Agreed! I thank HC for his elucidation. I hope he eventually makes a presentation about the other Greek city-states, too. No one ever discusses them . . . .
dude xD we shouldn't have 4K on these types of videos, especially if it's to be watched on sub-4K screens… lots of pollution caused by these heavy data transfers.
@@LuizAlexPhoenix @Zacharie Chiron prolly means that producing this simple style (with a lot of viewers maybe watching on phones for example) in 4K is a waste of energy
It's worth mentioning that the "ostracised" person could keep all his property, and he and his family would suffer no other repercussions other than his forced physical absence from the city for 10 years. The goal was removal from the political life, not punishment of any sort. For the Athenians, it was inconceivable that a citizen would be physically present but not participate in politics - even implying that someone didn't want to engage in "the common" [public matters] would be a huge insult. The modern term "idiot" comes from their word "idiotes", meaning the person who only cares about his private matters.
Really though, in every single place where there is a group of humans the majority are idiots, and I dare say America has more people who are not idiots than many or even most other countries.
Most Americans do not participate in politics, even at the voting level. It would be apt say that most Americans would be idiots, going by this reasoning.
The use of broken pottery is actually genius. It meant that no one could fake ballets, since their fake ballets wouldn’t fit back into the reassembled pot.
This channel does a great job in making history accessible. I already love history, but often don't have the time to scroll through many many documents and then make a coherent story. You are absolutely great at this, it is often quite difficult to make history seem coherent and simple because it often isn't. Good job! Keep up the good work!
@6:15 If a Citizen didn't participate on the assembly he was called an IDIOT which means "A Private Person" and was considered an idiot by his fellow citizens for allowing them to decide for him. The word IDIOT is still in use in modern Greek (ΙΔΙΟΤΗΣ) and has the same meaning without the negative connotation i.e. ΙΔΙΟΤΙΚΗ περιουσία = PRIVATE property
That makes the following quote by a contemporary Greek much more understandable - “those too smart to engage in politics are punished by being ruled by those dumber than them”
A noteworthy person to have been ostracized was Themistocles, the victorious admiral in the battle of Salamis against the Persians - by quite a large concensus, the man responsible for saving Athens and Greece itself from becoming a satrapy of the Achemenid Empire. He grew very popular in the aftermath of the war, but was wildly hostile to Sparta, which also contributed to the assembly's vote - not only was Temistocles becoming too powerful and influential, he might also drag the city to war with the Laconians. Themistocles never returned to Athens - ironically, he wound up serving the Persian king Artaxerxes - the son of the Xerxes who invaded Greece and who's fleet Themistocles destroyed - as governor and high ranking official. He died in exile in Asia, aged 63.
Solon's legislative reforms that laid the foundations for Athenean Democracy were not just an answer to the infighting of the oligarchs. You make it sound as if a member of the oligarchs willingly gave away power to the poor Athenean masses. Solon's reforms came about as a result of the growing unrest and rioting of the Athenean population against the Oligarchs. In other Greek city-states this conflict resulted in the establishment of tyrannies as a means for the aristocrates to maintain their rule. In Athens it was resolved with Solon's reforms which would compromise some of thar power and would introduce certain rights and political involvement to the masses.
@@PierroCh5 if you're implying our age of western democracies then you're wrong because they're based off of Roman style of democracy. Under Athenian democracy, poor, even if held little influence because of the rigged system, still voted for or against a lot of the issues DIRECTLY, not through representative. People didn't organize the governing bodies but voted directly and elections were held at random. Roman democracy on the other hand was heavily influenced by money and was made up of representatives who were supposed to represent their constituents but had their own interests. Still considering the technology back at the time, you couldn't have a full scale Athenian direct democracy on a scale of whole Roman Empire or even inside the walls of Rome itself because of how huge they were. And although today it's very much possible some rich oligarchs wouldn't be happy...
@@mYnAME-ww9iv Roman Democracy, or more succinctly the Roman Republic, was similar to Athenian democracy directly after the reforms of Solon. That is, while all Roman citizens did have some modicum of rights and power, the big decisions, and most of the power, were intended for the aristocracy & very wealthy, with the poor serving only as a 'tie-breaker' to prevent gridlock. Like this video suggests, basically a form of diffuse oligarchy, or perhaps an 'aristocratic republic'. If we were to continue the comparison, we might say that Julius Caesar was a Roman Peisistratos who was infinitely more charismatic, militarily skilled (pretty important), & politically populist. Still, I don't think the comparison is altogether helpful on a superficial level, and, for my part, I'm not suggesting Peisistratos was necessarily a dullard, or that their positions within their respective societies were altogether the same.
As a greek it's weird to hear words like Βασιλεύς Στρατηγός and Βουλή with an English accent. Also we were taught this type of stuff (although not with so much detail) in school so this is a nice way of learning more. As always great video.
DrIScream I thought that classical pronunciation included pronouncing β as b (not v), pronouncing "h" in words like "hellas", pronouning γ as g and υ as ü, as well as distinction between the sounds for ο and ω, and ι and ε, whereas Modern Greek is not pronounced like this.
AlphaMikeOmega You are right. The pronunciation has changed significantly over the centuries. But don't assume that in classical Greece there was a standard greek language for all Greeks, like there is today. There were many different accents, each one with their own distinct pronunciations of words. The current type of Greek language, called "demotike" is the continuation of classical attic Greek but shares the most simmilarities with "koine". The Greek type of language that was spoken in the Hellenistic eastern kingdoms. So the great grandfather is classical attic Greek, which would not be understood by current speakers, as it is fairly different in pronunciation. The grandfather is simplified Koine, which starts to resemble modern pronunciation. The father is medieval byzantine Greek. The child is demotike, which is spoken today.
Junius Argonon Well yes I'm Greek. And you are actually right. There are some distinct dialects such as Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot even today. But there is a difference. Most Cretans and certainly all Pontians can speak the standard Greek fairly well and they only speak their distinct accent (if they actually speak it at all) for cultural reasons between themselves. But that's not what I wanted to say in my previous comment. I actually wanted to talk about the false assumption that classical Greek of antiquity has the same pronunciation as today's standard Greek.
Junius Argonon Well it would amaze you how many Greeks unfortunately believe this. The truth is that 70% of our vocabulary comes directly from ancient greek. But that has lead to the misconception that because these are the same words, They must have been pronounced back then the same as they do today. So this is the reason behind my original comment. Take care.
Uh, who has imitated them? There is hardly a single country with any democratic institutions. We use elections - elections are anti-democratic, it´s an inherently aristocratic system. Random selection is the basis of democracy, not elections. Read Aristotle. We copy the Roman system, and there is a really good (actually really bad...) reason for that :P "Parliamentary democracy" and "democratic republic" are oxymorons, a contradiction hidden in plain sight. Plutocratic oligarchy is the correct term for modern government. PS: Jury duty is propably the only democratic institution today, but it is compromised by having judges.
Kawaiiser-Genosse Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern Calling modern governments oligarchies is a bit of a stretch. Look at the Venetian Republic for something more on that line.
Ancient History student here and I just spent this term studying this exact topic. This video is a perfect summery of what I studied. This will be helpful later down the line when it comes to revise for the exam period. Thank you very much Historia Civilis; amazing and informative content as always!
One of my favourite factoids about ancient Athens is that it was legal to kill a tyrant. If anyone held onto power after their term, a random citizen could kill him on some opportunity, and they wouldn't be accused of something.
A few comments by a native Greek speaker on the pronunciations: 1:23 "Areopagus = Arios Pagos" Pagos is an ancient Greek word for rock. It's basically a huge rocky hill situated near the Acropolis of Athens. Today the supreme court of Greece is called Arios Pagos. 2:10 "Basileus = Vasilefs". 2:35 "Polemarch = Polemarchos". 6:37 "Boule = Vouli" You've probably heard of it if you follow Greek politics. The word is still used today for the Hellenic Parliament 11:45 The 10 tribes were named after 10 mythological heroes, selected by the Oracle at Delphi. For anyone interested, they were: Erechtheis , Aigeis , Pandionis , Leontis , Akamantis , Oineis , Kekropis , Hippothontis , Aiantis (10 points if you know who the name refers to ) and lastly Antiochis. 13:40 "Prytaneis = Pritanis" The word is still used today, mostly for the head of a university. 17:05 Ostrakismos or Eksostrakismos (out + ostrascism). Historians have found roughly 10,500 pieces of pottery with names written on them. Plutarch wrote that on 482 B.C a man that didn't know how to write, asked a random person to write on his ostrakon the name Aristides (the Just). Unbeknownst to him that man was Aristides himself. Aristides asked him " What has Aristides done to you". "Nothing" the man replied, "but I'm tired of hearing everyone calling him Just". Upon hearing that, Aristides wrote his name on the Ostrakon and returned it to the man.
You're using the modern pronunciation of greek though. In ancient greek it would probably be closer to his pronunciation, since "β" sounded like "b" and not "v", "η" sounded like the italian "è" among other things
Great video! An underappreciated part of Solon's genius (and democracy's genius) was that a tremendous lot of new people not only got a measure of power; but with it a commensurate *stake* in the well-being and success of the nation-state. No monarchy or despotism can avail itself of so much freely given effort; born of the citizen's identifying the health of the state with his/her own so closely. This shouldn't be forgotten.
Excellent video. Even studying classics I struggled to get my head around Athenean democracy, this gives a really good picture of how it worked and evolved over time.
Well, this was illuminating. I knew of the Athenian Democracy before, and understood some of the peculiarities, but this was more complex than I had expected, with more thought put into it than I had realised. I guess I was a bit coloured by the story of the ostracism of Aristides, which made the Athenian Democracy seem so chaotic and foolish.
Athens gets that reputation I think in part because a lot of the people who wrote about Athenian government were opponents of it. The Philosophers like Socrates were never fans of Athenian democracy, and Thucydides had been exiled from the city and was not a fan of the more populist leaders. There are some legitimate examples of Athens making really bad decisions (looking at ordering an entire city killed for an insult or prosecuting all their admirals because they tried to save drowning sailors instead of perusing the enemy) but I think all democratic governments make idiotic decisions at times! Authoritarian governments also tend to have terrible rulers at times, just with democracy there are release valves were as you are stuck with terrible authoritarian leaders for years!
@@jeeshadow1 There's nothing that discredits a political system like losing a really big, important war. In the centuries following Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian war almost every historian/author treated democracy with scorn and derision. It helps explain why it took so long for democracy to get political traction again.
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 And part of the distortion was that the importance of that war was itself overrated, probably due to Thucydides and Xenophon, who each had a habit of exaggerating the importance of certain things in order to make a point. Truth: the oligarchic government of Athens installed after the war was gone in less than a year; the broad naval-based Athenian Empire was largely restored in a generation; the city once again surpassed Sparta in military importance after Leuctra, where the Thebans exposed the Spartan army as a paper tiger; and it was Macedon, not Sparta, that really brought down the democratic government as an independent force.
@@jeeshadow1 If you're talking about the battle of Arginusae, it was the other way around. They prosecuted the generals because they had failed to save drowning sailors, and that was especially infuriating to the public because of the political undertones (the sailors would have been mostly from the lower economic class).
Good video, I do want to note however that it's very common yet anachronistic to call Athens under Solon's reforms a "democracy". He laid a good foundation for Cleisthenes to build a democracy upon by removing debt-slavery and allowing all citizens to participate in the Ekklesia (along with some other less important reforms), but Athens under Solon wasn't democratic, it was timocratic and Solon didn't intend to do his reforms so that later someone could "finish" them and bring forth democracy or something, the idea of complete equality wasn't something he seeked.
Historia Civilis - You do a fantastic job of explaining history. Your voice has a very pleasant quality and your delivery is excellent. Plus your captions are quite funny as well. Thank you for all your work.
AMAZING video, as always. When the end song starts and the Historia Civilis logo comes at the end, I can't help but form a smile on my face in every video. Never change my dude, cheers.
@@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046 It's because most philosophers were either wealthy or disliked other people, and subsequently disliked the idea of "uneducated commoners" having any say on matters deemed too important for them.
It always is a pretty long wait for the next video. (I understand because it's a lot of research) But when there finally is one I genuinely can't wait to see it. I just watched this one in the train, I never watch TH-cam in the train. So sir, you may take this as a compliment! Thank u very much for doing what you do!
Heraclius reformed Roman administration to use Greek during the end of his tenure due to most of the Latin speaking parts of the empire being depopulated/conquered by Lombards, Slavs or Arabs.
Man your stuff is amazing your presentation of the material is always on point my attention is 100% on the video, I'd find it really interesting to learn how you make your research and put the whole thing together.
Thank You for Uploading this!!! I love the analyses of the different Greek States and just after my pretty awful finals week, it cheered me up thank you!!
V. Athanasiou I took Ancient Greek in college and I learned βουλή as meaning “counsel”, “will”, “determination”, or “Senate”. All of those translations make sense given the nature/job of the ancient boule and modern Parliament.
Love these constitution videos, wondering if you might also do less well known states, like the Florintian constitution, or to take a more modern example, the constitution of the Weimar republic?
I've been waiting for this video, I Just binged *all* your videos. I went back to the home page, and i couldn't believe my own luck, another Historia Civilis video. 10/10 Best channel on YT.
And Cleisthenes, nicknamed "the father of democracy", who was behind most of the later reforms presented in the video. He should have been mentioned by name :(
It's great to be able to look at history and see that the problems we face now aren't unique to our time and that they've been overcome before. I don't think we appreciate all that those in the past have gone through and learned. Nor do we try to implement their lessons in our own lives. We've been trying to figure out how best to live together in productive societies for what 12,000+ years now? There's a lot more to be taken from the past than some names and dates of battles. Historians of the future trying to figure out what our time was all about are going to have a lot of ads and blogs and general noise to wade through. I suppose all we really know of certain times is stock levels, trade agreements and certain privileged people's view on the state of things. Love these videos. Really make you think.
I think it worth mentioning the eventual downsides of the Athenian system, which can be slightly oversimplified into "mob rule." The citizens liked naval campaigns, because both shipbuilding and naval service brought money, so they kept pushing Athens into war whether it was prudent or not. This eventually led the Aegean area to regard Athens as a bully. There's much more to it than that, but that's the very short version. My point is that there's both an upside and a downside to almost anything. :)
That's possible, but there are some important safeguards we could adopt in a modern version. Today, we have something called Westphalian Sovereignty, meaning that the internal matters of another state are for it alone to decide provided that they respect their citizens' basic rights. A war may only be declared by another nation's aggression. Combined with rules related to conflicts of interest, transparency, and ownership over the means of building weapons and military equipment, and strict civilian control over any armed forces, defensive or not, no matter if they are without a ruling class or not, as well as complex trade networks that depend on international and collective cooperation, that works quite well. As for mobs, you can prevent that with having multiple centres of power beyond just the one assembly. Require broader consensus than just 50%+1. Create a charter of rights that cannot be repealed or amended to remove clauses, and make that charter very broad. Sortition as a means of political power includes the minority in a way that democracy today doesn't. And so on.
Love learning the configs of ancient civil governance and power. Battle knowledge is of course important but ancient society's legal, political and economic machines also give relevant lessons on how we got where we are today.
I’ve watched your whole playlist at least 2 dozen times…. I go to sleep to this and Timeous massive history of Rome playlist. TY so much. My son (9) loves em too YAY!!!
It‘s so sad, that we don‘t have a single „full democraty“ today. Here in Switzerland we get near to arhens but system isn‘t perfect (yet). And America, France, Germany and so on have have no direct democracy. = no democracy
Man this is great. To think about these people who lived tougher & more foreign lives than many of us can even imagine and how a small group of them decided to come together and stake everything on this idea of democracy, that people can decide for themselves in a civilized manner. It's a choice to live that way, with accompanying difficulties & rewards. Despite the difficulties these Greek people went to great lengths to defend & improve their democracy and look what a mark their efforts left.
Thumbs up due to the beautiful flowers @14:05! :)
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Agreed! I thank HC for his elucidation. I hope he eventually makes a presentation about the other Greek city-states, too. No one ever discusses them . . . .
Udumfck h
@@chadsknnr yo mama
Watching the video in 4K. You can really see how sharp the edges of the tiny squares are. 10/10
At 60 frames a second you can see how fluent their movement is
dude xD we shouldn't have 4K on these types of videos, especially if it's to be watched on sub-4K screens… lots of pollution caused by these heavy data transfers.
@Edgar Banuelos
Delete System32
@Edgar Banuelos What do you mean sorry?😁 it's not an issue of ram, it's an issue of pollution, of energy consumption.
@@LuizAlexPhoenix @Zacharie Chiron prolly means that producing this simple style (with a lot of viewers maybe watching on phones for example) in 4K is a waste of energy
It's worth mentioning that the "ostracised" person could keep all his property, and he and his family would suffer no other repercussions other than his forced physical absence from the city for 10 years.
The goal was removal from the political life, not punishment of any sort. For the Athenians, it was inconceivable that a citizen would be physically present but not participate in politics - even implying that someone didn't want to engage in "the common" [public matters] would be a huge insult. The modern term "idiot" comes from their word "idiotes", meaning the person who only cares about his private matters.
Well then, in America, I could say we are a nation of 'idiotes'.
Eliott Afriat Lol
Francis Lai
Wrong.
Really though, in every single place where there is a group of humans the majority are idiots, and I dare say America has more people who are not idiots than many or even most other countries.
Most Americans do not participate in politics, even at the voting level. It would be apt say that most Americans would be idiots, going by this reasoning.
last time i was this early the spartans could field 10.000 citizen soldiers.
Drew Insur that’s a lot of squares
@@hattiewhitson7736 or one really big one 🟥
2:23 "Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Basileus the greek?"
I am the King..
You are cute...
I love you so much right now.
"It's not a story a Turkish nationalist would tell."
Salve, Cicero!
I like your Avatar man. ;)
Only this man could get me to watch a full video about paperwork of a dead government over 2,000 year ago.
B We still have democracy.. what you mean dead?
1st off no we don't have a democracy we have a republics, but that aside I was talking specifically about the ancient government of Athens
Φώτης Γιαννακόπουλος we don’t have what Athens had anywhere in the world
Who is "we" are you guys talking about America?
"We"...as in every country in the world. No country in the world has Democracy today. Only One that comes close is Switzerland.
The use of broken pottery is actually genius. It meant that no one could fake ballets, since their fake ballets wouldn’t fit back into the reassembled pot.
holy shit i didnt notice this
This comment has ruined the quest in Assassin's Creed Odyssey where the player character rigs an ostracism in Athens.
... We should bring this back this is genius.
Then couldn’t you just get a whole another pot and break it? Maybe all the fake ballots from the extra pot would fit back together
You need a VERY Large pottery vessel to get 600 Ostraca on which a name would be written. Probably they had many vessels of pottery.
This channel does a great job in making history accessible. I already love history, but often don't have the time to scroll through many many documents and then make a coherent story. You are absolutely great at this, it is often quite difficult to make history seem coherent and simple because it often isn't. Good job! Keep up the good work!
mr id k
Telling a story around history is a double-edged sword. Memorable, accessible, sure. Vulnerable to your own biases? Also that.
@@TheGerogero true but history is biased by the tellers of the time and nowadays. You will read a textbook and it shall be biased, even slightly
@6:15 If a Citizen didn't participate on the assembly he was called an IDIOT which means "A Private Person"
and was considered an idiot by his fellow citizens for allowing them to decide for him.
The word IDIOT is still in use in modern Greek (ΙΔΙΟΤΗΣ) and has the same meaning without the negative connotation
i.e. ΙΔΙΟΤΙΚΗ περιουσία = PRIVATE property
Is it true etymologically? If it is, I'm gonna use it in political debates. You are an Idiot, YOU are an Idiot. Everyone is an Idiot these days xD
That makes the following quote by a contemporary Greek much more understandable - “those too smart to engage in politics are punished by being ruled by those dumber than them”
Well private property *is* idiotic in both senses of the word
@@evannesbitt7852 socialism with Athenian characteristics!
@@daca8395 if only
A noteworthy person to have been ostracized was Themistocles, the victorious admiral in the battle of Salamis against the Persians - by quite a large concensus, the man responsible for saving Athens and Greece itself from becoming a satrapy of the Achemenid Empire.
He grew very popular in the aftermath of the war, but was wildly hostile to Sparta, which also contributed to the assembly's vote - not only was Temistocles becoming too powerful and influential, he might also drag the city to war with the Laconians.
Themistocles never returned to Athens - ironically, he wound up serving the Persian king Artaxerxes - the son of the Xerxes who invaded Greece and who's fleet Themistocles destroyed - as governor and high ranking official. He died in exile in Asia, aged 63.
It reminds me of Churchill being voted out of office before WW2 had ended, except that Churchill wasn't exiled from the UK for 10 years.
Solon's legislative reforms that laid the foundations for Athenean Democracy were not just an answer to the infighting of the oligarchs. You make it sound as if a member of the oligarchs willingly gave away power to the poor Athenean masses. Solon's reforms came about as a result of the growing unrest and rioting of the Athenean population against the Oligarchs. In other Greek city-states this conflict resulted in the establishment of tyrannies as a means for the aristocrates to maintain their rule. In Athens it was resolved with Solon's reforms which would compromise some of thar power and would introduce certain rights and political involvement to the masses.
Sounds familiar...
@@PierroCh5 if you're implying our age of western democracies then you're wrong because they're based off of Roman style of democracy. Under Athenian democracy, poor, even if held little influence because of the rigged system, still voted for or against a lot of the issues DIRECTLY, not through representative. People didn't organize the governing bodies but voted directly and elections were held at random.
Roman democracy on the other hand was heavily influenced by money and was made up of representatives who were supposed to represent their constituents but had their own interests.
Still considering the technology back at the time, you couldn't have a full scale Athenian direct democracy on a scale of whole Roman Empire or even inside the walls of Rome itself because of how huge they were. And although today it's very much possible some rich oligarchs wouldn't be happy...
@@mYnAME-ww9iv Roman Democracy, or more succinctly the Roman Republic, was similar to Athenian democracy directly after the reforms of Solon. That is, while all Roman citizens did have some modicum of rights and power, the big decisions, and most of the power, were intended for the aristocracy & very wealthy, with the poor serving only as a 'tie-breaker' to prevent gridlock. Like this video suggests, basically a form of diffuse oligarchy, or perhaps an 'aristocratic republic'.
If we were to continue the comparison, we might say that Julius Caesar was a Roman Peisistratos who was infinitely more charismatic, militarily skilled (pretty important), & politically populist. Still, I don't think the comparison is altogether helpful on a superficial level, and, for my part, I'm not suggesting Peisistratos was necessarily a dullard, or that their positions within their respective societies were altogether the same.
'twas ever thus...
18:45 Where is Sicily?
Gone for a walk :P
Out of the frame. It’s too far out to see in this view.
obviously the boot kicked it away
And Sardinia. And Corsica.
Sorry dude. Sicily's just been ostracised.
Thanks for making another video, I missed the squares.
Nämen Hejsan tjänare, hur är livet?
Ja det går som det går. Hur e det själv?
Nämen Hejsan meh, sku kunna va bättre
Yeah, I love the little guys ▪️▪️▪️▪️▪️
▫️▫️▫️▫️▫️
that's racist, black and white squares? what about yellow, red, and brown squares?
jk of course
You did an amazing job. I'm reading Plutarch and Aristotle right now. But you clarified/simplified everything so well. Your channel deserves support.
This channel is my favourite thing to see in notifications. I legitimately get excited.
As a greek it's weird to hear words like Βασιλεύς Στρατηγός and Βουλή with an English accent. Also we were taught this type of stuff (although not with so much detail) in school so this is a nice way of learning more. As always great video.
I'm curious, presumably your teachers do the modern Greek pronunciation rather than the ancient/classical pronunciation? Or does it vary by teacher?
DrIScream I thought that classical pronunciation included pronouncing β as b (not v), pronouncing "h" in words like "hellas", pronouning γ as g and υ as ü, as well as distinction between the sounds for ο and ω, and ι and ε, whereas Modern Greek is not pronounced like this.
AlphaMikeOmega You are right. The pronunciation has changed significantly over the centuries. But don't assume that in classical Greece there was a standard greek language for all Greeks, like there is today. There were many different accents, each one with their own distinct pronunciations of words. The current type of Greek language, called "demotike" is the continuation of classical attic Greek but shares the most simmilarities with "koine". The Greek type of language that was spoken in the Hellenistic eastern kingdoms. So the great grandfather is classical attic Greek, which would not be understood by current speakers, as it is fairly different in pronunciation. The grandfather is simplified Koine, which starts to resemble modern pronunciation. The father is medieval byzantine Greek. The child is demotike, which is spoken today.
Junius Argonon Well yes I'm Greek. And you are actually right. There are some distinct dialects such as Pontic, Cretan, Cypriot even today. But there is a difference. Most Cretans and certainly all Pontians can speak the standard Greek fairly well and they only speak their distinct accent (if they actually speak it at all) for cultural reasons between themselves. But that's not what I wanted to say in my previous comment. I actually wanted to talk about the false assumption that classical Greek of antiquity has the same pronunciation as today's standard Greek.
Junius Argonon Well it would amaze you how many Greeks unfortunately believe this. The truth is that 70% of our vocabulary comes directly from ancient greek. But that has lead to the misconception that because these are the same words, They must have been pronounced back then the same as they do today. So this is the reason behind my original comment. Take care.
I teach history to high school students in Spain (I'm American) and have been using your videos with my history buff kids. keep it up dude!
I'd love a similar one on the Old Swiss Confederacy.
Yessssss
The comment is 69 likes
Those Ancient Athenians should feel proud. Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
oWallis too bad greece is an economic failure
Too bad they would pity us.Democracy nowdays means Mob drama
Uh, who has imitated them? There is hardly a single country with any democratic institutions. We use elections - elections are anti-democratic, it´s an inherently aristocratic system. Random selection is the basis of democracy, not elections. Read Aristotle.
We copy the Roman system, and there is a really good (actually really bad...) reason for that :P
"Parliamentary democracy" and "democratic republic" are oxymorons, a contradiction hidden in plain sight. Plutocratic oligarchy is the correct term for modern government.
PS: Jury duty is propably the only democratic institution today, but it is compromised by having judges.
Kawaiiser-Genosse Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern Calling modern governments oligarchies is a bit of a stretch. Look at the Venetian Republic for something more on that line.
*sincerest
That beat at the beginning of the video was pretty dope
Paul Casey y
th-cam.com/video/Z29-q66B1aA/w-d-xo.html
Macieks300 thanks!
Perfect, I was just wondering what I was going to watch while eating dinner. Another masterpiece my dude
oWallis check /r/mealtimevideos if you can. It was made for people like you and me.
Ancient History student here and I just spent this term studying this exact topic. This video is a perfect summery of what I studied. This will be helpful later down the line when it comes to revise for the exam period. Thank you very much Historia Civilis; amazing and informative content as always!
18:45 I see Sicily has been ostracized from Europe
Lmao
Sardinia and Corsica too
O Just love when the ending song plays after a small pause, It is so satisfying
One of my favourite factoids about ancient Athens is that it was legal to kill a tyrant. If anyone held onto power after their term, a random citizen could kill him on some opportunity, and they wouldn't be accused of something.
A few comments by a native Greek speaker on the pronunciations:
1:23 "Areopagus = Arios Pagos" Pagos is an ancient Greek word for rock. It's basically a huge rocky hill situated near the Acropolis of Athens. Today the supreme court of Greece is called Arios Pagos.
2:10 "Basileus = Vasilefs".
2:35 "Polemarch = Polemarchos".
6:37 "Boule = Vouli" You've probably heard of it if you follow Greek politics. The word is still used today for the Hellenic Parliament
11:45 The 10 tribes were named after 10 mythological heroes, selected by the Oracle at Delphi. For anyone interested, they were: Erechtheis , Aigeis , Pandionis , Leontis , Akamantis , Oineis , Kekropis , Hippothontis , Aiantis (10 points if you know who the name refers to ) and lastly Antiochis.
13:40 "Prytaneis = Pritanis" The word is still used today, mostly for the head of a university.
17:05 Ostrakismos or Eksostrakismos (out + ostrascism). Historians have found roughly 10,500 pieces of pottery with names written on them. Plutarch wrote that on 482 B.C a man that didn't know how to write, asked a random person to write on his ostrakon the name Aristides (the Just). Unbeknownst to him that man was Aristides himself. Aristides asked him " What has Aristides done to you". "Nothing" the man replied, "but I'm tired of hearing everyone calling him Just". Upon hearing that, Aristides wrote his name on the Ostrakon and returned it to the man.
You're using the modern pronunciation of greek though. In ancient greek it would probably be closer to his pronunciation, since "β" sounded like "b" and not "v", "η" sounded like the italian "è" among other things
That last story about Aristides is so deep omg
Great video! An underappreciated part of Solon's genius (and democracy's genius) was that a tremendous lot of new people not only got a measure of power; but with it a commensurate *stake* in the well-being and success of the nation-state. No monarchy or despotism can avail itself of so much freely given effort; born of the citizen's identifying the health of the state with his/her own so closely. This shouldn't be forgotten.
Excellent video. Even studying classics I struggled to get my head around Athenean democracy, this gives a really good picture of how it worked and evolved over time.
Well, this was illuminating.
I knew of the Athenian Democracy before, and understood some of the peculiarities, but this was more complex than I had expected, with more thought put into it than I had realised. I guess I was a bit coloured by the story of the ostracism of Aristides, which made the Athenian Democracy seem so chaotic and foolish.
Athens gets that reputation I think in part because a lot of the people who wrote about Athenian government were opponents of it. The Philosophers like Socrates were never fans of Athenian democracy, and Thucydides had been exiled from the city and was not a fan of the more populist leaders. There are some legitimate examples of Athens making really bad decisions (looking at ordering an entire city killed for an insult or prosecuting all their admirals because they tried to save drowning sailors instead of perusing the enemy) but I think all democratic governments make idiotic decisions at times! Authoritarian governments also tend to have terrible rulers at times, just with democracy there are release valves were as you are stuck with terrible authoritarian leaders for years!
@@jeeshadow1 There's nothing that discredits a political system like losing a really big, important war. In the centuries following Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian war almost every historian/author treated democracy with scorn and derision. It helps explain why it took so long for democracy to get political traction again.
@@AbbeyRoadkill1 And part of the distortion was that the importance of that war was itself overrated, probably due to Thucydides and Xenophon, who each had a habit of exaggerating the importance of certain things in order to make a point.
Truth: the oligarchic government of Athens installed after the war was gone in less than a year; the broad naval-based Athenian Empire was largely restored in a generation; the city once again surpassed Sparta in military importance after Leuctra, where the Thebans exposed the Spartan army as a paper tiger; and it was Macedon, not Sparta, that really brought down the democratic government as an independent force.
@@DarklordZagarna 👏👏👏👏👏 Pretty well explained.
@@jeeshadow1 If you're talking about the battle of Arginusae, it was the other way around. They prosecuted the generals because they had failed to save drowning sailors, and that was especially infuriating to the public because of the political undertones (the sailors would have been mostly from the lower economic class).
Good video, I do want to note however that it's very common yet anachronistic to call Athens under Solon's reforms a "democracy". He laid a good foundation for Cleisthenes to build a democracy upon by removing debt-slavery and allowing all citizens to participate in the Ekklesia (along with some other less important reforms), but Athens under Solon wasn't democratic, it was timocratic and Solon didn't intend to do his reforms so that later someone could "finish" them and bring forth democracy or something, the idea of complete equality wasn't something he seeked.
It was pretty cool of John Carpenter to do the soundtrack for this episode.
the music is shit
I'm etching your name +astroboirap onto a piece of pottery. You're gonna get ostracized! Need 5999 more likes! LET'S GOOOOO!
the new music ruled. astroboirap has no place in athens
astroboirap Says the dude getting more dislikes than likes on all of his 'songs'
SteaMonkey Alexander the Great wasn't popular either
Historia Civilis - You do a fantastic job of explaining history. Your voice has a very pleasant quality and your delivery is excellent. Plus your captions are quite funny as well. Thank you for all your work.
AMAZING video, as always. When the end song starts and the Historia Civilis logo comes at the end, I can't help but form a smile on my face in every video. Never change my dude, cheers.
Last time I was this early the Romans had just thrown out their king!
No more macedonians :(
Mate the synth bases you have as background music are insane
It totally rocks!
Historia Civilis: Transforming Athens from a limited democracy to a full democracy.
*Socrates has left the chat*
American patriotism has joined the chat.
Its weird that most philosophers were skeptical of democracy
*Jasjdwero*
@@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046 It's because most philosophers were either wealthy or disliked other people, and subsequently disliked the idea of "uneducated commoners" having any say on matters deemed too important for them.
@@alexmemster5816 USA is a republic, not "full democracy", you simp.
@@TheBrickMasterB They were proven right.
It always is a pretty long wait for the next video. (I understand because it's a lot of research) But when there finally is one I genuinely can't wait to see it. I just watched this one in the train, I never watch TH-cam in the train. So sir, you may take this as a compliment! Thank u very much for doing what you do!
Are you ever gonna go back to the Caesar-Pompey War?
Joey Kevorkian “I will make a video deconstructing the words “Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” I believe that is how it was said.
please daddy civilis
Joey Kevorkian most likely he will
Maybe he does Greek stuff until Alexander series is finished.
FivesIncarnate The phrase he said he'd dissect was "Caesar marched on Rome," I believe.
Your content should be on the front page! The videos are both informative and interesting. I cannot recommend them enough.
Basileus was also the title of the Byzantine (Roman) Emperor at some point IIRC E: Hold up, strategoi also was a name ERE used
Heraclius reformed Roman administration to use Greek during the end of his tenure due to most of the Latin speaking parts of the empire being depopulated/conquered by Lombards, Slavs or Arabs.
Sicily is missing from that map at then end. Love the content, honestly my favorite channel
I'm a simple man, I see a historia civilis video
I click
I like
Mmmm where did I read this before?
I like before the video load.
Hey reddit! XD super funny comment! Le upboat!
This is my favorite TH-cam channel of all time. I stop anything I'm doing to watch new uploads
what happened to sicily????
Alp Ugur It got deleted by the Gods xD
and sardegna and corse XD
The spartans took it from Athens! :)
FarawayWayfarer it's Sardinia in English
It was ostracized
I find it fascinating how much democracy has evolved since then, and encouraging to think it is perhaps capable of such evolution still.
YOU'RE BACK!
I missed you...
All the members of the Prytaneis living in a house together sounds like the setup for a historical sit-com
Man your stuff is amazing your presentation of the material is always on point my attention is 100% on the video, I'd find it really interesting to learn how you make your research and put the whole thing together.
One of the few channels I stop everything I am doing to watch. Always quality content.
When are you going to make a video on Caesars march on Rome?
*rolls dice*
At his rate, Summer 2019 sounds about right.
YAH21 it’s summer 2019
You make some of the legitimately best content on youtube.
It'd be interesting to go into more depth on the way that Hellenic culture spread, especially via the Etruscans to Rome.
This is easily my favorite TH-cam channel
18:50
Where is Sicily?!?!? It's gone :o
Thank You for Uploading this!!! I love the analyses of the different Greek States and just after my pretty awful finals week, it cheered me up thank you!!
HANDS UP FOR THE MOST HECTIC OUTRO MUSIC EVER!!
This is the channel i yearned to find for a long time
So... Thessaly next?
Car broke down, it's super cold (-15°C) and I'm middle of nowhere. At least there is Civilis video so I have that going for me
did you survive?
My man got some sick new intro-beats
That lightning puts Industrial Light and Magic to shame. Top notch work Historica Civlis, as customary.
In modern Greek "Boule" was the word chosen to translate "Parliament"
V. Athanasiou
I took Ancient Greek in college and I learned βουλή as meaning “counsel”, “will”, “determination”, or “Senate”.
All of those translations make sense given the nature/job of the ancient boule and modern Parliament.
I am so stoked! Thank you for submitting another fantastic video before the new year!
Love these constitution videos, wondering if you might also do less well known states, like the Florintian constitution, or to take a more modern example, the constitution of the Weimar republic?
I've been waiting for this video, I Just binged *all* your videos. I went back to the home page, and i couldn't believe my own luck, another Historia Civilis video.
10/10 Best channel on YT.
11:21 That spinning square looks hilarious.
That's a Sentence that, while it makes perfect sense In this context, I never expected to hear. Take my like
My favorite History channel on youtube. You kick ass bro.
Please do a video on caesars pall labienus
Paul Aldrich I could go for that
I believe Paul Benis was responsible for Kill Butt 2: 2
So glad to see enough video from Historia Civilis.
Give poor Draco some love too! Without his previous reforms, Solon couldn't have done much.
And Cleisthenes, nicknamed "the father of democracy", who was behind most of the later reforms presented in the video. He should have been mentioned by name :(
He was a bit too Draconian for my tastes.
*Buh dum tish.
@@jasondoe2596 Back in school, textbooks would always talk of "the reforms by Solon _and_ Cleisthenes".
yarpen26, yeap!
Ohhhhhhh it’s so good to have you back!
"Congratulations, my dude/fellow politician! They just elected you mayor!"
"Uh... greeeaaaat..."
"... of ancient Athens!"
"Wait what?! WOOOOOOO!!!"
It's great to be able to look at history and see that the problems we face now aren't unique to our time and that they've been overcome before.
I don't think we appreciate all that those in the past have gone through and learned. Nor do we try to implement their lessons in our own lives. We've been trying to figure out how best to live together in productive societies for what 12,000+ years now? There's a lot more to be taken from the past than some names and dates of battles.
Historians of the future trying to figure out what our time was all about are going to have a lot of ads and blogs and general noise to wade through. I suppose all we really know of certain times is stock levels, trade agreements and certain privileged people's view on the state of things.
Love these videos. Really make you think.
2:56 POWER OVERWHELMING
The music appears to be directional in my headphones and it threw me off. His outro in here is satisfying to reach as always. Good choices of music
18:33 where is Sicily?
Sunk by carthage
Keep up the good work.
I have been missing new videos from you. Don’t stop
18:59 where is Sicily? Did Thanos snap it out of existance?
So glad you uploaded again. This is my favorite channel. Please keep up your great work!
I think it worth mentioning the eventual downsides of the Athenian system, which can be slightly oversimplified into "mob rule." The citizens liked naval campaigns, because both shipbuilding and naval service brought money, so they kept pushing Athens into war whether it was prudent or not. This eventually led the Aegean area to regard Athens as a bully. There's much more to it than that, but that's the very short version. My point is that there's both an upside and a downside to almost anything. :)
That's possible, but there are some important safeguards we could adopt in a modern version.
Today, we have something called Westphalian Sovereignty, meaning that the internal matters of another state are for it alone to decide provided that they respect their citizens' basic rights. A war may only be declared by another nation's aggression. Combined with rules related to conflicts of interest, transparency, and ownership over the means of building weapons and military equipment, and strict civilian control over any armed forces, defensive or not, no matter if they are without a ruling class or not, as well as complex trade networks that depend on international and collective cooperation, that works quite well.
As for mobs, you can prevent that with having multiple centres of power beyond just the one assembly. Require broader consensus than just 50%+1. Create a charter of rights that cannot be repealed or amended to remove clauses, and make that charter very broad. Sortition as a means of political power includes the minority in a way that democracy today doesn't. And so on.
Love learning the configs of ancient civil governance and power. Battle knowledge is of course important but ancient society's legal, political and economic machines also give relevant lessons on how we got where we are today.
The problem with democracy is that people get a say.
Democracy can easily turn to Idiocracy, sadly.
that vid & the constitution of Spartans vid were both really well made, well done!
"Deme names are where it's at!"
-Some old Athenian
I’ve watched your whole playlist at least 2 dozen times…. I go to sleep to this and Timeous massive history of Rome playlist. TY so much. My son (9) loves em too YAY!!!
Thank God, I've scoured youtube and this is the first video to go over the Athenian system in detail.
Carolus Augustus Woo-hoo!
OMG I get so full of dopamine when you upload a video. Thank you!
It‘s so sad, that we don‘t have a single „full democraty“ today. Here in Switzerland we get near to arhens but system isn‘t perfect (yet). And America, France, Germany and so on have have no direct democracy. = no democracy
Direct democracy leads to mob rule
CodeKillerz
Yes, and that is sad too
U are a absolute master at explaining politics and military
Can u please do a video on when the Romans invaded Briton in 52 AD (I think that's the year) cheers
Excellent as usual. Very informative and easy to understand. Love the way you break it down. Keep it up.
man today’s been amazing. shoes I ordered finally came, new update for Payday 2 and a vid from Historia Civilis
Mandez Siow same here,but what arrived was my Hail Caesar miniatures not shoes 😄
No memes, no BS, just really good educational videos. Damn good.
freaking love this boy
awesome to see that a new video was uploaded. dude your a genius.Cheers
Man this is great. To think about these people who lived tougher & more foreign lives than many of us can even imagine and how a small group of them decided to come together and stake everything on this idea of democracy, that people can decide for themselves in a civilized manner. It's a choice to live that way, with accompanying difficulties & rewards. Despite the difficulties these Greek people went to great lengths to defend & improve their democracy and look what a mark their efforts left.
Very impressive work on this channel. Amongst the best on TH-cam.
WHAT!? Your map in the end is without sicily!?!?
Com on dude. :-)
One of the best channels on TH-cam.
Thank you for uploading!