welcome everyone this is a sample
lecture a taster lecture to give you a
feel of what it might be like to be an
Ancient History student here at
Birmingham and what I'm giving you today
is actually based on a lecture I give to
first-year students in their very first
week as an Ancient History student at
Birmingham so it really is a taster of
what it is actually like so it's
designed to give you a sense of what it
will be like in terms of the teaching
but also the content and I've started
with an image which is close to my
research interest which is an image of
Spartans being Spartan but I'm not going
to talk to you about Spartans almost at
all today so there's a lot you need to
get through before you get to that so
today's lecture like any Ancient History
lecture will actually begin with a
running order so it's not a completely
mysterious event about what we're
actually going to talk about and then
talk you through about what we're going
to do today so I'm going look at the
question of who were the Greeks I'm
going to consider where we might find
the Greeks and there'll be a moment of
audience participation where I ask you
to look at a map and tell me where you
think Greeks might be found we'll look
at the idea of a polis what is Apollo's
we'll look at how we actually know about
the Greeks and how you as ancient
history students are going to find out
more about the ancient Greeks we're
going to look at the question of who is
Herodotus quick show of hands who's
heard of Herodotus before okay I've got
some hands up that's good and we'll look
at the question of what Herodotus was
writing about and we'll look at the
really big question of how much can we
as ancient historians because now that
we're in this room we really are ancient
historians how much can we trust her
audit us are we are we able to take him
at his word or are there reasons to be
really cautious about what Herodotus
tells us so the big question who were
the Greeks well a bit of a problem for
us the Greeks weren't actually the
Greeks we call them the Greeks they
called themselves the Hellenes and
that's the same today in modern Greece
Greeks don't actually refer to
themselves as Greeks and they don't
refer to their country as as as Greece
either that's our term for them the
Greeks call themselves Hellenes
because they all believe that it
descended from one man named Hellen and
this is a moment I always have to pause
to first-year students and say a man
named Hellen with two L's not one l and
occasionally I set an exam question
that something along the lines of why
did the Greeks call themselves Hellenes
and one of the potential options is
because they were all descended from
Helen of Troy and that's definitely the
wrong answer they're all descended from
Hellen and there's a wonderful passage in
Herodotus where this idea of the Greeks
all coming together with one culture is
put into sentence where an Athenian says
we're all her lanes one race speaking
one language with temples to the gods
and religious rights in common and with
a common way of life and so speaking the
same language having the same practices
that's what makes them Greek and I've
got an image from Larry conics cartoon
history of the universe to put this
store the backstory to this idea in
perspective the Greeks believed that
Helen was the sole human whether the son
of the sole human decay liqu Deucalion
who survived a great flood the the the
Hebrew Bible is not the only ancient
text which has a flood story in it the
ancient Greeks believed that the gods
were angry with humans and decided to
wipe them all out in a great flood and
one man survived
Deucalion and he threw a rock over his
shoulder and his son Helen was born from
the earth and he is the first Greek and
all Greeks are descended from him where
would we find Greeks in the ancient
world there's a question I throw at you
now and I have a map here which is blank
so I'm just as might require some
audience participation does anyone feel
confident they could tell me where we
would find Greeks this is the moment
where you're behaving genuinely like
first-year students in the very first
lecture you're all sitting there shyly
and you've even demonstrated that by not
sitting in the front row as well because
no first-year students sit in the front
row if they can possibly avoid it anyone
confident enough to suggest where they
think Greeks would be found beginning oh
sorry in the middle of the map of left
or right you're volunteering
to the right okay I think we're heading
definitely to the right if you were
thinking there are we now all grinning
and agreeing with me here yep you would
definitely find ancient Greeks there as
you will find Greeks today but that's
not the only time the only place in the
ancient world you will find Greeks you
will also find Greeks in southern Italy
and in Sicily and it was really
interesting this week it was in The
Guardian there was an article talked
about how I in Sicily there's a town
where they're selling they're selling
houses for 1 euro and buried in that
article was a it was a fact where they
said apparently this city was founded by
Greeks and they wrote it in such a way
it made it sound like it was founded by
Greeks in the last couple of years what
they were actually talking about was the
period of colonization where ancient
Greeks sailed around the Mediterranean
and set up cities elsewhere so you'll
find Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily
you'll find Greeks along the coast of
what is now Turkey as well I'll come
back to this issue later on and Greeks
at the time that our primary sources are
talking about and the third time that
I'm talking about today tended to live
in city-states and the term that the
ancient Greeks had for city state was
polis and I'm gonna try and explain that
in map form for you here so what's the
most famous ancient Greek city anyone
can think of you're volunteering at
Athens yeah ok perfect that was the
right answer so the city of Athens that
you can travel to today has existed for
thousands of years the ancient Athenians
actually believed they had always lived
there they believed their mythical kings
like Helen have actually sprung up from
the earth itself so the Athenians were
proud of the fact that they were
indigenous and had never lived anywhere
else you've got another famous city
that's that's some key part of my own
work Sparta and just as another
perspective for you another city that
some of you might have heard of Corinth
so we're often thinking about these
places as cities but they're not just
cities they're city-states and I'm going
to
that with his map now Athens and
Athenians they didn't just leave in that
dot that is the city of Athens they
actually lived in all of that
surrounding countryside so that's what I
mean by a polis or a city-state it's the
city and its surrounding countryside
the Spartans controlled all of this area
known as Laconia and they actually
conquered the neighbours next door the
Mycenaeans and turned themselves into
what is pretty much the biggest
city-state in ancient greek history and
just to illustrate the point a bit
further you've got Corinth there these
are actually three of the biggest
city-states a lot of the city-states are
much smaller than that so our sources
often talk about Athens and Sparta and
they're often talk about that as butter
just because they were bigger and more
powerful than the rest of the cities and
these cities tended to get big and one
of the consequences of getting beat was
they started to spread themselves around
other parts of the Mediterranean so that
map before where I was showing you
southern Italy and Sicily there are
various colonies set up in the period
between 800 and 500 BC so you might
think of the north coast of Egypt and
Libya as very much African but in the
period that we're looking at today it
was actually colonized by the Greeks
the Spartans set up a colony in Fira
which is the modern island of Santorini
those people when they filled up
Santorini set up a colony in Cyrene II
in North Africa
you've got the colonies in Sicily Sicily
and southern Italy which modern scholars
tend to refer to as Magna Graecia
greater Greece there was almost as much
landmass controlled by Greeks there as
there is in what we would think of as
Greece
you've got Byzantium founded around 600
BC Byzantium later known as
Constantinople now known as Istanbul and
my personal favorite when it comes to
Greek colonization Masillia you will know
it more rough as will be much more
familiar to you as Marseille the French
city of Marseille
was actually founded by the Greeks
allegedly 598 BC they're quite specific
in some of these explanations of things
later on but it will have been around
around that time and the Greeks can
actually be found in the period we're
looking at here right up in the Black
Sea coast up in what is now disputed
territory between Russia and Ukraine so
the Greeks got around quite a bit in the
ancient world she'll actually point out
while I've got these slides up here one
of the things I like to do for
first-year students is give them a
timeline here so as we progress
downwards through Greek history we
actually get a sense of where we are so
in lectures that follow I would actually
have one of these some of these year
ranges highlighted so students get a
sense of what's going on in terms of
chronology okay so how do we know about
these Greeks I'm telling you all these
facts about Greek colonization I'm
talking about Greeks living in
city-states and this was called a policy
and the big question then is how do we
know about them and we know about them
because around at the time that I'm
gonna start talking about the Greeks
started to actually record their own
history and the word history actually
comes from the first attempts to
actually record the knowable past and
today we're going to focus on the first
surviving historian whose name was
Herodotus who was sometimes known as the
father of history and this is an image
which is labeled as Herodotus and is
what someone in the ancient world
thought and what artists looked like but
there's no no real sense that these he's
actually really an image of Herodotus
and Herodotus set out at the very
beginning of his work he explained what
he was trying to do so his work begins
with here are presented the results of
the inquiry carried out by Herodotus of
Halicarnassus the purpose is to prevent
the traces of human events from being
erased by time so Herodotus said I'm
doing this inquiry and the Greek word
for inquiry is historia which is where
our word history comes from it comes
from the the idea that Herodotus was
examining he was investigating and he
went around asking people
what they could tell him about things
that had happened in the past and that's
where our word history comes from and
Herodotus was worried that significant
things would be forgotten if someone
like him didn't record them and the main
thing he's actually talking about is the
escalating conflict between the Greeks
and the Persians that takes place
between around 546 BC and for sever 9 BC
but Herodotus tells us a lot of other
exciting things as well but the big
problem we as historians have because we
are historians now is that Herodotus has
the reputation of not entirely telling
the truth Cicero the Roman historian a
rhetorician orator described Herodotus
as the father of lies
because Herodotus told a whole lot of
stories that were untrue
I'll give you a good example or two of
some of the absolutely absurd Herodotus
stories number one is in book three
Herodotus talks about giant gold-digging
ants that you can find in the Middle
East he says here in the desert they
relieve amid the sand great ants in size
somewhat smaller than dogs
but bigger than foxes Herodotus clearly
sees some big dogs but they've got these
giant ants and the Persian king has a
number of them at his court and when
they are found in the wild these giant
ants make their dwellings underground
like Greek ants they resemble them in
shape they're just massively bigger and
they throw up heaps of sand as they
burrow and the sand which they dig up is
is full of gold dust so clearly this is
just a complete lie there is no way in
the world that and around 500 BC there
were giant ants digging gold out of the
ground in the Middle East that we just
have somehow not heard of so this is
clearly a lie and Herodotus tells us
about some amazing sheep just a few
passages later he says there are two
varieties of sheep that are worth
of wonder and occur nowhere else outside
of Arabia one of these has a long tail
which is not less than four and a half
feet long if this were to if this were
allowed to just drag behind the sheep
they would actually be injured by it so
what some people do is actually they
build a little cart which they can put
on the tail of the sheep so it can drag
it along so giant ants that dig up gold
and sheep with tails four and a half
foot long even on little cart but it
gets worse when Herodotus talks about
actual historical events Herodotus tells
us the story of the Persian king can be
seized and his brother murders Herodotus
tells us that Cyrus the father of Cambyses
 murders defeated Croesus king
of Lydia he tells us that when Cyrus
died he was succeeded by Cambyses who was
mad and then he goes into great detail
explaining of the sort of the the career
of Cambyses which really follows a
path from what he calls hubris you could
think of that as arrogance right through
to nemesis the disaster he's a wildly
violent arrogant man and he dies the
type of death that a wildly violent
arrogant man deserves he talks about how
in Egypt can be seized killed the sacred
Apis bull he secretly murdered his
brother Smerdis because he was jealous of
his brother and then he died
coincidentally with a wound to the leg
just where he'd wounded the Apis bull
when he killed it so it's the kind of
thing that makes it very clear that gods
want Cambyses to die he then tells
us that Persians priests known as the
Magi took the opportunity to put an
impostor on the throne and weirdly his
name was murderous he just happened to
look like the other Smerdis as well with
one minor problem he had no ears but
that's not a problem because Persian
kings wear out wear a cap that covers
their head so you wouldn't know that the
false murders has no
but clearly those who are close to the
king might know for example one of his
many wives might notice that he has no
ears and funnily enough this is part of
the story because one of Smerdis
new wives because ancient Near Eastern
Kings don't just have one wife they have
a whole harem of wives and concubines
she discovers that the murders who is
allegedly the real Smothers has no ears
and tells her father
Atane who is one of the Persian Nobles
Herodotus then reports that a group of
noblemen including attorneys overthrow
the imposter Smerdis and then the
story gets even more strange because he
tells us that having got rid of the king
these seven Persian noblemen sit down
and have a great debate about how Persia
should be ruled from now on and they
debate whether Sparta whether purchase
should become remain a monarchy whether
it should become an oligarchy we're just
a few powerful elite men rule Persia
together or whether they should become a
democracy and Herodotus pauses his
history at that point in time and he
says I know you won't believe that this
happened but I can assure you it is true
and one of the reasons he has to pause
his history and assure his readers at
this point in time that this is true is
because these events are taking place
around 525 BC which is about half a
century before the Athenians as far as
they are concerned invent democracy so
how could the Persians invent well how
could they debate whether Persia should
become a democracy before anyone has
even thought of it so the story that is
a story is seeming slightly weird here
and then becomes very very Greek
stereotype about the Persians because
they debate about democracy it's
suggested as a wonderful idea everyone
will have a say it will be fair and open
and this is rejected and ultimately the
Persians decide that they should remain
as a monarchy and this really confirms
Greek stereotypes about Persians
Persians are ruled by kings so they're
not
these servile so when having the
opportunity to decide about whether they
should govern themselves or let just one
man rule them they just say yeah let's
just have one man ruler sit sit sit
tells you a lot about how the Greeks
view themselves they prize being free
they prize being able to have a say in
the running of their state even the
Spartans have as an assembly of citizens
who are able to vote on major decisions
the Persians do not they choose to
remain a monarchy and this is where the
story gets even more crazy Herodotus
tells us they decide it should be one of
the seven conspirators who should be
king and whoever's hawt there will ride
out into the countryside and whoever's
horse neighs first when the Sun rises
will become the king so it's a great
system in place here again Greeks can be
laughing at the Persians the interesting
thing about is Herodotus gets quite
detailed there Darius wants to be king
he wants to ensure that he can be king
and he has a wily servant who says I can
make it happen
and his servant visits the stables finds
a mare who is in heat, rubs his hands on
the mare who's in heat gets sent on his
hands and then waits until the Sun rises
and then puts his hand covered with
the scent of the mayor on heat in front
of Darius' stallion who neighs at
sunrise and a rice becomes king so as I
put in the slide that I give the
first-year students you couldn't make
this up could you this is just complete
nonsense so what is this leave us with
the obvious assumption is Herodotus is
foolish Herodotus is just telling us
good stories and when I was an
undergraduate this was pretty much how
everyone viewed all three of these
stories just complete nonsense the kind
of thing that that that Herodotus does
earning himself the father of lies title
but here are some Arabian sheep they're
known as fat-tailed sheep these are
undoctored images some of a very good
image that one
it's undoctored these are pretty
enormous tails and this is a sixth
century AD Roman mosaic from one is now
Jordan and you can see there was a
pretty sizable tail on this sheep here
this is a early Imperial Roman period
oil lamp which is showing a mythical
scene as showing Odysseus escaping from
the cave of Polyphemus from the Odyssey
hiding under a sheep but the thing
that's worth noting here is the the time
of this sheep is pretty sizable and
here's a 7th century AD Middle Eastern
Roman mosaic with an enormous tale here
from a sheep again and this is my
favorite image this is from a 17th
century Dutch history of Ethiopia that
clearly read their Herodotus and they
have a fat-tailed sheet with a little
cart under it style so he's actually
entirely possible that Herodotus is
exaggerating rather than in making up
this story of the fat-tailed sheep there
are a variety of different fat-tailed sheep
found in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other
Middle Eastern countries they have
different sized tails which are pretty
big
there's the Awasthi breed which has a
beaver shaped tail
there's the cara man breed which is 2/3
of the sheep in Turkey so it's not just
an obscure breed which also has a beaver
shaped tail and there's the dag leech
sheep which is prominent in west central
Turkey which has a more triangular tail
so on the cheap Herodotus might have
been more right than we think he was now
how about the giant ants I assume we're
pretty confident this is a made-up story
but Herodotus might not have been
entirely wrong wrong on the giant ants
not wrong on some of the other details
in the 1990s a French ethnographer by
the name of Michel Purcell suggested
that Herodotus was wrong about the ants
but right about the gold and a giant
creature digging them up
he found when he was in the Kashmir
region there was a that and the
Himalayan marmots would be big holes in
the sand and the local people's would
actually gather gold dust and he goes on
and this is some Himalayan marmots
actually digging in the dirt there
according to Purcell it was astonishing
there were marmots and the Burrow and
the piles of sand they had thrown up and
he then goes on to say a landslide
exposed darker gold bearing soil feet
three feet below the surface that was
the same soil the marmots had dug up
from under the sand
so what's entirely possible here is that
Herodotus has got confused about the
word and he was hearing about giant
squirrels and heard it as giant ants and
who hasn't made that sort of mistake
you're laughing I'm gonna give you a
good example in March I was in Athens it
was early in the morning I desperately
needed coffee I didn't understand what
the waiter said to me and what I said to
him was effectively I'm sorry I don't
understand Greek coffee what I actually
meant to say was I'm sorry I don't
understand
Greek but I said  instead
 that sort of mistake is
pretty easy to make when you're dealing
with another language so it's entirely
possible that Herodotus just heard what
was a giant squirrel has giant ant and
then it gets even more interesting when
you get to see Darius's version of how
he came to be king
there you have Darius's message
explained in monumental form this is 
Darius's a document describing Darius's
reign and how he came to be king and I
like this image for a variety of reasons
you've got Darius's here you can see
he's a full head bigger than all of his
subjects here and his subjects here have
been bad men and you can see that in the
fact that all of them have hands tied
behind their back because they are being
punished by Darius and it's hard to see
but
one of them in particular is actually
underneath Darius's foot he is stamping
on one of his subjects who has done the
wrong thing and Darius is wanting
everyone to know this and I'm going to
show you how he wants everyone to know
this
this is his inscription this is the
message that we're going to be reading
in a moment and this is where it is Darius wanted to leave this for people to
find the interesting thing about this
was people didn't really find this
inscription and understand what it said
until the late 19th century so there are
generations over the years of scholars
who've looked at Herodotus a story of
how Darius became king and thought well
that's just complete nonsense but all of
that changed when they read this story
because what it tells us is
that he was the son of sia though the
son of Cyrus named Cambyses was king
before him that Cambyses had a brother
named Smerdis afterwards Cambyses
 murders  Smerdis
it was not known about the Persian
people that's Smerdis was slain and when
he went into Egypt where he will go on
to kill the sacred bull of the sacred
Apis bull according to Herodotus no one
knew what had happened and there was a
rebellion Darius goes on to say that
rebellion was led by one of the Magi
known as Gaumata
Gaumata lied to the people saying I am
Smerdis the son of Cyrus the brother of
Cambyses Gaumata seized the kingdom on
the ninth day of the month Garmapada
in 522 BC so Herodotus' story of a
false Smerdis
matches partly what Herodotus tells us
Darius goes on to report that he was
one of the few noblemen he doesn't give
a precise number he just says a few who
learned the truth rose up against the
false murders and rather than a devious
servant coming up with a means of making
his horse neigh first it was the God
and only God Ahuramazda who made Darius
King so Herodotus's story matches
elements of the official version of Darius's ascent to being the Persian king
so what does this actually tell us about
Herodotus this wonderful storyteller who
tells us lies well I think the job is
safe to say the giant ant story suggests
that Herodotus wasn't a great linguist
but he was dealing with the whole of
ancient Western Asia so mistakes can be
made
the story of Smerdis tells us that he is
talking to the right people that's the
official Persian version of the of their
ascent to have to rise to King but with
some distortions so he might be getting
ripping yarns while getting the right
story so we have to be cautious but
there is some element of the truth in
there we also have to remember that when
Herodotus's reporting stories that he's
hearing from his his his informants that
many of the stories might have an
element of Daddy what did you do in the
war and people are bigging themselves up
and Herodotus seems quite happy to
report people's potential exaggerations
of their own achievements in his 
account of what happened and the other
thing to remember is that Herodotus for
better or worse is our main source for
this sort of period of Greek history so
if we want to know what happened between
the fall of the Mycenaeans
and the Persian Wars Herodotus is our
most detailed and our best source so for
better or worse we have to deal with him
and if you want to know more about that
you'll actually have to choose to come
to study Ancient History with us next
year
