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00:00490 BC, 18 years after the founding of democracy, a lone figure runs across the mountainous terrain
00:13of Greece. His name is Pheidippides and he is a citizen of Athens. On this day Pheidippides will
00:26make one of the most astonishing athletic achievements in history, the inspiration for our modern marathon.
00:42But Pheidippides' quest is not for glory, but survival. His homeland is about to be conquered
00:49by the mighty Persian Empire.
00:59In the early 5th century BC, the Persians were the greatest power on the world stage.
01:11Their vast empire stretched from India in the east to Turkey in the west. Now, out on their
01:23western frontier, the tiny state of democratic Athens was gaining power. This was a threat
01:31that the Persians would have to destroy. The Persians lived in a culture of unbending tyranny.
01:41At the head of their empire sat Darius, known to the Greeks only as the Great King.
01:49Suppliants had to cover their mouths in his presence just to avoid tainting the air he breathed.
01:59For Pheidippides and the democratic Athenians, conquest by Darius and the Persians would mean
02:05the destruction of their entire way of life.
02:09There is a huge cultural difference between the Greeks and the Persians.
02:13The Greeks are a people who emphasize freedom. The Persians would put far more emphasis on
02:21obedience. It's a struggle between freedom and slavery.
02:33The Persian force landed at a sandy bay called Marathon, just 26 miles from Athens.
02:41News of the invasion spread through the streets like wildfire.
02:47This was a city without a standing army.
02:53Every male citizen would have to come to the defense of his state.
02:59The poorer citizens have spears, sticks, bows and arrows, whatever weapons they can find.
03:07But the heart of the Athenian force would be the hoplites.
03:13Men who could afford heavy bronze armor, a shield, a spear, a sword.
03:19The Athenians would field a small but determined force.
03:25That's probably the first time in the history of the Athenian state that the entire population had been mustered.
03:31And for them to field 10,000 hoplites out of a citizenry that might have only been 20 or 30,000,
03:39it's a level of involvement that's astounding.
03:42But as they faced the Persians on the battlefield,
03:45the Athenians held out little hope of victory.
03:49They were outnumbered by two to one.
03:52Phaedipides' desperate mission was to run for help from one of Athens' local rivals,
04:06the Greek state of Sparta.
04:16Even as he ran, Phaedipides must have imagined the horror that his fellow Athenians now faced.
04:22You're dodging spears from your men in front and your men in behind.
04:40You probably couldn't see or hear.
04:42All you would feel would be pressure.
04:45You wouldn't see the sword plunge that took one of your testicles off.
04:57You would not see the spear thrust that took your head off.
05:01You would have no idea what was going on, just the momentum that carried you ahead.
05:09All you would be aware of is that you had to push forward and keep stabbing and keep on your feet.
05:15And you would hope that everybody else would do that.
05:27Phaedipides' run was to become the stuff of legend.
05:33Fired by the terror that his fellow citizens were being slaughtered.
05:40He ran 140 miles in just two days.
05:45But Phaedipides' quest would end in failure.
05:57Help would be refused.
06:03He was left only with the knowledge that his fellow Athenians would have to fight alone.
06:07Phaedipides could never have imagined that the Greeks would, in fact, win a glorious victory.
06:29The Athenians had rushed at their foe in a headlong charge.
06:41And the Persians had scattered in the face of their assault.
06:52The Athenians slaughtered over 6,000 Persians in one fateful day.
07:00The world's first democracy had survived its first great test.
07:07Every Athenian knew that he had voted to fight and that this reflected the majority vote of the citizens.
07:14And that was not true of the Persians.
07:18Whatever you want to say about democracy, it fields the most patriotic, enthusiastic and often large armies.
07:24The Athenians returned to their city to celebrate their victory.
07:31But amongst them was one for whom the war with Persia had only just begun.
07:49An Athenian general named Themistatles.
08:02Themistatles had fought on the battlefield at Marathon.
08:05He was typical of a new generation of Athenian leaders, a man who had risen to power through democracy.
08:20Themistatles is a fascinating character, very much an example of the effect of democracy in Athens.
08:30It's relatively clear that he doesn't come from the inner circle of the landed aristocracy that traditionally had ruled in Athens.
08:38There were stories told about his feeling rather touchy about the fact that he hadn't had a traditional aristocratic upbringing, for example, in music and poetry.
08:50In fact, I might have given him a spur to show that he could do as well as someone who had gone to all the right schools, as it were.
09:04Themistatles' opinion of his common origins was blunt and straightforward.
09:08I may not know how to play the lyre or flute, but I do know how to make a city great.
09:18Themistatles had learned the skills of leadership here, the Democratic Assembly of Athens.
09:27From this very podium, Themistatles would now show himself to be one of history's greatest leaders.
09:32The savior of his city.
09:42For Themistatles alone recognized that the Persians might still be a danger.
09:47And that next time, victory for the Athenians might not prove so easy.
09:55Themistatles realized that the Persians, if they came again,
09:58it would be in a way that made sure that they weren't going to be defeated by land again.
10:04There was no way that the Athenians could rely on traditional uplight fighting technique.
10:11Themistatles began to form a bold new strategy,
10:15employing the most advanced weapon of the day.
10:21The trireme.
10:28Triremes were the state of the art in ancient shipbuilding.
10:41Stacking 170 oarsmen on three levels,
10:45their combination of light weight and raw power gave them astonishing speed and maneuverability.
10:51In contemporary terms, a trireme is a missile.
11:01The object of a trireme is to ram the enemy ship.
11:06It is a very narrow, very light, very sleek and very fast weapon.
11:12But these triremes were also exceedingly expensive.
11:19Themistatles' vision of a vast Athenian navy might never have come to pass if it had not been for one stroke of luck.
11:26In the year 483 BC, the Athenians discovered a great vein of silver in their territory.
11:45Worth a hundred talents, a vast amount in the ancient world.
11:48The Athenians wanted to divide these newfound riches among themselves.
12:03But then Themistatles stood up in the assembly.
12:06He wanted to spend the money on ships.
12:09But he also knew that this would be a hard proposal to sell.
12:14And so Themistatles played a complex bluff.
12:20His argument is not that the money should be used to build a fleet against Persia,
12:26but rather it should be used to build a fleet against Athens' local rival,
12:31the Greek city-state of Aegina.
12:34The reason Themistatles does this is that he knew it would simply be too upsetting
12:39to remind people of the Persian threat.
12:43It's a difficult argument to make and a tribute to his political skill that he's able to do it.
12:54Themistatles convinced the Athenians to build the greatest naval force in Greece,
13:00a force of 200 triremes.
13:02And not a moment too soon.
13:10The great Persian king Darius died in 486 BC.
13:15And his son Xerxes assumed his father's throne.
13:21Xerxes first action was to vow vengeance for his father's defeat at the hands of the Athenians.
13:28On my father's behalf, and on behalf of all my subjects, I will not rest until I have taken Athens and burnt it to the ground.
13:42As an imperial power, the Persians cannot allow small regional states like this to beat them with impunity.
14:06Xerxes began to gather his forces.
14:08He conscripted troops from every corner of his empire.
14:15Arabians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, as well as Persians.
14:20Rumors began to leak back to Athens.
14:24That Xerxes' army numbered nearly two million men.
14:28That it was the greatest force the world had ever seen.
14:31That soon it would be ready to march.
14:33And then finally, in the spring of 480 BC, news reached Athens.
14:46The Persian army had set out for Greece.
14:49History records that Xerxes' troops drank rivers dry.
15:04Trampled fields to the raw earth.
15:08Ravaging the land as they marched on towards Greece.
15:11Xerxes was confident of victory.
15:12We shall so extend the empire of Persia that its boundaries will be God's own sky.
15:24So that the sun will not look on any land that is not ours.
15:29When the Greeks realized that the Persians were invading again, terror gripped the whole country.
15:39For the Athenians, who knew that they would be Xerxes' first target, it seemed that this could only be the end.
15:45As panic gripped the city, they turned desperately to their gods.
15:55They sent a messenger to the oracle to find out their fate.
15:58Here, high in the Greek mountains, can still be found the site of Delphi, the most famous of the Greek oracles.
16:20Built around a vast chasm in the mountain from which a sacred spring still flows.
16:31Here, the Greeks would come to discover their future.
16:39They would ask questions of the Pythia, the mysterious priestess who spoke with the voice of the god Apollo.
16:50People came from all over the Greek world to consult Delphi, and sometimes came from outside the Greek world as well.
16:59It was considered to be the center of the universe.
17:03The omphalos, the navel stone, of the whole world was at Delphi.
17:08People asked questions about their private life, which are just the sorts of questions people want answers to now.
17:14Archaeologists have discovered copies of the questions asked of these ancient oracles.
17:23Has Aristos stolen the wool from the mattress?
17:28Hermione asks, what should I do to have useful children?
17:32But as the Athenians walked up this path two and a half thousand years ago, their question was simple and grave.
17:44What could they do to save themselves?
17:46The oracle's response could not have been more negative.
17:56Why sit you, doomed ones, fly to the ends of the earth?
18:01All is ruin, for fire and the headlong god of war shall bring you low.
18:07When this message came back to Athens, the democratic assembly dissolved into uproar.
18:17It seemed that even the gods had deserted them.
18:24But Themistocles refused to panic.
18:27He had spent every day since the Battle of Marathon waiting for this moment.
18:32He sent the envoys back to Delphi for a second prophecy.
18:43Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all-seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail.
18:56Argument raged as to what this wooden wall could be.
18:58Some said it meant the stronghold at the center of Athens, the Acropolis.
19:04But Themistocles had a different idea.
19:10He read the oracle and he insisted that it had a different interpretation.
19:17He said, the ships are the wooden barricade which are going to be the key to our success.
19:22Themistocles' plan was daring.
19:27Avoid a conflict on land and fight the Persians at sea.
19:33He ordered the evacuation of Athens for the first time in her history.
19:43This order for evacuation, carved into a stone tablet for public display, is still preserved.
19:54Discovered in the back of a Greek coffee house.
19:56The Athenians shall send their children and wives to the village of Troisen.
20:04All the men should embark on the 200 ships that have been prepared to fight the barbarian.
20:12Themistocles ordered that his fleet of triremes should gather at Salamis, a tiny island off the Athenian coast.
20:19Themistocles' strategy is remarkable not only because it is innovative and because it is bold,
20:27but because it requires extraordinary self-sacrifice on the part of the Athenian people.
20:32He wants every man, woman and child to leave their homes and possessions and to go into exile.
20:38With Athens abandoned, Xerxes' mighty force entered the city.
20:56The Persians march in and go up onto the Athenian Acropolis, the symbol of Athens.
21:09And they burn it.
21:17They burn the temples to the ground.
21:20Then you can see the smoke rising from Salamis.
21:26This would have been a devastating sight and a humiliating one.
21:30They would, in short, have seen their country occupied by a fearsome foreign invader.
21:35Surely they would have wondered if they would ever be able to go home again.
21:42As night fell, Themistocles met the leaders of the other Greek city-states on the island of Salamis.
21:59They had also assembled their much smaller fleets here.
22:07Their scouts had reported back.
22:10The Persians now not only held Athens, but had also gathered a mighty fleet four times the size of the Greek forces.
22:17But Themistocles' plans were laid.
22:27Themistocles sticks to his guns and his plan is to defeat the Persians at sea.
22:35He wants to fight in this narrow body of water between the island of Salamis and the Athenian mainland.
22:46The trick is going to be to get the enemy to fight there, because the Persians aren't stupid.
22:51Themistocles sent his servant to Xerxes with a seemingly traitorous message.
23:00The Greeks are afraid and are planning to slip away.
23:07They're squabbling with each other and will offer no opposition.
23:11You have at this moment an opportunity of unparalleled success.
23:15So eager was Xerxes for a crushing victory, he was happy to believe Themistocles' ploy.
23:25Xerxes marshals his admirals and they embark and they spend the night rowing.
23:34They send a contingent along the eastern defile, the strait there.
23:39They try to block up the straits.
23:45Only as the dawn rose did the Persians realize the true nature of Themistocles' plan.
23:59They discovered the Greeks not in disarray,
24:02but ranged in a battle line across the narrows in front of them.
24:05The Persian fleet had been lured so far up the straits that it had no room to manoeuvre.
24:16The powerful Greek triremes bore down on them without mercy.
24:20The Greek playwright Aeschylus fought in the battle and lived to tell the tale.
24:31We heard from every part this voice of exhortation.
24:36Advance ye sons of Greece, from slavery save your country, save your wives, your children save.
24:42This day the common cause of all demands your valour.
24:49The Greek forces smashed into the cornered Persian fleet.
24:52Xerxes himself watched the carnage from his golden throne placed on the shore.
25:14At the end of the battle, the Persians had lost 200 ships.
25:40For the Greeks, it was a stunning and conclusive victory.
25:47Victory at Salamis is tremendously important for Greece and for the Athenians.
25:54It breaks the Persian navy.
25:57The Persians can no longer guarantee that they can feed their army,
26:01nor can they guarantee the safety of the Persian king.
26:04They must immediately get back to Asia Minor while the going is good.
26:11In practical terms, the game is over and the Greeks have won.
26:19Themistatles' triumph was complete.
26:22He had persuaded the Athenians to build a navy.
26:24He had convinced them to sacrifice their entire city to bring them victory at sea.
26:35His instincts had been proved right.
26:38He had defeated the greatest empire of the day.
26:41And he had now placed Athens in a position where she could build an empire of her own.
27:02After the years of conflict, this was a new dawn for Athens.
27:06The Athenians are going to have naval superiority in the eastern Mediterranean.
27:13And that is how great their victory over the Persian fleet is.
27:20And this has a momentum of its own.
27:23Before you know it, the Athenians are the head of a naval confederacy.
27:28And they're on the road to becoming a superpower.
27:31The Athenians founded the Delian League.
27:45An alliance of Greek states designed to keep the Persians in check.
27:52Its treasury was located here, on the island of Delos,
27:55but the ruins still remain.
28:05By 450 BC, this league had more than 200 member states.
28:10But Athens was the undisputed leader.
28:13The Delian League had become Athens' empire in all but name.
28:16And Athens' naval supremacy also gave her economic power.
28:36She became a city at the center of a vast trading network.
28:40Goods from all over the Mediterranean flooded into her harbors.
28:52In its heyday, Athens was the big apple, or, if you will, the big olive,
28:58of the eastern Mediterranean.
29:00Constant coming and going of traders.
29:05The wharves would be busy, full of people in a cacophony of language.
29:12One contemporary author gave an account of the diversity of goods in the Athenian marketplace.
29:24From Cyrenia, ox hides.
29:28From the Hellespont, mackerel and all kinds of salted fish.
29:31Libya provides abundant ivory.
29:35Pagasse provides tattooed slaves.
29:38Carthage, rugs, and many colored cushions.
29:45The Athenian Empire was unprecedented in the degree of prosperity that came to it
29:51because of its role as a center of trade.
29:53The Athenians had access to a quality of life that probably no Greek had ever had before.
30:00Athens' rise to economic and political supremacy occurred at lightning speed.
30:20After the Battle of Salamis, she became the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean
30:27in less than a generation.
30:34And at the city's heart still lay her unique system of government, democracy.
30:42The system of voting using pebbles, olive leaves, or the show of hands
30:47that decided every aspect of the city's government.
30:49democracy gave the Athenians a great advantage of unleashing talents, powers, opportunities
31:04that other cultures simply cannot match.
31:09The Athenians keenly protected their democracy from any threat, foreign or domestic.
31:19the Athenians.
31:21Once a year, each citizen could scratch the name of an individual onto a shard of pottery,
31:26known as an ostraca,
31:29and place it into a pot in the assembly.
31:34The person whose name came up most would then be ostracized, banished from the city.
31:41This was the Athenians' method of protecting their government,
31:48expelling any person they felt might become too powerful.
31:55But Athenian democracy could turn on any citizen, even its greatest war hero.
32:01Themistocles now found himself under attack.
32:12The threat was gone now.
32:14His raison d'etre has been taken away.
32:16This is something he can't understand.
32:19Themistocles reacts, perhaps in an uncharacteristically crude way.
32:24He reminded the Athenian voters of what they owed him.
32:27Voters don't want to be reminded in any period of what they owe to their politicians.
32:32They want to be told what their politicians can do for them.
32:36The Athenian people turned on the aging politician.
32:40Calculated, cruel, but deeply democratic.
32:44They ostracized the man who had led them to their greatest victory.
32:49Themistocles was ostracized, I believe, because he was simply regarded as having gotten too big for his boats.
33:05Some of the ostraca with Themistocles' name still inscribed upon them have been found, hidden down an ancient well.
33:16Archaeologists believe that these had been pre-prepared by Themistocles' enemies.
33:23To be handed out to Athenian voters who couldn't write.
33:39Themistocles never recovered from this humiliation.
33:41He was to spend the rest of his years wandering from state to state, finally dying in exile in Persia.
33:50The country whose defeat had been his greatest triumph.
33:53The Athenians were now looking for a leader who might fulfill their new found sense of imperial glory.
34:16They found a man who seemed the perfect reflection of this new ideal.
34:23A man who would change the face of Athens forever.
34:29A man named Pericles.
34:36He's probably not a more important figure in the history of classical Greece than Pericles.
34:43He was the leader of Athens at the height of its power and of its artistic achievement.
34:49He was the figure associated appropriately with bringing Athenian democracy to its climax, to its height.
35:00But Pericles was no obvious democrat like Themistocles, for he had been born into one of Athens' most elite families.
35:07And perhaps because of his aristocratic origins, Pericles knew what the people of Athens now wanted.
35:19A city fit to rule an empire.
35:22It seems clear that Pericles had in mind to create a city whose greatness would be admired by the people who live there, by everybody else in the Greek world, well into the future.
35:39Pericles announced a glorious new vision to the Athenian assembly.
35:52All kinds of enterprises should be created which will provide inspiration for every art, find employment for every hand.
36:02We must devote ourselves to acquiring things that will be the source of everlasting fame.
36:08Pericles turned his attention to the Acropolis, the sheer peak in the centre of Athens, home of the city's patron goddess, Athena.
36:2120 years earlier, the Persians had burnt down the temples that stood here.
36:36Ever since, the Athenians had left these ruins untouched, as a memorial to those killed in the war.
36:42But Pericles had other ideas.
36:53He proposed a massive reconstruction plan.
36:57At its centre would be a new Parthenon, a temple to Athena.
37:02And it would be one of the most astonishing buildings of the ancient world.
37:12This new construction program was of unprecedented magnitude and expense.
37:30The Parthenon, in particular, was extraordinarily expensive.
37:35It was filled with all sorts of architectural refinements.
37:38Pericles planned to spend over 5,000 talents in the first year alone.
37:46A total budget of more than a billion dollars in today's terms.
37:53This project would require 20,000 tons of marble.
37:57The Athenian quarries at Mount Pentelicus, just outside the city, resounded as hundreds of workmen traced out and carved great blocks of marble from the mountain.
38:17This temple would be decorated like none before.
38:20Sculptors and craftsmen were gathered from all over the Greek world.
38:28With them stood Pericles, for he treated the building of the Parthenon as his own personal project.
38:37He selected architects, he selected the men who designed the plans.
38:43Pericles was directly involved in the planning process.
38:47Some protested that he was decking out the city like a prostitute.
38:53But when the building was completed in only 15 years,
38:58his critics were silenced.
39:02The Parthenon was, and still is, the most glorious symbol of Athen's empire.
39:05The Parthenon was, and still is, the most glorious symbol of Athen's empire.
39:22Here was the spiritual heart of the city, the mark of her wealth, power, and artistic genius.
39:34When you first came through the door, you'd have been just stunned.
39:46You'd have been confronted immediately by an enormous 40-foot-high statue of Athena in gold and ivory and studded with jewels.
39:56I think the impression of a statue of that size and with that kind of dressing must have been truly overwhelming.
40:10Pericles had embellished his temple like no other.
40:28Though this astonishing statue has since been lost to history, other treasures from the Parthenon have survived for over 2,000 years.
40:40The most famous is the Parthenon Frieze,
40:54a 500-foot-long stretch of carved marble which ran around the inner wall of the temple.
41:01The Parthenon Frieze is only two and a half inches thick at its maximum depth.
41:15And yet, in this space, the sculptors carved rank upon rank of crowded figures,
41:21a great procession of Athenians, glorious and elegant.
41:27Here, Pericles offered his fellow citizens a vision of themselves and their democratic state at the height of their glory.
41:36Democracy itself becomes heroised in that monument.
41:40It's a very democratic thing that wants to include all those citizens who participated in beating off the first great threat to democracy,
41:50which was from the Persians.
41:53These are ideals to which you can aspire.
41:56The monuments that Pericles built for his fellow Athenians still stand on the peak of the Acropolis.
42:13They remain the most striking legacy of classical Athens,
42:18an enduring testament to the achievements of the world's first democracy.
42:33But Pericles was not simply concerned with astonishing construction projects.
42:37Pericles.
42:38Under his leadership, Athens would also become the intellectual centre of the ancient world.
42:46Pericles was remarkable in that he associated with the leading minds of his day in just about every field of endeavour.
42:58In these years, Pericles played host to an astonishing generation of individuals.
43:05Figures such as Anaxagoras, the first man to realise that the moon was lit by reflected sunlight.
43:12He knew Herodotus, the world's first historian, who wrote one of the earliest records of Greek life.
43:19And poets and authors such as Aeschylus and Euripides, whose works are still standards of world literature.
43:26Pericles was well aware of his city's stature.
43:30Our whole city is an education.
43:34For our citizens excel all men in versatility, resourcefulness and brilliance.
43:43Even Pericles' partner, a woman named Aspasia, was unique and distinguished.
43:51Pericles had divorced his wife and set up home with a foreign woman.
43:55A woman whose occupation was hardly to be expected.
43:58For Aspasia was what was known as a hetaira, Greek for a companion.
44:06Yes, she was in a technical sense, I guess, a prostitute.
44:09But she was more than that.
44:11A woman of charm, of style, of intellect.
44:16She really was very extraordinary.
44:18She had an extraordinary mind.
44:21This relationship caused scandal throughout Athens.
44:24Not just because of Aspasia's profession,
44:27but because Pericles treated her as an equal.
44:30Something deeply unusual in 5th century Athens.
44:34One of the things that created such a stir was that Pericles had her participate in conversations that he had with some of the most important individuals with whom he talked.
44:44There's jokes to suggest that Aspasia actually was the person who wrote Pericles' speeches.
44:53Pericles and his circle were to become one of the most famous and influential groups in Western history.
45:03But in 5th century Athens, the highest achievements of art and culture were not restricted to the elite.
45:10Here in the shadow of the Acropolis sits the world's first theatre.
45:22Twice a year the Athenian population would gather here to watch a great festival.
45:29A festival of drama.
45:32Television, cinema, theatre all owe their existence to this place.
45:38For here is the home of popular entertainment.
45:44There's one huge difference between the ancient theatre and our own and that is that it was incredibly noisy.
45:54We hear stories of how when they didn't like a play the audience booed and they hissed and they actually got actors driven off the stage.
46:03But there's other stories that showed that when they were going with the story and deeply involved in it they actually all collectively burst into tears.
46:10The favourite tales of the Greek stage were called tragedies.
46:17These were stories as shocking as a contemporary horror movie.
46:22The tragedies told stories of great men falling from their heights, losing everything they owned.
46:31Greek tragedy shows human beings, however able, however brilliant, however intelligent,
46:36quite unable to alter the destinies which have been decreed for them.
46:43These tragedies have fascinated audiences ever since.
46:47This 19th century painting shows the story of the mythical ruler Agamemnon,
46:53who was murdered by his own wife.
46:55Another tragedy told of King Oedipus, who gouged out his eyes when he discovered that he had married his own mother.
47:07These Athenians, natives of the greatest city in the ancient world, seemed to revel in seeing how frail greatness could really be.
47:16I don't think we can use Greek tragedy to tell us exactly what happened in reality.
47:25It's not a document of Athenian social life.
47:28But what it does do is take us directly and immediately into the psychological heart of those Athenian men.
47:34The kind of dreams and fantasies and fears and imaginary scenarios that they came up with in the theatre have to tell us just as much about them as any document of everyday reality could.
47:50Theatres were built in every major Greek city.
47:52In Sparta, Corinth, on the island of Delos, here in Delphi.
48:02Athens was the heart of a cultural revolution that would spread across the Mediterranean and echo around the world.
48:22Periclean Athens seems to me to belong in a smallish collection of cities where truly great moments in the human experience took place.
48:34Culture in the broadest sense reaches a peak.
48:40But after 20 years of building the cultural capital of the Western world,
48:44Pericles and his fellow Athenians would now find that their theatre and their tragedies would hold a bitter sting.
48:57It is possible to think of Pericles, indeed I think of him, as a man with a tragic flaw.
49:04As the sort of man whose greatest qualities, the ones that make him most admirable and successful,
49:11turn out to be the seeds of his own destruction.
49:18Pericles began to plan a grand new venture.
49:23A venture even more ambitious than the Parthenon.
49:28He wanted to make Athens the undisputed leader of the Mediterranean.
49:31Little did Pericles know that he would now bring Athens not glory,
49:41but death, destruction, and the loss of her empire.
50:01A venture for the Western world.
50:02There was no crowd, no one or two years.
50:04Christians were calling his friends to come out.
50:05He was hiding today.
50:06A venture of America's Platform,
50:07And the world was hiding today.
50:09Everybody was hiding.
50:12He was hiding in the Swifties.
50:13You were hiding in the US.
50:15There was a huge hole.
50:17Let's go of it.
50:18He was hiding.
50:19Where are you hiding?
50:21Never been hiding.
50:23We're hiding.
50:25When the world were hiding.
50:27Are you hiding?
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