What Went Wrong for the Persians? And other Q’s | The Greek and Persian Wars with Roel Konijnendijk 

Omg!! This man is so beautiful!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!!

Good. I just started watching

Omg!! This man is so beautiful!! I want to put my face next to the arch of his foot!!!

Hi! It's @Roelkonijn

You forgot the part where the Med woke up.

@@gehlesen559 what do you mean?!

@@maxnetirtimon4121 I mean, that this version smells like it's been made by Iranian revisionists and makes 0 sense.

@@gehlesen559 it's literally from a classical source and the guy who told it (Dio Chrysostom) was a 'Greek' philosopher and historian himself cope harder.

@@maxnetirtimon4121 Dio lived ~100 AD. He was as much a contemporary to the Persian wars as I am to high medieval Germany. My thoughts precisely - That sounds a lot like Persians coping... And it still makes no sense. There's also a classical source that claimed the Persians had a manpower of 10 million. Or that Alexanders conquest of Persia was fought in a Homeric way. And we have a Persian under the alias of "Pythagoras" source, that claimed to know which magic spells Alexander used. Here are a couple of reasons why it smells fishy: Neither Naxos nor Eritrea were powerful enough to either warrant attention from the king of kings or a force of that many ships & men. There were also many, very rich and strategically important, islands in-between. Going all the way through the Aegean sea, just to loot some sheep in Eritrea seems like an odd goal for a decently sized army on warships. And if we accept that those were indeed the only goal, then why didn't they leave right afterwards? Why did they go on land at the exact same spot, where a huge force of Athenians, that should have been in Eritrea in this version of events, was waiting to have a scuffle? The next part is also nonsensical. If Xerxes had declared war on just the Spartans, why didn't he simply land in southern Greece? Why come from all the way north? Sparta had no fleet to prevent that. And if he had slewn their king at tge battle in Thermopyles, why did he proceed south, burned empty Athens twice, and decided to not go south and achieve his goal (Sparta) and instead left Greece forever? And if he did leave - who fought at platea against 90k Greeks? Just the Boetians & the Ionians from Asia minor? Or did that battle never happen? And if it didn't then *)1 And why did he never return despite pumping money into the city-states' infighting? And assuming all this is right anyway, that Sparta's army was defeated and Athens had been burned to the ground and everyone enslaved, then how on earth did both Athens and Sparta manage to become the strongest factions in Greece right after that? And if they were so resilient - why did the fall so easy right after the Peloponnesian war? *)1 Why did not a single soul call out their version, as, you know, Greeks normally did? I mean, it's kinda nonsensical to lie to your fellow Greeks about something that all of Greece had witnessed personally...

when you look at that part of the greek cost there is not alot of areas to put down a large army. the Persians might have just wanted to get there guys on any land they could to avoid a storm destroying everything (very common) before they packed up and went to a better spot.

Makes sense, there are so many battles in history where a smaller force ambushed a larger force, either due to terrain or weather.

Hmm i think the definition of citizenship back then would be quite different from modern day concept as related to the state. Citizenship was much more a local matter with its rights and obligation. I think it would be best to describe him as born a subject under the Persians and a citizen of Halicarnassus, later Thurii.

yes, pretty much

Not really no, what we think of as ‘Greek’ armour is really much more geographically widespread, linen and scale armour were common amongst the Persians and Medes but they tended to wear it under their clothing, helmets were also common as well and horse armour must grows more and more heavy. The main difference is the heavy shield & combat technique.

Thank you for these interesting information. I have been in Persepolice , Pasargadae and Susa , soldiers in rock reliefs usually carry spear with shield or bow and have long clothes and hat.I guess clothes and hats kinda give us that feeling

@@rrm9187 well don't you look dumb.

That might also be their ceremonial dress, not the battle version. These are palace guards on the reliefs after all.

It’s very likely there were, but sadly they are not extant

@@karlarden6260 any evidence of likelihood?

there were Persian historians. the thing is Iran had three terrible invasions happen to it. so the first one was Alexander then The Muslim conquests happened and last but not least the Mongols came. in all these three invasions the libraries were burned. not only the history books but also lots of great books too. I'm not sure if it's true or not but they say Avicenna had written a diet book that if you followed you could live for 100 years but it was burned when the Mongols came

Aliens

9th century AD is "ancient"? And what would those historians have to do with the Persia of pre-Alexander the Great times? I am more relevant to the study of the Norman conquest of Britain (and I'm no historian) than those alleged "historians" are to the actual ancient Persia.

everything you just said is wrong. the romans did win alot of those battles because of better strategies, sutch has choice of envirement and the way they used the tools that they had sutch has weapons and armor. absolutely the way the mongols and huns fought in horseback was completely diferent than the way other european civilizations fought and it did have some advantages.

@@fabiofernandes9122 The Romans thrashed the Macedons because of the extremely sloppy generalship of talentless inbreds like Perseus and Antiochus. The Goths annihilated the army of Valens because of Valens' blunders and not because defeat was inevitable. The Sassanids annihilated many Roman armies with ease not because they had figured out a new revolutionary way to wage war but because their commanders were better and their armies more experienced. At Zama the Romans would likely have lost if the Numidian cavalry had not defected to their side. Belisarius could well have lost in Africa if the Huns had defected to the Vandals. The Mongols and other similar horse archer armies were in no way better to a well-organized and well-led sedentary army and they were not something completely new. Western armies had faced such armies many times in the orient and the Macedonians and the Romans beat them repeatedly. The Mongols got absolutely curb-stomped in Hungary when they attempted to invade again and the Byzantines under competent emperors annihilated the Pechenegs and Cumans and had considerable success against the Seljuks. Also the idea of German Blitzkrieg is essentially a myth as modern historians like Citino have shown.

point being? yes better generals have better tactics. the romans managing to make the numidians join their side is part of strategy and also luring their enemies into places where their military tactics have an advantage is typical in wars and its genious.@@velvetcroc9827

​@@fabiofernandes9122 the Romans won on those parts of the battlefield, where their greek allies were stationed.

@@velvetcroc9827 lies. better strategists will always lead to victory.

They built the ancient European world, right?

firstly dutch is netherland and not germany. secondly ''iranian'' could be turkish/azeri iranian, kurdish iranian, arab iranian and ten more ethnics groups living in there...... but ''persian'' are real people from iran/persia.

@@p4p4juju Thats how the greeks call them, persians do not exist, they never called themesleves "persians" but iranians. The exonym Persia was the official name of Iran in the Western world before March 1935, but the Iranian peoples inside their country since the time of Zoroaster (probably circa 1000 BC), or even before, have called their country Arya, Iran, Iranshahr, Iranzamin (Land of Iran), Aryānām (the equivalent of Iran in the proto-Iranian language) or its equivalents. + Ottoman empire, wth is that, founder was Osman not Ottoman. Ottomans exist only acording to UK. Eastern roman empire "Byzantium" even if they called themselves romans, not some "Byzantines" , Byzant was a city name before it was renamed to Constantinople, not a name of the empire. It was Eastern Roman empire, not Byzanth. History is being changed because of the wrong teachings to make things more "simple".

Roel rolled his eyes because the host doesn't know too much about Greek Warfare as he does. But to get back to your point, yes Philip did create the Macedonian army, but why do you and others deny the fact that the one who led that army to conquer Persia and up to India was Alexander. And when you dare to think deeper you realise that if Philip instead of Alexander had lead the invasion there wouldn't have been a full conquest of Persia, that wasn't Philip’s approach, that was Alexander's. So credit fairly to Philip for creating the Macedonian army, but credit to Alexander as well for leading it to unparalleled success. You can have both with merit rather than credit one and try to diminish the other.

Roel will be delighted to know you all like his expressions and it’s interesting to see what folks think he’s reacting too. But I’m afraid you need to have listened to the pod we did on the end of Plataea for History Hack where he called Alexander the Great, Alexander the So-So, to understand. Basically it’s an in-joke that we both have heard enough about Alexander. I can assure you, Roel is a gentleman and would never roll his eyes at someone who doesn’t know as much about his special subject as he does.

@@adventuresinhistoryland5501 I have similar feelings about Alexander when people talk about the evolution of Greek society. I took it as being an eye-roll at Alexander and his excessive fame and how Phillip is so often ignored, and not an eye-roll at the person posing the statement.

@@klaudioabazi4478Alexander was certainly a great general but was a horrible ruler. If Phillip had survived to lead the campaign against Persia then I suspect things would indeed have been rather different but not in the way you indicate. The campaign would not have extended to India, or even into further Persian teritories after the death of Xerxes, and would not have involved a revolt of the Macedonians being led on campaign or a failure of the empire afterwards. It would have been a campaign of conquest and not a campaign of ego. I'd expect it would have resulted in a unified conquered Persia and an actual ruler over the new Macedonian empire which would have lasted beyond a single generation. My larger gripe with praising Alexander while failing to credit Phillip is that the whole campaign would have been impossible without the transformative works of Phillip. He brought true professionalism to Macedonia's army, forged alliances between the Greek city states beating them at their own political games, and brought Macedonia from being the Greek back-water to prominence, all in the lifespan of a single man. Without the foundations laid by Phillip, Alexander would have been a great general and warlord on par with Jason of Pherae, and a mere footnote in history.

@@jarrodbright5231 I do agree Alexander wasn't cut for rule cause he loved war so much. My point is, i am comfortable with praising both men's good qualities. Yes without Philip the conquests would have been impossible, he created the Macedonian Army, but it is equally true that without Alexander the conquests wouldn't have reached that far, whether for the best or for the worst that's the fact. So i feel comfortable praising both father and son, and also acknowledging their flaws, for all the good qualities Alexander inherited from his father he also inherited the bad ones, particularly heavy drinking. They both were skilled men, but flawed as well, so i feel comfortable acknowledging them both. But yeah, history really is frustrating cause it usually acknowledges one character and leaves the others in the shadows.