certainly very apparent in the wealthy houses of Athens and permeating now down into lower echelons of Athenian society as well.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

873.786

That's precisely right, he does have. It's not the first thing on his agenda. Having put down Greece, he has to turn his attention to Babylon too, because at the changeover succession, of course, Babylon always is an issue for him. So he has to go and stabilize Babylon first. Now, of course, again, we don't have the Persian version of these accounts, okay?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

894.932

But if you look at some of Xerxes' tribute lists... from Persepolis and from Susa, you'll see that the Jauner are listed as part of his empire already. So like, as far as he's concerned, they were never out of it. And who are the Jauner, just to remind us, who are the Jauner again? It's the kind of all-inclusive Persian word for Greeks, of Greeks of all sorts of people. So they're there.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Xerxes, Thermopylae and Salamis

922.026

They're next to the Egyptians and the Parthians and the Ethiopians. The Yauna are there. So as far as Xerxes is concerned, well, they've never gone anywhere. So it's hard to say from Xerxes' point of view when or why he decided to turn his attention to Greece. For that, I think we have to go back to the Greek sources.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

1349.102

Hallo ihr Mäuse, wir sind Janni und Alina vom Podcast Wine Wednesday.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

1360.731

Nee, wir sind da kein... Du paddeln wieder drin rum, oder was?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

1384.905

Das Geile ist, wir dürfen auf der Bühne an euch Zuschauer und Zuschauerinnen einen 800 Euro Voucher für Backmarket verlosen. Es lohnt sich also nicht nur wegen unseren schönen Gesichtern zu kommen.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

25.64

Hallo ihr Mäuse, wir sind Janni und Alina vom Podcast Wine Wednesday.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

3669.409

Hallo ihr Mäuse, wir sind Janni und Alina vom Podcast Wine Wednesday.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

3681.194

Oder im Olympiasee? Nee, paddeln wir da drin rum oder was?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

37.427

Oder im Olympiasee? Nee, paddeln wir da drin rum oder was?

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

3705.193

Das Geile ist, wir dürfen auf der Bühne an euch Zuschauer und Zuschauerinnen einen 800-Euro-Voucher für Backmarket verlosen. Es lohnt sich also nicht nur, wegen unseren schönen Gesichtern zu kommen.

The Ancients

The Persian Wars: Darius, Athens and the Battle of Marathon

61.424

Das Geile ist, wir dürfen auf der Bühne an euch Zuschauer und Zuschauerinnen einen 800 Euro Voucher für Backmarket verlosen. Es lohnt sich also nicht nur wegen unseren schönen Gesichtern zu kommen. Tickets gibt es unter www.kinoamolympiasee.de