Game of Thrones at the End of Ancient Greece II

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:47):
Greek culture and history is so influential on the Western world
and other places, not just the Western world.
We often don't realize somethingwe've known our entire lives
originated with them or was continued by them after
inheriting it from some older culture.
Greek influence is so ubiquitousthat sometimes we discover that

(01:09):
something we've known all our life had Greek origins.
We didn't know that part. We didn't know it was Greek to
begin with, but we've known it all our life.
Like inventions, philosophy, people, myths.
Some of those we do know, but welack context, right?
Most of us know a decent bit about their mythology.
All of you have heard of Zeus and Athena and Aphrodite, but

(01:29):
about how they were worshipped and how the Greeks viewed them,
it's different than how we view them, for sure.
It's very different. You've also heard surely about
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We learned that in like 7th
grade or something here in the US.
But you've mostly heard about their ideas.
You've mostly heard about their philosophy and their writings,

(01:51):
not them and not the context in which they lived and how their
ideas impacted people when they were new, when those ideas were
fresh. And they did.
They lived in the era this episode, Well, Socrates didn't.
He died 399, and we're about to hit 382 here, so we're past him.

(02:13):
But the other two are in this episode, 1 of the less pleasant
examples that we were reminded of from ancient Greece is the
constant back and forth between democracy and oligarchy, which,
hey, that's still playing out now, hasn't stopped.
Really, 2400 years later. Go back even farther.

(02:33):
Yeah, we're still playing that Game of Thrones in this era.
As we've said, it was not alwaysbut often very bloody.
And it's not all one sided. Even if you prefer democracy, as
I do, and most of you probably do overrule by rich folk, the
the downsides of both are on display here.
This isn't going to be an all democracy is just always a

(02:55):
shining example here. To be fair, modern democracy is
very different from the democracies of classical and
ancient Greece. They were a new idea.
Oligarchies weren't as new. So of the two, oligarchy is
older by quite a bit, but this is often why Democrats are
considered liberal and oligarchs.
Conservatives. Government aside, 1 is just

(03:17):
older than the other. With religion, it's much the
same. We don't worship The Olympian
gods now, but they're still around.
We still talk about them, they're still appearing here and
there. But really as a species we have
had endless conservative versus liberal debates in a variety of
theaters and topics and chronologies, fights, wars and
things like that rooted in religion.

(03:38):
And this is true even if we limit ourselves to one religion,
as in intra religious disputes meaning Christians fighting
other Christians or Islam peoplefighting each other as well.
Any of those examples we're not talking to necessarily about two
different religions clashing because the Greek world largely
worshipped the same gods, but not in the same way.

(03:59):
One of the most fascinating things about ancient Greece, and
it reminds me of the Westerosi period of 100 kingdoms when
there were only First Men, no and dolls yet is how there were
so many cities and towns in Greece where each one of them
had the same gods more or less, but they had different
relationships with them. Each city, state or city or even

(04:23):
town or village had a unique relationship with each one of
The Olympian gods, all sorts of variety.
Sometimes it's pretty similar, but sometimes it's not.
So that really reminds me of the100 Kingdoms period because you
just have a lot of dynasties andkingdoms coming and going, but
slowly moving towards larger States and all united under
pretty much the same religious umbrella, yet still able to

(04:47):
fight over being over that, eventhough it's the same religious
umbrella. Since George has such an amazing
job at capturing how real humanswould behave in a fantasy
setting, the carry over here is immense.
It it, it justifies and supportsa lot of our beliefs about how
thorough and realistic George is, even in an unrealistic
setting. Some of what ancient Greece

(05:08):
looks like to us is an unrealistic setting 'cause you
talk about they have oracles, they, they have things that
don't seem like they could have happened, but they believed it.
So they act on it as if it's true and that makes it real in a
sense. And the origin of these
concepts, like the we talk aboutthe origin of certain beliefs

(05:29):
and ways of thinking or ways of acting, cultural touchstones,
their origins, these kind of things, tropes, sometimes
they're tropes within stories. These have been appearing in
stories ever since we've had stories, which is farther back
than anyone knows. And that's what George is best
at. He is a great world builder, but

(05:49):
he's an even better storyteller.Of course those things go
together, but because he's so good at both it, it fits and we
see how well this translates. The tale of three city states
here continues as Sparta maintains their seizure of
Thebes while Athens looks to reclaim their maritime
dominance. Persia has war on many fronts

(06:10):
and ever worsening palace intrigue, making their
interference in Greece or lack thereof, uncertain.
While the old kings Agisilaus and Artaxerxes live on, a new
generation of leaders, warriors,orators and innovators are
emerging throughout Greece. The continuing stories of
Cabrius parasatus, Ethiquitis and Tirabasas are added to by

(06:33):
the stories of Pelopitus and Epaminondas and many others
featuring a Song of Ice and Firecounterparts and new characters.
On top of that, this is Part 2 of a multi part series made-up
of Fire and Blood and Aziz in Greece characters and parallels
to A Song of Ice and Fire set within a great stand alone and
largely true story that impactedhow we Live Today.

(06:57):
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
Podcast. Hello and welcome back to
another episode of History and Westeros, our sub series that
we're growing as time goes on more drawing into real world
parallels and origins and thingslike that that have comfortable

(07:19):
comparisons within A Song of Iceand Fire.
Simple and sometimes a little subtle, but never too obscure.
This is also an extension of our2025 Topics Moot, where this
topic was chosen. It's another one that's grown
beyond the telling, but more so than usual.
But that's real life history foryou.
There's a lot to it, huh? If you have questions for us,

(07:40):
hit us up at westeroshistory@gmail.com.
Or if you're watching this live here on YouTube, well, hit us
with questions here during the live chat.
Now, in 2025, I'm still catchingnew parallels entirely when
Within the framework of A Song of Ice and Fire.
That leads me to conclude that even though I've found a lot of

(08:02):
parallels here between Greeks and the Song of Ice and Fire,
Greeks and George's characters, there's surely some that I'm
missing. So I encourage you to speak up
if you catch any. Let us know whether you think
it's a small one, whether you think surely they've thought of
that one. You might be wrong, maybe we
haven't. So I'd love to hear from you all
on that and any other subject related to this.

(08:23):
It's always good to get feedbackfrom you all.
Let's start with the trivia question.
Who is said to be responsible for creating the Sacred Band of
Thieves? The Sacred Band is going to be
introduced to this episode. There.
I mentioned them briefly last time.
They are the 300 men that are 150 pairs of lovers in one unit
and that's quite interesting. We'll talk about it a lot this

(08:45):
episode and going forward. As I said, this absolutely
functions as a stand alone this episode, each of these episodes
does, but I think it's the most fun to start at the beginning.
And I don't know how many parts it's going to take.
At first I thought one, which was kind of silly.
Now I think I don't know. I think I don't know how many
it's going to take. We're going to go another 100
years roughly, not all in this episode.

(09:05):
So we'll take as long as it takes.
We'll space them out maybe once a month or so and it'll be fun
for most of y'all and we'll continue to follow this path and
maybe we'll look forward to other places and other times
that we can do this with as well.
And of course, we're mostly focused on the characters as
always. That's always going to be where
I start and finish and focus on.That's the most fun thing, the

(09:27):
people, right? That's what George has really
emphasized for us within A Song of Ice and Fire, and I'm
carrying that over here to real life history now.
The fog of history ensures that we'll never truly know what
happened, but that's something George captures as well.
There's lots of things within the story we're never going to
get answers for. Most of those are things within
the world building and not within the story, but within the
story too. We're never going to know what

(09:48):
certain characters we're thinking or we're really
happened with certain supernatural events and even
mundane ones. And that's reality.
So let's get a quick run throughof the sections, give you an
idea of what topics we're covering today, and then we'll
get right to it. We have the Spartan occupation
continues. We have fire and blood and
smoke. We have the sacred band of

(10:09):
thieves. We have the owl awakens.
Yes, that is referring to Athens, the Athenian owl being
their main symbol, the Boesian war and that unpunctuated
throughout. We're going year to year, so
whenever we change years, I'll point that out as well.
And of course, we'll continue tohave our Olympic victors and
other important cultural momentsoutside of war because I don't

(10:31):
want to only talk about the wars.
That is certainly the main driver of events here, but it's
not everything. Spartan occupation.
This is roughly the year 382. We're going to be dealing with a
few things that are elsewhere outside of Greece where the
chronology isn't always certain,but it's very close to this
time. I just allow us once said by
sowing frugality, we reap liberty, a golden harvest.

(10:55):
It's I get what he's saying, buthe didn't exactly live by that.
He certainly got into the whole money aspect of being a power
player that Sparta had tried to stay out of.
So Leontides, he was the man that on the inside the Theben
oligarch that led the coup, and he was kind of in charge from

(11:18):
that point on. Now recall that Andraclides and
Palopitus and the prominent Theben Democrats, the most
aggressive and outspoken, a lot of them fled rather than get
caught up in this coup, especially because they killed
the most powerful. See been Democrat as many as
shortly after the coup and he had been around for decades.

(11:40):
So so had Leontides. So that's part of what made the
whole thing such a big surprise was that you still had the same
leaders, but something very different happened, which was of
course, this coup. The Leontides was not finished.
He even though the city was wellin the hands of the oligarchs,
he knew those Democrats that gotaway could be a problem.

(12:01):
So he sent out assassins. Now the assassins were not
terribly successful, but they did kill one man.
Amongst the Democrats. It happened to be the leader.
They only got 1 kill, but it wasthe actual leader, Andrew Clyde.
So he went down, whereas all theother targeted leaders or

(12:22):
followers managed to either defeat the assassins or get
away. That includes Palapas.
He I can picture him fighting off an assassin.
Very aggressive, proud, zealous man.
Not shy about fighting. I can almost picture him
defeating the assassin that camefor him or multiples.
Especially if he was in a group and this just spurred on their

(12:46):
their need to do something aboutthis.
They can. Not only has their city been
taken, but they're getting attacked.
So this gives them less to lose.If they're if they're still a
target of murder, then there's less risk in them putting
themselves at risk to try and win their city back.
I mean, they're already at risk of getting killed just sitting
there, so they may as well try to accomplish something right

(13:08):
now. Lee and Tides had also worked
the Spartan angle here since they were his friends.
He had been pro Spartan for a long time.
He wanted some official recognition here.
Yes, Sparta had to say, Oh yeah,we broke the King's peace.
We're not supposed to do that. But we already saw how
hypocritical they were about that.
They didn't really punish Foibidas, it just allows paid

(13:30):
the fine he was given. So there was really no charge at
all. So the hypocrisy was on on
display here. So they had no trouble saying,
yes, Leontides, we support you, we're on your side, We sign off
on your deeds and giving that which gives them greater
political validity. It also puts some force of arms

(13:50):
behind it like, well, if you don't agree with me, take it up
with Sparta, right? And no one wants to do that,
especially not at this era whereSparta hadn't been beaten on
land in centuries and not in anynot in any battle of
significance. So that's how he was able to
execute as many as was was partly because of this backing
from Sparta. And he knew he'd get this

(14:11):
backing probably because it was probably prearranged with the
disallows as we all said. So as I said that this backfired
a bit because they only killed Andrew Cleides.
And not only did that spur the Theban exiles into into taking
action because they were afraid of getting murdered, so they had
to go take out the guy that was murdering them, but it put
Pelopitus in charge instead of the cautious elder Andrew

(14:35):
Cleides, who had a more patient,you know, slow moving.
Let's see how it works out. Let's try to talk to people.
Let's see what happens. Let it play out.
Polopitus was like, no, let's go.
I am a man of action, not a man of talk.
I want to take our city back. Now.
That said, he had to spend some time getting people to agree

(14:56):
with him that while this was taking place, Sparta was
increasing their hold on the region.
They didn't just stop at holdingThebes, they started detaching
smaller cities that were allied to Thebes and putting their own
garrisons in there, including the closest cities, the places

(15:17):
like Platia and Thespia. Those are really close to
Thebes, like 10-15 miles away. Now these are puppet regimes, of
course. They just install whoever the
local rich folk oligarchs are, the ones who have the ambition
to lead. They put them in charge with
Spartan garrisons to back them up.
So this is another ascent of power.
So they're not only do they expand on the capture of

(15:37):
thieves, they're trying to capture and control thieves as
former allies, which is one way of really locking things down.
And this is another thing that was predicted when Sparta was
put in charge of the Persian King's peace that we discussed
last time. It was supposed to keep Greece
in line and keep them from having too much civil war.
But really what it did was give Sparta a license to slowly

(16:01):
dominate the entire peninsula ofGreece, the entire Peloponnese,
and the northern part where Thebes and Athens were now
different. Things were playing out in
Thebes. We had the hostile, aggressive,
passionate party now led by Palopitus.
But his contemporary Epaminondasfavored patient and less violent

(16:23):
resistance. He was definitely a long game
kind of guy. He took a bit of a risk by
staying behind. He didn't flee with the rest of
the Exiles, but his philosophy made him poor on by choice.
He was he lived a life of poverty because he thought it
was morally correct. That also had the effect of
making him seem like less a threat.

(16:44):
They're like, well, what is whatthreat is this guy?
He's just a a poor guy that like, what's he going to do?
He's not going to bring a bunch of warriors in.
How could he do that? He's got no money.
In this era, we've seen how muchmoney is driving things,
especially because of Persia. This guy with no money, he
didn't seem like a threat. Mistake.

(17:04):
That was a mistake, and Pam Anandis would very soon become
known in Sparta as one of their biggest enemies.
But they certainly didn't catch it.
At this point. Sparta's not necessarily good at
then. I don't have much imagination.
A very conservative state in that sense.
They try to keep things the way they are.
They prefer the old way. The Pam Anandis was very

(17:26):
innovative and creative and thinking of new ways to do
things, things that Sparta had never considered.
So a very interesting thing about Epaminondas, he and his
Palopitus both came from pretty good families, Palopitus even
more so. But Epaminondas, as I said, he
kind of shunned a lot of the wealth and, you know, privilege

(17:48):
that came with that station. He thought it was more noble and
ethical to adopt AA poor attitude, you know, living like
a poor person, which is only a Sparta.
You can see how that kind of agrees with some things they
were trying to do in Sparta, butit it was more lip service than
reality in this era. Sparta was falling off of a lot
of those values. But you can see how this is a
similar thing like your your life is more noble and honorable

(18:11):
when you aren't distracted by money.
Money is such as money makes youa slave of your money.
That was a a common belief in ancient Greece.
We can see that now too. That hasn't changed, has it?
Some people absolutely are slaves to their own money.
You may be rich and I think think it, you know, takes you
away from some of the the burdens of the world, but it can
also trap you if you aren't careful.
So Epam Anandis and his brother were Pythagoreans.

(18:35):
Now his mother and father or their mother and father were
alive at this time, too. This is pretty interesting.
Pythagoreans. What is that?
You all have probably heard of aPythagorean theorem.
Yeah. Pythagoras was super
interesting. He was.
He was almost a cult leader at this time, but he was very
obsessed with the idea that the whole universe functioned via
math. He's kind of right.

(18:57):
I mean, to a certain extent he is.
There's certainly a lot of math you can deduce from the
universe. A lot of math underpins a lot of
what's going on out there. That doesn't mean it's the point
or the purpose or the full explanation.
But he was way ahead of his timein thinking that.
However he approached it, you know, more religiously and
culty, as I said. Now, he had died well before any

(19:17):
of this, maybe a hundred, 150 years.
The Pythagoreans were not very liked.
A lot of other people saw them as some weird cult.
Hey, and who are they to speak? They're sacrificing animals to
deities all the time. But yet these guys are weird
'cause they like numbers. Yeah.
Anyway, he was also vegetarian, which is odd for that era, but

(19:38):
cool, you know, interesting. A very high minded individual,
despite being kind of weird and and a little, little
unscrupulous at times. Like he at one point went, he
hid himself in a basement for a month and then came out all like
white face 'cause he was pale from not having been in the sun
and he was a little emaciated from lack of eating.
He claimed he had been to the underworld, which come on man,

(19:59):
you weren't to the you. You didn't go to the underworld,
you were in your basement. Anyway, something that happened
multiple times to the Pythagoreans was firebomb
attacks. People would find their
headquarters, their meeting place, and try to burn them all
alive while they were in there. This had been multiple times.
This may have even been how Pythagoras died.

(20:21):
Now there was a Pythagorean student called Lysus.
Lysus fled to Thebes after one of these.
Well, it was actually called Pythagorean Holocaust.
Holocaust with a lowercase H 'cause this is the the
dictionary definition of Greek Holocaust is just people dying
by fire. And so he fled.
He was one of the few people that survived.

(20:42):
He fled to Thebes and Epaminondas family took him in.
He lived with them. And so Epaminonis and his
brother Capisidoris were students of Lysis or students of
Pythagoreas through Lysis. And when Lysis died, they buried
him themselves. They dug his grave, Epaminonis
and his brother. So they're very impacted by his

(21:02):
philosophy, very high minded, very, you know, thoughtful, but
also men of Thebes, people that are in the midst of a
revolution. And so yes, all these high
minded ideals exist, but there'sno place in this world for
people who are against violence entirely.
That just isn't going to fly in this era.
So, and Epomenons was not ignorant of that.

(21:25):
As part of his long game, he would train the young man of
Thebes. Very normal for Greeks of all
statuses, but on cities to do exercise the gymnasium.
That's a Greek word common. It was very common for people to
exercise in groups, especially young men.

(21:46):
It was considered important. I mean it is today too.
It is important, right? Exercise is is very useful and
and good for you, right. So what happened was he would
encourage the Theban youths to challenge the Spartan Garrison
men to wrestling matches. Nothing strange about this is
normal. Like wrestling is a sport.
It would be like challenging them to a game of pick up

(22:07):
basketball. Like, sure, let's let's play a
game of basketball. And whenever the Thebans would
win, they'd be like they'd be a little proud.
And Epaminos would approach themand say something like, you're
proud of beating the Spartans, huh?
That's good. Yeah, you should be.
Then why are we still living under their occupation?
You're able to beat them, but we're still dominated by them.

(22:28):
There's they own our city, huh? You know?
So he started to get that into their minds.
It's to spread that plant that seed that like, hey, if we're
capable of beating them, doesn'tthat make it all the more
shameful that we're conquered bythem?
We can we we're proving that we can beat them, right, Even
though it's just wrestling, you know, it's not combat.

(22:50):
It's not, you know, Shields and Spears and swords, but still, it
makes them think they can win inwar if they can win in practice
war, right? It still gives them some
confidence. And the whole shame angle worked
a little bit. A lot of them are like, you
know, he's kind of got a point there.
So that but like I said, that's a long game.
You can't just drop that on somebody and expect them to
immediately turn and go, let's get the Spartans, let's fight

(23:12):
them now. It's something that you have to
kind of ponder and let other people talk about.
Let all the young men of Thebes get the idea and slowly build
that fire within them and slowlybuild that confidence too.
But one thing he also did differently was he didn't just
do this with the middle class and wealthier youth.
He taught the the poor of Thebesas well, who are normally not

(23:36):
really included in these things.Like they're often not included
in things in modern times that just like in any society, the
poorest of the poor often just get ignored or forgotten or
trampled on or one, one or more versions of that.
The Pam Anandis was not about that.
He's like, no, we're all thebanshere.
If we're going to throw off the yoke of Sparta, we're going to
need all the help we can get. And he was very respected, not

(23:59):
just because of his demeanor andbecause of his discipline and
personal self-control. He was also descended from the
Spartioy. Nothing to do with Sparta.
A similar word Spartioy translates as something familiar
here. Dragon men.
Dragon men, yes, they were this legendary mythical foundation of
Thebes. There was a guy Cadmus.

(24:21):
That's why the their main Fort, it's called the Cadmia.
Cadmus fought this dragon back in the day that was guarding the
important body of water. Like Copeus, I think it is near
Thebes and when when he killed that dragon, he took some of the
teeth and sewed them into the ground and they grew up.
They popped out of the ground asthese so-called Spartioi, the

(24:44):
fighting men they were, they came out fighting immediately
dragon men because they came from dragon teeth.
So this was a an important like bloodline to be a part of a lot
of Thebes. Theben men were part of that.
But Epaminon just could very clearly trace his descent to
that, at least in terms of how they believe these things.
So this is a whole generation ofTheben men under an occupation

(25:04):
that at this point, let's say, is going to take a few years.
And, you know, you keep kept. He very gradually taught them
that, hey, you can beat Sparta. Now, let's not forget how
pervasive the view of Spartan dominance was throughout Greece.
It just allows us and other Spartan kings had learned to use
fear of Sparta as a weapon as much as their actual infantry

(25:25):
and armies were a weapon. So a charismatic veteran hip
arc. Hip arc means cavalry commander.
Lots of arcs, you know, like you've seen Trier arc and and
other arcs within George's writings.
Those are all Greek titles to this guy, Gorgadas, he was
bullied by the Spartans. They were like, hey, we hear

(25:46):
that you spark. Are you Thebans?
When one of you was sworn in as a cavalry commander, you're
brought to the secret tomb of Dercy.
Anyone who's going to be sworn in as a cavalry leader goes to
this secret tomb. They don't tell anybody else
where it is. And you do like a little ritual.
Now he's like, no, I'm not telling you where to get this.

(26:07):
Now, remember what I said last time.
The Spartans were big on tombs. They wanted to harness the power
of heroic and legendary and mythical tombs.
This is something they tried to do all throughout Greece was
like, take the sacred artifacts and bring them back to Sparta.
It would make their city state more powerful.
That's what they believed. That's what they were doing
here. They're like, hey, Gorgodas,
give us the access to that tomb or else.

(26:29):
Gorgonas is a bit of a Blackfishcharacter, tough guy, cavalry
commander had been around a while.
I, I don't know how we don't actually know how old he was,
but I get the vibe that he's an older guy that's part of this
youth movement, like an older man that's caught that's helping
the youth as part of a, a change, you know, an era of
change here. So because of his courage,

(26:52):
because he just flatly refused and showed No Fear in this, they
backed down the Spartan. The Spartans were like, all
right, well, we respect your courage here.
Plus they respect the religious vow he must have taken.
Remember the Spartans, very pious.
Sometimes you could use this against them.
He's like, look, I took a vow tothe gods not to reveal.
It's not me. I'm not saying it's not my

(27:13):
personal wish. I took a vow to the gods not to
reveal this, and I cannot break that vow.
You, you understand, Spartans, you're pious.
Something like that happened. They're like, actually, that's a
good point. All right, fine.
Another man, Philidas, he playedthe long game rather than being
exiled, rather than sticking around like Epaminondas and sort

(27:34):
of playing a long game in terms of resistance by teaching people
how to resist and encouraging them to.
He was a bit of a mole. He pretended to be an oligarch
and he was. He's talented.
He worked his way up to be chiefof staff to the Polymarks, the
three polymarks of of Thebes. He was like their assistant,

(27:57):
their adjutant. And he was a mole though, so a
mole to the polamarks. That makes him a mole, Mark.
That's right. Now back in Sparta, Adisilaus
had a growth on his good leg andbecame I'll.
So he was out of action for a little while and it looks like
it might take his life. Let's see how we'll see what
happens there. Meanwhile in Persia, let's

(28:21):
remember our character Cabrias Cabrias the cockshore Cabrias
the confident who I've I've had some had some time to think
about him a little more and he'sJaime Lannister.
Y'all? He's a fancy Jaime Lannister,
not the Jaime Lannister isn't fancy, but he's like if Jaime
Lannister were even more of a spender and a guy who liked to
show his wealth, which you know,as a Lannister, that's just like

(28:42):
you're going to do that anyway, even just by living your life.
So still a young guy, super confident, he hires himself out
as a mercenary to Egypt to command armies for the arguably
rebel pharaoh Hakour. It's like is he a rebel or not?
And the reason it's it's unclearis because Egypt broke away from

(29:02):
the Persian Empire quite a whileago, like 20 years prior.
Are they still rebels? At this point it kind of feels
like they've re established their independence.
But Persia isn't done. They want to reconquer Egypt.
So since before Artaxerxes took the throne, Egypt has been in
rebellion. You could, like I said, you
could arguably say they've just been independent, but Persia

(29:25):
hadn't given up on it. They just were too distracted by
other things. Now it's very hard to invade
Egypt. Just the natural defenses there,
the rivers, the Nile, all the different, all that stuff.
It's really, really difficult. So Cabrios actually seems to
have been hired by the general Nocturnebeth rather than
directly by Pharaoh Hakour. And this tests the parameters of

(29:48):
the King's peace, doesn't it? This is a really like kind of
skirting the line here. Maybe a letter of the law type
of squeezing through here because Athens wasn't fighting
against Persia, but their general was.
Their general signed on with Egypt, but he signed on as a
private citizen. It wasn't an official capacity.

(30:09):
He's not there as a representative of Athens.
So it's like, what? Well, is that violating the
King's peace or not? So they're like, I don't really
know now. Remember, Cabrios was already
helping King Avagoris of Cyprus.Cyprus is that island that sits
off the coast there due east of Crete, and it's a it's off and

(30:30):
on been its own Kingdom. It was trying to be at this
point as Persia or as Egypt was trying to keep its independence.
Cyprus was as well and they wereworking together for a bit.
Hakor was sending money to Ivagoris.
Ivagoris was fighting the Persians and Cabrias had already
helped King of Vegoris, he had already helped ambush a Spartan
Garrison. He tricked them into emerging
and and killed them. So Cabrias was showing a lot of

(30:52):
that skill, a lot of that Jamie Landis, maybe a little bit of
Robb Stark thrown in there too. Young man who was very good at
at setting up ambushes and and leading men in in a tactical
fashion. But also, as I said with Jamie,
a kind of guy that people like to follow, a charismatic person
whose confidence was infectious.So Artaxerxes finally did get
back around to preparing to reinvade Egypt after all these

(31:17):
other things were happening. He gave the job to our friend
Farnabazus, the paymaster, the one who would bribe the hell out
of Greece, the guy who got a just allow us to come back by
bribing thieves to attack him. And he's like, he was trying to
invade Persia, but Farnabazus bribed Greece enough to force it
just allow us to return. So he didn't do it himself.

(31:38):
Ardizerxes appointed Farnabazzis, like I said, and
Farnabazzis just really took a long time.
We're not going to come back to this for a little while.
Farnabazzis was as effective as he had been before.
For some reason he was moving really slowly here.
So we'll have to come back to this.
But sticking with Persia, Ardizerxes actually did take the
field against with a huge army against an Iranian tribe called

(32:01):
the Kadusii. Let's not forget Persia's center
of powers in modern day Iran. He took Tirabazzis with him, but
Tirabazzis was an important commander last time around too.
Tirabazzis may be the only reason Artazzerxes got out of
any of this alive. So Artazzerxes, maybe not
listening to his more experienced commanders, just
took his massive army into a very sparse territory where

(32:23):
there isn't a lot of food, supplies run low and the army
starts to face starvation. An important man the the satrap
governor of Cappadocia was killed, but his son Datames, who
was of the royal bodyguard, the Kingsguard of Persia,
distinguished himself. So you got 1 member of the

(32:45):
family dying. But this, this up and Comer
really stands out. One of the most outstanding
minimal campaign. But the more outstanding was
Tirabazzis. As I said, he took a page from
the same well a Storm of Swords.He took a took a page from Sam
Tarley's book What Sam did to get John elected Lord Commander.
He told Dennis Mallister, they're going to pick Cotter

(33:07):
Pike. You know, if, if, if you don't
pick, if we don't pick now, Stannis is going to make Cotter
Pike our commander. Anyone told Cotter Pike, hey, if
we don't vote today and choose acommander, Stannis is going to
name Dennis Mallister. So he told the meats the
opposite thing, got them to move.
This exact same thing happened here.
Tierra Basses went to one Kadusian faction, his son went

(33:31):
to the other and they both said yo the other faction is agreeing
to peace with our king. You guys are going to be left
out. They're going to.
We're going to help them kill you unless you come to terms.
Also you better do that. It worked.
Both factions of the Kaduciai hated each other enough that
they believed this story and re established peace with our

(33:56):
deserxes. So after the campaign to Tommies
who did such a great job. Datamies.
Datamies. I don't know how to say it.
Datamies sounds cooler. That name means to whom force is
given. What a cool name.
He was promoted to his father's position.
It's sort of hereditary but sortof isn't.
It's kind of confusing the the Persian king has power to undo

(34:17):
that. But normally these governorships
just pass to the to a family member.
Many people call datames the greatest non Greek warrior slash
general not named Hannibal or Hamelkar.
And Hannibal and Hamelkar haven't been born yet.
They are enemies of Rome. They're not going to have

(34:38):
anything to do with our story. Now, let's not forget about our
Cersei Parisatus. She had likely returned to the
Royal Court at this point. Remember, she had been banished
to Babylon because of the whole business with murdering her own
son's wife. You know, Stuttera, she poisoned
her and all that, you know. Now, she hadn't lost her
substantial incomes through all that, so she still had her spy

(35:01):
network, most likely. And eventually she talked her
way into getting back to court because she just had so much
control over her son Artaxerxes.It's almost like a Visenya Megor
kind of situation. So there's a little bit of
Cersei and Parasitis, but the situation's a little more like
Magor Vicenya. So Tirabazzis, after saving the

(35:23):
army with his ploy against the Caduceans, was rewarded
handsomely, which you would expect.
The Persians are super rich. He performed great service.
Artaxerxes was personally there to witness it.
So it's not even word of mouth. He saw it happen.
He was like, yeah, good job Tierra Bassis.
So he offers Tierra Bassis, his daughter, a Tosa in marriage.

(35:46):
This is one of his important daughters, quote UN quote.
Now what I mean by that, this ishis daughter, one of his
daughters by his actual wife to Tara, the one that Parasitis had
murdered. Now, I have to point out this
distinction because Artaxerxes had like 100 daughters.
He had concubines. So he has having daughters all
over the place and sons, but they're not the they're not born

(36:10):
of marriage, which even to them makes a difference.
Not as much a difference as it makes in Westeros, but it makes
a difference. Now, Parasatus had noticed that
Artaxerxes was attracted to a Tosa.
Let me get let's make sure you understand.
Grandma noticed that her son wasinto her granddaughter, his own

(36:31):
daughter. Yeah, right.
Well, this is an incestuous family.
However, father daughter incest was not a thing in Persia, even
though brother, sister and some of those like it was like the
Targaryens, they they had the same limit there.
They're like, OK, we'll do brother sister, we'll do maybe
even do uncle niece. But we're not going to go any
farther than that. Until now, 'cause Parasitis was

(36:54):
like, what's a way to make my son even more powerful or to
seem even more powerful? Breaking rules that no one's
allowed to break. That's one.
And here's one of them. So he offers a tosa to Tirabasas
in marriage and then reneges. He's like, actually, never mind,
I'm going to marry her myself. And this was Parasitis's idea

(37:15):
that he planted in her, that sheplanted in her son's head.
And he did it. He married his own daughter on
the advice of his own mother. Yeah, that happened.
Yikes. As part back to Greece, as part
of Sparta's campaign to strip Thebes thieves of its power,
they rebuilt the city of Platea,which was very close to Thebes

(37:40):
and had been a Theban ally, but in its rebuilt state was very
much allied to Sparta. In fact, it was Sparta who had
destroyed it in the first place 46 years prior.
Let's move to the year 380 in the 100th Olympiad.
The naked Sprint was won by DinaSidoris of Toronto.

(38:02):
Toronto is southern Italy cause of course southern Italy at this
point was still very Greek. Northern Italy was Italian is
where the Romans were and all those but Greeks were the
dominant power, dominant culturein southern Italy at this time.
The boys naked Sprint was won byDina Lokos of Illis and the long
distance naked race was won by Satades of Crete again.

(38:23):
He had won it the last time in the 100 and or in the 99th
Olympiad. You probably don't remember the
name so I have to remind you. But yeah, this guy won again.
The boys boxing was won by Hippos of Illis.
The pancreation by Xenophon of Colicchia.
Not to be confused by with the Xenophon, the author warrior who
pops up often in our story because he is one of the main

(38:43):
sources on all this and a contemporary he was in.
He was an Athenian who actually fought under Adisalaus and was
Adisalaus's friend. He got banned from Athens
because he was too friendly to Sparta.
The boys pancreation was won by Aurelius Eureka Pedes of Athens.
Now the fact that there's even aboys pancreation is kind of

(39:04):
wild. They also had boys boxing.
But yeah, there's a little a little bit more of a violent
society, wasn't it? But pancreation, you may recall,
is basically mixed martial arts.It's it's the UFC in a very
infant form. You know, the only thing that
you couldn't do besides biting was eye gouging or aiming for

(39:26):
the groin. You couldn't like pummel the
groin. You could accidentally hit it.
People got away with that in Sparta, though.
They're like, Nah, there's no rules, anything you can do.
So Sparta was not allowed to compete in the pen creation for
the most part because they just,I just wouldn't obey the rules.
They're like, you can't bite or eye gouge.
And they're like, try to stop me, OK, we will stop you.

(39:47):
Sparta. You're not allowed to have
competitors enter this event. And that's apparently what
happened. So some of this I may have
explained last time, but just incase it wasn't clear, in boxing
and pancration, they didn't haverounds like we have rounds now.
Like you could fight for a minute or two minutes or three
minutes to take a break, go backat it.
They didn't do that. They fought outdoors in the
summer where it was really hot, really hot.

(40:11):
And they were at least naked, sothey didn't have clothing
slowing them down. But boy, that's just, it's
brutal, you know, No, no breaks,no rules except for these very
few rules that were kind of loosely followed.
And as I said, no women, no women spectators, in fact,
illegal spectators. And it wasn't just women who

(40:31):
were banned. It was non Greeks for the most
part. The rules changed.
We're talking about something that existed for hundreds of
years, but it was like a punishment, a punishment of
death for that kind of business,right?
So that's that. Back to Egypt, Pharaoh Hakour
had to stop helping king of, of Agoris against Cyprus cause
things were just going too badly.
He was too busy dealing with threats within his own borders

(40:55):
while also worried about Persia.Now in his 13th year, which
we're in here, Hakour died. He was replaced by his son
Nefarites the Second, despite the threat from Persia, or
perhaps because of it, he only lasted four months before being
overthrown and killed by GeneralNoktonebev, the one who probably

(41:16):
hired Cabrias to help them all out, but actually hired Cabrias
to help him become king rather Pharaoh.
And that's what happened. Noktonebev took the name
Nektonevo the 1st and Isis as his patron deity started to do a
little bit of religious reforming.
Kind of like how we just said every Greek city state has its

(41:36):
own different relationship with the gods.
Same thing is true in Egypt. They have a bunch of different
they have a big wide pantheon and they view different gods
differently depending on who you're talking to, what city it
is, what era it is. So the end of Pharaoh Hakor and
Nefertes the second. That was the 29th royal dynasty
of Egypt. It only lasted 18 years, so it

(41:57):
wasn't really a big deal, but still 29.
And this is the beginning of the30th Noctanebo, Nectanebo, the
first, that is, he is the first of the 30th dynasty of Egypt.
Wild. So yeah, Cabrias probably helped
Nectanebo's coup. And this is a good example of
how of the proxy war phenomenon where two more powerful nations

(42:20):
go to war in within the borders of 1/3 nation where they're both
sending armies and soldier or armies and money to 1/3 nation,
where this is playing out now. Farah buys us the paymaster, the
guy who's taking his time building this army to invade
Egypt. He's, you know, slow, as I said,

(42:41):
but he's still competent, especially in the matters of
money and intrigue and politics.He went to Athens and was like,
what the hell, y'all? Cabrius is fighting for Egypt.
You're supposed to be on our side.
The King's peace is in effect. Athens is signed on to that.
So what the hell are you doing with your general fighting for
these rebels? They're like, sorry, they didn't

(43:04):
want to risk an incident. They didn't want Persia mad at
them. So they're like, hey, Cabrius,
will you? Will you come home?
Will you come back? This is a problem.
He's like, yeah, all right, fine, fine.
I got some money out of it. I gained a little glory.
It's fine. I'll come home.
I don't care. You know, it's not a big deal.
His confidence is unaffected. Nothing could affect this guy's
confidence. How could this be a failure?

(43:26):
He got some money. He got some reputation.
Athens was embarrassed. He wasn't.
But the Athens was like, yeah, but maybe that's not enough.
We we recalled Cabrios. We gave him a local command.
He's about to pop up again. So to help things out, to
continue to make sure there's relations with Persian and sour,
they sent ethiquities, the innovator, the guy that changed

(43:49):
the shoes and the Spears and theShields to to a man to a point
that it made an enormous difference.
His changes, his innovations were used by Rome.
Rome's two most important thingswere marching long distances,
which you can't do without good footwear.
Y'all simple as that, right? And the fortified camp armies in

(44:12):
this area just pitched camp where they would.
And you know, whatever happens, happens.
By the by the Roman era, the Romans were big on every night
we dig a Moat, we build a fortress, we build a fortress
out of wood every night we may come back to that the next
night, but if we move 10 miles forward, we build a new
fortress. Rome was really hardcore about

(44:33):
that and they got this idea probably from Aficrites.
No other Greek general, no Persian general did this.
He's like every time we go to bed at night, we have a heavily
defended camp. No one's attacking us in the
night and getting any progress out of that.
So that it's kind of weird to think about that.
Like they didn't do that back then.
It's like, well, one guy figuredout that they should, so they

(44:56):
took Cabrias away from Egypt andgave Aficrites to Persia.
And they also put so Farna Baziswas like, OK, cool, Aficertis,
I'm going to let you be in charge of all the Greek soldiers
because he had a lot of soldiersfrom a lot of armies because
Persia is a big empire, right? So Aficertis was in charge of
the Greeks there. Meanwhile, in the north, Sparta

(45:18):
is continuing to help their allyon Mentos the Third, the king of
Macedon. Now he is at war with the
Chalkidian League. Of course, as these stories go
on, there's just so many leagues.
There's always bunch of Greek city states forming this or that
league. It just means alliance, right?
It's just a group. And sometimes these leagues end
and then reform. Don't need to worry about it too

(45:40):
much. Chaucis is like a little
peninsula. The northern part of Greece kind
of juts out there from from northern Greece, northern
Macedon there. But Sparta and Macedonia,
they're not just allies of circumstance here.
Sure, Sparta tends to support the kings because they have
kings they support, you know, rule by the few.
So they have a natural ideology pairing here.

(46:02):
But it goes a lot deeper than that.
Sparta and Macedonia had an ancient connection, or rather
their royal families did. Sparta has 2 kings right?
Sparta has 2 kings, 1 from 1 royal line, one from the other.
There's only two royal lines. That didn't really change the
Yuripanted, which was just a Laos at this point and the
Agiad, which is just Eppolis is the current king for Sparta four

(46:26):
and all of both of those dynasties are from the
Heracleidae, which remember, that's a big deal that Lysander
brought up just means you're a descendant of Heracles.
Your family can family line can be traced to that claiming
descent from Heracles had value all over Greece, but it
especially had value in a placeslike Thebes where Heracles was

(46:47):
supposedly born. And it had a lot of value in
Macedonia because Amentos himself was part of a dynasty
that descended from the Heracleids.
So he was a Heraclean as well. So that's an ancient connection
between Sparta and Macedonia. They both had royal families
that descend from Heracles. Now Thebes, like I said, they

(47:09):
had Heracleidi too and others said, but they didn't have kings
that descend from that because they didn't have kings at all.
Now Amentos the third had a son around this time who he named
Phillip. This is his third born son.
So you might be wondering why wecare about this third born son.
Well, this Phillip is going to be important.
There's lots of Phillips. Luckily, unlike our medieval

(47:31):
chronology episodes, we don't have too much of the problem of
the same guys with the same names.
A lot of that certainly happens here, but not a lot.
So, but there are a good number of Phillips.
So why are we following this particular Phillip?
Well, you'll see. He'll keep popping up.
His birth. His birth is important because
of how big he's going to be later.
But for now, here's another fun connection.

(47:54):
King of Mintas of Macedon, Philip's father.
He had a doctor named Nicomachus.
It's his personal doctor. It's his friend.
He was from a town in the Chalkidian League there.
And Nikomakis was supposedly descended from another guy named
Nikomakis, who was the son of Machaeon, who was the son of

(48:14):
Asclepius, the God of medicine. Yeah.
That's wild, right. So this doctor, that's a pretty
good thing to have on your resume as a doctor's like, yo, I
descend from the God of medicine.
There's my, you know, credentials as a doctor.
You know, what kind of what kindof university degree can match
up with that? You know, right.
So it's a pretty, pretty powerful thing right Now,

(48:36):
Asclepius was said to be so powerful that he could bring the
dead back to life. He couldn't bring himself back
to life, though, which is a problem because Zeus killed him
because Zeus was worried about that power of his.
Zeus was worried about the same thing that we're worried about
in the Song of Ice and Fire, TheLong Summer that never ends.
The thing that Benero preaches that you know, you follow Reloor

(48:59):
and you know there will be a summer that doesn't end and no
one will die. We're all, we'll all live
forever. And it's like, that doesn't
sound good. Actually, Zeus didn't think so
either. He's like, he was worried that
his Clepius would just do that to everyone.
He would give all humanity undying.
He'd make everyone undying amongst humanities.
He's like, I can't have that happen, so I'm gonna kill him
now. This story continues because

(49:20):
Nico Marcus and his wife Faestushad a son recently.
He was about four. His name was Aristotle.
You might know the name. Yeah.
One of the most famous people from all the ancient world.
Probably the single most influential person from the
ancient world, especially if youlimit it to non war things in

(49:45):
terms of philosophy, learning, just influence in a lot of
areas. He was a polymath.
He was just an expert in so manydifferent things.
Yeah, digging into Aristotle is like, wow, this guy, it's really
hard to find someone from the ancient world that has a bigger
influence on today. And boy, his influence is
massive. So as well, we talked about how

(50:08):
the Spartans were still campaigning north of Thebes
during this, because remember, the whole reason they went there
in the 1st place was to punish the city of Olympus, which had
broken the King's peace. Right.
And they broke the King's peace in a way that got involved here
with Amintas and Sparta, right? Because Sparta didn't want them

(50:30):
to have a league. It violated the King's peace.
Amintas didn't want them to havea league because they're on his
border. He didn't want his neighboring
Greek city states to be powerful.
He would much rather have them be fractured and separate.
That's much better for him. Now.
Just allow us to still back in Sparta himself because he's
I'll, you know, he had that leg thing or that problem with his

(50:51):
illness, whatever it was. So it Jessopolis is the one out
there. Jessopolis isn't a young man,
but he hasn't been king for verylong.
So he's doing sieges and battlesand he gets a fever.
And during one of the sieges doesn't seem like it's a big
deal. But in the ancient world, a lot
of fevers can turn into a big deal.
And this one did. He died.
So it just allows outlast another king from the other

(51:15):
Spartan dynasty still going. And now we have Cliambrotus.
That's the new king. That's Agispolis.
Brother Agispolis never had any children.
So Cliambrotus ascends and it just allows immediately start
sinking his hooks into him. Like, OK, he he had successfully
got Agispolis to focus more on relationships and partying in

(51:36):
order to free himself up to havemore power for himself.
Right. And it was classic move gets get
your get another powerful persondistracted by desires of the
flesh, pleasures of the flesh and, you know, leave the power
to me. It kind of backfired here,
though, didn't And you got a guythat maybe wasn't as a robust as
he should have been or as attentive to military matters.

(51:58):
And yeah, he might have finishedthe campaign sooner and gotten
home before that fever. But Nope, Nope, Nope.
Client Brodis is a he's a bit ofa Spartan, Edmure Tully kind of
passive, you know, for for a country that's very aggressive,
especially now they're bullying the entire country of Greece,
you know, the entire region. And they aren't shy about it.

(52:20):
They're not shy about being hypocrites either.
As we've seen. This guy is is a little bit,
he's not a pushover, but he's not super violent either.
He's definitely not aggressive at the same time.
So he's a bit of a different animal here.
That's it for the year 3738. Let's go to 379 in Rome, 6

(52:43):
military tribunes with consular powers were elected.
Four of them were named Lucius Amentos the third and Sparta
achieved victory. They defeated Olympus finally
and Mentos went back to his capital or get gets back his
capital because if you recall, what happened was Amintas loaned

(53:04):
to some of his territory to the Chalkadian League.
He's like, you know, hold on to this for me because I can't
hunt. Hang on to it.
I need to go fight these other people.
We're we're friends. You can hold on to this for me
and then you give it back to me later and I'll give you rewards
and we'll have a deal. It's not what happened to the
Chalkadian League is like, you know, actually we're going to
keep this. So it's part of where the part
of where the problems came in the 1st place.

(53:26):
Now, the Chakadean League was ended because of this, right?
And as I said, this caused problems later because without
this northern alliance, well, what have I said since the
beginning of the series that there's a threat to the north,
The Greeks, Greece is beating each other up, while it should
be more concerned with this threat to the north.
I haven't exactly outlined what this threat is.

(53:46):
I haven't told you exactly what that means.
We'll get to it. It's not quite ready yet either.
If you're thinking maybe Macedonia is a part of it,
you're on the right track. So this is definitely one of the
things, one of the conditions that's created to help Greece
lose their independence, something that none of them saw
coming. And in fact, the Chalkadian

(54:07):
League is going to reform later,but weaker without any
Macedonian parts. So it's it's not going to be
much of A obstacle to the powersfrom the north.
Now he renegotiated a timber deal he had with Athens.
He had lost it while he had losthis part of his Kingdom.
But this is such a strange thinghe he didn't renegotiate the

(54:30):
deal directly with like Athens, like through their public
infrastructure, which is how most things are done there.
He went straight to Timotheus, who was the son of Conan, who
was one of the Athenian Admiralsthat was fighting with the
Persians and then against them. And then they threw him in jail
and then he got out and then he died.

(54:50):
So this is his son picking up right where he left off.
He's an Athenian Admiral and he's quite a deal maker.
You know, I don't have a great comp for him in A Song of Ice
and Fire. I feel like there is one, but I
just couldn't come up with it. So y'all, this is a good
opportunity. Somebody who's a good deal
maker. He's a general, but he's more of
a statesman than a warrior, but he is capable of that as well.

(55:12):
Now nearby also in the north is Thessaly.
Thessaly is closer to Thebes in Boesha than Macedon.
So it's like Thessaly is to the north.
And then a little farther N is Macedonia.
So this guy Lycophron had formeda tyranny in Thessaly.
He was the tyrant of Pharaai, which nowadays is called

(55:34):
Velestino. It's kind of southeast in
Thessaly. Now, like Macedonia, Thessaly is
horse country and their cavalry is famous and excellent.
So like Efron had formed, you know, the tyranny again, tyranny
in Greece isn't quite the same as tyranny now.
It just means popular leader. He was elected through popular

(55:55):
acclaim, seized power unlawfully.
But that doesn't mean they're a bad guy.
Usually they are power going to people's heads.
That's a lot of power to have. But sometimes these these
tyrants were actually good benevolent dictators type of
things. We don't know if Lycophron was
or not. There's not a lot of history
there. But his son, this guy we're very

(56:17):
interested in. So when he died, Jason took over
Jason of Fira. He inherited the tyranny and
started to expand it. He started to conquer some of
the other little regions within Thessaly, and eventually he was
named Tagus, which is magistrate, you know, leading
guy in Thessaly. You know, they don't have kings,

(56:38):
but they have these high titles.And you get the impression that
he got this because he was so powerful, not because they
thought he was the right man forthe job.
It could be both. He was very capable.
This is an extremely talented, ambitious and capable man.
He was noteworthy as a youth fordoing really wildly ambitious
and bold things against his own family.

(57:01):
In some cases, for example, he kidnapped his mother's favorite
slave and held her for ransom. Well, yeah, Mom, you can't have
this slave back until you pay me.
Like what? Who does that?
Well, he did. He also, like, would arrange
religious devotions, like eventswhere everyone, you know,
everyone gives a little money and he would just pocket the

(57:23):
money. He wouldn't.
There was very little given to the gods or whatever.
Yeah, he did. He just got away with all these
sort of things because you know,he was powerful and he was so
capable. So he was also an innovator,
both the strategy, tactics, logistics and, and kind of along
the lines of ethiquities, not quite that intense, but he

(57:43):
invented a new type of armor called the hemothorax, which is
like a stomach armor because like Greek hoplites, you just
hear your helmet, you got your breastplate, you maybe got some
armor on your arms and maybe yougot Greaves, which are like
thigh armor, not much else. So stomach armor's a pretty big
deal. Wasn't armor for for regular
folk, it was only for rich guys 'cause it was hard to make.

(58:06):
And we're going to see this armor used in covert missions
because it's something you can easily conceal under your robes
or your tunic or what have you. So Jason knew Palapas, they were
acquaintances, maybe even friends.
And Jason wanted a balanced Greece.

(58:27):
He wanted thieves and Athens andSparta to all be kind of equal
in power, kind of like Persia did.
And you got to ask yourself why.Why did this guy care?
He's he doesn't even live there.He's north of Greece.
You know, what does he care about these nations?
The city states South of him. Why does he want balance there?
What's his angle? Well, generally speaking,

(58:50):
there's several examples of thisthroughout history.
When someone wants a balance of power in Greece, it's because
they want to control Greece for themselves.
They have designs on Greece. Jason had designs on Greece.
First. He had to prove how good he was.
He had to prove how capable he was.
He had to build his own power base.
But all along the way, whenever he had influence to wield, he

(59:11):
would push towards that balance.If if one of the three was out,
was losing power, he would, you know, maybe give them a little
help or argue that they should have help just to try to keep
that balance, right? He didn't want things to get too
bad. He didn't want Greece just
overwhelmed by civil war. And but he also didn't want them
to be too strong. No, no one power to be dominant.

(59:33):
Because if one power was really dominant, well, he'd have to
take on that one power rather than a divide and conquer
strategy. Jason also spoke of invading
Persia, that same Greek dream that has existed ever since the
time of Thermopylae in the Battle of the 300 getting back
at Persia. Remember Thermopylae happened in

(59:53):
480, we're in 379 or 380. We're 100 years later and they
still have that dream. Remember it just allow us was on
that was on that trip. He's like, I'm in Persia.
I got an army. I just keep going east beat them
entirely. Obviously that.
Things changed. He had to go back home to SPART.
I couldn't do that. But this is another guy
expressing that same dream. And Jason's also very

(01:00:16):
interesting because he didn't have a citizen army behind him.
He had mercenaries, cell swords,but they were kind of not
mercenaries because they were full time and that made them way
more dangerous. All they did all day was train
for war and Jason trained with them.
In fact he had high standards for his mercenary.

(01:00:37):
He wouldn't just hire any mercenary.
He would only hire ones that could keep up with him stamina
wise, very similar to what Braundid when Tyrion was like, hey,
hire me some cell swords. And Braun's like, all right,
well, to make sure we're hiring a good person, a useful guy, I
tell them to try to kill me. And Tyrion's like, what happens

(01:00:58):
if one of them does? He's like, well, you're going to
want to hire that guy. That guy's competent.
You know, clearly if you can kill me, Braun, A skilled
swordsman, you want that guy on your team.
So he's kind of flipping about it, but it it does show you that
he's keeping a certain baseline of quality.
He's not just like, well, you look like a fighter.
Bring him on. You know, no, I want to see how
good you actually are. It's not obviously not a fight

(01:01:20):
to the death. That wouldn't accomplish much.
But yeah, So Jason, he was building a mercenary army of
people who were not just competent but could keep up with
him. And he had high standards for
his own physique, for his own stamina, for his own just
ability to withstand the rigors of campaign, you know, hot,

(01:01:40):
cold, sleeping outdoors or anything.
He would take it on. He would not shirk, you know, he
wouldn't have his soldiers go through anything he wouldn't go
through, which is an interestingcombination because usually sell
sword slash mercenaries, they follow the money.
But this guy's like, you know, one of the problems there is
they follow the money. So what could happen to me one

(01:02:02):
day is Persia using Persia as anexample.
He's surely aware of what Persiais capable.
It was like, what if Persia justbribes all my mercenaries away
from me? Well, this was his answer to
that. They were becoming loyal to him
for not just money, but because they liked him.
They looked up to him, they respected him.
So it's not so easy to pull guysaway that are that are in that

(01:02:22):
mindset. You know, it's harder to bribe
people away when they're like, no, we kind of like this guy.
We don't like Persians. That's the other thing.
There was a lot of like Persian,you know, like racism almost,
you know, like they, we don't like, we don't like meatism, you
know. So Jason had kind of come up
with an answer for that problem.As we'll see later.
Jason's going to come up with some other interesting answers,
clever, innovative answers to a lot of problems or to a lot of

(01:02:46):
traditions. And he's going to get ahead of a
lot of things. He's going to keep popping up
for a while. But now let's go to Fire and
blood and smoke back to Thebes. Remember what Leontides did?
He sent assassins after the Theban Democrats, and only one
of them succeeded. Andrew Clydes was killed.

(01:03:08):
The leader in that filled the the leadership vacuum was filled
by Palopitas and others. Here's a quote.
We ought not to rest here while our beloved land is in the hands
of evil rulers. It would be glorious to win back
freedom for Thebes. Will you not join with me in
saving our native city? He's a he's a man who loved his
city. He was a, he was a Theben

(01:03:28):
Patriot. He had boundless energy.
This is Brandon Stark. We didn't get to know Brandon
Stark very well, but we know that he had a temper.
He was very loyal to his family,though.
Also he was maybe he had a temper to the point where it got
him in some trouble. Palopanos, yeah, he does fit in
that category. But he's also high minded anger
or something. They call it a high minded

(01:03:49):
anger. What does that even mean?
What is high minded anger? Well, it's getting angry at the
things you're supposed to get angry at.
If you're angry because you didn't get all the money you
thought you deserved, that mightbe greed.
Actually, you know, it's it's thinking about yourself.
But Palapa, this is more like, no, I'm mad when people dishonor
each other. I'm mad when evil is done.

(01:04:10):
I'm mad when justice is not done.
He doesn't get mad about petty things.
He gets mad about the things that are supposed to matter.
The things that we all say are virtues.
So that's what high minded angeris, you know, and I I kind of
appreciate that I kind of respected to a certain degree
better to have more self-control.
But what we're seeing here is we're having a little little

(01:04:32):
combo here, a little fire and ice got Palopitos.
Is the fire a pomenon? Just a bit of the ice, the calm,
rational, thoughtful, long game guy, you know, paired up with
the let's get them now fiery zealot guy.
Both of them talented at war as well.
So here we are in the year 379. Palapados was working that angle

(01:04:54):
for a while, getting support. Eventually it came together.
He got a group with the goal of taking back Thebes, not by
armies, but by subterfuge and intrigue, kind of like the way
that Sparta took it from Thebes.They're going to kind of, you
know, reverse engineer what justhappened.

(01:05:16):
They got about 30 people to signon, including a guy named Mellon
and another guy named Charon. Yeah.
Charon. Charon.
Like the boat guy, this River Styx boatman.
Yeah, this guy is actually namedCharon.
And it's his house they're goingto meet at, which is really
symbolic. Like the boat man, the guy that
ferries you to the realm of the dead.
This is where the conspirators are going to meet.

(01:05:37):
Like they're either, you can look at that as as really
negative, like they're about to die that he's going to he's, you
know, boating them over to the underworld, which means they're
dead. That sounds like this mission's
going to fail. On the other hand, if you've got
the River Styx boatman on your side, then you know he can
you're in control. You know, it's like, well, death

(01:05:59):
is on your side. It's kind of, there's another
way to look at it. And this is such an important
distinction. I don't know how they thought
about it, but this is the the weirdness, the unpredictability
of interpreting omens of things that happen in nature or just
weird coincidence. Like you interpret this as a
religious thing, but you can easily interpret it as positive
or negative. And we're going to see a lot of

(01:06:21):
that. More people added to the
conspiracy. Gorgados, the the cavalry
commander Semios Epaminondas andhis brother Kafisius signed on.
A guy named Kafisa Doris, a guy named Menoclides.
They took a page from the Aquador Occupiers book.
They waited for a religious festival.
Not just any religious festival,the festival of Aphrodite.

(01:06:43):
Aphrodites festival is pretty important in Thebes because
they're such a big, they're sucha big deal with love.
Their view of Eros is very different than a lot of other
cities. A little more on that later, but
Thebes is very much a marriage of Aries and Aphrodite, war and
love. This hasn't, this is forming
now, this, this bond, this is, or at least it's being extended

(01:07:05):
now. Now, of course, Aries and
Aphrodite actually did have children.
More on that later. So they had seen the last three
years how the oligarchs celebrated this festival.
It was noteworthy. It was a big party.
They got drunk and sloppy and gratuitous.

(01:07:26):
Lots of bringing lots of women in there, just having like, what
sounds like orgies and all that and this guy, the Molemark,
Phyllis is pushing it. He's like, yeah, y'all party
hard, party hard. That's right, dude, go all at
it. Aphrodite wants you to do this,
you know, having orgies and lustand all that.
That's what Aphrodite wants. Do it, y'all.

(01:07:47):
The Spartans weren't really so down with that part of it, but
they, you know, they're like, yes, observe religious
festivals, yes that's right. But obviously if you're drunk
and thinking about having sex, you're not thinking about war.
And that's a very good time to strike.
But a different page was taken before this page, a deadly

(01:08:07):
dangerous page. An Athenian priest must have
spied on the Thebans, or maybe was included.
Or maybe it's like an ancient version of Catholic confession
where one of the Theban conspirators is like, I need to
unburden myself. And the and the Greek priest is
like, I'm going to go tell the Spartans what's going on.
So he sent a letter to the Polimarks, to Archaeus in

(01:08:31):
particular, or maybe just to whoever's there, to the, to the
Polymarkaeon, the the building that runs the military there.
And we'll tell you what happens in a minute.
This message is making its way to thieves.
Meanwhile, the conspirators are trying to do their thing.
So this is, it's like a race. This message is working its way
towards thieves while the conspirators are trying to do

(01:08:51):
something before it even happens.
And they don't know this messageis on its way, this message that
can undo everything. They have no idea it's coming.
The next 48 hours are perhaps the most well documented 48
hours in all of Greek history, which argues for all of the
ancient world, maybe not including the Roman ancient

(01:09:12):
world, but certainly this point.We don't know Rome that well, so
that's cool. And we have 12 men at first went
alone there. They broke up their group into
smaller groups to try to avoid detection.
They knew they were being watched.
Assassins came for them and all that stuff.
So they had to be careful, but they chose their time pretty
well and they had some luck on their sides.
The weather was harsh, it was snowy, windy, so they got to

(01:09:34):
wrap scarves around their faces and have hoods.
So you have these groups kind ofsplitting up into twos and
threes so that they can enter the different gates of Thebes
from different directions and are less likely to track.
Notice now the the some of the younger ones went first because
guys like Palopitus and Malone and definitely Gorgadas, they

(01:09:57):
would be known, they'd be recognized.
Actually, Gorgadas wasn't one ofthe wasn't one of the Exiles.
He was still in in Thebes, as I said, so scratch that.
But yeah, a lot of these guys are recognizable, so they had to
be careful even with their facescovered.
Now, inside Thebes, the guy named Karon, one of his friends
had a bad dream. And that dream was that Karon's
house was pregnant. And when it gave birth, when the

(01:10:21):
house gave birth, it gave birth of fire.
Like a big plume of fire came forth.
And that fire spread everywhere except the Fort except the cat
Mia. That's where he's like, oh,
that's bad. Does that mean the whole city's
toast except for the Garrison that we're trying to fight?
That's bad. So he and a couple of the other

(01:10:43):
conspirators were like, all right, that's bad.
The omens are horrible. They get they get their own
message. So we've got multiple messages
racing their way to various places here and they send one
guy out. Clyde on.
They're like Clyde on go tell everyone the plan's off.
We can't do it. It it this omen is too bad.
So Clyde on goes home, gets goesto his horse.

(01:11:06):
She's like, I got to get my horse all saddled and ready.
Well, yeah, saddles are different back then.
It's hardly even much of A saddle, maybe more like a
blanket. But they did have bridles.
He can't find his bridle. He's like, where's my horse's
bridle? He's like, wife, where's my
bridal? And she's like, I don't know,
why would I know? He's like, 'cause you're
supposed to know. And she's like, don't tell me

(01:11:28):
I'm supposed to know. It's your horse.
You're supposed to know. They're so loud that the
neighbors start paying attention.
They're like, whoa, the Clyde onand his wife were going at it
again. She's like, finally she's like
your bridal's probably at the neighbors and he's like, you
silly woman, why didn't you justsay that in the 1st place?
And he's, and she's like, you silly man, you should have
known. Anyway, he decided after all

(01:11:50):
that, you know what? This missing bridle, that's an
omen. I'm staying home.
So he was supposed to go tell them to call the plot off and he
didn't because he's like, I got to stay home.
The missing bridle is clearly a message from the gods, right?
So Palapados and the other groups, they have no idea that
either of these messages were sent, one exposing them, one

(01:12:12):
telling them to back off. They still go.
They're still doing their thing.They have no reason to back
down. One group of conspirators is
walking down the street from 1 cell to another.
You know, conspirator cells liketerrorist cells.
They have different, few different houses and thieves
where all these meetings are taking place.
And they're doing their best to stay in small groups, but also
to to converge on one particularhouse, Caron's house.

(01:12:33):
So a small group including a seer named Theocritus was on
their way. They're walking through the
streets and they just encounter none other than Archaeus himself
and Lacinidoris. Lacinidoris is the Garrison
chief, the Spartan Garrison chief.
He's also happens to be the son of one of the most beautiful
women in the all Greek, Greek world, which not an important

(01:12:57):
detail, but fun to throw in there.
And they had soldiers with them.So you might say, well, maybe
they should just try to kill those guys right there and then.
Nah, they had soldiers with them.
So like, uh oh, what do we do? And maybe we'll just pass by and
nothing will happen. They're walking the opposite way
down the street, right? Yeah, maybe nothing will happen.
No, Archaeus is like, hold on, hey, Theocratus Seer, I need to

(01:13:17):
talk to you. And they're like, Oh my God,
what's going on here? And he's like, I got a religious
problem. King had just Laos wanted us to
go open this tomb of Heracles Mother Alchemine, which is, you
know, you guys know where that is, That's over here, you know,
outside the city limits or whatever.
But it's close by. And they're like, yeah, of
course we know about that. Obviously King had just allows
again, trying to loot tombs for the power of Sparta.

(01:13:42):
So you ordered the Lacentadoris to go do that.
So Lacentadoris did that. They looted the tomb, which by
the way, the tomb is in Haliartis, which is where
Lysander was killed, let's not forget.
So he goes over there, opens thetomb and he's like, there's no
bones here, but there is a bronze tablet with a strange
script that they couldn't understand.

(01:14:03):
So that is no word like this is some language we don't know
anymore. Shortly after they they opened
this tomb, Halliardis had a cropfailure and a flood.
So they were like, all right, that's clearly the gods are
pissed. Alchemine herself, Heracles, one
of them or both of them, they'remad.
And Archaeus asked Theocritus tosee her.

(01:14:23):
That's their problem. They're like, how do we properly
observe the, the proper rituals to reseal the tomb to, you know,
keep this curse at Bay? So he's like, he, he tells them
what they want to hear. He's like, well, you got to do
this and this and this. And they realize that this means
Lacenadoris is about to leave town to go do that.

(01:14:46):
He's like, you need. And so the Akratis just implores
him to do this quickly. So they actually talk the
Spartan Garrison chief into leaving maybe a little sooner
than he would have. So he leaves the city while
they're in the midst of a pulling off their plan, like
they're about to go make their move.
And they have this stroke of luck where the Spartan Garrison

(01:15:07):
chief, they're able to talk him into leaving.
So they keep going. They go to the next
conspirator's house. This guy named Simeus.
I had mentioned him earlier. Simeus was nervous because none
other than Leon Tides himself came to Simeus door earlier that
day, knocked on his door to argue with him about a certain
prisoner. Simeus had argued that this
prisoner who was a Democrat should be exiled and not killed.

(01:15:30):
And Leon Tides is like, Nah, execution.
But Leontides, he enjoys a good debate.
I suppose he wasn't going to tryto be too authoritative about
it. He wanted some consensus.
So he wanted to continue the debate.
He actually went to Simmons's house and argued with him a bit
longer. So that was not great.
They were like, well, he did back to he did leave.

(01:15:51):
So but it made them nervous. The guys they're trying to kill
might just, you know, they just come knocking on your door at
any moment. Let's remind ourselves of just
how small this whole place is. Like this, this world, you got
people who just know each other.This isn't like millions of
people here. You got people who know each
other just walking down the street like this, the all these
important players. Then another thing happened.

(01:16:14):
Simeus was like, Hey, y'all, some stranger came to town and
he made a sacrifice at the graveof Lysis, That Pythagorean sage
guy we talked about, and then hejust went to sleep by the grave.
He's freaking me out, y'all, what is up with this guy?
Is this a God in disguise? Is this an omen?
Epam Ananes and his brother speak up.

(01:16:35):
They're like, well, we're the ones who buried Lysis.
We were students of his. We'll go check it out.
So they go, they go and they're like, hey, man, who are you?
And he's like, I am a Lysis super fan.
I've been following his. I'd followed his career forever.
I've read his stuff. He's an inspiration to me.
I wanted to come here to make sure he was buried properly and

(01:16:57):
to offer sacrifice to his grave.And Epaminitis and his brother
are like, cool, We loved Lysis, too.
We're the ones who buried him. And so they're like, oh, well,
we have a lot in common. Hey, stranger, come live with
us. This guy just comes and live
with them. Yeah.
Anyway, what a coincidence, the two that he, he goes there to
offer sacrifice at this guy's grave and the guys who dug the

(01:17:20):
grave show up and they're all become friends, you know.
So Philidas, the Molamark, he was working, he was doing work
here, arranging things. He had make sure there's lots to
drink, bring in lots of women into distract the polo marks,
especially Archaeus and Philip. Archaeus and Philip were all
about it. They're like, yeah, bring me the

(01:17:40):
women. Bring me the highborn women.
I want to, I want to get everybody.
This is the festival of Aphrodite.
I I'm going at it anyway. Lead tighties.
To his credit, he wasn't like that.
He's like, I don't party like that.
I'm a I'm a serious man. I'm not like that.
So he didn't do it. He didn't go to the party.
He maybe had a few drinks and then went home.
He back at his own house just like, uh, well, that's a

(01:18:03):
problem. We can't kill everybody in one
spot, right? They're trying to sneak into
this party and kill people, but Leontide is the most important
guy. He's not even going to be there.
And then they realize another guy, high Paytes, also wasn't
going to be there. Like, well, damn, we got all
these targets. What are we going to do?
Well, they're going to have to split up into groups.
Luckily for them, high pay Tees lived somewhat near land tides.

(01:18:24):
You know, we're living in the rich part of town probably.
So then slide on shows up the guy with the missing bridle.
He tells them his story and they're like, whoa, we almost
called the whole thing off because of that.
So they changed their view instead of they still thought
the bridle was an omen, but theynow they thought it was a good
omen because like if if it wasn't for that bridle being

(01:18:47):
moved, it would have called the whole thing off.
So whichever God moved that bridal, which is how they
interpreted it, was on their side 'cause it caused good
things to happen. So Palopitus and Mellone each
lead a group. Palopitus leads a group to go
after Lentides. Might have been personal.
Remember Palopitus was probably targeted by Lentides assassins.

(01:19:07):
Mellone and his crew dress up like women.
So I'm guessing these were the like smaller statue started
guys. You probably don't have some
like big, huge hulking guy trying to pretend to be a woman,
a woman. He's they're wearing hoods and
garlands and stuff. And they're the assistants.
They're the maids. They're not the main women.
They're the ones that are helping the sex workers or the
highborn women like with their clothes.

(01:19:28):
And they're just attendants. So they're they're not as
noticeable. Before this happens, before
they're ready to leave, there's a bolt of lightning, but no
Thunder. And they thought this was good.
They thought this was good. It's like, hey, we're the
Thunder. You know, the Thunder is, is, is
is held back. We're getting ready to strike.
That's the Thunder. Unfortunately, a spy at one of

(01:19:52):
the gates reported back to Archaeus.
He said, look, I saw some exilescoming in.
I saw them. A couple of them came in through
the gate. Some of them are here.
Something's going on. So that guy goes to Archaeus and
tells him. And Archaeus is like.
Bring me Charon. Uh oh.
So they, some soldiers go to Charon's house where everyone is

(01:20:14):
meeting and he, there's a banging at the door and they're
like, uh oh, the jig is up. We're screwed.
Someone looks out the window andthere's like, it's only like 4
guys. They're like, well, if they're
coming to bust up our conspiracy, why is there only
four guys? All right, so they all hide.
They hide like the picture Life of Brian.
There's like one guy sticking out of a basket.
One guy, you know, he's he's completely visible, but he's got

(01:20:34):
his face is covered. If you can't see me, I can't see
you. You know, that kind of thing,
right. So they're like, come with us to
chair and enters the door. They're like, come with us.
We're you need to. Archaeus wants to see you.
And he's like, all right, OK, well, that's better than you
guys busting up our conspiracy. I'll go, but give me a SEC.
I need to. I was in the middle of
something. Hang on, let me go back inside.
Let me talk to my wife, tell herwhere I'm going.

(01:20:54):
They're like, all right, hurry up, though.
So he closes the door, goes backinside, just tells them what's
up, What's up? They're like, all right, well,
you got to go. You got to go, right?
Otherwise they'll get suspicious.
And he's like, yeah, I got to go.
This is dangerous, but I'll go. And then he's like, look, I
don't want you guys to think I'mgoing to turn on you.
I don't want you to think that Imight give the whole thing up
out of fear for myself. So here's my 15 year old son.

(01:21:17):
He's my, he's a hostage. Take him if you don't, if you,
if you want proof of my loyalty,you know, I kill him if I am not
loyal. Palapita says no, we aren't
doing that. We trust you, go ahead.
Your son is not collateral. Do what needs to be done.

(01:21:37):
We believe you. So he goes to the Polomar Chaeon
and Archaeus is already drunk and oiled up, literally oiled
up. So Sharon's like what's going to
happen? And so and Philidas the mole is
standing right behind Archaeus. He's right there.
So he's like, all right, what's going on?

(01:21:58):
And Archaeus is like, hey, he's drunk, right?
Remember that? He's like, I heard there are
exiles in town. So he does.
He's not very subtle about it. He could have tried to, like,
figure out what Charon knew, tried to get him to admit
something, but he just blurts this out and Charon makes the
best move possible. He plays the indignant patriot.
He's like, where? Where are the Exiles?

(01:22:20):
Where are they? Show me where they are.
Let me add them brilliant right,an old trick, but maybe not an
old trick in four 379 BC right. So and and Felita sit right
behind Archaeus is like yes, youdo that Charon, you better do
that or else you you find those exiles and you tell us when you

(01:22:42):
find them go no brilliant right.So Phillip Archaeus is satisfied
with that. But as Charon was leaving, the
message from Athens arrived, theone sent by the priest, the
message that said exactly what was happening.
But Archaeus was done. He's like, I don't want to do

(01:23:03):
any more business. The message says urgent
business, and he goes urgent business tomorrow.
He shoves the letter under a pillow and goes back to
partying. To this day, or at least
something like it, certainly formany centuries afterwards,
urgent tomorrow, urgent businesstomorrow, urgent later,

(01:23:25):
something to that effect became a safe.
It was just repeated for many years, if not still being
repeated. It's a, it became like a, a
meme, an ancient world meme. So Charon went back to the house
and was like, I, he didn't want to tell everybody what really
happened because he he didn't want to tell them that the

(01:23:46):
Polamarx knew about the exile, even though they were
blundering. He didn't want to scare them.
So he's like, he made-up a story.
He's like, yeah, they were, he just asked me about this.
And he pulled Palapas aside and was like, yo, what really
happened is this? They know.
They know what's going on. They don't actually know, but
they suspect. But right now, they're still
busy partying. So what should we do?
Should we tell them or not? And Palapas is like, yeah, maybe

(01:24:07):
we'll just keep that a secret. Well, they're all willing to die
trying anyway. These guys, these men are all
willing to die. We don't need to lower their
morale if they're already willing.
So he's like, well, let's keep that to ourselves.
Worse though, the one guy that told the bridal guy to cancel
the plot, he didn't show up. So they were also worried that
either he had given up, given them up or was about to, or had

(01:24:31):
told somebody. Anyway, So Melon and his group
go out. They bring, like I said, the
shorter probably guys, the less burly 'cause they're hiding in
hiding in women's clothing underneath their garb.
They have the hemothorax and they've got hidden daggers, and,
you know, they're wearing all sorts of accoutrement that would
be fitting for the festival of Aphrodite.

(01:24:53):
So they go into the room. They're brought in behind the
women, and Archaeus and Philip, the two polar marks are
clapping. They're like, yeah, the women
are here. All right, we're ready.
We're excited. And the maids are right there
behind. There's a certain high priest, a
guy named Kabiricus, and he's atthe party.
He's partying, too. He's drunk and he's holding on

(01:25:15):
to this relic, the Spear of Thebes.
I tried real hard to find out what this spear had anything to
do with, but I don't have any. I don't know what it was.
So Cabaricus notices something'sa little weird.
He's drunk, but he's like, he looks over at the maids and he
says, isn't this melon now? He wasn't referring to the
buffet. He wasn't like, isn't this

(01:25:37):
melon? Like, isn't this cantaloupe?
No, he's like, isn't that guy inwomen's clothing?
Isn't that Melon the Theben, theguy, the Democrat?
The answer was yes. Mellon's like, all right, Jig is
up, pulls his dagger, charges right at Archaeus.
A couple of the guys throw theirgoblets down and look for

(01:25:57):
weapons, but Archaeus is just like, dumbfounded.
He's like, what's going on? He's really wasted.
And our Mellon drops him with one stab.
And then Philip is like, he getsstands up and he's also drunk.
He falls over, they kill him, noproblem.
So Philetus the Molemark stood forth.

(01:26:18):
He he emerged. He's like announces as this is
happening. He's like, look, those of you
sitting here sitting by, if you're not involved, stay that
way. We're not here for you.
If you don't mess with us, we'regoing to leave you alone.
We're here for these guys and that's it.
We're here for the Spartans, we're here for the the traitors.

(01:26:39):
That's it. So most of the people are just
like, all right, I'll sip my wine, have a few olives.
Let the party continue, see who see who wins.
We'll stay out of it. Another guy tries to grab that
spear from Cabiricus and they have like a pulling match on the
spear and and the guy's like join us.
Come on, man, join us. This is the Theban revolution.
You're a Theban. What are you deciding with these

(01:27:00):
guys for? But the guy's like, he's too
slow, he's too drunk, he doesn'tknow what's happening.
And someone just comes up behindhim and stabs him and that's
that. The other guy grabs the spear
and uses it to probably Pierce another Theban or two.
Very Red Weddingish, right? You got these guys sneaking in.
They're they're wearing armor under their clothes.
You know, it's a party. You're waiting for everyone to

(01:27:22):
get drunk. Not everyone is killed.
Some people are left out of it because you're not trying to
piss off everybody. You're not trying to make
enemies of everybody. You've got a very specific
target you want, just like, you know, Ruse and and Walder took
certain people captive to keep certain families from getting
any ideas. Very similar.
So similar categorization is theRed Wedding.

(01:27:44):
But this isn't over, right? You, you can't think just 'cause
they killed these guys that there's still a Garrison, you
know, and there's still Sparta'snot far away.
So Athens hears about this. There's there's news going up.
So a group of Athenians form an army.
This is not a state sponsored thing.
They just do this of their own accord, partly because they owed

(01:28:06):
Thebes a favor. I believe I mentioned this last
time, but not that long before, during the Theban or during the
Peloponnesian War, Lysander established A tyranny within
Athens. After conquering it, he
installed the 30 tyrants, the Theban or the Athenian
Democrats, many of them fled to Thebes, had refuge for a while
until they were able to to expelthe 30 tyrants.

(01:28:29):
Now we have the reverse of that right?
Theben exiles fleet to Athens. So the Athenians are like, we
got to help pay them back. This is like divine, like this
is all a circular thing. It's like the, you know, and so
they, but they're like Tywin or maybe Walder Frey, they're late,
they show up, but they don't actually engage.
They're kind of like, well, let's wait to see what happens
first. Maybe, maybe let's not commit

(01:28:49):
just yet. I want to see Thebes start to
win a little bit before we take their side.
Otherwise we're jumping on a losing cause 'cause Esparta just
wins. Esparta just puts this fire out
and stomps out this rebellion. We don't want to have had
anything to do with it. So meanwhile, the other group of
conspirators, Palapidis and his group, they arrive at Leon

(01:29:10):
Tides's house. They know they don't have a lot
of time because they don't have watches or cell phones to
coordinate their actions. So what's happening at the party
might have already happened and then words going to spread.
So they don't have a lot of time.
Any, any moment, you know, word could start to spread.
It could be an outbreak of people hitting the streets, who

(01:29:32):
knows? They knock on the door, say,
hey, we're we've got a message from Athens, which is kind of
ironic given the message from Athens that should have been
delivered to Archaeus that he didn't look at a slave.
Opens the doors like, all right,who are you?
And they kick the door in like as soon as he cracks the door,
they kick it in and run through and disperse.

(01:29:54):
They don't exactly know where inthe house Lentides is.
It's a, you know, he's a rich guy, so he's got several rooms.
Lentides hears this. He starts yelling.
He's like slaves defend me, you know, and it's kind of a similar
deal where this the demons are like, you know, don't don't get
in our way. We're not going to touch you.
You get in. You stay away from us.

(01:30:14):
We won't we won't mess with you.All we're here for is Lentides.
We want your master, not you. So Lentides is in his own room.
He pulls his sword and then he gets next to the door so that
he's like hiding beside the door.
So if someone comes in the door,they'll be in his blind spot.
He can he can hit them. That's exactly what happens
because he's the Doris burst through the door.
Lentides stabs him in the side, killing him.

(01:30:37):
The body falls at an awkward angle, kind of blocking the way,
but Palopitus manages to get past the body, but he's the only
one, so he and Lane Tides go at it.
Lane Tides is still shouting forslaves.
They're not going to help even if they were coming.
At this point, Palopitus's men are in the hallway, and Lane
Tides is no slouch. Like we said, serious man, he

(01:30:58):
wasn't drunk. He's a warrior.
He's fighting Palopitus. He gets gets in a shot to
Palopitus on the head, doesn't stop him though.
The counter thrust right in the chest lintide drops dead.
The leader of the oligarchs, mastermind of the takeover,
which took three years. They held it for three years,
was dead thanks to this commandoraid and the skills of

(01:31:21):
Palopitus, Mellon and others. But now the resolve of them and
people like Epaminondas and Sharon, it's going to stop to
start to play out because I can once again, killing the leaders
doesn't get them their city back.
It's more it takes more than that.
And they had to kill that high Paytis guy as well.
So they they leave, they go after him.
He hears them coming, jumps out a window, runs away.

(01:31:44):
But he wasn't very fast. They got him.
They catch him, killed him. Next part of the plan called for
them to free the prisoners. A lot of Democrats were still in
prison. A lot of people that Lee and
Tides didn't like. He was prosecuting or rather
persecuting little of 1 little column a little from column B,
the molemarch Philidas went to the guard and was like, hey,

(01:32:04):
Archaeus wants this guy let out.The guy that they were about to
execute, the guy that they argued over that morning, he was
going to be executed the next day so that he was a priority to
get out of prison. But the guards like, show me
your order. Like I can't just let this guy
out without like some sort of proof that Lentides gave this

(01:32:24):
order even though Archaeus is a pretty high-ranking guy.
Philidis is like, all right, well, here's my permission.
Here's my permission slip. It's a spear.
It stabs the guard with a spear and they let everybody out.
It's like the weasel soup incident, like this internal
takeover happens. They free all the prisoners and
the a lot of the prisoners join the effort.
They help the resistance. They help the revolution.

(01:32:45):
Some of them leave the city in agroup though, because they are
true exiles or they, I don't actually don't know.
It's kind of puzzling to me why some of them left and didn't
help. Anyway, they are going to pop up
again in a minute. In the meantime, everyone starts
parading through the streets, yelling and shouting and saying
the tyrants are dead. Land tides, Philip, Archaeus,

(01:33:05):
Hypaides. They're dead.
We got them. They start smuggling.
They start distributing weapons.They don't have a lot because it
was hard to smuggle weapons in. That's the thing that they could
they could get caught doing. But there's also like ceremonial
displays like old swords, old Spears, old Shields.
They start grabbing those. Gorgidas and Epeminandis raid
the Armory, start handing out even more weapons.

(01:33:26):
The noise in the streets finallygets the Spartans attention.
They're in the they're in the Garrett, they're in the cadmium.
And they finally be like, wait, let's go.
I hear there's noise out there. And they climb up and they look
down. The cadmium's on a hill just
like the Red Keep. I called it the Red Keep of
Thebes. This is a good example of that.
So they look down on the city. It's night time, yet for some

(01:33:46):
reason there are lots of people with lights on in their houses.
They can see torches in the streets and they immediately
know what's going on. They're like, oh, this is some
sort of violent action. They're probably coming for us,
aren't they? Yes, they are.
Lots of smoke. Lots of smoke.
Which somehow relates to that dream, right?

(01:34:08):
Only this, only the Fort was wreathed in smoke.
The rest of the city was wreathed in fire, which is what
we're seeing, right? The wreaths in fire are people,
though. It's not houses on fire.
It's the revolutionaries. It's the rebellion.
It's the taking back of Thebes. So whether this dream actually
happened or not, I mean, I certainly lean towards no, it it

(01:34:29):
makes for a great story, right? And it certainly is how they
told the story afterwards. But once again, the the Spartans
are like, well, we still have the Fort locked down.
You can't get us out of here. But they tightened the siege.
They surrounded it. They're like, you guys are going
to run out of food. You know, that group from Athens
said, hey, we're going to help now too.

(01:34:50):
They were like, all right, you guys have done well.
We're going to help. We're we're ready to join on.
So they do that, they help out. This turned out to be decisive
because they needed more people to help with the siege.
Sparta responded, though. Sparta finally got wind of this.
And remember, it's not far away.They got an army together and
they sent Cleam Brodus. This is interesting.
They sent Cleam Brodus, not a disallow us.

(01:35:12):
Now I kind of wonder about that.Just allow us as the one that
maybe arranged for this in the 1st place, which might be why he
didn't go. It might be why he was trying to
keep his distance because he didn't want to be incriminated
and having done this in the 1st place.
And also because he had shown how he's a little unreasonable
when it comes to Thebes, how he is willing to lose his own men

(01:35:34):
to a certain degree if it harms Thebes.
Sparta didn't like that. I mean, even though he's one of
the kings, they, they have limited ability to stop him.
The, the E Fours, the 5E Fours who can override the kings.
They have a lot of power too. And they, my suspicion is that
they're like, yeah, we need someone that's not just
motivated by killing thieves. We, we have a hegemony to

(01:35:55):
maintain here. That's what we're after.
We're looking for control, not revenge.
But it may also just be that he was trying to work the political
situation or maybe still had that injury bothering him.
There's a lot of possibilities either way.
Sparta's authoritarian system their their lack of imagination
in their lower ranks caused a real problem here.

(01:36:15):
Remember, Lisenadoris was over there trying to seal the the
tomb of Alcamini. So the two second in commands,
Herpetus and Arcisis, they're like, all right, well, the
Spartan thing to do is to not give up.
So that's easy enough. Let's just not give up.
The problem was that not everyone in the Garrison was
Spartan, not even close. Like Sparta doesn't have enough

(01:36:37):
people for that to put garrisonsall over Greece.
So they had Spartan leaders, some Spartan troops like a
corps, but then you have like allies and even a few Theban
oligarch fanboys. So on the inside they're a
little worried that maybe there would be some turn here.
So they're they asked all right.Normally we would just fight to

(01:37:02):
the death. We would not give this up for
any reason. But we're a little concerned, so
let's negotiate. How about this?
Y'all? You let us go.
No harm done. You can have your cat Mia back.
Thebes is like, deal, deal. Absolutely.
You get the hell out, we won't kill you.
You can leave, but give us back our Fort.

(01:37:24):
That's what happens. They both agree.
No funny business. The Spartans start marching
home, the Theben starts celebrating.
On the way home the Spartan armyencounters the other Spartan
army, the one that was sent to help them.
And they're like oh I guess we should have waited one more day.

(01:37:45):
That's all it was. One more day and the Spartan
relief force would have gotten there under clean brotis.
Whoops, that's how close it was.So that's bad because the 2
Garrison commanders are like this make this is really bad.
We look like wieners, we look like losers, we look like
cowards. We screwed up.

(01:38:05):
No one's going to see this in a good light.
So they run away, they flee, they go to Corinth where they
failed to escape. They just allow us had them
arrested or they were arrested, brought back to Sparta.
Do y'all remember the this is Sparta where they kicked the guy
into the chasm? I think I told you in episode 1

(01:38:26):
that that chasm is real. That's where these two guys
ended up. Herbetus and Narcissus were
tossed into the chasm. That chasm had been in use as an
execution method for so long they probably landed on bones
and not the ground. Yikes, right?
But this wasn't enough. Listen to Doris, even though it
was a just allows his orders to open that tomb and listen to

(01:38:48):
Doris was back at the tomb sealing, resealing it using
pious methods, told him by a priest.
He didn't know any of this had even happened.
He was in Haliartist doing all this.
He didn't know thieves had come with a relief force.
He didn't know the Garrison had been defeated or or gave up.
So he was fined an amount that he couldn't pay.
So he had to go into exile. And then they killed his mother.

(01:39:09):
They just killed his mother 'cause she gave birth to a guy
who turned out to be a failure, even though they made him a
captain and all that. Really weak, really scapegoating
him basically. The vindictiveness, though,
served a purpose. This on this irrational
punishment of Lisinodorus did have a rational undertone or, or

(01:39:31):
strategy behind it, which is that everyone else in Greece got
scared. They're like, oh, oh, Sparta's
mad. What are they going to do?
You know, we're scared. Athens got so scared that the
two guys that led that private force that went to help Thebes,
they executed them when Cleambrotus's army marched
nearby, they're like, hey, hey, Cleambrotus.
Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. Look, these guys LED that army.

(01:39:53):
We're killed. We're killed them.
Look, they're dead. See.
See. And they had Cabrius go out with
a much smaller army to block a mountain pass into Attica, which
is the the area where Athens exists.
So Cleambrotus probably wasn't going to go after Athens anyway,
but they were making sure. So he blocked that mountain
pass, and that sent a loud and clear message that Athens was
not with thieves. Like, we're not with thieves

(01:40:13):
after all. And maybe we help, but hey,
don't. It's just a temporary thing and
it wasn't an official capacity. Leave us alone, please.
We're not doing it so clear. And Brodus, yeah, he passes them
by. He's like, yeah, well, we're
we're thieves is the problem here anyway.
So the Greek Game of Thrones would surely shift again here
because you got Athens, Sparta, Thieves.
None of them are allied with each other.
They're all separate, kind of. Athens is kind of like neutral,

(01:40:35):
just worried about Sparta's wrath, whereas thieves is all
about it. They're like, we're fighting for
our lives. We're trying to change the order
of things. We took our city back.
But we know Sparta's not just going to give up, right?
They got a new king in the fieldand Athens is just backed down
on helping them again. So still, here's what Plutarch

(01:40:56):
said. The effect on Thebes and the
rest of the Greek world was significant.
Quote. The subsequent change in the
political situation made this exploit the more glorious.
For the war which broke down thepretensions of Sparta, and put
an end to her supremacy by land and sea, began from that night

(01:41:19):
in which people, not by surprising any Fort or castle or
citadel, but by coming into a private house with eleven
others, loosed and broke in pieces, If the truth may be
expressed in a metaphor, the fetters of the Lacodemonian
supremacy, which were thought indissoluble and not to be

(01:41:43):
broken. So Sparta took the city by
surprise, but they didn't like trumpet that too much because it
broke the King's peace. Never.
Nevertheless, it was a big statement of power, and it was a
statement of hey, we can get away with this, rules for you,
not for us. And Palopolis and team did more
than match the plotting of Leontides.
They undid all that and then some.

(01:42:05):
Foy, but awesome. Possibly it just allows us all
undone by this, all that statement of Spartan power was
flipped and made light of like you guys did all this and you
lost it to even less. So it just allows, of all
people, he's the one we are sureis the most unhappy about all
this. I mean, he hates Thebes and he
was almost certainly a big part of that vindictive justice I put

(01:42:28):
in air quotes. So he's coming.
He's not done. Meanwhile, the Liberators were
celebrated for their incredible achievement.
There was a little bit of celebration before they got back
to work because they knew they had a lot of work to do.
Here's another line. The Night Wind Palapidis, with
no Fort, no walls, no citadel, but merely by bringing 12 men
home, loosed and struck off the shackles of Laconian power,

(01:42:50):
which had been seemed impossibleto loosen or break.
Yeah, so they just had to keep going.
The King's peace was broken again.
Persia would have it say too. What?
No matter what the wrath of Persia or Sparta would be,
Thebes was going to try to weather the storm, see if they
could do it. They have a new generation of
youngsters who grew up under this Spartan occupation, had

(01:43:12):
plenty of time to be mad about that, be caged animals.
Finally, when they were unleashed, they had great
success. It looked like the gods were on
their side, right? Look at all the coincidences and
strange little twist that had tohappen to make it work.
If that letter got through, if Archaeus has been a little less
drunk, if one of the conspirators had turned on them

(01:43:32):
like they feared they would, if the bridle had been there.
Like, there's all these little things that could have screwed
the whole thing up, could have ended it.
In a era like this, you got to think the gods are on your side
when things go that well, when the luck is all on your side
like that. So they were feeling really
optimistic, really positive, really good about it.
But the first thing they had to do was make sure not to repeat

(01:43:53):
the mistakes of the past, right?Let's talk about the Sacred Band
for the last part of our episodetoday.
The Sacred Band was formed by Gorgadas and a man named Pamenes
with heavy influence, probably from Plato, the philosopher of
all people stationed in the Kadmia.

(01:44:15):
So they, the idea was all right.Well, we had this problem where
our Garrison wasn't even there because of this religious
festival. So let's not do that again.
But let's also have a competent,strong city army that is ready
at all times rather than callingmen up when something happens
because that's too slow. We need, we need to be able to

(01:44:36):
react to things when they happen.
We can't be like, OK, we're under attack.
Get the army together, call everybody in from the
countryside. No, that's too slow.
So here's possibly a quote from Gorgadas.
It's definitely a quote. It just might not be from
Gorgadas, but here it is. It's great quote.
Homer's Nestor was no tactician when he urged the Greeks to form

(01:44:58):
in companies by clans and tribes.
That clan might give assistance unto clan, and tribes unto
tribes. Since he should have stationed
lover by beloved for tribesmen and clansmen make little account
of tribesmen and clansmen in times of danger.
Whereas a band that is held together by the friendship

(01:45:21):
between lovers is indissoluble and not to be broken, since the
lovers are ashamed to play the coward before their beloved and
the beloved before their lovers,and both stand firm in danger to
protect each other. Yeah, 150 pairs of lovers
stationed side by side. Well, at eventually stationed

(01:45:44):
side by side, as we'll see in the beginning, they, they went
through a little bit of a growthphase where they figured out how
best to use this group. But it's very Theban in origin.
Heracles, who was one of the patrons of Thebes.
He had a lover named Ayalis thatwas a man.
Yes. And the tomb of Ayalis is near
Thebes and it was very common like a like a kissing rock or

(01:46:08):
like the overlook, like the highschool place where all the kids
would go to to hang out on Friday night.
This was like the tomb of Ayalisfor young lovers, male lovers.
They would go there and swear vows.
They would pledge their troth orwhatever you want to call it,
pledge to be loyal to each otheras lovers.
And you know, so they put a holyoath to it, you know, put a

(01:46:29):
little, put something official to it, right.
And as I said before, this is getting us back to the whole,
the whole Thebes of it, whereas you got this concept of love
being important. And no other city in Greece had
the relationship with Eros that that Thebes did.
Remember what I said about each city state has a different
relationship with each Greek deity.

(01:46:51):
And I also said it's a marriage of Aphrodite and Aries, the the
beauty and desire and lust with war, right?
That's what we have mingled here.
You got Stevens who are becomingmilitaristic.
They want to take their city back.
They want to push back against Spartans, which is going to take
military power, military aggression, but they want to
have that on a basis, on an anchor, on a bedrock of love,

(01:47:12):
not of ideology to a state in terms of authority or in terms
of some other ideal, but in terms of love, in terms of that
bond. That's the most important thing
that they're swearing on here that they're emphasizing as a
military ideal that just allows hated that.
I mean, again, the Spartans had male Spartans had male lovers

(01:47:35):
all the time, including a just allows, but they were sometimes
shy about it. It was like a don't ask, don't
tell thing, isn't it? Isn't it anecdote when a just
allows was in Persia and he had taken a liking to this young
Persian boy, which again, boy inthis context doesn't necessarily
mean underage. It might, but it it's it's
better to think of as the term boy in this context is like when

(01:47:56):
a British person says lad, but again, it might have been a boy.
This guy comes to greet. It just allows and it's normal
for them to like do a little kiss thing like the Italian
greeting or whatever. And, and, but it just allows his
like he's, he, he rears back like he doesn't want the guy to
kiss him 'cause he's ashamed. He doesn't want anyone to know
that he likes this kid and the kids like, wait, what?

(01:48:17):
And, and why don't you want me to?
It's embarrassing. It's awkward, 'cause it's like a
moment in front of a bunch of people at court.
And later just as I was like, hey, why?
What happened there? And his friends were like, what
do you mean what happened there?You reared back, you shamed him.
And he's like, well, I didn't mean to.
He was like, well, go approach him and tell him you're, you
know, do it right. So yeah, just allows goes and

(01:48:40):
plays it off and say, hey, man, why didn't you kiss me properly?
And so he does so instead. So yeah, that's a little
different. So the marriage of Aphrodite and
Aries in Greek mythology, they had seven children.
Eros was one of them. Phobos, Demos, Harmonia, Pathos,
Anteros and Himeros. Eros is love and desire.

(01:49:03):
Phobos is fear. Damos is terror.
You might be like, wait, fear and terror are separate?
Well, Phobos and Damos were twins.
So yeah, it's about right. Harmonia, that's harmony and
concord. Pothos is yearning and Teros is
requited love. Not unrequited love, but balance
and relationship. So Pothos is kind of the
opposite. Pothos is unrequited love,
yearning and Teros is requited love, but also balance.

(01:49:24):
Like I said, balance within relationships.
So it's not like one person really loves the other person a
lot more than the other. That is something that Enteros
is supposed to be associated with.
And Himaros lust. Well that's simple enough.
Now, Harmonia married Cadmus, the mythical founder of thieves,
the one who killed the dragon and then sewed the teeth in the

(01:49:45):
ground. So the marriage of Harmonia and
Cadmus is a balance between loveand strife.
That's what it's considered. And Harmonia had this necklace
that went through all these iterations of cursing people and
thieves, and finally thieves broke the curse by giving the
necklace to the temple at Olympus so that it couldn't be,

(01:50:06):
so that it's mischief, its cursewould be handled.
That necklace is going to come back much later in our story,
certainly not today, certainly not the next episode, but we'll
get back to it. Don't forget the necklace of
Harmonia. Now, it's also important to
understand how they didn't just emphasize love.
The connection to love and Eros,as in a deity of sorts, is

(01:50:30):
important here. That's why it's called the
Sacred Band. Plato says a lover is a divine
friend inspired of God. It's the best type of human
connection there is. The Greeks revered it and it was
like, there is no better thing than the love of someone who's

(01:50:52):
your equal. And of course, this was in this
society. It was all men.
They didn't think women could beequals.
But whatever. So and they also didn't have a
word for gay that there's no word for male.
It's just it's just all love, right?
They definitely had views on it that differed, but they didn't
have they didn't distinguish it so much that they even had words
to differentiate it. This is where Plato comes into

(01:51:14):
it a bit. Like I said, he was a, a
potentially a direct influence on the formation of this band,
at least an indirect one, because if you look read some of
his works, like in the Republic,he even mentions this
possibility of lovers fighting together in war.
And he wrote about it before thesacred man was formed.
So that's that's a very strong argument that he had something

(01:51:34):
to do with this. And he only and he lived nearby
in Athens. It was like the guy lived in
this era close by. He had already founded his
Academy at this point. I believe I mentioned that last
episode. There's another quote from
Pamenes, the other important figure.
He was a he was a leader who's going to come up again.
Another Theban leader who had a lot to do with this.

(01:51:55):
He said a squad held together byarrows cannot be dispersed or
fragmented. Since lovers and their beloved
feel shame if they disappoint one another, they stand firm
against all dangers on one another's behalf.
I think there's a lot of truth to that.
I'm no military expert, but thatstatement in a vacuum, that's

(01:52:16):
pretty true when you're talking about people who actually love
each other Now, I'm not talking about people who say they do.
I'm not talking about a marriagethat's been dead for a while,
that people are going through the motions.
I'm not talking about, you know,obsession or just lust.
That's interpreted as love. I'm talking about genuine,

(01:52:38):
sincere love. And when you do love somebody
that much, yeah, you'll do anything for them.
You won't. You won't shame them.
You won't back down, you won't run away when they're standing
there. You'll do everything.
It's a pretty interesting concept for the basis of a
military ethos, right? And it's very unique in the

(01:53:00):
entire history of the world, so that this is fascinating.
But the idea wasn't just all this group and who they would be
and their unusual formation and value system.
It was also from a logistical standpoint.
It's like these guys are going to stay at the cadmium Whenever
they're not at war, they're stationed in the Fort, so they

(01:53:21):
can't. But we can't lose the Fort so
easily. Next time we'll have our best
guys. And they would also be state
sponsored. That's the other thing is these
guys are training all the time. They're like Knights or they're
like the Jason's mercenaries. They're training constantly.
There's no going to handle theirfields.
Other people are doing that for them.

(01:53:41):
They're working on training. They're athletics, spear work,
discipline, whatever you, whatever you need, whatever they
need to do. And this enables them to be on
display at all times in the city.
They can go and do their exercises in public and inspire
the youth to join. They can go out and parades like
we have military parades today. Sometimes they're kind of silly,

(01:54:02):
but sometimes they're inspiring.And you know when when the Army
is doing a good job, they're very inspiring.
And the Army had just done a great job here.
They just threw out Sparta. And this is the extent of that.
This is the extension of that. Rather, they're trying to build
on that wind. This is the the unit that forms
from that wind, that victory. That's their kind of the thing

(01:54:25):
that put the wind in their sailshere.
And it's kind of weird, the logistics of this group.
I've never seen any of this. I'm sure there's just endless
academic text that I'm not awareof because, I mean, people have
been writing about this forever.The Sacred Band has been very
popular in male gay culture for a long time for reasons that are
kind of obvious. There's lots of literature on

(01:54:48):
it. They've been inspired male
groups from centuries past up till now.
A little more on that later, butit's yeah, they're still to this
day held in high esteem in certain circles even though it's
been 2400 years. So.
But I have questions. Like for example, OK, so you got

(01:55:10):
paired lovers in the group and and as I said later, pretty soon
after this, they're going to be stationed next to each other.
At first they were kind of spread out, but now they're next
to each other. So what does that mean in terms
of like logistics? What happens if your lover is
injured? Are you just not in the army
that day? Do you both sit out for a while?

(01:55:31):
So that's kind of that seems like kind of a flaw.
Like one guy gets hurt and it actually takes two guys out,
even if it's only temper. And what if that guy is killed?
What if one of them is killed? Are you just out?
You don't have a lover anymore, so you can't be in the Sacred
Band. Maybe.
Maybe you find a new lover and then you're back in.
It's kind of hard to understand,but that might be how they
always have 300. They there's probably like a

(01:55:53):
maybe 100 guys in reserve that are currently partnerless or
their partners recovering, something like that.
Because otherwise it's kind of like, well, how do they manage
that, right? Like one guy gets, one guy's got
a bad ankle and like both of them have to sit out.
So some of this is probably not quite as strict as it sounds.
It probably had some exceptions where single guys are in there,

(01:56:14):
you know, like their lovers backat home injured, but they didn't
want both guys to sit out. For example, like Palopolis.
We're going to have a few cases of Palopolis fighting within the
Sacred Band. He's like always there.
You know, what is this? Is this?
Does he just have a lover that also never died, was always
there, never also never got hurt?
You know, was it hanging out by him at all times?
You know, I was like, or did he take new lovers every once in a

(01:56:35):
while? Or was it, you know, maybe,
maybe these guys did a little Polly thing where they have a
couple of lovers that way there's always one of them that
says to be available to stand next to them in the phalanx.
Yeah. It's kind of like, huh.
I wonder how they handled some of these things.
It it's not written about it all.
These are. This is pure guesswork on my
part. I don't have any firm answers
here. It just, it's I'm just very
curious. So with Athens wavering, Thebes

(01:57:00):
offered Sparta a deal. They're like, all right, we'll
rejoin your league. We'll we'll have peace.
Thebes and Sparta will not have any more war.
But you have to recognize our democratic government.
You don't rule us anymore. We're a democracy.
You guys can still be top dog inGreece, you know, under the
Persian King's peace. We'll live with that.

(01:57:22):
But we're a democracy again. And that's that's our terms now.
Spartan King Cleon brought us was like, like I said, he's a
bit of an Edmure Tully. He's not a nudist allows he's
not a Tywin. He's not a he's not nearly as
aggressive. He's like, all right, I'm of a
mind to let these negotiations play out.
Let's see what happens. Let's see where it goes.
In the meantime, Cleon Brodus had accidentally encountered

(01:57:45):
some of those prisoners that escaped that were let out by
Philetus and killed them all. So bad luck to them, they got
out of prison, they were freed, and then ran into a Spartan army
by accident anyway. So Cleon Brodus is very keen on
letting this play out. He doesn't want necessarily to
have war between Sparta and thieves either.

(01:58:07):
And this reveals the division within Sparta.
It Just Allow Us is obviously onthe aggressive side, but lots of
Spartans are even more conservative than he is.
In the terms of Sparta, the JustAllow Us is a progressive.
It sounds weird to say that, butin Spartan terms it's true.
Because a true Spartan conservative would not be

(01:58:28):
conquering outside of Sparta. They would not be extending
their influence like that. They would be keeping it tight
within their own culture and notbeing influenced by all these
others. Because you see what happens,
They get influenced by huge amounts of money a la Lysander.
We saw that last time. It throws off their the basis
for their culture. These, these sort of influences
come in and mess them up. And it did.

(01:58:49):
So while it just allows us pushing for all this, you have
people which Glenn brought us, maybe one of them, some of the E
Fours, some of the other power people in Sparta whose names we
don't have. They don't want, they are of a
mind to accept this deal and sayany sort of peace is good
because we don't want to be the police of Greece.
And so he's like, he's letting messages go back and forth.

(01:59:12):
Glenn Brodis is sitting there with his army sending messages
back and forth. Now in Westeros, as we know,
this would take a huge amount oftime even with Ravens, right?
But remember how close everything is here.
Like it's just like a couple of days going back and forth
between the Sparta Athens. So they could this happened
fairly quickly now. So Cleam Brodis was like, yeah,

(01:59:33):
let's see, we'll accept that. I I'm OK to accept that.
Let me see if the rest of Spartawill no, it just allow us.
His camp is too rooted in their ways.
He is not going to accept this. He's like, Nope, he makes very
unrealistic demand. There's no way this is going to
happen, which is he knows this he he's making the negotiations

(01:59:55):
fail to bring things back to war.
He says the only thing I'll accept is punishment of the coup
leaders and reinstatement of theoligarchy, which is obviously a
non starter. They're not going to do that.
So this is this is the, you know, I'm not going to negotiate
one O 1 via negotiating in a waythat means the negotiations will
end. So clean Brodus marched his

(02:00:17):
home, marched back home. After about two weeks,
negotiations failed, but nothingelse happened yet.
Thebes and Athens were still, you know, waiting.
They wanted to see what would happen next.
They wanted to see what it just allow us would do.
And they wanted to rebuild theirown strength.
They still they had things to doat home.

(02:00:37):
So like, yeah, any delay here isgood for us.
And it's winter. It just allows might have been
ready to attack, but he wasn't going to attack in winter.
Clean Brodis wasn't either. And if it just allows isn't
going to do it, then clean Brodis certainly isn't.
So winter they got at least waitthat out.
By spring, however, we're back to it.
OK, folks, we didn't get as far as I wanted to in this episode,

(02:01:00):
but that's all good. Fun is fun.
Story is story. We're not trying to rush through
this. I hope enough of you all are
enjoying this that we we're going to, it's going to be
worthwhile for us to keep doing it because I'm I'm very inclined
to keep the story going. Speak up if you are for or
against that. But if you even if you're
against it, y'all, we're still going to have lots of other
episodes. So we got plenty of other

(02:01:20):
content. If you're not into it and if you
are, definitely speak up. A lot of y'all already have.
It's very encouraging to me. I'm very into this topic and the
related ones, as you can probably tell from my enthusiasm
level. So I'd love to keep going.
I intend on keep going. Like I said, we got quite a bit
left. These characters are super
interesting to me. So we'll we'll reconvene in a
future date with the next group of next episode here.

(02:01:43):
And we'll have a few more Westeros episodes to close out
the year. I think the next one of these is
scheduled for December. But regardless, you can check
with us or check on our social media.
We always have our schedule hereand there.
And let's see a couple of closing thoughts.
I got to Scroll down to the bottom of this document because
I didn't get there on the natural course of things.

(02:02:03):
Here we talked about Palopolis and Epamanda, Epam, Anandis,
Jason Afiri, Cleombrodis, Datames.
We saw the deaths of Leontides, Archaeus and Philip and of
within the Garrison there, within the Spartan or the Theben

(02:02:23):
oligarchs. We still have a lot of
characters going. We got Artaxerxes, we got a just
allow us. We got Cabrios, the the Jaime
Lannister character. We got a Fikr tease and Farna
Bezos, who barely appeared in this episode, but there's still
a lot of them left. We got Tirabazos and Darius and
Parasatus, our Cersei. She's not done yet either.
What's Tirabazos going to do about having his, having a

(02:02:45):
Persian Princess offered to him?And then the king takes her back
and marries her himself. That can't be good, right?
So yeah, we got a lot more coming.
I'm excited to tell you about it.
Until then, you know what to do.But first actually let me say
some goodbyes. We have Carl Carsnark says I
love this stuff. The more geeky greeky stuff the

(02:03:06):
better I say. Dornish Dame says Loving these
UPS. Thanks y'all appreciate that.
I got to give you all the triviaanswer.
Who formed the sacred band? Were you paying close enough
attention to the guy who startedit all that I said?
Plato and Pamenes were involved,but the man given top credit.
Not Palopitas, not Epaminondas, not Mellon Gorgadas, Yes, the

(02:03:28):
cavalry commander who stood firmwhen Sparta tried to get him to
reveal the Tomb of Dersey, whichonly theben cavalry commanders
are given the location of. On behalf of Ashea, thanks
y'all. Our music was brought to you by
Joey Townsend, our video intro by Michael Klarfeld.
And if you want to check MichaelKlarfeld out, go to KLARADO

(02:03:51):
x.de. That's Clare dex.de.
You can buy his maps for yourself.
There's lots of them. They're so cool.
And while you're at it, encourage Michael to make more
because he's got some other onesunder in the on the on the way,
but they're kind of he's on a hiatus from working on it.
Every once in a while. He's you know, he's an artist,
you know, you get the you get the fire within you to work on

(02:04:11):
something. Well, he's got fire for other
projects right now. But if we could maybe one day
get him back to making these maps.
They're one of the best fan madethings that exist in the entire
Song of Ice and Fire fandoms. So yeah, let Michael know how
much you appreciate his maps. And on behalf of Ashea, I'm
Aziz. We'll see you next time, Valar
Rereadus.

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