While reading Strabo’s geographic tour de force, I chanced upon the following passage on Ierlen:
It does seem to lay it on a bit thick. Perhaps all that is said about oi barbaroi is just fanciful chimera. Of course, no one wants to say they are fighting pussillanimous enemy; it would reflect poorly on them.
Then, could it be that the primitive, barbarous savages that threatened Roman civility and the known world were not so savage after all?
Was theo kaesaron then not a hero but a murder; a perpetrator of mass genocide? Of course not!
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Our history books do seem immensely biased when it comes to the Athenian maritime empire. After the defeat of the overwhelming Median forces, Athens filled the power vacum left in the Hellenic world.
Argues that the defeat was insignificant to the Medes and that Greece at the time was but an impovished backwater. Theucyides declares that the Greeks were originally a pirating nation. Strabo corrobrates this:
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The Medes were unable to continue their western campaign as they had bigger problems on their eastern border.
Of course, as Greece is the cradle of Western civilization, we are naturally inclined to make a big fuss of the victory. And indeed, we completely ignore that the Greeks were not holy unified, but that each city state looked out for its own well-being. Were not the Thracians on the Mede’s side during the struggle?
But as I was saying, while we look favorably upon Athens and Greece during this particular point in human history