Dr. Roel Konijnendijk

Sparta, because they owe Cyrus, because they feel they have a personal bond with him rather than an abstract bond with Persia for winning the war for them, they back him.

But Cyrus loses.

He dies in the Battle of Cunaxa.

So Artaxerxes II is affirmed as king, at which point, obviously, Sparta finds itself having backed the wrong side in a struggle for the throne, you know, on the wrong side of the Persians.

So there's these moments when Sparta essentially makes a misstep that puts them further and further in the sort of on the red in Persia's ledgers.

So that is definitely something that is going to come to head.

This is the March of 10,000, which we've covered, actually, in the previous episode.

It's a great story.

I should specify, because there's a difference between tyranny and oligarchy.

It became known even already in ancient tradition as the 30 tyrants, but it's initially just the oligarchy of the 30.

So it's such a narrow oligarchy that there's only 30 of them, where more traditionally you'd get a few hundred or a few thousand.

No, that's a fair point.

No, it's very funny because there's later traditions even sort of describe the campaign against the 30 as tyrant killing.

Like they compare it to... Yeah, compare it to the two.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a very strange story because the Spartans obviously are backing this regime.

They're backing the 30.

They have a garrison in Athens.

And in fact, some Athenian sources will paint this as a time when Athens is under Spartan occupation, essentially.

It's under the control of the foreign power.