The 300 Savages at Thermopylae: A Response to the Hollywood Film '300' By Dr. Samar Abbas, Bhubaneshwar-751005, India. The recent Hollywood film '300' about the defeat of Dorian Spartans by the Imperial Iranians has created a storm of protest from Iranians worldwide. This is not surprising, since the film makers got the entire story wrong, turning the heroic Iranian victors of the battle, the defenders of Cuneiform civilization, into villains, and morphing the tribal Dorians militants from Sparta into heroes. In fact, the film is full of obvious cinematographic errors: Xerxes is shown as an alien with glowing skin, piercings and vines growing from his body, and rhinos, ogres and dragons are depicted on the Imperial side to further subhumanize the Iranians. This article shall not analyze these aberrations and mistakes, but instead focus on the historical inaccuracies and political propaganda of '300'.
SPARTA, AN APARTHEID STATE Firstly, the Dorians were not fighting for "freedom". On the contrary; Dorian Sparta shared many characteristics with later totalitarian states; cold-blooded eugenics along the lines of Nazi Germany was practised, and mass racial slavery existed just as in the 19th-century circum-Caribbean and apartheid-era South Africa. Not only were the petty Greek tribal states full-scale slave societies; they were racist slave societies, with the indigenous Pelasgians and other tribes enslaved by a tiny minority of Greek invaders. In the words of Prof. Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, Sparta was an "apartheid state":
"And had Leonidas undergone the agoge, he would have come of age not by slaying a wolf, but by murdering unarmed helots in a rite known as the Crypteia. These helots were the Greeks indigenous to Lakonia and Messenia, reduced to slavery by the tiny fraction of the population enjoying Spartan "freedom." By living off estates worked by helots, the Spartans could afford to be professional soldiers, although really they had no choice: securing a brutal apartheid state is a full-time job, to which end the Ephors [Sparta's highest officials] were required to ritually declare war on the helots." (Lytle 2007) The roots of this mentality lie deep in Greek thought, such as Aristotle's belief that some were "slaves by nature". No wonder then that many scholars trace the origin of racism to the ancient Greeks (Isaac 2004). That the brutal Dorian slave society of Sparta claimed to be standing for "freedom" hence sounds as hollow as the similar boast once made by the Confederate States of America. Whatever "democracy" existed in the Greek city-states was smothered when Alexander of Macedon crushed the Greek tribal states, blotting them out of existence. Paradoxically, Hollywood made a movie a few years ago, called "Alexander" and directed by Oliver Stone, which portrayed the Macedonian demolishers of Athenian democracy in a positive light. The glorification of both Athenian democracy and its destroyers is a contradiction at the very root of pan-Occidentalism.
INFANTICIDE AND EUGENICS Yet another ghastly custom of the Dorians was that of infanticide and, yes, Nazi-style eugenics. As Dana Stevens notes, "Another of the Spartans' less-than-glorious customs is the practice of eugenics, hurling any less-than-perfect infant off a cliff onto a huge pile of baby skeletons. Unfortunately for the 300 at Thermopylae, this system of racial cleansing isn't foolproof: One deformed hunchback, Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan), manages to make it to adulthood and begs Leonidas for a chance to serve Sparta in the 300. Sure enough, when he's turned down, the hunchback confirms his moral weakness by accepting Xerxes' offer to join ranks with the Persians." (Stevens 2007) This handicapped Spartan, betrayed by his own intolerant and fanatical Dorians merely because of his physical handicap, naturally turned to the more tolerant and civilized Iranians. Indeed, one may say that it was Ephialtes who was the hero of Thermopylae, for it was he who advocated changes in tactics which led to the crushing Dorian defeat. As if by a sudden turn of righteousness, the cruel Leonidas was defeated by the hunchback whom he had insulted. Thermopylae is hence also about the triumph of mind over brawn, the intellect of the handicapped Ephialtes defeating the brute animal-like brawn of Leonidas. HUMAN SACRIFICE Secondly, the film portrays the Iranians as paying no respect for human life, with the Greeks supposedly being the standard-bearers of humanity. This is also totally false, for human sacrifice was rampant amongst the Greeks (Hughes 1991, Schwenn 1915). The Pagan Greeks called human sacrifice as "anthropo-phagia", and this base practice was widespread, in sharp contrast to civilized Iran. In Greek legend, Thyestas' sons were killed and served to Thyestas himself by his own brother, whence the term Thyestean banquest arose to denote cannibal feasts. Minucius Felix' third-century dialogue "Octavius" on the value of Christianity describes the loathsome practice of human sacrifice amongst, "the Romans themselves, who in the past would bury alive two Greeks and two Gauls and who in his own day sacrifice men to Jupiter Latiaris (Oct. 30.1)" (Rives 1995) In fact, so common was human sacrifice in Graeco-Roman religion that the Christians made this one of their main planks during their debates with the Pagans. In this connection, we see that Clement of Alexandria noted,
"... a lengthy and elaborately documented list of peoples and individuals who have practised human sacrifice. For example, "Monimus, in his collection of Thaumasia, relates that in Pella of Thessaly human sacrifice is offered to Peleus and Cheiron, the victim being an Achaean. Thus too, Anticleides in his Nostoi declares that the Lynctians, a race of Cretans, slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says that Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus'. He provides similar evidence about Aristomenes the Messenian, the Taurians,the Phocaeans, Erectheus the Athenian, and Marius the Roman. 75 [75. Protr. III.42.1-43.2, in the Loeb translation of G.W.Butterworth.]" (Rives 1995, p.81) PEDERASTY Thirdly, the film spreads the misconception that the Persians were generally homosexual. There is of course, no historical evidence for this. In fact, it was the Dorian Spartans who were commonly and, in fact, flagrantly open about homosexuality, which was an integral part of Dorian Spartan society. Even Alexander the Accursed, the Macedonian invader and destroyer of cuneiform civilization, was said to have been a pederast. As Keith Wikle notes, "Next, I know a lot of blokes who will cringe at this, but the selection of the 300 by Leonidas may actually have been 300 homosexual pairs. The agoge (Spartan military school) was an indoctrination into pederasty where a teenage boy was paired with an older more experienced Spartan for initiation. So those men were really, really, close. That never made it into the comic or the film either. I'm sure 17 year old boys would not pay $8.00 to see 300 gay men cuddle under red cloaks before being annihilated. But it is an important part of the story." (Wikle 2007) So common was homosexuality in ancient Greece that it came to be known as "Greek love" (Symonds 1901). Further, Lesbianism is named after the Greek island of Lesbos. In effect, the Spartan military barracks had a form of institutionalized homosexual rape, with the seniors forcing the younger recruits to give in to their beastly lusts. Also, the Spartan military camps were nothing but robber schools, for recruits were also not given food so that they had to learn to steal it, in effect making thieves out of an entire nation. Little wonder, then that the Irano-Semitic peoples considered the Greeks to be effeminate. In fact, the terms for Greek in the Irano-Semitic world (Old Iranian "Yauna", Pali "Yona", Greek "Javan" and Prakrit "Yavana") besides meaning barbarian or savage, are derived from the root-word "yoni", meaning vagina. So, even the etymology of this term itself shows that the tall, long-headed and muscular Iranoid and Araboid races, so heroized in the Persepolis bas-reliefs, regarded the short-statured, round-headed and dark-skinned Alpine Graeco-Pelasgian race to be effeminate, in sharp contrast to the depictions in the movie. An illustration of this attitude comes from Mardonius, who stated that "... notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle." (Herodotus 7.9)
NEGROID ELEMENT AMONGST GREEKS The fourth historical error is the false racial imagery in the film. Thus, the movie seeks to portray the Iranians as black, and the Greeks as white-skinned. In fact, it is the Greeks who have a significant Negroid ancestry (Arnaiz-Villens et al. 2001). This Negroid element would have partly come from some of the aboriginal tribes. Indeed, the Greeks are largely descended from the various aboriginal inhabitants such as the Pelasgi, Leleges, Kuretes, Kaukones, Aones, Temmikes, Hyantes, Telchines, Boeotian Thracians, Teleboae, Ephyri and Phelgyae. Some of these were of round-headed Balkan stock, others were Negroid. A small part may have also entered through slaves imported from "Aethiopia" (Africa). Their round-headedness, and their partial Negroid ancestry, prove that the Greeks are largely descended from the pre-Greek aboriginal inhabitants of Greece. While there is no evidence that the blacks faced any racial hostility in Iran, the fact is that the Iranians were definitely taller and fairer than the Greeks, just as they are today.
GREEK TERRORISM AGAINST THE EMPIRE The fifth historical error in the film is the claim that the Greeks were being invaded for no reason whatsoever, that it was the greed and imperialism of the Iranians which led to the war. The Greeks are falsely shown as victims throughout the film. In fact, the film does not attempt to even tell its audience why the petty Greek states were being punished by the Iranian Empire. The fact is that the Iranian Empire was retaliating against the ghastly terrorist attacks on its soil carried out by the independant Greek tribes; in particular, for the dastardly Sack and Massacre of Sardis (Kar 2007). As Herodotus himself describes, "Sardis however was burnt, and, among other buildings, a temple of the native goddess Cybele was destroyed; which was the reason afterwards alleged by the Persians for setting on fire the temples of the Greeks." (Herodotus 5.102) If the makers of the film had at least read Greek history, they would not have embarrassed themselves by making such stupid mistakes. They would have come across this eloquent announcement by Xerxes during the commencement of the War against the Greeks:
"For this cause I have now called you together, that I may make known to you what I design to do. My intent is to throw a bridge over the Hellespont and march an army through Europe against Greece, that thereby I may obtain vengeance from the Athenians for the wrongs committed by them against the Persians and against my father. Your own eyes saw the preparations of Darius against these men; but death came upon him, and balked his hopes of revenge. In his behalf, therefore, and in behalf of all the Persians, I undertake the war, and pledge myself not to rest till I have taken and burnt Athens, which has dared, unprovoked, to injure me and my father. Long since they came to Asia with Aristagoras of Miletus, who was one of our slaves, and, entering Sardis, burnt its temples and its sacred groves; again, more lately, when we made a landing upon their coast under Datis and Artaphernes, how roughly they handled us ye do not need to be told." (Herodotus 7.8) Ironically, the victims of these vicious terrorist attacks were mostly fellow Greeks who lived under the beneficial Iranian Imperial rule, primarily the eastern Ionians. Of course, these minor details would not have bothered the Dorian and Aeolian terrorists and mercenaries, for their main goal was to loot and plunder the much wealthier and more prosperous districts of the Empire. The attacks by the Balkanic tribes against the Iranian Empire had exactly the same motive as those of the Germanic tribes against the Roman Empire, or of the Siberian tribes against the Han Chinese Empire: loot nad plunder. Their rich targets could amass their legendary wealth under Iranian rule, which created a much larger common market and consequent overall prosperity. It is on this wealth that the rabble of the poorer and rustic Greek tribes cast their greedy eyes.
It is also important to note that many Greeks themselves invited Emperor Xerxes to liberate Greece: "For, in the first place, it chanced that messengers arrived from Thessaly, sent by the Aleuadae, Thessalian kings, to invite Xerxes into Greece, and to promise him all the assistance which it was in their power to give. And further, the Pisistratidae, who had come up to Susa, held the same language as the Aleuadae, and worked upon him even more than they, by means of Onomacritus of Athens, an oracle-monger, and the same who set forth the prophecies of Musaeus in their order." (Herodotus, 7.6) The reason for this is because these Greeks, mostly from Ionia, had seen first-hand the benefits of Pax Iranica. Hence, another reason for Xerxes' march was an attempt to civilize the savage Balkan tribes. This was part of a more general strategy of the Iranians to bestow their superior and more ancient cuneiform Irano-Semitic civilization upon the less civilized and barbaric tribes of the outlying provinces, thereby reducing the military threat they posed, and bringing them into the sphere of the civilized world. Xerxes' march was an example of a larger, wealthier, more powerful and more cultured empire, trying to civilize a group of much smaller, petty, fragmented and mutually warring pastoral tribal confederations, towns and villages. This strategy worked in Anatolian Ionia, in the Indus Valley and in Libya. Unfortunately for the world, it failed in Greece, much as Rome's civilizing mission failed in Germania.
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DORIANS TO SPARTANS The sixth historical error of the film is that the Dorians are persistently called "Spartan" and given a completely new identity. The purpose of this deception is two-fold: Disconnect the Dorians of Sparta from their uncivilized Dorian tribal roots, thereby cutting them off from the Dorian invaders who plunged Greece into the Greek Dark Ages and annihilated the pre-Dorian Greek civilization, and Forge an artificial pan-Greek unity by making out of the Greeks not the welter of tribes which they were, but a collection of "city-states". The fact is that such city-names never served as correct ethnonyms. People from London, Paris and Moscow are not called "Londoners" or "Parisians" or "Moscowites", but Englishmen, Frenchmen and Russians based on their ethnicity. In case of the Spartans, the correct ethnonym is "Dorian", for the Spartans were descendants of the Dorian tribal invaders, as the Athenians were always at pains to point out. The reason pan-Hellenists are so intent on disconnecting the Spartans from their Dorian past is because the Dorian invasions plunged Greece into the Greek Dark Ages, leading to the annihiliation of pre-Dorian Greek civilization. That the same "defenders of Thermopylae" were, a few generations back, smashing Greek civilization to smithereens does not make consistent history. It is also inconsistent with the writings of Athenian philosophers, who saw the Dorians as savages and uncivilized brutes. In fact, if there was a divided group of people anywhere, it was the Greeks. Unlike the Iranians, who forged a single empire which united all Iranians and Semites for several centuries, the Greeks failed to form a single unified state for even a small period of time. The Pagan Greeks never formed a single political unit, they were merely tribal confederations (mis-called as "city-states" in Hellenocentric works) fighting one another.
In this regard, Mardonius stated that, " ... already have we subdued their children who dwell in our country, the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians. I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle. And yet, I am told, these very Greeks are wont to wage wars against one another in the most foolish way, through sheer perversity and doltishness. For no sooner is war proclaimed than they search out the smoothest and fairest plain that is to be found in all the land, and there they assemble and fight; whence it comes to pass that even the conquerors depart with great loss: I say nothing of the conquered, for they are destroyed altogether." (Herodotus 7.9 http://www.iranchamber.com/history/herodotus/herodotus_history_book7.php)
The statements of Mardonius shows that the Iranians clearly recognized the separate Greek tribal nations of Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians, their lack of political unity, and the nearly continuous inter-tribal warfare they waged against each other.
DIVIDE AND RULE: PERSIA VS. IRAN The seventh historical wrong is to give the Achaemenid Iranian Empire a new name, which the Greeks themselves concocted: the so-called "Persian Empire". Everywhere, on the inscriptions of Persepolis, in the traditional Iranian history as handed down to the Shah-namah, and in the sacred Avesta, it is observed that the Emperors refer to their domain as the "Iranian Empire", the "Shahanshahate-e-Iran", the "Iran-Shahr". Nowhere in the inscriptions, in the Avesta, or in the Shah-nameh do we hear of this silly concocted "Persian Empire". The Greeks might as well have called it the "Persepolitan Empire", a word as comic as the former invention. This was not the rule of the Persian people over everybody else. The Parsa clan were too few in number to have ruled over the entire Irano-Semitic world for so long. It is hence very clear that the Achaemenid Iranian Empire is the common heritage of the entire Irano-Semitic world, and should be properly named as such, on the model of similar names, like the Han Chinese Empire.
Why, then, do Hellenomaniac historians and the film refuse to call the Iranian Empire by its correct name, and insist on using the word they invented, "Persian Empire"? The aim is to trivialize the state in question, and portray it as merely the domination of one segment of the population (either from a particular region or a tribe) over the entire whole, thereby fomenting disunity and rebellions within that state. By insisting on using the term "Persian Empire", the Hellenists, after their proverbial cunning, sow the seeds of intra-Iranian division by portraying the state as the rule of the Persian branch of Iranians over the others. Instead of becoming the common heritage of all modern Irano-Semitic people from Morocco to Punjab, the Iranian Empire is devalued to become only the heritage of the Persians of Persis province. Similar strategies have been and are being used elsewhere:
Pan-Hellenists to this day refuse to use the words Macedonia or Macedonian to refer to the country or the people of that name, insisting on calling these as "FYROM" and "Skopjians". The same strategy of divide and rule was at work when the British insisted on calling the Second German Empire as the "Prussian Empire". Anti-Muslim authors refuse to call the Arabian Caliphate by its name, instead preferring to use the terms "Umayyad Empire" and "Abbasid Empire". Such usage would be analogous to calling the "British Empire" as the "English Empire", say, or the "Spanish Empire" as the "Castilian Empire". Or, to go one step further, it is the same as calling France the "Paris Republic", Russia as the "Moscow Empire", and China as the "Beijing Presidency" or Greece as the "Athenian Republic". Now that we have addressed some of the most glaring errors in the film, it is time to turn to the ideology behind it.
PAN-OCCIDENTALISM Why has Hollywood suddenly embarked on a propaganda campaign trying to glorify pre-Christian, pre-Reformation tribes, who are clearly "Pagan" idolaters? That too, why is it trying to lionize a clearly pathetic military defeat, which failed to stop Xerxes' advance to Athens, and which could not stop him from burning it down, in revenge for Sardis? Why celebrate an event, after which all of the southern Balkans were, for a short while, ruled by the Empire? Even if the inflated numbers of Greek historians are to be believed, this was only a minor skirmish from the Iranian point of view. "Pagan" Italo-Balkan civilization is clearly distinct from the much later Protestant Anglo-Saxon civilization of Hollywood. Not a drop of Greek blood would flow through the veins of the typical White Anglo-Saxon Protestant of New England. Historically, the Dorians couldn't have heard of Jesus, because Christianity wouldn't be invented for another thousand years. So why boast of a civilization which their own creed erased soem 1700 years ago?
The reason is a now declining stream of thought called pan-Occidentalism, which seeks to confound all the distinct civilizations of "the West" into one great porridge. Of course, Nordicism, pan-Germanism, Anglo-Saxonism, Latin nationalism, Macedonianism and Hellenic Exclusionism have all hobbled away at this outdated dogma. The Greeks, of course, had no concept of "Europe" (Burke 1980), and even considered the Macedonians as non-Hellenic. The whole concept of the supposed "West" was only coined recently; according to the Oxford Dictionary, Chesterton was the first to use the expression "Western Man", that too only in 1907. What is commonly called "Western civilization" in the Anglophone press is in fact a popular abbreviation for "Anglo-Saxon Protestant" civilization, which arose with the Protestant Reformation. This is the reason why Brazil, Columbia, Mexico and other Catholic countries are not considered "Western" by most authorities on the topic.
Furthermore, scholars also question the very heterogeneity of the concept of "Graeco-Roman civilization", or what is more properly called, "Italo-Balkan civilization". The reason is that the Latins was responsible for many attacks on Greek culture:
The savage Roman destruction of Seleucia, the center of Greek and Macedonian culture which had survived for centuries under the protection of the benevolent Arsacid Iranian Empire, was responsible for the decline of Greek culture in the East; The ferocious Latin sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade further destroyed the remainder of Pagan Greek culture which had survived Orthodox Byzantine persecutions. HISTORICAL DISCONTINUITY Second, Greek cultural accomplishments in the arts, literature and architecture - themselves largely derived and adapted from the Irano-Semitic cultures of Egypt and Phoenicia - were decimated and eventually nullified with the triumph of Christianity in the 3rd century A.D. Under the Byzantines, most of the hated "Pagan" Greek literature and culture was destroyed and simply vanished forever. As examples, the Suda, quoting John of Antioch, mentions that the Emperor Jovian destroyed Julian's library at the Temple of Hadrian in Antioch, and in 391 A.D. the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all Pagan temples. The Byzantine Patriarch Theophilus then proceeded to destroy the Library at Alexandria (Mutahhari 1997), which was a storehouse for Pagan Greek wisdom: "Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis, without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials, but these obstacles proved so insuperable that he was obliged to leave the foundations, and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterwards cleared away, to make room for a church erected in honour of the Christian martyrs. The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or the avarice of the archbishop might have been satiated with the rich spoils which were the reward of his victory." (Gibbon 1776, vol.5, ch.xxviii, `Final Destruction of Paganism', p.66) Carl Sagan in Cosmos also notes that the murder of the Greek woman-philosopher Hypataea by Byzantine Christian mobs occurred during this time. Furthermore, the ancient Greeks were decimated, and the modern Greeks are mostly descendants of Slavs (as Fallmeyer as shown) and a Pelasgian-Negroid mixed survival. At Thermopylae, the Iranians were not fighting Protestants or Crusaders on a holy war. They were attempting to civilize a backward wasteland inhabited by savage tribes - many of whom were called barbarian by the Athenians themselves. And they succeeded in Ionia, laying the foundations for later Greek civilization, which later flowed to Doris and Aeolis in the Balkans. Howeover one point stands out: in the eyes of the occidentalists, the Achaemenid Iranian Empire is no different from its successor state, the Arabian Caliphate. This should act as an eye-opener to the anti-Semites amongst the Iranians. Part of the shock of many Iranians living outside Iran is that the Pre-Islamic heritage of Iran should be seen by the West in the same light as Islam itself. There is no discontinuity in Iranian history in the eyes of the Occidentalist historian, there is no longer any reason why there should be any amongst Iranian historians any more.
WHO WAS CIVILIZED ? It is pertinent to answre the important question: who stood for civlization at Thermopylae ? The 300 members of the Dorian tribe from a village called Sparta, or the 400,000 strong army of the largest and most powerful empire the world had seen ? This is just like asking whether the rabble of Goths at Adrianople stood for civilization, or the legions of the Roman Empire. The answer should have been obvious even to a bunch of Hollywood film-makers, yet the Iranians and their Semitic allies are portrayed as hateful barbarian monsters throughout the film. Hence, a detailed comparison of the Irano-Semitic civilization with the Greek is required here: Architecture: Scarcely any monument survives from Dorian Sparta. Sparta does not have any acropolis like Athens. By contrast, the Irano-Semitic peoples built the magnificent Pyramids of Egypt, the stupendous Tower of Babel and the glorious Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Writing: The Irano-Semitic Phoenicians taught the Greeks the alphabet, so that the so-called Greek alphabet is nothing but a corruption of the Phoenician: "Now the Phoenicians who came with Cadmus, and to whom the Gephyraei belonged, introduced into Greece upon their arrival a great variety of arts, among the rest that of writing, whereof the Greeks till then had, as I think, been ignorant." (Herodotus, 5.58) In fact, all major Italo-Balkan writing systems are of Semitic origin. Antiquity: Irano-Semitic Civilization dates back to the semi-Semitized Sumerians, around 5000 B.C. and the Egypto-Semites, to around 4000 B.C. By contrast, classical Greek civilization commences only about 1000 B.C., after having been ravaged by the marauding Dorians. Health: Life expectancy in Greece was a mere 30 years. Literature: In Xerxes' eastern capital Taxila, Panini (who Amartya Sen recently showed, was an Iranian) wrote the world's first scientific book of grammar. And in Judah, the book of Job was written, in which God and man discuss the nature of good an evil. These achievements occurred when the Dorians, Ionians and Aeolians were busy slaughtering each other. The cuneiform edicts at Behistun, written in Elamite, Babylonian and Old Iranian languages, illustrate the legitimacy of the Iranian Empire as the heir to the Elamite, Babylonian and Avestan traditions. This is exactly analogous to the way in which the Muscovites inherited the Byzantine civilization to inaugurate Slavo-Byzantine civilization, or the manner in which the Romans inherited Greek thought to form the Graeco-Roman, or more correctly, Italo-Balkan, civilization. Furthermore, the Iranian Emperors were crowned as pharaohs, and liberated the Jews, leading to several laudatory verses in the Bible, so that the Achaemenid Iranian Empire represented the highest pinnacle of Semitic civilization. In fact, the diffusion of civilization into Greece from the Irano-Semitic East itself shows the origin of Hellenic culture. It was Ionia which had the benefit of being under Iranian rule, and was consequently the most civilized part of the Greek-speaking world, being illuminated by the rays of Irano-Semitic civilization. It is hence the Ionian language which was the predominant language of the Greek-speaking world for a long time.
BALKAN BARBARISM A recurring theme in history is that of a great Empire failing to pacify barbarian tribes on its borders, and then ultimately being overthrown by these barbarians in a subsequent age. Thus, the Roman Empire failed to pacify Germania, and was later brought to its knees by Germanic invaders. Han China failed to civilize Siberia, and it is from here that the barbarians issued who ultimately overthrew that state. The Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary failed in the northern Balkans, and were engulfed in the ensuing World War. Similarly, the failure of the Iranian Empire to pacify and civilize the Greeks, Macedonians and Thracians of the southern Balkan wastes had fateful consequences centuries later, when these same unpacified barbarian tribes brought about the fall of the Achaemenid Iranian Empire. Yet, in this case, the consequences of this conflagration were far more severe, for not only did a great world-empire disappear, but Cuneiform civilization itself was annihilated. This cataclysmic event occurred in a series of invasions from the Balkans. The savage Balkanic invasions of the Argeaedae under Alexander the Accursed, the Seluecidae, the Antigonidae under Antigonus the Cyclops, the Dorians of Agesilaus, and other assorted tribes of savages led to the demise of the Cuneiform stage of Irano-Semitic civilization. The Argead invaders sacked Persepolis and Babylon, hunting down and burning most of the Avesta and Zoroastrian scripture in fanatical book-burnings, a loss which could only be partially retrieved under the Sassanian revival. The Towers of Babel, the ziggurats of yore, disappeared under the sands of Iraq under the impact of the Antigonid invasions of Antigonus the Cyclops, a man as monstrous as his name implies. The savage Seleucid era of tyranny was a long period of incest, patricide and horrible mass murders. At the end of the Seleucid age, the cuneiform and heiroglyphic scripts had died out, ensuring that the knowledge enshrined in the Semitic cultures of Babylon and Egypt disappeared for millenia. Several centuries of history in eastern Iran, homeland of the Avesta, simply do not exist. Coins must be used as the sole reconstructive mechanism for this lost period of history. Half of the Irano-Semitic world was ruled by alien and savage invaders for centuries, and were only liberated from non-Irano-Semitic rule by the Arabian Caliphate.
Yet, this conquest of Greater Iran by the Balkan horders was simply a Zufallstande, a mere coincidence, an occurrence against the fundamental laws of nature. It represented the triumph of the savage over the civilized, the weak over the strong, the effeminate over the masculine. This statement is proven by the fact that Alexander's warlord territories broke up into myriad competing states even during his lifetime.
ANTI-SEMITISM Finally, Hellenocentrism has a long history of Anti-Semitism in general, and Anti-Judaism in particular (Lazare 1894). The Roman Sack of Jerusalem and the Macedonian Seleucid wars with the Maccabeans of Israel are only a few instances of the Anti-Semitism running through Italo-Balkan culture. As the Iranians liberated the Jews under Cyrus, and formed an important element of that empire, so the old Nazi-era hook-nosed stereotype of the hated Jew re-appears as well amongst the Iranian characters. The Anti-Semitism of the film hence taps deep into various stereotypes created by a long history of Hellenocentrism and pan-Occidentalism. CONCLUSION The ideology represented by the film "300" is nothing but brute barbarism, senseless savagery and mindless Hellenocentrism and Balkanism. It is this barbarism which wiped out the entire cuneiform civilization of the Babylonians and Egyptians, turning back the clock of knowledge by thousands of years. It must be fought tooth and nail by the entire civilized world. If it is not stopped now, Hollywood will move on to make yet more and more films demonizing Irano-Semitic civilization. Native Americans, Blacks and Hispanics have long fought to free Hollywood from negative portrayals of their communities. One does not see any films justifying enslavement of "inferior niggers" any more, nor does one see any glorification of General Custer or other cowboys, despite freedom of speech. It is time the Irano-Semitic peoples took up the same struggle. Indeed, the strength and success of the reaction from the Irano-Semitic world has upset the pan-Occidentalists. This is evidence that the Irano-Semitic world is not yet vanquished, in spite of the best efforts of the barbarians from the Dorians down to the brutish British, and now Hollywood. To date, the reaction to 300 is one of the rare time that Iranianists and Islamists stood in unbreakable unity. 300 has in fact forged unity amongst the disparate elements of Irano-Semitic civilization, a lesson which should anyway have been learned from Mutahhari (Mutahhari 1987).
All Irano-Semitic nations - both Muslim and Jewish - should band together in solidarity and demand an apology from the makers of the film. A strong ideological counterattack must be mounted, not just against the film, but against pan-Occidentalism, pan-Hellenism and brute Balkanism. Warner Brothers should issue an apology not just to Iran, but to the entire Irano-Semitic civilization as a whole. Or they should now make a film showing the Iranian Empire in a positive light. They should apologize to the Jews and clarify their position, for having apparently fomented Anti-Semitism by casting their homeland and Cyrus in a bad light and allegedly reviving the Nazi hook-nose stereotype. Jews worldwide must note the widespread Anti-Semitism enshrined at the very roots of Pan-Hellenism and Pan-Occidentalism (Lazare 1894). Asking for a ban on the film in countries with total freedom of speech is a wrong approach. Instead, the story of Thermopylae must be told from the Irano-Semitic perspective. It is time the Irano-Semites came out with a film called "Alexander the Monster", or, better still, "The 300 Savages".
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While I agree that 300 has a whole lot of Western dogmatic historical distortion, I DONT agree with this:
quote: Architecture: Scarcely any monument survives from Dorian Sparta. Sparta does not have any acropolis like Athens. By contrast, the Irano-Semitic peoples built the magnificent Pyramids of Egypt, the stupendous Tower of Babel and the glorious Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Second, Greek cultural accomplishments in the arts, literature and architecture - themselves largely derived and adapted from the Irano-Semitic cultures of Egypt and Phoenicia - ... Antiquity: Irano-Semitic Civilization dates back to the semi-Semitized Sumerians, around 5000 B.C. and the Egypto-Semites, to around 4000 B.C. By contrast, classical Greek civilization commences only about 1000 B.C., after having been ravaged by the marauding Dorians.
The ancient Egyptian civilization that built the pyramids was NOT semitic and did not learn civilization from Iranian people.
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Surprisingly, I haven't seen the movie yet but most everyone I know has. I have seen the previous, and I could tell that it was the work of Frank Miller since I did see his other movie Sin City, and well some of the characters in the 300 (the Persians of course) looked like the unhuman monster like creatrues in Sin City. LOL
And of course I didn't expect anything historically accurate about this movie even less so than Gibson's Apocalypto.
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Also I can't help but notice the critic's emphasis on the Greeks being short and "dark" but the Iranians or as he puts it "Irano-Semites" to be "tall and fair". And it sounds rather disturbing that this is coming from an Indian.
He also seems to associate "round-headedness" with "negroid" features and 'long-headedness' with 'caucasian'(?) When the opposite seems more true-- round headedness is common among Central and Northern Europeans and with many peoples of northern Eurasia in general.
Of course he is correct about Greece having black ancestry as those of us in this forum are too well aquainted with all the studies that confirm this .
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More historically accurate depictions of Xerxes:
300's Xerxes:
Now I ask, what was going on in Frank Miller's mind?! LOL Was he on X (ecstasy) when he came up with the character? Posts: 26248 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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^Yeah, especially since Semitic and Iranian are two entirely different languages and cultures. The author of the article is neither, but Indian. Although Indians are linguistically and culturally close relatives of Iranians. It's likely he meant to defend his 'Aryan' brothers in Iran.
But indeed, as long as you have collective group thinking like culture or the ever infamous 'race' there is always going to be "centrism". Posts: 26248 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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We are again generalizing regarding use of modern vs past historical events or peoples! India, as in South India, no way reflects a Persian relationship (brother or cousin!) vis a vis the physcial reference of distinction of sameness! Northern India, yes, but we are arbitrarily chosing reference points. What do I mean? South Indians have never looked like Persians!
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^Yazid, what are you talking about? No one ever said South Indians looked like Persians. Is the author of the article a South Indian?
My point was that linguistically and culturally, Indians mainly north Indians do share a relation with Iranians. And perhaps that is why this Indian author is so quick to come to the defense of the Iranians.
Posts: 26248 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: More historically accurate depictions of Xerxes:
300's Xerxes:
Now I ask, what was going on in Frank Miller's mind?! LOL Was he on X (ecstasy) when he came up with the character?
I have the actual movie on my website ... Click Here! PLEASE NOTE: ITS IN FRENCH ... So if you don't understand french I suggest turning down the volume.
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just a note: Farsis in India are the descendants of Persians of the Zorastrian era. Abbas, the author, appears to be a Muslim (again based on surname)!
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^I am well aware of the Parsis of India. But I think it would be better if the author spoke of the movie as being anti-Asian (Southwest Asian) to be exact. Since the Persians were not Semitic peoples and most people don't think much of a difference between Iranians and Semites only that both are 'Middle-Eastern'.
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Is it true that, as this article asserts, some guy named Fallmeyer proved that modern Greeks are descended from Slavs as opposed to the ancients?
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^I thought you were already informed about Greek origins?
Modern Greeks descend from indigenous Europeans as well as Asiatic and African immigrants. I don't know what exactly led that guy to the conclusion that they descend from "Slavs". No doubt they share a large percent of lineages with other Eastern European peoples, but it would be misleading to say that their ancestors were "Slavs" considering Greek and Slavic languages are two entirely different branches of Indo-European.
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Although I still haven't seen the movie (guess I'll see it on DVD), It think it's long time to address this response.
quote:Originally posted by Evergreen: The 300 Savages at Thermopylae: A Response to the Hollywood Film '300' By Dr. Samar Abbas, Bhubaneshwar-751005, India. The recent Hollywood film '300' about the defeat of Dorian Spartans by the Imperial Iranians has created a storm of protest from Iranians worldwide. This is not surprising, since the film makers got the entire story wrong, turning the heroic Iranian victors of the battle, the defenders of Cuneiform civilization, into villains, and morphing the tribal Dorians militants from Sparta into heroes. In fact, the film is full of obvious cinematographic errors: Xerxes is shown as an alien with glowing skin, piercings and vines growing from his body, and rhinos, ogres and dragons are depicted on the Imperial side to further subhumanize the Iranians. This article shall not analyze these aberrations and mistakes, but instead focus on the historical inaccuracies and political propaganda of '300'.
Of course we are dealing with a film based on a comic book by the same guy who created Sin City. Really, it's not all surprising that the creator took 'liberties' when conjuring up this work of art. And of course, it's Hollywood. What did these people expect?
quote:SPARTA, AN APARTHEID STATE Firstly, the Dorians were not fighting for "freedom". On the contrary; Dorian Sparta shared many characteristics with later totalitarian states; cold-blooded eugenics along the lines of Nazi Germany was practised, and mass racial slavery existed just as in the 19th-century circum-Caribbean and apartheid-era South Africa. Not only were the petty Greek tribal states full-scale slave societies; they were racist slave societies, with the indigenous Pelasgians and other tribes enslaved by a tiny minority of Greek invaders. In the words of Prof. Ephraim Lytle, assistant professor of hellenistic history at the University of Toronto, Sparta was an "apartheid state":
"And had Leonidas undergone the agoge, he would have come of age not by slaying a wolf, but by murdering unarmed helots in a rite known as the Crypteia. These helots were the Greeks indigenous to Lakonia and Messenia, reduced to slavery by the tiny fraction of the population enjoying Spartan "freedom." By living off estates worked by helots, the Spartans could afford to be professional soldiers, although really they had no choice: securing a brutal apartheid state is a full-time job, to which end the Ephors [Sparta's highest officials] were required to ritually declare war on the helots." (Lytle 2007) The roots of this mentality lie deep in Greek thought, such as Aristotle's belief that some were "slaves by nature". No wonder then that many scholars trace the origin of racism to the ancient Greeks (Isaac 2004). That the brutal Dorian slave society of Sparta claimed to be standing for "freedom" hence sounds as hollow as the similar boast once made by the Confederate States of America. Whatever "democracy" existed in the Greek city-states was smothered when Alexander of Macedon crushed the Greek tribal states, blotting them out of existence. Paradoxically, Hollywood made a movie a few years ago, called "Alexander" and directed by Oliver Stone, which portrayed the Macedonian demolishers of Athenian democracy in a positive light. The glorification of both Athenian democracy and its destroyers is a contradiction at the very root of pan-Occidentalism.
The above is description of Spartan city-state is indeed very true. Although, I find it somewhat a misnomer to call the Spartan society "aparthied"! Aparthied was based on racial segregation. The Helots were no more 'racially' different from the Spartans than the Spartans were from the Athenians. But Sparta was a state that was very much socialiat as it was militaristic, and it was indeed a slave society or a society supported by slave labor. And yes the Nazis took most of their ideas in governing from them.
quote:INFANTICIDE AND EUGENICS Yet another ghastly custom of the Dorians was that of infanticide and, yes, Nazi-style eugenics. As Dana Stevens notes, "Another of the Spartans' less-than-glorious customs is the practice of eugenics, hurling any less-than-perfect infant off a cliff onto a huge pile of baby skeletons. Unfortunately for the 300 at Thermopylae, this system of racial cleansing isn't foolproof: One deformed hunchback, Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan), manages to make it to adulthood and begs Leonidas for a chance to serve Sparta in the 300. Sure enough, when he's turned down, the hunchback confirms his moral weakness by accepting Xerxes' offer to join ranks with the Persians." (Stevens 2007) This handicapped Spartan, betrayed by his own intolerant and fanatical Dorians merely because of his physical handicap, naturally turned to the more tolerant and civilized Iranians. Indeed, one may say that it was Ephialtes who was the hero of Thermopylae, for it was he who advocated changes in tactics which led to the crushing Dorian defeat. As if by a sudden turn of righteousness, the cruel Leonidas was defeated by the hunchback whom he had insulted. Thermopylae is hence also about the triumph of mind over brawn, the intellect of the handicapped Ephialtes defeating the brute animal-like brawn of Leonidas.
Actually, infanticide was practiced by Greeks of other city-states as well since physical 'perfection' was favored by Greeks, and deformed or handicap children was very costly to the family that had to raise such children. This was especially true of the Spartans in which physical 'perfection' was a necessity to the military (state). Female children were also considered costly in Greek society so female infanticide was also not uncommon, however many Greeks in the southern Peloponese including the Spartans still valued females and did not kill infants because of their sex.
quote:HUMAN SACRIFICE Secondly, the film portrays the Iranians as paying no respect for human life, with the Greeks supposedly being the standard-bearers of humanity. This is also totally false, for human sacrifice was rampant amongst the Greeks (Hughes 1991, Schwenn 1915). The Pagan Greeks called human sacrifice as "anthropo-phagia", and this base practice was widespread, in sharp contrast to civilized Iran. In Greek legend, Thyestas' sons were killed and served to Thyestas himself by his own brother, whence the term Thyestean banquest arose to denote cannibal feasts. Minucius Felix' third-century dialogue "Octavius" on the value of Christianity describes the loathsome practice of human sacrifice amongst, "the Romans themselves, who in the past would bury alive two Greeks and two Gauls and who in his own day sacrifice men to Jupiter Latiaris (Oct. 30.1)" (Rives 1995) In fact, so common was human sacrifice in Graeco-Roman religion that the Christians made this one of their main planks during their debates with the Pagans. In this connection, we see that Clement of Alexandria noted,
"... a lengthy and elaborately documented list of peoples and individuals who have practised human sacrifice. For example, "Monimus, in his collection of Thaumasia, relates that in Pella of Thessaly human sacrifice is offered to Peleus and Cheiron, the victim being an Achaean. Thus too, Anticleides in his Nostoi declares that the Lynctians, a race of Cretans, slaughter men to Zeus, and Dosidas says that Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus'. He provides similar evidence about Aristomenes the Messenian, the Taurians,the Phocaeans, Erectheus the Athenian, and Marius the Roman. 75 [75. Protr. III.42.1-43.2, in the Loeb translation of G.W.Butterworth.]" (Rives 1995, p.81)
Human sacrifice was probably more common during the Bronze Age than it was in the 'Classical' period. In fact, most Greeks looked down on human sacrifice as distasteful. Most Greek records of human sacrifice come mainly from legends and myths which again point to the Bronze Age. To Classical Greeks, human sacrifice was meant for inhuman deities or demons who had a taste for human flesh, and the Olympians would actually punish mortals who offer them such. Greek sacrifices at the time weren't much different from the Iranians who made burnt offerings.
quote:PEDERASTY Thirdly, the film spreads the misconception that the Persians were generally homosexual. There is of course, no historical evidence for this. In fact, it was the Dorian Spartans who were commonly and, in fact, flagrantly open about homosexuality, which was an integral part of Dorian Spartan society. Even Alexander the Accursed, the Macedonian invader and destroyer of cuneiform civilization, was said to have been a pederast. As Keith Wikle notes, "Next, I know a lot of blokes who will cringe at this, but the selection of the 300 by Leonidas may actually have been 300 homosexual pairs. The agoge (Spartan military school) was an indoctrination into pederasty where a teenage boy was paired with an older more experienced Spartan for initiation. So those men were really, really, close. That never made it into the comic or the film either. I'm sure 17 year old boys would not pay $8.00 to see 300 gay men cuddle under red cloaks before being annihilated. But it is an important part of the story." (Wikle 2007) So common was homosexuality in ancient Greece that it came to be known as "Greek love" (Symonds 1901). Further, Lesbianism is named after the Greek island of Lesbos. In effect, the Spartan military barracks had a form of institutionalized homosexual rape, with the seniors forcing the younger recruits to give in to their beastly lusts. Also, the Spartan military camps were nothing but robber schools, for recruits were also not given food so that they had to learn to steal it, in effect making thieves out of an entire nation. Little wonder, then that the Irano-Semitic peoples considered the Greeks to be effeminate. In fact, the terms for Greek in the Irano-Semitic world (Old Iranian "Yauna", Pali "Yona", Greek "Javan" and Prakrit "Yavana") besides meaning barbarian or savage, are derived from the root-word "yoni", meaning vagina. So, even the etymology of this term itself shows that the tall, long-headed and muscular Iranoid and Araboid races, so heroized in the Persepolis bas-reliefs, regarded the short-statured, round-headed and dark-skinned Alpine Graeco-Pelasgian race to be effeminate, in sharp contrast to the depictions in the movie. An illustration of this attitude comes from Mardonius, who stated that "... notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle." (Herodotus 7.9)
LOL Ah, 'Greek Love'! Well what can I say about the above? It's all true, and yes the 300 may very well have been 150 homosexual couples. Hell, the elite army of Thebes known as the Sacred Band of Thebes was the same-- it consisted of 300 men divided into 150 couples.
However, the author should not be too hasty to call the Greeks out on this practice, considering that they also shared this lifestyle!
quote:NEGROID ELEMENT AMONGST GREEKS The fourth historical error is the false racial imagery in the film. Thus, the movie seeks to portray the Iranians as black, and the Greeks as white-skinned. In fact, it is the Greeks who have a significant Negroid ancestry (Arnaiz-Villens et al. 2001). This Negroid element would have partly come from some of the aboriginal tribes. Indeed, the Greeks are largely descended from the various aboriginal inhabitants such as the Pelasgi, Leleges, Kuretes, Kaukones, Aones, Temmikes, Hyantes, Telchines, Boeotian Thracians, Teleboae, Ephyri and Phelgyae. Some of these were of round-headed Balkan stock, others were Negroid. A small part may have also entered through slaves imported from "Aethiopia" (Africa). Their round-headedness, and their partial Negroid ancestry, prove that the Greeks are largely descended from the pre-Greek aboriginal inhabitants of Greece. While there is no evidence that the blacks faced any racial hostility in Iran, the fact is that the Iranians were definitely taller and fairer than the Greeks, just as they are today.
Well we all know the story-- Greeks carry 24% E3b that dates from the Neolithic. And even the Greeks themselves distinguished their tanned appearance from the 'white' appearance of most Persians who kept themselves covered from the sun anyway.
Of course Iranian peoples vary in appearance and all are not as 'fair-skinned' as most Iranis would have you think. But this is not surprising considering their own history and specifically the history of indigenous groups like the Elamites and others.
quote:GREEK TERRORISM AGAINST THE EMPIRE The fifth historical error in the film is the claim that the Greeks were being invaded for no reason whatsoever, that it was the greed and imperialism of the Iranians which led to the war. The Greeks are falsely shown as victims throughout the film. In fact, the film does not attempt to even tell its audience why the petty Greek states were being punished by the Iranian Empire. The fact is that the Iranian Empire was retaliating against the ghastly terrorist attacks on its soil carried out by the independant Greek tribes; in particular, for the dastardly Sack and Massacre of Sardis (Kar 2007). As Herodotus himself describes, "Sardis however was burnt, and, among other buildings, a temple of the native goddess Cybele was destroyed; which was the reason afterwards alleged by the Persians for setting on fire the temples of the Greeks." (Herodotus 5.102) If the makers of the film had at least read Greek history, they would not have embarrassed themselves by making such stupid mistakes. They would have come across this eloquent announcement by Xerxes during the commencement of the War against the Greeks:
"For this cause I have now called you together, that I may make known to you what I design to do. My intent is to throw a bridge over the Hellespont and march an army through Europe against Greece, that thereby I may obtain vengeance from the Athenians for the wrongs committed by them against the Persians and against my father. Your own eyes saw the preparations of Darius against these men; but death came upon him, and balked his hopes of revenge. In his behalf, therefore, and in behalf of all the Persians, I undertake the war, and pledge myself not to rest till I have taken and burnt Athens, which has dared, unprovoked, to injure me and my father. Long since they came to Asia with Aristagoras of Miletus, who was one of our slaves, and, entering Sardis, burnt its temples and its sacred groves; again, more lately, when we made a landing upon their coast under Datis and Artaphernes, how roughly they handled us ye do not need to be told." (Herodotus 7.8) Ironically, the victims of these vicious terrorist attacks were mostly fellow Greeks who lived under the beneficial Iranian Imperial rule, primarily the eastern Ionians. Of course, these minor details would not have bothered the Dorian and Aeolian terrorists and mercenaries, for their main goal was to loot and plunder the much wealthier and more prosperous districts of the Empire. The attacks by the Balkanic tribes against the Iranian Empire had exactly the same motive as those of the Germanic tribes against the Roman Empire, or of the Siberian tribes against the Han Chinese Empire: loot nad plunder. Their rich targets could amass their legendary wealth under Iranian rule, which created a much larger common market and consequent overall prosperity. It is on this wealth that the rabble of the poorer and rustic Greek tribes cast their greedy eyes.
Well what can I say? Again, one thing many people seem to 'forget' or not know of in the first place, was that Greeks were never united but were always divided into different city-states each having their own form of government. If one or a couple of city-states "misbehaves" like sacking another city-state, killing and enslaving its citizens etc. such was life in ancient Greece.
quote:It is also important to note that many Greeks themselves invited Emperor Xerxes to liberate Greece: "For, in the first place, it chanced that messengers arrived from Thessaly, sent by the Aleuadae, Thessalian kings, to invite Xerxes into Greece, and to promise him all the assistance which it was in their power to give. And further, the Pisistratidae, who had come up to Susa, held the same language as the Aleuadae, and worked upon him even more than they, by means of Onomacritus of Athens, an oracle-monger, and the same who set forth the prophecies of Musaeus in their order." (Herodotus, 7.6) The reason for this is because these Greeks, mostly from Ionia, had seen first-hand the benefits of Pax Iranica. Hence, another reason for Xerxes' march was an attempt to civilize the savage Balkan tribes. This was part of a more general strategy of the Iranians to bestow their superior and more ancient cuneiform Irano-Semitic civilization upon the less civilized and barbaric tribes of the outlying provinces, thereby reducing the military threat they posed, and bringing them into the sphere of the civilized world. Xerxes' march was an example of a larger, wealthier, more powerful and more cultured empire, trying to civilize a group of much smaller, petty, fragmented and mutually warring pastoral tribal confederations, towns and villages. This strategy worked in Anatolian Ionia, in the Indus Valley and in Libya. Unfortunately for the world, it failed in Greece, much as Rome's civilizing mission failed in Germania.
True. The film attempted to depict the Persians as 'savages' when in fact they were more 'civilized' than the Greeks! Not only were they more scientifically and technologically advanced, but overall they did seem more "humane" than many Greeks. In fact the Greeks were the few people in the ancient world who would pillage and enslave members of their own ethnicity! Oh, that whole scene in the movie where a Persian emmisary was thrown into a well was indeed a serious crime not only to the Persians but to the Greeks themselves as this violated Xenia-- the code of hospitality to strangers. Now, I don't meant to denigrate the Greeks as the author of the article seems to do in a tit-for-tat kind of way, and he himself omits certain unpleasant things about Persian society, but I do see his point.
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^ I would hesitate from saying the Persians were more "civilized" than the classical Greeks as a whole. In some ways, yes, but I know of no Persian philosophers or scientists on par with Socrates, Aristotle, or Archimedes. Nor do I know of a Persian democratic tradition like that in some Greek city states.
As for pederasty, did the West Asians get it from the Greeks or vice versa?
Posts: 7072 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Tyrannosaurus: ^ I would hesitate from saying the Persians were more "civilized" than the classical Greeks as a whole. In some ways, yes, but I know of no Persian philosophers or scientists on par with Socrates, Aristotle, or Archimedes. Nor do I know of a Persian democratic tradition like that in some Greek city states.
Well that would depend on what one meant by "civilized", but going by the Western definitions I would say that Persians were indeed more 'civilized' than the Greeks.
Again the Persians were scientifically and technologically more advanced with greater scientific knowledge in things from astronomy and mathematics, to medicine, and engineering. Just some of the discoveries we made was that they invented a sophisticated irrigation system called qanat that was the most advanced in the ancient world until the Roman aquaducts. There is even evidence to suggest they also invented the earliest machines, and later Greek mechanical inventions during the post-Hellenic period (after Alexander) may have largely been influenced from Persia. Some scholars think they may have a role in developing the world's first battery ( the baghdad battery). It was Persian engineers who constructed the largest pontoon bridge of the time across the Hellespont through for Persian forces to invade Greece.
As for the actual Persian scientists, unfortunately very few names survive, and while philosophy was very much extensive the only names other than Zarathustra (Zoroaster) I know of, are Mani and Mazdak whose philosophies both had very significant influence in modern Christianity.
The Persians were even more politically advanced as the Persians were united under a single nation whereas the Greeks still retained the vestiges of their past tribes under the banner of 'city-states'. And socially speaking, they were much more peaceful with much less internal or domestic conflict unlike the Greeks who continually fought each other.
quote:As for pederasty, did the West Asians get it from the Greeks or vice versa?
Herodotus claimed that Persians "learned it from the Greeks", but there is historical evidence that the Persians practiced it long before contact with Classical Greeks.
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