Mary Beard

I mean, it's kind of looking two ways.

It's looking at what we would call Greece proper, and it's also looking at Persia.

And it's not making any great shakes until Philip II, from his capital, a place called Pella, actually...

exerts more or less control both diplomatically, politically, and militarily over the Greek world and clearly is already, and this is mid-fourth century BCE, is already beginning to think about what his relationship with Persia is going to be.

You have to go back here in order to understand

What on earth either Philip or later Alexander is trying to do in moving east to Persia?

You have to go back to the idea that Persia is the dominant power in the east, which clashes famously in the 5th century, clashed in what we call the Persian Wars with the Greek world.

There were, in the end, the Greeks, those that hadn't gone over to Persia,

were victorious, but there is a sense that there's unfinished business.

And it clearly is the case that somebody like Philip, while he's putting his thumb pretty firmly in his new found kind of military power, quite how that arises, I think a big mystery, that he can leverage the Greek world by saying, and we're going to get vengeance on the Persian Empire.

And...

He doesn't manage to crack any Spartan heads together.

And Thebes.

Uphins does better than Thebes.

Thebes is well and truly thrashed.

Uphins is humiliated, or at least in the eyes of some, although there were others who were quite happy to go in with Philip II.

But I think what you say is interesting because there are backstories to all of this.

But, you know, Thebes has got a history with Philip II of Macedon.

The Greek world has got a history with the Persian Empire.

And you can't really understand what's going on in the 4th century without seeing that old scores are being settled.