Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

We would conquer them, enjoy the luxuries that they possess, and we'd take them for ourselves, and we would go soft.

And the result of that is that we would become prey ourselves, that we would become corrupted by this.

And this is one of the things that Herodotus believes, that he believes that that sort of governs the cycles of history, that people from difficult places like Greece

will be victorious in war against people who are not as tough, not as hardened by their conditions.

They will conquer them, they will become soft in turn, and then another hard people will come in and will conquer them.

This is what he envisions as a warning to the Greeks.

This has happened to the Persians, and it could happen to you.

He does very explicitly.

I mean, it's very interesting when you consider this in light of his framing at the beginning saying, I'm going to talk about all sorts of cities because we don't know which ones are going to be great later on, right?

There's always big cities have fallen and small cities have become great.

And so there's always that kind of thing in the background of like, you know, fortunes vary.

But in the Persian Wars, he says, you know, there's two of these leading states in the Greek world who took on this alliance, obviously, you know, who led it.

It's the Spartans and the Athenians.

The Spartans obviously claim that they did the most because they won this great victory at Latia.

But according to Herodotus, and he's almost shy about it, he says, I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but it is because the Athenians committed everything they had.

You know, even after their city was taken and razed to the ground, they evacuated their people, they fought on.

And because they were committed to this fight, they are the ones who brought it to a close.

So he says it's the Athenians and the Athenian willingness to serve under Spartan leadership and to fight on after everything had been lost.

That is what made the difference.

Absolutely.