Dr. Owen Rees

A tyrannical oligarchy.

That's a fair point.

I might be buying into the Athenian narrative later.

That's the Athenian historian in me.

Yeah, precisely that.

So that's very much the narrative.

But yeah, really, it's an oligarchy installed, much like the Spartans have been installing in so many other different states, because it's Athens, because Athens was such a novel democracy.

It has that resonance with us, even to this day.

The 30 tyrants get put in place, although it doesn't last more than a year.

Really?

There is basically an uprising against it.

I've just listened to a fantastic talk by an academic who might be opposite me, literally talking through this, you know, and sort of the overthrow of this tyranny and the reinstallation of democracy comes quite quickly.

And what's interesting for me when we consider the Spartans is the Spartans don't really have the ability or the will to stop it.

Yeah, absolutely.

So in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, a lot of these alliances very quickly come under like, scrutiny is the wrong word, but you know, very much.

Now what?

Especially as Sparta begins to expand more and more, which of course it had never attempted to really do before.

So Sparta is now trying to do something that its allies are not used to it trying to do.

Sparta is notoriously isolationist in its mentality during the 5th century.

They reluctantly send men outside of their own territory, and really the Peloponnesian Wars, we see it done systematically.