Denying Thermopylae - taken from the Newsfeed section

[Tarbicus]

.. he was the first to think the idea of gathering facts even rumours if you like instead of just pass over what his grandfather told him. And if the Persians.Iranians complain where are their historians and sources to compare and extract a more solid opinion? There is not anyone as far as i know. That alone says alot imo.

But if you're objective about the subject then it simply means that he is unreliable, which we all know, but it does mean that what he describes must be taken with a sceptical view. It's not an attack on Greek culture or heritage, it's just being objective and certainly not blasphemous (which implies faith, and if faith is based on no evidence... :wink: )

I had a search on RAT on the subject of Thermopylae, and the whole subject of the nature of Leonidas' objectives has been called into question a number of times, amongst other aspects to Thermopylae.

[Arthes]

"What is most disturbing about this movie is not that it lacks historical accuracy. It is not that Xerxes, the Grandson of Cyrus The Great and loving husband of Esther, is shown as an oversized drag queen. It is not even the outdated racist cliché of casting the Persians as Africans and the Spartans as white, blue-eyed 'Chippendale dancers,' when in reality the roles may well have been reversed."
African Spartans? White, blue-eyed Persians? This is just plain silly.

The Persian Empire at the time included areas that had races with dark skins....Egypt for example would have had Nubians amongst their warriors. So a Nubian emissary was not out of the question... However, there was also an ancient race of noble Persians that did have white skin coupled with dark hair.
There is a poem written by a Spartan that describes at least some of them as having blond hair... Alcman/Alkman - Partheneion Hymn to Artemis
There are different translations - but all mention the golden hair, and further on in the poem is mentioned 'she of the lovely yellow hair'

Do you not see? The Venetian racehorse -
the hair of my kinswoman Hagesichora
blooms like untarnished gold;
her silver face -
but why should I talk with you openly?
......
Imagine her if you can. Her hair,
As gold as a Venetian mane,
Flowers around her silver eyes.
What can I say to make you see?
She is Hagesikhora and
Agido, almost, almost as beautiful,
......
See how her hair, so thick, so bold,
A long mane of Venetian gold,
Flowers around her silver face.
What figured image can I place
That Hagesikhora shall stand
As if you touched her with your hand?.
.....
(Fragment I.50-6)
From Diotima

The original Dorians were also said to be fair haired.. and 'silver' eyes, have cropped up amongst the 'Celtic' races.

The depictions of the Immortals show them with dusky skin and dark hair with aqualine noses.
See this portrait Immortals

So we have Spartan women described as fair haired and the Persians with dusky skins and Nubians in the ranks....!
Therefore, what is wrong with caucasian men with dark hair and sometimes blue eyes portraying the Spartans...?

[Hoplitesmores]

I have had it with the feeble & sick degreekification of Greek history ranging from Pyrrhus,Alexander,Leonidas ranging from achievements to events and cultures.Just because it serves the political propaganda of Usa,turkey,skopje,albania,Iran or whatever country with or without history wants to rape or twist events for their own "gain" doesnt make it right. In Greece we dont demonize ancient Persia or even Turkey for that matter. I ve also had it with anyone saying we are not Greeks but a mix of avars,mongols or whatever people they come up to quench their idiotic racist inferiority complex. Greeks werent the x-men nor were they blond 2meter male models, actually those that were blonde "giants" were barbarians with every negative sense the word has today.That is Greek history and we are the Greeks because we have Greek paideia.

And if anyone is offended thats great because now he knows how we feel.[/u][/i]

[Hoplitesmores]

I respect british,french,american,chinese,eskimo,aztec... history and i get pissed of when i see documentary and false claims about them not just about ancient greece and even more when noone defends them. Is this some version of 1984 we are living in or is everyone just an idiot on this planet? :evil:

[Tarbicus]

So instead of throwing your dummy out of the pram, why not just come back with a debate on the subject and reasons why it's not so?

[M.H. White]

Hoplitesmores wrote:
I am not going to comment on what is blasphemy and hubris anymore.

Blashphemy?

THIS ....IS....SPARTA!!!!! *kicks guy into a well*


Having said that makes me a bad person. I'm terribly sorry, but in light of the topic and seriousness of the discussion, I simply couldn't resist, it was just too funny.


edit: that was strange, some emoticons in my post got replaced with words. My quotation thing also dissappeared.

[Hoplitesmores]

D i broke into a laugh myself

[Hoplitesmores]

i cant continue this too many brain centers have been destroyed after reading http://www.atrium-media.com/rogueclassi ... 05815.html
i am done for and going for a cat-scan and a follow up euthanasia.

[john m roberts]

Stephen Colbert has said it best: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts."
For you Europeans, Colbert is an American TV satirist who coined the word "truthiness": personal truth that is made true by believing it.

[Narukami]

Well said Vortigern. :!:

Narukami

[Magnus]

Blashphemy?

THIS ....IS....SPARTA!!!!! *kicks guy into a well*

Hahahahahaha! Classic!

[Robert Vermaat]

scepticism is not bad

No it’s not but, unsupported and incorrect assertions under the aegis of what ‘looks like’ a reputable source is (bad) and in this case fairly malicious.

No Paul, read the entire article - nowhere does he even begin to say that the battles or the places were incorrect. And he's right about the source (Herodotus) being too trusted upon where the details are concerned. As far as his comments about history and sources are concerned, he says nothing new, nothing derogatory, nothing that any self-respecting historian should also think.

I find this bit rather ridiculous:
"Today, no other country resembles ancient Persia as closely as does the United States. If any country should sympathize with, rather than celebrate, Persia's quagmire in Greece, it is the United States. Few events in history mirror America's war on terror as closely as Persia's war on Greece."

Ridiculous? Calm down Dave, and look at it from the point of the ancient Persians: to them this was also a just war against agressors (the Greeks who in their opinion had meddled in Persian afairs). Same as the modern point of view of Americans against war on terror. That many do not agree with that view and see the Persians as agressors is, also, mirrored today in many parts of the world.
The Persian empire can also be compared to the modern superpowers.

No, not modern politics, but comparing times and views.

Iranian scholars would do better to promote the best parts of their history like Cyrus and the Sassanides rather than trying to proove that Xerxes was just a tourist :twisted:
Kind regards

Come on Stefanos, you know they do that but western scholarship continues to ignore that. And again, this article does not make Xerxes a sightseeing tourist. :wink:

[Tarbicus]

you know they do that but western scholarship continues to ignore that.

IIRC:

For many years it was believed that Great White sharks never ventured into the Mediterranean Sea. Some actually found this baffling given the Med is ideal for them. But, no evidence meant they didn't.

As it turned out there had been many reports of Great Whites in the Med. The problem was they had all been written about in languages other than English, so they never made it into the official statistics on Great White sightings.

Just because it ain't in a language you can't read don't mean it ain't there.

[Jona Lendering]

western scholarship continues to ignore that.

Mildly exaggerated: there are scholars who do their best. I think that Tom Holland could do a lot better, but in Persian Fire he at least tried to break through the one-sided image of the Persian Wars.

In fact, western scholars -or some of them, like Pierre Briant- do it better than the Iranians themselves; for them writing about pre-islamic Iran is often repeating propaganda by the Shah, who based his claims (Cyrus' Cylinder as "the first human rights charter"...) on the Achaemenid and Sassanid age, and accepted the Parthian throne name Pahlavi.

[conon394]

No Paul, read the entire article - nowhere does he even begin to say that the battles or the places were incorrect. And he's right about the source (Herodotus) being too trusted upon where the details are concerned. As far as his comments about history and sources are concerned, he says nothing new, nothing derogatory, nothing that any self-respecting historian should also think.

I don’t need be to be patronized, I read the article and I’m not sorry to say I have a distinctly different opinion… and yes unlike the author of the article I am honest enough to admit it an opinion not fact.

According to Herodotus, hundreds of Persian ships were sunk at Salamis. Where are the remains of these shipwrecks? Of course, not all shipwrecks are always salvaged, either because the exact site is indeterminate, or because a single ship is being sought. The location that is given by Herodotus is a relatively precise location, and is not in a desolate or extremely deep part of an ocean. It is close to land, and not too deep. So what has been found at the site? Not much. Apart from an occasional shipwreck or two from the ancient world, the vast graveyard of triremes one expects to find there is notably absent, even with today's complex ship salvage technologies.

The conspicuous absence of hundreds of sunk Persian ships and the mass graves of 19,000 dead Persian warriors sheds serious doubt not just on the details of Herodotus' story, but upon its entire foundation.

I don’t see any how any other conclusion can be drawn from the 2 quotes above but that the author is directly accusing Herodotus of fabricating the Persian naval losses at Salamis predicated on the fact that no vast grave yard of trireme hulls is extent at Salamis.

But as I noted already it seems very hypocritical for someone who would charge Herodotus with

it is a far cry from an acceptable historical account.

To suggest that one should be able to locate any significant galley battle in the Mediterranean from archeology is fairly dishonest. Show me any major battle involving galleys right up to Leponto or later that can be demonstrated via archeology. Where is the ‘acceptable historicalâ€