06-16-2009, 08:20 PM
Quote:In his book on Themopylae, he maintains that the Persian Wars were decisive for the birth of western civilization. If we assume, for argument's sake, that there is indeed a connection between Greek and our own civilization (e.g., some kind of cultural paradigm was created in Greece that is still in existence), we must also prove that this would not have come into being if the Persian Wars had resulted in a Persian victory. The arguments for this thesis were for the first time put forward in the nineteenth century (Persian victory = eastern obscurantism, mysticism instead of rationalism, no democracy, no science).
Well FWIW his Alexander the Great seems better. I didn't notice any logical fallacies leaping off the pages and slapping me in the face.
But I wonder how something like this could make it into print. I mean, don't historians have peer review like other academic disciplines?
Imagine, for example, if a quantum physicist in the 21st century published claims supported by flawed, outdated research that Niels Bohr refuted in the 1920s. Wouldn't this physicist be scorned into obscurity?
I'm not saying I have a problem with Paul Cartledge, in fact I enjoyed the book I just finished reading. But mistakes are mistakes, even the best of us make them from time to time, and it seems like his credibility (or that of his publisher) should suffer as a result.
Quote:Cartledge may indeed be a propagandist on this issue, but if so then in a minor key. For a true propagandist one need but look at David Victor Hanson and his writings about the Greco-Persian wars, particularly the essays he wrote in support of the film 300. Hanson is considered a "serious" historian.
Thanks for the link to that essay. Hanson is posing a false dichotomy; he seems to think that from the Greek perspective, slavery and political oppression were uniquely Persian institutions, and those saintly Greeks never would have considered foisting those same injustices on their fellow Greeks.
Lest we forget that one generation after Thermopylae, the Parthenon was built by slaves and financed with money forcibly extracted from subjects of Athens.
So much for that precious "Greek freedom" being rescued from tyranny.
