Andrew Schulz

they had a lot of slaves, a lot of slaves.

But the slave, it really wasn't based on race or anything like that.

A lot of it was based on the subservient or captured culture.

So if you could go capture this culture of people,

And you could essentially pull them in and they would become like your slave, right?

So they participated in a lot of wars.

They made a... If I remember correctly, they made an incredible amount of money...

repelling the Persians during the Persian War of the early 400s BC.

They were able to recruit, they were finally able to convince the Spartans to go all in against the Persians.

And long story short, as a result of the success of that war, Athens

accumulated so much of the power and the wealth of Greece by taking those taxes.

That's what it was.

So they took a huge amount of taxes because of how much money Athens spent to be able to repel the Persians.

And so as a result of that, all the money, just this gravitational pull, all the money just got sucked into Athens.

So they put up these massive walls.

They build this huge port.

I think the port's called the Port of Piraeus.

And then they have all these slaves or people they brought in from around the way.

Now, these aren't slaves that are like what we may imagine colonial America to be like.

This is more like the working class that exists subservient to the political class.