When the news of the Greek victory at Marathon (490 BCE) came to the Persian king Darius the Great, he first sent heralds to Hellas to demand earth and water—the usual token of submission—which he received from many cities of Greece. [1] He instructed Ionia and the islands to build ships and to enroll their best men for service against Hellas. King Darius died, and the royal power descended to… Read more
We were pleased to welcome Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge, and A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus, for the first Open House of the Fall 2018 session, to discuss Sparta and its continuing myth. This event took place on Thursday, September 6, at 11 a.m. EDT, and was recorded. Before watching the event you might like to read the PDF handout: 2018-05-29_PaulCartledge_Sparta-T.pdf You can… Read more
Members of the Kosmos Society have been reading sections of Xenophon’s Anabasis, and this post provides a brief historical context to that work. The text is available on Perseus, both in Greek and in an English translation by Carleton L. Brownson (1922). Historical context The Anabasis by the Athenian soldier, historian and philosopher Xenophon, also known as The Anabasis of Cyrus, The March of the Ten Thousand and The March… Read more
The spectator on the aft deck A clay model found in a tomb at Amathos[1] tells us the story of a man who comfortably sits on the back of his ship without a helm, having such a clear vision over the well-built ship—and where it is going to—that we could call it a modeled scene of a theōriā: the figure being a spectator who looks with his eyes and his… Read more
By the second part of the Bronze Age the Mediterranean was a vibrant place, full of maritime activity, enabling exchange in knowledge and materials. The Greek art of building ships and knowing how to operate them was at the basis of western civilization. The natural drive to look beyond the horizon resulted in cultural growth, wealth, trade and migration.[1] The ancient Greeks explored new coastlines and envisaged to enter into… Read more