Why Did Ancient Greece Decline?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 มิ.ย. 2024
- How the brilliant city-states of Classical Greece became an unremarkable Roman province.
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:00 Theories, ancient and modern
1:39 The influence of
2:03 The agora of Thasos
2:35 Political economies
3:32 The forum of Philippi
4:20 Oligarchies
4:49 Cultural inertia
5:20 The theater of Philippi
6:09 A completed culture
7:04 What happened to Athens?
It is always interesting to realize how even the Romans saw the Greek city states as 'ancient'.
And then Italy ran like that until what, the 1850s or something?
Like America's relationship with Europe.
@@TheMysteryDriversays who?
@@TheMysteryDriverthose were not city states but rather Italian peninsula was in a sense balkanized. Difference in this case is that 19th century nationalism promoted unity of Italian people under a common national identity instead of break up into smaller states with strong regional identity, lik3 what happened to Yugoslavia
And both considered the Egyptians tens of thousands of years more ancient still. Pliny thought Babylon went back even further and was a bonkers 770,000 years old. Bonus points to who knows were I got that last fact from :p
They discovered Gyros, and from there, you can only go downhill.
Caligula would have blushed
No one could agree on the correct pronunciation and democracy crumbled.
hi im greek and this is true
Too much comfort eliminated desire to struggle for greatness.
im eating a gyro while watching this lol
The interaction between City States and Hellenistic Kings is fascinating stuff. They didn't pay tax, but gave "voluntary gifts" of gold crowns regularly. They were free to run their own affairs, but had to ask permission to import grain. They freely chose without external pressure to build shrines to their overlords, but those that did just happened to receive substantial benefactions. It very much has a sense of _"you are free to do whatever you like, as long as you dont do anything we disapprove of."_ But whenever blatant direct rule was imposed, all hell broke loose (like Pyrrhus' last months in Sicily).
Seems very similar to today's monarchial republics, like the UK, NL, etc. (superficially)
A confederation.
The most similar things to [con]federations in the Hellenistic world were the leagues, most famously the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues amongst others. Those were a bunch of city states that banded together by forming a super-state were they agreed to make some decisions (mostly of war and peace) together. Somewhere between NATO and the EU in terms of integration. It was based, to various degrees, on the equality of the member _poleis_ .
The relations between cities and kings (later emperors) was different in that it was fundamentally asymmetric in power. There is no good modern analogy IMO. Perhaps the medieval relations between Free Imperial Cities and the Emperor of the HRE would be close, but the HRE is so complicated and with so many layers I'm not sure it's a useful comparison.
I'm not sure it's similar to constitutional monarchies at all. In those, the monarch has _de jure_ power but _de facto_ none. The Hellenistic ones were the opposite (in relations to cities, not in general).
@@QuantumHistorian "IMO" should be hung on the forefront of every one of these sentences, as an opinion piece is all it is.
You write like Dr. Ryan. Or at least I read it in his voice. Spot on.
Decline is somewhat relative, the Greeks did not produce much new art but Hellenic science continued. The greater part of the scientific and technological development of the Roman Empire were done by Greeks.
It was mostly done in Alexandria, not Greece itself.
@@Creativethinker12 But Hellenic non the less. Greeks were the intellectuals of the empire.
What science are you talking about? Wasn't it mostly vague philosophical speculations on things they didn't know how to test?
@@cliffpinchon2832 only if you look only at the philosophers, in my opinion a very dubious Greek legacy. But if you look at the works of Archemeaies, Euclid, Heron of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Galen, and many more, you’ll see brilliant scientific discoveries and minds. Their discoveries and methods are the seed bed from which modern science comes. For all the talk of art and philosophy they are trivial.
@@cliffpinchon2832 Partly true. Yes, the scientific method wasn't a thing, but they still were discovering some crazy stuff, like the mini steam engine of Heron. That's half a step from the Industrial Revolution
While modern Western men think about Rome, the Romans thought about Greece.
Just some internet meme bullshit. Lots of people think about the Romans. 😂
I’m Indian by the way
@@foolofatook1271 Explains why you can't read and understand English properly.
@@foolofatook1271profile pic of a white guy? Yea we guessed
@@MrDonut-mb6mshow have you lived this long and not heard of lord of the rings???
I am curious about the Roman tradition of removing a finger of the deceased before cremation and placing with the ashes. If you make a video about the details of their funerary practices, including the reason behind this would be of interest. Your work is appreciated very much!
A video exploring Roman funerary customs and epitaphs is on my short list of future topics. Stay tuned!
@@toldinstone do one for greeks aswell
Amazing video on not commonly touched subject. Would love to see something on Carthage.
Especially their child sacrifice. We even have that today
Problem about Carthage is just how little is known. I've read a few books on them and, outside of their interactions with Greeks or Romans, there's just so little that can be said. Any attempt to go beyond a simple "Who did what where when" ends up being conjecture. A video on Tophets and child sacrifices would be cool, there's some textual and archaeological data to go on, but not yet a clear consensus. In a 10min video, Garrett could probably cover literally everything about it lol.
Very good point. Sadly,
all the Carthaginian documents are lost. @@QuantumHistorian
Was more interested in Punic society after the fall of Carthage as towns like Utica were spared the destruction.
@@QuantumHistorian
@@watchesandcoins.7738 - the cemeteries of the sacrificed children are still extant and multiple authorities have a consensus on their being the remains of babies offered to their deities
Would you consider doing an accuracy critique on the (2014) film Pompeii. I don't know that it deserves it, but might provide interesting educational opportunities or just fun.
I'd love to see more of the Greek provinces under Rome. It tends to be rather obscure.
Daily thinking about Ancient Greece* again
In a dark humorous way, the major intellectual influence of conquered Greece reminds me of the important role German scientists who were "captured" by American troops and "imported" into the USA at the end of WW2 in Europe, played in the rapidly expanding field of aeronautics, in which several German scientists were the recognised top world experts. Meanwhile, though, their Germany homeland was in a rebuilding phase and momentarily halted in its ability to function under the strict new conditions that were imposed upon losing the war in 1945.
Operation Paperclip
I just want to say that I really appricaite your work! Thanks a lot :)
The Persian wars and the following city-state rivalry in the classical period itself created a dynamism and greatness in the cities. Once life got easier under imperial rule people relaxed and focused more on maintaining status quo.
as far as I know, the only place from which scientific and philosophical development came was just Athens and maybe Corinth.
Sparta was a very conservative society with dual ruling monarchy. only interested in its military and control over the rest of Peloponnesian peninsula.
no innovations whatsoever. after the Persian invasions and the wars against Athens, Sparta became irrelevant even as a military power.
funny how Alexander The Great didn't even bother to invade Sparta tho. or convince them to join his campaign of conquest over Persia.
Sparta was completely out from the picture. a shell of its former glory.
@@LevisH21 True, but the legend of Sparta lives on today as strong as ever. That counts for something.
Greek conquered Rome and then the world through its culture. Physical empires are all doomed to die, yet, the strongest will have its language, philosophy and life-style to live on.
Culture starts as a big idea in one context, then endures a series of more and more different contexts until the most meaningful context is gone
I sont think it starts as a big idea, personally i think it is shaped and created by surroundings, problems that come from those surroundings. Only then years(perhaps hundreds) does it ripe into a full on idea, that gets more and more bigger and complex as you mentioned. The collapse always happens through collision with alother people / culture. The more the other party influences grand ideas the more the long growing ideas become fragile from shock until it is taken or changed. At least how i see it
As you have been at Thasos, I am sure you have walked around the antique cities fortifications build from megalithic blocks. I am looking forward to hear your notes about this enormous building. Not to mention the museum of antiquities in Thasos!
Some wonderful insights. Excellent stuff. Well done Doc.
Always enjoyable watching toldinstone
Very well done and interesting as always!
Excellent narrative and a lesson to us today.
Might it also be that a general Greek worldview of decline from a perfect primordial past was at play?
So perception? So where is the actual decline? The rise of Christians? The advance of the Ottomans? The occupation of the Nazis? It is no easy task to objectively measure the quality and quantity of material and moral change, especially when the baseline itself is so subjective.
I spoke lightly. Greek culture outlasted Athens, but their moment was lost as power and patronage shifted.
Great video, keep it up 👍👍
I really love your stuff, fantastic whippets of knowledge to dip in and out of, I have just bought your book. I am very eager to read it hurry up Amazon😂😂😂
Greece did not so much “fall” as “stall”
Well spoken good sir. Well done
Polybius seemed to blame people's aversion to having children: "One remarks nowadays over all Greece such a low birth rate and in a general manner such depopulation that the towns are deserted and the fields lying fallow, although this country has not been ravaged by war or epidemic. The cause of this harm is evident. By avarice or by cowardice, the people, if they marry, will not bring up children that they ought to have. At most, they bring up one or two ... It is in this manner that the scourge, before it is noticed, has rapidly developed. The remedy is in ourselves, we have but to change our morals." (Polybius, Histories, vol. 37; as cited by Plutarch?)
Definitely can see that going on in the modern world. Like it or not, a society that doesn’t procreate will take a steep dive.
@@Ramser03 we do what we do to get laid and for our children. thats the fundamental truth thats been lost over decades of neomalthusian brainwashing in the modern world as it was lost repeatedly in the past.
This makes me wonder if ecological or economic factors also contributed. Were the fields overworked and exhausted of fertility? Did large landowners with slaves out-compete small landowners, like in Imperial Roman Italy?
Realistically speaking, Greek farmers were probably being viciously impoverished by extortionate imperial tax collection, causing them to be unable to have children.
But the rich - whose wealth causes the poverty and misery of the poor - always blame the poor for the consequences of their poverty.
Nothing ever changes, does it.
@@nebojsag.5871 Except the poorest countries have the highest birth rates, in line with our own society where lower socioeconomic people have higher birth rates, so that can't be it.
Pausanias’ writings are probably my favourite “easy reading” classical text that I love to read while on a train.
I appreciate this. Thank you.
I've been thinking about the parallels between the collpase of ancient civilizations and the collpase of modern ones. One of the most intertesting statements to me was Polybius had claimed that, "The population had collapsed after the parents had become too decedent to raise their own children." Could you provide the historical source for me?
Polybius 36.17
Read Oswald Spengler, he explained everything
@@pxh6129 Supposedly we've entered the Caesarism phase.
Yessss! Love the Ancient Greece content
Ancient Chinese philosophy also flourished during the Spring and Autumn period, when countless micro-states dotted the lands of what is now North-Central China. Once unified imperial dynasties began to appear, most schools of thoughts disappeared as the despotic rulers found that Confucian thought with a Legalist core was the optimal choice to cement their rule, and everything else lost their patronage.
One of your best videos
Thank God there are people who dedicate their time to educating others with content like this.
When you're on top, you get complacent and don't adjust to the outside forces that seek to take what you have
Kind of like Europe falling to foreign migration, the altruistic nature of the west allowing their own cultural demise.
What can we learn from this for modern Western civilization? Perhaps that we should always respect the cultural works of the past, but always innovate and develop new ideas and new cultural products. Perhaps that national autonomy and competition are essential ingredients to drive cultural productivity.
Although I generally and almost completely agree with you, a lot of self-identified innovators tend to be unconscious and vulgar imitators. True creativity, such as the Greeks did with the most basic concepts (about time, place, piety, reason, etc) and modes of living - very rarely come. Even technological and scientific developments are still very much derivative on deeper cultural strata - much of our science (despite the revolutions) is primordially Greek. True beginning is hard, though it's probably not impossible. Who knows, we might see something of the sort after the political and cultural chaos after the climate situation starts to unleash and abate.
@@erlinacobrado7947 i mean.. of course we haven't seen progress on those ideas. the reason is that they have been explored and there's no need to innovate on such concepts. it's like trying to invent the wheel again, no point in doing it. making a better wheel? of course. but you can't make something completely different from the fundamental idea. i actually think going overboard on trying to invent new culture while there's no need for it is actually pathological for society (like people debating what is a woman.. *sigh*). there will be a time and place for new culture soon, but forcing it is not good. i honestly think that moment will come when artificial intelligence will reach a certain level and humanity has to rethink its place and role in society.
Interesting take. Think the emigration from Greece to the Hellenistic kingdoms played a major role in the decline of Greece.
Why would they cause the decline? I would think it’s the opposite, expansion of your population into colonies and conquered lands expands your civilization. Like Europe’s global expansion, or America’s westward push, or the explosion of Islam.
@@Shimra8888 But those kingdoms split after Alexander's death and never reformed. They fought with each other and never unified which is a massive difference from those groups. As such, a loss in population in Greece would weaken that area and the other kingdoms wouldn't come to help when Rome started invading. They just got taken out one by one by Romans/Parthians because of how fragmented they were.
Greece had always been devided. City states were the rulers of that part of the world. While speaking the same language and sharing their devines and a common cultural background, every city state was for itself. They did colonize because they had to. Greece is a very mountanous region with not enough farm land to support large populations. And that was also the cause for a lot of wars between the city states.
After seeding the fields in the spring, they went on military campaigns to fight each other. And then returned to harvest in the late summer (early autumn).
There have been occasional hellenistic federations to counter threats from outside, like the Persians. But it was more of a loose alliance. And often enough the alliances crumbled under some missbehavior - like Athens used the savings from other cities to gain more power and to build a wall from their city to their harbour.
Philipp I. - the father of Alexander the Great - unified Greece with his military campaigns. He did this with military reforms and innovations, like artillery (ballistas for example), or modifying the phalanx formation that wasnt changed by anyone for hundreds of years, or even the extensive use of cavillary. After the death of his father, Alexander had immediately to fight again for a unified Greece under his rule.
Expeditions to Persia werent anything new back then. Look at "Xenophon" for example (very interesting story about 10,000 men lost in Persia that had to go back to Greece).
Alexander conquered half of the known world, but his time was too short to really "save" his achievements. His generals devided his empire, and decades after his death, their offsprings fought each other again.
The Romans just took advantage about this infighting, and they were even welcomed by the local populations, who were fed up fighting over some dirt over and over again.
@@Gentleman...Driver *divided*, not sure why you keep writing devided
Idk if Greece really declined at all. It was small little city states with no order. As their technologically, population, military and sailing grew and trade routes became more vast and established….things consolidated and spread.
Egypt, the ruling class of rome, Greece, Middle East, and the Roman Empire after Rome fell were all Greek. Ancient Greece really lasted until 1450 something until constanipol fell then all their literature, culture, epics and philosophy was sent to Europe in which all nobility, wealthy merchants, royalty studied and learned. The ottomans and czars studied and idolized Greece too. It kinda never declined
Love this content
I fuccin LOVE that intro riff! What a Riff.
Hello Sir, thanks for a great video ! I can tell that since I earn my life making sounds and noises sometimes scattered in a musical form which the strong counterpart visual artistic side is carried by My wife, Art and Culture, even Fashion suffer the same luck as the Greek Classical period era, we see. Nowadays there are tendencies in music, painting, video and photography that are not eager for innovation or at least a hint of getting ahead. To the contrary they are carried by technology that embraces the pristine, sometimes so perfect/unreal sound or image. Hardly there is any real artistic evolution, to the contrary just to enhance experiences over cultural content. Repetition under technology capacity, rules the artistic world nowadays. Hopefully this will prove to change in our future. Have a most fantastic day.
Thank you sir
love your work
Hearing “THIS is the forum of Philippi” gave me a Doug Demuro Vietnam flashback.
Pyrrhus of Epirus has entered the chat.
I like to liken it to the British empire then the US world order.
The English language, and to a large extent political at least culture was adopted and taken up by another hegemon. Which then actually presided over a period where the originating culture still thrived and was somewhat looked up to.
I actually think in the long run the British Empire/US Hegemon will be seen as more akin to the split of the Roman Empire in 286. They're both basically fruits of the same loin, and to a some extent remain so. The king and the president both sit at the resolute desk, Donald Trump's mother is Scottish, Boris Johnson was born in NYC and so on. After the death of Diane Feinstein there are even rumours that Meghan Markle is going to run for office, which would put the royal family back in charge in one state! (weird times)! Now certainly military, cultural, and economic power has overwhelmingly shifted to America in the 20th century, but they're still joined at the hip to some extent, especially when you factor in places like Canada, which is still a commonwealth nation.
The US didn't really take up English language/culture. They started with it, from the moment colonisation started in New England. That makes the parallel with Rome rather weak IMO.
@QuantumHistorian I mean, all analogies break down eventually. And in the case of USA it wasn't such a clear cut thing. More americans are of german descent and at one point there was a vote on which language to adopt. Plus wouldn't you want to distance yourself from your imperial overlord against which you fought a revolutionary war? To me the different circumstances make it a harder test.
What I am pointing to is a pattern amongst hegemons- admiration for the preceeding culture then taking it under the wing.
Athens/Rome Eastern Rome/Venice Holland/Britain Britain/US
@@elbapo7 Most (white) Americans are of German descent, but most Presidents, bankers, etc. -- i.e. the people who call the shots -- are of British descent.
@cliffpinchon2832 quite right too.
Would you maybe consider making a video about the differece between the system of the roman republic and greek democracy?
More videos about Greece please
Love the new book, homeskillet!!
Told in stone is so good
AC odyssey had its issues but it was a very pretty and atmospheric game
Does anyone else think about how much the ancients would have loved tomatoes.
Salted tomatoes, or tomatoes with cheese 😊
Mmmm salted with olive oil and good bread
I think of it every day.
It is a good thought to have on a cool autumn day perhaps even a cold winters eve.@@williamwilliam5066
Crazy how the spaniards spread the seeds to all over the world, tomatoes and avocados come from mexico
Lessss gooo hyped to learn some Greek history
Neat!
Wake up, bro- new TiS dropped 😊
Beautiful.
Even by Roman times, the Greeks hadn't really declined much. The Romans just became stronger.
Yeah but what's interesting is why the Romans became stronger to the point the Greeks couldn't submit them
Not at all. With the rise of Rome and Parthia, there was no independent Greek polity in the world anymore.
Ofc they had declined. Traditional city states were in shambles. Only Hellenic kingdoms held power at that point and ofc they lost it mostly by infighting.
what is the painting on the right at 0:20 ?
No civilization has ever made such as impact as Classical Greece!
The hellenistic expansion took a lot of energy and manpower out of Greece to the East and made it vulnerable to the West.
Did it really decline? Being brought into the Roman state gave the polis more stability and prosperity. In turn Greece became the cultural capital of the Empire.
Did you visit the ruins you show in the videos or did you find those videos on the internet?
i already bought your pre order on insane emperors, as it finally pinged on audible. now i can stop writing the same comment on all your videos.
Wonder how different the language of ancient Roman and Greece are different than their respected countries now?
As a Greek it's really hard to answer because "ancient greek" can mean very different (to my perception) forms of the greek language. Thw concept is simple, thw further back in time, the more difficult to comprehend it. In the classical era there where many different variants, dialects, like Doric, Ionian and Attic. Of these, Attic is the easier to us, modern Greeks, but still pretty much unintelligible because the grammar has changed a lot and a big part of the vocabulary too. During the hellenistic times the Koine Greek (Koine means common) was formed, primarily from elements of Attic Greek (that is the reason why of all classical era dialects Attic is more easily understood). Koine was kinda simplified and from this our modern language evolved over a period of like 2000 years without changing too much (all with respect to the time passed). But does "ancient greek" stop at hellenistic era Koine? To other cultures "ancient" means 5th - 8th century. Greek from those times is kinda understandable to us.
In all, greek has been changing constantly (like all languages) but with some proper education I don't find it too difficult to interpret at least Koine Greek.
But wait theres more!
My theory on the fall of Rome is that it was a breakdown of the water system. They had an extensive network of aqueducts and canals. But, as the population grew and demand increased, maintenance and new construction couldn't keep up. This was before computers and advanced mathematics. The maintenance depended solely on a few geniuses and a hierarchal network of foremen and skilled trades. Remove a few key ppl and the house of cards comes down.
Water was to Rome what oil is to modern society. This is also a likely cause of the collapse of the Khmer empire. Having been there, I can tell you they spared no expense on canals and aqueducts. But, they didn't have the computing power to manage the system once it grew.
Surely it is always wokism and trannyism that destroys cultures?
Yeahhh you loaded up one
Does anyone know the name of the art piece at 7:46? It looks to me (not an expert) like an actor with different character masks, which I've heard had sort of built in "megaphones" with the open mouth part to help with voice projection. Super cool if that's what it is, and if not I'd love to find out what we do think it represents.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspis_(Menander)
@@kennj321 yo really appreciate it I just went down a sick rabbit hole
@@maxcasteel2141 understand, ancient greece will do that to you.
Hell yeah dude
And not a word about them destroying their forests
The biggiest factor of the decline was the decline of food production in Greece - importing cheeper wheat, cheeper olive oil and so on let the Greek cities grow but gettin dependent to the trade. If that trade got disturbed the city got weaken.
This dependence on trade started with the Classical period though, at the exact same time Greek culture exploded outwards. In fact, it's probably trade (especially with the Ionian states) that brought new ideas into mainland Greece and started the intellectual revolution.
How accurate is the Acropolis in Oddesey?
Minute 4:18 "which remains we see"?? Shouldn't it be "...whose remains we see"? Other than that, I love your work! LOL
@1:12 wow, that makes a whole lot of sense to be honest. A cost of living crisis might be the ultimate contraceptive known to man in the developed economies of the world. But, having housemaids and nannies in the developing world, has indeed led to a decline in birthrates, and below-replacement level birthrates are just around the corner. It’s either having a new kid, or paying the monthly payroll for the Help for those people.
depravity and population decline might be the biggest catalysts of the fall of great civillizations. and those two are probably the result of initial prosperity and then complacency
Oh absolutely. I totally agree. Just look at the modern Western World. It indeed is a “Strange Death of Europe” just like Murray’s book, along with the usual historical reasons, as stipulated in your comment, or those that I’ve stumbled upon in various book, about different civilizations across history.
What was that saying again? Strong men make good times, good times make weak men, and weak men make bad times.
@@khalidalali186 yes, love that saying. Some deep truth right there and we're definitely slowly moving in the weak men create hard times stage.
Absolutely, and one might argue, across the world, through various indicators, that all lead back to one form of depravity, decadence, and complacency or another. I also thought globalization and neo-liberalism have made it possible, for various chunks of the world, to undergo the same dilemma, through different ways, at the different points in time, along with various paces of speed or acceleration, from one geographic location to another, and one culture to another.
It’s definitely more apparent in countries with high-income economies, be they developed or developing nations. 🤷♂️
@@khalidalali186 So you're saying that what once would've been a fall of a localized prosperous civillization could now be a worldwide phenomenon because of globalization, no matter the specific circumstances of each nation?
Interesting point, might be true. Because of how interconnected we are, the top countries are basically "exporting" the symptoms that will cause their downfall to all the others. Kind of agree, pretty sad that some countries are getting all of the drawbacks without most of the benefits.
Please make your book avaiable on applebooks in czechia thanks ❤
what a treat!!!
Like baklava
Really weird question. Would Alexander the Great have become a vampire if possible?
That fluorescent pastel house tho.
I've often wondered about this topic. I came to the conclusion that the Greek city-state model was simply not sustainable in the face of a highly organized, bureaucratic regime that Rome presented.
In Roman Times Athens was a museum and Sparta was a relic.Beautiful said....!
The same in many regards can be said about today, but today we shun alot of the past rather than using it to produce a prosperous society.
Much of the greek derived culture such as religon was being driven by rome and a weird combination of lots of different beliefs combined with a growing number of beliefs from elsewhere including north africa likely devided the societ. Which is also mirrored today in europe.
Interesting.
the greek went through phases just like we all do in the world.
even in roman times the greek was still considered the highest capacities and best educated ppl.
when the greek became roman they took control rather fast of the roman empire and led it till the fall of constantinople.
thats when the real decline of the greek happened
All great cultural epochs are epochs of political decline: that which is great in the cultural sense has been unpolitical, even anti-political. Culture and the state - these are adversaries. The one lives off the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. Where culture is ascendant, there the state is in decline; where the state increases in power, there culture languishes.
I just made a similar comment 2 hours after you did! Though you have it stated much more elegantly.
Chinese Tang dynasty: I beg your pardon
The Sun King would beg to differ.
@@user-eb9kw9ks6v The Tang Dynasty should have begged for higher literacy rates
Did British culture decline during their ascendancy after Napoleon? Di Roman culture thrive while it was getting dismantled? Did Spanish culture flourish while being violently occupied by the French?
People talking about thinking about the roman empire every day. Not me. I think about the Greek empire
Let's gooioo
Lots had to do with power and money. During the League of Delos Athens taxed her "allies" and she was the biggest trading center in the Aegean so she could afford lots of public and private spending. During later times it was Athens who paid taxes and the trade moved to Rhodes during the Hellenistic period and Constantinople during the Late Empire so the city was poorer and could afford massive buildings only with patronage of the very wealthy imperial elite like Herodes Atticus or of the emperors like Hadrian.
The life of Herodes Atticus is a good example of how the local wealthy were pulled towards centers of powers and local communities eventually lost their benefactors who would rather host games in Rome than build something in their hometowns.
"Greece has fallen. Millions must go to theatre"
Why were they eclipsed?
🤔
*POLYPRAGMOUSINE*
-look it up and think deeply about it before firing back in pique.
(To fire back immediately in pique would be a clear example of the *polypragmousine* to which I refer.)
Thank you.
Did you make that word up because I can't find it anywhere.
@@mistersir3020 ...it is an ancient word used by ancient Greeks describing the increasingly sorrowful condition of their nation as it sank into it's twilight.
In modern times, it appears (fx) in Byron and a few other Hellenists.
Polypragmousine means
~busybodiness.
A whole chapter could be written on the topic, but here is not the place.
In essence, consider this:
Winners mind their own business.
Losers mind the business of winners. (and remain losers thereby.)
Empty people with no particular business of their own, and so busy themselves with the business of people who do.
As life became easy in Athens, leisure became widespread, and an easy life became widespread.
It became easy to loll about the market places and involve oneself with pointless trivialities and intrigues. (etc)
At this point, philosophy gave over to rhetoric, and the weighty matters of state gave over to endless petty wars of ego mediated by the courts in lawsuits, (etc.)
The strength of the public mind and will was sapped in this time, and once...the ship took that wind in it's sails, there was only one port to arrive upon.
The Stygian.
(Oblivion)
@@CM-st1dl It appears you mean "polypragmosyne" (πολυπραγμοσύνη). Can you recommend a book? (preferably not too young)
Thanks for this. Interesting reading.
Could the exhaustion of gold and silver mines be the cause of the decline of classical Greece?
I recently came back from Greece and felt depressed… so much beautiful civilisation lost to war and decay…
The only constant is change.
They might have declined without either of them, there is no way to say decline isn't a part of the culture's life time
And yet they live far better now than any of those ancestors.
Without a common enemy, Greeks reverted to doing what they did (and still do) best. Bicker amongst themselves. Fighting each other was like national sport to them. The military devolved to just using phalanx and without innovation all was ripe for Rome to sweep in, further divide the already divided Greeks and conquer.
In economic and demographic terms Hansen (2008) states that the population living in Greek city-states ("poleis") increased from around 8 to 10 million in the Classical period to 30 million during the Roman period (most of these city-states were not in Greece proper but spread over the Mediterranean like Alexandria in Egypt, Seleucia in Mesopotamia and Massilia in Gaul). Similarly, the economic prosperity of the Pax Romana was reflected in the large number of remains of fancy buildings of the period.
There was indeed a lack of philosophical creativity after the Romans conquered the Greek-speaking world. That does not mean there was an economic or demographic decline, but there was a centralization of political power. This centralization of power meant that Greeks lacked the self-determination to question existing philosophical and proto-scientific systems; instead they just repeated established classics.
BTW, during the Hellenistic period, before the Romans conquered Greece around 160 BC, Greeks were still quite creative. The Hellenistic Kingdoms were divided among themselves, so they couldn't conquer the Greek cities like the unified force of Rome could: if one Hellenistic kingdom threatened one city, then the city would just call for the support of the opposing kingdom. So the loss of great power status for Athens and Sparta was not a big problem for the Greek world overall.
I think it's explainable in a completely 'realist', pragmatic way. The same thing happened to the Ancient Egyptians. Once they lost their independence, they continued to be dominated by stronger neighbors; there were intermittent periods of independence, but these became the exception. Eventually there was no longer any real remembrance or desire for true independence in terms of foreign policy. They became Roman. The 'Byzantines' spoke Greek for most of their history. All of that to say, I think we can say with some confidence that the Greek poleis declined because Macedon won the battle of Chaeronea. I also think it's worth noting that the polei system probably would have never led itself to large empire building. It was too eclectic and chauvinistic/jingoistic, and I think there was also a degree of respect and reverence between polei. Best case scenario they could devise some sort of big league, maybe reminiscent of the EU today... Obviously that didn't happen, and it's conjecture.
I think the more surprising thing is that Rome actually pulled off the kind of domination that it did. I think the 'make or break' period for Rome was probably the period that we have the least history about; not the Punic Wars, of course those are important-- but how did Rome unite Italy? In a way, they had a government that was not altogether so different from say Thebes, but somehow they achieved something that neither Athens, Sparta nor Thebes could. I think part of it may have been how arrogant and self-important and 'near-peer' major polei were compared to, say, smaller Italic-city states/regions/petty-kingdoms or mid-level Magna Graecian states of Italy compared to Rome.
To be clear, I kind of love the idea of the 'city-state'. For some reason, that nucleus of autonomy and culture has always really appealed to me. Especially when you consider that a lot of these polei were direct democracies(into the 5th century and beyond, anyway). That said, I think there probably are downsides. For the same reason that Italy was not a dominant power in the medieval period in its 'city-state' period, Greece probably was never going to be an actual leading power in the classical period.
"The population had collapsed after parents became too decadent to raise their own children". Uh oh.
a similar thing happen with Italy or France today living of their glorious past
Legendaris
Good shit m8, keep the channels diversity up, speak on greece and other empires! Will be more content larger potential audience pools.
Very insighful video, especially if you are into the history of the later periods of the Empire (i.e. 3rd century crisis).
7:25 Sparta: "hahaha, Athenian losers, that would never happen here"
Something interesting, but I got the feeling that many of the colonists in the Middle East during the Roman Empire were actually Greek. Is that a correct observation? The question is, why? Why were there so many Greeks in Caesarea despite it being a Roman city in Judea?
The conquest of Philip and his son Alexander, led to "Greece" being ruled from somewhere else for over twenty centuries. Funny that modern day Greeks worship Alexander, when he was a foreign conqueror that ended their golden age.
Why did ancient Greece decline? Because they were too busy arguing about who had the best philosophers.