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00:03Greece, the year 490 BC.
00:10Here a revolution has begun that will change the world.
00:17In a moment of chaos and anarchy, the people of a tiny state named Athens have seized control of their
00:24city
00:26and established democracy for the first time in history.
00:32But now this tiny state will face a greater challenge.
00:38Athens will be pitted against the greatest power of the day, the tyrannical Persian Empire.
00:48In a contest spread across land and sea that will last over a decade,
00:54Athenian democracy will be tested in the crucible of war.
01:02This is the story of an extraordinary moment in history
01:06and of two men who would change the course of civilization.
01:11Themistatles, a military genius of the ancient world.
01:16And Peritles, a visionary whose legacy still shapes the world today.
01:25This is the story of the Greeks.
01:46490 BC.
01:47490 BC.
01:49A lone figure runs across the mountainous terrain of Greece.
01:57His name is Pheidippides, citizen of a tiny democracy named Athens.
02:04On this day, Pheidippides will make one of the most astonishing athletic achievements in history.
02:12The inspiration for our modern marathon.
02:20The inspiration for our modern marathon.
02:41In the early 5th century BC, the Persians were the greatest power on the world stage.
02:51Their vast empire stretched from India in the east to Turkey in the west.
02:59Now, out on their western frontier, the tiny state of democratic Athens was gaining power.
03:06This was a threat that the Persians would have to destroy.
03:13The Persians lived in a culture of unbending tyranny.
03:17At the head of their empire sat Darius, known to the Greeks only as the Great King.
03:26Suppliants had to cover their mouths in his presence, just to avoid tainting the air he breathed.
03:35For Pheidippides and the democratic Athenians, conquest by Darius and the Persians would mean
03:41the destruction of their entire way of life.
03:44There is a huge cultural difference between the Greeks and the Persians.
03:48The Greeks are a people who emphasize freedom.
03:53The Persians would put far more emphasis on obedience.
03:58There is a struggle between freedom and slavery.
04:06The Persian force landed at a sandy bay called Marathon, just 26 miles from Athens.
04:14News of the invasion spread through the streets like wildfire.
04:20This was a city without a standing army.
04:25Every male citizen would have to come to the defense of his state.
04:31The poorer citizens have spears, sticks, bows and arrows, whatever weapons they can find.
04:40But the heart of the Athenian force would be the hoplites.
04:45Men who could afford heavy bronze armor, a shield, a spear, a sword.
04:52The Athenians would field a small but determined force.
04:56That's probably the first time in the history of the Athenian state that the entire population
05:01had been mustered.
05:02And for them to field 10,000 hoplites out of a citizenry that might have only been 20 or
05:0830,000, it's a level of involvement that's astounding.
05:13But as they faced the Persians on the battlefield, the Athenians held out little hope of victory.
05:19They were outnumbered by two to one.
05:30Pheidippides' desperate mission was to run for help from one of Athens' local rivals,
05:35the Greek state of Sparta.
05:45Even as he ran, Pheidippides must have imagined the horror that his fellow Athenians now faced.
06:05You're dodging spears from your men in front and your men in behind.
06:09You probably couldn't see or hear.
06:11All you would feel would be pressure.
06:22You wouldn't see the sword plunge that took one of your testicles off.
06:26You would not see the spear thrust that took your head off.
06:33You would have no idea what was going on, just the momentum that carried you ahead.
06:44All you would be aware of is that you had to push forward and keep stabbing and keep on your
06:49feet.
06:50And you would hope that everybody else would do that.
06:57Pheidippides' run was to become the stuff of legend.
07:02Fired by the terror that his fellow citizens were being slaughtered, he ran 140 miles in just two days.
07:19But Pheidippides' quest would end in failure.
07:22Help would be refused.
07:26That he had voted to fight and that this reflected the majority vote of the citizens and that was not
07:32true of the Persians.
07:34Whatever you want to say about democracy, it fields the most patriotic, enthusiastic and often large armies.
07:44The Athenians returned to their city to celebrate their victory.
08:00But amongst them was one for whom the war with Persia had only just begun.
08:09An Athenian general named Themistotles.
08:17Themistotles had fought on the battlefield at Marathon.
08:28He was typical of a new generation of Athenian leaders.
08:32A man who had risen to power through democracy.
08:36Themistotles is a fascinating character.
08:38Very much an example of the effect of democracy in Athens.
08:43It's relatively clear that he doesn't come from the inner circle of the landed aristocracy that traditionally had ruled in
08:52Athens.
08:54There were stories told about his feeling rather touchy about the fact that he hadn't had a traditional aristocratic upbringing,
09:00for example, in music and poetry.
09:03In fact, that might have given him a spur to show that he could do as well as someone who
09:09had gone to all the right schools, as it were.
09:16Themistotles' opinion of his common origins was blunt and straightforward.
09:22I may not know how to play the lyre or flute, but I do know how to make a city
09:27great.
09:29Themistotles had learnt the skills of leadership here, the Democratic Assembly of Athens.
09:38Here, any Athenian could stand before his fellow citizens and try to convince them to follow his leadership.
09:50From this very podium, Themistotles would now show himself to be one of history's greatest leaders, the savior of his
10:00city.
10:03For Themistotles alone recognized that the Persians might still be a danger.
10:09And that next time, victory for the Athenians might not prove so easy.
10:16Themistotles realized that the Persians, if they came again, it would be in a way that made sure that they
10:22weren't going to be defeated by land again.
10:25There was no way that the Athenians could rely on traditional uplight fighting technique.
10:32Themistotles began to form a bold new strategy, employing the most advanced weapon of the day, the trireme.
11:02Triremes had been developed by the Greek state of Corinth, the ancient world's finest shipbuilders.
11:13Stacking 170 oarsmen on three levels, their combination of light weight and raw power gave them astonishing speed and maneuverability.
11:26There was nothing else like them on the water.
11:30In contemporary terms, a trireme is a missile.
11:33The object of a trireme is to ram the enemy ship.
11:38It is a very narrow, very light, very sleek and very fast weapon.
11:45But these triremes were also exceedingly expensive.
11:51Themistotles' vision of a vast Athenian navy might never have come to pass if it had not been for one
11:57stroke of luck.
12:06In the year 483 BC, the Athenians discovered a great vein of silver in their territory.
12:15Worth a hundred talents, a vast amount in the ancient world.
12:24The Athenians wanted to divide these newfound riches among themselves.
12:32But then Themistotles stood up in the assembly.
12:35He wanted to spend the money on ships.
12:39But he also knew that this would be a hard proposal to sell.
12:46And so Themistocles played a complex bluff.
12:50His argument is not that the money should be used to build a fleet against Persia,
12:55but rather it should be used to build a fleet against Athens' local rival, the Greek city-state of Aegina.
13:04The reason Themistocles does this is that he knew it would simply be too upsetting to remind people of the
13:09Persian threat.
13:12It's a difficult argument to make and a tribute to his political skill that he's able to do it.
13:26Themistocles convinced the Athenians to build the greatest naval force in Greece.
13:48The great Persian king Darius died in 486 BC, and his son Xerxes assumed his father's throne.
14:00Xerxes' first action was to vow vengeance for his father's defeat at the hands of the Athenians.
14:07On my father's behalf, and on behalf of all my subjects, I will not rest until I have taken Athens
14:14and burnt it to the ground.
14:18As an imperial power, the Persians cannot allow small regional states like this to beat them with impunity.
14:29Xerxes began to gather his forces.
14:34He conscripted troops from every corner of his empire, Arabians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, as well as Persians.
14:44Rumors began to leak back to Athens, that Xerxes' army numbered nearly two million men,
14:50that it was the greatest force the world had ever seen, that soon it would be ready to march.
15:02And then finally in the spring of 480 BC, news reached Athens.
15:08The Persian army had set out for Greece.
15:16History records that Xerxes' troops drank rivers dry,
15:25trampled fields to the raw earth, ravaging the land as they marched on towards Greece.
15:34Xerxes was confident of victory.
15:37We shall so extend the empire of Persia that its boundaries will be God's own sky,
15:44so that the sun will not look on any land that is not ours.
15:50When the Greeks realized that the Persians were invading again, terror gripped the whole country.
15:57For the Athenians, who knew that they would be Xerxes' first target,
16:01it seemed that this could only be the end.
16:06As panic gripped the city, they turned desperately to their gods.
16:13They sent a messenger to the Oracle to find out their fate.
16:32Here, high in the Greek mountains, can still be found the site of Delphi,
16:36the most famous of the Greek oracles.
16:42built around a vast chasm in the mountain from which a sacred spring still flows.
16:48Here, the Greeks would come to discover their future.
16:56They would ask questions of the Pythia, the mysterious priestess who spoke with the voice of the god Apollo.
17:09People came from all over the Greek world to consult Delphi,
17:12and sometimes came from outside the Greek world as well.
17:15It was considered to be the center of the universe.
17:18The omphalos, the navel stone of the whole world, was at Delphi.
17:22People asked questions about their private life, which are just the sorts of questions people want answers to now.
17:32Archaeologists have discovered copies of the questions asked of these ancient oracles.
17:37Has Aristos stolen the wool from the mattress?
17:42Hermione asks, what should I do to have useful children?
17:49But as the Athenians walked up this path two and a half thousand years ago,
17:53their question was simple and grave.
17:57What could they do to save themselves?
18:03The oracle's response could not have been more negative.
18:08Why sit you, doomed ones?
18:11Fly to the ends of the earth.
18:13All is ruin.
18:15For fire and the headlong god of war shall bring you low.
18:21When this message came back to Athens,
18:24the democratic assembly dissolved into uproar.
18:29It seemed that even the gods had deserted them.
18:35But Themistocles refused to panic.
18:38He had spent every day since the battle of Marathon waiting for this moment.
18:45He sent the envoys back to Delphi for a second prophecy.
18:53Though all else shall be taken, Zeus, the all-seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail.
19:05Argument raged as to what this wooden wall could be.
19:09Some said it meant the stronghold at the center of Athens, the Acropolis.
19:14But Themistocles had a different idea.
19:19He read the oracle and he insisted that it had a different interpretation.
19:25He said the ships are the wooden barricade which are going to be the key to our success.
19:34Themistocles' plan was daring.
19:38Avoid a conflict on land.
19:41And fight the Persians at sea.
19:47He ordered the evacuation of Athens for the first time in her history.
19:54This order for evacuation, carved into a stone tablet for public display, is still preserved.
20:01Discovered in the back of a Greek coffee house.
20:05The Athenians shall send their children and wives to the village of Troison.
20:10All the men should embark on the 200 ships that have been prepared to fight the barbarian.
20:18Themistocles ordered that his fleet of triremes should gather at Salamis, a tiny island off the Athenian coast.
20:26Themistocles' strategy is remarkable not only because it is innovative and because it is bold,
20:32but because it requires extraordinary self-sacrifice on the part of the Athenian people.
20:37He wants every man, woman and child to leave their homes and possessions and to go into exile.
20:56With Athens abandoned, Xerxes' mighty force entered the city.
21:05The Persians march in and go up onto the Athenian Acropolis, the symbol of Athens.
21:14And they burn it.
21:20They burn the temples to the ground.
21:23Then you can see the smoke rising from Salamis.
21:29This would have been a devastating sight and a humiliating one.
21:32They would, in short, have seen their country occupied by a fearsome foreign invader.
21:40Surely they would have wondered if they would ever be able to go home again.
21:56As night fell, Themistocles met the leaders of the other Greek city-states on the island of Salamis.
22:05They had also assembled their much smaller fleets here.
22:09Their scouts had reported back.
22:12The Persians now not only held Athens, but had also gathered a mighty fleet four times the size of the
22:18Greek forces.
22:24But Themistocles' plans were laid.
22:30Themistocles 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.
22:45The trick is going to be to get the enemy to fight there because the Persians aren't stupid.
22:53Themistocles sent his servant to Xerxes with a seemingly traitorous message.
23:01The Greeks are afraid and are planning to slip away.
23:05They're squabbling with each other and will offer no opposition.
23:09You have at this moment an opportunity of unparalleled success.
23:14So eager was Xerxes for a crushing victory, he was happy to believe Themistocles' ploy.
23:23Xerxes marshals his admirals and they embark and they spend the night rowing.
23:31They send a contingent along the eastern defile, the strait there.
23:35They try to block up the straits.
23:47Only as the dawn rose did the Persians realize the true nature of Themistocles' plan.
23:54They discovered the Greeks not in disarray, but 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 maneuver.
24:12Powerful Greek triremes bore down on them without mercy.
24:20The Greek playwright Aeschylus fought in the battle and lived to tell the tale.
24:26We heard from every part this voice of exhortation.
24:30Advance ye sons of Greece, from slavery save your country, save your wives, your children save.
24:36This day the common cause of all demands your valor.
24:42The Greek forces smashed into the Cornet Persian fleet.
25:02Xerxes himself watched the carnage from his golden throne placed on the shore.
25:27At the end of the battle, the Persians had lost 200 ships.
25:33For the Greeks, it was a stunning and conclusive victory.
25:39Victory at Salamis is tremendously important for Greece and for the Athenians.
25:44It breaks the Persian navy.
25:47The Persians can no longer guarantee that they can feed their army, nor can they guarantee the safety of the
25:53Persian king.
25:54They must immediately get back to Asia Minor while the going is good.
25:59In practical terms, the game is over and the Greeks have won.
26:07Themistatles' triumph was complete.
26:10He had persuaded the Athenians to build a navy.
26:14He had convinced them to sacrifice their entire city to bring them victory at sea.
26:23His instincts had been proved right.
26:26He had defeated the greatest empire of the day.
26:32And he had now placed Athens in a position where she could build an empire of her own.
26:48After the years of conflict, this was a new dawn for Athens.
26:56Flush with victory, equipped with the largest fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, the tiny democracy began to grow.
27:15The Athenians are going to have naval superiority in the eastern Mediterranean.
27:19And that is how great their victory over the Persian fleet is.
27:26And this has a momentum of its own.
27:29Before you know it, the Athenians are the head of a naval confederacy.
27:34And they're on the road to becoming a superpower.
27:45The Athenians founded the Delian League.
27:50An alliance of Greek states designed to keep the Persians in check.
27:56Its treasury was located here, on the island of Delos.
28:01But the ruins still remain.
28:09By 450 BC, this league had more than 200 member states.
28:14But Athens was the undisputed leader.
28:17The Delian League had become Athens' empire in all but name.
28:28And Athens' naval supremacy also gave her economic power.
28:38She became a city at the center of a vast trading network.
28:46Goods from all over the Mediterranean flooded into her harbors.
28:53In its heyday, Athens was the big apple, or if you will, the big olive, of the eastern Mediterranean.
29:04Constant coming and going of traders.
29:08The wharves would be busy, full of people in a cacophony of language.
29:19One contemporary author gave an account of the diversity of goods in the Athenian marketplace.
29:26From Cyrenia, ox-hides.
29:29From the Hellespont, mackerel and all kinds of salted fish.
29:32Libya provides abundant ivory.
29:35Pagassae provides tattooed slaves.
29:38Carthage, rugs and many colored cushions.
29:44The Athenian Empire was unprecedented in the degree of prosperity that came to it because of its role as a
29:52center of trade.
29:53The Athenians had access to a quality of life that probably no Greek had ever had before.
30:05The Athenian Empire.
30:06The Athenian Empire.
30:13Athens' 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 in less than a generation.
30:31And at the city's heart still lay her unique system of government.
30:35Democracy.
30:38A system of voting using pebbles, olive leaves or the show of hands that decided every aspect of the city's
30:45government.
30:50Democracy gave the Athenians a great advantage of unleashing talents, powers, opportunities that other cultures simply cannot match.
31:04The Athenians keenly protected their democracy from any threat, foreign or domestic.
31:16Once a year, each citizen could scratch the name of an individual onto a shard of pottery, known as an
31:22ostraca, and place it into a pot in the assembly.
31:30The person whose name came up most would then be ostracized, banished from the city.
31:38This was the Athenians' method of protecting their government.
31:42Expelling any person they felt might become too powerful.
31:48But Athenian democracy could turn on any citizen, even its greatest war hero.
31:57Themistocles now found himself under attack.
32:04The threat was gone now.
32:06His raison d'etre has been taken away.
32:08This is something he can't understand.
32:12Themistocles reacts, perhaps in an uncharacteristically crude way.
32:16He reminded the Athenian voters of what they owed him.
32:19Voters don't want to be reminded in any period of what they owe to their politicians.
32:24They want to be told what their politicians can do for them.
32:27The Athenian people turned on the aging politician.
32:32Calculated, cruel, but deeply democratic.
32:36They ostracized the man who had led them to their greatest victory.
32:47Themistocles was ostracized, I believe, because he was simply regarded as having gotten too big for his boat.
32:59Some of the ostraca with Themistocles' name still inscribed upon them have been found, hidden down an ancient well.
33:09Archaeologists believe that these had been pre-prepared by Themistocles' enemies.
33:16To be handed out to Athenian voters who couldn't write.
33:26Themistocles never recovered from this humiliation.
33:30He was to spend the rest of his years wandering from state to state.
33:34Finally dying in exile in Persia.
33:38The country whose defeat had been his greatest triumph.
33:57The Athenians were now looking for a leader who might fulfill their new found sense of imperial glory.
34:05They found a man who seemed the perfect reflection of this new ideal.
34:11A man who would change the face of Athens forever.
34:15A man named Pericles.
34:21He's probably not a more important figure in the history of classical Greece than Pericles.
34:28He was the leader of Athens at the height of its power and of its artistic achievement.
34:35He was the figure associated appropriately with bringing Athenian democracy to its climax, to its height.
34:44But Pericles was no obvious democrat like Themistocles, for he had been born into one of Athens' most elite families.
34:55Nobody had blower blood than Pericles.
34:59His father was a famous and successful general.
35:02His mother came from one of the most distinguished Athenian political families.
35:09Pericles was born with advantages and eminence that Themistocles lacked.
35:19And perhaps because of his aristocratic origins, Pericles knew what the people of Athens now wanted.
35:27A city fit to rule an empire.
35:32It seems clear that Pericles had in mind to create a city whose greatness would be admired by the people
35:41who live there, by everybody else in the Greek world, well into the future.
35:51Pericles announced a glorious new vision to the Athenian assembly.
35:58All kinds of enterprises should be created which will provide inspiration for every art, find employment for every hand.
36:07We must devote ourselves to acquiring things that will be the source of everlasting fame.
36:16Pericles turned his attention to the Acropolis, the sheer peak in the centre of Athens, home of the city's patron
36:24goddess, Athena.
36:3220 years earlier, the Persians had burnt down the temples that stood here.
36:39Ever since, the Athenians had left these ruins untouched, as a memorial to those killed in the war.
36:50But Pericles had other ideas.
36:56He proposed a massive reconstruction plan.
36:59At its centre would be a new Parthenon, a temple to Athena.
37:04And it would be one of the most astonishing buildings of the ancient world.
37:24This new construction program was of unprecedented magnitude and expense.
37:31The Parthenon, in particular, was extraordinarily expensive.
37:35It was filled with all sorts of architectural refinements.
37:42Pericles planned to spend over 5,000 talents in the first year alone.
37:47A total budget of more than a billion dollars in today's terms.
37:54This project would require 20,000 tons of marble.
38:02The Athenian quarries at Mount Pentelicus, just outside the city, resounded as hundreds of workmen traced out and carved great
38:09blocks of marble from the mountain.
38:16This temple would be decorated like none before.
38:23Sculptors 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.
38:35He selected architects, he selected the men who designed the plans.
38:41Pericles was directly involved in the planning process.
38:47Some protested that he was decking out the city like a prostitute.
38:51But when the building was completed, in only 15 years,
38:58his critics were silenced.
39:13The Parthenon was, and still is, the most glorious symbol of Athens' empire.
39:21Here was the spiritual heart of the city.
39:25The mark of her wealth, power, and artistic genius.
39:34When you first came through the door, you'd have been just stunned.
39:41You'd have been confronted immediately by an enormous 40-foot-high statue of Athena, in gold and ivory and studded
39:50with jewels.
39:53I think the impression of a statue of that size, and with that kind of dressing, must have been truly
40:02overwhelming.
40:18Pericles had embellished his temple like no other.
40:24Though this astonishing statue has since been lost to history, other treasures from the Parthenon have survived for over 2
40:31,000 years.
40:40The most famous is the Parthenon Frieze.
40:46A 500-foot-long stretch of carved marble, which ran around the inner wall of the temple.
41:00The Parthenon Frieze is only two and a half inches thick at its maximum depth.
41:05And yet, in this space, the sculptors carved rank upon rank of crowded figures,
41:11a great procession of Athenians, glorious and elegant.
41:17Here, Pericles offered his fellow citizens a vision of themselves and their democratic state at the height of their glory.
41:25Democracy itself becomes heroised in that monument.
41:29It's a very democratic thing that wants to include all those citizens who participated in beating off the first great
41:37threat to democracy,
41:38which was from the Persians.
41:41These are ideals to which you can aspire.
41:52The monuments that Pericles built for his fellow Athenians still stand on the peak of the Acropolis.
42:02They remain the most striking legacy of classical Athens, of one of the great empires of the ancient world.
42:1220,000 tons of perfectly proportioned marble, carved to sub-millimeter accuracy.
42:22The entire structure of the Parthenon is subtly designed to compensate for optical distortion.
42:30There isn't actually a single right angle in the entire temple.
42:34Pillars swell.
42:36The floor is curved, all to give the appearance of perfection.
42:40It is an astonishing testament to the achievements of Athenian democracy.
42:53The Pericles was not simply concerned with astonishing construction projects.
42:58Under his leadership, Athens would also become the intellectual centre of the ancient world.
43:08The traditional centre of Athenian upper-class life had always been the symposium, or dinner party,
43:16where guests would gather to eat, drink and talk.
43:22In these years, Pericles played host to an astonishing generation of individuals.
43:29Figures whose achievements would shape Western civilization.
43:42Pericles was remarkable in that he associated with the leading minds of his day,
43:47in just about every field of endeavour.
43:53Pericles was acquainted with the world's first scientists.
43:56Figures such as Anaxagoras, the first man to realise that the moon was lit by reflected sunlight.
44:03He knew Herodotus, the world's first historian, who wrote one of the earliest records of Greek life.
44:10And poets and authors such as Aeschylus and Euripides, whose works are still standards of world literature.
44:17Pericles was well aware of his city's stature.
44:21Our whole city is an education, for our citizens excel all men in versatility, resourcefulness and brilliance.
44:33Even Pericles' partner, a woman named Aspasia, was unique and distinguished.
44:41Pericles had divorced his wife and set up home with a foreign woman.
44:45A woman whose occupation was hardly to be expected.
44:48For Aspasia was what was known as a hetaira, Greek for a companion.
44:55Yes, she was in a technical sense, I guess, a prostitute, but she was more than that.
45:00A woman of charm, of style, of intellect.
45:04She really was very extraordinary. She had an extraordinary mind.
45:08This relationship caused scandal throughout Athens, not just because of Aspasia's profession, but because Pericles treated her as an equal,
45:18something deeply unusual in 5th century Athens.
45:22One of the things that created such a stir was that Pericles had her participate in conversations that he had
45:28with some of the most important individuals with whom he talked.
45:32There's jokes to suggest that Aspasia actually was the person who wrote Pericles' speeches.
45:40Pericles and his circle were to become one of the most famous and influential groups in Western history.
45:50But in 5th century Athens, the highest achievements of art and culture were not restricted to the elite.
46:04Here in the shadow of the Acropolis sits the world's first theatre.
46:10Twice a year the Athenian population would gather here to watch a great festival.
46:15A festival of drama.
46:18Television, cinema, theatre all owe their existence to this place.
46:26For here is the home of popular entertainment.
46:30There's one huge difference between the ancient theatre and our own, and that is that it was incredibly noisy.
46:38We hear stories of how when they didn't like a play, the audience booed and they hissed and they actually
46:44got actors driven off the stage.
46:47But there's other stories that showed that when they were going with the story and deeply involved in it, they
46:52actually all collectively burst into tears.
46:56The favourite tales of the Greek stage were called tragedies.
47:00These were stories as shocking as a contemporary horror movie.
47:04The tragedies told stories of great men falling from their heights, losing everything they owned.
47:13Greek tragedy shows human beings, however able, however brilliant, however intelligent, quite unable to alter the destinies which have been
47:22decreed for them.
47:24These tragedies have fascinated audiences ever since.
47:28This 19th century painting shows the story of the mythical ruler Agamemnon, who was murdered by his own wife.
47:39Another tragedy told of King Oedipus, who gouged out his eyes when he discovered that he had married his own
47:46mother.
47:49These Athenians, natives of the greatest city in the ancient world, seemed to revel in seeing how frail greatness could
47:56really be.
47:59I don't think we can use Greek tragedy to tell us exactly what happened in reality.
48:04It's not a document of Athenian social life.
48:07But what it does do is take us directly and immediately into the psychological heart of those Athenian men.
48:14The kind of dreams and fantasies and fears and imaginary scenarios that they came up with in the theatre have
48:20to tell us just as much about them as any document of everyday reality could.
48:28Theatres were built in every major Greek city, in Sparta, Corinth, on the island of Delos, here in Delphi.
48:39Athens was the heart of a cultural revolution that would spread across the Mediterranean and echo around the world.
48:58Periclean Athens seems to me to belong in the smallish collection of cities where truly great moments in the human
49:08experience took place.
49:10Culture in the broadest sense reaches a peak.
49:16But after 20 years of building the cultural capital of the Western world, Pericles and his fellow Athenians would now
49:24find that their theatre and their tragedies would hold a bitter sting.
49:31It is possible to think of Pericles, indeed I think of him, as a man with a tragic flaw.
49:39As the sort of man whose greatest qualities, the ones that make him most admirable and successful, turn out to
49:48be the seeds of his own destruction.
49:51Ultimately, it can be said they lead to the destruction of the Athens that he prized more than anything else.
49:59In the coming years, Pericles would embroil his city in the greatest war in the history of classical Greece.
50:08He would see her devastated by siege and plague.
50:13And he himself would fall victim to a fate the equal of any tragic hero.
50:45He was forced to die of the
50:46He was forced to die from the world as he was forced into silver and gold.
50:47The very beginning of the world was also forced to die from an end.
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