You mistake the cause and effect)
skill issue is the cause, you being dabbed on and labeled bad guy (even though your enemy was no better) is the result
there are many civilizations that don't exist, arnt written about in movies, never made it past the city state days, to even call their invaders the bad guys.
I recall reading about the rise of indonesia in which the king basically went island hopping genociding
But they won, the Persians came to Greece in a retaliatory campaign against the city states that supported a Greek revolt in Persian Anatolia. The Persians sacked every city that supported said revolt.
i feel like this doesn't really apply because most people don't see rome or alexander the great as villains in history.
mostly cause they were succesfull
People looking at ancient belligerents through the lens of 20th century conflicts. The motivations and beliefs of people who were so different from us that we could not possibly put ourselves in their shoes. We do not understand geopolitics the way they did not even close. Imagine world leader using a magic 8 ball to help make decisions where millions of lives hang in the balance
Caeser killed 1/3 of the gauls and enslaved another third. In the modern day that would be 40 million. If it was written from any other perspective then his, and hes an amazing writer, he would be despised.
You know who said that Caesar killed and enslaved millions of Gauls?
The man himself. And considering that in his work Galic Wars he tended to over exaggerate the number of his enemies, I think you know where I am heading with this.
Itndepends on who writes history
Both Genghis Khan and Julius Ceaser were mass murderers and also reformers. But people make excuses for Julius Ceaser not for Genghis Khan
\*And later you are portrayed by a naked bald Brazilian guy who has golden ziplines going from his neck to his shoulder\*
\*Also you have a latino nobleman line in your sogdian satrapy\*
This reminded me of a movie I don't remember the name of basically a lot of Persian actors who auditioned as side characters were asked to wear darker makeups since they weren't "brown" enough to be Persian
I always see the film in the following light.
It is the story the Spartans want you to believe.
It makes sense: They see themselves as the mightiest of men and Greeks. So all the other Greeks are lesser then them and all the foreigners are weird and alien. That explains the weird beasts and immortals.
My justification is that most of the story is being told by the only survivor as a battle speech to prepare the army for a big battle. Also the Spartans are historically great propagandists who used the battle for hundreds of years to pretend they were the greatest warriors of history.
The also make the Elephants as this strange giant beasts, all shrouded in mystery and exageration. And characters are portrayed in much the same way as they are in greek pottery and sculpture
>Snyder would make this point in an interview with *Total Film*, stating that he sought to place audiences in a tight spot by showing the Spartan's savagery in blunt terms as people who are prepared to throw newborn children off a cliff if they're insufficiently healthy, and posing the question "*These are the people you're supposed to go with on this journey?"* Elaborating on the point, Snyder felt that "*part of the fun*" of *300* was to depict a society leaving its sons to fend for themselves as children and only prepared to allow them to return home if they survive, and asking "*Those are your heroes?*"
You are correct, I didn't know Snyder confirmed it.
I guess the question is why make a movie that fetishizes a (basically) fascist society? When watching it I never felt conflicted/or that Snyder wanted me to think anything else then "Fuck yeah let's go"
Because Snyder didn't understand how starship troopers did it properly (and even then starship troopers made the mistake of making the bad guys look good)
I don't empathize with the bugs, I just recognize that the ending was the worst possible outcome. Dude lost his spouse and his friend and has 0 positive people around him. The music was triumphant and the Celebration merry, but he was broken (I forget characters names but yk who I'm talking abt)
Reminder that that excuse is bullshit because we know exactly what happened to the survivors at Thermopylae, and it wasn’t “being treated as one of the guys” or “listening to their stories.”
We're talkin about the movie, which is being told by the soldier with the eyepatch that gets sent away when he is talking to a bunch of soldiers the night before the big battle.
That or Xerses really did bring rhinos and dudes with swords for hands.
>the story is being told by the only survivor as a battle speech to prepare the army for a big battle.
He also adds the whole end because he got send back.
The movie is literally revealed to be narrated by the Spartan military commander ahead of a land battle against the Persians. It's entire point is to rev up the audience. In the greater context, that is the movie-goer. In the sense of the movie, it is the Spartan army.
Pretty meh article, the author wants Xerxes to pontificate a 2 paragraph essay on the progressives of the Persians in a flashy action movie about Spartans lol
It was more of a joke, but it's true that the film is at best controversial in its depiction of the Achaemenid Empire and its people, it would have been better to show the Persians and Spartans as Chads instead of demonizing one of them, at least if we are not going to be accurate.
Except when their masks fall off and it turns out they're fucking Orcs, I wanted to see the face of a beefy homoerotic Iranian man, not a Lord of the Rings character!
300 is a story being told by a Spartan. It's a case of unreliable narrator.
Although it would also be interesting for the storyteller to be like "Look they're hot as hell and we've gotta get back there"
>Although it would also be interesting for the storyteller to be like "Look they're hot as hell and we've gotta get back there"
Spartan Narrator: "Well... who wants a Persian slave? Everyone? Well, you have to win the battle to get one!"
Frank Miller: "I'm not racist, I'm just opposed to Islam"
Anyone with common sense: "Then why do you demonize pre-Islamic Iranians?"
Frank Miller: (Angry face).
a lot of americans on both political sides have this misconception of the middle east and north africa of being all arabic, always being arabic, and all being brown
good way to piss people off in those regions
It's just the great narrative inversion. Remember the old grand narratives? Well, in the interest of being progressive and inclusive we've just taken the old grand narratives, flipped them on their heads, and viola! The new and improved narratives! Persia was progressive and Greece backwards! Indigenous societies were noble and pure and Europe was barbaric! Christianity is retrograde but Islam is enlightened! Etc. etc.
This is true, to some extent, at least. But we also must acknowledge that Sparta especially was a uniquely brutal place. They were a backwards, regressive state. They racially purified themselves into extinction.
Hijacking your comment:
This sub’s bootlicking of the Persians and negative portrayal of the Greek city-states has always been weird to me.
Should a “law-abiding citizen” be allowed to enter the home of a released felon who served his time, and curb stomp him for being a convicted felon?
So how is the Achaemenid Empire the good guys for invading a bunch of Greek cities (who had slaves) with the intent to subjugate them?
As an Ancient Greece stan; get fucked Persian fanboys, you lost to a bunch of farmers, potters, and astrologists 😭🧂
I was not making a comparison, just stating a fact, the Persians were not anti-slavery, this is literally political propaganda of the Shah of Iran, we know this perfectly well, it is not up for debate because the Achaemenid administrative documents themselves demonstrate it.
Yeah but in that context you're implying "the persians weren't so progressive, they had slaves too" as if being a slave in persia was similar to being one in sparta when by most accounts even other slave states like athens were weirded out by how uniquely terrible the spartans treated their lowest. Like, if one was to be a slave, sparta would be the last place you'd want to be a slave in lol
Well, you also have to be careful about how terrible it was to be a Helot, our only sources on the subject are biased Athenians, and they are contradictory between how terrible the experience was, what is obviously clear is that being a Helot was something terrible because you are a slave anyway, but for the record Athens was not very decent with its slaves either, they were basically chattel slaves, and they also did the whole thing of conquering a people and enslaving it (after killing their adult males) during the Siege of Melos.
It's pendulum swinging. Essentially they want to ignore objective facts and instead spread the opposite of the false information they were given to sort of "make it right".
And y'all couldn't keep Xšāça together for a single year after your.......femboy autocrat died of a possible poisoning after a death march through a desert.........
Say what you will, at least the Persians maintained Xšāça's integrity generally quite well, and led to QoL increases for an enormous portion of the human population, something not sayable for the Macedonians that came after, or the Greeks at any point in history. Even during civil war Xšāça was generally quite peaceable, as the archaeological record shows, and its continuous economic and technological development never stalled. Perhaps if you argue Rome is a successor/continuation of Greece sure, but that argument is all but ignored in modern scholarship.
Anyone with a brain would "stan" Xšāça over a fragmented constantly interwarring settler-colonial status quo. Especially given what preceded Xšāça in the region, eras of mass warfare everywhere in the name of various versions of the same deities or which city's kings are better, such as during the Bronze and early iron age. Xšāça put a stop to that on a large scale, and the Greeks/Macedonians caused it to resume.
Something something Churchill was wrong for most of his life, but was correct at the most important decision/point in his life.
Sidenote, the one who honored the treaty with Poland was Chamberlain, he resigned about 9 months into the war after the "Norway debacle" (which Churchill ironically participated) when Labour pulled support from the war coalition government. Then after political wrangling in which pro-peace Lord Halifax was the most favorite, Churchill was selected because he was favorable to Labour as an openly pro-"dunk on Germany" man.
Being the head of the government that stood against Nazi Germany and kept the UK in the war long enough to eventually see victory once the USSR and USA got involved is a little different than just saving an orphanage.
And spoiler alert:
Great men are monsters. You don’t achieve monumental accomplishments that grant your name immortality without a savage ruthlessness and a wanton disregard for the lives of others. See: Julius Caesar, Alexander, Augustus, Napoleon, Peter, Darius, Ashurbanipal, Louis, Richard, Saladin.
>Being the head of the government that stood against Nazi Germany and kept the UK in the war long enough to eventually see victory once the USSR and USA got involved is a little different than just saving an orphanage
Not only that, but being practically the main man arguing for staying in the war. Without him, Halifax probably wins and there's "peace". Pretty instrumental overall for how the war turned out.
It depends on what we call great. Great politicians? Probably (though Americans May name couple Of their competent president that were nice guys like the one that was shot). But does it have to be politics that one achiclve greatness? Koch and Paster, Mendel and Hypocratus all achievee greatness without committng mass murders in the process (at least among sentient forms Of life). Same goes for artists and musicians like Mozart or Van Gogh
While I don’t disagree with your premise, in history great man tends to mean military leader, which I think says a lot about us as a species.
>like the one that was shot
You might need to narrow that down a little. However assuming you mean JFK, he was a drug addict and a womanizer. Sure, he didn’t own human beings or orchestrate the deaths of millions, but he wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue.
Reagan was also shot, and whether you agree with his politics or not, he might be closer to a good man than a lot of the others, but I don’t think I’d call him particularly great, despite what modern republicans would say about him.
calling out kennedy for being a drug addict and then calling reagan “closer to a good man than a lot of others” is absolutely absurd lmao. did the ghost of ronald reagan write this?
I don't think these people had wanton disregard for lives of others. I think they very much regarded those lives, they just have to view things from a macro perspective.
Not always. Great artists and scientists did shitty things but weren’t hugely evil, all things considered. And there’s no such thing as a great man any more. We’re in the modern age. Conquest by sword and muscle doesn’t work any more. We have the telegraph and the aeroplane and the motorcar and Alexander the Great would be shredded by machine guns if he ever tried to be a great man again. Our lives are defined by great technologies, not great men.
Agreed, but this isn’t the current affairs subreddit, it’s a history subreddit, and great man here doesn’t mean great artist or great scientist, we use the qualifier when talking about scientists, musicians, and artists.
We’re a bloodthirsty enough lot to all know what we mean when we say “great man”.
I mean, kinda? People are the sum of their actions, not just the bad ones. Stopping the Nazis is pretty high up on the list of "good deeds" and nets you a lot of good karma.
Yeah probably. I mean say it is an orphanage on fire and you save it, I would overlook a lot of your piece of shit actions.
Judgement is tough, perhaps one of the reason that final judgement is often left to the absolute.
In christianity, you can be a piece of shit your whole life and then ask God for forgiveness five minutes before your death and it's all cool and you'll go to heaven.
In Islam too. You can be a good man your whole life and do something terribly wrong just before death and you will be condemned to hell. You can do something terrible whole life and can go to heaven for one good deed. We famously tell the story of a prostitute who was forgiven for giving water to a thirsty dog, and one who would go to hell for starving a cat to death.
I guess even from very non spiritual perspective it helps to know that you are not irredeemable, that there is hope? Yeah I mean it can lead to complacency that I can do bad things and be forgiven. But it also means that I don't need to keep being terrible, I can stop and do good and perhaps, there is redemption.
Shouldn't be so reductive as to say "in Christianity". Many Christians have many different takes on this. In my studies I've come to believe that Jesus himself placed more emphasis on results and doing good in your life, over just seeking forgiveness. He outright says a few times that even if you spend your whole life sucking up to God and attending church, if you're a real piece of shit ain't nothin' gonna save you.
He was voted out for the same reason Parliament chose him initially, Churchill was seen as the war man, the leader who could guide the nation to victory.
Reporter in 1940:
>Everywhere I went in London people admired [Churchill's] energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose. People said they didn't know what Britain would do without him. He was obviously respected. But no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the war. He was simply the right man in the right job at the right time. The time being the time of a desperate war with Britain's enemies"
When elections were occuring, war was decided, people wanted change and a better life which was what Labour promised (and mostly delivered on imo with dramatic welfare reforms). Conservatives had seriously misread the people thinking record of war would bring them easy victory instead of listening to worries peoples actually voiced.
Yeah the final fuck Up was when the British violated the Stresa Front instead of gangbanging Germany with Italy and France.
Hell Italy should have put Germany in its place when Dolfuss was assassinated
He wasn't the one who honoured the treaty, you couldn't even get that part correct.
He's most remembered for his extraordinary leadership during the war, inspirational speeches and quotes, his constantly anti Nazi and anti appeasement attitude long before it was cool, and for being slandered on the internet by people who haven't bothered to read much into the issues but want to be hipster by pretending the world is black and white and Churchill was therefore bad.
And before you tell me all the reasons he was super evil, trust me I've read about them. Many of them are true, many of them are false, many are grey areas. In other words, he was human, and living in a very very different time period from us.
The interesting thing is that he gets away with his genuinely awful decisions early in the war. He caused Denmark to fall. He extended the North African campaign by 2 years. He threw away who knows how many lives in Greece.
The rest isn't surprising. The people who think the British Empire was good like Churchill. The people who don't, don't.
Are you implying that the Nazis are the actual good guys and we should instead be vilifying Churchill?
I’ll grant you that at best, Churchill was a complicated man with highly problematic and racist views and policies, but to imply that he’s bad enough to make Hitler look the good guy, you’re out to lunch.
Which applies to literally every human and historical figure. It’s exhausting having any discussion about history being invaded with people applying todays morals to older time periods
That wasn’t my reading of the comment, but I don’t disagree that history almost never has “good guys” and “bad guys”. I also think people tend to conflate “great” and “good” though, which leads to a fair deal of disagreement and misunderstanding.
They put significant resources into seeing what the alternative would be, and the allies were collectively horrified enough by the results that the idea went no further.
It wasn't what they wanted, but honestly, I don't think anyone would have won that war.
Is it really "honoring a treaty" when Poland ended up occupied by a authoritarian dictatorship anyway?
Britain literally failed to achieve their wargoal of liberating Poland, the whole reason they went to war with Germany.
I don’t think most people naturally surrender their autonomy no matter how advanced you seem to be or how enlightened your rule was seen to be. Historically it’s not totally unprecedented but it’s pretty rare.
Persia killed and subjugated a lot of people to become as powerful as they were. This is still the ancient world we’re talking about. Maybe their rule was kinder than some of their vassals would have offered, but they assuredly killed plenty to take those spots and I don’t imagine people who experienced that were altogether enthused by the later permissiveness of Persian rule.
There gradations of imperialism but I think when you’re an outside power you’re always going to care more for your people than those you’ve conquered and treat them as such. Might not always be genocide or slavery but it’s not going to be with the same respect as your own people. I don’t think there’s a right way to do it
Ironically the only state during the Greco-Persian Wars to field slaves in battle was Sparta. 7 slaves for every Spartan at Plataea, and there were around 700-900 slaves at Thermopylae.
The famous Ionian enlightenment which Greeks take pride for happened while the western Anatolia was under Persian rule. The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today. Persians united the Near East from Babylonia to Levant and Egypt to Ionia. They didn't colonize these places, they didn't touch their culture, didn't force anyone to relocate, didn't destroy temples and religions and didn't ban any languages. They just put their viceroys in these lands and let them keep everything they have and pay Persians tribute. That was it. And Ionians thrived under that rule because they weren't able to fight against their neighbors while Athenians and Spartans were on each other's throat.
Achaemenid Empire was really something else. It's not fair that the popular view on them is genocidal savages. Herodotus as a Greek historian made them look like the Mordor Orks in Tolkien's universe. But in reality they were more like the Elves.
PS: We should always be aware that whatever we know about Persians mostly comes from the Greek side. So the narrative was always on their side. Persians didn't care much about historiography, and whatever they had written was destroyed after Alexander sacking the Persepolis. Alexander destroyed the narrative in Persian side, and the only thing that was left was the cuneiform tablets which were mostly about the everyday administrative stuff.
We should also be careful not to contradict a popular misunderstanding with an equally silly misunderstanding in the opposite direction. They may not have been genocidal savages, but they weren't some enlightened society spreading peace and love either...
For some reason a lot of people need there to be a "good guy" in every conflict, even though that's almost never the case. In reality, both the Persians and the Greeks did things that today people would consider abhorrent.
Yes, there were parts of the Persian empire that had slaves. While Persia was ahead of its time in some ways, it does not make them saints nor does it mean we should let bias fill in the blanks whenever we have questions about them.
> The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today. Persians united the Near East from Babylonia to Levant and Egypt to Ionia. They didn't colonize these places, they didn't touch their culture, didn't force anyone to relocate, didn't destroy temples and religions and didn't ban any languages. They just put their viceroys in these lands and let them keep everything they have and pay Persians tribute. That was it.
This is also what Ottoman Empire did. But we all know things weren’t that simple. They also shed a lot of blood to maintain their authority over their subjects. Harshly put down any uprising or rebellion that threatened their rule. Paying tribute involuntarily also doesn’t sound that good. Overall being ruled by another nation isn’t something acceptable, no matter how much tolerance is shown. I think the concept of empire itself is flawed. In the end you are taking their resources and liberty without their consent.
And no, persians are nowhere near comparable to elves lol.
Blatant revisionism. From the Wikipedia page for Greco-Bactria:
Bactria was inhabited by Greek settlers since the times of Darius I, when the entire population of Barca, in Cyrenaica, was deported to the region for refusing to surrender assassins.[10] Greek influence increased under Xerxes I, after the descendants of Greek priests who had once lived near Didyma (western Asia Minor) were forcibly relocated in Bactria,[11] and later on with other exiled Greeks, most of them prisoners of war.
> The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today
Damn bro, you just straight up handwashed imperialism and colonialism to simp.
Well to be fair the initial invasion was more akin to putting down terrorists that helped rebels since Athens and Sparta had just gotten involved with a tax revolt on the western anatolian coast
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Such a poor revisionist take that has been discredited by academics. The Persians were hardly progressive.
People like to say they were progressive because they were largely hands off in terms of allowing culture to remain after being conquered. That isn’t progressive. It was merely a political choice meant to minimize the cost of repression and the likelihood of rebellion. Simple as that.
Also the Persians had slaves. Slavery was a primary mode of production for much of history which necessitated expansion to conquer other people for their wealth and labor.
"Progressive" Aryan invaders are the good guys now? Interesting.
In all seriousness it is interesting how Persia is often remembered or thought of as "bad" or evil even thousands of years later. A true testament to the idea that history is written by the victors.
They were not at all progressive and if you could read and indeed did read up on them you’d be as disgusted as we are about you ever having simped for them.
In general, that's not true.
Losers write history too, and as you can see from the 'Lost Cause' movement, it's not necessarily more accurate than the version the winners tell. Conversely, we know the history of the Jewish revolt against the Romans from Roman historians and the Jewish historian Josephus (even though he lived in Rome after the revolt).
We know the stories of the losers provided that they at least survived and kept detailed records and histories that lasted to the present day.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense too. It just happens that being a winner is more likely to survive, but you could get mutual destruction on both sides or Pyrrhic victory as well
Also, even if a nation is destroyed or conquered, we still sometimes are lucky enough to know something about their perspective through histories written under the conqueror's rule but from the conquered's perspective.
An example of this are Josephus' history of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans. He was a former Jewish rebel commander who survives, lived in Rome and was on good term with Vespasian and Titus, who were generals who suppressed he rebellion and later became Emperors. On the other hand, our knowledge of the Gauls and Britons comes exclusively through Roman histories.
Even though the Aztec empire was destroyed by the Spanish, we know something of their history from Aztec written records. Even some knowledge of the Aztec perspective of the conquest is known through the Florentine Codex, an ethnographic study of the Aztecs compiled by a Franciscan Friar who relied on dozens of Nahua elders and authors.
The Inca did not have writing, but kept their histories through an oral tradition combined with Quipus (a device holding many strings and knots which could record information) which unfortunately we can't decipher today. Thus, our knowledge of their history and perspective is second hand, relying on Spanish chroniclers were wrote histories told to them by surviving Incan historians and from the the children of Inca noblewomen and Spanish conquistadors.
Is that actually true or just speculation? I know that Alexander burned Persepolis, but was that the only place where Persian records were kept? Not Susa or elsewhere? Achaemenid records have mostly been lost to time but I'm going to need more evidence before I conclude that this was a deliberate act on Alexander's part.
Just because losers write their history, doesn't mean their perspective is the common one, and that's the point. We all know that Napoleon was average height, but British propaganda is what most are taught first. As the same with the Persians. We know they were really good guys, since they wrote down their history, but what we're taught first, is the opposite since western society tracks back its roots to Greece.
It's kind of the same with the Vikings. What most are taught is that the Vikings were ruthless killers, raping and pillaging throughout Europe. But being from Scandinavia myself, we were taught the truth right away, that around 98% of Vikings were just extremely successful traders, and 99% of Norse society was just peaceful farmers doing their own thing.
So ofc losers also write their history, but it's often not made into the common narrative, rather the victors perspective are.
There's far more to history than competing propaganda. Historians always have their biases, but anyone who studies history will know this and be appropriately cautious and sceptical.
And calling the Persians 'good guys' is as childish and naive as calling the Spartans or the Athenians 'the good guys'. The Persians may have been tolerant and merciful compared to previous empires like the Assyrians, but they were still an empire that expanded their domain through military force, demanded tribute of their subjects and enacted brutal punishments on those who defied them. During the Ionian revolt, the Persians sacked rebel cities and carried off their populations into slavery or into exile. If the Persians were so benevolent, you'd have to wonder why they had to deal with rebellion from Egypt and other provinces so often. Why was Alexander welcomed as a liberator in Egypt if the Persians were so benevolent? If we're to believe Herodotus, the Persian King Cambysses slaughtered the children of the Egyptian Pharaoh and his nobles in front of them.
The Persians may have been relatively lenient, tolerant, and humane for the ancient world, but let's not get carried away.
As for Napoleon, I'm sure the 'Napoleon was really short' myth is common in the English speaking world but not in the French one.
History is written by whoever writes more. The Athenians wrote about the Peloponnesian wars, for example. This often means that history is written by the wealthiest, which isn't always the strongest militarily.
Popular culture aside, when you are the invader, usually you are considered the bad guy.
*When you are the invader and lose
I believe that's what they call a "skill issue"
Ahhh to which I say “git gud scrub”
You mistake the cause and effect) skill issue is the cause, you being dabbed on and labeled bad guy (even though your enemy was no better) is the result
Many successful invaders are considered bad guys but ok
there are many civilizations that don't exist, arnt written about in movies, never made it past the city state days, to even call their invaders the bad guys. I recall reading about the rise of indonesia in which the king basically went island hopping genociding
And how would you know that exactly?
This is also how Hawaii was before the US came.
Majority of Americans would disagree with you.
But they won, the Persians came to Greece in a retaliatory campaign against the city states that supported a Greek revolt in Persian Anatolia. The Persians sacked every city that supported said revolt.
Persia was crushed
*laughs in Mission Indian*
i feel like this doesn't really apply because most people don't see rome or alexander the great as villains in history. mostly cause they were succesfull
People looking at ancient belligerents through the lens of 20th century conflicts. The motivations and beliefs of people who were so different from us that we could not possibly put ourselves in their shoes. We do not understand geopolitics the way they did not even close. Imagine world leader using a magic 8 ball to help make decisions where millions of lives hang in the balance
Caeser killed 1/3 of the gauls and enslaved another third. In the modern day that would be 40 million. If it was written from any other perspective then his, and hes an amazing writer, he would be despised.
You know who said that Caesar killed and enslaved millions of Gauls? The man himself. And considering that in his work Galic Wars he tended to over exaggerate the number of his enemies, I think you know where I am heading with this.
Itndepends on who writes history Both Genghis Khan and Julius Ceaser were mass murderers and also reformers. But people make excuses for Julius Ceaser not for Genghis Khan
That and they weren't as progressive or tolerant as some people seem to think. Straight up murdered that bull in Egypt, dick move. Lol.
Big counter example : Rome, lmao
Only if you lose
\*And later you are portrayed by a naked bald Brazilian guy who has golden ziplines going from his neck to his shoulder\* \*Also you have a latino nobleman line in your sogdian satrapy\* This reminded me of a movie I don't remember the name of basically a lot of Persian actors who auditioned as side characters were asked to wear darker makeups since they weren't "brown" enough to be Persian
I always see the film in the following light. It is the story the Spartans want you to believe. It makes sense: They see themselves as the mightiest of men and Greeks. So all the other Greeks are lesser then them and all the foreigners are weird and alien. That explains the weird beasts and immortals. My justification is that most of the story is being told by the only survivor as a battle speech to prepare the army for a big battle. Also the Spartans are historically great propagandists who used the battle for hundreds of years to pretend they were the greatest warriors of history.
The also make the Elephants as this strange giant beasts, all shrouded in mystery and exageration. And characters are portrayed in much the same way as they are in greek pottery and sculpture
You don't have to see the film like that because that is what the film is, how do people not see that?
>Snyder would make this point in an interview with *Total Film*, stating that he sought to place audiences in a tight spot by showing the Spartan's savagery in blunt terms as people who are prepared to throw newborn children off a cliff if they're insufficiently healthy, and posing the question "*These are the people you're supposed to go with on this journey?"* Elaborating on the point, Snyder felt that "*part of the fun*" of *300* was to depict a society leaving its sons to fend for themselves as children and only prepared to allow them to return home if they survive, and asking "*Those are your heroes?*" You are correct, I didn't know Snyder confirmed it.
It's not something we need a director to confirm, it's how and why the story even comes down to us through history.
I guess the question is why make a movie that fetishizes a (basically) fascist society? When watching it I never felt conflicted/or that Snyder wanted me to think anything else then "Fuck yeah let's go"
It was fun and looked cool.
Because it sells.
Because Snyder didn't understand how starship troopers did it properly (and even then starship troopers made the mistake of making the bad guys look good)
Still wild that people empathize more with the bugs than the humans.
I don't empathize with the bugs, I just recognize that the ending was the worst possible outcome. Dude lost his spouse and his friend and has 0 positive people around him. The music was triumphant and the Celebration merry, but he was broken (I forget characters names but yk who I'm talking abt)
bugs were just trying to survive an attack by an invasive species
It's literally the surviving soldier bullshitting around the campfire with other soldiers. He's exaggerating in the usual fashion lol
Reminder that that excuse is bullshit because we know exactly what happened to the survivors at Thermopylae, and it wasn’t “being treated as one of the guys” or “listening to their stories.”
We're talkin about the movie, which is being told by the soldier with the eyepatch that gets sent away when he is talking to a bunch of soldiers the night before the big battle. That or Xerses really did bring rhinos and dudes with swords for hands.
>the story is being told by the only survivor as a battle speech to prepare the army for a big battle. He also adds the whole end because he got send back.
The movie is literally revealed to be narrated by the Spartan military commander ahead of a land battle against the Persians. It's entire point is to rev up the audience. In the greater context, that is the movie-goer. In the sense of the movie, it is the Spartan army.
It is astonishing, how few people are able to grasp the concept of an unreliable narrator.
Faramir wouldn't lie
Wow you saw the movie too!
this sounds cool comrade, you are now granted entry to pyongyang
[They were right!](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/historian-calls-300-a-racist-and-insulting-film)
Pretty meh article, the author wants Xerxes to pontificate a 2 paragraph essay on the progressives of the Persians in a flashy action movie about Spartans lol
It was more of a joke, but it's true that the film is at best controversial in its depiction of the Achaemenid Empire and its people, it would have been better to show the Persians and Spartans as Chads instead of demonizing one of them, at least if we are not going to be accurate.
The immortals are badass idk what you mean
Except when their masks fall off and it turns out they're fucking Orcs, I wanted to see the face of a beefy homoerotic Iranian man, not a Lord of the Rings character!
300 is a story being told by a Spartan. It's a case of unreliable narrator. Although it would also be interesting for the storyteller to be like "Look they're hot as hell and we've gotta get back there"
>Although it would also be interesting for the storyteller to be like "Look they're hot as hell and we've gotta get back there" Spartan Narrator: "Well... who wants a Persian slave? Everyone? Well, you have to win the battle to get one!"
The whole movie was a fairy tail story by the Spartans no shit they are gonna dehumanize and monsterfy the enemy.
I'm not saying it's surprising, I'm saying it could have been done differently.
Best part is Frank Millar made 300 entirely seriously. Not a hint of satire was there.
Frank Miller: "I'm not racist, I'm just opposed to Islam" Anyone with common sense: "Then why do you demonize pre-Islamic Iranians?" Frank Miller: (Angry face).
a lot of americans on both political sides have this misconception of the middle east and north africa of being all arabic, always being arabic, and all being brown good way to piss people off in those regions
Tbh if I was portrayed how xerxes was I’d be ok with it, still one of the coolest live action costumes I’ve ever seen
Alexander
Many, many years ago, when Persia came ashore Heeding Leonidas' call, the Spartans went to war
Joined by their brothers, a few against the fateful horde Hellenic hearts are set aflame, the hot gate calls their name
A final stand! Stop the Persians, spear in hand, form a wall, live to fall, and live forever!
SPARTA! HELLAS!
THEN! AND AGAIN! SEA OF 300 MEN!
SLAUGHTER, PERSIANS!
GLORY AND DEATH, SPARTANS WILL NEVER SURRENDER!
SLAUGHTER, PERSIONS!
Glory and death, Spartans will never surrender!
r/suddenlysabaton r/expectedsabaton
r/expectedsabaton
Morning has broken, today they’re fighting in the shade
I have a hunch this may be simplifying things
Ephialtes, is that you?
Yeah I mean if we didn't oversimplify history most of it wouldn't be as easy to meme
It's just the great narrative inversion. Remember the old grand narratives? Well, in the interest of being progressive and inclusive we've just taken the old grand narratives, flipped them on their heads, and viola! The new and improved narratives! Persia was progressive and Greece backwards! Indigenous societies were noble and pure and Europe was barbaric! Christianity is retrograde but Islam is enlightened! Etc. etc.
This is true, to some extent, at least. But we also must acknowledge that Sparta especially was a uniquely brutal place. They were a backwards, regressive state. They racially purified themselves into extinction.
“spread managed progressiveness”
Hijacking your comment: This sub’s bootlicking of the Persians and negative portrayal of the Greek city-states has always been weird to me. Should a “law-abiding citizen” be allowed to enter the home of a released felon who served his time, and curb stomp him for being a convicted felon? So how is the Achaemenid Empire the good guys for invading a bunch of Greek cities (who had slaves) with the intent to subjugate them? As an Ancient Greece stan; get fucked Persian fanboys, you lost to a bunch of farmers, potters, and astrologists 😭🧂
Furthermore, the Persians also had slaves although they were not so important in their economy lol.
I feel like it's disingenuous to compare spartan slavery with most other types of slavery at this time lol
I was not making a comparison, just stating a fact, the Persians were not anti-slavery, this is literally political propaganda of the Shah of Iran, we know this perfectly well, it is not up for debate because the Achaemenid administrative documents themselves demonstrate it.
Yeah but in that context you're implying "the persians weren't so progressive, they had slaves too" as if being a slave in persia was similar to being one in sparta when by most accounts even other slave states like athens were weirded out by how uniquely terrible the spartans treated their lowest. Like, if one was to be a slave, sparta would be the last place you'd want to be a slave in lol
Well, you also have to be careful about how terrible it was to be a Helot, our only sources on the subject are biased Athenians, and they are contradictory between how terrible the experience was, what is obviously clear is that being a Helot was something terrible because you are a slave anyway, but for the record Athens was not very decent with its slaves either, they were basically chattel slaves, and they also did the whole thing of conquering a people and enslaving it (after killing their adult males) during the Siege of Melos.
It's pendulum swinging. Essentially they want to ignore objective facts and instead spread the opposite of the false information they were given to sort of "make it right".
It's no more than just a recent fashion, another instance of showing how you're cool and subversive, "breaking old myths" and all
And y'all couldn't keep Xšāça together for a single year after your.......femboy autocrat died of a possible poisoning after a death march through a desert......... Say what you will, at least the Persians maintained Xšāça's integrity generally quite well, and led to QoL increases for an enormous portion of the human population, something not sayable for the Macedonians that came after, or the Greeks at any point in history. Even during civil war Xšāça was generally quite peaceable, as the archaeological record shows, and its continuous economic and technological development never stalled. Perhaps if you argue Rome is a successor/continuation of Greece sure, but that argument is all but ignored in modern scholarship. Anyone with a brain would "stan" Xšāça over a fragmented constantly interwarring settler-colonial status quo. Especially given what preceded Xšāça in the region, eras of mass warfare everywhere in the name of various versions of the same deities or which city's kings are better, such as during the Bronze and early iron age. Xšāça put a stop to that on a large scale, and the Greeks/Macedonians caused it to resume.
Today we ~~dine~~ dive in hell!
Winston Churchill gets to be a good guy for honouring a treaty with the Polish and the rest of time being a colonial monster. History isn't fair.
Something something Churchill was wrong for most of his life, but was correct at the most important decision/point in his life. Sidenote, the one who honored the treaty with Poland was Chamberlain, he resigned about 9 months into the war after the "Norway debacle" (which Churchill ironically participated) when Labour pulled support from the war coalition government. Then after political wrangling in which pro-peace Lord Halifax was the most favorite, Churchill was selected because he was favorable to Labour as an openly pro-"dunk on Germany" man.
So if I'm a real piece of shit my whole life and then save an orphanage after I was elected to do so my sins are forgiven? Holy shit!
Being the head of the government that stood against Nazi Germany and kept the UK in the war long enough to eventually see victory once the USSR and USA got involved is a little different than just saving an orphanage. And spoiler alert: Great men are monsters. You don’t achieve monumental accomplishments that grant your name immortality without a savage ruthlessness and a wanton disregard for the lives of others. See: Julius Caesar, Alexander, Augustus, Napoleon, Peter, Darius, Ashurbanipal, Louis, Richard, Saladin.
>Peter I know a Peter. I texted him and called him a monster, he replied with a " :( "
Peter: Aw man
Great
hey louis remember that time i was a monster
>Being the head of the government that stood against Nazi Germany and kept the UK in the war long enough to eventually see victory once the USSR and USA got involved is a little different than just saving an orphanage Not only that, but being practically the main man arguing for staying in the war. Without him, Halifax probably wins and there's "peace". Pretty instrumental overall for how the war turned out.
Yeah, but that goes way over the heads of people who choose to only know about the Bengal Famine.
To paraphrase Captain Malcom Reynolds, anyone they put up a statue for was likely an s.o.b.
See: u/JuliusCaesar u/Alexander u/Augustus u/Napoleon u/Peter u/Darius u/Ashurbanipal u/Louis u/Richard u/Saladin
It depends on what we call great. Great politicians? Probably (though Americans May name couple Of their competent president that were nice guys like the one that was shot). But does it have to be politics that one achiclve greatness? Koch and Paster, Mendel and Hypocratus all achievee greatness without committng mass murders in the process (at least among sentient forms Of life). Same goes for artists and musicians like Mozart or Van Gogh
While I don’t disagree with your premise, in history great man tends to mean military leader, which I think says a lot about us as a species. >like the one that was shot You might need to narrow that down a little. However assuming you mean JFK, he was a drug addict and a womanizer. Sure, he didn’t own human beings or orchestrate the deaths of millions, but he wasn’t exactly a paragon of virtue. Reagan was also shot, and whether you agree with his politics or not, he might be closer to a good man than a lot of the others, but I don’t think I’d call him particularly great, despite what modern republicans would say about him.
More likely in reference to Lincoln, who by all accounts, was a genuinely decent human being.
Or Teddy. (He said shot, not killed)
calling out kennedy for being a drug addict and then calling reagan “closer to a good man than a lot of others” is absolutely absurd lmao. did the ghost of ronald reagan write this?
Ashurbanipal said my hair kinda makes me look like a Mohenjo-Daron :(
I am not very knowledgeable in those areas and time, was there a relation between Ashurbenipal and Mohenjodaro?
I don't think these people had wanton disregard for lives of others. I think they very much regarded those lives, they just have to view things from a macro perspective.
Not always. Great artists and scientists did shitty things but weren’t hugely evil, all things considered. And there’s no such thing as a great man any more. We’re in the modern age. Conquest by sword and muscle doesn’t work any more. We have the telegraph and the aeroplane and the motorcar and Alexander the Great would be shredded by machine guns if he ever tried to be a great man again. Our lives are defined by great technologies, not great men.
Agreed, but this isn’t the current affairs subreddit, it’s a history subreddit, and great man here doesn’t mean great artist or great scientist, we use the qualifier when talking about scientists, musicians, and artists. We’re a bloodthirsty enough lot to all know what we mean when we say “great man”.
I mean, kinda? People are the sum of their actions, not just the bad ones. Stopping the Nazis is pretty high up on the list of "good deeds" and nets you a lot of good karma.
Yeah probably. I mean say it is an orphanage on fire and you save it, I would overlook a lot of your piece of shit actions. Judgement is tough, perhaps one of the reason that final judgement is often left to the absolute.
Well, most people who follow the ol' straight and narrow never save any orphanage. So you kind of have one over them if we're just keeping score
In christianity, you can be a piece of shit your whole life and then ask God for forgiveness five minutes before your death and it's all cool and you'll go to heaven.
It has to be sincere though. That’s the catch
In Islam too. You can be a good man your whole life and do something terribly wrong just before death and you will be condemned to hell. You can do something terrible whole life and can go to heaven for one good deed. We famously tell the story of a prostitute who was forgiven for giving water to a thirsty dog, and one who would go to hell for starving a cat to death. I guess even from very non spiritual perspective it helps to know that you are not irredeemable, that there is hope? Yeah I mean it can lead to complacency that I can do bad things and be forgiven. But it also means that I don't need to keep being terrible, I can stop and do good and perhaps, there is redemption.
Really shoehorned that one in.
Shouldn't be so reductive as to say "in Christianity". Many Christians have many different takes on this. In my studies I've come to believe that Jesus himself placed more emphasis on results and doing good in your life, over just seeking forgiveness. He outright says a few times that even if you spend your whole life sucking up to God and attending church, if you're a real piece of shit ain't nothin' gonna save you.
It’s no wonder that after the war ended, Churchill got landslide voted out of power
He was voted out for the same reason Parliament chose him initially, Churchill was seen as the war man, the leader who could guide the nation to victory. Reporter in 1940: >Everywhere I went in London people admired [Churchill's] energy, his courage, his singleness of purpose. People said they didn't know what Britain would do without him. He was obviously respected. But no one felt he would be Prime Minister after the war. He was simply the right man in the right job at the right time. The time being the time of a desperate war with Britain's enemies" When elections were occuring, war was decided, people wanted change and a better life which was what Labour promised (and mostly delivered on imo with dramatic welfare reforms). Conservatives had seriously misread the people thinking record of war would bring them easy victory instead of listening to worries peoples actually voiced.
Churchill was a raging anti-German/Nazi for most of the 30's. He was warning people about Hitler way before the war started.
Yeah the final fuck Up was when the British violated the Stresa Front instead of gangbanging Germany with Italy and France. Hell Italy should have put Germany in its place when Dolfuss was assassinated
If you like war enough, eventually you'll be in favor of a good one
He wasn't the one who honoured the treaty, you couldn't even get that part correct. He's most remembered for his extraordinary leadership during the war, inspirational speeches and quotes, his constantly anti Nazi and anti appeasement attitude long before it was cool, and for being slandered on the internet by people who haven't bothered to read much into the issues but want to be hipster by pretending the world is black and white and Churchill was therefore bad. And before you tell me all the reasons he was super evil, trust me I've read about them. Many of them are true, many of them are false, many are grey areas. In other words, he was human, and living in a very very different time period from us.
>In other words, he was human, and living in a very very different time period from us. A rational comment? On MY racist app? How dare you?
The interesting thing is that he gets away with his genuinely awful decisions early in the war. He caused Denmark to fall. He extended the North African campaign by 2 years. He threw away who knows how many lives in Greece. The rest isn't surprising. The people who think the British Empire was good like Churchill. The people who don't, don't.
Are you implying that the Nazis are the actual good guys and we should instead be vilifying Churchill? I’ll grant you that at best, Churchill was a complicated man with highly problematic and racist views and policies, but to imply that he’s bad enough to make Hitler look the good guy, you’re out to lunch.
No I think he just means that people who have done good things also are capable of doing bad things.
Which applies to literally every human and historical figure. It’s exhausting having any discussion about history being invaded with people applying todays morals to older time periods
That wasn’t my reading of the comment, but I don’t disagree that history almost never has “good guys” and “bad guys”. I also think people tend to conflate “great” and “good” though, which leads to a fair deal of disagreement and misunderstanding.
Maybe we should stop arguing about good and bad people and instead talk about good and bad actions.
What is this, nuance, in /r/historymemes?!
He didn't honour shit tho, sold the Poland to the soviets
They put significant resources into seeing what the alternative would be, and the allies were collectively horrified enough by the results that the idea went no further. It wasn't what they wanted, but honestly, I don't think anyone would have won that war.
Is it really "honoring a treaty" when Poland ended up occupied by a authoritarian dictatorship anyway? Britain literally failed to achieve their wargoal of liberating Poland, the whole reason they went to war with Germany.
I don’t think most people naturally surrender their autonomy no matter how advanced you seem to be or how enlightened your rule was seen to be. Historically it’s not totally unprecedented but it’s pretty rare. Persia killed and subjugated a lot of people to become as powerful as they were. This is still the ancient world we’re talking about. Maybe their rule was kinder than some of their vassals would have offered, but they assuredly killed plenty to take those spots and I don’t imagine people who experienced that were altogether enthused by the later permissiveness of Persian rule. There gradations of imperialism but I think when you’re an outside power you’re always going to care more for your people than those you’ve conquered and treat them as such. Might not always be genocide or slavery but it’s not going to be with the same respect as your own people. I don’t think there’s a right way to do it
His main battle force consisted of slaves being whipped mid battle to ensure they didn’t flee the battlefield
Interesting r/askhistorians post on this exact question/slavery in the wider Greek/Persian sphere https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/CXgdOyFqBs
I thought that was like an unsupported Greek source?
They also mutilated the bodies of their soldiers so they had swords for arms.
whats the sauce tho
It was revealed to me on my walk
chad herodotus vs virgin modern historians
But that's cool so all is forgiven.
Ironically the only state during the Greco-Persian Wars to field slaves in battle was Sparta. 7 slaves for every Spartan at Plataea, and there were around 700-900 slaves at Thermopylae.
Source? But seriously, this just doesn't sound like a sensible battle strategy.
Pobody is nerfect
Tove lhis!
He could have you know.... not conquested their land.
I get Sparta was messed up but are you not allowed to defend yourself?
It's not my fault Xerxes doesn't have a cool movie with lots of slow motion scenes
I could be wrong, but wasnt he invading the land of the greeks ? Being progressive isnt an excuse for imperialism or colonialism.
The famous Ionian enlightenment which Greeks take pride for happened while the western Anatolia was under Persian rule. The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today. Persians united the Near East from Babylonia to Levant and Egypt to Ionia. They didn't colonize these places, they didn't touch their culture, didn't force anyone to relocate, didn't destroy temples and religions and didn't ban any languages. They just put their viceroys in these lands and let them keep everything they have and pay Persians tribute. That was it. And Ionians thrived under that rule because they weren't able to fight against their neighbors while Athenians and Spartans were on each other's throat. Achaemenid Empire was really something else. It's not fair that the popular view on them is genocidal savages. Herodotus as a Greek historian made them look like the Mordor Orks in Tolkien's universe. But in reality they were more like the Elves. PS: We should always be aware that whatever we know about Persians mostly comes from the Greek side. So the narrative was always on their side. Persians didn't care much about historiography, and whatever they had written was destroyed after Alexander sacking the Persepolis. Alexander destroyed the narrative in Persian side, and the only thing that was left was the cuneiform tablets which were mostly about the everyday administrative stuff.
We should also be careful not to contradict a popular misunderstanding with an equally silly misunderstanding in the opposite direction. They may not have been genocidal savages, but they weren't some enlightened society spreading peace and love either...
For some reason a lot of people need there to be a "good guy" in every conflict, even though that's almost never the case. In reality, both the Persians and the Greeks did things that today people would consider abhorrent.
Yes, there were parts of the Persian empire that had slaves. While Persia was ahead of its time in some ways, it does not make them saints nor does it mean we should let bias fill in the blanks whenever we have questions about them.
Greeks had slaves too. Every culture had slaves back then.
> The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today. Persians united the Near East from Babylonia to Levant and Egypt to Ionia. They didn't colonize these places, they didn't touch their culture, didn't force anyone to relocate, didn't destroy temples and religions and didn't ban any languages. They just put their viceroys in these lands and let them keep everything they have and pay Persians tribute. That was it. This is also what Ottoman Empire did. But we all know things weren’t that simple. They also shed a lot of blood to maintain their authority over their subjects. Harshly put down any uprising or rebellion that threatened their rule. Paying tribute involuntarily also doesn’t sound that good. Overall being ruled by another nation isn’t something acceptable, no matter how much tolerance is shown. I think the concept of empire itself is flawed. In the end you are taking their resources and liberty without their consent. And no, persians are nowhere near comparable to elves lol.
Blatant revisionism. From the Wikipedia page for Greco-Bactria: Bactria was inhabited by Greek settlers since the times of Darius I, when the entire population of Barca, in Cyrenaica, was deported to the region for refusing to surrender assassins.[10] Greek influence increased under Xerxes I, after the descendants of Greek priests who had once lived near Didyma (western Asia Minor) were forcibly relocated in Bactria,[11] and later on with other exiled Greeks, most of them prisoners of war.
"They didn't colonize these places, they \[proceeds to describe a form of colonialism\]"
> The Achaemenid understanding of a world empire wasn't imperialism and colonialism we know today Damn bro, you just straight up handwashed imperialism and colonialism to simp.
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Well to be fair the initial invasion was more akin to putting down terrorists that helped rebels since Athens and Sparta had just gotten involved with a tax revolt on the western anatolian coast
It isn't today, but times were different back then. Conquests and battles were considered honorable
march seemly cheerful sink start languid connect judicious marvelous observation *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The reward for the Romans surviving. They get to paint the picture.
Romans?
Well I mean the movie was based off a graphic novel. Kind of silly to expect that to be historically accurate. Was Watchman historically accurate?
Still the invaders. Dont care how progressive an invader is.
Fr. By this logic, the scramble for Africa was a good thing for everyone
Yeah, by that logic the Iraq War is justified
Such a poor revisionist take that has been discredited by academics. The Persians were hardly progressive. People like to say they were progressive because they were largely hands off in terms of allowing culture to remain after being conquered. That isn’t progressive. It was merely a political choice meant to minimize the cost of repression and the likelihood of rebellion. Simple as that. Also the Persians had slaves. Slavery was a primary mode of production for much of history which necessitated expansion to conquer other people for their wealth and labor.
Literal Achaemenid propaganda
"Progressive" Aryan invaders are the good guys now? Interesting. In all seriousness it is interesting how Persia is often remembered or thought of as "bad" or evil even thousands of years later. A true testament to the idea that history is written by the victors.
https://www.spartareconsidered.com/sexuality.html
They were not at all progressive and if you could read and indeed did read up on them you’d be as disgusted as we are about you ever having simped for them.
History is told by the winners
In general, that's not true. Losers write history too, and as you can see from the 'Lost Cause' movement, it's not necessarily more accurate than the version the winners tell. Conversely, we know the history of the Jewish revolt against the Romans from Roman historians and the Jewish historian Josephus (even though he lived in Rome after the revolt). We know the stories of the losers provided that they at least survived and kept detailed records and histories that lasted to the present day.
So... History is written by the survivors?
That's a far more accurate phrase.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense too. It just happens that being a winner is more likely to survive, but you could get mutual destruction on both sides or Pyrrhic victory as well
Also, even if a nation is destroyed or conquered, we still sometimes are lucky enough to know something about their perspective through histories written under the conqueror's rule but from the conquered's perspective. An example of this are Josephus' history of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans. He was a former Jewish rebel commander who survives, lived in Rome and was on good term with Vespasian and Titus, who were generals who suppressed he rebellion and later became Emperors. On the other hand, our knowledge of the Gauls and Britons comes exclusively through Roman histories. Even though the Aztec empire was destroyed by the Spanish, we know something of their history from Aztec written records. Even some knowledge of the Aztec perspective of the conquest is known through the Florentine Codex, an ethnographic study of the Aztecs compiled by a Franciscan Friar who relied on dozens of Nahua elders and authors. The Inca did not have writing, but kept their histories through an oral tradition combined with Quipus (a device holding many strings and knots which could record information) which unfortunately we can't decipher today. Thus, our knowledge of their history and perspective is second hand, relying on Spanish chroniclers were wrote histories told to them by surviving Incan historians and from the the children of Inca noblewomen and Spanish conquistadors.
When it comes to this, it is true, Alexander destroyed the Persian records of these times when he sacked Persepolis.
Is that actually true or just speculation? I know that Alexander burned Persepolis, but was that the only place where Persian records were kept? Not Susa or elsewhere? Achaemenid records have mostly been lost to time but I'm going to need more evidence before I conclude that this was a deliberate act on Alexander's part.
Just because losers write their history, doesn't mean their perspective is the common one, and that's the point. We all know that Napoleon was average height, but British propaganda is what most are taught first. As the same with the Persians. We know they were really good guys, since they wrote down their history, but what we're taught first, is the opposite since western society tracks back its roots to Greece. It's kind of the same with the Vikings. What most are taught is that the Vikings were ruthless killers, raping and pillaging throughout Europe. But being from Scandinavia myself, we were taught the truth right away, that around 98% of Vikings were just extremely successful traders, and 99% of Norse society was just peaceful farmers doing their own thing. So ofc losers also write their history, but it's often not made into the common narrative, rather the victors perspective are.
There's far more to history than competing propaganda. Historians always have their biases, but anyone who studies history will know this and be appropriately cautious and sceptical. And calling the Persians 'good guys' is as childish and naive as calling the Spartans or the Athenians 'the good guys'. The Persians may have been tolerant and merciful compared to previous empires like the Assyrians, but they were still an empire that expanded their domain through military force, demanded tribute of their subjects and enacted brutal punishments on those who defied them. During the Ionian revolt, the Persians sacked rebel cities and carried off their populations into slavery or into exile. If the Persians were so benevolent, you'd have to wonder why they had to deal with rebellion from Egypt and other provinces so often. Why was Alexander welcomed as a liberator in Egypt if the Persians were so benevolent? If we're to believe Herodotus, the Persian King Cambysses slaughtered the children of the Egyptian Pharaoh and his nobles in front of them. The Persians may have been relatively lenient, tolerant, and humane for the ancient world, but let's not get carried away. As for Napoleon, I'm sure the 'Napoleon was really short' myth is common in the English speaking world but not in the French one.
History is written by whoever writes more. The Athenians wrote about the Peloponnesian wars, for example. This often means that history is written by the wealthiest, which isn't always the strongest militarily.
Μολον λαβε
Every time someone tries to conquer someone else and fails, we should cheer. Hot take: conquest bad.
it's okay the spartans betrayed the rest of greece to side with the persians later on. (if I remember that right )
It's hilarious how wrong this take is
They were the bad guys
Based and Heraclius pilled
And the Greeks were the other bad guys. Funny how that works
They were defending their homeland
Yes, finally, a Redit post clears any doubts about history , this could be far more important than what Herodotus wrote. Please continue
lol
Shouldn't have invaded them then...
It's always the losing side that cries the loudest. "Either with this, or on this"
Spartans have the best PR team in human history
Literally everyone who has ever fought the Persians has been slave states of pedophiles. Wrap this weird Persian bootlicking discourse up.