January 21, 2025 • 59 mins
Unlock the secrets of ancient history as we navigate through the dramatic saga of Xerxes' invasion of Greece. Was it sheer ambition or supernatural forces that propelled Xerxes into one of the most audacious military campaigns of his era? Join me, Mike D, as we dissect the monumental engineering challenges, like the bridge of ships across the Dardanelles, and the tyrannical decisions that defined his rule. Witness how nature and hubris combined to set the stage for one of history's most storied conflicts.
From the epic clash at Thermopylae to the cunning naval strategies at Salamis, discover the strategic brilliance that helped the Greeks turn the tide against the overwhelming Persian forces. The tale of Xerxes is one of grand ambitions thwarted by missteps and misinformation, showcasing the resilience and wit of the Greeks, culminating in their triumphant stand at Plataea. Explore the rise of the Delian League and the shifting power dynamics that reshaped the ancient world, as alliances formed and dissolved in the wake of Persian retreat.
The narrative doesn't stop at military exploits; it also offers a unique glimpse into the cultural and economic landscapes of the time. Journey through the vibrant Jewish communities in Babylonia, revealing their surprising roles in local society, and delve into the sophisticated banking practices of the Murashu family. As we conclude with Artaxerxes' reign, unravel the intricate web of diplomacy and cultural interplay that defined Persian society, painting a rich tapestry of an empire in flux. This episode promises a comprehensive exploration of the forces that molded the ancient world, from battlefield tactics to social transformations.
To support the podcast through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/HistoryOfMoneyBankingTrade
Visit us at https://moneybankingtrade.com/
Visit us on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyBankingTrade
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
(00:25):
entertaining, and although I'mnot a historian, I am a fan of
history.
Where we last left off, we werediscussing the life and rule of
Darius the Great.
When, looking at him from ahistorical lens, he was probably
one of the greatestadministrators of all time and
(00:47):
at the end of his life he had abig decision to make as to who
would succeed him.
Being someone who had the greatability to look into the future
and potentially see any issueswith who he picks as the heir,
he probably made the rightchoice and chose Xerxes because
(01:08):
he could trace Xerxes back toCyrus the Great, as he was his
grandfather and, like I said,darius had questionable lineage
concerns because many people didnot believe his story.
So by picking Xerxes as hisheir, he can kind of really nip
that in the bud right away.
(01:29):
Now, by all accounts, xerxeswasn't really on board with
invading Greece because heperceived keeping Egypt under
his control a much more greaterimportance due to the fact that
keeping Egypt under controlmeant he would have the
breadbasket in place, because hewas expanding his army, he was
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expanding his territory and herealized you have to be able to
feed your soldiers and yourpopulation.
So it's quite possible that hewould have viewed Darius's
obsession with Greece to kind ofbe out of line, because for him
Egypt was always going to bepriority number one.
Despite all this, once Xerxesfelt that Egypt was under
(02:17):
control and really wasn't athreat to revolt, he did return
back to Greece.
Now it was Xerxes' uncle who hadinformed Xerxes that.
You know.
He told his brother, darius,not to attack Greece and
basically warned Xerxes thatGreece would be a serious
(02:38):
problem because they barelyescaped their previous invasions
and now the Greeks had rebuilttheir navy and potentially
became more unified in itsdefense.
After hearing this, xerxesbasically told his uncle that he
was a coward and he should juststay home with the women, and
this obviously would have beenan incredible insult.
(03:00):
It appears that from Xerxesviewpoints, he believed that
they should attack Greece first,because if they didn't attack
first, greece was surely goingto attack them.
So, in his mind's eyes, a gooddefense would be a good offense,
(03:20):
but apparently Xerxes reallystarted to think about what his
uncle was telling him.
The story goes that when Xerxeswent to sleep that night, he saw
a ghost.
And the ghost asked him Did youreally change your mind?
You need to follow youroriginal plan.
Despite this ghostly visit,xerxes called his war council.
(03:42):
Apparently, he said I spokerashly yesterday and did not
give my uncle the respect hedeserves.
I've changed my mind aboutinvading Greece.
That night the ghost reappearedagain and says know this, if you
do not march on Greece, youwill experience a catastrophe.
Apparently, this had Xerxesshook up, so he bolted out of
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his bed and called his uncleinto the room and says you know,
I'm haunted by a ghostthreatening me with harm if I do
not march on to Greece.
Maybe it's just a dream from myown imagination.
So let's test this.
Lie down in my bed.
If the word is from God, youwill see the ghost also.
Xerxes leaves the room and hisuncle falls asleep on his bed,
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but then the ghost reappears andhe looks at him and says you,
you pretend to care about Xerxes, warning him about attacking
the Greeks.
You will not escape judgment,not now and not afterward.
Then the ghost attempts togouge out his uncle's eyes with
a red hot poker.
He screamed and ran out of theroom into Xerxes.
(04:51):
I've changed my mind.
The fates have ordained it.
March on to Greece Now.
Thanks to the ghostly visit,they spent the next three to
four years in their plans toattack Greece.
Now, this preparation went evenfurther than just building up a
navy and preparing men for war.
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It would have also includedgreat engineering feats, such as
building a bridge across theDardanelles Straits, and this is
where Asia would have metEurope.
This bridge would have alsobeen approximately three
quarters of a mile or onekilometer across, or 1.2
kilometers across.
(05:33):
Now, to accomplish this, whatthey needed to do is essentially
line up 674 ships together, andthey would have laid a wooden
plank across the ships, forminglike basically a long span for
Xerxes army to march over.
All in all, it took a fewmonths to complete, and when
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they finished, around 480 BCE,xerxes was able to march his
million man army, which may havecome from many nations that
made up the accumulated PersianEmpire.
Now, a million-man army mightbe a pretty big stretch, but
nonetheless it was still amassive army that he was going
to transport from Asia intoEurope.
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Now, luckily for the Greeks, thegods had stepped in and brought
a violent storm to the regionwhich destroyed the bridge.
Now this completely enragedXerxes Enraged him so much that
he had his engineers decapitated.
And to show you how angry hewas, he even ordered his men to
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give the water 300 lashes andbranded it with red hot irons
because that will show the waterwho's in charge.
Now, in my mind, this is kindof a bizarre behavior that I
think most people would expectto hear when you discuss ancient
Persian kings.
I guess I always envisionedthese ancient rulers as the
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types who would put on this kindof display and show some kind
of irrational behavior to showthat they were in charge.
But the one question that Ithink a lot of historians and
probably much of his officercorps were thinking was why did
they use the 674 ships to builda bridge and just not use them
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to ferry them across the water?
But either way, the bridge wasrebuilt and this quote unquote
million man army was able towalk across.
And to give you an idea aboutthe sheer size of his army, it
took them seven days and sevennights just to clear his entire
army across.
Like I said, it wasn't probablya million man army, but it was
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massive nonetheless.
Meanwhile, the naval fleet of1,200 ships was on the move in
the Aegean as well, and this wasalso another great engineering
feat, because Xerxes had hisengineers build a massive canal
through the Athos Peninsulabecause they previously tried to
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sail around the peninsula andthe navy was wiped out in a
severe storm.
So Xerxes decided it's best notto take any chances sailing
around the peninsula.
Instead, they would just sailright through the peninsula.
Instead, they would just sailright through the peninsula.
In the end, this canal wasabout a mile across, or like 1.6
kilometers, and this wasn'tbuilt overnight.
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It took about three years tocomplete, like his other bridge
projects.
Some historians have pointedout that this may have been a
complete waste of time andresources, because the Persian
Navy still had to sail throughthe Aegean anyway to reach the
peninsula.
So why waste so much time andresources building this canal,
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since they were already out inthe open water to begin with?
In other words, you can't reachSparta or Athens without first
sailing into the Aegean andtherefore you still would have
to face the risk of potentialbad storms regardless of this
canal.
So in the end it really kind ofmakes it hard for me to
understand what Xerxes wasthinking.
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But it could have been just amere fact that he wanted to show
his enemies that he had theability to think outside the box
, just to get them.
In a weird way it kind ofreminds me of when Julius Caesar
had his engineers build theGreat Bridge across the Rhine
River into Germania, instead ofsending them across in boats,
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because he wanted to basicallyshow the people on the other
side of the river that we havethe ability to come get you and
we can do things that you can'tdo.
In other words, he wanted tobasically show them some sort of
psychological warfare.
And this right here takes us upto one of the most famous
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battles in ancient history, whenthe 300 Spartans squared off
against the massive Persian armyat the hot gates of Thermopylae
.
Now, if you really want to getinto the story in a little bit
better detail and probablyexplained way better than I ever
could, I would suggest DanCarlin's episode, because he did
an amazing job discussing thestory and he can obviously do it
(10:21):
much better than I ever could.
But either way, he canobviously do it much better than
I ever could, but either way,it wasn't 300.
It was probably close to 6,000Greeks that had barred the
entrance, and the reason whysuch a small force could hold
back such a large force was thegeography more or less created a
bottleneck and therefore itwouldn't have been that hard to
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take a small force to hold backa massive force Led by King
Leonidas of Sparta.
The Greeks blocked the narrowmountain pass for four days.
Now.
In order to figure out how todefeat the Greeks, xerxes called
in Demeritus, who was theformer Spartan king, who had
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defected to Persia after beingdethroned because of rumors that
were spread by the other kingbecause, as I mentioned
previously, sparta had two kings.
Xerxes also sent envoys tellingthe Spartans this is your last
chance to avoid bloodshed.
Simply lay down your arms.
(11:30):
Leonardo reportedly said comeand take them.
The Greeks were able towithstand the usual Persian
tactics of first shooting offarrows and then the cavalry
charge.
The reason being is first off,the Greeks were heavily armored
and they could use their armoredshield so that they could
basically set up a wall and evenif a few arrows somehow made it
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through their shield wall, theywere wearing enough armor that
they would also be protectedfrom the arrows and since this
was a narrow pass, a cavalrycharge wouldn't really be useful
.
The Persians, on the other hand, were lightly protected.
They didn't have the armor thatthe Greeks had, and their only
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protection was essentiallywicker shields.
So you can see the dichotomybetween how well protected the
small Greek force would havebeen versus the much larger
Persian force.
In the end, the Greek defectorwas able to tell Xerxes of an
alternative path to get aroundthis pass and therefore sent his
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army up and around and thenattacked the Greeks from the
rear, sent his army up andaround and then attacked the
Greeks from the rear.
All while this was happening,the Greeks were still facing a
threat from the sea, as the1,200 ships were sailing towards
them.
Luckily for the Greeks, thegods once again stepped in and a
major storm hit the region andsunk approximately a third of
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their ships.
Major storm hit the region andsunk approximately a third of
their ships.
Then another storm hit and thePersians lose another 200 ships
or so.
So, as a recap, the Persiansspent three years building this
canal, but still lost nearlyhalf of their fleet anyway.
They still had a numericaladvantage, but the Greeks
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managed to attack the Persianfleet unexpectedly, and they
were able to capture about 30triremes from the Persians.
And then the next day theGreeks once again prevailed, but
the Persians were able toregroup and, more importantly,
their Egyptian allies stepped inand captured Greek ships and
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then damaged approximately halfof the Athenian fleet.
Xerxes was able to get pastThermopylae, but he lost time,
and that valuable time was usedto evacuate the city of Athens,
and that valuable time was usedto evacuate the city of Athens.
So by the time Xerxes arrived,he found nearly an entirely
abandoned city, but that didn'tstop him and his forces from
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plundering the city and killingany people that had remained.
The people that had left Athenswent to the island of Salamis.
Meanwhile, thermistocles, whowas the great leader of Athens,
had sent a private message toXerxes and basically told him he
was going to flip sides.
Now was the time to attackbecause the Greeks were in panic
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mode and therefore werediscombobulated and were easy
pickings.
Therefore, they were ready toflee to Salamis and you could
just catch them flat footed, asthey would be fighting amongst
themselves.
Xerxes took the bait and orderedover 400 ships to attack,
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despite the fact that QueenArtemisia informed him it was
too risky to fight in theStraits of Salamis.
The Greeks would have a majoradvantage there.
Now, xerxes would often listento the queen, and he really did
take her advice seriously, butin this particular instance he
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didn't listen to her warning.
And the biggest reason was hewas so convinced by this ruse
that he had sent runners back toPersia to tell the people of
his great victory over theGreeks before the battle had
even started.
So the very next day, thePersian fleet sails into the
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Gulf, where they find 50 shipsthat began to flee.
The Persians bore down on themand sailed right into the trap.
The rest of the Greek fleetcame out from the hiding places
that they were in and basicallysailed behind them and pinned
them in with no room to escapeand no room to maneuver.
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Meanwhile, xerxes is observingthis entire debacle from a
mountaintop overlooking the bay,as he was basically watching
his fleet get utterly destroyed.
Xerxes' advisor was with him atthe time and informed him that
it's probably best to get backto Persia as quickly as possible
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so that you can inform thepeople that you won, because you
sacked, plundered and burntAthens to the ground.
Xerxes was able to lead histroops back home, but many had
died of starvation on the wayback.
Before he went back to Persia,he left his trusted general and
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a large force back in Greece,where they wintered and prepared
to attack Greece the followingspring.
In the meantime, the Atheniansreturned back to the city.
The Persian general did exactlywhat he said he was going to do
and he marched back into Athens.
The following spring, however,the Athenians did exactly what
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they did before and they fled toSalamis.
This time, the Persiansdestroyed any remaining
structures, including the homesand temples and, of course, the
walls that were still standingfrom the first attack.
But this time the Spartans andother Greek city-states came to
defense of the Athenians andbecause of this, the Persians
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had no choice but to retreat.
The Persians fought theSpartans in the Battle of
Plataea.
The Spartans pulled one oftheir old battle tricks, one
that the Mongols perfectedthousands of years later, in
that they essentially faked aretreat to trick the Persians
into chasing them Suddenly.
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The Greeks would just stoptheir retreat, turn around and
form up into their famousPhalanx position, and then they
would catch the Persians totallyoff guard.
Now it was the Persians thatwere fleeing, but this was the
Greek homeland, and basicallyout of nowhere.
Tens of thousands of Greekswere coming out of hiding places
through the hills and theywould have massacred, they say,
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260,000 Persian soldiers.
It was said that 40,000 or sosurvived out of the 300,000.
Luckily, the Persian general,well, he died in the attack.
And I say luckily because hisfate probably would have been a
lot worse if he were able tolook back to Persia with the
remaining 40,000 or so troops.
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And I just want to reiteratethe number of 300,000 troops
probably is an exaggeration to acertain extent.
And the 40,000 that remainprobably is also an exaggeration
.
And the 40,000 that remainedprobably is also an exaggeration
.
But that still shouldn't takeaway from the fact that this was
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a massive army that was utterlydestroyed.
Now, in the aftermath, the realquestion came down to where do
the Ionian Greeks loyalties lie?
Because they were stilltechnically under the control of
the Persians.
They were still technicallyunder the control of the
Persians.
So would they be loyal toXerxes or their ancestral
homeland of the Greeks acrossthe Aegean Sea?
And that particular question ofloyalty would have been brought
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up by the Persians becausethere were rumblings that they
had actually sabotaged the wholecampaign and therefore were
guilty of treason.
In fact, a high-rankingPhoenician had questioned the
Ionians and where theirloyalties would have lied, but
for some reason Xerxes wasn'thaving any of that nonsense
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because he had the Phoenicianleader beheaded for Sander.
And you have to realizesomething about the Persians
beheaded for Sander, and youhave to realize something about
the Persians One of the worstthings you can do is accuse
somebody of lying, because inthe Persian culture, lying is
probably one of the greatestoffenses that one could commit.
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Now, despite all these questionsabout where the Ionians' true
feelings lie, the Spartans werein the process of trying to sway
the Ionians to remember theirGreek heritage and as such, the
Spartans had deployed 110 shipsto sail to Delios to fight the
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Persians.
But before the fight, someIonian Greeks from the island of
Samos secretly met with them.
The story goes that theSpartans had called out to the
Ionians in the Greek languageand asked them where their
loyalties lied, and apparentlythe Persians had told them men
of Ionia, remember your freedom,pass this along to the other
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Greeks of Ionia, remember yourfreedom, pass this along to the
other Greeks.
This was ultimately a two-partstrategy, because, for one, they
were obviously looking to bringthe Greeks to the other side,
but they also were looking toshow distrust among the Persians
regarding the Ionians.
So, in other words, if theydon't join us, let's make it
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look like they're conspiringwith us and thus they can't be
trusted and therefore they won'tbe utilized in their military
machine.
And it appears that thisstrategy may have worked,
because the Persians quicklydisarmed their Ionian Greek
military members and now we'reno longer a threat to the
Spartans and the Athenians.
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And soon enough they were onthe attack.
But now they didn't have toworry about fighting against
their fellow Greeks.
And it might be because of this, but this battle quickly tilted
in favor of the Greeks,especially when some of the
Greek cousins, the Ionians, haddefected and decided to join the
Spartans and the Athenians.
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This obviously would have madethe Persians highly upset and,
as a result, they were quicklyslaughtered by their former
overlords.
In the end, 40,000 Persiansdied.
That day, the king of Sparta metwith the other Ionian Greeks
and said that day, the king ofSparta met with the other Ionian
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Greeks and said come back andlive in the motherland, you will
be safe from Persian attacks.
But shockingly, the Ioniansrejected this by saying we've
been here for 600 years.
We're not going anywhere assuch, in 477 BCE, the Ionians
formed the Delian League, whichwas a confederacy of Ionian
Greek city-states.
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Now that they had this largealliance, they formed up
together and they launchedattacks against the Persian
forces.
So this new Delian League wasable to take back the
westernmost coastline ofAnatolia from the Greeks and
from the Persians.
This region was vital to anyempire that controlled it,
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because this region was filledwith fantastic traders and
shipbuilding.
The fact of the matter is, theAegean Sea was the lifeblood of
the Greeks and, to a lesserextent, the Phoenicians and the
Persians, but when commoditiesand merchandise are flowing
through the region, well, thatmeans it's going to attract
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people who might view it as agolden opportunity to get rich
quick.
And this get rich quick schemeof antiquity usually meant
piracy.
And really, before the DelianLeague was formed, there was a
lot of complaints by certainmerchants that they were just
getting robbed left and right bythe Delopian pirates of Cyrus.
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Now, the initial strategy fordealing with this was to
essentially punish the entireisland.
However, it really wasn't fairto punish everyone when it was
only a handful of people thatwere causing the disruption to
piracy.
This is where the Dalian Leaguecame into play, because they
were able to deal with thisdirectly by capturing and
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expelling the pirates that weredisrupting trade in the region
in the region.
So you can kind of see how thisis a great example of a
cooperative being used to helpmake trade much more efficient
and even safer.
Cimon, who fought at the Battleof Salamis, was the league's
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principal commander.
After taking care of the piracyproblem, he was able to take
back Persian territories for theGreeks.
In doing so, he was able toplunder the Persian possessions
that were left behind.
Furthermore, one of the greatways to make a quick buck was
through this process of ransom.
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So, in other words, you capturean enemy soldier, hold them
hostage and see how much moneyyou can take when you contact
their families back home.
Apparently, this worked outvery well for Achaemenon, as he
became very wealthy.
Just off of ransoming Persiansoldiers, the Delian League
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moved on to attacking Persianoutposts in Thrace in 476 BCE.
Now, to give you an idea whereThrace is located, it is in
Southeast Europe, with theBalkan Mountains to the north,
the Aegean Sea to the south, theBlack Sea to the east, and it
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comprised present-day Bulgaria.
The natural resources that werelocated in Thrace would have
meant that they would have beena key outpost for both the
Persians and the Greeks.
Whoever controlled the regionwould have controlled the
massive amount of timber thatwould have been used for
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shipbuilding and also used forfuel for iron making and, of
course, for trade and war.
In addition, there was alsosilver mines in the region that
could have been used to paysoldiers and shipbuilders, and
it would have been used toprovide provisions for the
soldiers and shipbuilders, andit would have been used to
provide provisions for thesoldiers and sailors when they
were on campaign.
Caiman, the leader of theDailing League, ultimately took
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the Persians head on in Thraceand, by doing so, put the city
of Eon under siege.
Apparently, the Persians wereabout to give up, but then
Xerxes sent 340 triremes, whichwere commanded by his son, and
then an additional 80 ships weresent by the Phoenicians.
Xerxes' strategy was to employan early form of island hopping
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by working his way through Ionia, reclaiming each city-state to
form a type of beachhead wherehe could eventually launch an
attack from Ionia onto Thraceand Greece.
A fierce naval battle ensuedwith the Greeks and would have
destroyed much of the Persiannavy.
In the process, the Greekscaptured 100 ships or so, along
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with their crew, with theremaining Persian fleet
retreating to Cyprus.
Cayman wasn't really satisfied,so he set sail to fight the
remaining Persian army.
But he had a major problem.
There were barbarians who wereallies with the Persians, who
were encamped on the banks ofthe Irimedan River.
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Now he needed a way to sailpast them without alarming them.
So he came up with a great idea.
He took the Persian ships andtheir crew's clothing, and from
there he pulled the oldswitcheroo and had his best
Greek sailors dress as Persianson Persian ships.
The barbarians saw them comingand received them as if they
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were allies and friends, sinceit was the Persians on the
Persian ships.
As night fell, the Greeksdisembarked from their ships and
basically caught the barbariansoff guard and slaughtered them,
including their generals andthe nephew of the king.
Some did manage to survive, andthey would have fled for their
lives.
Some did manage to survive andthey would have fled for their
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lives.
And then more Ionian Greeksjoined the Delian League, which
would then morph into theAthenian Empire.
So while all this is happening,in Greece there was an issue
with the Persians because in 465BCE, king Xerxes and his eldest
son, crown prince Darius, wereassassinated by the commander of
the royal bodyguard, xerxes'youngest son, artaxerxes,
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avenged the assassination of hisfather and brother by killing
the bodyguard and his sons.
The last Persian city in Thracewas Doriscus.
Last Persian city in Thrace wasDoriscus.
The Greeks struggled to conquerit, but this was happening at
the same time of Xerxes'assassination, and then the
Persian satrap was recalled toPersia and with that the
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accumulated Persian empire nolonger had a presence in Europe
presence in Europe.
Since there was a lot of chaosin Persia.
Egypt, with the help of Athens,rebelled in 460 BCE.
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King Artaxerxes had sent300,000 men, supposedly to put
an end to Egypt's rebellion.
With the help of their Athenianallies, they initially had some
success, as they defeated thePersian army in their early
battles.
During one of the early battles, the commander by the name of
Akamenes was killed, and theGreeks thought it would be a
good idea to send KingArtaxerxes a package containing
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his dead brother's body.
This was obviously not theAmazon package that he was
expecting.
As such, the Persians retreatedto Memphis and from there they
were able to turn the tide ofwar.
The Athenians and Egyptians werefinally defeated in 454 BCE by
the Persian army led by Megabus.
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The Egyptian pharaoh wascaptured and sent to Susa where
he was killed by crucifixion.
You can see where this kind ofreally changed things, because
in the past if a pharaoh wascaptured he most likely would
have been given some kind ofassignment as an advisor to the
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king.
However, the king's brother wasjust killed, so this obviously
wasn't going to happen.
So all bets were off by thispoint.
Meanwhile, the Athenians kindof panicked when this happened.
The Delian League had kept thistreasury on the island of Delos
due to its central location, butthe Athenians worried that the
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Persians would sail up from theNile and into the Mediterranean,
so they moved the treasury toAthens.
Now this did not sit well withthe Ionians and the Delian
League.
They had some serious concerns.
Were the Athenians just goingto keep the treasury for
themselves and not for theDelian League?
So in reality, at this pointyou can kind of start to see
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some sort of cracks that'sforming in the Deleon League.
And it's interesting because ifyou look at a lot of conflicts
throughout history and even on apersonal level, let's be honest
a lot of conflicts that happenwith friends or family start and
end with money, and right hereis a perfect example.
Once the money gets moved,people start to question their
(31:23):
fellow Greek motives.
However, the Greeks were able toput this issue behind them for
now, because theycounterattacked the Persian
stronghold in Cyprus.
But Caiman, the Greek general,died in battle.
However, this was concealedfrom their forces because they
didn't want any sort of panic toset in.
(31:44):
So in the land and sea battlein Cyprus, the Greeks were under
the assumption that Caiman wasstill leading his troops and as
such, they actually won bothbattles, one on the sea and one
on the land.
They actually won both battles,one on the sea and one on the
land.
So it's quite possible that bykeeping his death concealed, he
may have kept morale up andallowed the Greeks to defeat the
(32:07):
Persians.
One only knows, if they hadlearned that their great
commander was dead, if thingswould have changed completely.
It's quite possible.
The greek victory in cyprusallowed the athenian statesman,
calais to negotiate a 30-yeartruce between the acumen of
persian empire and the delianleague in 449 bce, as peace was
(32:31):
being established between thegreeks and the persians.
The athenians probably neededthis peace even more because
they were already deep into thefirst Peloponnesian war, whereas
they were fighting the Spartans, oh, and they were fighting the
Thebans and the Corinthians.
In hindsight, I'm kind ofsurprised that the Persians
(32:51):
would even really sign thispeace treaty anyway, considering
that the Greeks were in a bitof chaos at the time.
Were in a bit of chaos at thetime, so it appears to me that
the Persians really didn't havea very effective intelligence
apparatus at the time.
But either way, the Greeksconceded Persian dominance of
the Black Sea, cyprus, egypt andPersia's remaining territories
(33:18):
in western Turkey Now, alsoprobably because they felt they
had no choice but the DelianLeague more or less morphed into
the Athenian Empire, especiallyconsidering the fact that they
had control of the treasury, ofwhich it was used on a massive
building and engineering spreefor Athens and even some other
Greek city-states as well.
So, while all this is going onin Greece, there was a sense of
(33:40):
peace between the two becausethey had just signed the 30-year
truce.
And, in honesty, since this is apodcast about trade, money and
banking and I've more or lessgone off on a tangent that
doesn't really include any ofthat, I figure it's a good
opportunity to kind of reallybring it back to the scope of
the podcast.
In general, I'm not a historian.
(34:01):
I do love to see how thingsevolved and, in all honesty, a
lot of these geopoliticalhappenings will affect trade.
It will affect how money isdistributed throughout the
empire.
The fact of the matter is isthe soldier's salary was paid in
coin and this coin was used tojumpstart trade throughout the
Persian Empire.
(34:22):
And now that we have a sense ofpeace, you can see trade and
commerce kind of reemerge in theforefront of the Achaemenid
Persian Empire.
And to give you a great exampleof this is, the University of
Pennsylvania uncovered about 730clay tablets from a family
(34:44):
archive that would have datedfrom 455 to 403 BCE, so we're
talking right in this timeperiod when the 30-year peace
was basically just signed.
Now, these tablets werediscovered from the ruins of
Nippur that showed that thebanking house Marushu and Sons
(35:04):
had conducted business with Jewswho decided to remain in Nippur
rather than return to Judea.
The local population of Nippurand, by extension, the Persians
in general, appear to haveaccepted the Jewish population
in the region if they decided tostay.
(35:25):
Also, it's not really 100%certain if this is in fact a
Jewish family or not, as itcould be just a West Semitic
name, so maybe they're notJewish With.
The fact of the matter is, theystill would have been
technically kind of foreignersin this region and they were
accepted nonetheless, butregardless of the family's
religious beliefs or whateverthey were.
(35:46):
There were 28 Jewishsettlements in the immediate
Nippur region.
The documents of the regionappear to attest to the fact
that there was a widespreadamount of activities of the
local Jewish population, so onecan easily deduce the fact that
it really sounds like they wereallowed to prosper in Babylonia,
(36:09):
as you can see how they thrivedin the region.
As deeds for land acquisitionsand contracts for all kinds of
different business ventures,including the insurance business
, there were large-scale creditprovisions for specific projects
.
That was uncovered.
However, despite all this, theJewish population was quite
diverse and therefore held manydifferent positions in society,
(36:33):
from the high-class palaceofficials to the lower class and
even slaves.
And speaking of the lowestclass, most of the Jews that
were referred to in the Marashudocuments were of the lower
class and some were in factslaves.
Now, if you recall from theprevious episodes, I did talk
(36:55):
about slavery and it's importantto note that slavery in ancient
times was not like chattelslavery in the American South.
Slavery is still slavery andI'm sure it sucks for the slaves
, but slaves in ancientBabylonia and Persia had way
(37:15):
more rights and were probablytreated much better than the
black American slaves in theAmerican South, and even worse
for the slaves in the Caribbean,as they were just worked to
death.
The slaves of ancient Persiawere not treated as mere
property without rights, but asa person who retained certain
privileges as well asresponsibilities to their owner
(37:42):
privileges as well asresponsibilities to their owner.
They could be independentlyable to enter into legal
agreements, as long as it wasn'ta conflict of interest to their
lord.
So, according to the tabletsthat were discovered, two such
slaves one clearly bearing aJudaic name were contracted by
the head of the Marashu torepair the dam of the irrigation
canal that was passing throughthe Marashu property.
(38:04):
The contract stipulated thatdamages would be assessed if the
commitment was not fulfilled.
So what exactly does that mean?
What it meant was that theslaves had independent property
of their own to be assessed.
Imagine trying to sue a slavein the American South and try to
(38:25):
recover any personal property.
Well, that would have beennearly impossible, because they
didn't have any personalproperty and they didn't have
any rights.
And, of course, they weren'tallowed to read either.
So you can give them paperwork.
Technically they shouldn't'tallowed to read either.
So you can give them paperworkthey can't.
Technically they shouldn't beable to read it.
The Marashu family really had adiverse business portfolio.
(38:47):
First off, they were bankers,whereas they lent money at high
interest rates and I'm not surewhat high interest rates means,
as I haven't read anything thatreally indicates the exact
interest rates in terms ofnumbers and loan repayment
periods.
They also ran a large-scaleproperty management business,
(39:09):
whereas they would have managedestates for absentee landlords,
who were often royals orhigh-ranking military members
who may have been out oncampaign, or high-ranking
military members who may havebeen out on campaign.
As such, they would have beenresponsible for hiring labor to
work the land or the factory andthey would have paid taxes on
(39:35):
behalf of the absentee landlord.
And, lastly, they would haveremitted the profits to the
landlords.
Additionally, they suppliedfarmers with animals, seed and
other implements.
In addition, they also dealt insecurities for imprisoned
debtors, so they were using thisto basically trade the debt
amongst them.
(39:55):
We know of at least threegenerations of this banker
family that had existed in theNippur region.
An ancient map was discoveredthat shows that the Marashu home
had a prime real estatelocation as it was laid on an
important irrigation canal ofthe Euphrates.
It's not quite clear, but theymay have also operated as tax
(40:22):
farmers as well.
All in all, the family employedabout 60 people in total and
had commercial dealings with atleast 2,500 individuals.
But this was all done on alocal level and therefore it did
not participate ininternational long-distance
trade.
But they did have certainindividuals in the family that
(40:43):
basically opened up a familyoffice in Susa, which was
approximately 125 miles or about200 kilometers away.
The tablets almost read likekind of like a local newspaper
in a way, because for one theytell kind of a unique story that
a Jewish person by the name ofUdarna had property that was
(41:06):
stolen or taken by his brother,or maybe it was even a nephew.
The tablet goes on to see if hemight reacquire his property.
So it appears that Udarna hadbrought his complaint to the
banking firm of Marashu and Sons.
Udana did not have the propertyreturned and in addition no
(41:30):
charges were brought against thebrother or the nephew.
They also agreed that nooffspring of Udana would ever
bring charges against Udana'sbrother or nephew or their
offspring.
The act of forbidding anylawsuit being brought against
Udarna's brother and nephew orthe generations afterward, was
seemingly implemented to preventa blood feud that might last
(41:51):
generations.
So in the end, it doesn't evenappear like really that this was
resolved.
It just appears that it was hey, you're not going to get
anything and you're not going tokill each other in the meantime
.
So really, what I'm getting atis, by the time of the peace
between the Greeks and theAchaemenid Empire, banking had
been thriving and really been inoperation since Darius.
(42:14):
In fact, most of the bankingoperations that was performed
were typically done by thetemples, or even the prince and
even Magi, to be honest with you.
I mean, the temples were reallyconsidered the earliest banks
in ancient Mesopotamia.
They would have stored anythingfrom grains to any other
personal valuables, and thiskind of basically continued up
(42:37):
and through Persia, and thiskind of basically continued up
and through Persia, right.
So the temples would have beenlooked at as the ancient bank
vault for a lot of the localpopulation.
The Magi, on the other hand,well, they were typically
members of the king's family andthey would have been
responsible for the religiousrituals and other kind of
divination.
And then, thirdly, they wouldhave been involved in banking.
(43:00):
They would have offered loanswith typically around a 20%
interest rate.
But depending on who they'relending money to, they would
have potentially waived theinterest.
So if it was to a king orsomeone very important, they
might waive the interest andhope to get something in return.
Obviously, because there is nofree lunch right, you always
expect something.
(43:20):
So there's almost always somekind of quid pro quo that's
happening, whether it's inwriting or just kind of implied.
And then, lastly, the princewould have been responsible for
essentially banking operationsfor the family.
And it's really important tonote, and I kind of touched on
it briefly here is a lot of thisbanking stuff kind of really
carried over from ancientMesopotamian practices,
(43:42):
especially in Sumer right.
So it started in the south inSumer and kind of worked its way
up the land between the tworivers.
And really before theAchaemenid dynasty was in full
bloom, most of the bankingoperations would have actually
been carried out by the templesand even the prince, and private
banking operations withindividuals wouldn't have really
(44:04):
happened that much, if at all,to be honest with you.
But it's during the AchaemenidEmpire that trade really boomed,
and trade you kind of expect itto boom when you have an
expanding empire, because whenyou expand an empire, what
you're going to do is you'regoing to offer a lot of security
and protection for people inthe outer reaches of the empire
that previously may not have had.
(44:25):
And then, on top of it, whatyou do, too, is the kind of
unexpected part, or the partthat's probably least
appreciated, is the fact thatweights and measures in far off
places start to get standardized.
Measures in far off placesstart to get standardized.
When you standardize theseweights and measures, it makes
trade much more efficient and itultimately drives down costs
(44:46):
and therefore you can basicallytrade with people maybe that you
couldn't trade with before,because now it becomes set at a
reasonable price.
And, as you can see from thisSemitic family, who may or may
not have been Jewish, thebanking operations in the
Achaemenid dynasty wereprimarily started in Babylon,
right, and then it kind ofexpanded on further to other
(45:08):
parts.
Then you factor in the factthat Lydia was now a part of the
Achaemenid dynasty.
The coinage that was flowing infrom western Anatolia would
have been used for bankingoperations in Babylon and other
parts of the Persian empire.
So where we're at in the storyis we have this peace between
(45:32):
the Greeks and the Persians, andthe good thing about peace is
you're not having all yourresources sucked up into
military operations.
So therefore you can see howbanking and trade would really
thrive and you can see how thisparticular family would flourish
during this time period,because it's a time of peace.
Military operations are notsucking up all the resources
(45:56):
available to the people, up allthe resources available to the
people.
However, despite this peace,back home in Athens,
themistocles, who was once theirpowerful politician well, he
was the one that was thevisionary behind the Athenian
defense by ordering the buildupof a massive naval fleet.
Despite being one of the mostpopular and powerful people in
(46:18):
Athens, his reign didn't lastlong because people kind of
turned on him and he eventuallywas ostracized by the Athenians
and as such, thermosiclesappears to have been very
heartbroken because he was madthat his homeland had basically
turned their back on him andthey in fact charged him with
(46:42):
treason.
So he in turn turned his backson them and therefore he decided
to flee to Persia, theirarchenemy, to Persia, their arch
enemy.
And it's kind of ironic becauseat one point one can make a
serious argument thatThermostocles was in fact the
(47:03):
Persians' biggest adversary,because if it wasn't for him.
It's quite possible that Athensgets defeated years prior and
gets defeated years prior.
Now, apparently, thermostoclesmet up with Artaxerxes and
apparently said King of kings,as you know, I was once your
(47:23):
father's enemy.
But as you also know,circumstances can quickly change
in the political world,especially in Athens, especially
at Salamis.
My evil adversaries havefalsely accused me and any
(47:47):
defense is a hopeless task.
Thus I offer myself to you.
Now, this would have been amajor coup for Artaxerxes,
because Thermostocles would haveobviously had a lot of inside
information that could be usedto defeat Athens.
When he met Artaxerxes, he wasasked for a year to learn the
Persian language and its customs.
Then he would be a faithfulservant.
Now, it's worth noting that bythis time period, the Aramaic
(48:11):
language had replaced theElamite and Persian languages in
the courts.
Written Aramaic was a naturalsuccessor, as it had the
advantage of an alphabet.
It was far easier to learn 22letters representing phonetic
sounds than to memorize around athousand characters
(48:32):
representing words in cuneiformscript.
This alphabet would haveactually been imported from the
Phoenicians.
Originally, the Phoenicians haddeveloped an alphabet and
basically it had been adopted bythe Greeks, and then also, too,
the people that were speakingthe Aramaic languages kind of
really jumped on board too,because they just kind of
(48:53):
realized that this makes a lotmore sense to use 22 characters
instead of sending the richestof the rich to school for many
years to learn thousands ofcharacters for a Qunei's
reformed script.
So in the end, an averageperson could technically learn
how to read and write, andtherefore this would have
(49:16):
actually enabled trade tobasically become more efficient
as well.
In addition to the writing, thatwas basically changing, their
religion was also changing.
In the region, zoroastrianismwas becoming the preferred
religion, as it was nearly amonotheistic religion, as it
(49:37):
worshipped the ancientIndo-Iranian god Ahura Mazda.
Now, as such, unlike othersocieties with different
religious belief systems, thePersians did not erect statues
or temples or altars or anyother kind of idols in the
religious system.
Now, according to Herodus, hewas of the belief that the
(49:57):
reason why they didn't do thiswas because they did not believe
that their gods had humanqualities, which would have been
unlike any other religion thatwas really being practiced at
the time, from the Egyptians allthe way to the Greeks.
Another interesting thing aboutZoroastrianism is that they do
(50:18):
not, and they continue to not,bury or cremate their dead
bodies, but instead they wouldhave practiced sky burials,
which means that they placebodies of their deceased on a
mountain for vultures to eat.
Now, even to this day, thispractice continues.
In fact, in April 2023, a greatpodcast named Radiolab did an
(50:41):
episode discussing this practiceand, long story short, bodies
were being laid out, but inMumbai, india, apparently, the
vultures were dying off in Indiaand Pakistan, which was a major
problem for people whopracticed Zoroastrianism, as the
bodies became bloated and wererotting in the sun because the
(51:03):
vultures weren't coming.
But if you want to hear more onthis, you can check out
Radiolab.
They did a fantastic jobdiscussing the problems of
modern day India and Pakistanand how it affects this ancient
religious practice.
What I'm getting at is thePersian society was transforming
(51:24):
and with that change camesocial change.
In fact, artaxerxes reign endedup being known as Persia's
cultural phase of the AchaemenidEmpire reign ended up being
known as Persia's cultural phaseof the Achaemenid Empire.
So, while Persia's empire waschanging and becoming more
cultured, they still needed todeal with geopolitical issues
(51:46):
that often involved death,torture and other kind of mayhem
.
In fact, they're still kind ofreally trying to figure out what
to do because, remember,artaxerxes' brother was killed
and his body was sent to him.
The Persian generalmegabusiness had informed them
that if they give up they wouldbe spared.
As such, the man responsiblefor the death was brought to
(52:11):
Artaxerxes, and Artaxerxesobviously was furious and wanted
to kill him right then andthere.
But before he could do it, hisgeneral mega business stopped
him because he had to honor thedeal, and one of the other
problems here was Artaxerxesmother was heartbroken and she
was beside herself when shelearned that her son's killer
(52:33):
wouldn't face retribution.
So apparently Artaxerxes'mother had badgered him for five
years, asking him to takevengeance.
Finally, artaxerxes gave hisbrother's killer to his grieving
mother, where she had himimpaled on three spikes and
decapitated.
She had him impaled on threespikes and decapitated.
(52:58):
But now Artaxerxes had anotherproblem, because his general
Megabusiness left for his homeprovince of Syria, where he met
up with Greeks who had escapedArtaxerxes' mother's wrath,
forming an army of 150,000 men.
He revolted against Artaxerxes,which required 200,000 men to
put down.
Those numbers probably are abit high, but you can see that
(53:22):
it was a big deal.
There was a lot of peopleinvolved.
Artaxerxes' other brother,artarius, wanted to mediate the
situation, so he traveled tomeet Megabusiness and basically
told him that he had a long andgreat career serving the king,
and why throw that all away?
(53:42):
And then basically said hey,why don't you come meet my
brother, the king Artaxerxes,and we can all smooth this over.
However, he said he justcouldn't bear the thought of
seeing the Queen Mother andreliving what he had done to the
man he had sworn to protect.
Even Artaxerxes' mother urgedhim to make peace and forgive
(54:04):
Megabusiness because ultimately,he was an influential and
legendary war hero.
Artaxerxes therefore pardonedMegabusiness but forced him to
make one last trip to thePersian court to receive it.
Now, normally, if I'm reading astory or listening to a podcast
(54:26):
about a subject matter that'ssimilar to this, the obvious
next part of the story is thatthere's some sort of deception
and someone's double-crossed andkilled, but luckily for
Megabusiness, this just didn'thappen.
In fact, he was given hispardon and he lived to the ripe
(54:48):
old age of 76 and died in peace.
And that right there kind ofreally separates the Persians
from a lot of other ancientsocieties and, in all honesty,
before I really started to readup on the Persians, I was always
under the impression that thesewere warmongering barbarians
(55:09):
who had no compassion.
But in all honesty, they werevery compassionate and they
lived by honor.
It's not something that Ireally ever learned.
Dan Carlin said something great.
I remember I was listening toone of his podcasts and he said
that he always viewed the warbetween the Greeks and the
Persians as the Greeks were thehome team and the Persians were
(55:31):
the away team, the bad guys.
But in reality, though, it'sreally complicated.
It's just not that case at all,because ultimately, this is the
case of the Persians doing yetagain the honorable thing.
This started with Cyrus theGreat and, if you recall, just a
few generations prior, cyrushad pardoned the Jews and
(55:53):
allowed them to return to Israel.
Generations prior, cyrus hadpardoned the Jews and allowed
them to return to Israel.
Now, prior to this pardon, theAssyrians and the Babylonians
had practiced redistribution ofthe population, so the Jews from
Israel were brought to Babylonand the Babylonians were sent to
Israel or some other far-offplace.
So when Cyrus had pardoned theJews, they went back, but they
still would have to deal withthe Babylonians who were still
(56:17):
in the region, and oftentimesthese Babylonians would have
been in position of leadershipand maybe did not like the Jews
because they were obviously alot of cultural differences
between the two.
As such, the governor of Israelwas not Jewish, and I'm
guessing he didn't really carefor the Jews either.
So what he did was he began towarn Artaxerxes that Jerusalem
(56:42):
was nearly rebuilt and the onlything it needed to do was finish
its walls.
Now that's fine and dandy andall, but what he did was he told
them that, once these wallswere finished, the Jews would
not pay their fair share oftaxes and tribute, as they would
(57:03):
have felt so secure that theycould just hide behind the walls
.
Based on this information,artaxerxes ordered them to stop
the construction, but afterabout seven years, he had a
change of heart and he allowedthem to finish Jerusalem.
Now, it's speculation that thereason why he had such a change
(57:24):
of heart was because his mosttrusted advisors were Jewish.
So not only did he allow themto finish building up Jerusalem
and its walls, he also orderedthem to beautify the temple in
Jerusalem, which was funded bysilver and gold from the
Babylonian treasure andvoluntary offerings of the Jews.
(57:45):
And even from there, he uppedhis ante even more by providing
an enormous amount of timber andother building materials to
help finish up Jerusalem.
And while this is going on, thePersians were continuing to
exploit the tensions betweenSparta and Athens.
Thermasicles was still in theservices of Persia but began to
(58:10):
have second thoughts.
He must have been thinking tohimself how would my name go
down in history?
Would he be looked at as one ofthe biggest betrayers of Athens
of all time?
So, instead of helpingArtaxerxes, he decided to commit
suicide, and with the death ofThermostocles, artaxerxes'
(58:32):
easiest path to defeating theGreeks may have come to an end
as well.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
(58:54):
Also, you can help the show outa ton by leaving a five-star
review and telling a friend ortwo.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D, and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
(00:25):
entertaining, and although I'mnot a historian, I am a fan of
history.
Where we last left off, we werediscussing the life and rule of
Darius the Great.
When, looking at him from ahistorical lens, he was probably
one of the greatestadministrators of all time and
(00:47):
at the end of his life he had abig decision to make as to who
would succeed him.
Being someone who had the greatability to look into the future
and potentially see any issueswith who he picks as the heir,
he probably made the rightchoice and chose Xerxes because
(01:08):
he could trace Xerxes back toCyrus the Great, as he was his
grandfather and, like I said,darius had questionable lineage
concerns because many people didnot believe his story.
So by picking Xerxes as hisheir, he can kind of really nip
that in the bud right away.
(01:29):
Now, by all accounts, xerxeswasn't really on board with
invading Greece because heperceived keeping Egypt under
his control a much more greaterimportance due to the fact that
keeping Egypt under controlmeant he would have the
breadbasket in place, because hewas expanding his army, he was
(01:52):
expanding his territory and herealized you have to be able to
feed your soldiers and yourpopulation.
So it's quite possible that hewould have viewed Darius's
obsession with Greece to kind ofbe out of line, because for him
Egypt was always going to bepriority number one.
Despite all this, once Xerxesfelt that Egypt was under
(02:17):
control and really wasn't athreat to revolt, he did return
back to Greece.
Now it was Xerxes' uncle who hadinformed Xerxes that.
You know.
He told his brother, darius,not to attack Greece and
basically warned Xerxes thatGreece would be a serious
(02:38):
problem because they barelyescaped their previous invasions
and now the Greeks had rebuilttheir navy and potentially
became more unified in itsdefense.
After hearing this, xerxesbasically told his uncle that he
was a coward and he should juststay home with the women, and
this obviously would have beenan incredible insult.
(03:00):
It appears that from Xerxesviewpoints, he believed that
they should attack Greece first,because if they didn't attack
first, greece was surely goingto attack them.
So, in his mind's eyes, a gooddefense would be a good offense,
(03:20):
but apparently Xerxes reallystarted to think about what his
uncle was telling him.
The story goes that when Xerxeswent to sleep that night, he saw
a ghost.
And the ghost asked him Did youreally change your mind?
You need to follow youroriginal plan.
Despite this ghostly visit,xerxes called his war council.
(03:42):
Apparently, he said I spokerashly yesterday and did not
give my uncle the respect hedeserves.
I've changed my mind aboutinvading Greece.
That night the ghost reappearedagain and says know this, if you
do not march on Greece, youwill experience a catastrophe.
Apparently, this had Xerxesshook up, so he bolted out of
(04:06):
his bed and called his uncleinto the room and says you know,
I'm haunted by a ghostthreatening me with harm if I do
not march on to Greece.
Maybe it's just a dream from myown imagination.
So let's test this.
Lie down in my bed.
If the word is from God, youwill see the ghost also.
Xerxes leaves the room and hisuncle falls asleep on his bed,
(04:29):
but then the ghost reappears andhe looks at him and says you,
you pretend to care about Xerxes, warning him about attacking
the Greeks.
You will not escape judgment,not now and not afterward.
Then the ghost attempts togouge out his uncle's eyes with
a red hot poker.
He screamed and ran out of theroom into Xerxes.
(04:51):
I've changed my mind.
The fates have ordained it.
March on to Greece Now.
Thanks to the ghostly visit,they spent the next three to
four years in their plans toattack Greece.
Now, this preparation went evenfurther than just building up a
navy and preparing men for war.
(05:13):
It would have also includedgreat engineering feats, such as
building a bridge across theDardanelles Straits, and this is
where Asia would have metEurope.
This bridge would have alsobeen approximately three
quarters of a mile or onekilometer across, or 1.2
kilometers across.
(05:33):
Now, to accomplish this, whatthey needed to do is essentially
line up 674 ships together, andthey would have laid a wooden
plank across the ships, forminglike basically a long span for
Xerxes army to march over.
All in all, it took a fewmonths to complete, and when
(05:53):
they finished, around 480 BCE,xerxes was able to march his
million man army, which may havecome from many nations that
made up the accumulated PersianEmpire.
Now, a million-man army mightbe a pretty big stretch, but
nonetheless it was still amassive army that he was going
to transport from Asia intoEurope.
(06:18):
Now, luckily for the Greeks, thegods had stepped in and brought
a violent storm to the regionwhich destroyed the bridge.
Now this completely enragedXerxes Enraged him so much that
he had his engineers decapitated.
And to show you how angry hewas, he even ordered his men to
(06:39):
give the water 300 lashes andbranded it with red hot irons
because that will show the waterwho's in charge.
Now, in my mind, this is kindof a bizarre behavior that I
think most people would expectto hear when you discuss ancient
Persian kings.
I guess I always envisionedthese ancient rulers as the
(07:02):
types who would put on this kindof display and show some kind
of irrational behavior to showthat they were in charge.
But the one question that Ithink a lot of historians and
probably much of his officercorps were thinking was why did
they use the 674 ships to builda bridge and just not use them
(07:24):
to ferry them across the water?
But either way, the bridge wasrebuilt and this quote unquote
million man army was able towalk across.
And to give you an idea aboutthe sheer size of his army, it
took them seven days and sevennights just to clear his entire
army across.
Like I said, it wasn't probablya million man army, but it was
(07:47):
massive nonetheless.
Meanwhile, the naval fleet of1,200 ships was on the move in
the Aegean as well, and this wasalso another great engineering
feat, because Xerxes had hisengineers build a massive canal
through the Athos Peninsulabecause they previously tried to
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sail around the peninsula andthe navy was wiped out in a
severe storm.
So Xerxes decided it's best notto take any chances sailing
around the peninsula.
Instead, they would just sailright through the peninsula.
Instead, they would just sailright through the peninsula.
In the end, this canal wasabout a mile across, or like 1.6
kilometers, and this wasn'tbuilt overnight.
(08:32):
It took about three years tocomplete, like his other bridge
projects.
Some historians have pointedout that this may have been a
complete waste of time andresources, because the Persian
Navy still had to sail throughthe Aegean anyway to reach the
peninsula.
So why waste so much time andresources building this canal,
(08:55):
since they were already out inthe open water to begin with?
In other words, you can't reachSparta or Athens without first
sailing into the Aegean andtherefore you still would have
to face the risk of potentialbad storms regardless of this
canal.
So in the end it really kind ofmakes it hard for me to
understand what Xerxes wasthinking.
(09:16):
But it could have been just amere fact that he wanted to show
his enemies that he had theability to think outside the box
, just to get them.
In a weird way it kind ofreminds me of when Julius Caesar
had his engineers build theGreat Bridge across the Rhine
River into Germania, instead ofsending them across in boats,
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because he wanted to basicallyshow the people on the other
side of the river that we havethe ability to come get you and
we can do things that you can'tdo.
In other words, he wanted tobasically show them some sort of
psychological warfare.
And this right here takes us upto one of the most famous
(09:59):
battles in ancient history, whenthe 300 Spartans squared off
against the massive Persian armyat the hot gates of Thermopylae
.
Now, if you really want to getinto the story in a little bit
better detail and probablyexplained way better than I ever
could, I would suggest DanCarlin's episode, because he did
an amazing job discussing thestory and he can obviously do it
(10:21):
much better than I ever could.
But either way, he canobviously do it much better than
I ever could, but either way,it wasn't 300.
It was probably close to 6,000Greeks that had barred the
entrance, and the reason whysuch a small force could hold
back such a large force was thegeography more or less created a
bottleneck and therefore itwouldn't have been that hard to
(10:45):
take a small force to hold backa massive force Led by King
Leonidas of Sparta.
The Greeks blocked the narrowmountain pass for four days.
Now.
In order to figure out how todefeat the Greeks, xerxes called
in Demeritus, who was theformer Spartan king, who had
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defected to Persia after beingdethroned because of rumors that
were spread by the other kingbecause, as I mentioned
previously, sparta had two kings.
Xerxes also sent envoys tellingthe Spartans this is your last
chance to avoid bloodshed.
Simply lay down your arms.
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Leonardo reportedly said comeand take them.
The Greeks were able towithstand the usual Persian
tactics of first shooting offarrows and then the cavalry
charge.
The reason being is first off,the Greeks were heavily armored
and they could use their armoredshield so that they could
basically set up a wall and evenif a few arrows somehow made it
(11:54):
through their shield wall, theywere wearing enough armor that
they would also be protectedfrom the arrows and since this
was a narrow pass, a cavalrycharge wouldn't really be useful
.
The Persians, on the other hand, were lightly protected.
They didn't have the armor thatthe Greeks had, and their only
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protection was essentiallywicker shields.
So you can see the dichotomybetween how well protected the
small Greek force would havebeen versus the much larger
Persian force.
In the end, the Greek defectorwas able to tell Xerxes of an
alternative path to get aroundthis pass and therefore sent his
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army up and around and thenattacked the Greeks from the
rear, sent his army up andaround and then attacked the
Greeks from the rear.
All while this was happening,the Greeks were still facing a
threat from the sea, as the1,200 ships were sailing towards
them.
Luckily for the Greeks, thegods once again stepped in and a
major storm hit the region andsunk approximately a third of
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their ships.
Major storm hit the region andsunk approximately a third of
their ships.
Then another storm hit and thePersians lose another 200 ships
or so.
So, as a recap, the Persiansspent three years building this
canal, but still lost nearlyhalf of their fleet anyway.
They still had a numericaladvantage, but the Greeks
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managed to attack the Persianfleet unexpectedly, and they
were able to capture about 30triremes from the Persians.
And then the next day theGreeks once again prevailed, but
the Persians were able toregroup and, more importantly,
their Egyptian allies stepped inand captured Greek ships and
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then damaged approximately halfof the Athenian fleet.
Xerxes was able to get pastThermopylae, but he lost time,
and that valuable time was usedto evacuate the city of Athens,
and that valuable time was usedto evacuate the city of Athens.
So by the time Xerxes arrived,he found nearly an entirely
abandoned city, but that didn'tstop him and his forces from
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plundering the city and killingany people that had remained.
The people that had left Athenswent to the island of Salamis.
Meanwhile, thermistocles, whowas the great leader of Athens,
had sent a private message toXerxes and basically told him he
was going to flip sides.
Now was the time to attackbecause the Greeks were in panic
(14:38):
mode and therefore werediscombobulated and were easy
pickings.
Therefore, they were ready toflee to Salamis and you could
just catch them flat footed, asthey would be fighting amongst
themselves.
Xerxes took the bait and orderedover 400 ships to attack,
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despite the fact that QueenArtemisia informed him it was
too risky to fight in theStraits of Salamis.
The Greeks would have a majoradvantage there.
Now, xerxes would often listento the queen, and he really did
take her advice seriously, butin this particular instance he
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didn't listen to her warning.
And the biggest reason was hewas so convinced by this ruse
that he had sent runners back toPersia to tell the people of
his great victory over theGreeks before the battle had
even started.
So the very next day, thePersian fleet sails into the
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Gulf, where they find 50 shipsthat began to flee.
The Persians bore down on themand sailed right into the trap.
The rest of the Greek fleetcame out from the hiding places
that they were in and basicallysailed behind them and pinned
them in with no room to escapeand no room to maneuver.
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Meanwhile, xerxes is observingthis entire debacle from a
mountaintop overlooking the bay,as he was basically watching
his fleet get utterly destroyed.
Xerxes' advisor was with him atthe time and informed him that
it's probably best to get backto Persia as quickly as possible
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so that you can inform thepeople that you won, because you
sacked, plundered and burntAthens to the ground.
Xerxes was able to lead histroops back home, but many had
died of starvation on the wayback.
Before he went back to Persia,he left his trusted general and
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a large force back in Greece,where they wintered and prepared
to attack Greece the followingspring.
In the meantime, the Atheniansreturned back to the city.
The Persian general did exactlywhat he said he was going to do
and he marched back into Athens.
The following spring, however,the Athenians did exactly what
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they did before and they fled toSalamis.
This time, the Persiansdestroyed any remaining
structures, including the homesand temples and, of course, the
walls that were still standingfrom the first attack.
But this time the Spartans andother Greek city-states came to
defense of the Athenians andbecause of this, the Persians
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had no choice but to retreat.
The Persians fought theSpartans in the Battle of
Plataea.
The Spartans pulled one oftheir old battle tricks, one
that the Mongols perfectedthousands of years later, in
that they essentially faked aretreat to trick the Persians
into chasing them Suddenly.
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The Greeks would just stoptheir retreat, turn around and
form up into their famousPhalanx position, and then they
would catch the Persians totallyoff guard.
Now it was the Persians thatwere fleeing, but this was the
Greek homeland, and basicallyout of nowhere.
Tens of thousands of Greekswere coming out of hiding places
through the hills and theywould have massacred, they say,
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260,000 Persian soldiers.
It was said that 40,000 or sosurvived out of the 300,000.
Luckily, the Persian general,well, he died in the attack.
And I say luckily because hisfate probably would have been a
lot worse if he were able tolook back to Persia with the
remaining 40,000 or so troops.
(18:29):
And I just want to reiteratethe number of 300,000 troops
probably is an exaggeration to acertain extent.
And the 40,000 that remainprobably is also an exaggeration
.
And the 40,000 that remainedprobably is also an exaggeration
.
But that still shouldn't takeaway from the fact that this was
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a massive army that was utterlydestroyed.
Now, in the aftermath, the realquestion came down to where do
the Ionian Greeks loyalties lie?
Because they were stilltechnically under the control of
the Persians.
They were still technicallyunder the control of the
Persians.
So would they be loyal toXerxes or their ancestral
homeland of the Greeks acrossthe Aegean Sea?
And that particular question ofloyalty would have been brought
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up by the Persians becausethere were rumblings that they
had actually sabotaged the wholecampaign and therefore were
guilty of treason.
In fact, a high-rankingPhoenician had questioned the
Ionians and where theirloyalties would have lied, but
for some reason Xerxes wasn'thaving any of that nonsense
(19:37):
because he had the Phoenicianleader beheaded for Sander.
And you have to realizesomething about the Persians
beheaded for Sander, and youhave to realize something about
the Persians One of the worstthings you can do is accuse
somebody of lying, because inthe Persian culture, lying is
probably one of the greatestoffenses that one could commit.
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Now, despite all these questionsabout where the Ionians' true
feelings lie, the Spartans werein the process of trying to sway
the Ionians to remember theirGreek heritage and as such, the
Spartans had deployed 110 shipsto sail to Delios to fight the
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Persians.
But before the fight, someIonian Greeks from the island of
Samos secretly met with them.
The story goes that theSpartans had called out to the
Ionians in the Greek languageand asked them where their
loyalties lied, and apparentlythe Persians had told them men
of Ionia, remember your freedom,pass this along to the other
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Greeks of Ionia, remember yourfreedom, pass this along to the
other Greeks.
This was ultimately a two-partstrategy, because, for one, they
were obviously looking to bringthe Greeks to the other side,
but they also were looking toshow distrust among the Persians
regarding the Ionians.
So, in other words, if theydon't join us, let's make it
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look like they're conspiringwith us and thus they can't be
trusted and therefore they won'tbe utilized in their military
machine.
And it appears that thisstrategy may have worked,
because the Persians quicklydisarmed their Ionian Greek
military members and now we'reno longer a threat to the
Spartans and the Athenians.
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And soon enough they were onthe attack.
But now they didn't have toworry about fighting against
their fellow Greeks.
And it might be because of this, but this battle quickly tilted
in favor of the Greeks,especially when some of the
Greek cousins, the Ionians, haddefected and decided to join the
Spartans and the Athenians.
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This obviously would have madethe Persians highly upset and,
as a result, they were quicklyslaughtered by their former
overlords.
In the end, 40,000 Persiansdied.
That day, the king of Sparta metwith the other Ionian Greeks
and said that day, the king ofSparta met with the other Ionian
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Greeks and said come back andlive in the motherland, you will
be safe from Persian attacks.
But shockingly, the Ioniansrejected this by saying we've
been here for 600 years.
We're not going anywhere assuch, in 477 BCE, the Ionians
formed the Delian League, whichwas a confederacy of Ionian
Greek city-states.
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Now that they had this largealliance, they formed up
together and they launchedattacks against the Persian
forces.
So this new Delian League wasable to take back the
westernmost coastline ofAnatolia from the Greeks and
from the Persians.
This region was vital to anyempire that controlled it,
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because this region was filledwith fantastic traders and
shipbuilding.
The fact of the matter is, theAegean Sea was the lifeblood of
the Greeks and, to a lesserextent, the Phoenicians and the
Persians, but when commoditiesand merchandise are flowing
through the region, well, thatmeans it's going to attract
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people who might view it as agolden opportunity to get rich
quick.
And this get rich quick schemeof antiquity usually meant
piracy.
And really, before the DelianLeague was formed, there was a
lot of complaints by certainmerchants that they were just
getting robbed left and right bythe Delopian pirates of Cyrus.
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Now, the initial strategy fordealing with this was to
essentially punish the entireisland.
However, it really wasn't fairto punish everyone when it was
only a handful of people thatwere causing the disruption to
piracy.
This is where the Dalian Leaguecame into play, because they
were able to deal with thisdirectly by capturing and
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expelling the pirates that weredisrupting trade in the region
in the region.
So you can kind of see how thisis a great example of a
cooperative being used to helpmake trade much more efficient
and even safer.
Cimon, who fought at the Battleof Salamis, was the league's
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principal commander.
After taking care of the piracyproblem, he was able to take
back Persian territories for theGreeks.
In doing so, he was able toplunder the Persian possessions
that were left behind.
Furthermore, one of the greatways to make a quick buck was
through this process of ransom.
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So, in other words, you capturean enemy soldier, hold them
hostage and see how much moneyyou can take when you contact
their families back home.
Apparently, this worked outvery well for Achaemenon, as he
became very wealthy.
Just off of ransoming Persiansoldiers, the Delian League
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moved on to attacking Persianoutposts in Thrace in 476 BCE.
Now, to give you an idea whereThrace is located, it is in
Southeast Europe, with theBalkan Mountains to the north,
the Aegean Sea to the south, theBlack Sea to the east, and it
(25:24):
comprised present-day Bulgaria.
The natural resources that werelocated in Thrace would have
meant that they would have beena key outpost for both the
Persians and the Greeks.
Whoever controlled the regionwould have controlled the
massive amount of timber thatwould have been used for
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shipbuilding and also used forfuel for iron making and, of
course, for trade and war.
In addition, there was alsosilver mines in the region that
could have been used to paysoldiers and shipbuilders, and
it would have been used toprovide provisions for the
soldiers and shipbuilders, andit would have been used to
provide provisions for thesoldiers and sailors when they
were on campaign.
Caiman, the leader of theDailing League, ultimately took
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the Persians head on in Thraceand, by doing so, put the city
of Eon under siege.
Apparently, the Persians wereabout to give up, but then
Xerxes sent 340 triremes, whichwere commanded by his son, and
then an additional 80 ships weresent by the Phoenicians.
Xerxes' strategy was to employan early form of island hopping
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by working his way through Ionia, reclaiming each city-state to
form a type of beachhead wherehe could eventually launch an
attack from Ionia onto Thraceand Greece.
A fierce naval battle ensuedwith the Greeks and would have
destroyed much of the Persiannavy.
In the process, the Greekscaptured 100 ships or so, along
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with their crew, with theremaining Persian fleet
retreating to Cyprus.
Cayman wasn't really satisfied,so he set sail to fight the
remaining Persian army.
But he had a major problem.
There were barbarians who wereallies with the Persians, who
were encamped on the banks ofthe Irimedan River.
(27:16):
Now he needed a way to sailpast them without alarming them.
So he came up with a great idea.
He took the Persian ships andtheir crew's clothing, and from
there he pulled the oldswitcheroo and had his best
Greek sailors dress as Persianson Persian ships.
The barbarians saw them comingand received them as if they
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were allies and friends, sinceit was the Persians on the
Persian ships.
As night fell, the Greeksdisembarked from their ships and
basically caught the barbariansoff guard and slaughtered them,
including their generals andthe nephew of the king.
Some did manage to survive, andthey would have fled for their
lives.
Some did manage to survive andthey would have fled for their
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lives.
And then more Ionian Greeksjoined the Delian League, which
would then morph into theAthenian Empire.
So while all this is happening,in Greece there was an issue
with the Persians because in 465BCE, king Xerxes and his eldest
son, crown prince Darius, wereassassinated by the commander of
the royal bodyguard, xerxes'youngest son, artaxerxes,
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avenged the assassination of hisfather and brother by killing
the bodyguard and his sons.
The last Persian city in Thracewas Doriscus.
Last Persian city in Thrace wasDoriscus.
The Greeks struggled to conquerit, but this was happening at
the same time of Xerxes'assassination, and then the
Persian satrap was recalled toPersia and with that the
(28:52):
accumulated Persian empire nolonger had a presence in Europe
presence in Europe.
Since there was a lot of chaosin Persia.
Egypt, with the help of Athens,rebelled in 460 BCE.
(29:14):
King Artaxerxes had sent300,000 men, supposedly to put
an end to Egypt's rebellion.
With the help of their Athenianallies, they initially had some
success, as they defeated thePersian army in their early
battles.
During one of the early battles, the commander by the name of
Akamenes was killed, and theGreeks thought it would be a
good idea to send KingArtaxerxes a package containing
(29:36):
his dead brother's body.
This was obviously not theAmazon package that he was
expecting.
As such, the Persians retreatedto Memphis and from there they
were able to turn the tide ofwar.
The Athenians and Egyptians werefinally defeated in 454 BCE by
the Persian army led by Megabus.
(29:58):
The Egyptian pharaoh wascaptured and sent to Susa where
he was killed by crucifixion.
You can see where this kind ofreally changed things, because
in the past if a pharaoh wascaptured he most likely would
have been given some kind ofassignment as an advisor to the
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king.
However, the king's brother wasjust killed, so this obviously
wasn't going to happen.
So all bets were off by thispoint.
Meanwhile, the Athenians kindof panicked when this happened.
The Delian League had kept thistreasury on the island of Delos
due to its central location, butthe Athenians worried that the
(30:39):
Persians would sail up from theNile and into the Mediterranean,
so they moved the treasury toAthens.
Now this did not sit well withthe Ionians and the Delian
League.
They had some serious concerns.
Were the Athenians just goingto keep the treasury for
themselves and not for theDelian League?
So in reality, at this pointyou can kind of start to see
(31:01):
some sort of cracks that'sforming in the Deleon League.
And it's interesting because ifyou look at a lot of conflicts
throughout history and even on apersonal level, let's be honest
a lot of conflicts that happenwith friends or family start and
end with money, and right hereis a perfect example.
Once the money gets moved,people start to question their
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fellow Greek motives.
However, the Greeks were able toput this issue behind them for
now, because theycounterattacked the Persian
stronghold in Cyprus.
But Caiman, the Greek general,died in battle.
However, this was concealedfrom their forces because they
didn't want any sort of panic toset in.
(31:44):
So in the land and sea battlein Cyprus, the Greeks were under
the assumption that Caiman wasstill leading his troops and as
such, they actually won bothbattles, one on the sea and one
on the land.
They actually won both battles,one on the sea and one on the
land.
So it's quite possible that bykeeping his death concealed, he
may have kept morale up andallowed the Greeks to defeat the
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Persians.
One only knows, if they hadlearned that their great
commander was dead, if thingswould have changed completely.
It's quite possible.
The greek victory in cyprusallowed the athenian statesman,
calais to negotiate a 30-yeartruce between the acumen of
persian empire and the delianleague in 449 bce, as peace was
(32:31):
being established between thegreeks and the persians.
The athenians probably neededthis peace even more because
they were already deep into thefirst Peloponnesian war, whereas
they were fighting the Spartans, oh, and they were fighting the
Thebans and the Corinthians.
In hindsight, I'm kind ofsurprised that the Persians
(32:51):
would even really sign thispeace treaty anyway, considering
that the Greeks were in a bitof chaos at the time.
Were in a bit of chaos at thetime, so it appears to me that
the Persians really didn't havea very effective intelligence
apparatus at the time.
But either way, the Greeksconceded Persian dominance of
the Black Sea, cyprus, egypt andPersia's remaining territories
(33:18):
in western Turkey Now, alsoprobably because they felt they
had no choice but the DelianLeague more or less morphed into
the Athenian Empire, especiallyconsidering the fact that they
had control of the treasury, ofwhich it was used on a massive
building and engineering spreefor Athens and even some other
Greek city-states as well.
So, while all this is going onin Greece, there was a sense of
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peace between the two becausethey had just signed the 30-year
truce.
And, in honesty, since this is apodcast about trade, money and
banking and I've more or lessgone off on a tangent that
doesn't really include any ofthat, I figure it's a good
opportunity to kind of reallybring it back to the scope of
the podcast.
In general, I'm not a historian.
(34:01):
I do love to see how thingsevolved and, in all honesty, a
lot of these geopoliticalhappenings will affect trade.
It will affect how money isdistributed throughout the
empire.
The fact of the matter is isthe soldier's salary was paid in
coin and this coin was used tojumpstart trade throughout the
Persian Empire.
(34:22):
And now that we have a sense ofpeace, you can see trade and
commerce kind of reemerge in theforefront of the Achaemenid
Persian Empire.
And to give you a great exampleof this is, the University of
Pennsylvania uncovered about 730clay tablets from a family
(34:44):
archive that would have datedfrom 455 to 403 BCE, so we're
talking right in this timeperiod when the 30-year peace
was basically just signed.
Now, these tablets werediscovered from the ruins of
Nippur that showed that thebanking house Marushu and Sons
(35:04):
had conducted business with Jewswho decided to remain in Nippur
rather than return to Judea.
The local population of Nippurand, by extension, the Persians
in general, appear to haveaccepted the Jewish population
in the region if they decided tostay.
(35:25):
Also, it's not really 100%certain if this is in fact a
Jewish family or not, as itcould be just a West Semitic
name, so maybe they're notJewish With.
The fact of the matter is, theystill would have been
technically kind of foreignersin this region and they were
accepted nonetheless, butregardless of the family's
religious beliefs or whateverthey were.
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There were 28 Jewishsettlements in the immediate
Nippur region.
The documents of the regionappear to attest to the fact
that there was a widespreadamount of activities of the
local Jewish population, so onecan easily deduce the fact that
it really sounds like they wereallowed to prosper in Babylonia,
(36:09):
as you can see how they thrivedin the region.
As deeds for land acquisitionsand contracts for all kinds of
different business ventures,including the insurance business
, there were large-scale creditprovisions for specific projects
.
That was uncovered.
However, despite all this, theJewish population was quite
diverse and therefore held manydifferent positions in society,
(36:33):
from the high-class palaceofficials to the lower class and
even slaves.
And speaking of the lowestclass, most of the Jews that
were referred to in the Marashudocuments were of the lower
class and some were in factslaves.
Now, if you recall from theprevious episodes, I did talk
(36:55):
about slavery and it's importantto note that slavery in ancient
times was not like chattelslavery in the American South.
Slavery is still slavery andI'm sure it sucks for the slaves
, but slaves in ancientBabylonia and Persia had way
(37:15):
more rights and were probablytreated much better than the
black American slaves in theAmerican South, and even worse
for the slaves in the Caribbean,as they were just worked to
death.
The slaves of ancient Persiawere not treated as mere
property without rights, but asa person who retained certain
privileges as well asresponsibilities to their owner
(37:42):
privileges as well asresponsibilities to their owner.
They could be independentlyable to enter into legal
agreements, as long as it wasn'ta conflict of interest to their
lord.
So, according to the tabletsthat were discovered, two such
slaves one clearly bearing aJudaic name were contracted by
the head of the Marashu torepair the dam of the irrigation
canal that was passing throughthe Marashu property.
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The contract stipulated thatdamages would be assessed if the
commitment was not fulfilled.
So what exactly does that mean?
What it meant was that theslaves had independent property
of their own to be assessed.
Imagine trying to sue a slavein the American South and try to
(38:25):
recover any personal property.
Well, that would have beennearly impossible, because they
didn't have any personalproperty and they didn't have
any rights.
And, of course, they weren'tallowed to read either.
So you can give them paperwork.
Technically they shouldn't'tallowed to read either.
So you can give them paperworkthey can't.
Technically they shouldn't beable to read it.
The Marashu family really had adiverse business portfolio.
(38:47):
First off, they were bankers,whereas they lent money at high
interest rates and I'm not surewhat high interest rates means,
as I haven't read anything thatreally indicates the exact
interest rates in terms ofnumbers and loan repayment
periods.
They also ran a large-scaleproperty management business,
(39:09):
whereas they would have managedestates for absentee landlords,
who were often royals orhigh-ranking military members
who may have been out oncampaign, or high-ranking
military members who may havebeen out on campaign.
As such, they would have beenresponsible for hiring labor to
work the land or the factory andthey would have paid taxes on
(39:35):
behalf of the absentee landlord.
And, lastly, they would haveremitted the profits to the
landlords.
Additionally, they suppliedfarmers with animals, seed and
other implements.
In addition, they also dealt insecurities for imprisoned
debtors, so they were using thisto basically trade the debt
amongst them.
(39:55):
We know of at least threegenerations of this banker
family that had existed in theNippur region.
An ancient map was discoveredthat shows that the Marashu home
had a prime real estatelocation as it was laid on an
important irrigation canal ofthe Euphrates.
It's not quite clear, but theymay have also operated as tax
(40:22):
farmers as well.
All in all, the family employedabout 60 people in total and
had commercial dealings with atleast 2,500 individuals.
But this was all done on alocal level and therefore it did
not participate ininternational long-distance
trade.
But they did have certainindividuals in the family that
(40:43):
basically opened up a familyoffice in Susa, which was
approximately 125 miles or about200 kilometers away.
The tablets almost read likekind of like a local newspaper
in a way, because for one theytell kind of a unique story that
a Jewish person by the name ofUdarna had property that was
(41:06):
stolen or taken by his brother,or maybe it was even a nephew.
The tablet goes on to see if hemight reacquire his property.
So it appears that Udarna hadbrought his complaint to the
banking firm of Marashu and Sons.
Udana did not have the propertyreturned and in addition no
(41:30):
charges were brought against thebrother or the nephew.
They also agreed that nooffspring of Udana would ever
bring charges against Udana'sbrother or nephew or their
offspring.
The act of forbidding anylawsuit being brought against
Udarna's brother and nephew orthe generations afterward, was
seemingly implemented to preventa blood feud that might last
(41:51):
generations.
So in the end, it doesn't evenappear like really that this was
resolved.
It just appears that it was hey, you're not going to get
anything and you're not going tokill each other in the meantime
.
So really, what I'm getting atis, by the time of the peace
between the Greeks and theAchaemenid Empire, banking had
been thriving and really been inoperation since Darius.
(42:14):
In fact, most of the bankingoperations that was performed
were typically done by thetemples, or even the prince and
even Magi, to be honest with you.
I mean, the temples were reallyconsidered the earliest banks
in ancient Mesopotamia.
They would have stored anythingfrom grains to any other
personal valuables, and thiskind of basically continued up
(42:37):
and through Persia, and thiskind of basically continued up
and through Persia, right.
So the temples would have beenlooked at as the ancient bank
vault for a lot of the localpopulation.
The Magi, on the other hand,well, they were typically
members of the king's family andthey would have been
responsible for the religiousrituals and other kind of
divination.
And then, thirdly, they wouldhave been involved in banking.
(43:00):
They would have offered loanswith typically around a 20%
interest rate.
But depending on who they'relending money to, they would
have potentially waived theinterest.
So if it was to a king orsomeone very important, they
might waive the interest andhope to get something in return.
Obviously, because there is nofree lunch right, you always
expect something.
(43:20):
So there's almost always somekind of quid pro quo that's
happening, whether it's inwriting or just kind of implied.
And then, lastly, the princewould have been responsible for
essentially banking operationsfor the family.
And it's really important tonote, and I kind of touched on
it briefly here is a lot of thisbanking stuff kind of really
carried over from ancientMesopotamian practices,
(43:42):
especially in Sumer right.
So it started in the south inSumer and kind of worked its way
up the land between the tworivers.
And really before theAchaemenid dynasty was in full
bloom, most of the bankingoperations would have actually
been carried out by the templesand even the prince, and private
banking operations withindividuals wouldn't have really
(44:04):
happened that much, if at all,to be honest with you.
But it's during the AchaemenidEmpire that trade really boomed,
and trade you kind of expect itto boom when you have an
expanding empire, because whenyou expand an empire, what
you're going to do is you'regoing to offer a lot of security
and protection for people inthe outer reaches of the empire
that previously may not have had.
(44:25):
And then, on top of it, whatyou do, too, is the kind of
unexpected part, or the partthat's probably least
appreciated, is the fact thatweights and measures in far off
places start to get standardized.
Measures in far off placesstart to get standardized.
When you standardize theseweights and measures, it makes
trade much more efficient and itultimately drives down costs
(44:46):
and therefore you can basicallytrade with people maybe that you
couldn't trade with before,because now it becomes set at a
reasonable price.
And, as you can see from thisSemitic family, who may or may
not have been Jewish, thebanking operations in the
Achaemenid dynasty wereprimarily started in Babylon,
right, and then it kind ofexpanded on further to other
(45:08):
parts.
Then you factor in the factthat Lydia was now a part of the
Achaemenid dynasty.
The coinage that was flowing infrom western Anatolia would
have been used for bankingoperations in Babylon and other
parts of the Persian empire.
So where we're at in the storyis we have this peace between
(45:32):
the Greeks and the Persians, andthe good thing about peace is
you're not having all yourresources sucked up into
military operations.
So therefore you can see howbanking and trade would really
thrive and you can see how thisparticular family would flourish
during this time period,because it's a time of peace.
Military operations are notsucking up all the resources
(45:56):
available to the people, up allthe resources available to the
people.
However, despite this peace,back home in Athens,
themistocles, who was once theirpowerful politician well, he
was the one that was thevisionary behind the Athenian
defense by ordering the buildupof a massive naval fleet.
Despite being one of the mostpopular and powerful people in
(46:18):
Athens, his reign didn't lastlong because people kind of
turned on him and he eventuallywas ostracized by the Athenians
and as such, thermosiclesappears to have been very
heartbroken because he was madthat his homeland had basically
turned their back on him andthey in fact charged him with
(46:42):
treason.
So he in turn turned his backson them and therefore he decided
to flee to Persia, theirarchenemy, to Persia, their arch
enemy.
And it's kind of ironic becauseat one point one can make a
serious argument thatThermostocles was in fact the
(47:03):
Persians' biggest adversary,because if it wasn't for him.
It's quite possible that Athensgets defeated years prior and
gets defeated years prior.
Now, apparently, thermostoclesmet up with Artaxerxes and
apparently said King of kings,as you know, I was once your
(47:23):
father's enemy.
But as you also know,circumstances can quickly change
in the political world,especially in Athens, especially
at Salamis.
My evil adversaries havefalsely accused me and any
(47:47):
defense is a hopeless task.
Thus I offer myself to you.
Now, this would have been amajor coup for Artaxerxes,
because Thermostocles would haveobviously had a lot of inside
information that could be usedto defeat Athens.
When he met Artaxerxes, he wasasked for a year to learn the
Persian language and its customs.
Then he would be a faithfulservant.
Now, it's worth noting that bythis time period, the Aramaic
(48:11):
language had replaced theElamite and Persian languages in
the courts.
Written Aramaic was a naturalsuccessor, as it had the
advantage of an alphabet.
It was far easier to learn 22letters representing phonetic
sounds than to memorize around athousand characters
(48:32):
representing words in cuneiformscript.
This alphabet would haveactually been imported from the
Phoenicians.
Originally, the Phoenicians haddeveloped an alphabet and
basically it had been adopted bythe Greeks, and then also, too,
the people that were speakingthe Aramaic languages kind of
really jumped on board too,because they just kind of
(48:53):
realized that this makes a lotmore sense to use 22 characters
instead of sending the richestof the rich to school for many
years to learn thousands ofcharacters for a Qunei's
reformed script.
So in the end, an averageperson could technically learn
how to read and write, andtherefore this would have
(49:16):
actually enabled trade tobasically become more efficient
as well.
In addition to the writing, thatwas basically changing, their
religion was also changing.
In the region, zoroastrianismwas becoming the preferred
religion, as it was nearly amonotheistic religion, as it
(49:37):
worshipped the ancientIndo-Iranian god Ahura Mazda.
Now, as such, unlike othersocieties with different
religious belief systems, thePersians did not erect statues
or temples or altars or anyother kind of idols in the
religious system.
Now, according to Herodus, hewas of the belief that the
(49:57):
reason why they didn't do thiswas because they did not believe
that their gods had humanqualities, which would have been
unlike any other religion thatwas really being practiced at
the time, from the Egyptians allthe way to the Greeks.
Another interesting thing aboutZoroastrianism is that they do
(50:18):
not, and they continue to not,bury or cremate their dead
bodies, but instead they wouldhave practiced sky burials,
which means that they placebodies of their deceased on a
mountain for vultures to eat.
Now, even to this day, thispractice continues.
In fact, in April 2023, a greatpodcast named Radiolab did an
(50:41):
episode discussing this practiceand, long story short, bodies
were being laid out, but inMumbai, india, apparently, the
vultures were dying off in Indiaand Pakistan, which was a major
problem for people whopracticed Zoroastrianism, as the
bodies became bloated and wererotting in the sun because the
(51:03):
vultures weren't coming.
But if you want to hear more onthis, you can check out
Radiolab.
They did a fantastic jobdiscussing the problems of
modern day India and Pakistanand how it affects this ancient
religious practice.
What I'm getting at is thePersian society was transforming
(51:24):
and with that change camesocial change.
In fact, artaxerxes reign endedup being known as Persia's
cultural phase of the AchaemenidEmpire reign ended up being
known as Persia's cultural phaseof the Achaemenid Empire.
So, while Persia's empire waschanging and becoming more
cultured, they still needed todeal with geopolitical issues
(51:46):
that often involved death,torture and other kind of mayhem
.
In fact, they're still kind ofreally trying to figure out what
to do because, remember,artaxerxes' brother was killed
and his body was sent to him.
The Persian generalmegabusiness had informed them
that if they give up they wouldbe spared.
As such, the man responsiblefor the death was brought to
(52:11):
Artaxerxes, and Artaxerxesobviously was furious and wanted
to kill him right then andthere.
But before he could do it, hisgeneral mega business stopped
him because he had to honor thedeal, and one of the other
problems here was Artaxerxesmother was heartbroken and she
was beside herself when shelearned that her son's killer
(52:33):
wouldn't face retribution.
So apparently Artaxerxes'mother had badgered him for five
years, asking him to takevengeance.
Finally, artaxerxes gave hisbrother's killer to his grieving
mother, where she had himimpaled on three spikes and
decapitated.
She had him impaled on threespikes and decapitated.
(52:58):
But now Artaxerxes had anotherproblem, because his general
Megabusiness left for his homeprovince of Syria, where he met
up with Greeks who had escapedArtaxerxes' mother's wrath,
forming an army of 150,000 men.
He revolted against Artaxerxes,which required 200,000 men to
put down.
Those numbers probably are abit high, but you can see that
(53:22):
it was a big deal.
There was a lot of peopleinvolved.
Artaxerxes' other brother,artarius, wanted to mediate the
situation, so he traveled tomeet Megabusiness and basically
told him that he had a long andgreat career serving the king,
and why throw that all away?
(53:42):
And then basically said hey,why don't you come meet my
brother, the king Artaxerxes,and we can all smooth this over.
However, he said he justcouldn't bear the thought of
seeing the Queen Mother andreliving what he had done to the
man he had sworn to protect.
Even Artaxerxes' mother urgedhim to make peace and forgive
(54:04):
Megabusiness because ultimately,he was an influential and
legendary war hero.
Artaxerxes therefore pardonedMegabusiness but forced him to
make one last trip to thePersian court to receive it.
Now, normally, if I'm reading astory or listening to a podcast
(54:26):
about a subject matter that'ssimilar to this, the obvious
next part of the story is thatthere's some sort of deception
and someone's double-crossed andkilled, but luckily for
Megabusiness, this just didn'thappen.
In fact, he was given hispardon and he lived to the ripe
(54:48):
old age of 76 and died in peace.
And that right there kind ofreally separates the Persians
from a lot of other ancientsocieties and, in all honesty,
before I really started to readup on the Persians, I was always
under the impression that thesewere warmongering barbarians
(55:09):
who had no compassion.
But in all honesty, they werevery compassionate and they
lived by honor.
It's not something that Ireally ever learned.
Dan Carlin said something great.
I remember I was listening toone of his podcasts and he said
that he always viewed the warbetween the Greeks and the
Persians as the Greeks were thehome team and the Persians were
(55:31):
the away team, the bad guys.
But in reality, though, it'sreally complicated.
It's just not that case at all,because ultimately, this is the
case of the Persians doing yetagain the honorable thing.
This started with Cyrus theGreat and, if you recall, just a
few generations prior, cyrushad pardoned the Jews and
(55:53):
allowed them to return to Israel.
Generations prior, cyrus hadpardoned the Jews and allowed
them to return to Israel.
Now, prior to this pardon, theAssyrians and the Babylonians
had practiced redistribution ofthe population, so the Jews from
Israel were brought to Babylonand the Babylonians were sent to
Israel or some other far-offplace.
So when Cyrus had pardoned theJews, they went back, but they
still would have to deal withthe Babylonians who were still
(56:17):
in the region, and oftentimesthese Babylonians would have
been in position of leadershipand maybe did not like the Jews
because they were obviously alot of cultural differences
between the two.
As such, the governor of Israelwas not Jewish, and I'm
guessing he didn't really carefor the Jews either.
So what he did was he began towarn Artaxerxes that Jerusalem
(56:42):
was nearly rebuilt and the onlything it needed to do was finish
its walls.
Now that's fine and dandy andall, but what he did was he told
them that, once these wallswere finished, the Jews would
not pay their fair share oftaxes and tribute, as they would
(57:03):
have felt so secure that theycould just hide behind the walls
.
Based on this information,artaxerxes ordered them to stop
the construction, but afterabout seven years, he had a
change of heart and he allowedthem to finish Jerusalem.
Now, it's speculation that thereason why he had such a change
(57:24):
of heart was because his mosttrusted advisors were Jewish.
So not only did he allow themto finish building up Jerusalem
and its walls, he also orderedthem to beautify the temple in
Jerusalem, which was funded bysilver and gold from the
Babylonian treasure andvoluntary offerings of the Jews.
(57:45):
And even from there, he uppedhis ante even more by providing
an enormous amount of timber andother building materials to
help finish up Jerusalem.
And while this is going on, thePersians were continuing to
exploit the tensions betweenSparta and Athens.
Thermasicles was still in theservices of Persia but began to
(58:10):
have second thoughts.
He must have been thinking tohimself how would my name go
down in history?
Would he be looked at as one ofthe biggest betrayers of Athens
of all time?
So, instead of helpingArtaxerxes, he decided to commit
suicide, and with the death ofThermostocles, artaxerxes'
(58:32):
easiest path to defeating theGreeks may have come to an end
as well.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to the show, you
can visit us at patreoncom slashhistory of money banking trade
or you can visit our website atmoneybankingtradecom.
(58:54):
Also, you can help the show outa ton by leaving a five-star
review and telling a friend ortwo.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
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